Tokki

4

Six months later, I was seventeen years old, a whopping eight months pregnant, and signing the lease to an apartment just around the corner from Mrs. Kim's restaurant.

It was small but it was mine. I had nothing but an old mattress, donated by a customer of ours, and an old table I had found in an alley. I was given a plate, a bowl, a cup, and some cutlery from Mrs. Kim but I refused to take anything else from her. The job, alone, had been enough. To offer employment to a child she barely even knew, an American at that, knowing of my situation? She had been a god-send. She had also already bought a closet full of baby clothes for me, insisting that she should be the god-mother and I agreed.

By the time I could no longer see my feet, I had begun to love Mrs. Kim as my second term mother. She was always checking up on my health, mental, emotional, and physical. She was easily someone I could talk to, and I did on the several occasions where she had been my ride to the doctor's office, or sitting in her office in the back of the restaurant.

She would offer me to come in and have lunch, even on my off days. She had begun to refer to me as family. I never told Mrs. Kim I was living on the streets. Sometimes, though, I think she had her suspicions but knew my pride wouldn't let her help me in that department.

And the customers and coworkers I had encountered while working for her were a friendly, lively bunch. They had all taken to teaching me Korean whenever the opportunity arose and I had to admit, I was pretty good at speaking and understanding the basics by the time I was due to go into labor.

I hadn't heard from Gukkie since right after he had landed in Korea. My phone had been cut off and I had saved every penny I had earned just to get us a place we could call our home. I wondered how he had been doing. Wondered if all his dreams had come true. I hadn't heard anything from Mrs.Kim and television wasn't a big priority for me. It was all about working and providing for us. I took on extra shifts, sometimes doing doubles, or seven days a week until Mrs. Kim forced me to slow down. "It's time for you to prepare for your little bundle," she had said. "Take some time to enjoy what little you have left for yourself. Go to the ocean, take a nice walk, read a book.

I did begin to read a lot around my sixth month, books that I found in random places or given to me by coworkers or customers. I'd begun, what I considered, an unhealthy obsession with true crime. Stories of the craziest, most profound killers had me up all night with my nose in the pages.

It was on one of those nights when my contractions started. It wasn't killer pain, nothing I hadn't felt before. Just a bit of cramping and discomfort. I chucked it up to Braxton-Hicks and continued on with my stories. I don't know why I didn't pay more attention to my body, as the doctor at the clinic had told me I would more than likely go into early labor. I guess I just didn't think I was really ready. It wasn't the right time yet.

But boy, was it. I ended up hobbling down the hall, my water having broken and was now leaking down my thighs, and banging on the door of a neighboring apartment at 4 o'clock in the morning. Luckily they were of the nicer variety and helped me inside while calling an ambulance to the building. In my opinion, it took them entirely too long to get to me and to this day, I still feel so terrible for the children I woke up who had to stand and watch me scream out in pain on their parents couch.

By the time the ambulance finally did arrive, the urge to push was undeniable despite the EMT's begging me not to. Jina Korryn was born at 4:32 am on April 3rd, 2013 at a small 5 lbs 3 oz in the back of a speeding ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Her little brother, Jae-Joong Ki-tae, on the other hand, waited until we were at least in the ambulance bay, his arrival being at 4:46 am, weighing a little more than his big sister at 5 lbs 5 oz. Yup. I now had a beautiful set of twins. And they looked just like their father.