Mrs. Kim, You Need Some Rest
Mrs Kim's walking stick isn't even touching the ground as she wanders at a pace that would seem leisurely to any onlooker. The sound of her heels meeting the pavement is like the steady beat of a metronome, echoing down the street and, despite her short stature, her shadow is long against the light that the lamp posts offer up.
Curfew was two hours ago but she can't find it in herself to quicken her pace, grinning to herself when the pauses between her steps actually become longer. She takes a deep breath, the cool air making her feel lighter, and she strokes her scarf down, making sure that it falls nicely over her shoulders.
They must be worried about her, or perhaps they're just worried about their inability to cross her name off of the list. The care home has five stars on Google, and the comments said that “the workers really care about their clients” and “it's a good place to be for people of that age”, but do yellow stars on a computer screen really mean anything at all? Mrs Kim continues walking, considering looking to see where any night buses might take her. Now that she thinks about it, she hasn't been anywhere outside of Chicago in over twenty years, and when she was younger, she resented the idea of staying in the same place for so long. Perhaps it might be worth paying her daughter a visit.
Kim Yong-Sun, or as she called herself, Sunny, got home at 9:00pm. She laid her papers out on the kitchen table and opened her laptop to check her emails.
'Paul's plumbing service-', junk.
'Meeting tomorrow (Friday) at 1:00pm in conference room E', read.
'$41.92 taken out of your account today at-', Sunny clicked on the email and scanned through it for a few seconds.
“Mum!”
“Oi, didn't I teach you never to yell through the house like that?” Mrs Kim shouted back.
Sunny rested her laptop on her arm and walked through to the living room where her mother was.
“Mum, did you use my card again today?”
“Sit down, Yong-Sun, you look like you're interrogating me. You're wound so tight all the time, you should make some tea so that we can-”
“More than forty dollars, mum! On what?”
Mrs Kim tutted and sighed, looking back to the magazine that she was occupied with before. “A scarf. A nice one, too. Not like the things you wear these days. Honestly, did I not teach you how to dress? And who do you think you are, interrupting me like that? I brought you to the world, to this country, you should be kissing the ground I walk on.” She tapped on a page in her magazine and folded the corner.
“A scarf? Who spends that much money on a scarf?”
“I told you, it was a nice scarf. And anyway, I would have paid for it, I could have paid for it, but I didn't have any money on me at the time, so I did the most logical thing and used what I had.”
“When did you even have time to buy it today? Weren't you at work?”
Mrs Kim turned to the next page. “No.”
“I'm running out of money, mum”, Sunny sighed and closed her laptop, “and I'm not getting paid enough to keep up. Can you pay me back once you get your pay-check?”
“Asking your mother to pay you! Haven't I done enough for you already? I've already paid you in care and devotion through all of your thirty years! I need to rest, Yong-Sun, can't we discuss this another time?”
At the dinner table that evening, Sunny's son told them about the upcoming science fair at his school. Mrs Kim reacted animatedly when he spoke of the solar system, asking questions about how they are going to model it, and 'really? You can paper-mache that? With a balloon? Of all things, I never would have thought of that', when he chose to educate them on how he planned to recreate the sun.
“But I need glue, and some string, and something to hang the planets from. Mum, can we buy something? What could we use? Maybe a tennis racket and I'll hold it up and-”
“Honey, why don't we just use a coat hanger?”
“No”, Mrs Kim interjected. “He needs the best of the best! It is for the solar system, after all. We can't simply use coat hangers. Are you going to include stars in it?” Mrs Kim faced the boy. “We could get some fairy lights for those.”
The plate made a harsh sound when Sunny's fork landed on it. Her son's moment of excitement upon hearing about the lights had been put on pause, and the white noise from the television in the other room filled the space.
“Mum, have you ever considered staying in a nursing home?”
The white noise seemed louder and the young boy focused on his peas.
“You're crazy, Yong-Sun. Me? In a nursing home? That's like putting a lion in a hamster's cage. Crazy. I knew all of this work would drive you out of your mind eventually.”
“There are some good ones around here. There's one on the other side of town. It got five stars on Google. All the comments were saying nice things, mum. It'd be nice. I mean, for you there. You'd have fun. You seem like you need some rest, anyway.”
No, it's too late to visit her now.
Mrs Kim spins her walking stick around her arm. She wasn't always this age. When she was twenty years old, just a child, she aspired to be a fashion designer. She was good at it, too, so good that her clothes were recognised by an American designer. The move to Chicago was quite a sudden one, so much so that she felt like she had whiplash. With bags in her hands and a bump under her shirt, she had arrived at the small apartment and immediately set to work. When she got on the train every morning she looked out the window and imagined her clothes on billboards. When she spoke with other designers about ideas and the fact that it was a 'dream come true', she wrote down the English words that she wasn't familiar with on her forearm, remembering to scan the dictionary that evening. And when her first runway project stayed under the noses of the people, the press, and other designers in the business, never rising to their line of sight, she invested in a small a property that would come to be called “Kim's Café”.
'Wednesday specials: soup of the day, grilled cheese sandwiches, BLT, green tea.'
Henry was nineteen when he asked Mrs Kim if she was hiring. Four years since then, his role was still to stay in the kitchen while Mrs Kim stood behind the counter, smiling at the customers as they caught her eye. They would never see him, but Mrs Kim’s eyes were young, they'd always say, and it was unlike her to reject a compliment. 'This is our system', she would tell them, 'he cooks the grub, I get the smiles. It's just about who we are as people, I suppose.'
“Henry, do you think 'grilled cheese sandwiches' sounds a bit – I don't know – doesn't it lack finesse?”
“Mrs Kim, has this café ever had finesse?”
“How about 'le fromage de' – oh, how do you say sandwich in French again?”
He didn't seem to pause for thought, responding quite quickly as he worked, adding another slice of bacon into the pan that occupied his concentration. “I don't know Mrs Kim.”
“Let's just say 'le fromage de sand-grille'. I've never seen a French person around here anyway.”
Mrs Kim had successfully sold twelve sand-grilles by the time Henry stood next to her by the counter, and she was heavily preoccupied, green notes in hand.
“Mrs Kim-”
“Hang on a minute, Henry. I'm busy. Twenty-five, thirty-”
“Mrs Kim, how old are you now?”
She looked up from the notes with a look that couldn't quite be identified, but it would never be classed as cheerful.
“Brat, who do you think you are? Asking me about my age. How old are you? Twelve? Thirteen? Have you even been born yet?” She hit the back of his head like she was playing badminton and turned all of her attention back to the notes. “Get back to work”, she said, sounding so nonchalant, seemingly feeling more content as Henry winced and rubbed the back of his head. “thirty-nine, forty, forty-one.”
“Mrs Kim, you need some rest. Have you ever considered retiring?”
She stops walking when she reaches the gate. Putting Mrs Kim in a nursing home is like putting a lion in a hamster's cage. The lion will ache, if it even fits in in the first place. She taps her walking stick on the ground a couple of times fewer than she taps her foot. She wasn't always old, and if you ask her now she still won't call herself so. She lets out a shaky breath that turns into mist in front of her. She'd never wanted to be the old bag who sits in the corner of the nursing home, talking about how the weather was in 1972. She'd never wanted to be the elderly woman who has a walking stick and actually uses it, incapable of taking three steps without toppling onto her side. She had never wanted to be the person who moves to a town or city once and never leaves again.
Mrs Kim lifts her walking stick off the ground and the sound of her heels on the pavement echoes through the air, like the steady beat of a metronome.
Curfew was two hours ago but she can't find it in herself to quicken her pace, grinning to herself when the pauses between her steps actually become longer. She takes a deep breath, the cool air making her feel lighter, and she strokes her scarf down, making sure that it falls nicely over her shoulders.
They must be worried about her, or perhaps they're just worried about their inability to cross her name off of the list. The care home has five stars on Google, and the comments said that “the workers really care about their clients” and “it's a good place to be for people of that age”, but do yellow stars on a computer screen really mean anything at all? Mrs Kim continues walking, considering looking to see where any night buses might take her. Now that she thinks about it, she hasn't been anywhere outside of Chicago in over twenty years, and when she was younger, she resented the idea of staying in the same place for so long. Perhaps it might be worth paying her daughter a visit.
Kim Yong-Sun, or as she called herself, Sunny, got home at 9:00pm. She laid her papers out on the kitchen table and opened her laptop to check her emails.
'Paul's plumbing service-', junk.
'Meeting tomorrow (Friday) at 1:00pm in conference room E', read.
'$41.92 taken out of your account today at-', Sunny clicked on the email and scanned through it for a few seconds.
“Mum!”
“Oi, didn't I teach you never to yell through the house like that?” Mrs Kim shouted back.
Sunny rested her laptop on her arm and walked through to the living room where her mother was.
“Mum, did you use my card again today?”
“Sit down, Yong-Sun, you look like you're interrogating me. You're wound so tight all the time, you should make some tea so that we can-”
“More than forty dollars, mum! On what?”
Mrs Kim tutted and sighed, looking back to the magazine that she was occupied with before. “A scarf. A nice one, too. Not like the things you wear these days. Honestly, did I not teach you how to dress? And who do you think you are, interrupting me like that? I brought you to the world, to this country, you should be kissing the ground I walk on.” She tapped on a page in her magazine and folded the corner.
“A scarf? Who spends that much money on a scarf?”
“I told you, it was a nice scarf. And anyway, I would have paid for it, I could have paid for it, but I didn't have any money on me at the time, so I did the most logical thing and used what I had.”
“When did you even have time to buy it today? Weren't you at work?”
Mrs Kim turned to the next page. “No.”
“I'm running out of money, mum”, Sunny sighed and closed her laptop, “and I'm not getting paid enough to keep up. Can you pay me back once you get your pay-check?”
“Asking your mother to pay you! Haven't I done enough for you already? I've already paid you in care and devotion through all of your thirty years! I need to rest, Yong-Sun, can't we discuss this another time?”
At the dinner table that evening, Sunny's son told them about the upcoming science fair at his school. Mrs Kim reacted animatedly when he spoke of the solar system, asking questions about how they are going to model it, and 'really? You can paper-mache that? With a balloon? Of all things, I never would have thought of that', when he chose to educate them on how he planned to recreate the sun.
“But I need glue, and some string, and something to hang the planets from. Mum, can we buy something? What could we use? Maybe a tennis racket and I'll hold it up and-”
“Honey, why don't we just use a coat hanger?”
“No”, Mrs Kim interjected. “He needs the best of the best! It is for the solar system, after all. We can't simply use coat hangers. Are you going to include stars in it?” Mrs Kim faced the boy. “We could get some fairy lights for those.”
The plate made a harsh sound when Sunny's fork landed on it. Her son's moment of excitement upon hearing about the lights had been put on pause, and the white noise from the television in the other room filled the space.
“Mum, have you ever considered staying in a nursing home?”
The white noise seemed louder and the young boy focused on his peas.
“You're crazy, Yong-Sun. Me? In a nursing home? That's like putting a lion in a hamster's cage. Crazy. I knew all of this work would drive you out of your mind eventually.”
“There are some good ones around here. There's one on the other side of town. It got five stars on Google. All the comments were saying nice things, mum. It'd be nice. I mean, for you there. You'd have fun. You seem like you need some rest, anyway.”
No, it's too late to visit her now.
Mrs Kim spins her walking stick around her arm. She wasn't always this age. When she was twenty years old, just a child, she aspired to be a fashion designer. She was good at it, too, so good that her clothes were recognised by an American designer. The move to Chicago was quite a sudden one, so much so that she felt like she had whiplash. With bags in her hands and a bump under her shirt, she had arrived at the small apartment and immediately set to work. When she got on the train every morning she looked out the window and imagined her clothes on billboards. When she spoke with other designers about ideas and the fact that it was a 'dream come true', she wrote down the English words that she wasn't familiar with on her forearm, remembering to scan the dictionary that evening. And when her first runway project stayed under the noses of the people, the press, and other designers in the business, never rising to their line of sight, she invested in a small a property that would come to be called “Kim's Café”.
'Wednesday specials: soup of the day, grilled cheese sandwiches, BLT, green tea.'
Henry was nineteen when he asked Mrs Kim if she was hiring. Four years since then, his role was still to stay in the kitchen while Mrs Kim stood behind the counter, smiling at the customers as they caught her eye. They would never see him, but Mrs Kim’s eyes were young, they'd always say, and it was unlike her to reject a compliment. 'This is our system', she would tell them, 'he cooks the grub, I get the smiles. It's just about who we are as people, I suppose.'
“Henry, do you think 'grilled cheese sandwiches' sounds a bit – I don't know – doesn't it lack finesse?”
“Mrs Kim, has this café ever had finesse?”
“How about 'le fromage de' – oh, how do you say sandwich in French again?”
He didn't seem to pause for thought, responding quite quickly as he worked, adding another slice of bacon into the pan that occupied his concentration. “I don't know Mrs Kim.”
“Let's just say 'le fromage de sand-grille'. I've never seen a French person around here anyway.”
Mrs Kim had successfully sold twelve sand-grilles by the time Henry stood next to her by the counter, and she was heavily preoccupied, green notes in hand.
“Mrs Kim-”
“Hang on a minute, Henry. I'm busy. Twenty-five, thirty-”
“Mrs Kim, how old are you now?”
She looked up from the notes with a look that couldn't quite be identified, but it would never be classed as cheerful.
“Brat, who do you think you are? Asking me about my age. How old are you? Twelve? Thirteen? Have you even been born yet?” She hit the back of his head like she was playing badminton and turned all of her attention back to the notes. “Get back to work”, she said, sounding so nonchalant, seemingly feeling more content as Henry winced and rubbed the back of his head. “thirty-nine, forty, forty-one.”
“Mrs Kim, you need some rest. Have you ever considered retiring?”
She stops walking when she reaches the gate. Putting Mrs Kim in a nursing home is like putting a lion in a hamster's cage. The lion will ache, if it even fits in in the first place. She taps her walking stick on the ground a couple of times fewer than she taps her foot. She wasn't always old, and if you ask her now she still won't call herself so. She lets out a shaky breath that turns into mist in front of her. She'd never wanted to be the old bag who sits in the corner of the nursing home, talking about how the weather was in 1972. She'd never wanted to be the elderly woman who has a walking stick and actually uses it, incapable of taking three steps without toppling onto her side. She had never wanted to be the person who moves to a town or city once and never leaves again.
Mrs Kim lifts her walking stick off the ground and the sound of her heels on the pavement echoes through the air, like the steady beat of a metronome.
