I don’t exist in his story.
I never do.
chapter 12
The next moment, I’m at our door. A glitch of dissociation. He’s home. I hear the muffled sounds of his laptop and his huhuhuh chuckling as I slide my key in the lock. I steel myself. When I open it, he’s on the couch, ass to the pillow I put my face on, watching his computer, which is hooked up to my Bluetooth speaker.
“Jeremy.” I toss the keys on the kitchen counter with too much force. They slide straight into the sink. I set my sister’s Tupperware on the stove. He shoots up, his basketball shorts drapey on his chicken legs. He lays his laptop beside him, out of the way. I know he’s using my Netflix account. I should have kicked him out when he asked for my password and canceled his subscription without talking to me first. If they show you who they are, believe them. What more fuckery did I need than his smiling green avatar on the landing page?
“Babe,” he says. “I’m glad you’re home.” He comes over to me in the kitchen. “Not to be a dick, but I’ve been meaning to ask. Did you smoke all the weed? Because that’s not chill…” He rubs his face. “And yo, did you kill the rest of my ginger ice cream…?”
“What?” I’m blindsided by his gall. “Are you serious?”
“It’s a seasonal flavor,” he explains gravely. “They only made, like, thirty pints. It’s for tastemakers. I’m supposed to social it.”
“I saw your article,” I snap. He takes a half step. I wonder if he’s always had such weak shoulders. If they’ve always sloped at this unbecoming, defeated angle from his neck.
“The reporter was a moron,” he says, pulling out his phone. I know he’s checking how the post is doing. “And thanks for sending the photo,” he says sarcastically. “It would have taken you a second. I wouldn’t even mind you eating all my special stuff, but the least you could—”
“You have to fucking leave my house,” I tell him.
His tiny peanut head jerks back. “Now, hold on,” he says, palming the air between us. His attention flicks down to his thumbed screen one final time as he pointedly puts it facedown on the coffee table.
His expression hardens when I roll my eyes. “You owe me twenty-one hundred dollars in rent,” I continue. “And I don’t know what the fuck happened to your precious limited-edition douchehole ice cream.”
The lie comes out smooth. It was delicious. Especially when I was high on his weed.
“Wait a minute—” He stammers.
I cut him off again. “I’m kicking you out.”
I shuck off my sneakers and head for the bedroom, but as I do, a single, hot tear crests over the ridge of my right eye and tumbles. I brush it away and sniff hard. He gives me a simpering look as I push past him, misreading my traitorous rage-tear.
“Is this about the other night?” He reaches for me, but I shake him off, pulling the suitcase from the closet. “When I had… company?” A belabored sigh. “You knew I’ve been seeing people. Polyamory is important to me. I’ve been abundantly clear on my truth.”
I pull out two blazers, a tangle of cardigans, and some silky things for going out. Jeremy’s dirty clothes are in my white plastic hamper, so I shake them out and slide his flannel shirts off my flat black velvet hangers and drop them in heaps.
“What are you doing?” he calls from the hall. “You don’t have to be an asshole.”
I drag the suitcase and the hamper filled with hangers, backing into him forcefully. I start packing in the living room.
“Can’t we talk about this?”
I turn to glare just as he brightens, as if struck with a genius idea. “We can switch,” he declares, nodding toward the couch that I’ve been sleeping on for the past few nights. “I’ll take the sofa.” Then he smiles indulgently. “Look, it’s healthy for us to move through this. Honestly, living with you hasn’t been good for me, either, what with the hostility and the silence. You know she was just some Raya chick.”
That’s when I tune out. I lose myself in the packing. I love packing. Always have. When I was little, I was constantly gathering hobo bags with Mom’s tablecloths and scarves, tying them to the end of broomsticks, filling them with snacks and toys. Mom would always remark on how keen I was to leave.
Later, I’d laugh at her hypocrisy.
The packing isn’t as tidy as I’d like. My school books take up half the suitcase. The Spacesaver bags are in the high closet, and I’d sooner eat my own eyes than ask Jeremy for help. I mash everything together and zip it up. I head to the kitchen with the hamper and press every Trader Joe’s cooler bag I have into service.
“Jesus, what is with you and food?” I unzip the first bag. “You’re lying about the fucking ice cream. I know it. The way you lie about my cereal. Bread, Beyond Burgers, everything. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you talk like an adult? You don’t get to shut down right now. Jayne. Jayne? God dammit. This is important. Look at me.”
There’s a lot to do in the pantry. I grab sesame seeds, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, Chinkiang vinegar, red chili flakes, soy sauce, fish sauce, and seaweed. I seize both Maggi sauces, the giant Jeroboam one and the mini because I deserve them.
I pop open the fridge, removing every banchan and condiment. Prepared Korean food is extortionate, so I hoard it like a pepper flake coveting Gollum. Every kimchi jar, even the wack white cabbage garbage that hipsters eat for the probiotics, the preserved dried squid, the marinated soybeans, seasoned radish, the fermented bean paste, frozen dumplings, frozen rice cakes, and the stupid fucking frozen edamame that I buy from Trader Joe’s to illustrate a point even when Jeremy keeps ordering edamame from Seamless for eight bucks, and splitting the bill down the middle when he’s done.
“How many times have I told you, it’s the same fucking soybeans.” I wave the bag of pods in his face. “Japanese curry comes from a brick. Restaurant udon isn’t from scratch, either. Jesus.”
Why is he so dense? I take the almond milk and his oat coffee creamer.
On my tiptoes, I fling open the snack cupboard and hit pay dirt. I grab the economy-size five-pack brick of Shin Ramyun Black by the corner of the plastic bag and fling it onto the counter.
“You’re not taking that,” he says, stepping closer, trapping me between him and the counter behind me. He’s wearing his Birkenstocks in the house, which he swears he doesn’t wear outside when he totally does. “I bought it. You don’t even eat ramyun anymore, remember? It makes you bloated.”
That he calls it ramyun, the way Koreans pronounce it, sets me aflame. I shudder at Jeremy’s entire schtick. The way he was so proud of how he knew how to use chopsticks before we met. Or how showy he was about loving spicy food until the time we got hot pot and he ordered stunt-spice levels and had fire shits for a week. Plus, he’s constantly passing off my tastes as his own. I overheard him tell a girl that Kinokuniya was his favorite bookstore though he’d never even heard of it until I took him.
“Are you breaking up with me?” He runs his hand through his hair, riffling it out a little. This tic of preening almost makes me shudder. Watching him self-consciously finger his eroding hairline disgusts me. I let him see my revulsion.
“I can’t break up with you,” I tell him, shoving everything into bags. “We obviously aren’t together. It’s like how you can’t fire me.”
“Wow,” he drawls. “Okay. But you’re legally obligated to give me time. I paid rent.”
“You paid rent once. Two months ago. It’s October.” I’m light-headed that we’re finally talking about money again.
“You have to give me at least thirty days,” he says crisply. “It’s New York law.”
“I’ll give you a week.”
He nods at the neck of the bottle sticking out of my blue tote. “Maggi’s European, you know. Knorr’s Swiss.”
I can practically hear the fissure in my brain. It’s as if every splinter of frustration from every nonconfrontational moment in my entire life forms this dense thorny morning star of rage that I’m
desperate to hurl at him.
“Fuck you, Jeremy!” I scream inches from his face, and push him with the hand still holding the instant noodles. “You don’t get to have this! In fact, you don’t get to have any of this anymore.” I hate how I’ve upgraded this fuckstick’s life in any way. Especially this way. That this asshole now knows how superior Shin Ramyun Black is to regular Shin Ramyun by the grace of an extra flavor packet and all that bonus garlic.
This fucker doesn’t deserve bonus garlic.
“If I so much as see you at H Mart”—I get right in his face—“or even Sunrise Mart, I will fucking ruin you.”
chapter 13
My head is hot, my ears flooded with blood. Something’s biting into my palm, and I look down to find a tangle of iPhone charger cables clutched in my fevered fingers. Two are his. One of the dangling white cubes is even labeled J in blue Sharpie. Jesus Christ, Jeremy’s a dipshit. It makes me laugh that both our names start with J. My mind hones in on the memory of when I told him Koreans don’t get BO because we have dry earwax and not wet like most people. Later, when we went to get dumplings with his boys, he kept raising my arm up by the wrist and smelling my armpit in front of them, saying, “Seriously, get in there. She smells like air!” I socked him but felt secretly proud. It made me feel thin and virtuous to smell like nothing.
When the car pulls up, one of the IKEA bags lurches painfully into my shin.
I click the seat belt fastener a few times before realizing I never buckled myself in.
I stagger through the lobby, looking like a bag lady.
June buzzes me through, but when I get to her floor, she takes a look at my stuff. “What happened?”
“It was a boyfriend,” I tell her. “He was a scumbag.”
“You shouldn’t have left,” says June, blocking her door.
“You’re the one who’s always saying I shouldn’t waste my time with these guys!” I panic momentarily that she won’t let me in.
“Not like this.” She’s wearing pj’s and her face is creased.
“Were you asleep?”
She ignores my concern. “Dummy, do you know how much harder it is to get him out now?”
“But…” I glance down at my hands helplessly. They’re lashed red from the heavy bag handles.
“Christ, Jayne.” She crosses her arms and gives me a hard look. “You know I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning.”
The tears come without warning. “I’m sorry,” I whimper. “I know this is the worst possible timing, but if you just let me stay for tonight. I promise…”
“Is he on the lease?”
“He’s going to leave,” I insist. “I told him he had to by the end of the week. I completely lit into him.”
Her eyes drop to my bags again. “Dude, did you only bring groceries?”
“Please, June.”
She sighs, bumps her door open with her butt, and shuffles back inside. I hobble in after her, shoving all the frozen foods in the freezer, and leaving the fridge stuff in the cooler bags for the morning.
I take a long, hot shower, luxuriating in the water pressure, the steam, and how the tub isn’t blackened with mildew. She’s left her bedroom door ajar, so I get in beside her in the king-size bed. The sheets are cool and expansive, and I’m calmed by her steady breathing. I wake up six hours later.
“Have whatever,” she grumbles when I find her in the kitchen. June has never been a morning person. I open the fridge to finish putting away my things. The smell is so intense, it feels invasive. It has the piercing quality of ammonia. In the back there’s a jar of pickles that’s carpeted with a thick layer of fur, which I didn’t even know was a thing for brined foods. In the crisper drawer is a ballooned sack of mixed field greens that have matured into a sludge. There’s also a container from Domino’s Pizza. In New York. We live in the town with the best slices in the world and my sister is ordering Domino’s Pizza. If there were ever an indication that your sibling was unwell, it’s this.
Her uncovered bowl of mapo from last night sits front and center. Complete with stale rice and chopsticks still stuck in it. Behind it are stacks of takeout containers and a petrified slice of red velvet cake in a plastic clamshell that hasn’t been shut. It looks like a wax sculpture.
I locate eggs and check the expiration date. I pair my Hidden Valley ranch dressing with her bigger one in the fridge door. I also slot my soy sauce and fish sauce in the pantry. I love that we have two of mostly everything.
“I’ll sleep on the couch tonight,” I tell her, cracking two eggs and depositing the whites into a ramekin with a damp paper towel on top.
“What did you do with the yolks?” she asks.
I glance at her guiltily. Her face is puffy from sleep.
“I chucked them.”
June hits her trash can pedal with her foot to peer inside.
“Not the literal trash. I’m not a total monster. The sink.”
“That’s fucked up.”
I don’t tell her that what’s really fucked up is the elaborate ecosystem that’s going on in her refrigerator. Her hair’s tied in a sloppy ponytail, and I can’t believe she’s wearing the woolly blue pajamas with yellow roses that Mom gave us two Christmases ago. The temperature’s in the sixties today, but June’s favorite thing has always been to crank up her central air and wear winter clothes inside. I bite my tongue about how she can be wasteful too.
“Next time get your own eggs,” she says groggily. I don’t tell June she has sleep in her eyes, out of spite. Even though I’m the only one who has to look at the goo.
“Fine.” I put the eggs in the microwave silently. I can’t wait until the week is out. “You did say help yourself to whatever, though.”
Something softens in her expression.
In the hazy morning light, a corona of baby hairs dance around her face. “I got those eggs from the farmers’ market,” she says. “They’re nonconflict, organic, grass-fed eggs that cost nine bucks for a thing.”
“Jesus.” I’m genuinely taken aback. “I had no idea.”
I check the carton. They look like regular eggs. If a little hipster because the label is a tasteful line drawing of chickens. It looks like a wine label. Or a sixties animation where real shit pops off, like the farmer kills a character for food.
“Whatever,” she says, waving her hand. “Take them. I thought I should start eating better and then forgot about them.”
I look down at my shriveled breakfast. I could have kept the yolks. Pretended I was ever in my life going to make hollandaise. Or flan. “Damn, the farmers probably christened each one.”
She smiles at my stupid joke. “Are you a farmer if you have chickens? Or is that only for, I don’t know, crops? Can you be like ‘I’m a chicken farmer’?”
“Hi. I’m a ‘cow farmer.’ ” I try it out and grin. “Are we stupid? Why don’t we know this? I think it’s right though.” I raise a hand. “Hi. I’m a pig farmer. See there, I feel like I’ve definitely heard of pig farmers. That’s a thing for sure.”
She starts laughing. “I don’t know why, but the ‘hi’ is the dumbest part.”
I start laughing. “Is it the ‘hi’ part or the fact that I keep waving each time?”
We both crack up. Then it dawns on me. What the eggs signify. June once told me that organic food was a scam.
“Yeah, you can stay for a few days.” She pulls out a Chinese food container from the fridge and sniffs it. “What’d the bastard do?” She pries off the metal handle of the cardboard Chinese food bucket, folds it shut, and sticks it in the microwave.
“He was just a fuckstick,” I tell the back of her head.
I study her while she watches the box spin in the microwave.
June is scared. There’s no way she’d go to the farmers’ market and get ripped off on eggs if she wasn’t.
chapter 14
“I’m going to my thing,” she announces as I’m rinsing our breakfast plates. I watch her pull her hair ou
t from the back of her coat.
“Okay,” I tell her. “With the gynecologic oncology surgeon.” I hear myself recite the words carefully, as if reading.
“Yeah.” She checks her pockets for her keys and then holds on as if she’s forgotten something.
I want to ask to go with her, but I’m watching myself not do it.
“Um, when are you done?” I ask instead.
“I don’t actually know. Juju’s first cancer, so.”
I feel stupid for having asked. “But like—” My voice breaks.
She glances over with the door cracked.
“Do you want me to come? With you? To the place?”
“Why?” she says in a withering tone. “No.” She shakes her head briskly. “Don’t you have class?”
“Yeah, but…” I get on my feet and shrug. “I could come. And help you or whatever.”
“Honestly,” she says, raising her brows. “You’d just stress me out.”
“Fine.” I blink back tears.
She sighs and tries again. “I need to process. Give me a little space, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
She’s punishing me for being here. I know she is.
“Um,” she says. I hold my breath, wondering if she’s changed her mind. She pulls a set of keys out of a drawer, dangles them, then sets them on the counter. “The top key’s squarish.”
I nod.
“Don’t lose them. It’s, like, two hundred bucks for the outside one.”
“Got it.” My nose stings. The full weight of the indignity hits me as the door shuts.
I lie around staring at my phone dejectedly and then finally go to the bathroom to fix my face. I open June’s medicine cabinet to an avalanche of tampons. Gathering all the plastic-wrapped bullets from the floor—since my sister uses OB like it’s 1954—I quickly dismiss the niggling unease of how my period’s been missing for the better part of a year. I open the under-sink cupboard to find a large plastic bag of hotel toiletries, including two pairs of terry-cloth slippers in cloth drawstring pouches. There are also countless individual packets of Advil and NyQuil. And a half-used ring of birth control pills.
Yolk Page 7
