Alternate World in Which Koreans Can Pickle Anything, and: First Encounter

Abstract

Alternate World in Which Koreans Can Pickle Anything, and: First Encounter Franny Choi (bio) Alternate World in Which Koreans Can Pickle Anything Pickle the name your mother gave you.Pickle late nights watching Music Bank on Jihae's couch.Pickle the floral print rice cookers guarding the sidelinesof the church basement. Pickle the prayer & the shapesit makes of your mouth. & pickle the ballad, too, you know the one, with a few too many key modulations, the onethe ajushis sing like they're dragging it out of the hole that's beengrowing since the day they left Seoul. Pickle the mic & its waytoo much reverb. Pickle the plane ride. Pickle the bags& the lives you packed inside. Pickle your mother's good name pronounced right. The maiden name she kept. Pickle barbecuemixed with the tang of shoreline & Lucky Strikes, the volleyball court,the stiff mats laid down on the grass, pinnedagainst wind with sneakers. pickle the sweat when the oppastry to teach you to six step, pickle that—that feeling— the prayer you call down into your little throat when everyone is pretty& tall, when it turns out Dohyun knows your name after all,when it's your turn on the court or the N64 controlleror the kitchen floor. Put in the jar, along with the crack that forms down your mother's face just beforeshe starts to cry. The look your sister gave you when she wasa mile underground and you left her alone. The sound of your brothernot speaking and not speaking. Pickle the new names they gave you,though you can't bear to say them out loud. Throw in some ginger& pickle the night you picked up the phone to hear another womansaying your father's name. Pickle the silent hang-up. Or if not, at least pickle the apologies. Vinegar will cut the heat over time& you can eat it in the winter: The subway's clang when it mixeswith your sister's laughter; the childhood babble you recite [End Page 94] like scripture; the patterns of your mother's eight feetwhen you all march into the doctor's office or the PTA meetingor the library, the good one, in Hamden,where you can check out VHS tapes & sit on the bean bags. Pickle it all: the softer corners & the colors the world usedto tell you about yourself—in Rs & Ls, in cops& their questions, & the knowledge that, if you bury it,new lives will grow & feed you when the winds come. They will call what grows there a colony. Or they will call it: sidedish. Topping. They'll put it on anything. They'll say they like it now.Remember: if they never had to scrub it out of their shame, it isn'ttheir story to love. This is more than memory, more than salt& funk & rearview. Remember: this is what you makewhen the earth stops wanting to make you. [End Page 95] First Encounter It was winter in Wisconsin, and late,and my mother was just going to be a minuteinside the grocery store, maybe a Woodman's, and maybeshe took a little longer than she'd expected.Maybe she got stuck at the register, or perhapsit wasn't long at all. Maybe we three kids were happyin the car, drawing in the windows' wet film,or tossing some toy, or wiping sweet dribblefrom my brother's cheek, his feet boundand bouncing. Maybe I led my sister in songor asked her questions. Really, I don't knowhow long we were there, in the car,before the cop came, tapped on the glass.I guess he must have spoken to us. And I'm surewe answered the way immigrant kids do,stowaway-in-headlights, words dribbling outof our mouths like frozen peas. Maybe our voiceswere too small and green for the officerto hear. Maybe they were crushed under his boots,lost between chirps on the radio. I thinkI remember his voice then, a dull smack,flat and efficient as a car horn...