Sublimation(23)

* * *



You want to take your other self’s hand and fold her into your existence. You want to hide in your apartment with the soft warm weight of your cat in your arms. You want to call Clarissa in Germany and commiserate. You want to smoke outside barbecue restaurants with Minsoo. You want to go back to your grandfather’s grave and apologize for taking so long to visit.

You want to kiss your instance’s fiancé and have him be your own. You want to have grown up in Korea. You want to have grown up in America. You want there to be only one of you. You want your other self to be happy. You want to fulfill your grandfather’s last request. You want to be happy. You want to go home.



* * *



There is a multibillion-dollar industry built around human longing.



* * *



“It’s not that easy,” you say. Your instance’s face crystallizing in her smile. You can’t look at this, because even if it’s not your feelings, you understand the way that disappointment feels in her heart.

“You’ll remember, if we reintegrate. It’s not that I become you. Or that you become me. You’ll remember, and I’ll remember, but it’s not going to make us happier. It won’t make Harabeoji and Umma make up retroactively, and it won’t stop me from having left, and maybe it’s selfish, but I have a life. I have a job, and I have a cat, and I have friends, and they could be ours, but then they wouldn’t be mine. And it won’t make Harabeoji happy, because he’s dead, and what he wants can’t be more important than what I want, and I’m sorry about that but it’s true. And I wish there was a way for me to have everything—for you to have everything—but there isn’t. I can’t live my life and live yours at the same time. Fulfilling his wishes doesn’t bring him back.”

You are suddenly achingly homesick. Home like your grandfather’s house, twenty years ago. Home like falling asleep in the back seat of your mom’s car. Home like waking up in your childhood bedroom. You won’t ever get any of that back, and losing that wasn’t your choice, but you can choose how to live with the loss of all the people you used to be.

“If we reintegrate, America becomes a memory for you. For me. Just like Korea is a memory for me. You’ll remember, because I’ll remember, and you’ll regret, because I’ve regretted. I know you will. I know about regret. I miss Korea, sometimes. I’d miss my life more.”

You don’t know how to explain the way you feel about the States to your instance, who has never had to leave home. How she-you will long for worlds that no longer exist, for countries that only exist in your memories, how you’ve had years to come to terms with the tension that sits in your belly when you think about the homes you’ve left behind, how you have changed enough to miss America, now, and you can bear the loss of one homeland but not two. How to explain she would become a foreigner.

“I don’t want that for you,” you say instead. “Or for me.”

Your other self’s smile melts into something less cracked. You smile back in relief.

“If it’s only regret,” Soyoung says, and reaches for your hand and this is the first time you’ve seen her bare wrist, white and smooth like your own, and—



* * *



The knife in the heart, held in the fisherman’s hand.





PART II


Tell me, O Muse, of a complicated man, Whose instance wandered widely

After sacking that famous town of Troy.

Where he went, while his other remained, How he suffered while his other withered, And how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home.

—Homer, The Odyssey





SOYOUNG-ROSE


In her dreams, Soyoung sits next to herself and they don’t touch. In her dreams, Soyoung is Rose is Soyoung is nine years old and has never seen herself doubled. In her dreams, Rose is wearing Soyoung’s clothing and walking through an apartment she’s never lived in. In her dreams, Soyoung sits in her grandfather’s house and does her homework with Minsoo and Yujin and she is nine years old forever.

In her dreams, Soyoung tears the band on her other self’s arm and beats her black and blue and bloody.

When she wakes up, Soyoung goes to the bathroom. She splashes water on her face.

She tells herself: “People reintegrate every day. You shouldn’t be having so many goddamn problems with this.”

She tells herself: “You have everything both of you ever wanted. And you’ve seen both worlds now. It’s not like one of them is better. Who cares why Soyoung chose this?”

She tells herself: “You need to man up and call the American embassy. And change your registration with the Korean government. And quit Rose’s job. Just get it over with.”

Sometimes the pep talk is enough, and she slips back over to the bed and slides between the sheets. If Tae’s sleeping over, he’ll mumble something as she moves his arm gently. Will hold her close when she slides in with him. When he’s asleep, he forgets that they’re fighting. When he’s asleep, he forgets that she’s half-stranger. And in the warm black of her bedroom, it’s easy for her to forget to be a foreigner.

Other nights, the dream ends closer to morning, or leaves her hands shaking. So she pads into the living room. It’ll be quiet. Only the slow roll of cars. Birds chirping. She’ll turn on the television, with the audio low. She turns the channel to SBS, which airs an English practice program at four in the morning. It’s soothing. Information that she already knows, that scratches the itch of the not-knowing. The presenter will pronounce American words and write them on the digital blackboard, and slowly the living room will brighten as the sun rises, and eventually she will fall back asleep, on the couch, and then when she wakes up, the TV is in Korean again, and it’s like the educational program was a dream.