by Min Jin Lee
When Casey arrived, Dr. Shim explained everything to her. He had to go. He was late for a dinner with a board member from his hospital.
“You’ll take care of your mom?” Douglas said. He felt better now that Casey was here.
“Yes, of course. Thank you, Dr. Shim. Thank you for everything you did today. Please thank Ella for finding me.”
“It’s nothing. I wish I didn’t have to go to this dinner. But I really have to. I’ll call later. Okay?” He looked at her fondly. “I’m sure you have all this under control.”
Casey nodded. “We’re going to be okay. Thank you, though.”
Douglas smiled and hugged her before leaving her alone with her father.
Her father was staring at the beige hospital floor, unable to look her in the eye. The thought of her parents having sex was not awful, but surprising. Her mother had been pregnant. She and Tina could have had another sibling. How crazy.
“How is she? Have you seen her since?”
“She’s still in there.” Joseph pointed to the area behind the swinging doors. “They’re cleaning out. . .” He couldn’t say any more. Did his daughters know? That he’d had a vasectomy after Tina was born? In all these years, she had not gotten pregnant. Not as far as he knew. Could she have kept that from him? Elder Shim had said sometimes women miscarry and don’t even know it. It could appear to be a heavy menses. His wife never talked about her periods or things like that. “Ella’s dad said vasectomies are not a hundred percent.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
Her father looked alarmed, as if she were learning something she wasn’t supposed to know. “Oh sure,” Casey said quickly. “I read that somewhere. That you can get pregnant even if a man has a vasectomy.” She had never read that anywhere, but her father’s relief was palpable. Her father had a vasectomy? Casey knew nothing more than the average person about contraception. She’d had an abortion, for crying out loud, having gotten pregnant while on the pill. Shit happened. She fought the urge to phone Tina right then. To ask if a vasectomy was foolproof.
Joseph sat down. He rubbed his temples with his hands. His headache was worsening. Casey sat beside him, her body parallel to his. From the corner of his eyes, he could see her in profile. Her eyes were dark brown with short black lashes. She was so close to him that he could make out the layer of black mascara coating her eyelashes. Her eyes were small, different in shape from his wife’s, far more like his own. She had his mother’s nose, and her lips were like his, taking after his side of the family. This was something he had always known, had been pointed out to him, but he had not liked this about her, and he felt sorry that he had always favored the younger one. But he had. The younger one had been easier to love. She had been more like a child, mild in nature and obedient.
Casey was wearing something that looked like a short necktie with a white shirt and white trousers. How odd. He was wearing a tie, but he was a man, and he had just come straight from church services. She looked strange in her getup. Not bad, but weird. She had always dressed so bizarrely. She had come from her office; routinely worked on the weekends, she’d said to Elder Shim. Why couldn’t she dress like normal people? And in her hand she held a straw fedora with an orange ribbon band. Like a man’s hat, too. Was his daughter a lesbian? No. She’d had boyfriends. Who knew? Tina was yam-jun-heh, ladylike, in comparison, though it was Casey who had loved skirts and wearing beaded necklaces as a little girl—the one who had fooled around with their mother’s lipstick. Tina was reserved, did better at most things without having to be reminded, helped out her mother. Casey had been more trouble. Not so much at school, but in all things, she’d wanted to do things her own way without anyone’s help. His girls were so different. Casey had the temperament of a boy. She had acted like a rebellious son. Before the war, he had been that way.
Joseph had not counted on it, but she had come to help. Suddenly, it seemed natural for him to pat her on the back, the way he patted Tina when she sat close by him at dinner. At first Casey stiffened at his touch, then she relaxed. She started to cry, but Joseph did not know why exactly.
A middle-aged Filipina nurse in white pants and a loud-patterned shirt, oversize for her petite frame, approached them. Her ID read “Eva Bulosan, R.N.” Everything was okay.
“She needs to rest for a while, but she’ll be able to go home tonight.”
Joseph sighed, then lowered his head into his hands. Casey could hear him praising God in Korean.
“Nurse Bulosan, my mother. . . ,” Casey said, grateful for the nurse’s smile. Her oval-shaped face was beautiful. “Can I see her?”
The nurse swiveled her body slightly, as if to give Joseph some privacy. She gazed at the daughter’s face intently.
“Yes. Her room is the third door to your left, past the swinging doors. She’ll be groggy, but that’s normal. She might also be more emotional than her usual self. That’s understandable, of course.” The nurse stayed to answer questions, then left. Her step was light, and she was gone quickly.
Joseph finished praying.
“Did you want me to phone Tina now?” Casey asked.
“No. I’ll phone her,” Joseph replied. “You go ahead.”
“Don’t you want to see Mom?”
“I’ll be there soon. Go. Go check,” Joseph said, and got up. He wanted to have a cigarette, though it had been a long while since he’d last had one. He could buy one for a dollar from any of the smokers in front of the hospital. There would be phones on the main floor.
The anesthesia had pretty much worn off. The procedure hadn’t taken long. What Leah remembered was counting backward in English at the doctor’s instruction. She was still lying on the gurney. The hospital bed wasn’t ready for her yet. She was in a shared room, but no one was in the other bed, so she was here alone. She looked down at her stomach. A dark pool of blood surrounded her narrow hips. The blue plastic sheets clung to the backs of her thighs. Where was Joseph? He must know that she was pregnant. The door opened slowly. Leah strained to see Casey entering the room.
“Umma, are you all right?” Casey asked.
“How did you find Umma?”
“Ella found me at the office.”
Leah nodded.
Casey stood close by the gurney. A clump of her mother’s long hair partially covered her right eye. She pushed her mother’s hair away from her brow. Her mother looked tired, but otherwise she looked okay. Fragile, mostly. “God, I was so worried,” she blurted out in relief.
“Umma is okay. Where is Daddy?”
“Phoning Tina.”
“Oh.”
How the hell did her mother have a miscarriage when her father had a vasectomy? Casey wondered. She took a breath.
“Did you have sex with someone else besides Daddy?” Casey asked. Had she actually formed those words in her brain, then uttered them out loud?
“Yes,” Leah answered.
Casey looked up at the ceiling.
Leah did not feel any better from unburdening this truth to her daughter. Her wish to die only resurfaced.
“I sinned against God.”
Casey shook her head. “He got you pregnant, then.”
“I didn’t know I was—”
“How could you not know?”
“My periods don’t come every month.”
“Daddy said he had a vasectomy.”
“He told you?”
“He thought I knew.”
“I deserve to die.”
Casey paused a little before speaking and made sure to speak as calmly as possible.
“I don’t care who you fuck exactly. I’m just a little surprised, that’s all.”
Leah closed her eyes. Her sin had to be punished. Her husband would leave her. Perhaps he had left her already. Everyone should know what a horrible person she was.
Casey turned to check the door. It remained closed.
“Daddy thinks it might have been his baby. Dr. Shim told him that vasectomies are not
a hundred percent.”
“I sinned. Against God. Against my husband. Against myself.”
“Do you still love this other guy? Are you still seeing him?”
“No, no. But I sinned.”
“Cut the sin talk. Just tell me what happened and how it happened. Explain very carefully.”
Leah told her about the professor. The chicken pox, the choir rehearsal, the diner, and the sex in the car parked by the subway station.
“Wait a second. The choir director? Mr. Jun?” Casey made a face.
“No. Professor Hong, he’s new. Mr. Jun retired. The professor is also a voice coach. And he is a composer. He’s writing a song cycle that will have a world premiere at a famous music school.” Leah rattled off the impressive things she knew about the choir director. “He’s coached opera singers from the Metropolitan—”
“Okay. Whatever. Why did you get in the backseat with him?”
“I didn’t know he wanted to have sex.”
“Did you think he wanted to hold hands and sing you songs?”
Leah sobbed, and Casey grew silent.
“But I must have made him have this desire for me. I didn’t know how to make it stop. I told him no, but he said I didn’t understand. He said he loved me.”
“You said no?”
Leah nodded. “I asked him to please. Please, no. I begged him. To please. . . but he couldn’t. A man can’t stop when he’s excited. I knew that. Everyone had told me that when I was a girl. I should have—”
“You said no.” Casey rolled her eyes. She inhaled deeply. “But he did it anyway. Men are not all the same. Some men can stop and will stop. You know nothing about men.” She said it quietly, without any harshness in her voice. “Nothing. You’ve slept with one man in your life. No, technically two, but I think you were date-raped, so just one.” But her mother didn’t know what that meant.
“It wasn’t some sin for you to take him to a diner. He was hungry, and you had a car. You would have never let anyone be hungry. He was your choir director, and you had a crush on him. Big fucking deal. He knew you were having a crush on him, because he’s been around, and he took advantage of you. He’s an asshole.”
He’d said she was beautiful. That he wanted her to come live with him. It had given her pleasure to think about running away, even though she’d felt awful about that, too.
“What happened between you and the choir director was hardly consensual. Did you want to sleep with him?”
“No. I. . . ,” Leah stammered. “You have to believe me. I wanted him to be interested in me. I took him to the restaurant. I really enjoyed myself during the dinner.”
“You’re allowed to have dinner with someone you like. That’s not the same thing as letting a man fuck you afterwards just because he wants to.”
“I want to die. Please let me die!” Leah began to scream.
“Stop it! Stop it. Calm down.”
Leah opened her eyes wide. She became silent.
“I’m very sorry this happened to you. I really am. But you’re not going to die. You can’t.”
“Suicide is a sin,” Leah said softly. “I can’t kill myself.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.”
Leah was still crying.
“Listen. You can’t tell Daddy. You’re not going to tell him what happened. There’s no point. Trust me. It would kill him, and why? So you can have a clear conscience? You had a crush. And you were raped. It’s not your fault. I’m not mad at you. I’m not. I don’t think less of you.” Casey stroked her mother’s white hair, feeling the awkwardness of having to comfort her mother. “It’s going to be okay.” Her mother was less experienced than most American teenage girls. Didn’t she talk to her friends in her geh about sex? About men? Didn’t they at least complain about husbands? Couldn’t sex have come up?
By having slept with nearly a dozen men, Casey had developed theories about sex; she had her own sexual point of view. She was interested in making love, in being a good lover, sometimes just fucking. Sex was often bracketed by both humiliation and flattery; awkwardness and beauty were found in the spaces between. She had learned that her body had value to herself and others. Jay had been someone she had trusted with her body. Unu was someone who had deserved that trust, and she had blown it by fucking Hugh. Hugh had been an irrational lay. She had not loved him, and he had not loved her. It was questionable if Hugh was capable of loving someone for a sustained period. Experience was a funny thing: The downside of knowing things intimately was that she had also, in the process, degraded sex. She was still lost. What was sex for? She’d had good sex, bad sex, losses, and conquests. Stretches without. But more importantly, if she were to take off her clothes again and agree to another round, why? And whom would she love?
Her own mother had gotten pregnant after she had been with the choir director. If it wasn’t rape, it was certainly some kind of molesting—Casey hesitated at the words, because they made her forty-three-year-old mother sound dumb.
“It was my fault,” Leah burbled through her tears. “It was my fault. I have to confess my sin. Repent,” she cried.
Casey checked the door again.
“Please don’t do that. Please don’t hurt my father.” She touched her mother’s head. “I have never asked you for anything like this.”
Leah continued to sob. No one came to the door.
Tina offered to come to New York right away, but Joseph said it was okay. He explained that she’d had a spontaneous miscarriage, but the D&C had gone fine. The nurse said so.
“Umma can come home tonight. It was just a big shock for all of us. And Casey is here.”
“Casey is there?”
“Yes. She came a while ago. It’s easier for her to take care of Umma because she’s in New York. You have to think about Timothy and your husband. Don’t worry. And Chul needs you to be there while he has finals. You said his grades are really important.”
“Yes, but if Umma is sick. . .” It would be wildly expensive for her to take the baby and go to New York again. Their budget was tight as it was. “I could try—”
“She’s okay, Tina. Elder Shim said that she’ll heal very soon from something like this. It’s not something very serious. You should stay in California.”
“But, Daddy—”
“Tina, you don’t have to do everything. I know how hard you’re working at home. Casey can help out, and I’ll take care of Umma, too. You don’t have to do everything, Tina. I’ll tell Umma that you wanted to come. She knows that.”
Tina nodded. He was trying to make sure that she didn’t feel bad about not being able to come. “I’ll call her at home, then. Later.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Bye, Daddy. Thank you for calling. Take care of yourself.”
“Okay, okay. You take care of yourself, too, Tina. Good care. You can’t get sick. Your family depends on you.”
As he approached Leah’s hospital room, Joseph saw the large group of women by her closed door. It took a minute for him to realize that the group was made up of some of the female elders and deaconesses from the hospitality committee and many of the female choir members. The professor was not there.
At the sight of Elder Han, the women flipped through their hymnals to find the right page of “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past.” They bowed.
“Waaah,” he exclaimed, astonished by the large number. There were at least twenty-five women.
“Is she all right?” asked Mrs. Noh, the choir secretary.
“Yes. She had a miscarriage. She’ll be able to go home today.”
The women clicked their tongues. It was always a heartbreak to have a miscarriage. Many of them had experienced it themselves. Of course, it was not an illness, but it was terrible just the same.
“We didn’t want to knock on the door. In case she was sleeping.”
“Have you been waiting here all this time?”
“Just a few minutes. Maybe you can knock for us,” a choir member sugg
ested.
Joseph nodded and knocked on the door himself. Casey called out to him, “Come in.”
He opened the door, and at that moment, the choir burst into song. A hush fell at the sound. People leaned out of open doors to listen, and the doctors and nurses stopped moving for a moment. Nurse Bulosan, who’d spoken to them earlier, stood still to sing along. She crossed herself.
The music filled the hall, and Leah began to sing. The church had come to her. It was Sunday night, when the choir members should have been with their families. How did the girls leave behind their children and husbands, with dinners unmade, houses left to clean, all to come and sing for her, a sinner?
Casey helped her mother to sit up a little. Leah sang through her tears: “Under the shadow of Thy throne, Thy saints have dwelt secure; sufficient is Thine arm alone, and our defense is sure.”
Leah turned her head and saw her husband standing by the door. His concern for her was so clear. He smiled at her, and she reached her hand toward his direction.
13 GIFT
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Unu caught the Metro-North to New Haven, then took a bus to Foxwoods with a hundred bucks of gambling money. Following his bookie’s advice, he’d taken no credit cards or ATM card with him, because the temptation to borrow on cash advances would be too great. By nighttime, he returned with exactly a hundred and thirty-two dollars in his money clip. The transit cost and a Subway sandwich had neatly erased his thirty-two percent gain. Six hours of travel time door-to-door, five hours of gambling, with net zero in the margins—finally, Unu was standing in front of his apartment door.
The key wouldn’t fit. There were only two keys on the metal ring with its yellow plastic fob from Lucky Bastard Lounge off I-95: one for his apartment and another for the mailbox. His bookie already had the Volvo key. Unu kept at the lock, but nothing doing. The Medeco dead bolt wouldn’t budge. Was he on the right floor? His door? At his feet, near the pile of newspapers he’d neglected to bring in earlier, a squiggly length of masking tape affixed a thick envelope to the hallway brown carpet. From the city marshal’s office. His name typed in blurry carbon. In it, he recognized the photocopies of the notice of eviction papers he’d been served several weeks before. Unu tossed the envelope on the floor with his keys.
