Seoulmates (Seoul 2)

“From your cousin?” I’m astonished.

“No. Not from him, but I’ve heard it from others.”

And he believes it. It’s become a part of the truth in his life regardless of the actual medical diagnosis. In some ways, Yujun has been as alone as I. He lost his mother young and was shipped to America, where his aunt refused to speak any Korean and where the kids were so cruel that he developed a stutter. His father finally collected him and brought him a new mother in the form of Wansu, who for all her strengths is not an incredibly warm person, whereas Yujun is the physical incarnation of the sun. He radiates strength, brightness, and warmth.

As his fingers twine through mine, I realize that this is what love is. It’s when their pain is your pain and their loss is your tragedy as well, and you would do anything to absorb that hurt inside yourself so that the other knows nothing but a flower path.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Dinner is ready.” Mrs. Ji greets us at the door.

I toe off my flats, but before I can put them away, a hand appears and picks them up for me. My gaze travels up a pair of crisply pressed heather gray slacks and a matching cashmere sweater.

“We’ll be making songpyeon tonight,” Wansu informs us. “For Chuseok.”

“About Chuseok,” Yujun begins.

“You do not need to tell me what happened with Choi Juwon’s family. His mother already called me.” Wansu opens the closet door and stows my shoes inside. “Nothing that has happened will change our plans. We will introduce Hara to our family, honor our ancestors, eat our meal together. Afterward, the children will play yut nori. Tomorrow, we will visit the grave site, and the day after we will rest. Nothing is changing.”

The last sentence is said with such certainty that I think an earthquake would not move her. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not. I’m even more puzzled when I arrive at the table to see chopsticks, the matching long-handled spoon, a large shallow cast-iron pot on a burner, and six different dishes of banchan: lotus root, pickled radish, marinated cucumbers, kimchi, candied potatoes, and roasted sesame seed spinach. It’s a Korean spread.

“Tonight we are having mandu jeongol. Have you had it before?”

The smell wafting from the soup pot makes my stomach clench in delight. “No, but I watched a video on it.”

The chef used prepackaged mandu, or dumplings, as the seasoning for a soup made out of leftover ingredients from the refrigerator. Basically any vegetable that you liked in soup could be added along with a handful of mandu. The spices and seasoning in the dumplings flavored the water to create a broth. With a little garlic, ginger, and soup soy sauce, you had a complete meal. It looked delicious and so does this.

“Mrs. Ji made the dumplings last night for our soup. It is very good. Sit.”

I can’t move fast enough. Yujun is slower, but he, too, pulls out a chair.

“What did Choi Juwon’s mother say?”

“That Hara should not attend Chuseok.”

I stop reaching for the chopsticks.

“What did you tell her?”

“That she was welcome to hold her own charye.” Wansu eats a piece of radish banchan as if she hasn’t had an afternoon of fighting with her in-laws.

Yujun nods his approval. “Mrs. Ji, the soup smells delicious.”

“I put extra samgyeopsal in for you,” she says from behind the kitchen counter.

“Thank you. Did you know, Hara, that most Koreans don’t eat anything but samgyeopsal? Your food truck is unusual.”

Is this what we’re doing? Talking about pork eating habits? We’re going to ignore what happened in the parking lot of Hello Flour and that at least some part of the family is threatening to boycott this important holiday dinner because of my presence? I’m not okay with that.

“Is it because I’m adopted? Or because Yujun and I are seeing each other?”

“It is not you. It is me.” Wansu reaches over and places a piece of samgyeopsal, or pork belly, on my rice. “I am not a Choi and these are not my ancestors and therefore not your ancestors either. What is the purpose of you honoring them when they do not know you? That sort of thing.”

“Oh.”

“Not all families celebrate Chuseok like this anymore,” Yujun supplies. “No one cooks all the dishes for the charye. They buy their banchan at the banchan markets. There are more Christians, and they believe the honoring of the ancestors is like worshipping false idols, so they go on vacations to Jeju.”

“Or Hawaii.” Wansu sounds almost wistful.

I’ve always hated the holidays. I never felt particularly close to Pat’s or Ellen’s parents. Pat’s mother always seemed to wear a perpetual frown of disapproval. Maybe that’s why he turned out the way he did. She never expected him to amount to much and would frequently say so, and so he lived up to her low expectations. She had a sharp tongue and never spared anyone—not her son; certainly not her daughter-in-law, who never managed to get pregnant; and not me, the foreign-born adopted child. Ellen would never admit it, but the best part of divorcing Pat was never seeing his mother again. When Pat’s mother died, we went to the funeral, but Ellen didn’t shed one tear. For my mother, that was essentially the same as ringing bells and singing the refrain from “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from The Wizard of Oz.