Page 14 of XOXO

“You’re going to leave me untilJuly?” I can hear my voice rising. “It’s November now.”

“No,” she says calmly. “I wouldn’t fly out until after the new year. Likely end of February. There’s still some work things I need to take care of.”

I’m still trying to process what’s happening. My mother’s leaving mein the middle of my junior year.“What about the end of the year performance. It’s in May.”

“There will be more performances. Jenny, my mother needs me.”

I need you.I almost say it, aloud, but I don’t. If I tell her I need her she’ll only ask me why, and I can’t explain it beyond the simple fact that I’ll miss her.

“I wouldn’t have decided on this if I didn’t believe you would be all right.”

“But, Mom—”

“If something happens to her and I’m not there, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Game. Set. Match. Because I can’t argue with that. I would feel the same; I have felt the same.

“So you’ll be in Korea,” I say, and I sound exhausted even to my own ears, “That’s a sixteen hour time difference.”

“I—wait, how do you know that?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I stand up. I have some more choice words I could say to my mother, but as I study her, the anger inside me deflates. She looks as tired as I feel, dark circles beneath her eyes, and she’s not even eating anymore, which is the greatest indicator that she’s not her usual self.

I offer an olive branch. “Well, at least you’ll be here through the holidays. And then, wow, Seoul, huh? You haven’t been there for, what, six years?” And even then, only the one time since she first came to the US on a student visa. She stayed after marrying my dad.

“Seven,” Mom sighs. She must feel a little better because she reaches for a slice of mung bean pancake. “I’ve been putting it off for long enough. It’s about time I go back.”

I’m almost late for my nine o’clock cello lesson the next morning, having not gone to bed until well after two. When I get there, I fumble over so many notes that Eunbi, my teacher, stops me in the middle of my solo piece for school.

“I can tell something’s bothering you,” she says. “Is it the results from the competition?”

It’s wild to think that less than twenty-four hours ago, the answer would have been yes. I’m still upset about what the judges said, but also the judges aren’t my mother, and they’re not abandoning me for months on end.

“Here, let me get you some tea, then we’ll talk.” I leave the piano bench to sit on one of the wingback chairs in her living room. We don’t do this often, but sometimes we’ll skip a lesson to catch up on things outside cello. The first time, she sat me down, pointed to my head, my heart, and my hands, and said, “They’re all connected.” I don’t think I quite understood then—I was eleven—but I think I do now. No practice and talent can overcome a troubled mind and heart.

She returns and hands me a mug of barley tea, taking the seat opposite. “I’m all ears.”

I tell her everything, starting with my mom’s call with the doctor and her decision to leave me behind.

Eunbi listens carefully, as she does when I play for her, with her whole attention. And maybe it’s because of that, but I sort of dump all my feelings onto her.

“She just told me what her plans are. She didn’t even ask me what I thought about it. She’s literally abandoning me in the middle of my junior year.”

Eunbi takes a sip of her tea. “Did you ask if you could go with her?”

I blink, taken aback. “I didn’t think it was an option. I have school... and she’s going to be there for five months.”

“There are performing arts schools in Seoul,” she says, not unreasonably, and I’m reminded that she went to one herself before graduating from Ewha Womans University with a degree in classical cello. “It’s only a matter of forwarding your materials to one that takes international students.”

I’m still trying to process the possibility of this. It hadn’t even occurred to me, that I mightgo withmy mother, that I might finish my junior yearin another country.

I’ve never been outside California, let alone traveled to South Korea. I don’t even know anyone who lives there, besides my grandmother.

Well, that’s not true.

I know one other person.

“A friend of mine is the director of a music school in Seoul,” Eunbi says. “If you send over your audition materials, I can email her a recommendation. The academic year in Korea starts in March, so you wouldn’t be arriving in the middle of their school year.”

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