together my sorrow here, like this .
CHAPTER 12
IF THERE HAS TO BE a reason for it, I think Mun-ju and I became close not only because we’re the same age, but also because I understood her appetite. Mun-ju said she was the eldest of five sisters. Pausing after revealing this, she asked me, Could you turn the lights off?
It was late at night, after her coworkers had left and I’d even told her about the pheasant I’d encountered when I was twenty years old, a story I’d never told anyone. I turned out the light in the kitchen, came back to the table, and extinguished the light hanging over the table, dangling from the ceiling above Munju’s head. Amid the honks and the intermittent flashes of headlights racing by on the eight-lane road outside the restaurant in the deep of the night, we were floating in a space of zero gravity where we couldn’t feel or taste or smell.
My father wanted to raise us very strictly, Mun-ju continued. Maybe it was because he felt unsettled that he didn’t have a son. He had rules about when we slept, woke up, studied, and didn’t allow us to wear skirts or blouses. My sisters and I had togrow up like little soldiers. But raising girls like that doesn’t turn them into boys, you know? Our relationship got worse after Mom died. My father set strict curfews and even forbade me from hanging out with friends. I think he was the worst with me because I’m the oldest. Once, after a group tutoring session, a boy walked me home, and my father caught us. For a whole month after that, he didn’t touch the food I made, like it was dirty. Food was the hardest thing for him to control. Once a week, he’d force me onto the scale and weigh me, saying a fat girl was of no use to anyone. You can’t understand how hard that was for me. I wasn’t stick skinny, but I wasn’t fat either. So I ended up stuffing myself when my father wasn’t looking. There was no other way to rebel. I used to keep a whole bag of brown sugar in my purse. When I was sad about something, I ran straight to the fridge. But the odd thing is that I gained weight every day, a lot of weight, but my father didn’t say anything about it. And I couldn’t stand that either, because it felt like he was ignoring me.
My father would appear in my dreams and say, I’m going to eat you up because that’s how much I love you. I got fatter and fatter. At one point I was so fat that I even dreamt that my girth blew the house to pieces. My life’s purpose boiled down to this—leave home as soon as possible, which I did when I was seventeen. I think bingeing and starving are really the same. They both have the same purpose—they give you a twisted sense of accomplishment, allowing you to say, I’m the best at bingeing or starving myself. But that really was all I had. I met you at a time in my life when I was thinking that. And your cooking taught me, for the first time, that food wasn’t just for stuffing your face, but was supposed to make you feel something. That first day, the roasted duck breast you made, topped with roots of baby spinach, really got me hungry, just by looking at it. That’s why I wanted to leave as soon as possible. Butthen you came after me in the parking lot, asking why I didn’t eat it, how could I write an article about it if I’d never even tried it. You really cracked me up. You were so serious! That day, I thought there must be something special about your food. It’d been a long time since I’d eaten something that made me feel as if a weight had been lifted off me. I feel like I spent all of my twenties struggling with something stupid, with eating, with food. I’m really pissed about it, I really am.
I pushed napkins toward Mun-ju, who was crying.
A sated person is different from a hungry one. A hungry one can’t be persuaded to do anything, but a full person can be given boundaries and convinced. So after that, I continued to cook for Mun-ju whenever she popped into the restaurant. I just
CHAPTER 12
IF THERE HAS TO BE a reason for it, I think Mun-ju and I became close not only because we’re the same age, but also because I understood her appetite. Mun-ju said she was the eldest of five sisters. Pausing after revealing this, she asked me, Could you turn the lights off?
It was late at night, after her coworkers had left and I’d even told her about the pheasant I’d encountered when I was twenty years old, a story I’d never told anyone. I turned out the light in the kitchen, came back to the table, and extinguished the light hanging over the table, dangling from the ceiling above Munju’s head. Amid the honks and the intermittent flashes of headlights racing by on the eight-lane road outside the restaurant in the deep of the night, we were floating in a space of zero gravity where we couldn’t feel or taste or smell.
My father wanted to raise us very strictly, Mun-ju continued. Maybe it was because he felt unsettled that he didn’t have a son. He had rules about when we slept, woke up, studied, and didn’t allow us to wear skirts or blouses. My sisters and I had togrow up like little soldiers. But raising girls like that doesn’t turn them into boys, you know? Our relationship got worse after Mom died. My father set strict curfews and even forbade me from hanging out with friends. I think he was the worst with me because I’m the oldest. Once, after a group tutoring session, a boy walked me home, and my father caught us. For a whole month after that, he didn’t touch the food I made, like it was dirty. Food was the hardest thing for him to control. Once a week, he’d force me onto the scale and weigh me, saying a fat girl was of no use to anyone. You can’t understand how hard that was for me. I wasn’t stick skinny, but I wasn’t fat either. So I ended up stuffing myself when my father wasn’t looking. There was no other way to rebel. I used to keep a whole bag of brown sugar in my purse. When I was sad about something, I ran straight to the fridge. But the odd thing is that I gained weight every day, a lot of weight, but my father didn’t say anything about it. And I couldn’t stand that either, because it felt like he was ignoring me.
My father would appear in my dreams and say, I’m going to eat you up because that’s how much I love you. I got fatter and fatter. At one point I was so fat that I even dreamt that my girth blew the house to pieces. My life’s purpose boiled down to this—leave home as soon as possible, which I did when I was seventeen. I think bingeing and starving are really the same. They both have the same purpose—they give you a twisted sense of accomplishment, allowing you to say, I’m the best at bingeing or starving myself. But that really was all I had. I met you at a time in my life when I was thinking that. And your cooking taught me, for the first time, that food wasn’t just for stuffing your face, but was supposed to make you feel something. That first day, the roasted duck breast you made, topped with roots of baby spinach, really got me hungry, just by looking at it. That’s why I wanted to leave as soon as possible. Butthen you came after me in the parking lot, asking why I didn’t eat it, how could I write an article about it if I’d never even tried it. You really cracked me up. You were so serious! That day, I thought there must be something special about your food. It’d been a long time since I’d eaten something that made me feel as if a weight had been lifted off me. I feel like I spent all of my twenties struggling with something stupid, with eating, with food. I’m really pissed about it, I really am.
I pushed napkins toward Mun-ju, who was crying.
A sated person is different from a hungry one. A hungry one can’t be persuaded to do anything, but a full person can be given boundaries and convinced. So after that, I continued to cook for Mun-ju whenever she popped into the restaurant. I just
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