Umma

It was hard to see. My wiry black bangs had grossly overgrown and were now uncomfortably poking at my eyes with all the obstinacy of a spoiled child and the wiriness of untamed pubic hair. I peered through this unyielding curtain at the face across from me, just inches away.

The summer morning was quiet. Soft shadows of honeyed sunlight spilled through the window and danced across my mom and I, who sat face to face in our small bathtub. I sat on a yellow plastic stepstool while she kneeled, scrutinizing my face.

Her forehead was furrowed with three deep horizontal lines that appeared whenever she was concentrating hard. Umma always complained about how her stress lines made her look old, but I thought they looked soothing, like the water ripples in the pond where we fed ducks every week.

This is what I was thinking about as she cut my hair, feeling the cool sensation of metal scissors against my forehead and listening to the snip snip of her gentle hand. I looked down and watched as plumes of what used to be a part of me floated to the ground, dark tufts of ebony stark against the white porcelain of the bathtub. I watched my feet dangle off the edge of the stepstool, far from the ground below. I pretended they were squid tentacles and jiggled them around.

“가만히 안자,” Umma said. Hold still.

I tried and failed. I was too eager to get up, to bounce around, to ride my scooter or play with the neighborhood kids. There were just so many things to do and too many beds that needed to be jumped on. So I wriggled around some more.

Umma sighed and set her scissors aside. Just when she looked like she was about to scold me, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and her thin body abruptly slumped over.

The sudden silence that followed was eerie. I squinted at her curiously through my half- cut bangs, wondering what was going on. Unsure, I climbed out of the bathtub, looking around warily.

In the corner of my vision, I could see Umma peeping her eyes open to watch me. But when I whirled back around to look, she quickly clamped them shut. What kind of game was this?

Confused, I sat cross-legged on the hard bathroom floor and gazed at her for some time. After a long while, she opened both her eyes and stared straight at me, exasperated. In rapid-fire Korean, she asked, “Why didn’t you call 911? If something like that happens, you’re supposed to call 911 like I taught you.”

I shrugged. I wanted to say, Because I knew you were tricking me, but the words didn’t come out.

Umma swiftly got up and advanced toward me. She gripped my shoulders, hard. The stern whites of her eyes looked like little moons.

“Danbi, I’m serious. If there’s an emergency, you need to be able to call 911 on your own. What if I had been dying?” she asked.

Her words were heavy like wet cement and took just as long to sink in. Dying? Death? My mother wasn’t subject to something as permanent as death. Death was for old people.

And yet, the very thought of her dying one day and leaving me to be all alone was too much to bear. I felt a tight knot festering deep in my stomach like a dirty penny sitting at the bottom of a well, and before I knew it, salty tears were prickling the corners of my eyes. Umma’s face softened.

“I’m sorry, Danbi. I just wanted you to be prepared. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

But the tears kept coming, and coming, and unraveled into a series of guttural, gasping sobs. I was flooded with an overwhelming sense of despair that someday, I’d have to live without my mother. Umma pulled me into a hug, and we sat there on the bathroom floor for a small eternity, me with my half-finished haircut and heartbreak, Umma with her soothing back rubs and freshly wet shirt.

And after my crying was reduced to sniffles, Umma went to the kitchen and got us two Yakult drinks, which we slurped up quick. It made me feel a little better.

Every Saturday, my mom and I would go shopping at Assi, an Asian supermarket a few blocks from our home.

We had a routine. The two of us would arrive in the early afternoon so that we could beat the dinner crowd. She’d pull out a handwritten list and begin her search while I explored, skipping down the aisles or poking the cold blue crabs scuttling around on ice beds. But I never strayed far from her grocery cart.

As we made our rounds, we’d eat samples at small tables manned by sweet old Korean ladies with white aprons and permed hair. Umma and the lady would exchange a few phrases in Korean, and then she’d nudge me gently. That was my cue to say, gamsahamnida! Thank you! The words felt chewy in my mouth, like sweet, sticky taffy, pulling my jaw in ways I wasn’t used to. But the little old lady would smile at me and compliment my Korean, giving me the confidence to move onto the next table and repeat the phrase again.

If my legs got tired from walking around too much, Umma would place me in the shopping cart. I loved sitting in the cart criss-cross applesauce while she wheeled me around. I’d absorb intimate sights as she hunted for groceries: the blue tanks full of floundering fish in the seafood section, narrow aisles packed with aromatic spices, and slightly stained linoleum floors. It all felt familiar and good.

As we wheeled around together, we played my favorite game. Umma would pick up a random food item and show it to me, pointing a slender finger at its label.

“이게 뭐야?” What is this?

Squinting, I’d examine the small black characters and try to discern what Korean letter she was pointing to. Could it be the window shape of ᄆ? The curvy, snakelike ᄅ? What about the bounciness of ᄇ?


If I answered correctly, Umma would reward me with a fruit of my choice. On one particular day, after correctly naming ‘ᄂ,’ I pointed at a small cluster of pretty plums in the corner.

“I want those!” I squealed.

Umma wheeled me over. We felt the plums’ firm bodies, trying to pick out the ripest ones. The small fruits radiated a deep burgundy shade and were as smooth as river stones. I turned one over in my hands in reverence.

“You know, I used to dream of plums when I was pregnant with you,” Umma remarked in cadences of melodic Korean.

I wasn’t paying attention, too preoccupied trying to find the perfect plum. She went on.

“In my dream, I was trapped in a dark forest somewhere, lost. I was so thirsty but couldn’t find any water. I raised my hands to rub my eyes, and suddenly, a ripe plum appeared in my palm. I bit into it hungrily. I raised my hand again, and another plum appeared. I kept eating and eating and eating. They were the sweetest things I’d ever created. Well, almost.”

I stopped rummaging around in the plums to look up at her, ears perked. “What’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever created?”

She playfully bounced her finger on my nose and smiled. “You.”

Umma and Appa stopped loving each other when I was ten. In the middle of fourth grade, Umma and I left our home in Georgia to move to a strange place called Ohio.

“Ohio? Like Cheerio?” I asked on the plane ride.


Umma reached over the armrest to squeeze my hand. “Yes.”


I scrunched my nose. “I don’t like Cheerios.”


Turns out I didn’t care for Ohio much, either. I didn’t know anyone and it was always too cold outside. But there was one glimmer of light in all this dreariness: the public library next to our tiny apartment.

Over the years, I grew to think of these books as my friends. I’d beg Umma to go back every weekend so I could relive unforgettable escapades within the pages of my favorite novels. Umma and I would find a quiet corner of the library and read for hours; fantasy novels my favorite, Korean poetry, hers.

Once, when I was twelve, I tried to teach her some English vocabulary. She knew the basics, but only enough to get by.

We were hunched over a computer at the back wall of the library, and I was proofreading her work email. I pointed at a word I’d just written, speaking it aloud slowly:

“Rarely.”


Umma tried to mimic me. “Lar-euh-lee.”

“No, you’re pronouncing it wrong. Rare-ly.”

She tried again. “Lar...euh-lee.” The words sounded garbled in her mouth, like an old tape played in reverse.

“No, you have to emphasize the ‘r’ in the beginning.”


Umma sucked her teeth and reverted back to speaking Korean: “Ah, I don’t need this. It’s fine. I’ll just send the email.”


“Why are you giving up? It’s so easy.”


“It’s not natural to me. But as long as my Danbi finds English easy to understand, that’s all that matters.”


And I did find it easy. To me, English seemed so lucid, so understandable. It just made sense. I was fascinated with the language and the way it was so malleable, able to bend to an author’s will; I became enthralled with words and the power they held, the way mere ink on a page was capable of transporting me to an entirely different dimension. It was pure magic.

Inspired by the books I read, I started scribbling my own tales in neon pink ink, shaping castles out of commentaries and palaces out of paragraphs. And I loved it. I loved it more than anything.

A few years later, when I was an angsty sophomore in high school, Umma and I were eating dinner together at home. As usual, we ate quietly; I had my nose buried in a book while she stared out the window, watching the cars pass. On this particular day, though, she chose to fracture the silence with an observation:

“You have some new acne on your chin.”

There was no malice in her voice, and she probably meant well, but the blatancy of her comment left me seething. I’d already spent half an hour picking and prodding at the fleshy pimple in my bathroom mirror this morning. I didn’t need a reminder that my skin was a battleground.

I kept my eyes trained on my book. Trying my best to keep my tone indifferent as an operating table, I grunted, “Mm-hmm.”

Umma persisted. “Are you using that new cream I bought? The blue one with the white cap? I read a lot of reviews online that said it’s good for oily skin...”

I short-circuited.

“Oh my god WHY do you ALWAYS have to bother me about the tiniest things? I’m just trying to eat dinner in peace, can’t you see that I’m reading a book?!”

The air was vacuum-sucked out of the room, and for a long moment, we sat staring at each other in zero gravity, the furniture seemingly floating in the air, frozen in time. The distance between us was palpable.

Finally, Umma released a frustrated sigh through her nostrils and looked away. She picked at her white ox bone soup, which suddenly looked gray in the fluorescent light. Then she glanced back at me.

“I don’t know why you’re reading all those books anyway. You’re almost a junior now. You should devote some of that effort to studying for the SATs. Michael Park got a perfect score in math, you know.”

“I don’t care about what Michael Park got. I don’t even wanna go into math, anyways.”

“Then what kind of job are you going to get?”


I deliberated whether or not to tell her the truth, whether or not to share the secret reverie I’d been harboring in my heart for years, the fantasy I’d daydream about on long bus rides home and during the most private hours of the night. Before I knew it, the words came spilling out of me:

“I want to be a writer.”

I sat there holding my breath, feeling like I just dropped a truckload of bricks off the roof of a skyscraper. I was waiting for the bricks to hit the cement below, waiting to see if they’d stay intact or crack open like broken eggshells on the sidewalk. My esophagus crumpled under the pressure, as if I was miles deep underwater in the darkest part of the ocean.

Umma looked at me with steely, unwavering eyes. I watched her hear my words. I watched the information sink in. And I also watched as her eyes hooded over and hardened.

She grasped her plate, stood up, and exited the room wordlessly. A few moments later, I could hear her washing dishes in the kitchen. The pots and pans clanged louder than usual, creating a discordant sound that was too cacophonous for our quiet home.

I stared down into my milky soup. The sediments had gathered at the bottom of the bowl, deflated from their once buoyant state.

College application season was hell. Tensions with my mom were at an all-time high. It felt like we were in a Cold War.

One winter night, I was driving us home. The dimly lit street was adorned with snow, and the streets were empty. We sat in snowglobe silence.

Out of nowhere, Umma spoke. “You should apply to the University of Pennsylvania. Their students have very high employment rates after graduation.”

I clamped down on my tongue, determined not to start another fight. I couldn’t handle it. Not today.

She continued, “A really great school. If you have an Ivy League education, employment will much easier for the rest of your life. Plus, Pennsylvania isn’t so far. It would be very easy for me to move there so we can keep living together.”

At this, I gawked. What did she just say? I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. Umma, moving in with me to college? The whole point was to get away from her, to get away from here, to get away from this small town where nothing ever happened and I didn’t fit in.

I sputtered. “Umma, nobody’s mom moves in with them to college! That’s...that’s totally crazy!”

I involuntarily revved the car engine. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her staring at me fixedly.

“I thought that was our plan all along. How could you ever live all on your own?”

“I...I’d figure it out.”


“You’ve never done a load of laundry in your life. And you don’t know how to cook...”

“Well, that’s – I can learn!” Angered, I pressed down on the accelerator.

“...And if you’re going to major in something useless like English anyway, you may as well have me there to take care of you, because finding a job after college will not be easy–”

“UMMA! The point is, no one ever willingly lives with their parent in college!”

“Why not? It’s not so uncommon in Korea.”


“Yeah, but this is America!”


“But you are Korean.”

“Yeah, well, maybe sometimes I wish I weren’t.”

Umma’s thin lips pressed together in a tight white line. I was fuming at this point, and my foot fully covered the accelerator. We were whipping down a snowy suburban road, tiny silver flurries whizzing past us in the inky sky.

“Slow down,” Umma said, a hint of worry in her tone.

I barely heard her. I was pushing eighty miles an hour.

“Danbi! Slow down!” she repeated.

I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. The adrenaline was steadily pumping through my veins at double time, galvanizing my nerve endings and making me feel reckless. It felt good to have some tangible, visceral way to outpour my rage. For the first time in a long time, I felt in control. I felt powerful.

The speedometer inched closer to a hundred.


“DANBI!!!”


I couldn’t stop.


The sound of a banshee screaming in agonizing pain filled my ears as the car skidded wildly out of control.


We veered off the road and headed straight for a tree.

That’s the last thing I remember.

I woke up in the hospital, head pounding. All the lights were too bright, all the sounds too loud. My neck was killing me. I peered down and saw my right arm encased in a sterile white cast. Slowly, I sat up.

From the corner of the room, Umma leapt up and sprinted over to me. She cradled my head in a warm hug, teary-eyed and sniffling. This struck me as strange – I’d never seen my mother cry before.

The doctor said I had a mild concussion and sprained wrist, but those would heal in a few weeks as long as I got enough nutrients and sleep. Miraculously, Umma only had a few scrapes and bruises, nothing that needed serious treatment. I sighed in relief.

In the spring, I found out that I got into Berkeley, my dream school. When I opened the acceptance letter, I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh or jump or cry. I just sat on my bed with my mouth slack, staring at my computer screen. I felt hardened into stone, immobile in my simultaneous happiness and guilt: What did this mean for me? What did this mean for Umma? What did this mean for us?

In the months leading up to my departure for college, Umma slowly faded away. With each passing day, she became quiet and gray, like a bleary sky right before a heavy rain.

She’d spend her days floating around the house like a ghost, occupying herself with meaningless tasks, folding and unfolding and refolding laundry again, rearranging dishes in cabinets, wiping down spotless tables.

She couldn’t even look me in the eye; when I talked, she’d stare right through me.

I began to wonder if I was made of glass, if I’d actually died in that car crash and God was playing some cruel joke, because it felt like Umma was mourning my death while I was still alive.

The momentous day finally arrived. Umma and I sat outside my boarding gate on an uncomfortable steel bench, not looking at each other. Amid the rowdy hubbub and constant jostling of the crowd around us, our silence somehow seemed exacerbated.

The passengers started to board the plane, and slowly, the crowd thinned out until I was the last person at the gate. I turned to Umma.

“So...I guess this is it.”

Umma nodded solemnly, still looking right through me. I reached for the handle of my suitcase.

“Well...bye, Umma. Thanks for everything. Really.”

I pulled her into an awkward hug. Her small, thin frame seemed frailer than I remembered.

I whispered into her hair. “I’ll miss you.”

She spoke for the first time in months: “나도.” Me too. Her voice sounded far away, a faint echo in a conch shell.


We pulled away and stared at each other’s faces for a few moments, drinking in all we could. Her forehead was furrowed in that rippled way, and she was staring at my face like she was committing it to memory, like this was the last time we’d ever see each other, like she was sending me off to a war.

I tried to smile so she would remember me as her happy daughter. I’m not sure she was convinced.

Right before I turned to go, she pressed a cool, hard rectangle into my left palm. I looked down and saw it was a new phone. I turned to her in surprise – I didn’t think we could afford this.

“Call me when you need me,” she whispered in Korean.


I nodded and grasped her hand gratefully.


“Bye, Umma.”


“안녕, 우리 예쁜 딸.” Goodbye, my lovely daughter.

And then I stepped onto the plane and into another world.

I didn’t look back.

When I landed in California, I was incredibly hungry. I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and maybe I was homesick already, because I was craving Korean food. Luckily, there was an Assi near the airport. I took a quick taxi there.

When I walked through the grocery store’s doors, I was struck by how familiar the smell was. Although the aisles were in different places and the little old ladies at the sample counters were not the same, the pungent scent of fresh kimchi intertwined with the inviting smell of warm beef stew, accompanied by the underlying stench of fish.

I felt like I had entered a time capsule, like I was a walking anachronism within this little world.

I wandered through the aisles and drank in all the familiar sights: the fresh fruits in clusters near the entrance, the vibrant packaging of tasty snacks, the different sizes of bottled beverages in the drink aisle.

Everything looked so much smaller now. The world no longer looked like a vast adventure waiting to be explored with surprises around every corner; it just looked like a small supermarket that was falling apart at the seams.

And out of nowhere, amid the green aloe drinks and sweet, iced Yakult, I break down sobbing.

I cry because for the first time in my life, I’m completely and utterly alone, and it feels like I’m sinking.

I cry because I don’t know what’s coming next.

I cry because I feel guilty for leaving my mother all alone in that empty apartment in the middle of nowhere in Ohio.

I cry for Umma and the horrible way I treated her throughout all those years, when all she ever did was care about me with her whole heart.

Tears blurring my vision, I reach for the phone Umma gave me. I need to call her right now.

As soon as I unlock the phone, there is a notes page waiting for me on the screen. In careful Korean characters, it reads:

“My Dear Daughter, I’m sorry I’ve been overbearing.
I know I can be a bit hypercritical sometimes, but that’s only because I want what is best for you, and because I know you have great potential to succeed.
 You have grown to be such a strong young woman, and I guess I just wanted to hang onto that little girl a little longer, the one who’d need her bangs cut every month, who’d get scared of the dark, who spent weekends with me at the library, who loved to go grocery shopping, who always needed my help.
But you don’t need me anymore, and I will just have to come to terms with that in my own way. I hope we can rebuild our relationship again, and become as close as we used to be.
I love you with all my soul. Umma.”

Through teary eyes, I dial my mother’s number and, with trembling fingers, hit “call.”