“Sidewalks” by Sasha Hom (Fiction ’22)

Sidewalks

I missed my sixth-grade graduation because I had to go with my parents to Seoul to stay in a multistory hotel. The mission was to scoop up a child we had never seen before, sign some papers, and call her ours. Their rationale for flying all the way to Korea to pick her up, versus having her flown to the States with a planeload of other adoptable children the way I had arrived, was that this way, they could kill two birds with one stone. They would get to show me my country of birth and, at the same time, bring me back a sister. Because more than anything, my parents loved a bargain—Dad at Double Luck Liquors whenever they were having a two-for-one sale, me in the bucket of the cart, knees tucked under my skirt, while he stacked jugs of wine with twist-off caps around my sparkly shoes, singing gleefully, “This is chee-eap wine.”

Our room was on the twenty-third floor of the Seoul Plaza Hotel. There were demonstrations in the plaza. Across from City Hall, a gathering of protesters pushed against a wall of police. Back and forth they ran, crossing some invisible line. It reminded me of these shorebirds two-stepping with the waves on Naksan Beach where I saw an old woman jump playfully on the back of another, both laughing with their mouths so open you could see down the long dark hole of their throats.

“Anyone here could be related to you,” Ma said.