Things Lost in Translation

I stumble out of the bathroom, gripping the door frame as I sink to the floor in the hallway. The piece of plastic in my hand clatters to the tile beside me. I take quick, shallow breaths until I think I’ve used up all the air in our apartment. It’s so small that I can see all of it from here—the narrow galley kitchen in front of me, the crooked lamp hanging above the dining table, our faded wedding photo beside the bulky television. It’s cramped enough for me and Seojun. There isn’t room for a third person.

​

Knees pressed to my chest, I look at the calendar on the fridge. October just began. I count how long it’s been since that night. Three weeks.

​

I stare at the chipped paint on the living room wall, peeling off bit by bit. Did we really do it, three weeks ago?

 

 

​
 

It was a normal Tuesday. We sat across from each other at the dining table. Seojun got home late, as usual, so the rice was hard, the kimchi soup cold, the spinach side dish more shriveled. When I asked him about work, Seojun just sighed and chewed solemnly on his rice. Our only conversation was the clinks of metal chopsticks on porcelain dishes.

 

Later, in bed, we lay unmoving, silent. I knew Seojun wasn’t sleeping because he wasn’t snoring. I remembered we used to do this a lot, stay awake together deep into the night, except in those days my head was on his lap and he twirled my hair around his finger and we chatted about what kind of house we’d buy, how many kids we’d have, the family vacations we’d plan to Jeju Island, back when it was only a ferry ride away.

 

But that night, as I stared up at the crumbling line where the wall’s cracked paint met the popcorn ceiling, I was afraid I was searching for something we’d left behind on the other side of the Pacific. The mattress felt like a rock with a me-shaped mold I couldn’t escape. My breaths quickened until the words stumbled out of my mouth. Barely a whisper, spoken to the ceiling: “Do you still want a baby?”

 

Slowly, I heard Seojun turn his head towards me.

 

Please, I thought, because in that moment I couldn’t bear the suffocation of silence. I longed for the cries and giggles of a child, a bundle of joy to bridge the chasm between our bodies on this bed. I wanted it so badly that for the first time in months, I rolled over to his side of the bed. I pushed away the blankets and kissed Seojun’s neck the way I used to when we were dating. His skin had roughened since we immigrated, but was just as warm. In the darkness, I was bold. I slipped my hand under his shirt. I pulled him on top of me. I remembered we used to do this because we craved each other, when lying with my head in his lap was simply not close enough, and maybe Seojun remembered too because he grasped my hand against the pillow and kissed me. I gasped because part of me had thought he didn’t desire me anymore and I desperately tried to hold on to it, pulling him closer, closer, to make up for all the things we didn’t say to each other.

 

But the next morning, under the dining table’s harsh yellow light, we ate breakfast in silence. He wouldn’t look at me. He gulped down his tea. The door slammed behind him as he left for work and he didn’t return until I’d already gone to bed.

 

 

​
 

I grasp my stomach, leaning my head against the wall. We never discussed that night. Never repeated it. And the moment he left in the morning, I squashed any hope of a child because they deserved better than to be brought into a marriage that already lost two people’s happiness.

 

From the window, I hear the creaks of a swingset and children shouting to each other in English. Their giggles echo through our empty apartment.

 

I haul myself to my feet, staring at the walls. Chipped paint, cracked drywall, murky stains in the oddest corners. Seojun said he would fix it but never got around to it, coming home too late or passing out on the couch instead. In the living room, I grab the landline but halfway through dialing Seojun’s number, I stop. I can’t tell him through a call.

 

I set the phone down. I grab my shoes and head out the door.

 

I need to find Seojun.

 

​

​

I remember one of our first mornings in Canada, Seojun and I went out for a stroll. Summer in Vancouver was incredible. We marveled at the lush greenery lining the streets and breathed in the crisp, clean air void of pollution from Korea’s countless buses. Everything looked intimidating, especially the sky. Without Seoul’s blocky buildings obstructing the view, Vancouver’s sky was such a vast expanse above us I felt like I was in outer space.

 

Hand-in-hand with Seojun, I took a step forward but was tugged back. Seojun had stopped walking, head tilted up. He looked at the sky with childlike wonder, sunlight illuminating the crinkles around his eyes.

 

“It’s so big, Haewon. It’s exhilarating.”  He smiled. It was infectious, like a shot of espresso.

 

“I wish my mother could’ve seen this.”

 

“What do you think she would’ve said about us immigrating?”

 

“Oh, that we’re crazy for doing something so risky.” And that it was too ambitious for a young couple, that it was too early into our marriage. She’d always said I was overly trusting of my husband. I didn’t tell that part to Seojun.

 

He placed his hands on my shoulders, suddenly serious. “Do you think she’s right?”

 

“It’s a bit late to be asking that, isn’t it?”

 

“I just don’t want you to regret it.”

 

I squeezed his hand. “As long as I’m here with you, I’ll be okay.”

​

Seojun pointed to the three-storey houses on the street. “One day, we’ll buy one of those houses, play with our kids at that park, and they’ll go to that school.”

 

I followed his gaze across the neighbourhood. Truthfully, I didn’t know the answer to his question. I felt so much distance from everyone else in the street who looked and sounded so different than us. Walking past the park, I watched kids chase each other on the playground and felt my youth coming sharply to an end, more than when I graduated university or married Seojun or when we moved into our first apartment together. Here, miles away from Korea, I felt the full force of adulthood.

 

It was up to us and nobody else to make this work.

 

Seojun kissed the side of my head. “I’ll take care of you.”

 

I still think about that image—Seojun gazing up at the sky like he wanted to touch the clouds. And when I see him now hunched over the dining room table, eating silently, my chest hurts so much that I get up early from dinner and leave my husband sitting alone.

 

​

​

I take swift, decisive steps toward the construction site, eyes fixed on the crane’s long, mechanical arm protruding toward the sky. My shoes crunch on the gravel sidewalk and I tug my cardigan closer as the breeze skitters past.

 

Caged within the site’s bright, blue fence, machinery rumbles and beeps loudly, punctuated by the barked comments of construction workers. My heart jumps, both hoping and terrified to pick out Seojun’s voice. I don’t hear him.

 

They’re building something, but I can’t tell what. It’s supposed to be a flashy, new-and-improved extension of the old mall, currently a grungy, yellow-ish building beside the construction site. The workers mill about, walking in and out of the new structure’s gloomy, windowless hallways, their bright orange vests popping against the dark gray cement and dreary Vancouver sky.

 

I see this site all the time but it doesn’t make sense every time I look at it. I don’t understand how Seojun and the crew worked long hours every day for two years, so exhaustingly hard that some weeks Seojun crashed on the couch and never came to bed, and all they have to show for it are a few slabs of concrete held up by precariously thin metal poles. A structure that makes me anxious, like any day the rain will beat down on it too hard, or the wind will be too stormy, and the entire complex will crack and crash down and all the blood, sweat, and tears Seojun put into it would have been for nothing.

 

I don’t think life is supposed to work that way.

 

The crane drops a bundle of long metal rods and they clatter to the ground. I jump, halting directly in front of the site’s blue fence. Amid the flurry of the workers’ complaints and re-grouping to clean up the rods, I panic. I haven’t prepared. I don’t know what to tell Seojun.

 

I can’t do it. I swerve left, towards the old mall.

 

 

​
 

I shift from foot to foot in front of bright lights, pastel-coloured posters, and piles of picture books. Kids reach for books on their tip-toes by the shelves, curl up on bean bag chairs, and flip pages with stubby fingers. I’m not sure why I ended up here, at the entrance of the Indigo’s kids’ section. 

 

Someone clears their throat behind me. I’m blocking the entrance. My cheeks flush. I grab the first picture book on the shelf and scurry away from the kids’ section, finding a secluded hallway of the bookstore. In a little nook surrounded by carts filled with books, I take a deep breath and look at the picture book.

 

A cartoon family beams at me from the cover. Two parents, a son, and a daughter, all with blue eyes and blonde hair, are huddled together on the couch in a homey living room with a roaring fireplace and rich, sage green walls. I swallow, picturing Seojun passed out on our beaten-down couch after work and the gloomy, beige walls of our apartment.

 

I open the book. On the first page, the kids run around with a golden retriever in a luscious front yard with a white picket fence. The parents, smiling, watch from the porch, the husband gluing his wife to his side with an arm around her waist. On another page, the parents exchange a kiss and the kids cover their eyes. It takes three tries for me to read what the child says, silently sounding it out: Gross!

 

I touch their faces with my finger. I thought Seojun and I would raise a family like this.

 

I don’t remember when we stopped trying for a baby, or when we stopped talking about it. Sometime between Seojun’s ten hour workdays, the amassing bills, and the hours I spent in grocery stores, or pharmacies, or the streets unable to talk to anyone, it just became easier to retreat inwards. Seojun already looked so tired after work and I didn’t want to burden him with worries I didn’t even know how to articulate. Little by little, the days became more wearisome until one morning I woke up and it felt like we were trudging through honey, slowly suffocating, our hands sticky with something we couldn’t wash away.

 

Someone speaks into my ear. I jump, clutching the book to my chest.

 

Dammit. An employee stands behind me, head tilted, looking at me expectantly. I think she asked if I needed any help. I shake my head.

 

She says something else, gesturing to the carts around us. What? I blink, shifting on my feet. She’s speaking too quickly for me to fully understand what she’s saying.

 

I duck my head and move it in a way that could be interpreted as either a nod or a shake, and turn my back to her. I still feel her presence looming behind me like a shadow.

 

She taps my shoulder.

 

I whirl around. In English I firmly say, “No. No help. Thank you.”

 

To the side, a sudden voice lifts the hairs on the back of my neck. “Honey?”

 

 

​
 

My mother warned me of the day I will hate my husband.

 

She was a blunt figure, my mother. A realist. I suppose because she married my father a month after my grandparents introduced her to him, she had a different take on marriage than I did. Strong opinions, like mine, and we often clashed when discussing them. Unlike most Korean mothers, she didn’t care who I married. She was just against marriage altogether.

 

Still, I believed she loved my father, even if she rarely said it.

 

“How have you been doing?” I asked her once. It had been a year since my father passed away. “Are things okay even though Dad’s gone?”

 

“Even though?” She scoffed, crouched on the kitchen floor over a large bowl filled with kimchi. Her sleeves were pushed up and she was wearing plastic gloves, mixing the gochujang paste into the cabbage. “There’s a lot about my life that’s a lot easier without your father.”

​

I shifted uncomfortably, adding a splash of vinegar to the bowl. She said things like this sometimes, things that made it sound like she didn’t love him. When she was mad at him, she’d threaten divorce. She’d laugh a little too hard when the neighborhood mothers gathered in the living room to trash talk their husbands.

 

“Still, you were married to him since you were twenty. It must be a big change.”

 

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I was with him since I was twenty. Our marriage didn’t start until a few years later.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Remember this before you marry Seojun.”

 

“Mom.” I could sense another lecture coming, the kind that ended in an argument. “We’re already engaged.”

 

“You know I think he’s a good guy. I’m just telling you—marriage doesn’t start when you say your vows. There will come a time after that. It might be a month, a year, or five years. But one day, when all the romance is gone, you’ll look at your husband and see the stupidest goddamn man on the planet and you won’t be able to believe you signed up for life with him. That’s when your marriage starts.”

 

“Mom.”

 

She grabbed a chunk of kimchi and held it in front of my mouth. “Taste this. I think I added too much salt.”

 

​

​

​

Of all people, Seojun appears behind the employee. He’s not wearing his neon construction vest and battered jeans, but a dress shirt and trousers, one hand holding onto the backpack slung over his shoulder. Blood pounding, I hide the picture book behind my back as he glances between me and the employee, frowning. I chuck it behind some books on a cart as Seojun talks to the employee in broken English. His expression hardens. I understand only one phrase completely: Sorry.

 

Seojun grabs my wrist and pulls me out of the hallway. “You’re in the employees-only section.” He points to a sign on the wall that I now realize reads Employees Only.

 

“Oh.” My palms sweat. I try to process his presence. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

 

He rubs his neck. “I have a meeting to attend. Inside the mall.”

 

In his two years as a construction worker, he’s never once attended a meeting. I haven’t seen trousers and a dress shirt in the laundry for ages.

 

He’s lying.

 

“At Indigo?”

 

“No, it’s… on this floor. I just saw you when I was walking by.” I frown, but he barrels on. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you home?”

 

“I just… wanted some fresh air.”

 

Seojun stares at me. I stare back. I used to hear his thoughts in the silence. It was something I loved about us, how we were always on the same wavelength without even trying. But now, it’s like standing before a black hole—an empty and unreadable void.

 

I take a deep breath. “I have to tell—”

 

At the same time, Seojun says, “You should memorize it.”

 

I blink. “What?”

 

“The sign.” He points at the Employees Only sign. “You’ll see it everywhere. Memorize it.”

 

Warmth floods my face. Seojun looks away, hand stuffed into his pocket. “Are you embarrassed of me?”

 

“I didn’t say that.”

 

“That’s what you’re saying.”

 

“No, I just—why did you come out without me?”

 

“Is that a problem?”

 

“It would be easier for you, that’s all.”

 

“Because you can read English signs for me?”

 

“That’s not—” He glances around us. A couple employees watching us quickly turn their gazes away and wheel their carts away. Seojun’s expression pinches. He turns toward a bookshelf. “Come on, I’ll take you home. We’re loitering for too long and causing a scene. It’s rude not to buy anything.”

 

In the underground markets in Korea, vendors trail customers like shadows, droning like flies in customers’ ear about sales, urging them to purchase something—and still Seojun has firmly walked out empty-handed without falling for their traps. But in Indigo he glances around at the employees and other customers and walks to the bookshelf. He doesn’t even like reading.

 

He chooses a book with a single word for the title. Normally I like shorter titles but this word is difficult, though it looks familiar. We both stare at it. Then he clears his throat and marches to the till.

 

The cashier scans the book and glances back at me. I jump at the sudden eye contact. She smiles at Seojun and asks him something. He pauses. Even from afar, I see him tense. Something’s wrong. He takes the book back from the cashier, opening it—then quickly sets it back on the counter, shaking his head. He walks away from the till.

 

The cashier stares after him. Seojun beelines past me toward the exit. His cheeks are flushed. I catch up with him.

 

“What happened?”

 

“I don’t need it. I already read it.”

 

“When?”

 

“In high school, for English class.” Seojun’s tone is clipped. He’s lying again.

 

I see another copy of the book on a shelf as we leave. I remember where I’ve seen the word before—every month on a piece of packaging in the bathroom—and am finally able to read it: Menstruation.

 

 

​
 

“I’m not going home.” I halt outside of Indigo. Seojun turns around. I think about the picture book, the beaming family on the cover. My fingers clench. I need to buy it. I need to read it over and over until I can read it perfectly to my baby. I need to cut out a picture of the kids laughing in their backyard and tape it to our wall. There’s some secret in there. Some answer I can find and extract into our marriage to fix it.

 

Seojun checks his watch. “Come on. I don’t have much time until my meeting, but I can drop you off at home first.”

 

“Go without me. I’ll walk home later.”

 

“Haewon, wait.” He grabs my wrist. He hesitates, looking at me like he finally wants to tell me something, but nothing comes out of his mouth. Finally he just says, “Let me drive you home. Please?”

 

I step backward, shaking my head.

 

I turn around and march back inside Indigo. Seojun doesn’t follow.

 

 

​
 

A splotch of sage green paint drips from the wall, a droplet falling onto the television. I let out a warm breath into my mask. I hold my arms out for balance, a brush in one hand and a paint can in the other, and step down from the dining chair I dragged into the living room. I wipe the paint off the television as best I can, but my fingers are already smeared with paint and I end up smudging it more. Normally I would be worried that Seojun wouldn’t be happy about that, but as I glance around the living room—newspapers covering the carpet, the open paint cans dotting the floor, the couches and coffee table haphazardly moved away from the walls freshly painted sage green—I think a splotch of paint on the television will be the last thing Seojun notices.

 

I survey my work. The walls are a rich sage green, the same as the house in the picture book that’s now lying open on the coffee table. I bought the book and marched into the paint store in the mall, pointing to the fictional living room’s sage green walls to the cashier. I don’t know if I explained myself correctly but I kept jabbing at the page until he brought me paint cans of a similar colour.

 

In the television reflection, I see a crazy woman with paint on her cheeks and walls half-painted green. I shake my head and step back on the chair, painting away. If I pause for too long, I’m reminded that I don’t know what I’m doing. That maybe the only thing I can do—paint our walls green—still isn’t enough for my baby.

 

I paint, paint, and paint, covering every dreary beige corner of the wall, over all the cracks and scratches.

 

As I tiptoe on the chair, reaching the very top of the wall, the front door opens. My heart jumps, but I don’t stop. I keep painting until—

 

“Honey?”

 

I freeze, my paintbrush hovering in the air.

 

Framed by the hallway, Seojun blinks, lips parted.

 

“Yes?” It feels like I spoke by the edge of a cliff, out into the fog, unsure if I’ll hear an echo. Slowly, Seojun scans the room—the splotches of sage paint on the walls, the crinkled newspapers on the floors, the open tin cans. His nose scrunches slightly at the smell of paint in the air. His gaze finally lands on me.

It’s the first time in a while I think Seojun truly sees me.

 

“You’re late,” I say.

 

“You’re painting.” He takes a cautious step forward, looking up at me. “What’s going on?”

 

I climb down from the chair. Drop the paintbrush into the tin. I brush the loose hairs out of my face, smearing more paint from my fingertips to my forehead, and cross my arms. I take a deep breath.

 

“I’m pregnant,” I say quietly.

 

“You’re… what?”

 

I rip off my mask and drop it to the ground. “Pregnant. We’re having a baby.”

 

Seojun’s eyes widen, dumbstruck. I see him do the math—three weeks ago, that normal Tuesday. His hand covers his mouth. “Really?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Haewon.” His face breaks out into a smile. “That’s amazing.”

 

The sparkle in his eyes catches me off guard. “You think so?”

 

“Of course, I—” He steps toward me, arms raised, but hesitates. It’s been a while since we hugged each other. But Seojun places his hands firmly on my shoulders. “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

 

Tears prick my eyes. The steadiness of his hands gives me courage to say something even scarier than my pregnancy. “I don’t know. Because you never tell me anything anymore. You barely look at me. I sit at home all day in silence and you come home and somehow it’s even more quiet. I don’t even know what you did today.”

 

Seojun’s face falls. He rubs his neck. The collar of his dress shirt is askew, the top buttons undone. He looks so tired, so far from that hopeful husband who squeezed my hand on the flight to Canada.

 

“I had an interview,” he admits.

 

“You’re looking for a new job?”

 

“I can’t work at the construction site forever.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

Seojun spots the picture book on the coffee table and picks it up. Looking at the smiling family on the page, he sighs and takes a seat on a clean patch of newspaper. “I didn’t want to remind you of my failures. This isn’t the kind of life I said we’d have in Canada.” He looks at his hands. “I don’t feel like the same person who decided to immigrate, the person who told you to trust me.”

 

When he says that, something in me knocks loose. Slowly, I join Seojun on the floor, the newspaper crinkling. “I don’t feel like the same person, either.” His eyes meet mine, lined by wrinkles. Shoulders touching, it’s the closest I’ve seen his face in a long time. “I used to think things would work out on their own because—I don’t know, because it just had to.”

 

“It’s harder than I thought it would be,” Seojun says.

 

“I don’t think it’ll stop being hard,” I say. “I think this is what we signed up for.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s not your fault.” Tentatively, I take Seojun’s hand, fit my fingers between his. For a moment it feels uncomfortable, but then our hands slide into place, his rough calluses pressed against the dried paint on my palm. “I think it’s okay that it’s harder than we expected. I’m okay with taking it slow. I just don’t want to do it alone.”

 

For a moment, Seojun is still. Then he wraps an arm around me, taking a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll figure it out.”

 

We sit there, side by side, in front of the half-painted wall. My messy brush strokes look like they were painted by a toddler. I smile a little, placing a hand on my stomach.

 

“I wonder if it’s a boy or girl,” I say.

 

Seojun pulls away, looking at me. There’s a spark in his eye. “Oh god. We have to figure out how to be parents.”

 

“Somehow.”

 

“Do we have to teach them English?”

 

“I think they’ll learn it at school.”

 

“We should buy some more picture books.”

 

“Definitely. But first.” I look at the unfinished paint job around us and the buckets of paint cans dotting the floor. I turn to Seojun. “Do you feel like painting?”