Leah ducked into the apartment and sat on the edge of an ottoman. Right away, she pulled out the Bible from her purse. Without removing her coat or gloves, she bent her head in prayer. Her lips moved, but she made no sound. She thanked God for her safe arrival and prayed for knowledge about her daughter.
Casey’s mother was enacting the ritual that the others had done at her father’s house. The Korean Christians would dash into the living room, sit, shut their eyes, and mumble prayers of thanksgiving. Ella was used to this practice of devotion; it was as natural to her as taking off her shoes upon entering the house or floating pine seeds into her father’s ginseng tea after adding his two teaspoons of honey. From her blue-and-white sofa, she would wait for Deaconess Cho to tell her why she had come.
Leah opened her eyes. The living room was clean and light: The fabric-upholstered furniture looked fresh, and a collection of jade plants of varying sizes in ceramic pots rested on the wide windowsill. A big kitchen was visible through the pass-through window. On the white marble kitchen counter, there were brand-new appliances Leah had seen advertised in the Macy’s Cellar circulars and different-shaped cutting boards stacked neatly against the tea green tile backsplash, a hickory block holding knives with black matching handles, and a row of cookbooks on a wall shelf. Leah, who’d never cared much for accumulating things, felt a prick of envy, but not for herself. She could never give the same things to her own daughters, who deserved these items no less than Ella.
Leah reminded herself that this child had no mother. “I didn’t want to bother you, but is she here?”
“No.”
Leah covered her face with her hands.
“I’m sorry.” Ella bit her lip.
“Then can you tell me where my daughter is? I haven’t seen her in six months.”
Ella shook her head no again. Casey wouldn’t have wanted Ella to tell her. Even Casey’s sister wasn’t allowed to tell. She glanced down at her own stocking feet.
Casey’s father had hit her and thrown her out. She had not gone into the details. It had never occurred to Ella that there might be a plausible reason, or that her parents could be sorry and want her back, and since Ella had grown up without a mother of her own, she had somehow forgotten about Deaconess Cho. Casey never talked about her. Ella had not considered Leah’s suffering. It was then that Ella realized she had no mother who’d search for her in this way. She was surprised by how bitterly she felt this lack—for a contingency that would never occur.
The bright, sun-filled apartment grew quiet and strained. The two women sat in mutual silence. The girl’s refusal to tell her where her daughter was staying made Leah feel spurned by God Himself. Somewhere nearby, her daughter was hiding from her. She was well, as far as she knew, but somehow that made it worse. Her own child did not want her. When Casey was born, Leah remembered looking down at the wet, red face and thinking, I would die for you, and the fierce attachment that followed in being a mother had frightened her. Her love for her husband would never equal what she felt for her children. But how could this impossibly lucky girl Ella know what it was like to love that way? Ella didn’t have a mother, and she had no children. Her apparent sympathy and kindness did not equal true experience, did it? Leah’s sobs were low and blocked—she was ashamed to cry like this when a mother should be collected and determined in the face of life’s crises. But life, for Leah, was overwhelming and terrifying—in every corner lurked greater dangers. It wasn’t possible to plan or be safe: Life would not let you alone.
The mums and the red berries remained on the coffee table, with no one getting up to put them in water. Ella glided the box of tissues toward Casey’s mother.
“Why?” Leah sniffled. “Why doesn’t she call me?”
Ella couldn’t answer her.
“What won’t you girls tell me? Is there more I need to know? I’m her mother. I have the right to know.” Leah was crying and shouting. The humiliation was unbearable. “Do you know what that means? I’m her mother.”
How was she supposed to know? Ella didn’t even have a mother. As a girl, she used to study Casey and her mother on Sundays during coffee hour. Ted had taught her that everyone fell under the categories of the Myers-Briggs personality test: Casey was an obvious Extravert, and Leah was an Introvert. Casey’s younger sister, Tina, resembled her mother in her prettiness; their faces were arranged in a similar pattern. But Casey and her mother cried the same way—with a kind of elegiac heartbreak.