Daze of Loss by Yuna Kang

i.

Keep walking. There are branching hallways, and a woman occupies them. She is an elderly Asian woman, in a scratchy face mask, putting up an old map. Ignore her. She is ignoring you.

Keep walking. There at the end is a wall, and only by reaching it so closely that your nose could scrape the plaster, that then you will see the hall. It is to your right.

Tissues are lazily tossed in an adjacent water fountain, as if to cram the flow. The light is brighter, moving from the grey-orangeness to the standard yellow blur.

The bathroom is dirty. The bathroom is crowded. A good beetle crawls up the walls, antennas sensitive and twitching. There is no time to be embarrassed, or afraid. It is more his home than yours.

The cleaning lady from earlier will spontaneously appear in the bathroom with you. Ignore her. She is ignoring you. She watches you wash your hands with some interest, and much judgement. Somehow to her standards, you have done things wrong, but it doesn’t matter. Ignore her. She is ignoring you.

Leave the way you came, and touch nothing. The walls are less than adobe, for they insulate nothing, and collect dirt itself.

ii.

I did things wrong.

I wanted to talk to the cleaning lady. Most people, especially the elderly Asian ones, in Chinatown are, well, Chinese. Guangzhou hailers or Hong Kong expatriates. Cambodian mixed, or North Vietnamese-Chinese individuals, all fleeing the wars. I was Korean, but expatriated in foldable ways, so I craved that proximity to home. Mean Asian elders. Telling me to grow up, or go home.

“Ah, ajummoni…” I called to her. Peeking my head through taupe hallway. She looked up at me, unsurprised. Her eyes were seeing, but they were gray.

Ajummoni, ajeossi. The lights did not feign to flicker, they did not stop. I thought by accosting this woman, maybe I would have distorted a sacred balance of sorts, but no.

She continued to ignore me.

iii.

When I was younger, I had the standard bedroom. My blanket was dark blue, and machine-stitched with huge pale stars. My walls were a similar midnight shade, and all of my furniture was made of an auburn-colored wood. Ikea.

I had a few stuffed animals, but I treasured them. There was bunny, a pink ragdoll type with button eyes. There was Bunny II, more updated, in Easter yellow with a thin smile. I had a sock monkey, a couple of fighter jets, a Lego model of a truck and a car. I was tomboyish, even back then.

I saw ajummoni in the corner of my bedroom at night. Her face was dark; the shadows were almost a veil. I saw her long gloves, the kind older women wore when they washed dishes, or rinsed the salt from kimchi leaves. The ones lounging in our home sink were bright pink. Hers were a muted yellow, as if to match the lights of a later bathroom.

She would crouch, as if she was rinsing out a pot in a stream. Or she would stand, back perfectly straight, shoulders set in tension. The way old people do when they are avoiding pain, eking out a few more years of cushioned misery through severe stretches, posture gaming.

I loved her. My door was always shut at night, and there were no pets. Ajummoni in the midnight corner made me feel like I was never alone.

I couldn’t wait to meet her one day.

iv.

I refused.

I walked backwards. Or in my mind, I did so.

(In another mind, I kept on walking. I used the restroom. I returned the bathroom key. I went home).

Like an action star, or sitcom buffoon, I grabbed ajummoni’s arm. This woman I have known in dreams and more.

“Hey,” I said, and my English deserted me. “왜?”

Why, why, why? Why did you no longer appear in my bedroom, when the daylight turned the walls purple, and I became afraid to go outside? When I first kissed a girl, and then a woman, and the corner became silent. A still fountain. A drought grave. Eomma wouldn’t look at me, (divided away- multitudes and multitudes), and I became afraid to go outside. The dirt hills, with a myriad of ant eyes. Pincers and forests. Jets streaking upwards, making heat in the steady blue skies. I saw rabbits once, in a zoo. They were munching on crocuses that were mounted in a lawn; they were happy once, too.

All of these things I could not express to you, ajummoni, woman of the corner. Cleaning lady in bathroom nightmare, who smells vaguely of salt and kelp-laden seas. Take me to the marina, or take me to Jack London Square. I want to wander in the delicious melt, where concrete and water are one. Air is rising. Temperature is flying. Virtual osmosis, maneuvering around my body- I want to be a part of it. Of it. Of me.

v.

I grabbed her arm.

“Hey,” I said, and my manners deserted me. “I’m talking to you.”

Ajummoni, who is not her, because up close she has eyes the color of pepper flakes, and a mean twisted smile. The ajummoni of my childhood was veiled and kind, ever-watching, ever-sweet. I had grabbed her arm, and she wrenched from me. From my grasp.

“Ajummoni,” I said, but I was not talking to her anymore. The lady was pushing her cart away, and away, and I noticed the hallway was blue at the corners, and blue at the end. I could see brightness, the skylights colored, as if emulating the outdoors bright.

A procession. Dirt was not on the walls but graffiti, etchings done in crude chalk, so they looked more like patterns of ants, little dots separated by the plaster bumps. A policeman with a sword. A nurse cradling the arm of a man with a black hat. He is young; a teenager. His eyes are sunken, his bones are wrought into his suit.

And then there was a musician, tiny, holding a flute painted with lively elephants. It took a while to notice, I had to inch closer and closer to the wall, but I saw it. Butterflies were dancing to the entertainer’s sweet tune. The musicality of it carried me, closer and closer, to the end.

vi.

I returned the keycard to the front desk. There was a different security officer there, an older man, with pale cheeks and the air of a bureaucrat about him.

“You’re lucky,” he remarked. A crumpled black hat lay by his feet; he was wearing leather shoes. Something was playing in the plaza air, a video of sorts, but the words were muffled and distant.

“Huh?” I said. I looked closely at the man; utterly normal being. He took up a flattened cigarette laying on his desk; he let it fall with a sigh.

The outdoors were bright and vivid; their usual best. The guard opened the library doors for me. He wished me a good day.

0.

Walk down a tan hallway, with walls partially scrubbed of dirt, with cobwebs dusty and high. The lights flicker; the world is in a taupe glow…

vii.

“I’m sorry,” I said. The lady looked up.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Visions of a ghastly ajummoni, swirling and anticerebral, fell to an end. I was putting her in corridors, in rooms, where she did not belong.

Perhaps she was never there. Perhaps it was just me all along.

I pivoted backwards, and I followed the standard steps. Walk to the wall, turn right. See the fountain now devoid of papers, the cleaning crew must have come in already. Come out, and see the walls dusty and orange, like unpainted pottery pieces from the Aztec lands.

I nearly forgot to give the keycard back. A bare teenager, (19, he informed me,) had to chase me down. He wore an embroidered jacket richly adorned with dragons and phoenixes, but it was the colors that most inspired me, he was laden in rich reds and warm golds.

“Not the usual attire for a security officer,” I said, before realizing I spoke aloud. He laughed to see me blush.

“No but--” he said, breaking into a grin. Even with the green pallor of his cheeks, tortoiseshell-colored in the sunlight, he looked happy. As if the luminous glow of an opal had moved into the entire room, inspiring his skin tone, inspiring him.

“It’s a good time,” he said, opening the doors so I could leave.

“Have a good day, Dae,” he said. I thought for a moment of something clever, or more profound to say, but I had nothing in my mind. I wished him the same as well.

Yuna Kang is a queer, half-deaf, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She loves postcards, crows, God(x), and cats.