She looks down into the bin, flips my phone over, and stares at the case, as she’s done every day. The case is the cover art for an album called Nevermind by the band Nirvana. Every day her fingers linger on the baby on the cover, and every day I don’t like her touching it. Nirvana’s lead singer was Kurt Cobain. His voice, the damage in it, the way it’s not at all perfect, the way you can feel everything he’s ever felt in it, the way his voice stretches out so thin that you think it’s going to break and then it doesn’t, is the only thing that’s kept me sane since this nightmare began. His misery is so much more abject than mine.
She’s taking a long time, and I can’t miss this appointment. I consider saying something, but I don’t want to make her angry. Probably she hates her job. I don’t want to give her a reason to delay me even further. She glances up at me again but shows no sign that she recognizes me, even though I’ve been here every day for the last week. To her I’m just another anonymous face, another applicant, another someone who wants something from America.
NATASHA IS NOT AT ALL correct about Irene. Irene loves her job. More than loves it—needs it. It’s almost the sole human contact she has. It’s the only thing keeping her total and desperate loneliness at bay.
Every interaction with these applicants saves her life just a little. At first they barely notice her. They dump their items into the bin and watch closely as they go through the machine. Most are suspicious that Irene will pocket loose change or a pen or keys or whatever. In the normal course of things, the applicant would never notice her, but she makes sure they do. It’s her only connection to the world.
So she waylays each bin with a single gloved hand. The delay is long enough that the applicant is forced to look up and meet her eyes. To actually see the person standing in front of them. Most mumble a reluctant good morning, and the words fill her up a little. Others ask how she’s doing and she expands a little more.
Irene never answers. She doesn’t know how. Instead, she looks back down at the bin and scrutinizes each object for clues, for some bit of information to store away and examine later.
More than anything, she wishes she could take her gloves off and touch the keys and the wallets and the loose change. She wishes she could slide her fingertips along the surfaces, memorizing textures and letting the artifacts of other people’s lives seep into her. But she can’t delay the line too long. Eventually she sends the bin and its owner away from her.
Last night was a particularly bad night for Irene. The impossible hungry mouth of her loneliness wanted to swallow her in a single piece. This morning she needs contact to save her life. She drags her eyes away from a retreating bin and up to the next applicant.
It’s the same girl who’s been coming every day this week. She can’t be more than seventeen. Like everyone else, the girl doesn’t look up from the bin. She keeps her eyes focused on it, like she can’t bear to be parted from the hot-pink headphones and her cell phone. Irene lays her gloved hand on the side of the bin to prevent its slide out of her life and onto the conveyor belt.
The girl looks up and Irene inflates. She looks as desperate as Irene feels. Irene almost smiles at her. In her head she does smile at her.
Welcome back. Nice to see you, Irene says, but only in her head.
In reality, she’s already looking down, studying the girl’s phone case. The picture on it is of a fat white baby boy completely submerged in clear blue water. The baby is spread-eagled and looks more like he’s flying than swimming. His mouth and eyes are open. In front of him a dollar bill dangles on a fishhook. The picture is not decent, and every time Irene looks at it she feels herself take an extra breath, as if she were the one underwater.
She wants to find a reason to confiscate the phone, but there is none.
I KNOW THE PRECISE MOMENT when Charlie stopped liking me. It was the summer I turned six and he turned eight. He was riding his shiny new bike (red, ten-speed, awesome) with his shiny new friends (white, ten years old, awesome). Even though there were lots of hints all summer long, I hadn’t really figured out that I’d been demoted to Annoying Younger Brother.
That day he and his friends rode away without me. I chased him for blocks and blocks, calling out, “Charlie,” convinced that he just forgot to invite me. I pedaled so fast that I got tired (six-year-olds on bikes don’t get tired, so that’s saying something).
Why didn’t I just give up? Of course he could hear me calling.
Finally he stopped and hopped off his bike. He shoved it into the dirt, kickstand be damned, and stood there waiting for me to catch up. I could see that he was angry. He kicked dirt onto his bike to make sure everyone was clear on that fact.
“Hyung,” I began, using the title younger brothers use for older brothers. I knew it was a big mistake as soon as I said it. His whole face turned red—cheeks, nose, the tips of his ears—the whole thing. He was practically aglow. His eyes darted sideways to where his new friends were watching us like we were on TV.
“What’d he just call you?” the shorter one asked.
“Is that some kind of secret Korean code?” the taller one chimed in.
Charlie ignored them both and got right in my face. “What are you doing here?” He was so pissed that his voice cracked a little.
I didn’t have an answer, but he really didn’t want one. What he wanted was to hit me. I saw it in the way he clenched and unclenched his fists. I saw him trying to figure out how much trouble he would get in if he did hit me right there in the park in front of boys he barely knew.
“Why don’t you get some friends of your own and stop following me around like a baby?” he said instead.
He should’ve just hit me.
He grabbed his bike out of the dirt and puffed himself up with so much angry air I thought he’d burst, and I’d have to tell Mom that her older and more perfect son exploded.
“My name is Charles,” he said to those boys, daring them to say another word. “Are you coming or what?” He didn’t wait for them, didn’t look back to see if they were coming. They followed him into the park and into summer and into high school, just like many other people would eventually follow him. Somehow I had made my brother into a king.
I’ve never called him hyung again.
DANIEL IS RIGHT ABOUT CHARLES. He’s an asshole through and through. Some people grow out of their lesser natures, but Charles will not. He will settle into it, the skin that was always going to be his.
But before that, before he becomes a politician and marries well, before he changes his name to Charles Bay, before he betrays his good wife and constituents at every turn, before too much money and success and much too much of getting everything that he wants, he will do a good and selfless thing for his brother. It will be the last good and selfless thing that he ever does.
WHEN MIN SOO FELL IN LOVE with Dae Hyun, she did not expect that love to take them from South Korea to America. But Dae Hyun had been poor all his life. He had a cousin in America who’d been doing well for himself in New York City. He promised to help.
For most immigrants, moving to the new country is an act of faith. Even if you’ve heard stories of safety, opportunity, and prosperity, it’s still a leap to remove yourself from your own language, people, and country. Your own history. What if the stories weren’t true? What if you couldn’t adapt? What if you weren’t wanted in the new country?
In the end, only some of the stories were true. Like all immigrants, Min Soo and Dae Hyun adapted as much as they were able. They avoided the people and places that didn’t want them. Dae Hyun’s cousin did help, and they prospered, faith rewarded.
A few years later, when Min Soo learned that she was pregnant, her first thought was of what to name her child. She had this feeling that in America names didn’t mean anything, not like they did in Korea. In Korea, the family name came first and told the entire history of your ancestry. In America, the family name is called the last name. Dae Hyun said it showed that Americans think the individual is more important than the family.