Note: This is the first in a series of short stories I’m writing based on amusing pictures I find online. The reasons for this are manifold: 1) I want to improve my fiction writing, 2) I like looking for pictures online because sometimes the ladies are nude, and 3) I like making my readers suffer. Thank you.
Sung stared at her new, as-yet-unnamed turtle for roughly 2 hours, without moving a muscle, before Steve noticed and asked her if she was okay.
She wasn’t.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
It wasn’t the first time that a 23-year-old girl had suffered a stroke, but it was certainly the first time in the collective memory of the 1st Korean Methodist Church. The usual phrases were uttered: “so young,” “so beautiful,” “so much to look forward to.” Steve sat in a chair in the third row, barely paying attention, barely conscious. He didn’t cry; every ounce of emotion in his body had been drained from him in the 4 days since she died. All that was left was actual, physical pain; it felt like someone had hooked a crowbar under his sternum and ripped it from his chest. Or something like that.
He hadn’t bothered to ask if he could sit with Sung’s family. Her parents were tolerant people, and over the years had grown to accept that Sung might marry someone not of Korean descent, but moving in with a black guy had not even been considered. Her grandmother had been living under the delusion that Sung and Steve were just “roommates,” but Mr. and Mrs. Yun had seen their apartment, saw both sets of clothes in one closet, the unmade bed, the condom wrapper in the trashcan. Steve was reasonably grateful they had bothered to let him know when and where to come “celebrate Sung’s life.”
His father couldn’t get out of work, but his mother came along. He wasn’t sure if having her there made him feel any better, or worse. At least, for once, she had the good sense not to say much. Anyway, if Steve had driven himself, it was even odds he’d slammed head-on into a bridge abutment.
Suddenly, the congregation stood, as Sung Yun’s coffin was rolled into the church. As soon as he saw it, Steve’s knees began to buckle, so he sat down, which got him some dirty looks from other mourners. He knew that one of her strongest beliefs was that wasting space on cemeteries was a sin; when she died, Sung wanted to be cremated, so that her ashes could be spread on the Gulf of Mexico. He knew it, and her parents knew it, but they said she would go in the family plot, and that was that. The decision might have been partially affected by unvoiced suspicions of what went on during the “field trip” to New Orleans, but it wasn’t as if Steve could ask. “Hey, are you failing to honor your daughters wishes because she and I did it in a bus station in Baton Rouge?” Yeah, that’d go over GREAT.
The service was in traditional Korean, although one of the eulogists, a young cousin, said her piece in English. She and Sung had been close growing up, but when Sung went away to college, they drifted apart. Her speech talked about lost youth, and she didn’t have a lot to say about what might have happened after high school graduation. No mention of Sung’s summa cum laude degree in politics, no mention of the night she spent in jail for punching a bartender that called her “slanty,” no mention of stealing a golf cart from a country club in Arizona, and certainly no mention of her black boyfriend.
The congregation sang several hymns together during the course of the service. Steve spoke little Korean, only what he’d been able to gather from Sung in their 18 months together; mostly expletives and simple idioms. By the third hymn, he didn’t even bother to stand up, until he realized he recognized the tune of the introduction. He opened the hymnal in front of him to the same page as everyone else; he couldn’t read the title, but he could read the English words at the bottom:
Words and Music: Thomas Dorsey
While the congregation sang the Korean translation, Steve softly murmured,
Precious Lord, take my hand.
Lead me on, let me stand.
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.
Steve’s mother, who had been standing, but staying respectfully silent, during the hymns, joined him.
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light.
Take my hand, precious Lord, Lead me home.
By the end of the first verse, other people, Korean people, were singing the English version as well. No one remembered the words to the second and third stanzas, so they just sang the first one three times.
As the song wound down, there seemed to be as many voices singing in English as there were in Korean, but for some reason it didn’t sound bad. The two different languages somehow meshed, in a way that added a syncopation to the song, something jarring, yet very joyous. The lyrics were tender, and the volume very soft, but throughout the last verse there was the hint of a wild woman.
When the hymn concluded, Steve sat heavily on his seat, and began sobbing uncontrollably. His mom wrapped her arms around him, and he collapsed into her, burying his head in her shoulder. There were no dirty stares from the surrounding people, just consoling glances, and not a few tears. Someone mumbled something, and Steve heard the muffled squeaks of the castors as they rolled the coffin out. He stood with the rest of the congregation, wiped his nose with the sleeve of his suit, and watched the family walk by. Mr. and Mrs. Yun had trouble making eye contact with Steve as they came up the aisle, so to make it easier on them he looked away as well and studied his cheap brown shoes.
“Um . . . Steven?”
Steve turned back toward the aisle. Mr. Yun was looking at him.
“Steven? Um . . . would you . . . could you please walk with us to the cemetery?”
Steve felt his knees start to give way again, but managed to stay on his feet and squeeze past the other people in his row. He could hear his mother following him, periodically coughing to hide choked sobs. When he got to the aisle, he and Sung’s father looked down at each other’s cheap brown shoes, before courage caught up with Steve.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. Mr. Yun looked up, and held out his hand. Steve took it. Mrs. Yun smiled.
