We were already in Korea, the familiar lilts and rhythms of its language leaping from neighboring seats, the stewardesses marching with perfect posture in their pressed powder-blue jackets, matching neckerchiefs, khaki skirts, and black high heels. Mom and I would share bibimbap with gochujang that came from miniature travel-toothpaste-sized tubes and we’d hear calls from those still hungry for Shin Cup.

As Peter and I took our seats the first signs of the illusion flashed again, and over the turbine hum the familiar sounds of the Korean language washed over me. Unlike the second languages I attempted to learn in high school, there are Korean words I inherently understand without ever having learned their definition. There is no momentary translation that mediates the transition from one language to another. Parts of Korean just exist somewhere as a part of my psyche—words imbued with their pure meaning, not their English substitutes.

In my formative first year, I must have heard far more Korean than English. While my father was away at work, a house full of women would sing lullabies, putting me to sleep with “jajang jajang” and celebratory coos in Hangul phrases like “Michelle-ah” and “aigo chakhae.” The television ran in the background—Korean news, cartoons, and dramas filling the rooms with more language. Over it all, my grandmother’s thunderous voice bellowed, punctuating every sustained vowel and singsong rhythm with the distinctly Korean growl that emerged from deep within the throat to exaggerate, like the sound of a hissing cat or someone hawking a loogie.

My first word was Korean: Umma. Even as an infant, I felt the importance of my mother. She was the one I saw most, and on the dark edge of emerging consciousness I could already tell that she was mine. In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.

The journey that once filled me with such excitement now filled me with fear as I realized that this would be the first time Nami and I would speak without Eunmi or my mother or Seong Young on hand to translate. We’d have to figure out how to communicate without an intermediary.

How could I expect to sustain a relationship with Nami on the vocabulary of a three-year-old? How could I ever sufficiently express the internal conflict I felt? Without my mother, did I have any real claim to Korea or her family? And what was the Korean word for “little axe”?

When I was a kid, my aunts used to tease me, asking if I was a rabbit or a fox.

I would say, “I’m a rabbit! Tokki!”

And then they would say, “Ah nee, Michelle yeou!” No, Michelle is a fox!

No, no, I would insist, I am a rabbit!

And we would go back and forth, until finally they relented. I was smart and good, like a rabbit, not mischievous and conniving.

Did Nami still think of me as the spoiled, sulking little girl her sister brought around every other summer? The one that fussed over the smoke in a fancy barbecue restaurant, complaining it stung her eyes and throat. The one who forced her son to chase her up the apartment stairs while he sweated through his clothes, worrying she’d get lost on her own. After all, it was Nami who coined the term “Famous Bad Girl.”

* * *

—

“SO TIRED! MUST!” Nami shouted little bits in English. “Good good! Relax!” “You hungry? How about?”

She wore a long, loose housedress. Her hair was cut in a neat bob and dyed dark brown with a hint of auburn. Leon, Eunmi’s orphaned toy poodle, ran yipping around our ankles as we exited the elevator and went inside. Nami guided us to the guest room and showed us where to store our luggage. She took Peter out to one of the balconies where she’d placed an ashtray with a wet tissue even though she’d quit smoking more than twenty years ago.

“Smoking here,” she said. “No problem!”

She placed a welcoming palm on Peter’s back and steered him over to the robotic massage chair in the living room. It looked like a transformer. It was large and high-tech, made of glossy beige plastic with a color-changing LED strip along its side. The seat was smooth brown leather.

“Relax!” she said, pushing the buttons of the remote control. The chair began to recline and the footrest lifted his legs. Sounds like soft little sneezes escaped as it compressed and released air, squeezing his arms and legs while the mechanism beneath the leather pushed and prodded his back and neck.

“Very nice!” Peter exclaimed politely.

Emo Boo returned home from the oriental medicine hospital in a gray suit. He shimmied over quickly to shake Peter’s hand.

“Nice to meet you—Peter!” he said. He enunciated firmly, his speech jolting forward into pregnant pauses, like someone toggling rapidly between the accelerator and the brake, as he took time to search for words and prepare pronunciations. “Do you have pain? Where is—the pain? I am—doctor.”

He zipped out of sight and Nami spread blankets for us on the floor. Peter and I lifted our shirts and lay down on our stomachs. Having changed into a matching set of blue pajamas with little cartoon foxes, Emo Boo returned and placed suction cups on our backs, squeezing the trigger of what looked like a small plastic gun to remove the air. Deftly and nimbly, he inserted acupuncture needles along our necks and shoulders. After twenty minutes, Nami assisted like a nurse, collecting the cups and needles as he removed them.

Drowsy and jet-lagged, I remained prostrate on the living room floor, drifting in and out of sleep. My eyelids were heavy and I felt my aunt cover me with a light blanket. The anxiety I had carried melted away in her maternal presence. It felt nice to be cared for.

* * *

—

WHEN I WOKE in the morning, Nami was up already preparing breakfast.

“Jal jass-eo?” I said, asking if she slept well. She had her back to me, bent over the stove. She turned, wide-eyed, holding a pair of grease-tipped chopsticks in one hand, and put her free palm over her heart.

“Kkamjjag nollasseo! You sound just like your mom,” she said.

Nami prepared a Western breakfast for Peter and a Korean breakfast for me. For Peter, fried eggs and buttered toast with the crust cut off and a salad of halved cherry tomatoes, red cabbage, and iceberg lettuce. For me, she got out Tupperware containers and refried some jeon. I watched over her shoulder as the grease bubbled under the egg-battered pancakes. Oysters, small fish fillets, sausage patties, all battered in flour and egg, fried and dipped in soy sauce. She served them alongside a steaming pot of kimchi jjigae. She opened a plastic single of seaweed and set it near my bowl of rice just like my mother used to.

My birthday arrived four days into our stay. For the occasion, Nami made miyeokguk, a hearty seaweed soup full of nutrients that pregnant women are encouraged to eat postpartum. Traditionally, you eat it on your birthday in celebration of your mother. It felt sacred now, imbued with new meaning. I drank the broth gratefully, chewing on bits of soft, slick seaweed, the taste conjuring the image of some ancient sea deity washed ashore, feasting naked among the sea foam. It soothed me, as if I were back in the womb, free floating.

* * *

—

I WAS HUNGRY to talk to Nami but words failed me. We communicated as best we could, our conversation interrupted by long pauses as we fumbled through our phones for translations.

“Really, thank you so much, Aunt,” I said in Korean one night over beers and cake at her kitchen table. Then I typed into Google Translate: “I don’t want to be a burden.” I passed her my phone to read it and she shook her head.