Page 13 of XOXO

“I thought you were working on a case tonight,” I say. Usually on the weekends she takes extra cases and sleeps overnightat the office. As an immigration lawyer in LA, she’s busy a lot.

“Change of plans.” She starts across the kitchen, then stops, doing a double take. I realize I’m still in the clothes I wore to school this morning. “Did you just get home?”

For a moment I blank, unsure whether or not to tell her how I spent my night.

“Bomi had a project due,” I say finally, “so I stayed late to help out Uncle Jay. He gave me a ride home.” The last part is true, if not the first.

I feel a bit guilty. I hardly ever lie to my mother; there’s no reason to. We literally have the same goal: for me to go to music school in New York City. And for the past five years, it’s just been us, and Uncle Jay.

But if I tell her, I know she’ll worry that I’m not focused enough or that I’ll be distracted; we haven’t had the “dating” talk, but it’s heavily implied that I should wait until college.

She heads over to the rice cooker and pops it open, sighing when she finds it empty.

“You didn’t eat at the office?” I ask.

“No time.”

I point to the counter where I left the H Mart grocery bag. “Mrs. Kim gave us some banchan, if you want to eat that. There’s jangjorim.” It’s her favorite.

Mom clicks her tongue. “Mrs. Kim should mind her own business. She can be so nosy.”

“Well, I think it’s nice of her.”

“Don’t tell me she didn’t slide in a snide comment about my parenting.”

I try to think back to what she said, but honestly can’t remember. “There’s also japchae.”

“Fine. Can you make rice? I’m going to take a shower. And, actually, since you’re awake, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

When someone announces they want to talk to me, I always get nervous. Like, just say it. I don’t like the anticipation of thinking it could be something bad. But Mom knows not to spring anything serious on me, not after Dad.

“Sure,” I say, and she heads off in the direction of her bedroom. Our rooms are at opposite ends of the apartment, which is to say, they’re almost right next to each other.

I pour two cups of rice into a bowl and wash out the grains in water, then dump the whole thing into the cooker.

Afterward, I grab a melon bar from the fridge and sit at the table, googling how long it takes to fly from LAX to Seoul.

Fourteen hours.

Then I google what the time difference is between Korea and California.

Korea is sixteen hours ahead.

Mom walks into the kitchen in a bathrobe twenty minutes later, her hair wrapped neatly in a towel.

When the rice cooker pings, she scoops up rice into a bowl and sits across from me at the table.

She doesn’t comment on the low levels of banchan in the containers, so I refrain from enlightening her.

“I got a call from Seoul this morning,” she begins, “about... my mother.”

I sit up in my seat. “She’s okay, isn’t she?” Just tonight I mentioned my grandmother in Korea to Jaewoo. I might have never met her, but she’s still family and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.

“She’s fine,” Mom assures me. “As fine as someone with colon cancer can be. It was her doctor who called. He thinks she might be healthy enough to get surgery in a few months, but she’s refusing. It won’t be for a while yet, and she still needs careful monitoring, but I thought I could go to Seoul for a few months, spend time with her and convince her to get the surgery.”

A hundred thoughts pass through my mind. My grandmother has cancer, a different kind than my father, but she’s sick. And my mom is going to Seoul to take care of her. Without me.

“I already called Jay,” Mom continues, “and he said you could stay with him for the rest of the school year. I should be back by July.”

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