even noticed. The other children did not pick on me, but they did not seek my company either, and so it was a natural thing for me to play alone by the creek after school or in the garden of our church, where one of the nuns had given me a patch to plant things. The nuns, who saw my grandmother every week at services, had a better idea than most people what she was like.
* * *
—
IT WAS a pretty spring day when the letter arrived from America, I remember. Cherry blossoms had erupted over garden walls earlier that week, and my grandmother and I were walking back from the well on the mountain where we pumped our drinking water every few days. The mailman was at our gate.
“Letter from your son in America,” he called, waving when he saw us.
“Really? He writes too often,” said my grandmother merrily. She had not spoken to me for several days, but she was good at hiding her moods from others.
Because she wanted to brag more about the letter, she made a show of opening it on the spot.
“He’s coming to visit this summer,” she said, reading it slowly. “His wife and children too.”
“My goodness! What an event. Is it his first time since he left for America?” The mailman, like the rest of our street, knew about my uncle, the prodigy who had been offered a job at a think tank in America after marrying my aunt, a treasured only child from a wealthy family.
My grandmother pursed her lips. “Yes,” she replied, and then abruptly went inside the gate, leaving him puzzled.
I flew in after her. My cousins were coming! The thought made me dizzy. My cousins, Somin and Hyungshik. I knew all about them from my aunt and uncle’s letters. They were six and three to my eight years and they lived in Washington on a street where no other Asian people lived. Somin went to a school with American children and was learning wonderful things like ballet and soccer and violin while Hyungshik was starting a gymnastics class for toddlers.
My grandmother would plummet into her morose rages every time a letter came, but I would pore over the details in my aunt’s graceful handwriting. My aunt would often include small gifts for me in her packages and letters, and every year she sent an American birthday card with flowers or animals. She also sent photos from Somin’s birthday parties, which always showed her daughter in a frilly dress and a party hat, blowing out candles and surrounded by other little girls and boys, some with yellow or orange hair and skin the color of paper.
“Such ridiculous extravagance for a child!” my grandmother would say angrily before tossing the photos in the trash, or sometimes, if she was in a particularly dark mood, cutting them to pieces with scissors.
I didn’t have high hopes for my younger cousin, Hyungshik—I only had a hazy idea of the physical capabilities of a three-and-a-half-year-old (could he even talk? I didn’t know or care) and he would probably only serve to slow Somin and me down as we played. But I dreamed of taking Somin to my plot in the church garden to show her my flowering cucumber plants, which even my grandmother said made good oiji.
If things went really well, I would also take her to the stationery store next to the market, where the neighborhood children gathered to play on the benches out front. I imagined them whispering to each other about how pretty and interesting she was, Wonna’s cousin, the girl from America.
These were the daydreams I had in those days.
* * *
—
MY FATHER was the second of three sons, but it was my youngest uncle who lived in the big house in America. While my grandmother always belittled my aunt when speaking about her, she always made sure that the gifts my uncle sent from America were on display in the house when company came over. A shiny black camera would be left on the kitchen table, or a pouch of cosmetics would be spilling out on the living room floor.