In the hollow blues of dusk, grandmother stroked her slim hands, twisting a ring that was a tad too small as it strangulated her flesh to a translucent pink. Well, translucent when she clapped her hand beside an illuminating light, reciting another wish under the sea of shimmering sprinkles. She gently tapped her glass of pink lemonade with another— whispering “Cheers” into the lonesome zephyrs.

I watched her in the distance as I washed her dishes and retrieved her pink clothes. She loved pink. Everything about her was pink. I asked her after helping her get dressed in her pink chiffon dress, pink sun hat, and pink loafers...

“Why is it that you love pink so much?”

Her eyes curved into two crescent moons. Her cheekbones bulged like the full moon.

“Why do you ask, my 만두 (mandu)?” she inquired while reaching for her pink parasol—one she called beautiful—with her disjointed hand. Her pink loafers, clacking against the wooden patio floor, came to a stop. She opened her parasol, revealing rivulets of cherry blossoms and rich, brown trees with intertwining branches that the cherry blossoms cling onto for dear life. 

“‘사랑해 (I love you)’ Two men said that to me underneath the cherry blossoms a decade ago. It was breathtaking. It contrasts the still blue—just blue. Blue is sad and gloomy. Like the night sky. Pink is, no…was much brighter. Like dawn. I miss pink. So, I wear it. Everyday.”

“Who were the two men, Grandma?”

The odd angles of her finger joints tilted the parasol into a peculiar position as she gripped the handle.

“Your grandfather, who never came back from the war. The other, your father, who never came back to me.”

When grandma turned away from me, a tear bloomed in her pink tear ducts. It, too, hanging onto dear life.  

***

Grandmother did not speak about it for some years. We did not talk much anyways since she had made it a habit to gaze into incredulous clouds for hours on end. On occasions, she would straighten her back, the cricks and cracks filling the silence, and then hunch her back, like a reclining roly poly into a bite-sized ball.  

“It’s from making all that 김치 (kimchi). It hurts my back,” she would huff, furrowing her eyebrows at me. 

When breakfast is served, she held her bamboo chopsticks ever so gently to retrieve her vienna sausage. She nibbled at the sausage for a few minutes until her teeth gave in or the sausage plummets onto the tainted wooden floor. In confusion, she reached with her bamboo chopsticks for another sausage only to be met with an empty clank. Subsequently, she refused to eat for that whole day.

I pecked the sausages with my steel fork and placed them beside a tiny hole in the rotting wall, which has seen its fair share of corrosion and critters.

Grandmother never liked to kill ants. 

“How easily a living organism can be taken with just a small push of a finger. How it rolls up into a small ball as you fidget with it between your fingers. And how it dismembers into two balls—one the head and one the abdomen—as they both say goodbye with a small twitch of their arms and legs. 

너무 슬퍼.”

(So sad).

On a searing summer day, I came back from elementary school and washed plump radishes in a large pink bowl as a great drool of anticipation rushed over me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little movement on the crumb-ridden counter. Approaching it, I spotted a trail of ants marching with bits of bread crumbs settled on top of their minuscule heads. It was a fascinating sight. Each one helped carry a singular bread crumb from one side of the counter to the other, which to them must have felt like the length of an endless desert. Oh how thirsty and hungry they must have been—how delirious they must have been! And yet, none gnawed at each other, nor did they succumb to gluttony. It didn’t matter if an ant lost an arm or a leg. It didn’t matter if they were missing an abdomen…because they pushed forward—together. 

Looking back, it must have been my grandmother who set those breadcrumbs on the counter—a gesture only my ant-loving grandmother would do. The same grandmother who caressed her son with her smiles that out-brightened the bombs sent by the North, burning the soil along with the helpless ants. The one who cupped her son’s baby pink ears whilst whispering words of comfort as shots fire overhead like lethal shooting stars at midnight. Who gripped her son’s hand as if she was afraid he, too, would be fragmented like her husband’s torn body had, which they both once gazed upon in stillness. Who covered her son’s eyes as a soldier of the North skewered a woman like a sausage with a bamboo stick—the woman shouting at the top of her lungs with death beside her, 

“너 죽어, 빨갱이!” 

(Die, you red, communist scum)!

But to Grandma’s chagrin, her son disappeared two decades after her husband, only leaving behind a newborn child. Grandmother held the ball of living flesh with wrinkled hands of her own faded husk. She took an oath to never let go of the doughy hands—tiny, pink fingers creased like dumpling wrappers that she calls 만두피 (mandu-pi); pink cheeks bulging as if one bite will reveal a bountiful pork filling.  

Her eyes drooped into a gibbous moon. Her lips curved like a crescent moon. 

“내 만두.”

(My mandu).

(My dumpling). 

(My baby).

***

I don’t believe in fate. It’s the scapegoat of the good, the bad, and the ugly that unravels throughout one’s life: one big act. 

I glance at my grandmother's crinkled hand; it is more muddled than the last time I  cared for the pulpy mush that protruded from her skin. She whispers into the dead of night knowing that she won’t get a response; her raspy voice is carried off into the dusk. Her decaying arms reach for her colorless parasol. She winces as it clunks onto the wooden floor as though she, too, had felt the impact on her brittle bones. Her pupils—nearly zinc white—traced the sound of her parasol swaying back and forth; the clanks of the flaking wood follow the rhythm: Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. 

“Do you hear that, my 만두 (mandu)? It’s the steps of the 저승사자!”

“저승사자 (Joesung saja)?”

“The man who has come to hold my hand…to lead me to death. He who only wears black garments. The Grim Reaper.” 

Like I said—I don’t believe in fate nor the supernatural—they are nothing more than figments of imagination to entertain us, humans, are they not? But I scrutinized her slime-like body that no longer fits the pink chiffon dress; the calluses on her bare feet that are no longer adorned with pink loafers; her gray, scalping head—her pink sun hat unable to hide her pruney skin anymore. She picked at the cluster of lumps sprinkled onto her sullen cheeks. She would scratch and scratch, but it was futile. Perhaps, the Grim Reaper has come, alas.

“Grandmother, stop scratching them. They are going to turn bloody and pink!”

“Pink?” she gasped and only scratched more.

“Grandmother!” I pried her arthritic hand away from her face– too pitiful to stare at, “What is it about pink that you love so much? It’s just a color!”

“Shhhhhh…my 만두 (mandu),” she looked at me with eyes that did not believe in fate: they pleaded to fate. She took a big, deep breath.

“Next time when you harvest those radishes, make sure to wash them in a large pink bowl. Nice and clean. 

Next time when you go into the kitchen, make sure to take out the 만두피 (mandu-pi) and the pink pork filling. Make sure to take the 만두피 (mandu-pi) and pinch it around the pink, pork filling. Make sure to be strong but gentle so it doesn’t spill out nor run away. Because it did to me. And I missed it. 

Dearly. 

And whenever you open my pink parasol, gaze at the cherry blossoms falling from the branches. So free. So bright. With the whistling of the wind, remember me and that you are my 만두 (mandu). Remember that… 

사랑해.”

(I love you).

She exhaled.

***

The straw grass grazes my shins as the wind woos into my pink, frostbitten ear, slithering into my chilled bloodstream. I pay no attention to my frosty eyelashes; instead, my eyes trail along the sea. I never really liked the ocean. It is colorless and only reflects the distant, smoky blues that are filled with toxins emitted by those of us squirming upon the unforgiving sun. I begged the sun not to burn us alive in my prayers, fearing that one day it will not hold back anymore. Yet, it is not forgiving towards my grandmother. 

Maybe the sun was lonely amidst the beginning of dusk. In an attempt to quench its emptiness, it dragged my grandmother along with it too. It was when the moon shined the brightest when it suddenly hit me. 

Grandmother’s rigid, unmoving arms still packed some muscle from making all that 김치 (kimchi); her clouded eyes as still as a dead ant that I found on the sidewalk during summer. Perhaps it singed from the sun too. Her cracked, parted lips formed a warm smile and called for me: “my 만두 (mandu)”. The blobs hanging off her skin swing back and forth to the remnant rhythm of the weak monsoon winds– the winds, too, hang onto dear life.

In a split second, a concert of sirens filled our neighborhood. At first, I thought it was for our neighbors, but reality settles in. The dispatcher calls for me, “Aera! Area Yoo! Are you still there?”

애라

(Aera). 

Grandmother used to tell me that it means love. When she prayed to God, she would always wish for me to receive love and give love. I would always refute, “Why would I need that if I have you, grandmother?” Her only response was the crescent of her chestnut eyes. 

As it turns out, she was looking at the near future, dead in the eye.

And now, her dead eyes can only stare back into the past. 

***

Tongues of sea foam roll against the tender, purple shoreline.

A middle-aged man with an armful of hibiscus flowers stands before me. “Young lady, would you like a flower?” One flower stretches toward me. The man scrutinizes my ruffled hair and sniffling nose. In a voice pungent with pity, he adds, “It’s on the house.”

Grandmother taught me to always accept flowers, for it means the person giving it has a message for you. I caress the hibiscus like a newborn baby and frown, stopping myself from sobbing. 

I manage to mumble, “Sir, you must really like pink with all those pink flowers.”

“No no! I personally prefer blue, but my mother loved pink! She would always look at cherry blossoms when they were in season while eating the 만두 (mandu) she made herself. Since cherry blossoms aren't in season, I decided to go with hibiscus flowers. You see, I lost contact with my mother long ago. I regret not holding onto her tighter. I hope she is doing well. And I hope her grandchild is doing well, too,” the man heaves a long sigh, “Let fate be by their side.” 

An unexplainable chuckle escapes my lips.

“Is that so? Then, Sir, do you believe in fate?”

“Isn’t fate the reason why death comes and goes, leaving the living to live with their wounds?” 

 The man's cheeks suddenly flush a ruddy red as he stumbles over his own words, “Oh my, I must be an old man, rambling on like that! I must go…and if fate has it, I’ll pray for your future, too. Goodbye!”

And just like that, the man runs off in a scurry before I can respond to his rhetorical question. My confused heart tightens with each step he takes away from me. My hands reach out towards him as a sudden urge to scream protrudes into my throat, “Don't leave! Don’t leave me!” 

But it’s in vain. 

The man is gone in a swift whoosh, and all I am left with is a sole hibiscus flower which I bring into a tight hug. 

 I rub the pink petals, attempting to feel any warmth, any movement—anything. I watch a string of ants march through the sand, some, slower than others, end up in the ocean drowning. It is a strange, grotesque sight. 

Perhaps the burden was too large for them to carry.

Yet, the ocean waves envelop them with love; each crash reverberates the sound of a “thank you” and… 

“사랑해.”

(I love you).

A pang of nostalgia washes over me as I clutch the hibiscus in both my hands, strong but gentle, just like grandma said. My rosy cheeks swell into two balls, like a dismembered ant. My puffy eyes turn into big crescent moons; my lips turn into the shape of grandma’s 만두 (mandu). 

What a beautiful, pink dawn.