She chooses me. Twenty-one years after she gave me away, she recognizes
something in me and she reaches. What she recognizes, who knows. Is it my
house shoulders, same as her, or is it my heart face, same as my father’s, or is it
the look, this look, always on the coast of tears

 Her arms are like waves, pulling me into her, out to sea. She covers me in kisses
and saltwater and when we sit on the couch, the ocean inside her bursts

 She capsizes into me, gasping, every year snapping and folding in on itself. She
can’t speak she’s choking, her lungs two torn sails, her tongue a beached whale.
She takes breaths of shark, breaths of bird, she exhales schools of fish, sputtering

 I hold my mother, an adult woman drowning, cradled in my arms like an infant.
 Touching my own skin under water is too electric to survive. I freeze.

 As a ghost in this moment I come closest to being the daughter she remembers

* * *

Umma stops crying. She unboxes a birthday cake. It’s my birthday! (It’s not my
birthday). I play along. Umma lights a match. She sings. Everyone – Umma, Kim
(my korean american friend who came to interpret), Mr. Joon (my social worker) –
sings.

Saeng il chuk ha ham ni da
Happy birthday to you
Saeng il chuk ha ham ni da
Happy birthday to you
Sarang ha neun namee shi
Dear Na Mee
Saeng il chuk ha ham ni da
Happy birthday to you

I blow out twenty-one candles. I forget to make a wish.

Umma is crying again

because I grew up so fast

* * *

We go out to eat. She orders twenty-one years of food.

Mani mohgo, my birthmother tells me, eat lots. She nests food in front of me,
beside me, above me beyond me inside me.

In Korea they start a fire between you and call it dinner

Bulgogi, dwaeji bulgogi, kalbi, mulgogi, pajeong, daenjang chigae bean sprout and
fried anchovies and seasoned seaweed and shishito peppers cucumber kimchi
and radish kimchi and kimchi kimchi. There is so much to eat, so much to say to
translate to say.

The food the chopsticks the words her hands, they never sit still

My mother swaddles the ssamgyetang and the rice in a leaf, then another leaf
and another leaf. She holds them up, she places them in my mouth my mouth her
baby’s mouth her mouth.

I eat until she is full

* * *

Now we’re at the market! When did the market get so tall?? I hold my umma’s
hand as she zips us from row to row. There are one hundred million jillion people
at this market today; the sound of footsteps and good deals and not good enough
deals roaring. I am not used to holding a mother’s hand, and I squirm and stiffen
and nonchalantly soften and obviously I am being very not awkward about it.
Umma never lets go. At namdaeemun, you have to hold your valuables close. At
namdaemun – the market, I later learn, my birthmother worked at when she was
pregnant with me – everything is for sale.

Umma brings me to the hanbok maker. The hanbok maker lifts my arms and
lowers them. She bundles me in her measuring tape, wraps it around my chest,
my shoulders; she stretches it against my memories, my legs. She measures how
long of a Korean I am, how wide. Umma shakes her head and tells the hanbok
maker her numbers are wrong. Too big, she argues. The hanbok maker measures
me again, again, again, shows my umma what a little girl I’m not anymore

Umma opens a binder full of photographs. Divine women in divine hanboks, so
korean they break my heart

Yaepooda, yaepooda, yaepooda, my birthmother says, turning the pages, pretty
pretty pretty

Ee gun joahaeyo? she asks
Which do you like?

Which do you like? I ask back, and Kim interprets. I have never done this before,
picked out a hanbok slash been her daughter. Umma orders the one with the
bright blood red skirt and a neon jeogori. A dress like a welcome sign. A happy
dress, a healthy dress, born chosen.
It was the one, perhaps, she has always wanted

* * *

 We order drinks. I mean, they order drinks and I drink them. Gumbae! We say,
 clinking our glasses and spilling over. Our cheeks tight from smiling. Our skin rosy,
slicked in cheer.

 In korea you never let a person’s glass go empty. I love you, you say, in the
 language of beverages, and you pour more, more, more for each other. I fill for
 Umma and she is full, briefly. She smiles and frowns and rubs my face like it’s a
 genie bottle, waiting for me to come out. Myunhae, she murmurs, like the wish
 she would have wished, had I appeared. There’s nothing left in the bottle.

 Myunhae, she says again, to our empty glasses, to the brass nothing of me.
I’m sorry.

Myunhae
Myunhae