Issue Four

“Come here. You said you weren’t Chinese, correct?” A stout, middle-aged woman said in a commanding voice. At the bold age of five, I was proud of my origins; it was known by everyone in my grade that I was not “another Chinese kid” and that I was the only “Korean.” Just the week before, I had figured out where the peninsula was located in Asia on my older brother’s globe and had admired the land’s vivid fuchsia color on the circular map. A piece of my heart felt like it was home, despite that I had never stepped foot in the country.

I nodded my head vigorously, trying to suppress my excitement. Why would a teacher call me over? Was it for a special treat? Had she somehow bought some Korean candy or snack? I had introduced many of my friends to Korean foods before; they had always raved about it whenever we had play dates at my house. The thought of a treat filled me with joy. She motioned me to stand beside her, where she was holding a food wrapper of some sort. “Can you read this?” I tried to ignore the pang of disappointment, before looking at the shiny blue plastic. It appeared to be from some assortment of cookies.

“This isn’t Korean,” I said defiantly, staring at the loopiness of the characters. “I think it looks Japanese.” The woman looked puzzled at my words as if I had uttered some gibberish to her. She was one of the after school program teachers who looked after children whose parents were too busy to come as soon as classes were over, although I had yet to talk to her. She seemed aloof most of the time, and not interested in whatever games we children had.

“But isn’t it the same?” I frowned at her question, furrowing my brows. I could not bring myself to meet her gaze, and steadied my eyes on the blue wrapper. A flash of light from the fading sun distracted me, and I shook my head slowly, sneaking a peek at the woman’s wristwatch. It was almost time for my mother to pick me up from the after school care. I did not want to stay here anymore. I could hear my friends, their shrill voices behind me somewhere on the playground in a vicious game of tag. A part of me longed to join them, but a larger part of me wanted to vanish under the woman’s scrutinizing gaze.

“We aren’t the same. Japan is an island. Korea isn’t!” The woman shrugged, and I felt a flare of anger at her obvious disinterest. It was worse than the children who always assumed I was Chinese—at least they would acknowledge South Korea as a country after I spoke. “You can just ask my mom when she comes.” It seemed almost like a desperate way for me to prove myself, by dragging my mother into such an issue. The woman nodded, her gaze unfocused on me. She lost whatever scrap of care she had for me the moment I made my uselessness to her evident. At age five I would not have known that there are hopeless cases to walk away from, but I was too stubborn to leave, my feet glued to that spot on the asphalt. I watched children run by, their shrieking laughter begging me to join. I did not.

By the time my mother came to pick me up, I was still standing beside the woman, my determination to prove her wrong overwhelming. She was fiddling with her phone, not sparing me a single look. My mother’s warm eyes were wide in anxiety as she saw me standing there, and I could see the panic on her face. She was worried I had caused trouble, and the teacher was reprimanding me for my behavior. I waved at her brightly, my pigtails flickering from side to side at my enthusiasm, before I pointed at the discarded blue plastic on the ground, picking it up to show off the label.

“Is this Korean? It isn’t Hangul, right?” I pestered as my mother looked over the blue wrapper. The woman put her phone away, diverting her attention back to the wrapper. She stared at my mother, ignoring the glee on my face as my mother shook her head. I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out, while the woman quirked her lips slightly, a hint of a frown revealing itself on her face.

“This is Japanese. I’m sorry I cannot help you.” My mother spoke in her gentle voice. The woman forced out a chuckle, and it was obvious she could not simply state that they were “the same” as she had before. My mother gripped my tiny hand in her own before bidding the woman farewell. I did not wave goodbye.

Brittany is a high school junior from northern New Jersey. Interested in psychology, Brittany explores the concept of character development in her writing. She also enjoys drawing, playing with her dog Angel, and baking goods to share with friends and family.

The room was quiet and still, and I would have thought myself deaf if it hadn’t been for the buzzing and whirring of the machines keeping my aunt alive. I hadn’t even known rooms could be so dark until that night, and the only window in the room let in the deeper darkness of the night. The silence itself was remarkable, achieved by a room crowded with bodies. Heat radiated from the bodies and made the room stuffy and suffocating. Everyone in the room was waiting for death. My aunt was lying on the bed that was more hardware than cushion, and many people who loved her were standing and sitting in various parts of the room. The room was definitely too small to hold all of the love… or the sadness.

ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, is a degenerative nerve disease that slowly and viciously kills its victims. My mother’s side of the family carries the ALS gene, and Auntie Chi Chi had developed the disease. My mother had taken care of her for as long as we could at our house, but in the final weeks of her life, we knew she would have to stay in a nursing home. I watched as my aunt, the energetic sales rep glued to her cell phone, became a wisp of a human body that could barely say anything. I had seen her spirit leave her eyes. She was not ready to die; she was too young and loved life too much. Everyone in the darkness that night realized the same thing: the end was near.

While privately mourning, I remembered my first-hand experience with my aunt and her lack of basic motor skills. My mother and father were busy preparing a medication in the kitchen, which was serving as a pharmacy. My task was to feed my aunt ice cream. This was the same ice cream the rest of the family ate, no special medications or supplements, just a creamy vanilla. I put the ice cream in a bowl, a bowl that we had all used for years. I grabbed a spoon, not a special feeding tool for the sick, a spoon that I had used countless times before. I sat in front of her, perhaps the only ill relative of mine who hadn’t been ready to die when it was time. Taking a spoonful of ice cream, I guided it towards her mouth. This was a mouth that could barely speak anything besides what must be described as a moan, let alone eat with much success. She opened her mouth and I inserted the spoon. I saw her molasses-like lips close around the spoon and I gently pulled back, as if I were feeding a baby. She had taken just a little off of the top. We went on like this, and we couldn’t even get halfway through the dessert before the ice cream had melted.

I knew no young child in my parents’ eyes would be charged with the duty of feeding the sick. My playroom had been long gone as well; my old toys were moved out and replaced with a bed and various medical accessories to keep first my grandmother (a victim of cigarettes) and then my aunt alive. I realized I was becoming a young adult. I was a twelve year old growing up alongside the diseases and sicknesses that had taken two family members in quick succession.

I struggled to keep the ice cream off of her face realizing what my aunt had to go through. She couldn’t even have ice cream without getting it dribbled down her chin. Ice cream, a universal symbol of happiness and glee, was an arduous task for her to consume. I thought of the kind of happiness it must have brought her when she was my age and younger; images of little kids running around playfully after the ice cream truck ran through my mind. I thought of the joy ice cream had brought me in previous years. I thought of Maya, Chi Chi’s daughter, who so enjoyed ice cream. My God, her daughter: How would she survive the years after her mother’s death? How would she deal with a motherless house? What was being imprinted in her brain at this moment, watching her mother slowly die? What would be left in my mind after this was all over? Would it ever really be over? These thoughts made me sick as I stared at the melted ice cream, and when we were done, I pushed the bowl away as if I could distance myself from these feelings.

That night in the nursing home, amongst the silent darkness, I came to my epiphany. My aunt would die soon, but it was okay. She was going to enjoy the heaven that she believed in much more than this life. Her long-term suffering, pain, and embarrassment (terrible for her Japanese pride) would finally come to an end. She would fly higher than the superficial world of today, escape the chains of her diseased body, escape the nursing home she despised so much, say farewell to the crowd of loved ones in her room, fly past my inescapable feelings and be reunited with wherever the spirit of her parents went. I knew Maya would soon come to the same realization, and the love in the room would guide her to this eventually. Chi Chi would die with those she loved on Earth all around her, and she wouldn’t have asked for more.

William Blomerth is a high school junior and Eagle Scout interested in English and the human mind. When not in school or on the track, he enjoys writing, playing music, and camping.