Rachel Lee

Prayer

Today is Wednesday, which means I am learning about being saved. I learn about God every Wednesday for an hour at a time; Pastor Yoon and Joseph share the hour. Pastor Yoon walks slowly across the stage now, trying to look each of us in the eye. But Yena and Hana are both asleep next to me, and the girl in front of us is playing piano tiles.

Joseph is British. He’s white and blond and talks to us in English. He says Jesus instead of Yesu-nim, Je-sus, with his British accent and his hands passionate in the air. The idea is that we should learn English not just for our own selfish gains, but to spread the word of God as well. But I don’t know, he makes my head hurt. And he spits when he talks.

I like listening to Pastor Yoon, who always tells us the same story about his gambling addiction. The details tend to vary. Sometimes he’s betting on horses, sometimes it has to do with Go-stop, and apparently, he went to Macau once. But they always end the same way: the voice of God guided him away from these horrible things and onto the right path, which now includes talking to us every Wednesday and volunteering at the Gangnam dog shelter. Sometimes, he even tells us about his stocks. Investing will save you from student debt; gambling will not.

High school has taught me a lot of things about God that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. I am sixteen and I know now that God loves everyone the same. So should we. God can forgive. So should we. Jesus is the savior; he can save anyone. So should we, but Pastor Yoon tells us that this isn’t actually our job.

He finally reaches the left end of the stage and stills again. Our eyes meet as he scans the crowd. I feel bad for him because most of us are asleep. Some girls sleep later on Tuesday nights because they use Chapel to nap— like Hana and Yena, even though their names mean Gift of God and Gift of Jesus. But Pastor Yoon always uses up the entire hour regardless, so maybe it’s not actually about us listening.

On stage, he swipes a hand across his forehead. He clears his throat once. This, here, is the most important part. I don’t hold my breath, but I do bring my hands into my lap.

With a clap and in his loudest voice, Pastor Yoon declares with renewed vigor, “Okay, let’s pray!”

The thing is, I’ve been learning a lot about God, but nothing about how to pray. On the first Wednesday of my freshman year, I bowed my head a few seconds too late and kept my eyes wide open. And I kept looking up because I wanted to see. I wanted to see what everyone looked like with their heads down and hands together like that, just thinking. Or praying.

I asked Pastor Yoon how I was supposed to do it a few weeks later, when I finally realized that it wasn’t a one-time thing. He told me that there are no rules, that prayer can be about anything, and that God listens to everything we have to say. And when he left, he looked so satisfied that I never asked him about it again.

At his shout, Hana jerks awake but Yena continues to sleep. The girl in front of us tucks her phone away. Pastor Yoon closes his eyes. And he begins to pray.

“Dear Heavenly Father,”

I close my eyes too. I start thinking about the calculus quiz I have next period, repeat the equations in my head over and over. I wonder if God is listening, like Pastor Yoon said. If He is, I hope He likes inverse trigonometric functions.

I’m kidding, of course. He’s not listening.

****

Mom says that whenever there is a full moon, we get to make a wish. We’re standing outside our apartment and the sky is so dark. I am seven, I think, or maybe six, since No-Eul still has to be carried. Dad is holding him with one arm and he’s quiet, for once. I’m glad he’s asleep because it’s past his bedtime and mine, too, but this feels special.

She tells me to make a circle with my fingers. Then she takes my hand and points it at the sky. When the moon sits in the sky in a perfect circle, plump and happy, he will grant us our wishes, she says. Dad chuckles as I squint at the sky, at the way the moon is glowing against my thumb. He tells me that is what I am named after: Ha-Neul, sky. And No-Eul, sunset.

He tousles my hair with his other hand. He has a specific smell, one I can recognize even in sleep, but I don’t know what it is yet. We stand together and look at the moon, the four of us small under the big sky. When I start to yawn, mom pulls my hand down and presses my palms together. She covers my eyes with her own palm; it smells like baby lotion. Make a wish, she tells me.

My first wish-- and so I learn to pray long before I learn about God. I don’t remember what I wished for; it might have been a hamster. Or maybe a dog.

*****

I come home and find No-Eul sitting at the kitchen table, which means dad is coming home early tonight. His face is sullen and puckered like a sour grape. He’s playing some game, and it’s loud: the sound of a knife slashing through the air and a tinny scream.

“I’m home,” I call out to mom as No-Eul mutters angrily under his breath.

She turns around and gives me a quick smile before she goes back to stirring.

“How was school? Anything fun happen?”

“Nope.”

She turns around again and gives me a look.

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “We had chapel.”

Mom huffs. “And that was fun?”

Mom and dad both think my high school is cultlike. They think all Christians are at least a little bit cultlike; dad says all religions are. He says religion is as vulgar as it is addicting. But mom is a Buddhist, I think.

In the end, they both decided that my high school’s English program was too good to pass up. It’s not about God, or faith, not even hope, really, it’s about English. So they both like Joseph, even though he only teaches us how to say things like “let go and let God.”

“It was okay,” I say. I never tell mom that sometimes in Chapel, I’m the only one awake in my row.

Eyes fixed on his screen, No-Eul makes a few gagging noises. “Yeah, your nun school sounds really fun, Ha-Neul.”

I whip around with a sharp glare; he sneers back.

Mom says No-Eul is going through puberty and that I should be understanding because I was like that too when I was a sixth grader. But honestly, I don’t remember ever being this stupid. And when I was in sixth grade, I knew why dad had two phones, why he was busy even on the weekends. No-Eul is in sixth grade now, but I’m not sure if he knows that dad could be cheating again. Or maybe he does know. And we’re just on different sides.

Mom makes No-Eul set the table because he was rude to me. He grumbles, but he sets the table anyway. Then he sits and waits, just like the thousand other times we waited for dad, except his legs are a lot longer and he smells sharp next to me. Mom sets the kimchi-jjigae on the table and keeps the lid on.

Then, a few beeps at the front door, quick and precise: dad. I hear his steps as he walks down the hallway but I don’t get up, and neither does No-Eul.

When we were younger, we used to dash out to the front door like it was a race, like the floor was lava and only dad could sweep us out of it. I don’t remember what he looked like then, younger than he is now, up close like that and with his face pressed into my neck. But I do remember the feeling of his arm and his hand, calloused and warm, so big that he could be nothing other than a hero. And the clean crisp of his shiny suit.

I hear him first, his voice as he crows, “My beautiful family!”

Then mom, “How was work?”

Their words are like a careful song, a tape I can only listen to so often before its edges start to fray.

I smell him as he tousles my hair, his fingertips raspy with cigarette smoke. I look up to watch as he does the same to No-Eul, to marvel again at how similar they look: dark eyebrows, a pointy nose, and a round chin. They always have, even when No-Eul was just a baby, back when he always wanted me to hold his hand. I watch No-Eul’s face, smooth and still now as dad pats him on the shoulder. I wonder if he will grow up and smell like cigarettes, too.

*****

Mom and dad are fighting again and they’re loud. They’re loud enough that when No-Eul opens my door with his tiny chest heaving, I pull him into my bed without saying anything. I press my forehead against his; his breaths are hot and teary against my cheeks. I’m crying too, I think, or maybe I’m not. But I feel sad, if sad is the right word. Sad enough that my hands are trembling over No-Eul’s.

I’m an older sister and my job is to talk. So I talk about school, and what I’m learning in fifth grade. Since No-Eul is in kindergarten, I try to remember which toys I brought to show and tell. I make up a story about a hero. She can fly— and she is so strong that she can carry an entire house into the sky. A house full of bricks. A house full of planes. A house with a little boy. A house with a little girl. But the screaming grows louder, something thuds, my voice thins, and I can only say one thing,

it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

A mantra; a command. But no one is listening, so I leave No-Eul under the duvet. Without my hand in his, he is wailing now. I find my phone and then I call the police.

And I will never forget this, pressing my palm over my other ear to listen to the line ring, a flat heartbeat over No-Eul’s feeble breaths and dad’s hollers. Hanging up. My phone coming away damp.

*****

We’re sitting in a circle on the field, me and Hana and some of the other girls also in junior year. Fridays mean after-school bible study with Joseph, but today is my first time here. I’m here because Hana is, who isn’t here because of the two silvery crosses on her ears, but because she wants to marry Joseph. She’s a fan of the way he says “darling,” like a lot of the other girls in class.

Most of their questions are about love.

“Joseph, can God help someone fall in love?”

“Joseph, does God choose who you get to marry?”

“Joseph, what would you want in a wife?”

Joseph answers their questions with a smile, shaking his head sometimes.

“Any other serious questions?” He asks. I keep my mouth shut, like I have the past hour. We’ve been sitting outside for a while and my cheeks feel hot. I don’t know if my question is a serious one or a stupid one, even more so than all the questions about love.

“These are serious questions, Joseph!” Hana pouts. The other girls laugh, so I do too. At that, Joseph shrugs with another smile and tells us that we can wrap up here if there is nothing else to discuss. He prays with his face tilted to the sky. Heaven is always in the sky.

When I stand up, my mouth feels dry. I told Hana that I wanted to come with her today because I also like Joseph’s accent and his hair. I didn’t tell her about mom calling the abbot, about dad who is coming home late again.

As I hoist my backpack onto my shoulder, Joseph stops me with a palm on my arm.

“I know today is your first time here with us. I was wondering if you had any questions about anything?” he asks me in his broken Korean.

I look at Joseph and his kind eyes and imagine him with a cigarette between his fingers. I imagine him lifting a daughter onto his shoulders. Him drunk. Him with a son, buying that son Taiyaki in winter and Bingsoo in summer. Him picking out the bones of a fish, then eating only the scales. I want to ask Joseph about people like this, if they can still be saved.

“Ha-Neul, we’re leaving!” Hana calls. So I shake my head at Joseph and dash away to meet them.

I walk to the bus stop with them and I try not to resent them, the girls and their giggles, Hana and her loud voice as she prays for God to let her marry Joseph. Hope looks so easy on them.

*****

Mom is on the phone and I think my great-grandmother is dying. One hand holds her phone to her ear. The other hand curls into a fist then unfurls again, over and over, like a child’s hand. I know something bad is happening because when she calls for great-grandma, her voice is bright and devastated. And the word, halmeoni, crumbles at the end into one sharp inhale.

It’s me, halmeoni. It’s Jiyeon. Yes, Jiyeon, halmeoni. Can you hear me?

I watch her apologize into the phone: she’s sorry that she isn’t in Busan, that she ca’t be there with her. I know that it was my great-grandma who took care of mom since she was thirteen, when grandma died from cancer. I am thirteen now.

Mom glances at me once before she turns her back to me. Her shoulders tremble, but her voice is quieter now. My chest starts to feel tight and I know I’m seeing something I’m not supposed to, so I leave. I close the door to my room and press my ear against it to listen to what she says.

Halmeoni, I love you. I love you so much. Okay?

I go back to the living room after an hour has passed. I find mom on the couch, watching TV. When I ask her if she’s okay, she hugs me and tells me yes, thank you for asking. Her nose is red. No-Eul is asleep; dad isn’t home because he is working. He will come home late smelling like alcohol and fall asleep in his tie. The next morning, mom will tell him what happened. He will tell her he’s sorry. And then mom will drive No-Eul and I to school, even though she will never call anyone halmeoni again. Months later, we will be fighting and she will start to cry. And she will tell me that if I am not on her side, no one is.

I spend the night wide awake, peering out my window. There is no full moon but I close my eyes and make a wish anyway. I wish that heaven is real so that mom will be able to see her grandma again. I stand there for a long time, mouthing the words to myself until I can almost see the two of them there, happy and together and young again. I mouth the words to myself until they sound like a prayer-- and I am praying that heaven is real. In my mind, heaven looks a lot like the past.

*****

I open the front door and find mom holding a pig head. She crouches and places it on the coffee table, next to the Asian pears and apples. Two bags of jujubes sit in front of the head.

“Mom,” I begin slowly. “What is that?”

She stands up and turns to me, one hand on her hip.

“It’s a pig head,” she gestures to it nonchalantly. “You can’t tell?”

“Well, why is it here?”

“It’s for Gosa, Ha-Neul,” she grunts as she pushes the table to the right.

Gosa is for getting rid of bad luck and bringing in good luck. I remember this because it’s what grandpa told me the last time we had Gosa, three years ago when dad got a promotion. But the last time we had Gosa, mom refused to buy a pig head. She said it was embarrassing, so we had rice cake instead.

Yesterday, she told me she went to Woljung-sa, her favorite temple, and talked to the abbot there. He told her to stay hopeful, she said. That anyone can be saved. Today, she sits here and pushes the pig head to the center of the table, even though I know dad hasn’t gotten a promotion.

“Why are we having Gosa, mom?”

I feel tired.

She doesn’t answer; I ask her again.

She tells me, with a sigh, “For good luck.”

“So your dad can get promoted again,” she adds after a breath.

When I don’t say anything, she adds again, with a guilty glimpse at me, “And then he can stop working so late.”

I look at her, the thin hair on her forehead and the dark lines around her eyes, and I’m glad No-Eul isn’t home yet. Because he would be embarrassed by this, this pig head that’s supposed to bring us good fortune, and by mom, crouched here in a stained t-shirt.

I sit down next to her and help pour the jujubes into a bowl. I look at the pig’s face. It is still and yellow. I wonder if the tug in my heart is embarrassment. If it is hope.

If this is what will save us.

*****

When you were younger, mom says, you used to love seeing dad in his suit. You wanted him to wear it all the time: when he took you to the playground, when he dropped you off at preschool, when he tucked you in for bed. For some reason, you could just never stop talking about how cool your dad looked in a suit. It was adorable. And one weekend, I was busy with something, so it was just you and your dad at home. He asked you what you wanted to do. And you told him you wanted to go find a new suit for him! Can you believe that, Ha-Neul? You were five. I mean, you would never do something like that today. But that day, you told him you wanted to find him a new suit. And so the two of you walked around the department store all day, just looking at suits. Your one weekend together, and that’s what you did. That’s how much you adored him, Ha-Neul. Can you believe that? Just how much you loved your dad? Can you believe that, Ha-Neul?

Every time she tells me this, I just nod. I don’t remember any of it. But I think about it a lot. I think about it again and again and again, until I can almost feel his hand in mine: my favorite prayer.

As we’re walking hand-in-hand, I always tell him I love him. And he’s always listening.

*****

Hana grabs my arm as soon as I walk into class. Something about Joseph, probably, so I roll my eyes at her and begin to pull my things out of my backpack anyway. With a huff, she tries to tug me closer.

“Someone died,” she whispers into my ear. My hands pause mid-air, stunned.

“What?” I whisper back, even though we’re at the seat farthest from Mrs. Park’s desk. I look around and find that the other kids are also whispering. Yena leans across the desk and starts to whisper, too.

“Someone who graduated two years ago,” Yena’s eyes flit to Mrs. Park, who is writing something on the board. When she looks back at me, her eyes are wide and curious. “Apparently he killed himself.”

“Oh my god, that’s horrible. What’s his name?” I answer her with a frown.

Hana shrugs, arms crossed over her chest. “No one knows. But all the seniors get to skip first block to pray for him.”

“What?”

“Like, they put all the seniors in the library and they’re all praying for the person who died,” Hana tells me with a look, the same one she gives me when she thinks I’m being slow.

“But why?” My hand curls around my notebook. A hundred prayers.

“So he can go to heaven, duh,” Yena interjects. Her fingers are playing with the silver cross nestled between her collarbones.

With a sniff, she adds, “But my dad told me that people who commit suicide can’t go to heaven.”

“Oh my god, Yena, don’t say that,” Hana hisses, slapping Yena on the shoulder.

“I’m just saying!” Yena protests. “That’s what my dad told me.”

“Well, they’re all praying for him right now, so I’m sure he’ll go to heaven.” Hana rolls her eyes. Like it’s that easy.

After class, I run to the library to see if the seniors are still praying. I don’t tell Hana and Yena. I peek into the room from behind the door and find them sitting in neat rows, heads bowed and hands clasped together in prayer. My breath catches in my throat. A hundred prayers. If God will ever hear, it is now.

I ignore the guilt coiling in my chest. I close my eyes and I pray.

I run away after, my steps quick and my breath fast. I dart into the bathroom. My hands are sticky with sweat. As I am washing my hands, I wipe the tears from my eyes.

I hope their words will be enough to save him, the person I don’t know, the person I’ve cheated. I hope their prayers are like hands, pulling him up from where he fell to wherever heaven is. But if God can only hear one prayer, I hope it is mine.

*****

Dear God,

Please make sure that No-Eul does not start to smoke. And if he does, please make sure that mom doesn’t know. Please make sure that mom is happy. Please make sure that she isn’t lonely. Please make sure that she knows I’m on her side. Please make sure that she doesn’t forgive dad, not if he’s cheating again. Please make sure that dad doesn’t cheat again. Please make sure that dad doesn’t go to hell. Please make sure that we can be happy again. Please make sure that dad doesn’t go to hell. Please make sure that dad doesn’t go to hell. Please make sure that dad doesn’t go to hell.

*****

I open the front door and find only loafers in the doorway. Dad’s home. He’s sitting on the couch, watching TV with his tie loose. The afternoon sun settles like a glaze across him and he looks thinner and drowsier than I remember.

“Hi, dad,” I say to him first. He smiles.

“Ha-Neul! How was school?”

“Good,” I hesitate. “Why are you home so early?”

“I was supposed to have a meeting but the meeting got canceled, so I thought I’d just come home. Relax for a bit,” he squints at me like he doesn’t recognize me, either.

Then he scratches at his ear and asks, “Do you want to go out for Bingsoo?”

I sit in his car and ask him to tell me a story. I ask him to tell me again about how he met mom. So he tells me the story again, how they met at work, how he liked her first, how he proposed to her with a quartet in an Italian restaurant.

He forgets a few details. He forgets to tell me that when they met at work, she was wearing the blue blouse that she still has today. He forgets to tell me how he fell in love with her on their first date, how much he adored her rosy cheeks and her squeaky laugh. He forgets to tell me about the sunset behind them as he was proposing. He forgets to tell me how much he still loves her. My hands are careful and still in my lap and I think to myself the details he forgets. Once, then twice.

After he’s done speaking, I don’t say anything else, not even when he jokes about how much I love that story. I don’t look at him, but I breathe his air: the smell of a father. I look out the window and I find a cloud that might be heaven. I want to ask him if he believes in heaven, if he believes in being saved. I want to tell him that I do.

But I glance at him and find a stranger there, an old man in a ratty suit. And he begins to hum, so I don’t say anything. I press my forehead against the cool window of the car. He’s not listening.

Rachel Lee is a junior at Emory University where she studies political science and creative writing. She grew up in Seoul, South Korea, and has loved reading and writing since her childhood. The first English book she remembers reading is the Rainbow Magic series. Today, her love for fiction extends to her interest in law, which she finds to carry many of the same threads as storytelling. For her future plans, Rachel hopes to continue exploring the craft-based aspects of fiction and is also considering law school.