When I was out of immediate danger of “burning to ash,” my mother said she needed to leave me in order to prepare her weapons. She opened the hallway closet, shook out our extra bedsheet, and, after studying it briefly, tore it into seven long strips. Then, with a felt marker, over and over again, she wrote my name, birth date, and genealogy—what she referred to as my “spiritual address.” When I first looked at my feet in the morning, I thought they were bound in black-and-white striped material, so densely written were my mother’s words.
“You needed to be tied into your body,” she told me when I asked her about the linen around my feet. “And in case you slipped out, these words would have led you back.” She pointed to one of the lines. “Look here—this character means you. This is me, this is the Birth Grandmother, this is each of her sisters. I linked us all together, a chain to fight the Red Death.”
My mother said she forced the Birth Grandmother to call upon her sisters, the Seven Stars—each of them named Soon-something, which my mother said meant “pure”—to come protect me. “I didn’t want to be rude,” she said, “but really, if your spirit guardian can’t protect you on her own, she should call for help, don’t you think? I mean, I’m your mother, but I still ask her to help me watch you.” My mother huffed as if disgusted and insulted by her spirit guardian’s overbearing pride and lack of common sense. “Finally, I had to get rough with her.
“‘Induk,’ I said, using her personal name to show how upset I was, ‘this Red Death is too much for an old lady spirit like you!’
“When the Birth Grandmother did not answer, I knew I had been too blunt, but I could not waste time massaging the ego of a fickle spirit. ‘Call on the Seven Stars, or I will find a new Birth Grandmother and you will be just another lost ghost,’ I told her. ‘My daughter is dying.’”
When I choked, my mother interrupted her story to scold me. “Pay attention.” She scowled. “I told you this was serious.”
The Birth Grandmother, responding to either her threats or her plea, must have listened to my mother, because a path of white light cracked the red cloud. My mother walked through—“Floated,” she said. “I didn’t even have to move my feet”—and found herself transported to my side in the bathtub.
She peeled the blankets from my body, stripping me naked. When I shivered, she placed each of the seven strips of bedsheet—one for each of the Star Sisters—on my body. Starting from my head, she smoothed the linen against my contours, asking for blessings from the protective spirits. She ran her hands down my face, throat, arms, torso, legs, and when she touched my feet, her hands vibrated.
“The Sisters were telling me where the honyaek entered your body. This,” my mother said as she tapped at my feet, which I could barely feel under their wrap, “is your weak point. Didn’t I always say you got them from your father?
“They were balloons—so swollen, red, and tender,” she said, “they melted into pus when I touched them. I took a razor from the medicine cabinet and—zhaa! zhaa! just like gutting nsh—opened your feet to let the sickness out.” My mother brandished imaginary knives, slicing the air with sure, quick strokes, reliving her battle. “Red Death shot from your feet, fouling the air with its stench of rotting meat and rat feces. I cut deeper, catching and killing the poison with the bandages blessed by the spirits. At first, as soon as I placed the cloth by your feet, the whole thing turned red, becoming slick and saturated with Red Death. I was like a demon myself, possessed, pushing clean cloths against your feet with one hand, pulling away the ones drenched in Red Death with the other hand. And all the while, I could see the battle between the Sisters and the honyaek on the strips of cloth, as the good spirits fought to turn the bandages back to pure white.
“Finally, toward the morning, when all the Red Death had been sucked from the room through the balls of your feet, when all the bandages were white again—even the one against your feet, which by then wept only clear water—the arrowhead, the sal triggered by the honyaek, popped out. Wait, I’ll show you.” My mother scuttled off the bed and rushed into the kitchen. I could hear her rummaging through the glass cupboard, and when she returned, she held above her head like a small trophy a Smucker’s jelly jar.
She shook the jar in my face, and what looked like bits of bone jumped and rattled around the bottom. “Sal,” she announced. “This is the shattered arrowhead working its way out, making all kinds of trouble. We’ve got to watch for more of these.”
I took the jar from her, interested in something I could touch from the spirit world, something tangible from the place where my mother lived half her life. I looked into the jar, then shook the contents onto my palm.
“Don’t make that face,” my mother said as I stared at the sal. “Wrinkles will freeze in your forehead.” When I didn’t say anything, she knelt beside me and wailed, “It’s not my fault! In Korea, everything is safe for the mother and baby—you’re not even supposed to leave the bed for two weeks after you give birth! Here, anybody, any man, can come right into the delivery room and cut you, so how could I protect you when you first came into this world? At first I thought since you were half American you would be immune. But now I see that in your second life transition, the arrows are coming home.”
I cupped my mother’s chin in my hand, forcing her to look at me, worried that she was losing the present and drifting away from me. “Mom? What are you talking about? Where are you?”
She slapped my hand down. “Sometimes you ask stupid questions,” she said. “I am explaining to you how the sal got in your body and what we can do about it. This is the critical year, the year you become a woman and vulnerable—just like when a snake first sheds his skin—so we got to purge the clouds of Red Disaster from the home—done—and then this building and then the school. Then we got to purify your mind. You got to—”
“Stop, Mommy, stop!” I held my palm toward her, displaying the white flecks. “This isn’t sal or an arrow or whatever; it’s coral.”
“Coral?” My mother picked up a small piece and rolled it in her fingers.
“Yeah,” I said, carefully dropping the rest of the rocks back into the jar so I wouldn’t have to look at her. “You know, like stones from the sea.”
“Yes,” my mother said, her words measured, as if she were talking to someone mentally slow. “Sal is like stones from the sea.”
“No, I mean coral is stones from the sea.” I took a deep breath and exhaled in a rush. “I rode a bus and went swimming on a field trip. I lied to you before. I’m sorry. No need to watch me anymore.”
My mother lifted the jar from my hands and swirled it until the coral skimmed across the bottom in an even hum. “I know you went swimming,” she said. “The office called to tell me your bus would be getting back to school late.”
“So you lied!” I yelled. “You know it’s not sal.”
My mother slammed the glass down on the night table. Bits of coral flew across the bed and onto the floor at her feet. “It is sal,” she screamed back at me. “That’s what made you lie in the first place. It’s what made your feet swell up and stink. And I can see you still have more sal in your mouth, making it mean and stupid. Now—” Here my mother suddenly quieted and dropped down to kiss me on the forehead. “You are not well. Just rest. I’m going to keep you safe. I will watch for sal and pluck them out when you show the signs.”