This Burns My Heart Page 0,124

big pool, Min, this nice house. Who do you think is paying for all this? Do you really think your father would welcome you with open arms if you didn’t have the money with you?”

“Don’t talk like that. He’s my father,” said Min.

“The only reason that what I say bothers you is because you’ve wondered it yourself. Fine, keep the money, but give my daughter back. And by the way, I will never, ever forgive you for this.”

Min looked at her with a bit of a start, and the look on his face confirmed it—he had felt no guilt about taking the money from selling the land she herself had originally bought; he thought of that money as his, the same way he thought of Hana as his, and her future, too—all his.

“Can we talk about this later?” asked Min. “It’s Mother’s birthday.”

Soo-Ja closed her eyes, resting her forehead against the palm of her hand. An elder’s sixtieth birthday represented a momentous occasion, with a number of ceremonial gestures. At which point, Soo-Ja wondered, should she confront her in-laws? Maybe after the “offering of the flowers,” but before the “song of congratulations”—maybe that would be a good moment to ask them why ten years ago they had abandoned Soo-Ja, penniless, while they started a new life in America with her father’s money. Or maybe after the “offering of the ceremonial liquor” but before the “congratulatory address”—maybe that would be the right moment to demand why they hadn’t sent back their son and granddaughter to Korea, when they knew very well that Min had brought Hana there without Soo-Ja’s consent.

“No, we can’t talk about this later. I want everyone gathered here to know exactly what kind of people your parents are,” said Soo-Ja, preparing to get up. She saw, not far from her, the banquet table covered in white and laid out with the traditional sixtieth birthday dishes: sliced rice cakes stacked almost four feet in the air, and shiny pears sitting on different rungs of a three-story silver platter.

Min’s parents had taken their place on the other side of the banquet table, and in a moment, the ceremony would start. Each of their five children—along with their wives, or in the case of Na-yeong, her husband—were expected to bow to Soo-Ja’s in-laws and offer them a gourd filled with red wine. By living to age sixty, Mother-in-law had reached a milestone. She’d completed the sexagenarian cycle of the zodiac, and, for the first time in her life, her animal element, the monkey, had finally aligned with her yin-yang heavenly stem, metal. The already revered matriarch would be even more so, and given more power and respect than ever.

“If you make a scene, no one will sympathize with you. Everyone here is on Mother and Father’s side,” said Min. “And as far as knowing what kind of people they are… we all know already. We’re their children, remember?”

Soo-Ja took a deep breath, frustration running through her veins like water boiling in a cauldron. “Don’t speak to me. I don’t want to hear another word from you.”

Soo-Ja sat on one of the lawn chairs, holding a thick paper plate filled with spicy radishes, sulfurous eggs, and rice wrapped in seaweed. She made a point of sitting apart from the others, and away from Min.

But not soon after, a woman not much older than her, perhaps in her early forties, plunked down next to her. She had a perm, and big, heavy locks of curly hair. She must have been a distant relative, for she seemed to know Soo-Ja, though Soo-Ja herself didn’t recognize her.

“It’s very nice of your father-in-law to bring you to America,” the woman said, settling into her own lawn chair, and balancing the overflowing plate of food on her lap.

“Yes, he brought me here all right,” said Soo-Ja, savoring the irony.

“But then again, he’s always taken care of you, I hear. He gave you a business to run in Seoul, didn’t he?”

“Is that what he tells people?” asked Soo-Ja.

“And I heard he gave you a house, too.” The woman smiled broadly, revealing some gold in her back molars. Soo-Ja wondered if she did this on purpose, an older woman’s version of a young woman flashing a diamond engagement ring.

“Oh, yes,” Soo-Ja said, bewildered at her father-in-law’s distortions. “He’s so kind.”

“So how do you like America?” the woman asked, playfully waving her hands in the air, as if she were a magician and had just produced this country, for Soo-Ja’s