Sublimation(7)

“He talked about you a lot,” Minsoo says. “Before he died. You and your mom.”

“Family was important to him,” Tae says. “I learned that when I asked him about marrying Soyoung. He was a big ‘duty and loyalty’ sort of guy.”

“War generation,” Minsoo says sagely. “I think not knowing about what happened in the north kind of haunted him.”

“I think he always hoped you’d come back,” your instance says. Your eyes snap up. You want her to explain, but she’s looking away now, busy moving the kid to her own seat.

“What’s living in the States like?” Tae asks.

“Well, everyone speaks English,” you say, and everyone laughs. Then the food begins to arrive, and it’s a scramble to clear the table so that the plates of banchan, meat, lettuce, rice in metal bowls, and kimchi can all fit around the grill. Conversation turns to cooking meat, pouring drinks.

“To the old man,” Minsoo says, and you all clink shot glasses. This, at least, is easy. Like slotting into a life you had forgotten living.



* * *



What’s living in the States like?

America is Costco and Starbucks and freeways; America is H-Mart and boba and FOBs and bananas and first gen, second gen, third gen. America means KSA and APSA in college, and it means clicking the box that says “Asian/Pacific-Islander” on the job applications and the census, America means being asked so, where are you from? and nobody meaning New Jersey.

America means not knowing which of your friends are instances.

In 1776, the Constitution granted full rights to white, male, landowning instances—unheard of in Europe at the time—and not much to anyone else. Common knowledge states that instancing exploded globally from the Age of Discovery and onward, though, in truth, instancing records had historically been badly kept. But it’s certain that colonization duplicated people across the globe. Immigration through Ellis and Angel Islands created vast swaths of instanced communities across the coasts. This is the legacy of the west: A mitosis-like duplication of the self across lands already populated.

Instancing is written into America’s blood, into the story it tells itself: Here is where instances immigrate. Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry, give us your copies and let them be fruitful and multiply, let them homestead, let them become titans of industry, let them and their non-instanced children build cities and towns and railroads. Let them build chemical empires. Let them master their own fates.

The party line is: America assumes instances will stay forever.

Here is a free state for those who want to leave, America says, ignoring the fact that the land was already peopled, that the borders were brought to them unwillingly. Ignoring those brought by force in chains. Ignoring the deportations at the border and the raids in sanctuary cities. Ignoring the fact that intention to leave actually just means acceptance of situations beyond your control.

Living in the States means that you’re blank-American. Korean-American. Mexican-American. African-American. Indian-American. Native American. America assumes instances leave their original country permanently and defines them by the self left behind.

And there is, perennially, the citizenship issue. The illegal immigrant issue. The border issue. The H-1B issue. The green card lottery issue. All facets of the same sort of problem. We want you here, but we want you on our terms.



* * *



Halfway through dinner, Minsoo and you take a smoke break outside. He had offered. You don’t smoke much anymore, but the atmosphere inside was getting to you. The way your instance and her fiancé held hands through most of dinner, the way she looked up at him through her eyelashes—you had grown out of that sort of behavior in college, although it could have just been that you didn’t have anyone to do stupid couple things with.

You exhale clouds of smoke. Cold air, warm nicotine. It’s nice. It was strange to watch Minsoo and your instance together. Good strange.

“So, what’s she like? Soyoung, I mean,” you ask Minsoo. You remember him being honest, as much as a kid is ever honest. “She seemed pretty high-strung during dinner.”

Minsoo waves a hand in the air, trailing smoke. “Eh. She’s having a rough time of it.”

“Are she and her fiancé always like this?”

He laughs. “What, are you not like this with—are you seeing anyone?”

“No,” you say. “And I don’t act like—not even that, just, she’s so cagey.”

“You’re not seeing her at her best,” he says. “You know how it is, Harabeoji’s last words to her were about wanting her to reintegrate. That was pretty shitty of the old man.”

You stop, cigarette halfway to your lips. “What?”

Minsoo stops. “She didn’t tell you?”

“No, all she told me was that Harabeoji wanted me to come to the funeral. Jesus Christ, did he really ask her that? Dying wish, ask her to reintegrate?”

You are abruptly reevaluating how much you knew about your-her grandfather. You know Harabeoji was born before the Korean War. You know your family is from the north. You know your grandmother died when you were very young. You know Harabeoji liked to watch baseball and that he kept sweet jelly cup snacks in his cupboard for you, even when your mom told him to stop buying them.