Heirloom

From To Kill a Mockingbird, I learn the word "chifforobe." My grandmother has a lacquer chest, a chifforobe, in her bedroom. She claims it is the only object she brought with her from Korea. In its drawers, she stores newspaper clippings, old racing forms from the track, and envelopes stuffed with receipts. In one of the drawers, she keeps the yards of rough satin out of which she plans to sew my wedding dress. She runs her fingers over the fabric, dyed red and green, like Christmas ribbons. I tell her I will never marry. I'm nine.

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In school, I learn the word "heirloom," am instructed to ask my parents if we have any. I practice pronouncing the word: hair/air/loom. I imagine weaving an object out of hair, out of air. At home, my mother looks up the word in her English-Korean dictionary.

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At sixteen, my mother arrives in America wearing two dresses. In her suitcase, folded and wrapped in plastic for protection, a handmade quilt. In a year, she'll sell the quilt at a flea market downtown, tell my grandmother it was lost at some point between Seoul and Los Angeles. I imagine a silken blanket floating off the coast of California, the patchwork square surrounded by water. City of angels, city of ghosts, city of the missing and misplaced. City of the lost, city of the bought and sold.

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The chest is made of lacquer, a black so black I feel almost dizzy when I look at it. When I crouch on the carpet and crawl close, I feel as if I'm pressed against a shadow. I put my palm to it, pull it away. My sweat leaves a brief handprint, which shrinks inward before evaporating. The lacquer feels almost liquid. Though I know better, I check my palm for ink.

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Immigrants don't have heirlooms, my mother says. I ask about my grandmother's chest. My mother shrugs. I don't think it's real, she says. I don't know what this means, but don't dare to ask more. The next day, I fake illness to stay home from school.

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My grandmother' chest, her breasts milk-white, and heavy as two melons. Home from the racetrack, she sheds her dress which lands in a puddle around her feet. She pulls one arm, then the other, out from her billowing bra. Rolls of green bills, sealed in sandwich bags, spill forth. Her bra, now deflated, hangs around her waist. Her breasts sway as she counts her cash.