The Hate Vow by Nicole French

Three

“Istill don’t understand. Why do you have to go to Boston now? You have to find a job, Jane. You have to work.”

I swiped another three dresses off the rack behind my mother’s couch and tossed them on top of the suitcases. I flipped through the other clothes that had been hanging there since I’d had to vacate my apartment. Almost all of them were black, with a few red, and a couple olive green pieces. None were particularly nice, with the exception of one red and black number I got a few years back. I stared at it for a moment. I’d received it by virtue of association when I attended a gala with Skylar and Brandon. My one brush with the world of the rich and famous.

Eric had gone too. The look on his face when I walked out wearing it flashed through my memory. He didn’t need to say “pretty girl” in that moment, but his expression had told me exactly what I could expect later that night.

I left the dress on the rack.

I grabbed two other dresses that were acceptable and tossed them on the pile, suddenly in a hurry. I really needed to see my best friend right now. So much that I didn’t really care if I was maxing out the last of my credit card to do it. Skylar’s curt, cut-through-the-bullshit sensibility was exactly what the doctor ordered.

It had been three days since the chat on the sidewalk. Three days since Eric had stared at my mouth, making small talk for another thirty minutes before he went back to Boston. Three days of nothing but one short message asking when I thought I’d be coming to town to discuss the “agreement.”

Like it was a real estate transaction, not a marriage proposal.

“I need a nicer shoe to go with these,” I muttered to myself. Then, finally, I turned around to where my mother stood on the other side of the couch, glaring at the contents of my suitcase. “Eomma, do you have a pink heel that would go with my hair?”

The glare lifted to me, and I swear, if I hadn’t already been wearing glasses to protect me from her death rays, she might have straight-up turned me to salt. I was pretty certain at one point that my mother was part basilisk. It was a little eerie, reading about the giant snake in Harry Potter that could kill people with a glance and being reminded of my mother’s formidable stare. Harry Potter beat the snake, but could he have beat Yu Na Lee? Hard to say.

“Okay, okay,” I said to the suitcase when she didn’t reply. “No pink heels. Message received. I’ll check out The Garment District when I get to Boston.”

“Jane!”

I turned around again. “What? You do have a pink heel? Eomma, make up your mind. My flight’s tomorrow.”

With that, she flew into a rush of Korean, of which she was fully aware I could understand about one word in ten. My Korean was never that great—especially since Dad never learned it either. You just don’t pick up the family lingo in quite the same way when no one speaks it in the house unless they’re angry, but you do learn the classics. Especially when they are aimed at you on a regular basis.

“Eomma, slow down,” I said as I folded my clothes into the suitcase. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack. What is wrong? Why is it such a big deal that I’m leaving right now? We’ve been at each other’s throats since my lease expired, and literally all you’ve been talking about is how much you need space. I would have thought you’d be jumping at the chance to be rid of me.”

“What’s wrong?” she demanded with a face flushed beneath the mask of makeup she wore daily. “Four days you been with no job. One month you been on my couch. Now you show up yesterday with hair like a lollipop, and you’re packing your bags. What are you trying to do to me?”

I rolled my eyes. Leaving the cap off the toothpaste. Forgetting to turn off the lights in the kitchen. My mother talked about everything like it was a life-or-death situation. Yu Na lived like a soap opera heroine, and without my father to calm her down, the habit had gotten worse.

I turned around. “Eomma, it’s my hair. It’s my life. Why is this about what I’m doing to you?”

“Because it is embarrassing, that’s why! It was bad enough when you were younger, coming home with ripped jeans and spiky hair. Bad enough you had to ruin good clothes from Macy’s or dye your hair like crayons. But I think, she will grow out of it. My Jane will grow up, like her mother and dad taught her the right way to be. And it took you a long time, but you did. Finally. Now…you are almost thirty, Jane. Too old for pink hair and running away!”

Self-consciously, I touched the messy bun piled on the top of my head. I had my mother’s hair color—black-brown—but whereas hers was straight, mine was unruly unless I took the time to dry it properly. She made it sound like I looked homeless with this hair color, but in all fairness, I hadn’t done it yet this morning. Like her, I wasn’t usually one to step outside without makeup and a nicely coiffed head. I was the daughter of an esthetician, after all. And it was just eight in the morning. I hadn’t even had coffee.

“The hair looks fabulous,” I informed her for the tenth time since she’d seen it. “And since, as you remind me, I am almost thirty, I’ll wear it any way I damn well please. Just like I’ll get a job when I’m good and damn ready, and I’ll visit my friends whenever I damn well like. Without my mommy’s damn permission!”

“How do you talk to your mother like that? Damn this, damn that. Where is the respect?” She tossed her hands up toward the ceiling. “What am I going to tell my friends? They ask about you all the time. They say, Jane, is she married yet? No, she don’t have a boyfriend, so how can she be married? But I tell them, she has a good job. A lawyer in the city. Now you don’t have that. No money. No apartment. What do you have now? Pink hair and a bunch of ugly black clothes, sleeping on your mother’s couch. What kind of life is that?”

I threw a pair of gladiator sandals into the suitcase a little harder than necessary. I really, really needed to get out of this apartment. I would have stayed with my cousin in Albany Park, but her spare room was now occupied by a baby. Everyone really was growing up. Except me.

“That’s enough, Eomma. If I want to be berated by your friends, I’ll play godori with you guys or watch the soaps with Jiyeon. I’m going to live my life the way I want. So kindly can it, or butt the hell out.”

When I turned back around, my mother was gawking at me like I’d just told her to lick a toilet seat.

“What,” she said, “would your father say to that?”

Easy now, Plain Jane. You know how she gets.

And there it was. I knew it would happen sooner or later—the constant reminder that now, in death, my father was likely ashamed of me. That in these moments, it was up to me, not her to assert control. That he knew I could do better.

His memory had been urging me to take care of her, to manage this situation since he died. Though my mother had no problem invoking his memory when it suited her inconsistent arguments, the reality was that her worries extended beyond my life to hers as well.

See, we learned a lot from Dad’s death.

Lesson One: VA psychologists don’t make much. And Dad only had a measly pension and never took out a life insurance policy.

Lesson Two: It’s a lot harder to get a job when you’re fifty-three than twenty-one. And most nail salons weren’t interested in hiring an out-of-practice esthetician with a lapsed license. Getting work took my mother a while.

Lesson Three: The house in Evanston was worth a lot more than when my parents originally bought the place in 1980-something. And that, unfortunately, came with property taxes that my mother couldn’t afford, especially on top of the lavish funeral she insisted on having. The sale of the house covered the funeral, this small apartment in Skokie, and enough for her to grieve for about six months before she had to go back to painting nails for a living. Reality came for her too. There was no way around it—my mother was bitter.

It didn’t help that on top of being the provider, Daddy was also the peacemaker between Eomma and me. The diffuser between two women with opposite values and identical tempers. He loved us both and had made it possible for us to tolerate each other.

Not anymore.

Just walk away, peanut. You know she doesn’t mean what she says.

“Daddy would probably tell me to ignore you,” I shot back. “Which is exactly what I’m going to do. In Boston.” I finished zipping up the bag with a flourish and stood up. “I’m going to take a shower, and then I’m going out. And when I’m done, you and I are not going to talk about this again.”

“Why?” Like a jumping flea with coral lipstick, she followed me into the kitchen. “Why do you have to go to Boston now, Jane? You need a job! You need a place to live! It makes no sense when you have no prospects.”

For a second, I almost told her. Just to get her off my back. Just to see her head explode in surprise confetti of dyed-black hair and rouged cheeks when I broke the news that not only did I have a prospect, but he was probably the best goddamn prospect in the entire world.

For three nights, I had considered Eric’s indecent proposal. But I still didn’t know what to do. I needed the person who cut through the shit in my life like I did for her. I needed to look my best friend in the face and ask her what she thought about this bullshit, especially since it was coming from someone she also knew very well. Eric was her friend and her business partner. Skylar would tell me the truth.

So then why fight, kiddo? Jane Brain, you’re better than this.

It wasn’t fair. I knew that. I couldn’t have this fight with my mother if she didn’t know everything. But I couldn’t tell her. Not yet. Part of me didn’t want to know what she would say. On the one hand, she might jump for joy. After all, who wouldn’t want her daughter to marry into obscene wealth, especially when the both of us were dealing with our fair share of money issues? But on the other hand, she might be ashamed. It was bad enough that I acted absolutely nothing like an ideal Korean daughter would. I wasn’t sweet. I wasn’t obedient. And I wasn’t quiet.

Acerbic. Discordant. Loud.

Disappointment. That was me.

Let’s not play that game, Jane Brain. Your mom loves you. She just doesn’t know how to show it.

How many times had I heard my dad say that? Guilt squeezed my stomach. But it still came back to the same conclusion: what would Yu Na Lee Lefferts think of her daughter selling five years of her life for twenty million dollars? Just how shamed would she feel?

I stood there for a minute, staring at the contents of her fridge. Leftover rice. Three types of kimchi. Cheap cuts of chicken for two. She bought for both of us now, not just herself. My anger faded.

I turned around and surprised my mother when I wrapped her in a hug and kissed the top of her head like she was the child, and I was the parent.

“Jane!” she squawked, but her squawk was laced with love.

I released her. “It’s just a week, Eomma, and then I’ll be back. I have a Harvard law degree and five years at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office behind me. I’ll figure something out, I promise.”

Slowly, while I held onto her short, squat body, the sharpness in my mother’s face softened too.

“Okay,” she relented. “But you shower and fix your makeup, okay? You look like one of those people in the circus with that hair.” She picked up my hand and clucked her tongue as she examined my nails. “And before you go, I’ll give you a manicure.”