The children were staring wide-eyed at my wife. She turned her blank gaze on her family, as if she couldn’t fathom the reason for all this sudden fuss.

A strained silence ensued. I surveyed in turn my father-in-law’s swarthy cheeks; my mother-in-law’s face, so full of wrinkles I couldn’t believe it had once been that of a young woman, her eyes filled with worry; In-hye’s anxiously raised eyebrows; her husband’s affected attitude of being no more than a casual bystander; the passive but seemingly displeased expressions of Yeong-ho and his wife. I expected my wife to say something in her own defense, but the sole, silent answer she made to all those glaring faces was to set the pair of chopsticks she had picked up back down on the table.

A small flurry of unease ran through the assembled family. This time, my mother-in-law picked up some sweet and sour pork with her chopsticks and thrust it right up in front of my wife’s mouth, saying, “Here. Come on, hurry up and eat.” Mouth closed, my wife stared at her mother as though entirely ignorant of the rules of etiquette. “Open your mouth right now. You don’t like it? Well, try this instead, then.” She tried the same thing with stir-fried beef, and when my wife kept her mouth shut just as before, set the beef down and picked up some dressed oysters. “Haven’t you liked these since you were little? You used to want to eat them all the time—”

“Yes, I remember that too,” In-hye chimed in, backing up her mother by making it seem as though my wife’s not eating oysters were the ultimate big deal. “I always think of you when I see oysters, Yeong-hye.”

As the chopsticks holding the dressed oysters gradually neared my wife’s averted mouth, she twisted away violently.

“Eat it quickly! My arm hurts…”

My mother-in-law’s arm was actually trembling. Eventually, my wife stood up.

“I won’t eat it.”

For the first time in a long while, her speech was clear and distinct.

“What?” my wife’s father and brother, who were both similarly hot tempered, yelled in concert. Yeong-ho’s wife quickly grabbed her husband’s arm.

“My heart will pack in if this goes on any longer!” my father-in-law shouted at Yeong-hye. “Don’t you understand what your father’s telling you? If he tells you to eat, you eat!”

I expected an answer from my wife along the lines of “I’m sorry, Father, but I just can’t eat it,” but all she said was “I do not eat meat”—clearly enunciated, and seemingly not the least bit apologetic.

My mother-in-law gathered up the chopsticks with an attitude of despair. Her old woman’s face seemed on the brink of crumpling into tears, tears that would explode from her eyes and then course down her wrinkled cheeks in silence. My father-in-law took up a pair of chopsticks. He used them to pick up a piece of sweet and sour pork and stood tall in front of my wife, who turned away.