Page 117 of Mother Parker
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I hid my face behind my cup.
“Yeya, you live your whole life wanting to make your omma’s dream come true. You never think about your future and what your own future look like. Always Omma’s dream. You do it now. Are you happy?”
I opened my mouth to say of course I was. Of course I was happy. I was. Or had been until Parker.
“I don’t want to let one man destroy my dream likehedid to hers,” I said.
“Ah, there is.”
“What?” I asked.
“The reason.”
“What? Hoobastank? Halmeoni, since when do you listen to American rock?”
Halmeoni pursed her lips and frowned. She shook her head and took a sip.
“You joke, but that the reason. No because you don’t have time to fall in love. Because you scared it will do to you what it do to Heejin,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said, though I knew in my heart she was right.
Love had destroyed Omma’s life. It’d taken everything from her. Taken her from me. How could I not be scared of it?
“Hwanchan-ah, just because Heejin fell in love with one bad man does not mean all love evil,” she said. “What about Harabeoji and me? You think our love evil?”
I’d never met my harabeoji, but both Omma and Halmeoni would tell me stories about him. The things he did for his family. Hell, the fact that a poor, working man even thought to take out life insurance when he could hardly make ends meet was an indication of how much he cared about Halmeoni and his daughter. What other working-class immigrant had life insurance?
“Of course not, Halmeoni,” I said.
“So why you not give Parker a chance? He nothing like your appa. You have to give love a chance even if it not work out. We not born to work and die. We born to love,” she said.
I nodded.
She was right, of course. She was always right. And I was an idiot.
Parker was nothing like my sperm donor. He wasn’t playing with me. He was a sweet, sweet man. The sweetest. Sweeter than any man I’d ever met or been with. I didn’t mind that he hid it under the tough-boy exterior. What people were like on the outside had nothing to do with the inside. I smiled all day, every day, but there was so much baggage behind those smiles. So much burden.
Yeah, Parker was a good man. And if he said he loved me, why shouldn’t I believe him? Why would I believe he didn’t mean it? If anything, Parker never said something he didn’t mean. Not unless he was upset or annoyed, and he had been neither of those things when he told me how he felt.
“You’re right, Halmeoni. I’m stupid,” I said and put the tea down.
“Hm…” was her answer. “Beside, if he hurt you, he have to deal with me.”
I smiled and gave Halmeoni a hug and a kiss.
She laughed, but I knew she meant it. Everything I was today was because of her and how she’d protected me. How she’d raise hell at school, talk back to the principal, defend her sonja no matter what.
In a way, I thought she did it because she couldn’t do it for Omma. She never told me, but I could tell by how she acted and talked that she blamed herself for not doing more to save my mother.
I guessed we were both haunted by her life, whether we liked it or not.
“I need to go, Halmeoni. Thank you. Love you,” I said and kissed her forehead again.
She groaned and waved me off.
