Suicide Buddies

Gala Apple Graduation : A Gâteau Recipe

(hi tysm for readin, much appreciated. if you've gotten this far in this weird story, then props to you. tap the star for it is lonely, you see. kidding, but really.)

I have three cousins. One that's dead, one that's abandoned, and one that's unloved. Kiyoung, Junwoo, and Anna. I've never met two of them.

My mother and father were both immigrants in their own respects, but my mother was far more assimilated to America as she'd been here for much longer and only remembered slivers of her short childhood in Korea. My father, however, came much later—after university and therefore held high distaste for America in tandem with much appreciation.

Kiyoung was from my mother's side. I'd only ever seen photos of her, and most were in hospital beds. From a young age, Kiyoung had many heart problems, breathing problems, and couldn't be away from the hospitals for more than a few weeks before her parents would send her back.

"Such a sweet girl," my mother told me one day while we sat on the floor making kimchi together with gloved hands, our skin pungent and red-stained. "She never deserved it."

Kiyoung was five years older than me and lived in Korea. She wasn't really my cousin by definition, but my mother's best friend's daughter, who had moved to Korea because of her husband. But considering how few cousins I had for the count, I included her.

Later, it was found that she had been born with a malfunctioning respiratory system highly prone to disease and infection. Her parents held onto hope that a lung transplant, which would finally give her a normal life even if not the longest one, would come to them in due time.

When we went to church, my mother would pull me next to her in the foam-fabric church chairs and smooth down her skirt with open palms, ushering for me to copy her bowed head and clasped hands. When Pastor Kim finished his own group prayer, she'd pray on her own and Kiyoung's name would appear.

One day when I was young enough not to remember much but old enough to remember enough, she came home with red eyes and the same clasped hands.

"Kiyoung died this morning," she said. "She was just too sick."

When I asked about the new lungs, my mother just shook her head.

"Too late," she whispered in hushed Korean. "They were too late."

She went into her room after that. My father came home, stone-faced, and joined her there. When he emerged, he looked the exact same, but behind the door, I could hear my mother's muffled sniffles. Cries for a child she had only seen through photo frames and prayers. Cries that lasted nearly two weeks.

I used to ask her about Kiyoung, but after those weeks my mother seemed to forget all about her.

"Kiyoung?" she repeated. "What about her?" Like she had died a hundred years ago.

Then she would tell me to finish my sliced sagwa and finish my homework for the day, smiling as she ruffled my hair before going to prepare dinner. Like it was nothing, Like it was always nothing. Beneath the silk sheets it went, not a single maggot crawling out after. I never heard about Kiyoung again.

Junwoo was on my father's side, nearly ten years older than me, and the son of his much older sister who lived in Gimpo, and who refused to talk to my father unless in dire need.

"Jiltu," he would mutter. Jealousy. "She never studied a day, but I studied very hard and went to Seoul." Because Seoul University was Harvard for Korea, and therefore produced very smart and very arrogant people like my father. "She holds it against me forever."