I have had an enduring pain in my side for three days now, doctor. You have told me to stop calling this line, that you are not here anymore, that we have no patient-client privileges anymore. But doctor. My stomach hurts.
It reminds me of the time at hakyo when the big kids pushed me off the slide, and I fell slick! onto the bark-infested ground. The halmeonis told me then to get up, get up, we had no use for weak girls in this world.
I remember one of them pulled me aside, wiped the blood from my nose with a little lace handkerchief. I thought she was Mary, the white mantilla tucked neatly over brown-grey curls, the wrinkles earned and rippling throughout her face, like the sign of a clear ocean.
“Ack,” she said then, and gently laughed.
“You have got blood on my sleeve. Look—”
Her sleeves were fantastically embroidered, classically Korean, in stripes of thick colors. Our glorious flag was a motif amongst the cuffs, the gold threads gleaming, and she told me she did it herself.
“When you are a big strong girl,” she said then, “you will know how to create like this. Look!”
But I had thought that the big strong girls were mean and tough, with yellow streaks in their hair, weapons of AP Calculus textbooks and Kate Spade handbags. They loitered together outside by the cars, pretending to smoke, gossipping in the pidgin Korean that our careless ancestors would hate.
“Look,” and I could not hear the voice now.
“See how the girls run.”
And at the sound of go, go, go! I see them run and run and run, little rainbow crowns dangling over crescent foreheads. They are white as the dead, and they’re sprinting and laughing, giggling into a killing silver fog. I strain my eyes, I even sit on top of a car, but once they enter that glittering mist, they are gone.
And I have this recurring nightmare, doctor, that the Church parking lot is dark and empty. I can barely see the cars in the fog, but still they blink on and on, haphazard, waste of gas, waste of energy I can hear the women say. I am scared, but stop it! We have no use for frightened girls in this world.
And I am running and running and running but my legs do not work, and then I am driving. The process comes so easily to me now, shift gear, brake check, gas pedal, go. Distant memories of old town Sacramento return to haunt me, but then they fade. I see little Korean shops from LA, shuttered with iron grates over their eyes. I see the butcher from Buan, walking home, cleaver clenched in a tight fist. I can’t see anything at all, it is so dark, it is so alone, I cannot drive, I cannot see.
And the road is lined with big yellow eyes, looming streetlamps. The storefronts have lights on the outside, those little bulbs you see at dangerous gas stations, and they flicker. I am driving towards the light but it fails to guide me; instead, haloes of constant glass shimmer at my sides, lighting the torches to my doom.
I am driving, driving, driving. It reminds me of skiing down a big cliff, that white descent, the slow fall towards misery. Sometimes I reach the freeway, that slow dip downwards, circuitous route, and it all becomes snow, powdered glass in my old tinted eyes.
I do not wake up from this dream, doctor. It simply comes to me like a memory.
And I keep dreaming and dreaming it, but then a few days ago, a stabbing pain in my side occurred. My mother would say it is just a pre-period cramp, but I know better. Doctor, I think I am going to die. Can you pick up? I know, I’m so sorry for calling again. I just had no one else to call.
Please doctor, please hurry up. I think I am going to die. My stomach hurts. I do not want to go to the ER. Can you come over? Please… please… please… please…
Yuna Kang is a queer, half-deaf, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She loves postcards, crows, God(x), and cats. Kang is also the recipient of the 2024 New Feathers Award.
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