The Final Six

The metal buckle reflected the hazy and dusty light of Main Street, faintly flashing and flickering beneath the bustling ferns in Lippman Plaza. Without thinking, Min-Ji reaches her arm deep into the plant, digging her nails into dirt until she wraps her fingers around a cold and stiff strap, pulling out a partially buried black leather duffle-bag. Her heart thumping against her chest, she quickly decides to sling the bag across her shoulder before running to catch her bus. On the groaning bus, her fingers graze the dirt-scattered leather of the bag resting on her lap while she watches the sky descend into the royal blue and blood orange colors of the evening.

Impatiently entering the the three-family house, deep in suburban Flushing, she is greeted with the cozy smell of corn and citrusy Sancocho wafting out from the closed door of the first floor apartment. She strokes the duffel-bag against her side as she makes her way up to the second floor, where she smells the neighbor cooking soy-braised pork belly or soy sauce chicken, and the bag feels heavy, and she is in front of her apartment, where through the crack underneath, the scent of fried fishcake and sesame welcomes her home. Kicking off her loafers at the door, she mumbles hello to her roommate in the kitchen while scurrying into her room, shutting the door, and slamming the heavy bag into her closet. She gets on her knees and like a surgeon carefully, precisely, pulls the heavy gilded zipper completely open in one swift glide.

What she sees makes her gasp, pushes her to the hardwood floor, makes her want to get up and close the blinds, which she promptly does before looking back down at the shiny black bag, zipped open, filled with bundles of crispy cash. On top of the green pile is a small black notebook – like a sign on top Everest, like the flag on the moon – with a yellow post-it pasted on the cover, only one word written: Explanations. Min-Ji hungrily grabs the notebook and examines the front and back, lightly sniffing across the thin journal for any clues before finally opening it to the first page.

You found it. I don’t know who you are but if you found this bag you are most likely from Queens and I hope you can help me. Inside the bag, there is $20,000 in cash, my entire life savings, and with it, I need you to help me finish my life.

I have written down six entries – the six things I thought I would do but ultimately couldn’t, before I died. You will not meet me in the beginning, I can not help you during the middle, we will still be strangers by the end.

My name is Park Jang-Suk and I am basically a nobody. I am a sick sixty-seven year old woman, a useless mother with a dead daughter, a nameless cashier. In this bag, is everything. My life – whittled down to six points, things I’ve never done, destinations that I have never visited. After all of living, whatever is in this bag is what is left. The notebook. My story. The money. This is the most you will ever meet of me.

The further pages describe detailed scenes of a hard life – deep regrets as a daughter and then as a mother, and heart and back breaking betrayals from husbands and boyfriends, doctors, lawyers, landlords, even it seems the Divine. Min-Ji notices spots on the pages that are wrinkled and brown, little circles of interruptions and smears, and realizes this person, Jang-Suk, must have been crying while writing. Jang-Suk, a Korean name. Min-Ji strokes her thumb across faded tattooed teardrops scattered across the pages that are scribbled with handwriting that look too similar to her own mothers, and she cries until it is dark in the room. She pulls the book closer up to her face and whispers into the pages, Jang-Suk, my name is Kim Min-Ji. I can help. She places the little notebook onto the floor in front of her and while swallowing her tears, traditionally bows to Jang-Suk: her elder, and her newest friend.

Min-Ji’s eyes are almost swollen shut from salty tears as she pulls out an unused notebook from her crowded desk drawer. She decides to categorize and list Jang-Suk’s six favors from easiest to most complicated. She was surprised to read that Jang-Suk had lived in Queens for twenty-three years without doing some of the things she had listed. It only made her sad.

Jang-Suk’s Six Favors

1) Watch a Broadway play

2) Go to a Yankees game

3) Take a carriage ride around Central Park at night

4) Visit Korea and lay flowers on her parents graves

5) Hike Hallasan Mountain in the Winter

6) Say goodbye to her daughter, who rests next to her at

Flushing Cemetery

That night, Min-Ji dreams about Jang-Suk, who in her dream has the eyes of her mother, the nose of her aunt, and the lips of the woman who gives out the Misugaru samples at H-Mart. They hug for a long time before Min-Ji watches her slowly walk down a winding dirt road, surrounded by golden swishing barley, until she becomes a dot, until she disappears. Min-Ji wakes up in the middle of the night and grabs her phone. She books a First Class ticket to Korea for the Winter and searches for tickets to the Lion King for this week, unable to find availability until she finally settles for the third row, center stage. She also reserves SkySeats for a Yankees game before falling asleep – tired from the speed at which her life had drastically changed in one day, because of one person.

–

Min-Ji brings the little notebook with her the night of the Lion King, a perfect fit in her playful pink beaded clutch which she pairs with a little black dress and her white kitten heels. Her first task, her first day with Jang-Suk, and she wants to make it special, memorable. The hushed and dark theater erupted with a chorus of voices of all ages, neon colors and glowing light. There was an entire sky onstage and Min-Ji was entranced, amazed, completely awed, sitting in her single seat with a dead woman on her lap, wanting to embrace Jang-Suk and laugh into her extinct face but only feeling the weight of her inked dreams and aspirations on her legs. Instead she holds on tightly to her clutch and watches, fixated on the stage where a new sun rises. She takes in the music, and silently thanks Jang-Suk as she gets up with the crowd to applause for the bowing actors. After, at home, she opens her journal and writes a long letter about the night, ending it with, It felt like you were there with me.

–

After a riveting Yankees game, she takes the D down to 86th Street and walks among the giant Elms in Central Park, holding the little notebook to her chest while telling Jang-Suk stories about how her own mother used to take her to Central Park on Sundays. She halts at a carriage helmed by a neat black and white speckled horse and suddenly she is sitting in the back, still holding the notebook against her, gazing at the boulders and trees that pass. Everything around her is illuminated by the light of colossal buildings behind the park – great portions of the sky blocked by concrete, stars replaced with dim-lit windows. The wind lightly breezes by and Min-Ji opens the notebook, re-reading the excerpt where Jang-Suk describes her childhood in Korea, and she feels less lonely in the wide backseat of the carriage. Back in her room, she pens another letter, a longer letter, in which she writes, Even though we’ve never met, even though you’ve moved on past this life, you have already changed mine.

–

On the train to the cemetery in Busan, Min-Ji cannot believe how far she has come. During the plane ride from JFK, she realized it was the first time she was returning to Korea since her family had immigrated to the United States when she was only two. She would have never imagined her first time back would be to fulfill a dead stranger's aspirations but here she was, with almost two hundred thousand Won in her wallet, on a bullet train going to the city where her own grandfather was born and where the stranger’s parents were buried. She hails a cab and asks him to stop by the best butcher, the best bakery, the best produce stand, and lastly any liquor store, before pulling up to the graveyard with a bag of Hanwoo beef, pillowy and sweet walnut cookies, shiny apples and rich colored oranges, and four bottles of soju and makgeuli. She pulls out a bouquet of white roses and yellow chrysanthemums from the trunk and makes way to the graves, a half mile walk into the grounds, her small black notebook tucked into the bag strapped across her chest.

She bows at the feet of the raised domes of land and arranges the bounty across the graves of Jang-Suk’s parents. She explains the situation and apologizes for her sudden appearance, as a complete stranger. She also delivers a message from Jang-Suk, which was sloppily written in the notebook. She does not cry as she explains that Jang-Suk could not make it to their funerals because she had not gotten her Green Card in time, and that she had died regretful about it. She pours them each a glass of soju and makgeuli and peels the apples and oranges, leaving the skin on the luscious grass for it to soak up later. After a few drinks, she leaves the flowers and food and walks slowly back to the car where she writes a long tear-stained letter, finishing it with, We’re almost at the end, and I’m really scared to let you go.

–

At the peak of Hallasan mountain, which was a very well marked and easy hike, the wind bashes into Min-Ji’s face and the rain sting like needles. She has the notebook in a ziplock bag velcroed across her chest, under her jacket, and she can barely see anything beyond the dark clouds. She hugs her arms across her chest and yells out, to the abyss of thundering rain and sky, yelling until her yells become cries, until her voice is gone and her throat throbs. Later, in the hotel room, she books the ticket back to New York with the last of the money. She writes in her notebook, Tomorrow, I am going back to New York. Then, I am finally meeting your daughter. And I am finally meeting you.

–

In front of the headstones, Min-Ji is surprised at the wave of calm she feels as she reads the words etched into the peachy marble stone. Park Yu-Mi, 1987 - 2010, Perfect Daughter and Friend. Park Jang-Suk, 1948 - 2015, Loving Mother. She sits down on the grass between them before bowing and shakily saying hello. With her forehead against the earth, she feels the notebook which she has strapped across her body shift, and it unhinges something in Min-Ji, and suddenly she is crying, her tears sinking and blooming into the ground. She feels like she has no words, so she just stays this way for a long time before getting up and pulling out the small black notebook as well as her own. She turns to Yu-Mi’s headstone and begins to read out the letters she had written throughout the past half-year. When Min-Ji finishes, she bows again before she walks away, and she walks to her home close by, where she sits on her bed, wondering where her life had been before she met Jang-Suk, relishing in where she is now.