My mother would have killed me if she saw the things I was getting rid of. School essays and old insurance cards, VHS tapes of my cameo on a children’s show in Korea and the cartoons my aunt dubbed. I sold the Beanie Babies we had been duped into buying, the Princess Diana bear still in its plastic case and tag protector. Samantha, the American Girl doll with long brown hair I had begged for, Craigslisted along with the clothes she came with and the extra ones my mother commissioned at a bargain. It was something like being possessed, the rampant disposal akin to a house fire. The taming of this mountain of chattel into a reasonable collection of possessions took on the proportions of penal labor, its completion looming like a deserved exit, a sentence’s end.

All these objects seemed orphaned by her loss, or just devolved into objects, matter, impedimenta. What once had a purpose transformed into a blockade. The bowls once reserved for their own specific meals were now just dishes to be sorted, obstacles in my path to leave. The candleholder I used to pretend was a magical urn as a child, a key plot point in my imaginary narratives, now just another thing to throw away.

I filled a roll of contractor bags with her clothing, staging it all upstairs in piles, so my father wouldn’t have to confront the weeklong process. One for donations, one for things I might keep, one for things I knew I wanted. With her clothing spread out on the floor, it looked as if multiple versions of her had deflated and disappeared.

I tried on all her coats, beautiful leather jackets, all heartbreakingly an inch too big in the shoulders. I kept the shoes that suited me, though I promptly disposed of her platform sneakers. I lined her handbags up on the table. Soft orange leather, shiny red snakeskin, small precious clutches that hardly had room for a cell phone. A perfect circle of soft black fur with a thin silver clasp and a black satin interior. All of them looked pristine, like they’d never been used. There was one high-quality fake Chanel purse with the classic black quilting and one real one, still in the box.

I invited Nicole and Corey to look over the rest. I brought them into the room and encouraged them to try on a few of her things and take whatever they wanted. It was awkward at first, but after much insisting they finally gave in. Afterward I invited a few of my mother’s friends to do the same, then divided the remainder into carloads and made trips to donation centers in town.

I could feel my heart hardening—crusting over, growing a husk, a callus. I deleted the photographs from the hospital of my mother and me in her bed wearing matching pajamas. I deleted the photo she sent me the day she got her hair cut like Mia Farrow, shyly posing as if the hardest part was over. As I organized the cupboards by the kitchen phone, consolidating loose batteries, tossing old photographs of blurry landscapes, setting aside old undeveloped rolls of film, I came across the green spiral notebook where I had logged all her medications and calorie counts. Those desperate sums, that hopeful inventory, recording every coaxed sip and peck in some sad effort to keep pushing through. I ripped the pages and pulled the metal spiral apart, screaming as I shredded my stupid, useless calculations into innumerable pieces.

* * *

—

PERHAPS I WAS HAUNTED by the destruction of so many entries of jatjuk but later I found myself with an inexplicable craving for the porridge. The meal Kye most often prepared for my mother, one of the few things she’d been able to stomach.

I googled to see if Maangchi, whose recipe I’d followed for soybean stew, had one for pine nut porridge. I was doubtful, since it was a far less popular dish than doenjang jjigae, but sure enough, there it was.

The description read: “I can say that pine nut porridge is the queen of all the porridges!…It looks soupy, but I recommend spooning it instead of drinking it, because I want you to enjoy the aftertaste. 1 spoon after, pause! And close your eyes just as I did in the video, to savor the taste. oh yummy oh yummy, then start another spoon! lol.”

Her writing reminded me of my mother’s texts, down to the way she would micromanage every eating experience.

I propped my laptop up on the kitchen counter and started the video. Maangchi was wearing a brown three-quarter-sleeve shirt with a lace decal on the collar. Her black hair was neat and straight, falling below her shoulders. She stood before her cutting board next to a blender. The video was more recent than the last one and the production quality had improved. Her kitchen was different, more modern and brightly lit.

“Hi, everybody!” she chirped. “Today we are going to learn how to make jatjuk!”

The recipe was simple—pine nuts, rice, salt, and water, all ingredients we already had on hand. Per Maangchi’s instructions, I soaked a third of a cup of rice and set it aside for two hours. I measured out two tablespoons of pine nuts and began removing the tips, then tossed the soft, picked kernels into the blender. When the rice was finished soaking, I rinsed it under the faucet and added it to the pine nuts with two cups of water. I closed the lid and ran the blender on high, then emptied the liquid into a small pot on the stove.

“You don’t need many ingredients, but as you can see it takes time. That’s why jatjuk is very precious. Like, for example, one of your family members is sick, nothing much you can do. When we visit the hospital we usually make this jatjuk because patients can’t eat like normal food. Pine nuts has protein and good fat for body so this is perfect food for patients who are recovering from their illness,” Maangchi explained.

The mixture was a beautiful milky-white color. On medium heat I stirred it with a wooden spoon. At first, impatient for it to thicken, I was afraid I’d used too much water. Then, as its consistency turned from skim milk to peanut butter, I was afraid I hadn’t added enough. I lowered the heat and continued to stir, hoping it would thin as Maangchi’s had. When the pot began to sizzle, I took it off the heat and added salt, then poured it into a small bowl.

I cut chonggak kimchi into small disks and ladled some of the brine over the radish pieces. The soup was creamy and nutty, and felt soft and soothing as I swallowed. I ate a few more spoonfuls before crunching into some kimchi to break up the rich flavor with something spicy and tart. That wasn’t so hard, I thought to myself, happy to have conquered the dish Kye had mystified.

This was all I wanted, I realized, after so many days of decadent filets and pricey crustaceans, potatoes slathered in the many glorious permutations that ratios of butter, cheese, and cream can take. This plain porridge was the first dish to make me feel full. Maangchi supplied the secrets to its composition step by step, like a digital guardian I could always turn to, delivering the knowledge that had been withheld from me, that was my birthright. I closed my eyes and spooned the last of the soup into my mouth, picturing the soft mixture coating my mother’s blistered tongue, the warm liquid traveling slowly into my stomach as I tried to savor the aftertaste.

17

Little Axe

“We’re on our last two slices of the Vegan Spiral,” one of the waitresses announced, strutting past the salad prep station that served as a sort of DMZ between front and back of house. She paused to sniff the air and made a face. “Is something burning?”

“Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. Here!” I snarled, half of my head still in the pizza oven as I scraped at a stubborn pile of burning cheese. Balanced on a step stool, squinting through the gray smoke that billowed from the ripped center of a pie I’d spent the last ten painstaking minutes preparing, I struggled to keep a cool head and work my way out of the weeds. It was my first shift alone in a busy kitchen and I suddenly understood why all the chefs I’d ever worked with hated front of house. It took every part of me not to fling a pizza cutter across the kitchen like a ninja star.

After the holidays, I’d applied for a job as a cook at a hipster pizza shop, lured in by the grit of working the line and not having to deal with customer service. I figured working at a pizza restaurant would be soothing, that I’d pass the hours leisurely listening to music, massaging soft dough with my fingers—psychically somewhere between the zen of a Ninja Turtle and Julia Roberts in a Slice of Heaven tee. I figured, like most people, working at a pizza shop was stoner work, a good way to return home with money in my pocket in exchange for a little scuff of flour on my cheek.