At the very least, the thought makes me feel mature, powerful, centered in the midst of all my childishness. I gaze at the weapon of choice, hidden in my left fist. Such potential lies in my hands – these hands whose skin-covering numbs into uneven white fractures in the morning frost as I make the trek to work, these frigid hands that caress each imperfection on the skin of poor Charlie’s back at night.

These hands were empty when I arrived in America; I had barely enough wons to sustain me through the first few weeks until I found a distant relative. Luckily, I knew the language after years of intense night classes at Kwang Yang High School, not far from the hospital. The teacher was an aging Korean man who wore the same, tattered wool vest every day and reeked of stale cigarettes whenever he passed my seat during his lectures. He liked to move around the classroom as he spoke and “engage the students.” His favorite word was “don’t,” which he liked to pronounce a certain way. “No, no, don’t. You say it wrong. Repeat after me: daaaunt,” he would instruct in his thick, Korean accent, showing the pink of his tongue when he opened his mouth into an awkward oval. This word has gotten me through a lot of uncomfortable situations. “Daaaunt. Daaaunt under-stand.” Works best with telemarketers.

During the daytime, I worked at a hospital, the one where Jinna was born. I left the hospital not with a baby but with a decent, respectable job as a translator for patients who spoke only English. Earlier on, I would take naps on empty gurneys until I could afford my own apartment; nights were always reserved for the English classes, for which the hospital paid in full.

In my fifth year at the hospital, the psychiatrist had been having trouble with a young British girl. By the time I was called, the girl was shaking her wild, strawberry-tinted hair and refusing to go back to the prenatal ward, crying, “Don’t,” each time a nurse tried to touch her, reassure her. “Don’t,” she repeated. The nurse assured the girl that her nervousness was understandable, being so young and all, but that she would be well-cared for throughout the labor and the adoption process. I translated. Still, the British girl hiccupped, “Don’t,” while wiping her tears with the back of her soft hand. “Don’t want to give her up.” I gave her a blank stare as she shook her slinky, slutty hair and heaved her pathetic sobs. I wondered if I ever looked as pitiful.

The on-call nurse and I then sat with her for two hours and finally convinced her that the adoption she had agreed to would still be the best option for her child. After these two hours, I decided to quit.

I told my employers that the stress of hospital work got to me. Fourteen years was enough. I hated being called into pediatrics, maybe even more than the prenatal ward; I couldn’t stand seeing the bright faces of the children and wondering what Jinna would have looked like on her first birthday. Second. Third. Fourth. Fifth. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I made that infamous trek for Angel Island, the passageway that would lead me to my daughter.

When I arrived in Los Angeles, I knew only the second cousin I had met briefly during one holiday back home. He had left Korea to study abroad at UCLA, and by the time I arrived, he was running a dry cleaner’s on the West side of town. He was impressed with my English and taught me how to run the store. A few years later, he went back to school and sold it to me at a fair price.

I moved into a dingy apartment complex off of 5^th Avenue, only seven blocks away from the shop. I learned that if I had extra time, I could take a different path to work and skirt around the two homeless men on 10^th Avenue. The grocery store, two blocks North, and the local library was just a quick bus ride away.

How small the world seems now. I sit in the bathroom and try to still my breathing, clutching the weapon in my hand.

When Charlie moved in, I had half-hoped it would all change. I thought his ability to label leftovers in the fridge and take the vacuum cleaner out of the closet once in a while would rub off on me. I thought that his earnest conversations about settling down, buying a house, and maybe even having children of our own would convince me to grow up.

And yet. I still eschew responsibility. I try to get to work on time and close at 7, but I end up sleeping late and itch to close shop early. I live moment by moment, unfettered, here in this Land of Opportunity, where the streets drip with gold and clouds shower fortune on the good citizens of America. Maybe that’s why I was so against falling in love. I can’t settle down. Not without Jinna.

I listen to poor Charlie draw even breaths from the old punctured mattress, pressed against the muted sounds of the light Sunday morning traffic outside. My attention turns to the bathroom mirror, through which a thin crack runs, partitioning the reflection of my face with a jagged split. These prominent laugh wrinkles around the corners of my mouth lie, just like the electric bills piled on the stout coffee table that give the pretense of adulthood and responsibility. “Don’t,” I command to the mirror. “I’m still a girl.”

Now at twenty-five, she is contemplating her first murder. They grow up so fast.

A voice, somewhere in the back of my mind gives the orders. Staple little, yellow tags on the men’s shirts with medium to heavy starch. Staple little, orange tags on the shirts with little to no starch. When the van comes at the back entrance at three in the afternoon, drop off the bags of clothes and pick up the ones that were cleaned the day before. In between taking orders and retrieving clothes for customers, organize the clothe heaps at the back of the store.

Then one day. The bells tinkled, and a man walked through the door carrying a tattered, brown leather shoe with an open sole. He was on the tall side, several years old than I. Wisps of grey were already attacking the sides of his hair, and his eyes slanted made him seem tired all the time. When he smiled, I could spot a tiny chip on one of his bottom front teeth. When he smiled, though, it was genuine.

“Do you fix shoes here?” he asked in Korean.

“Yes, we do. See below?” I replied, nodding down to the sign under the cash register with words printed in a bold red: We do dry cleaning, alterations, and accessories (hats, shoes, gloves, and more)! I realize now it was probably unkind to say this instead of simply nodding. He was clearly new to the States. Not like me. His eyes perused the sign for a while, digesting each syllable and silently rolling the consonants in his mouth with care.

“Al- altu-ration?” he finally asked.

“Yes,” I said, softer. “ ‘Alteration,’ if you need pants hemmed or if a coat doesn’t fit you well enough. Or if you need to resole your shoes, I fix that for you, too,” I answered smoothly in Korean, looking down at the dying shoe tucked under his left arm.

Charlie hesitated before he spoke and stared at me for what may have been few seconds but felt like hours. When my eyes started to burn, I looked down. “I go by Charlie. The Koreans next door who run the medicine shoppe,” he said thoughtfully. “They tell me that you are from Nam Yang.”

I looked quizzically at him. “Yes.”

He nodded slowly and said, “My grandmother had a farm there; I visited her every few years.”

“Really?” I asked, more alert. He was the first person I had met from Nam Yang. Did he know? Had he heard? If so, why wasn’t he mocking me, criticizing me? “Well,” I told him with as pleasant a smile I could muster, “it’s wonderful to meet someone who shares such close origins.” I bowed slightly.

He returned the bow and said, “Yes, certainly.”

I opened my hands, and he placed the shoe in them. “I can take a look at this and have it back to you by Tuesday, as good as new,” I said.

He hesitated again, as though he did not want to leave. Eventually, he mumbled, “Yes, of course. Thank you. I shall see you soon.”

Early that Tuesday, he picked up the shoe and made a point to take his time to search in his pockets and count out his money in exact change as other customers lined up behind him, tapping their shoes and staring at the clock. A few days later, he returned with a dark blue dress jacket that needed fitting. Barely two week had passed when he handed me pants that looked as though they were from the same set as the jacket; it needed hemming, half an inch off of both legs. Every week or so, he would drop by like this, pick up his laundry, and count out his exact change while asking questions.

“When did you arrive here?” he asked, plucking each grimy penny onto the counter to pay for his dry-cleaned set of socks.

“Four years ago,” I said, after some thought. “I already fear I’m losing my Korean accent. Learning English in the States is much better than taking classes in Korea.”

“Your Korean is still good,” Charlie insisted. He pointed out, “It’s still better than your English.” I didn’t mean to glare at him, but I suppose it may have looked that way. He corrected himself, “But your English is amazing. Only been here four years, and you speak almost like the natives.” Charlie grinned and then changed the subject. “How did you acquire this shop, may I ask?”

I replied, “Bought it from a relative when he decided to go back to school. It’s not much, but it pays the bills. Some day, I want to get out into the real world and do something adventurous. Maybe go to the East Coast, see New York, I don’t know.” I shrugged sheepishly and admitted, “I miss the snow.” He nodded in agreement.

Charlie came back a few days later and dropped a pile of collared shirts on the counter. He stayed with me as I went through each shirt and tagged it; I liked his company, though this time, he didn’t have his usual question firing round. Instead, he looked excited, almost anticipatory. As the printer was sputtering out a receipt behind me, I got to the bottom of the pile. When I unfolded the last shirt, I found hidden in the cloth a small snow globe that trapped the Statue of Liberty in its round glass. Charlie beamed at me when I stared, amazed, at the present and then feverishly shook the globe the way a little girl does, gripping onto the stone ends and then watching the tornado effect. Look at the snow, JiYun.

Slowly, he read the words lined at the base: “Lib-uh-tee.”

“Yes,” I said, still staring at the snow globe, the falling specks of fake snow floating lazily around the sphere until it found the shoulders of Lady Liberty. “Yes, Charlie,” I repeated. “Liberty.”

I was at the back of the store, speaking to my mother on the phone. I tried to call her every holiday season, speaking for as long as either of us could stand. This time, I reached the minute mark. A record for us.

“Hi, Mom. How are you? How has your Chu Suk been?”

“Fine. The holidays are always the same. Lots of family time,” she said apathetically. The pause that followed filled the air, engulfed it, and plugged up all the oxygen, as I struggled for breath.

After a beat I asked, “And how is Dad doing?”

“Good. He’s good.” It was times like these that I had siblings to ask about, perhaps even compare myself to – I would point at their failures and note, ‘Hey, at least I’m not as bad as them. All I did was get kicked out of my own home.’

Following another hesitant pause, I told her, “I think I finally found her today, Mom. I just saw her briefly, but she looks beautiful. Healthy. Happy. Jinna’s doing well.”

This time, the pause was devastatingly long. “Good,” she finally replied.

“Mom,” I pleaded. “I’ve done well for myself. I learned English on my own; I made it all the way here like I said I would. Please. Can’t you say that you’re proud of me?”

I heard a sigh on the other end and then, “Good for you. I have to go now.”

At this point, the bells rang in the shop. I brushed the damp edges of my eyes with the back of my fingers. “Okay. I have to go, too. I’ll talk to you,” I said, “soon.” I heard the click of the phone even before I had uttered the last word.

It was Charlie. He was there, there dropping his shirts on the counter, there walking over to me, here enveloping me in his warmth as I wept like a child.

That night, he gave me a ride home, and I put on a pot of tea for us made out of dried corn kernels. Watching me from the wooden stool in the cramped kitchen, he asked what the name of my child was. I had been waiting for this question. “Jinna,” I replied softly.

He left his seat and walked closer. “What happened to her?” he asked, kissing the warm tears on my cheeks and holding my terrible hands that now shudder with power.

“She’s in L.A. She’s here,” I said, closing my eyes to the whistle of the boiling tea. “She’s happy. That’s all I need to know.”

“You’re so brave. So good,” he sighed in my ear.

“Don’t,” I insisted. I didn’t need to be won over. He was an old soul from Nam Yang, like me. He wanted to start anew, like me. He wanted to start anew, with me. At the time, I knew I should have refused his love.

But I was far too selfish.

“Not at all,” I said, trying not to stare the girl. But she fit the picture perfectly; Jinna would have had the same crescent-moon shape to her eyes, similar to mine. She would have been a similar height, just coming up to her mother’s navel. She would have had the same thin, jet-black hair tied in braided pigtails slithering down her shoulders.

“This is Koreatown, isn’t it?” the woman asked.

I nod and brighten my eyes like I had seen in American infomercials. “Yes, you’re right on the edge of it. You’ll hit the center if you go further East.” My eyes again glided down to the little girl, who was picking at the corners of the sign below the cash register, uninterested in the conversation.

“Would you happen to know how to get to the Jeong Arts Center?” the woman asked. “We have tickets for a cultural show that starts in,” she looked at her watch, “ten minutes. I got off of work late, and I feel terrible about that, but you know how it is.”

She winked at me. I blinked at her.

“Yes,” I managed to say, “the Center is actually just the fifth light down and two blocks to the left. You can ask around if you get lost.”

The girl looked up at me and tugged at her mother’s jacket and scrunched her nose. “Mom, that lady looks just like me.”

I stopped, but her mother just laughed a high-pitched laugh and pinched her daughter’s yellow cheeks. “Oh, darling,” she chuckled. “Yes, this lady is Asian, too,” She turned to me and gave me a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that. Her fourth-grade teacher says she needs to work on being less blunt at times, but it’s so hard to say no to this cute face,” she smiled at her daughter. When the girl began to get bored again and walk towards the exit, the woman quickly thanked me and followed her out of the store.

The bells from the door deafened in my ears. Fourth grade; is that what she said? So she was indeed around nine years old. And Jinna had said it herself: “That lady looks just like me.” She thought it too.

I was stunned by her seemingly selfish and disrespectful nature. At the same time, she seemed happy, safe, wanted. Jinna was pampered and loved, having all the things I should have had, had she not come along. Was it a mistake, giving her up? Or even having a baby in the first place?

I should have been happy for her.

But again, I was selfish.

I hang onto the edge of the cold, ivory-white seat with a fierce grip. When I am confident that the nausea has ceased, I use the toilet seat to stand. I rinse my polluted mouth with the old mouthwash I find in the medicine cabinet and briefly touch the bottom of my stomach. Am I imagining things, or does it look bigger already?

The nausea has begun to abandon me with a depressing sobriety. In my left fist, the pill tumbles. With the other hand, I cup my cheek and press the tips of my fingers into the deep circles that penetrate the bottoms of my eye. I lick my lips, filling in the parched cracks with saliva. Such potential for life.

I unclench my hand and stare at the pill, which has grown sticky in the daunting darkness of my closed fist. Don’t want to make another mistake. Don’t. Responsibility, stability, banality, the prospect of a real family, the pain of giving another one up – it’s all too daunting.

I swallow it dry and kill the daunting potential that lies inside me. Poor Charlie; he was a father for only so long. But like the first, he’ll never know.

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