by Steph Cha
Her mother was gone, and Grace was alone, filthy with her blood. The bystanders swarmed around her, talking at her, questioning her, as if she owed them an explanation. One of them even had his phone out, held up and pointed at her. She wanted them to leave. She needed to get out of this place. The car was right there. She closed her eyes and pictured the drive to the hospital, tried to breathe normally and steady her hands. She was still steeling herself when she realized Yvonne’s purse was gone, her car key with it. She was stranded here, among strangers. She wondered if one of them might give her a ride to the hospital, if they cared enough to be kind when it cost them something, even if it was just bloodstains on a back seat.
She called her father, though as soon as she hung up, she couldn’t remember what was said.
Sirens again—three police cars swept into the parking lot.
They were too late. Everything important had already happened.
The waiting room looked disturbingly grimy. She hadn’t spent much time in hospitals and had always pictured them, thoughtlessly, as spotless, sterile places, as unpolluted temples of healing, helmed by handsome doctors in white coats. She was reminded now that they were full of the sick and the poor and the dirty. The waiting room was packed, some of the people in it clearly in need of medical attention. Others waited without visible injuries, and she wondered who they were waiting for. A young Latina woman sat with a little boy on her lap. She dozed lightly, but the child was awake, and he gazed at Grace, his wide eyes a watery brown. Were they waiting on a gunshot victim, too? The gangbanging baby daddy? This was racist, she knew. But this chola-looking woman, she was asleep in this terrible place; maybe a night in the ER was no big surprise. All these people, they looked like nothing if not friends of misfortune. What was Grace doing here with them? The boy blinked at her and she looked away.
The frame of things was changing, widening so fast that it hurt her head to even think about it.
She’d lived her whole life shielded from violence. No one had ever so much as smacked her, apart from her mother and Miriam, and they’d never caused damage that lasted beyond the hour. She’d never even seen a gun, let alone witnessed a shooting.
And this was not just violence, not just calamity, but an attempt made by another human being on her mother’s life. Who would want to hurt Yvonne? She was just a harmless middle-aged woman. She didn’t have enemies, unless she counted Miriam.
At least Miriam had come. Grace had managed to call her, doing what was necessary despite her shock. The past few hours were already blurred, improperly processed, but she remembered shouting at her sister, enraged by her initial hesitance to rush to Yvonne’s side, as if her petty shit mattered when their mother might be dying. It was almost a relief, that extravagant anger, a bright feeling that beamed through her helplessness and fear.
Miriam showed up a half hour after Grace arrived with Paul. He and Miriam hadn’t seen each other in two years, but there was no sense of reunion, only of family thrust into crisis together. Paul hardly said anything at all. He sat with them, face blank and posture rigid, getting up and wandering off every few minutes, it seemed, more frequently as the wait stretched and the suspense became unbearable.
Yvonne was alive, for now. She was in her third hour of surgery, and no one was telling them anything. Grace had googled gunshot survival statistics but couldn’t bring herself to read the results. She put her phone away, and for the first time in ages, she bowed her head and prayed like she meant it, like she needed someone to listen. If God would deal with this, if He would just pull her mother through and make everything okay, Grace would do anything. She would go back to church. She would be kinder to strangers. She would be a better daughter, a better person.
She was still praying, rocking and whispering into her clasped hands, when she felt Miriam touch her back.
“Yes?” she heard her say.
Grace opened her eyes and looked up in time to see the detective sit down next to her and stretch his hand out to Miriam.
“Neil Maxwell,” he said, as Miriam took it uncertainly. “I’m a detective with the LAPD. You must be Miriam. I met your sister earlier.”
Maxwell, that was his name. He was a big, gruffly handsome white man, about forty years old, with wiry brown hair and a solid torso, a commanding figure in a gray suit that looked at odds with the rumpled, thrown-on clothes of the other occupants of the ER waiting room. He showed his badge, and it was just like on TV, this man the star of his own police show. Making Grace a bit character, victim’s daughter #2, with two lines the whole episode.
He gave her a concerned but reassuring look, one that probably came in handy when dealing with families in shock. He’d been the one who found her in the parking lot, who’d spoken to her in murmurs until Paul arrived. She wondered if he’d been lurking the whole time, waiting to talk to her again.
“Miriam Park,” said Miriam. In theory, she didn’t like cops, but it looked like she might be willing to make an exception, now that her mother was the victim of a crime. “Have you found him?”
“Not yet.” He spoke neutrally, hinting at neither apology nor promise. “We’re still interviewing witnesses, though it seems no one saw much of anything. My understanding is that no one else was in the parking lot until after the assailant drove off. We have conflicting descriptions of the car.”
Grace didn’t check to see if he was looking at her. She stared at her lap, shamed by her uselessness.
She hadn’t thought to study the car, remember the make and model and license plate. She wasn’t even sure what color it was—silver, if she had to guess, but it could have been tiger striped for all she’d been paying attention. The detective had pressed her, gently, but she couldn’t answer his questions with any certainty.
“How’s your mother doing?” he asked.
“She’s still in surgery,” said Miriam. “We have no idea when she’ll be out.”
Grace’s eyes filled again. They had no idea whether she’d come out at all.
Maxwell sat with them for a minute, silent and grave, as if he were in this with them. Grace waited, knowing he had more questions, hating her inability to give him basic answers.
“Do you know if your mother’s gotten any threats lately?” he asked.
She turned to him and met his eyes, relieved to field an easy one. “No, nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head.
She looked to her sister for agreement, but of course she wouldn’t know. Miriam was biting the inside of her lip, her expression pensive and strange and alarming.
Maxwell picked up on it, too, and addressed her directly. “Is there anyone who might have reason to hurt her?”
“No, of course not,” said Grace, a feeling of dread mounting inside her.
The detective kept his eyes focused on Miriam. “There’s a rumor going around about your mother.”
The whole room seemed to fall quiet, ready for Maxwell’s next words. But he didn’t elaborate, just watched Miriam, his silence probing, provocative. He wasn’t comforting them anymore.
Paul rushed into the waiting room, out of breath and smelling like tobacco. That’s where he’d been, smoking a cigarette for the first time in years.
Maxwell stood up to meet him, and Grace saw a worried glance pass between her father and sister. Two years they hadn’t seen each other—what private concern could they possibly share?
The detective introduced himself, extending his hand. Paul ignored it. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I told you to leave my daughters alone.”
Grace was stunned. He was trying to hide it, but her father was angry at the detective in charge of his wife’s case. A man he’d just met, who was here to help their family.
She touched his arm. “Appa?”
No one would meet her eyes.
Her mother had been shot. Her mother might not survive. And yet Grace knew in her bones that there was even more to come.
“Take her home,” Paul ordered Miriam. “Now.”
It was understood, to Grace’s relief, that they would spend the night together. Miriam invited her to sleep over in Silver Lake, but the distance from Northridge, the thought of Blake’s concern—even Miriam understood it was the worse option. In the end they went to the only home they shared, the house in Granada Hills. Grace opened the door for her sister with an odd formality, like a Realtor giving a tour to a skeptical buyer. Anticipation in the turn of the key.
It was almost eleven, and the house was dark but hot, the air close and stifling. On any other night, both her parents would be home now, watching TV, getting ready for bed. She hated the thought of their empty room. It scared her, a cursed idea. She remembered when she and Miriam were children, how they would drag their blankets to that room and sleep on the floor, then climb on the bed to wake Paul and Yvonne.
Miriam took her hand. “Have you even eaten?” she asked. Her voice was soft, gentle and exhausted.
Grace realized she hadn’t had anything since lunch. It had been such a terrible night, and Yvonne hadn’t been there to remind her. She thought of the kimbap her mother had bought for her, spilled and wasted in the Hanin parking lot.
Miriam steered her to the kitchen and sat her down at the table before seeing about food. The fridge was tightly packed, and Grace watched as Miriam rummaged through it, pulling out containers of rice and banchan and leftover kimchi jjigae. “I definitely missed this,” said Miriam.
She microwaved the rice and left the stew to boil on the stove. Grace hadn’t thought she was hungry, but her stomach started to ache as the smell of kimchi rose, warm and pungent. She sat still as Miriam set the table, understanding that her sister was taking care of her, even though both of them had to be suffering.
While the jjigae cooled down, Miriam studied the small stash of liquor their parents kept on top of the fridge. She selected a bottle of Crown Royal and brought it over with two water glasses full of ice. “Good old KTown scotch,” she said, sliding it over to Grace and presenting her glass. “Pour for me.”
The bottle was dusty, a fuzz of grime coming off on Grace’s fingers as she poured a drink for her sister. “I’m pretty sure no one’s touched this since you’ve been gone,” she said.
Miriam was the only real drinker in the family. Grace was a lightweight. She remembered the last time she’d been drunk, that lousy night with her sister, the flurry of bad feeling, the hangover that lasted through the next afternoon. But that was in another universe, one in which the people Grace loved were uninjured and everything else, in retrospect, seemed remarkably okay. After this day, maybe a drink was just what she needed.
She started to serve herself, but Miriam took the bottle away from her. “Come on. We don’t pour our own drinks,” she said, filling Grace’s glass halfway. “That’s seven years of bad sex.”
“Shit,” said Grace. She found her phone in her handbag, realized she hadn’t checked it in hours. “I had a date tonight. I forgot to cancel.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Miriam kept close tabs on Grace’s love life, and Grace had so little going on that she reported whenever she had a date. Her sister and mother weren’t all that different, when it came down to it. They both loved her enough to want things for her. It was only the things that were different. “You stood up the Korean doctor?”
Grace read through her messages—there were eight of them, and the last five were long and angry.
“I stood up the Korean doctor,” she said, blinking at the profanity.
“What?”
She gave Miriam the phone and watched her scowl. “‘Frickin inconsiderate cunt’? Why ‘frickin’?”
Grace shrugged and Miriam handed her phone back.
“God, I think you really—” She paused, her lips parted on the next word.
“You were gonna say I dodged a bullet,” said Grace.
Miriam nodded, a grim smile on her face.
Grace sighed. “Well, that’s two in one day.”
“Jesus Christ, Gracious.” Miriam laughed, and it made Grace laugh—so that was still possible, in this new world.
They drank whiskey with their kimchi jjigae, a funky, soothing meal. The alcohol hit Grace fast, a cool fog calming her mind. She was glad her sister was here. She knew Yvonne would be grateful.
Grace took another sip of Crown and asked, “You’ll make up with her if she comes out of this, right?”
“I don’t know,” said Miriam. “I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
“Someone tried to kill her, Unni.”
“I know that, and I’m worried sick about her. But it doesn’t change anything.” Miriam shook her head. “She’s not a good person, Grace.”
“How can you say that? She’s been nothing but a good mother to both of us.” When Miriam said nothing, Grace pressed her again, gently, feeling a desperate kind of optimism. “Come on, you know she’s a good mom.”
“That’s separate.” But she didn’t deny it.
“Is this seriously because she was racist against the surprise black guy you dated for a month?”
“You know it’s not about him.”
Grace sighed. “I really don’t know why you think she’s so horrible, but surely this is punishment enough.”
Something rippled across Miriam’s face, controlled but breaching the surface. A look of dark knowledge. Her mouth opened and closed. In the silence, the hum of the refrigerator sounded like waking hornets.
“What if she is being punished?” Miriam asked, her tone infuriatingly careful. She combed her fingers through her hair, which had picked up an oily shine over the last several hours.
“What the fuck, Unni? You think she deserved to be shot?” Grace snapped.
Miriam’s face filled with pity, and Grace felt a new certainty click into place. The interview with the detective, the looks passed between her sister and her father, Grace the monkey in the middle. And before that, for months, for years, the sense of being left out, of missing some crucial thing: her failure to understand the breakdown in her own family. She had imagined none of it. There was something important Grace didn’t know, and Miriam had hidden it from her.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
Miriam swirled the liquid in her glass and took a long, slow swallow before setting it back down. Finally, she looked at Grace and nodded, biting her lip with grave determination. She asked her, “Does the name Ava Matthews mean anything to you?”
Grace cocked her head. She’d geared herself up for a gut punch, and she knew this had to be it. But Ava Matthews? Who on earth was that?
“No,” she said. “Is it supposed to?”
Miriam grimaced. “Yes. It’s a name everyone should know.” She sighed again. “How about Rodney King, you know that one?”
“Yeah, of course.” Grace blinked, wondering what Rodney King could have to do with her mother. “You’re talking about the guy from the riots, right?”
“The L.A. Uprising, yeah. Do you know much about that?”
Grace thought about it. She was a newborn in April 1992, but growing up around Koreans, she’d heard plenty of stories. She remembered one conversation at a church retreat, Alan Chung—who she’d had a big crush on—talking about his family’s dry cleaners in Koreatown, looted and burned to the ground. He said his dad went back and helped his friends protect their businesses, since the police were off holding down Beverly Hills. A few of the other kids chimed in with their own family lore: lost livelihoods and brushes with death, fathers and uncles and cousins lying on rooftops with guns. Grace had felt oddly left out. Her parents never even mentioned the riots, which must not have reached them in the deep Valley.
“I know it was bad for Koreans,” she said.
Miriam nodded. “Koreans owned a lot of the businesses in South Central, and they didn’t tend to get along with their customers, who were mostly black. When the Rodney King verdict broke, they were kind of a natural target.”
Grace glared at Miriam—her sister was stalling.
“What is this, Unni? I don’t need a fucking history lesson right now.”
“It’s not history, Grace, it’s—”
“Just get to the point,” she said. “Who is Ava Matthews?”
Miriam took a long swallow of Crown before looking back at Grace. “Ava Matthews was a sixteen-year-old black girl from South Central. She’s the other reason the rioters went after Koreans.” She spoke rapidly now, the words tumbling out of her in a single breath. “One day, she walked into a convenience store, and the owner accused her of shoplifting a bottle of milk. They got in a fight, and the owner shot her in the back of the head. When the police came, they found her with two dollars in her hand.”
Grace’s heart was slamming against her chest—she knew this was it; Miriam had thrown open the door to the secret chamber, to show her the monster inside. Only she still couldn’t see it. “And what?” she asked, her mouth dry. “The owner was some Korean dude?”
Miriam shook her head, sadly, and watched her sister. “She was a Korean woman.”
Six
Friday, August 23, 2019
It was a Friday night. That was a big thing when Shawn was younger—Friday night, make the most of it. When he was a kid, it meant school was over; Ava would get him from his classroom, there’d be no homework and two days of playtime ahead. It meant a trip to the movies, corn dogs at the mall, listening to music in a circle around a boom box. Later, there were parties and joy rides and curfews laughed into nothing. Friday night was the first taste of freedom—there was no need to savor it, to try and parcel out the fun to make it last. It was time for trouble and revelry, revelry and trouble.
