Suki Kim - The Interpreter

“It must’ve been sitting in my mailbox for a while. I was out of town until yesterday.” Then Maria adds with an awkward face, “But I don’t have it with me… Besides, Grace didn’t want it opened.”

No wonder the girl from the accountant’s office could not find Maria. No one had been home when Suzy sat on her stoop in the rain.

Why is this woman living at her parents’ house?

The first friend to appear from Grace’s life. Perhaps the only friend. “How do you know my sister?” asks Suzy, contemplating the woman.

“From Smith, a swimming class in freshman year. One of those silly phys-ed requirements,” Maria says with a smile in her eyes, as though she suddenly recalls the indoor pool where the class used to be held. “On the first day, the instructor, this rather large white woman, turned to both of us and said how some bodies just won’t float. She was talking about body fat, of course, how thin girls don’t float as well as bigger girls. But what she was really pointing at was the fact that we were the only two Asian girls in the class, that we were different. Strange, I’m not even completely Korean, as you can see, but in white people’s eyes, I’m as Asian as they come.”

Suzy tries to distinguish the Asian features in Maria’s face, although, the more she searches, the whiter Maria looks.

“I bet I don’t look so Korean to you either,” Maria muses, reading Suzy’s thoughts. “Don’t worry, I’m used to it. Even Charlie, my daughter’s father, left me because I wasn’t Korean enough for him; he told me after seven years together… Anyway, thank God no one can tell my white blood in my little Grace, although her hair isn’t as straight as other Korean girls’. Genes are weird, don’t you think? They pop up in the oddest places.” Maria sighs, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. Suzy wonders why she did not notice before that her hair’s been heavily blow-dried to appear straight.

“What a useless class; more than ten years later, I still can’t swim!” she says laughingly. “It wasn’t until after graduation that I started hearing from Grace regularly. She’d send me a letter every six months or so, always with nice little gifts. The odd thing was we weren’t even that close. I guess I still can’t say I really know her. I didn’t even know she had a sister.” Maria seems flustered by the discovery.

“What kind of gifts?”

“Oh, random stuff, like an antique jade ring or a pair of fancy sunglasses. Really nice, except they were all hers, clearly things she’d owned for a while. The letters weren’t much, though. Just brief updates of her life. I thought maybe she was lonely.”

A jade ring? Mom used to wear one on her middle finger. For good luck, she would say, twirling it seven times before whispering a prayer. Did Mom give it to Grace at some point? Why would Grace pass it on to a friend?

“Then, when I was down and out, right after Charlie left me, I was four months pregnant with no job, it was Grace who saved me. She took me in, and later even set me up in a house that used to belong to her parents.” Maria pauses, realizing that they were also Suzy’s parents. “I owe so much to Grace. I think she felt sorry for me, because… maybe she thought I was a bit like her, a misfit, a Korean girl with a name like Sutpen.”

“A misfit?”

“She could never stick to a job, temped for years, strange for a girl who graduated Phi Beta Kappa. It’s like she was allergic to a permanent situation—until the teaching job, that is.”

Like me, Suzy thinks. A waste of college education.

Who do you think interpreted for your parents all those times with the INS?

Grace had never let Suzy know. Grace never let Suzy in. If Grace did not speak to Suzy, then Suzy could remain innocent. But is Suzy innocent?

Even at Smith, Grace was completely alone. Even at Fort Lee High School. No one seems to have gotten through, not even Maria Sutpen, with whom her friendship still feels guarded. Perhaps Grace was freer with the man who she claimed was alone, orphaned, just like her.

“What about her boyfriend?”

“What boyfriend?”

“It seems that she went off somewhere to get married, although—”

“Married? That’s ridiculous,” Maria cuts her short, looking dismayed. “Grace is appalled by anything remotely domestic. It’s a stretch for her to even be my baby’s godmother. I pretty much had to force it on her. She certainly wouldn’t be getting married overnight!”

How peculiar that the whole school seems to be aware of his existence when her only friend has no clue.

“She’s never mentioned a guy she was seeing?”

“Back in college, boys from U. Mass. and Amherst were always after her. She never went out with anyone, though. Boys used to say that she was a lesbian. But she had someone from home, some guy who used to come and see her every few weeks.”

“A guy from home?”

“I never met him, but I’ve heard people say he was bad news.

“Why?”

“He picked fights with strangers because he thought they were checking her out. Right on King Street. I remember hearing about it, because in downtown Northampton pretty much everyone belongs to one of the Five Colleges.” Maria pauses. “Why, you think she’s still with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s over.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me,” answers Maria, squinting her eyes as if reaching back to a remote past. “She mentioned something about him finally giving up on her. She said that he was better off without her, because he knew too much about her. She looked so lonely when she said it, though. That’s when it occurred to me that she might’ve had some feelings for him after all. I thought he was just some freak stalking her, but maybe they had a real thing. She hasn’t been with anyone since. Especially after what happened to her… your parents.”

“Why do you think she couldn’t?” Suzy mutters, as though posing the question to herself.

“Something in her died with them. She seemed permanently lost without them. Years ago, when she moved back home after college, she used to write to me about how great her parents were, how much she loved them. I remember being envious. My mother died when I was five, and I never even met my father. I know what it’s like to lose parents, but I can’t imagine the pain when you’ve been so close…” Maria stops abruptly, realizing that the pain also belongs to Suzy.

Did Grace really use those words?

That they were great?

Something begins collapsing inside her.

A quiet sinking.

Grace hadn’t even begun facing the truth, Suzy realizes. Moving back home might have been her attempt to bury the truth. Just as Suzy had invented the oceanfront house in her dreams, Grace might have told herself that none of it had happened, that her parents had never used her for their crimes, that they had never violated her conscience.

One day, if you find yourself alone, will you remember that I am too?

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know. She never talked about him except that one time.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“About a month ago, she dropped by suddenly. She said that she was in the neighborhood, which was unusual.”

“Why unusual?”

“Because she never comes to Queens. It’s almost like she avoids it. But that day, she said she was looking around to buy a store. When I asked her what kind of store, she said she’ll tell me later.”

A hundred grand, in one shot. A month ago.

Suddenly, pealing laughter halts the two.

“Mommy!” It is the tiny bundle of mess climbing up the stairs, smiling triumphantly, her mouth smudged in chocolate, and opening her palms to reveal a fistful of crushed cookie crumbs. “Look what I got for you!”