A Step from Heaven (15 page)

Pictures. A pile of old black and white pictures. I can hardly believe my eyes. Here in this box is a fist-deep wealth of old memories.

Uhmma! I gasp. Where did you get those?

A gentle tug on the corners of her lips is all the answer she will
give me for now. Her face is almost sad. She lifts up a photo with an image of a young boy and an older girl dressed in matching blue uniforms.

Uhmma points to the girl, who looks about nine or ten. That is me, she says.

I take the picture from Uhmma. You? I ask and stare hard at the face. Same serious expression, a slight gathering of the eyebrows, lips held tightly closed, cheekbones high and prominent. I smile. Uhmma was determined even back then.

Who is that? I ask and point to the boy.

My brother, your uncle. Song Won Ju, Uhmma says, already picking out another photo.

The little boy is smiling so wide and open you can see his tongue. Why haven't I heard about Uhmma's brother? Or seen these photos? I vaguely remember a trip to visit Uhmma's parents, but their faces and the specifics of the visit are blurred and faint in my memory. I realize that a whole part of my history has been missing.

Uhmma, why have you not told us about your family? I ask.

Uhmma passes me another photo. This time I recognize Uhmma right away. She is a teenager, but her younger brother stands taller. He's even taller than his father. He is as tall as Joon. The four of them are dressed formally. Uhmma and her mother stand in low pumps, wearing dark dresses and long woolen coats with fur on the collar. The men are in suits and ties. Even with the countryside in the background, there is an air of wealth about them.

I pull on Uhmma's shoulder. Why have you not shown me these photos? I ask.

This time Uhmma stops going through the pictures. She sighs
and slouches back. Wisps of hair have escaped from her bun. These pictures, Uhmma says, waving her hand at the box, are hard for me to look at.

What do you mean? I ask.

They remind me too much of Han Gook. My family. They make me homesick.

Why did you not let Joon and me look at them?

Uhmma glances at me sideways. Your Apa would not have been happy to know I had kept these with me.

Why?

Uhmma smiles and says, It is always why with you, Young Ju.

I shrug.

Because, Uhmma says and pats my hand. Apa did not like to be reminded of where I came from.

I slowly hold up the picture of Uhmma and her family. Because you were rich, I state.

Uhmma stares down at her hands. We sit silent for a moment, and then Uhmma reaches into the box again and pulls out another photo.

This one is for you, she says.

I take it from her, glance at the young man holding a little girl on his shoulders and at the woman standing by his side. Waves and a long stretch of beach lie in the background.

Is this when you were young? I ask.

No, Young Ju, Uhmma says. Look again.

This time I study the man carefully. Study the slope of his nose, the way his eyes crinkle in the corners from his broad grin like the eyes of sleepy cats in the sun. The way his hair stands up straight
in the front from a cowlick. Then I look at the little girl. She is not facing the camera. Instead, her head is turned slightly, her eyes watching the waves. The woman grins broadly at the man.

I carefully point to the little girl. That is me.

Uhmma points to the man and woman. And Apa and me, she says softly. That was one of the best days I can remember.

I try to think back. Remember. The waves. Uhmma! I exclaim, a memory forming on the edge of my tongue. You taught me how to jump in the waves that day.

Uhmma wrinkles her eyebrows together, shakes her head slightly.

Was it Halmoni? I ask. Halmoni loved the beach, I say.

Uhmma leans in close. It was your Apa, Young Ju.

I frown. Apa?

He loved the waves, Uhmma says. I remember how worried I was to see you go into the water. But somehow he taught you to be brave that day. You loved the waves after that. Never wanted to come out.

Apa?

What dreamers you two were! Pretending to be dolphins, then seals, then ships that could sail far across the sea. Uhmma suddenly turns away from me, looks out the window of our new home. After a moment she says quietly, He was a different man back then.

I trace the faces in the picture with my fingertips. I can barely remember the feel of his arms as he held me tight and asked me to be brave. How scared I was of the waves, of what might be out there.

You take that with you, Uhmma says, peering over my shoulder. Take it to college so you can remember how to be brave. She holds
the corner of the picture for a second and then lets go. Uhmma turns her face to the window again. She gazes out and says quietly, And remember, Young Ju. You come from a family of dreamers.

I hold the picture close to my heart.

I am a sea bubble floating, floating in a dream. Bhop.

Uhmma's hands are as old as sand. They have always been old, even when we were young. In the mornings, they would scratch across our sleeping faces as she smoothed our foreheads, our cheeks, and told us quietly, Wake up. Time for school.

At work, her hands sewed hundreds of jeans before the lunch bell sounded and then boxed hundreds more before she left for her night job at Johnny's Steak House. They knew how to make a medium-rare steak, baked potato on the side, in ten minutes flat for hungry customers always in a hurry.

Uhmma's hands washed our dinner dishes, cleaned the kitchen floor with a rag, folded load after load of laundry. They could raise hems of second-hand dresses with stitches so tiny there was barely a line. Even on Sunday they held a Bible and helped set out doughnuts and coffee after the service. Uhmma's hands rarely rested.

But sometimes, not often—and not when Uhmma was tired and wanted only to feel the cool underside of a pillow—but sometimes, her hands would open. Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, in a sunspot bright as the open sea, Uhmma unfurled her fingers. Palms up. A flower finally open to the bees.

Joon and I would rush to sit on either side of her. Uhmma held our small hands in her own and said she could read stories in the lines of our palms.

Look, Young Ju, Uhmma said. Your intelligence line is strong. Someday, maybe you will become a doctor. Uhmma traced the line
with her cat-tongue finger, tickling my hand as it moved from the heel of my palm up to the base of my middle finger.

Joon shoved away my hand and offered his for inspection. Look at my intelligence line, Uhmma.

These baby hands have lines? Let me see, Uhmma said and brought his palm up close to her face. She studied it for a moment and then suddenly kissed the middle. Plop. A raindrop on water.

Joon giggled, kicking out his feet. This one, Uhmma. Tell me about this one, Joon said and pointed to a line on his palm, the one that predicted he would live to be an old, successful man with many children.

It did not matter that we had heard the stories before. Each telling was a lullaby of dreams we never wanted to wake from. We were reaching, always reaching, to touch Uhmma's sandpaper palms.

Uhmma said her hands were her life. But for us, she only wished to see our hands holding books. You must use this, she said and pointed to her mind. Uhmma's hands worked hard to make sure our hands would not resemble hers.

It takes only a glance at our nails, our knuckles, our palms to know Uhmma succeeded. Joon and I both possess Uhmma's lean fingers, but without the hard, yellowed calluses formed by years of abuse from physical labor. Our hands turn pages of books, press fingertips to keyboard buttons, hold pencils and pens. They are lithe and tender. The hands of dreams come true.

As I walk with Uhmma now, her hand grasped firmly in mine, I can feel the strength that was there in our childhood ebbing away. I cup her hand, unfurl her fingers, and let the lines of her palm speak
to the sky. They are the marks of story and time. For some it might be hard to tell which lines were there from birth and which ones immigrated from countless jobs. But I can tell.

I trace a set of tiny lines etched along her thumb. They speak of Uhmma's early years gathering and drying fish along the Korean coastline. I follow another path and find a deep groove at the base of her pointer finger. Immediately I smell the smoky kitchen of the steak house crowded with visitors just pulling off the I-5 for dinner.

Too busy, she had explained as she unwound the Reynolds plastic wrap and tried to peel away the blood-soaked napkin from the cut. The old scar, white and fleshy, still remembers the hard kiss of the dancing knife.

I smooth the tips of her fingers. Tiny flecks of skin, parched from dry-cleaning clothes, ironing shirts, “heavy on the starch,” stand up searching for the moisture that was robbed day after day for eleven years.

In the middle of her palm, the creases are still strong. Although the line of riches is cut short by a scar from an unseen hook caught in a fish's mouth, her lifeline extends out full and long. The marriage line is faint, crisscrossed by tiny cracks in the skin starting and ending in a mystery. Uhmma's hands have lived many lives, though her hair only recently has begun to gray.

I study these lines of history and wish to erase them. Remove the scars, the cuts, fill in the cracks in the skin. I envelop Uhmma's hands in my own tender palms. Close them together. Like a book. A Siamese prayer. I tell her, I wish I could erase these scars for you.

Uhmma gently slips her hands from mine. She stares for a moment at her callused skin and then says firmly, These are my hands, Young Ju. Uhmma tucks a wisp of my long, straight black hair behind my ear and then puts her arm around my waist. We continue our walk along the beach.

My deepest gratitude to the Mesa Refuge Foundation for the gift of time and space. To Jacqueline Woodson, Norma Fox Mazer, Sharon Darrow, and Brock Cole at the Vermont College MFA in Writing Children's Literature Program, your knowledge and unwavering support brought this book into the light. To Jennifer Brown, James Nagle, Harriet Muir, Deborah Drickersen Cortez, and Ian Haney Lopez, those amazing dinners and fits of laughter were the best endings to my days. And to my editor, Stephen Roxburgh, thank you for rendering the words anew.

Also by An Na

The Fold

Wait for Me

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2001 by An Na

Jacket photograph of model copyright © 2016 by Jill Wachter

Jacket pattern photographs (plants and birds) copyright © 2016 by Thinkstock

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