I speak with my own mouth, so I will address others on my own terms. Other girls called Jimin Unni, but I called her Sunbe. I didn’t have a particular reason for it. I just liked it that way. My stepmother tried to coax me into calling her Mom. She said in return, she’d give me back the special pillow that smelled like my mother. My ragged but precious pillow, which she kept on top of the armoire, just out of my reach. I didn’t want to call her Mom. I addressed her by “Excuse me” or “Umm,” and she’d slap me across the face. I can’t count how many times that happened. Without the pillow I had a hard time falling asleep, and even if I fell asleep, I got sleep paralysis. When my family slept over at my older uncle’s place for the Jesa ritual, I had to bring the pillow with me in a large paper bag. With incredible cruelty my stepmother made me watch her burn the pillow. What an awful human being. But I’m not trying to paint her as the fairy-tale stepmother-witch here. Not all biological mothers make warm bowls of white rice and wait for their children to come home like textbooks will have us believe, either.

* * *

“Yeoul! Yeoul! Where is she hiding again?”

Seething with anger, I’m trying to eat a bowl of rice soaked in cold water in my room, but the café owner bothers me before I can even eat the second spoonful.

“Yeoul, check on the cake we ordered at the bakery. See if they are making it tri-layered like I asked. I told them it should be topped with a white chocolate angel. I thought the rose decoration they had on the sample cake was tacky. Check that they’ve done that, and also double-check with them on the delivery time. Remind them I want the cake on Sunday, and that the traffic to Haewoondae gets really bad on the weekend.”