She remembered one New Year’s Day back in high school while she and Lawrence were making the rounds to wish all the aunties and uncles New Year’s greetings, running inside the gas station in her hanbok to put ten dollars on pump number three and praying no one she knew was inside or would drive by. Umma loved New Year’s mornings, sitting cross-legged on a cushion in the living room in her own hanbok, the old style with the wraparound skirt, Apa beside her in his billowy pants and jacket. The year Phoebe and Malcolm were married, they had kneeled across from Umma and Apa together, the humility of the moment containing within it the echo of their muffled laughter in the guest room, as they struggled with the fiddly buttons and ties on Malcolm’s vest and the bulky undergarments that always gave Phoebe static cling. Ted had never bowed to the elders with Phoebe. She’d never asked him to.

Phoebe had used some of her own hanboks for Warrior Bride and paid a couple of students at OAC to make the rest of the costumes, but when she told her mother what she had in mind for tonight, a modern riff on the traditional hanbok, Umma had insisted on taking her to the best dressmaker in Santa Clara’s Koreatown. Mrs. Park had had the shop three doors down from the Lees’ grocery, on the other side of the beauty supply store in Festival Plaza, for twenty-five years. Phoebe had a rough sketch of the dress she wanted, and she’d brushed up on her patchy Korean the night before—she knew how to say skirt and pink, but what were the words for collar or for the pockets she wanted to add? Umma was proud to show her daughter off to Mrs. Park. She soaked in the compliments about Phoebe’s figure—so trim! She bragged about the film—a real movie! about Korea! At the final fitting, Umma bowed to Mrs. Park in gratitude and respect, and Phoebe bowed, too, finally understanding the pride and pleasure she’d deprived her mother of when she’d married Malcolm in the backyard.