Chapter One #3
“She’s our mother,” Sue cried. “The only parent we’ve got left— The only family we’ve got left other than each other. I tell you she’s dying and all you can do is stand there playing with your noodles?”
Still, I said nothing. I didn’t so much as lift my head.
“What is wrong with you!” A rough hand spun me around. “Do you think I’m lying or—”
“Yes.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Yes. I think you’re lying through your bleached teeth. You forget that I know you, Sue. I do,” I hissed, “and that’s why you’ve always hated me. Everyone else has looked at you and seen the pretty, sweet, charming person you’ve always pretended to be, but me...”
She backed away, expression hardening.
“I know you’re nothing but a monster in a candy-coated shell.” I flicked her forehead, making her jerk. “And you’re already starting to crack.”
Sue straightened, clearing her throat. “That’s very hurtful, Sarah, and completely uncalled for.
I came here not as your enemy, but as your sister.
Your only sister. All I want is for the three of us to be together one final time.
Please, can’t you just for once leave the past in the past?
What good is it doing you, sitting here in your hovel all day, frying up a side of resentment to make your Korean cheap eats go down easier? ”
I clenched my teeth, fuming as my own words came back to haunt me. Fake-ass apologies like that put all the responsibility on me for what happened, instead of on you.
But, of course, Sue didn’t even apologize.
Why would she when I was the one holding on to resentment and refusing to leave the past in the past?
It really had to be nice in the mind of a narcissist. They got to live an entire lifetime never doing a single thing wrong—or so they would go to their graves swearing.
I smiled winningly. “Me and the past are living quite happily in this hovel. And I’ll have you know that resentment is a tasty spice, but my cheap eats don’t need it. I always was the better cook than you.”
“No, you weren’t!” she barked, lip curling.
I smiled wider.
Sue saw it and fixed her face in an instant, internally cursing herself for the slip—and I didn’t need to be in her head to know it.
I was eight years old when I figured out that my sister was a twisted, duplicitous snake.
Nine when I stopped taking her crap, and made it my mission to ensure the world saw her for what she truly was.
And ten when Omma realized that the only way for us to live in a peaceful home was for her to put Sue and me at opposite sides of it.
She cleared her throat. “You know what? Have it your way, Sarah. Pick a fight. Be a bitch. Whatever it takes for you to feel like you’re winning a game you’re only playing with yourself.
“The only reason I came was for Omma. She wants to see you before it’s too late. Are you coming or not?”
“Not,” I breezed, turning back to the stove.
“Why? Don’t you care about your own mother?”
“I would, if she were really dying.” My tone couldn’t be flatter. “But since you’re lying and she’s not, I’m not rushing off anywhere with you.”
She choked. “I— I’m not lying! What kind of a nutcase do you think I am? Do you really believe I’d come all this way just to make up a story about our mother being on her deathbed?”
“Yep,” I replied, popping the “p.”
She blew out a rough breath that tickled my hair. “Fuck’s sake— Fine,” she snapped. “I thought you’d make this difficult, so here.” I heard shuffling behind me. “I brought proof.”
“What proof?” I didn’t turn around. “Medical reports? Scans? Might as well put them away now because you could’ve easily doctored those. That’s not proof of anything.”
“Will you just look?”
My stirring slowed down. There’s no reason for me to look at anything she has to show me. Sue used to call Omma a poisonous prune whenever her back was turned, and I doubt her feelings toward her changed much in the last decade.
She doesn’t give a shit about honoring her dying wish, because that would require her caring about someone other than herself.
Don’t get caught in her web, sense whispered in my ear. Remember everything you learned about dealing with narcissistic abusers. Remember that no matter how much you wish, beg, plead, want them to... they never change.
Just tell her to go.
“What is it?” I turned around and snatched the folder from her grip. “A letter from Omma that you wrote yourself? Pictures from the bad old days? Or is it...?” I trailed off, reading four uppercase words across the top of the document that shut me down better than an explanation.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
“What is this...?” My whole body went numb.
“Read what it says under Disposition of Property.”
My hands moved of their own accord, flipping through the pages, they took me to the second to last page.
“She’s leaving it all to you.” Sue’s voice whispered against my ear.
“Yes, all that she has. Omma made some bad investments in the last couple years, and that was before she found out about the cancer. Between the chemo and experimental trial after experimental trial, she doesn’t have much, but still, she’s leaving it all to you.
Ten thousand dollars, her car, and even Halmeoni’s necklace.
“We bought the house from her to help her cover the medical bills,” Sue confessed. “That belongs to me now, but you get her book collection and most of her furniture. You can keep it or sell it—up to you.”
She didn’t have to tell me that. I could read it all in fine, black ink. All of Omma’s earthly and monetary possessions bequeathed to my youngest daughter, Sarang Kim.
“It’s not fake,” Sue blurted out in the stretching silence. “You can see for yourself that she and the witnesses all signed it. It’s her real will.”
Sue didn’t have to tell me that either. I once dreamed of becoming a lawyer until Sue saw to the end of that. I knew when I was holding a legal document in my hands.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Sue asked when again I didn’t speak.
“Yes,” I rasped, holding the papers in my trembling hands.
“It means Omma did something she’s never done in the eighteen years I lived in her house.
She... admitted she was wrong.” I raised my head, gazing at her for the first proper time since she walked into my life.
“And not even your lies, schemes, or tricks could ever get her to do that.
“She really is dying.”
She nodded. “So... will you come?”
My grip tightened on the will, crumpling the paper between my fingertips. “Why now?”
“She’s on hospice. The doctors have her on so many meds to stop the pain, they’re making her loopy and confused.
Some days she doesn’t know what year it is or even who she is,” she said.
“She’ll ask where you are, forgetting that she sent you away, and then when she remembers.
.. she cries.” Sue looked away, her jaw clenching tight.
“She’s just reliving one of the worst days of her life over and over and over, and it’s hell.
“Omma is already in enough pain. She doesn’t need to carry the regret of never making it right with you to the grave as well.
” Sue snapped back to me, glaring. “I know you think I’m some kind of monster, but not even I can watch my own mother suffer like this.
I can’t do anything to help her, except bring her you.
So,” she barked, making me stiffen. “Are you coming or not?”
I stared at her—my expression blank but my mind racing.
Why should I go with her? My own mother didn’t believe me when I told her through snot-covered lips that I wasn’t some psychopath who left innocent people paralyzed for life.
She threw me out onto the street with nothing, ignored my calls and letters, hasn’t spoken to me in ten years, and now that she wants to make up, instead of reaching out herself, she sends the last person on earth I’d ever want to see to be her message girl.
I owed Omma nothing. Less than nothing. I played the good, dutiful daughter for eighteen years, and it didn’t save me from living under the constant cloud of her disappointment and its acid rain of her impossible expectations.
The truth was, Ha-eun Kim was never anything approaching a good mother.
I gave up on her long before she gave up on me.
“Yes,” I said, turning off the stove. “I’m coming.”