“Family Ledger,” by Tommy Kim (Fiction ’09)
JOYLAND recently published “Family Ledger,” an excerpt of a novel-in-progress by 2009 fiction graduate Tommy Kim. Read an excerpt of “Family Ledger” below:
Family Ledger
She had not been invited to the wedding, but decorum—which was really nothing more than a mask for frailty and fear—would not stop her from attending. This was her niece after all, her deceased brother’s daughter whose choice in husband, if anyone with common sense examined this misadventure, was made out of grief and panic. It was not so much that he was not Korean—he was American—it was that he had not been vetted through Suk Ja’s scrupulous methods for determining the worthiness of a mate. No matter. This child still inherited the love Suk Ja had for her brother, and she was required to attend this wedding to provide the highest offering of love for the living and the dead. That was how important this wedding was—rotted sapling of a niece notwithstanding.
Suk Ja sat reading her NIV bible at the kitchen table. Her son, who was a groomsman for Janet’s wedding, appeared in the kitchen wearing his suit.
“I’m going early,” he said.
“Of course you are going early,” she said. “Being a member of the wedding party is quite the responsibility, especially when trying to corral the Kang women into their pens.”
He sat across from Suk Ja. His leather shoes squeaked.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said.
“And I am supposed to supply you with these elusive words?” she said.
Her son looked upon her in his fragile way. How the boy had been lavished with ill-treatment by his father, that coward who was now living in New York with his new bride, although Suk Ja and he had divorced some 15 years ago. It was unfortunate, the tendencies one inherits from one’s parents. In his embarrassingly earnest way, the boy plodded toward the door with his usual preoccupations—what was that boy always thinking about that was not about now?
“Stand up straight,” she said. “The suit makes you look short.”
“Call me if you need anything,” he said.
“Don’t play with such false charity,” she said.
“Why do you always…” he said, trying in his feeble way to place the perfect word onto his lips.
“Please, tell me,” she said. “Why do I always what? Tolerate mistreatment from my family?”
“None of this is my fault,” he said.
“Be specific when you speak. What is ‘this?’ And you are slouching again. Up,” she said, pushing out her chest. “You are now twenty-one. There are no excuses for poor posture or your roundabout talking. You are a man now. Go straight.”
“Do you want me to choose between you and Janet?” he said. “Being offered such a choice really reflects my great upbringing.”
“Again with your refusal to accept responsibility. You are not offered anything. You are supposed to take,” she said. “Just go.”
She said this as if to hurry and immerse herself back in the biblical texts, a tendency to wholly be inside of the moment, ignoring the grievances of the past or the causal nature of the future. According to her sisters, Suk Ja struggled with understanding that this moment actually had a consequence for a time later in life, a habit of disregard which was partly to blame for her ban from the wedding. Oh Janet, her innocent niece—she knew that Suk Ja’s three older sisters would employ lupine tactics to perform properly at the wedding, but Suk Ja would not play such games and would not hesitate to elevate a disagreement on seating arrangements into global nuclear warfare. The glowering of these feckless siblings would not be ignored, and each of their actions would be responded to with fair and equal force. It was not her fault she would not submit to the gaming of her sisters. In any case, Suk Ja would never lose.
When her son left, she pulled the pictures of her brother’s high school graduation out from the shoebox under her bed. Such handsome cheekbones. The prepossessing face that had been eroded by age and sickness. The last month of his life had been especially difficult as his cheeks, bloated from dialysis, submerged his princely eyes into the yellow folds of jaundice. Oh the sisters and their meddling! It was not Suk Ja’s fault that her brother loved her the most. But of course they poisoned her niece’s thoughts and spread rumors about Suk Ja. When her brother’s wife died ten years before his own death, Janet had been vulnerable to the influence of the sisters, who all vied with one another to take over as Janet’s mother figure. How she missed her lovely brother! The suffering he would have endured knowing his little sister was mistreated by the others. Hidden at the bottom of the shoebox was a thick envelope. Inside were the green striations of cash she would give to her niece.
She could easily persuade her oldest sister to disclose the location of the wedding. For good measure, Suk Ja revisited her favorite section of Psalms: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
She quickly changed out of her clothing. She had stopped wearing a bra after her double mastectomy. These old sutures angled downward like closed, benevolent eyes. By now the scars were just another marker of loss. She had lost count of all that had disappeared in her life. Better to live now than wait for possibilities later, as possibilities were the futile wishes of the foolish. Blink and another thing gone. She threw on the pink and blue hanbok dress she had worn for her son’s dol celebration twenty years ago. In the last moments of her brother’s life, she’d caressed his stubbled cheeks and promised she would take care of his daughter. This promise was a responsibility that none of the sisters would defile with their meddling. She would not allow it.
Read the piece in its entirety here: https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/family-ledger/
