By Yuna Kang
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Mild body horror, death
“장난감, 장난감!1” The old little cry. The boy wants a toy, and I cannot give it to him.
“아니요2 . . . anie! Annie-yo…” I scold and he giggles. For my name is Annie Yeo, daughter of Seojung-Yeo, and the child does not respect me. My syllables are weak and coarse, like unground bread. Faint chaff blows when I speak; my lips are lined with dust.
And when I was little I spoke like a river ungrounded, flush blue waves glittering in the Eastern sun. Halmeoni, Harmony-Yeo, used to bend naked with me on the close Buan ground.
“Look,” she would say in uneven English.
“See how the sun moves.”
And I was too little to see such subterfuges, but I saw the dirt roads lined with sparkles of wheat. I would bend down to pick them up, and playfully, Halmeoni would knock my hand.
“아니요. We don’t need.”
And so I would pull good clovers to eat, and the long roots of fennel. I would peer into the endless rice paddies and like warmth, I would find mermaids lurking beneath root-cluttered reflections. One of them offered me a kiss, to come close to the mirror surface, but I refused. I was expected back at home.
She continued to meet me in the pretty rivers.
“Mermaids don’t take to rejection very well,” my mother told me. There was talk of going home to America. A priest was called, and then a shaman. I did not like the men, so I pretended not to see her again.
I stopped going near the water. I stopped playing outside.
“Mermaids cannot follow us to America…” I heard my mother murmur, and still she was talking about going home. Yeo-Harmony nodded and agreed, as if this was a good plan.
I stopped going outside. I confined myself to our meager house; TV set to alarming news, incontinuous K-dramas, the sound of a pot on an infinite bubble.
But one time, (I do not know why), at dusk I decided to go to the well. I wanted water, I think, and with a clay pot I meandered out back onto the Buan roads. And I saw her, I saw her hair dripping down like a grudge. She was clad in white, scales murmuring and numerous in the hot white sun. She was behind me, following me, like a grudge.
I turned to confront her, and as the sky invented blue, she was gone. A blink, and the mermaid had never appeared. The roads were scarce with footprints and novelty.
And so I stopped leaving the bedroom. Mother believed I was sick, and the priest was called again, the shaman, the doctor. I did not like the old men.
And at 3 AM one morning, I went to the little bathroom, where a steamed mirror sat next to plastic tubs, used to collect kimchi and dirt alike. And the mermaid was there, blinking at me from crystal reflection. Her eyes were onyx dark, the perfect black of a rich court lady’s hair. She was untidy, undone.
She cocked an unnaturally pale face at me. She wanted a kiss, but I would not give it to her.
“I do not kiss strangers,” I said in querulous English. The mermaid flashed knife teeth at me then, okay then, and with predator leap, she moved from the glass to take my tongue. Unbroken, as if the wall mirror was water, she darted. Nipping down, like some little dog, she pulled and spit, and I stumbled back alarmed.
Bowls clattered. The earthy walls reverberated. I pulled on her skin, and aloe-green blood steamed out, reknitting to unite with loosened scales. She wanted my tongue.
And I can still taste the chocolate-crip rust blooming on my tongue, the way when she pulled, I threatened to free myself . . . join her . . . kiss her . . . but then Halmeoni came in with a broom and dustpan. With free arms, she hit the mermaid, over and over, cursing her in elderly tongue. I sat in the corner, shuddering, silent tears kissing my face. I had never seen my grandmother angry before.
And when the mermaid ran out of our home naked, hair fraying and waggling in the evening light, I could see her in the body of my mind’s eye to hit chive-colored shores. She returned to the rice paddies, I knew, dissatisfied and happy, and I was terrified and afraid and I could not speak, but then Halmeoni kissed my cheek.
“Aegyo . . . aegie-ya . . . Anna-ya . . . are you . . . okay?”
And it was like I heard her for the first time.
Later that week, my grandmother keeled over. Some tendon of cancer had found its way into her mouth, her tongue, and then it traveled to her heart. We could not have known it, the doctor said, and besides she lived very happily. Yeo-Harmony was 108 when she died.
“Who could wish for better?” My mother translated from the doctor’s tongue. Still, I could not speak. My mouth was swollen with fang bites. My cheeks were puffy from the mind’s endless rain.
I remembered the funeral, a simple affair, grandmother being buried in heavy hills. The priest and the shaman were there, and the shaman was crying. It was a sunny day, full of puff clouds and a light breeze. She was buried next to her husband, her brother, and three early miscarriages.
“A long life . . . ” my mother murmured, translating what the passing villagers said.
“A good life.”
And I still held my mother’s hand, (Seojung-Yeo!), clutching it tightly, causing spots of funeral agony to sprout on her fingers. I was clad in white dress, black coat, and still I could not speak.
I never saw the mermaid again. We returned to the US, and when finally my tongue and face healed, I could not speak Korean again. It was like marbles in a dry mouth: the vowels hurt, the syllables tasted like blood rain. My mother did not mind.
“You are American too, Annie. It is okay.” But it wasn’t okay. Somewhere in distant Buan land my grandmother lay buried, and she had died for me. In living, I had given up something monumental, something sacred . . .
Sometimes I remember from that night the crazed glaze of Harmony-Yeo’s eyes, how familiar it seemed, the continuation of battles long finished and remembered . . . but I invent such things. Most of the time, I lay sleepless in my bunk bed, remembering feverishly the ancient words: anniyo . . . annie-yeo . . . aniyo . . . ani-ya . . . anniyo . . . anniyo . . . .
And I know the mermaid is watching, and that this has happened before. I know that one day she will devour me with her knife teeth, and that I will only have to watch . . . for Halmeoni is here no longer . . . .
And the sound of the boy’s laughter disrupts me. He is my brother, supposedly, and yet he laughs at me.
With a swift kick, I disrupt his misbehavior. When he cries, a tendril of warmth blooms in my heart. Tears are like the rain of an everlasting world. In my mind’s eye, I remember the rain that falls, and how it blisters my tongue. I see the mermaid swimming lengths in dislocated pools, swarming paddy to paddy, waiting for our strange children to fall in, and then my eye recedes.
Mother comes in, (Seojung-Yeo!), and her face is a mask of agony.
She has done this before.
1 translates to toy in Korean
2 translates roughly to ‘no’ in Korean. Connotation depends on delivery and context. Pronounced roughly ‘Anni-ya’
Yuna Kang is a queer, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She has been published in journals such as Strange Horizons, Sinister Wisdom, and many more. Their work has been published in multiple languages. They were also nominated for the 2022 Dwarf Stars Award, as well as the 2024 Best New Poets Award. Their website link is: https://kangyunak.wixsite.com/website
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