When my mother and I stayed in Seoul, Halmoni’s three-bedroom apartment was shared among six people. You couldn’t walk five feet without bumping into someone. Seong Young slept by the kitchen in a small, closet-sized room just big enough to accommodate a tiny square television, his Sony PlayStation, and a small futon mattress that lay beneath a rack of clothing across from the Mariah Carey poster he had taped to his door.

Seong Young was Nami Emo’s son and my only cousin on my mother’s side. His parents divorced shortly after he was born and, while Nami worked, he was largely raised by our grandmother in a house full of women. He was seven years older than me, tall and sturdily built, but moved about with a dejected posture, shy and effeminate in spite of his size. As a teenager he was extremely self-conscious, consumed by the pressures of school and his impending conscription, the two years of military service every Korean man is required to complete. He suffered from bad acne and would strenuously attempt to manage it with a variety of topical cleansers and creams, going so far as to wash his face exclusively with bottled water.

I adored Seong Young and spent the majority of my summers following him everywhere. He was a sweet boy, endlessly patient as I clung to his legs and back, forcing him to carry me through the humid summer heat while sweat poured from his face and soaked through his shirt, gracious when I begged him to chase me up the twenty-three flights of stairs to Halmoni’s apartment.

Nami Emo’s room was on the other side of the kitchen, abutting the small balcony that overlooked the street. She had a large, jade-colored vanity, its surface strewn with a hundred different kinds of nail polish. At the beginning of each visit, she would invite me to choose a color and after my careful deliberation, paint my nails on top of newspaper. When she was done, she’d use a special freezing spray from an aerosol can that helped them dry faster. The liquid would foam over my cuticles, then disappear like dry ice sneezed onto my fingertips.

Nami Emo was also the greatest storybook reader in the world. Like my grandfather before her, she worked as a voice actress, doing voice-overs for documentaries and dubbing anime episodes, which Seong Young and I would watch over and over on VHS. At night, she’d read Korean Sailor Moon books to me and do all the voices. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t translate the chapters into English—her voice was elastic and could swing seamlessly from the cackle of an evil queen to the catchphrase of the resolute heroine, then quiver words of caution from a useless sidekick and resolve with a dashing prince’s gallant coo.

When I was eight or so, Nami Emo started dating Mr. Kim, whom I’d call Emo Boo after they married. Emo Boo wore his hair in a wide, black pompadour with a white streak, like Pepé Le Pew. He was a Chinese medicine doctor and ran his own clinic, drying, blending, and extracting natural ingredients to create herbal remedies. For my mother, Emo Boo’s presence was a newfound weapon in her long-standing campaign to realize my ideal form. Every morning he would come to the apartment and brew a special herbal tea to help me grow and while we waited for it to steep, he’d insert acupuncture needles into my head to help stimulate my brain activity so I’d perform better at school.

The tea was dark green and smelled like black licorice mixed with tiger balm. It tasted like fruit rinds soaked in murky lake water and was the most bitter thing I’d ever consumed. Every day I’d dutifully hold my nose and try to get as much of the hot syrupy liquid down as I could before gagging. Years later, in my twenties, I would come to realize the flavor profile matched the service industry’s favorite bitter Italian spirit—Fernet.

Eunmi Emo’s bedroom was opposite Nami’s. She was the youngest sister and the only one to have attended college. She graduated at the top of her class with a major in English and would assume the role of translator when my mother became fed up with it and wanted to relax into her native tongue. She was only a few years younger than my mother, but perhaps because she’d never married or even dated, she felt more like a playmate than a guardian. I spent most of my days with her and Seong Young, rooting through their CD collections and begging them to chaperone visits to stationery shops filled with whatever new Korean character was in vogue that year—the Pajama Sisters, Blue Bear, or MashiMaro, the perverted rabbit who wore a plunger on his head.

At night my mother and I slept on a futon mattress in the living room, facing away from the glass sliding doors. I hated sleeping alone and relished the opportunity to sleep so close to her without the need for an excuse. At three a.m. we tossed and turned, tortured by jet lag. Eventually, my mother would turn and whisper, “Let’s go see what’s in Halmoni’s refrigerator.” At home, I was scolded if I got caught poking around the pantry past eight, but in Seoul, my mom was like a kid again, leading the campaign. Standing at the counter, we’d open every Tupperware container full of homemade banchan, and snack together in the blue dark of the humid kitchen. Sweet braised black soybeans, crisp yellow sprouts with scallion and sesame oil, and tart, juicy cucumber kimchi were shoveled into our mouths behind spoonfuls of warm, lavender kong bap straight from the open rice cooker. We’d giggle and shush each other as we ate ganjang gejang with our fingers, sucking salty, rich, custardy raw crab from its shell, prodding the meat from its crevices with our tongues, licking our soy sauce–stained fingers. Between chews of a wilted perilla leaf, my mother would say, “This is how I know you’re a true Korean.”

Most evenings my mother would linger in Halmoni’s room. Every so often I’d observe them from the doorway as my mother lay beside her on a granite mattress on the floor, quietly watching Korean game shows as Halmoni chain-smoked cigarettes or peeled Asian pears with a large knife pulled toward her, all in one continuous strip. Halmoni would take bites from the core so none of the fruit would go to waste, while my mom ate from the perfectly cut slivers, just as I did when she cut fruit for me at home. It never occurred to me that she was trying to make up for all the years she’d spent away in America. It was difficult to even register that this woman was my mother’s mother, let alone that their relationship would be a model for the bond between my mother and me for the rest of my life.

I was afraid of my grandmother. She spoke harshly and loudly and knew maybe fifteen words in English, so it always seemed like she was angry. She never smiled in pictures and her laugh was like a cackle that ended in loud hacking and coughing. She was as hunched over as an umbrella handle and always wore plaid pajama pants and shirts with glittering, rough fabrics. But I was chiefly afraid of one particular weapon she proudly brandished—the ddongchim. Ddongchim literally means poop needle. It involves clasping your hands in the shape of a gun, index fingers pressed together to create a needle used to penetrate an unsuspecting anus. As horrifying as it sounds, it’s a common cultural thing, something akin to a Korean wedgie and not some unique form of sexual assault. Nevertheless, it scared the shit out of me. Whenever she was near, I constantly hid behind my mother or Seong Young, or scooted by her furtively with my butt pressed against the wall, anxiously expecting my halmoni to prod her index fingers through my pants, cackling and then hacking at my surprise and terror.