This episode’s about me, Mari Lightfeather. It’s April 2021 and I’m 25. The place Seattle, Washington.

It all started last March when I moved in with my mother. I had never lived with her before, primarily because she’s a horrible parent. Far as I can tell, she had me at twenty-five and then proceeded to live a very full, childless life, leaving me in the care of Harmuni – that’s grandmother in Korean. Somehow, around junior high, I ended up with Nana – that’s grandmother in Kansan. The circumstances leading up to this transition are unknown. You can’t get a straight answer out of anybody, not in Korea and not in Kansas. Doesn’t really matter because I don’t believe anything they tell me anyway, partly because they’re liars and partly because I have trust issues. Can you blame me? I had prided myself on never asking my mother for help. Sure, she gave me a lot of subsidies in college so I didn’t have to work and maybe a few times after graduation. But I didn’t ask. She offered. But last year, I found myself with nothing, back in America, no job, no desire for a job, no skills to get a job and no place to live. That it coincided with the onset of a global pandemic meant I got a little bit of a pass, which is a little bit more than I usually got from my mother. My dad usually gave me a full pass, but unfortunately, he didn’t have much help to give.

I asked my mother straight. “Can I stay with you? I’ll leave as soon as this whole virus thing is over.”

“Okay. I’ll think about it, ” she said.

She’ll think about it. What kind of answer is that? I’m her daughter, her only child. What is there to think about? Harmuni stepped in. I don’t know what she did exactly, but it was probably the world’s biggest guilt trip because my mother called me in a couple of hours and said yes, of course I could stay with her, AND I could stay as long as I wanted. Harmuni told me later that my mother didn’t want to give up one of the four extra bedrooms in her house. Imagine, Harmuni said, letting your child suffer because you didn’t want to give up your room of crafts. Well, she didn’t give up her room of crafts. Instead, she gave me the room of dressing, where she kept her Imelda Marcos sized shoe collection. Why did she need so many shoes?

At first, I thought it would be a daily hounding about me finding a job, getting myself a plan, figuring out my life because if she ever showed me any love at all, it was the tough kind. But it didn’t go like that. When she first saw me, she had tears in her eyes. I hadn’t seen her for three years. She held me tight and told me she was happy I was safe and happy to have my company. Huh? It must have been the strangeness at the beginning of the pandemic, when the whole world had a moment of awakening. But as you already know, that didn’t last long. My mother returned to being how I remembered her – productive and detached. The good thing is she left me alone about the direction of my life. She left me alone period. We hardly came across each other. She’d order from a restaurant, pick something for me and leave it on the kitchen counter. Somehow, she always guessed exactly what I wanted. Whenever I got a glimpse of her, she looked like she was going off to a very important meeting with other lawyers. But of course, she was working from the room of office, where she did whatever lawyers do. I don’t know the exact nature of her job, but I know she hates it. What she really liked to do was read. She has a whole room of books, real books, made out of real paper, with which she spends all of her spare time. Everyone says she wanted to be a writer, but I don’t see any trace of that now.

It was fine. All I really wanted was to be left alone anyway so I can watch one TikTok clip after another for 15 hours a day. At first, I thought I could post my own videos. I could do better than a 13 year old. I could probably lip-sync, right? And my mother’s two Yorkshire terriers. I’m sure if I followed them around with my phone, I could catch them being irresistibly cute. But these plans involve getting up and doing something, and it turns out, that’s my strong suit. Still, at least I had ideas of doing something, but then I discovered Netflix as a background. I’ve heard that a lion’s brain can only process three things, and if you introduce a fourth, it becomes so confused that it can’t act. That’s why a lion tamer has a chair with four legs. If they used a three-legged stool, the lion would not be confused and maul the little human, dumb enough to annoy it. Netflix was the fourth leg for me, and as long as it was on in the background, I processed none of the information flooding through me from TikTok or Instagram or Netflix itself. If it was thinking that defines existence, I had seized to be alive.

In the room of dressing, I could not muster up the motivation to change out of the clothes I wore to bed. Showering was rare and dreaded. This is when I needed the tough love – my mother barging into the room and screaming at me to get out of bed, but she was too busy to notice me. I thought at the very least she would be lonely sometimes, want some human contact, the only human contact she could have, but Harmuni was right – my mother was a rare soul that didn’t need the company of other human beings. Maybe I’m like that too because soon, I got used to my life in the room of dressing.

It stayed like this for a few months, until one Saturday in June, the doorbell rang in the middle of the afternoon. Bidip. My mother was texting me. “There’s a surprise in the kitchen for you. 😊” A surprise? Was it my birthday? No, that’s in December. I ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, almost biting it, turning the corner. Oh my god. It was my dad. I had no idea that Robert Lightfeather knew where we lived. Not only that, but I could tell by the way they were laughing at me that they were totally comfortable with each other. How long had this been going on?

“Hi,” he said.

I stood frozen, unable to speak. I heard only a portion of what he was saying. Something about moving here for me. What? Complete bullshit. He hadn’t called me one time since the pandemic. This was about them. It had to be. They looked nervous like they were about to be found out. I blurted it out.

“Are you together?”

“No. no. no,” they said.

“Then why did you move here?”

“I wanted to be near my family.”

“Then, why didn’t you go to Nana’s?

“I wanted to be near family I didn’t want to strangle.”

My mother bent over and laughed so hard there were tears streaming down her face. Her smile was so bright and wide that you couldn’t help it but to smile along with her. And soon, we were all laughing together, for the first time in my life.
I had only seen them near each other a couple of times, the last time at my high school graduation, but all the old people that raised me were there too. I admit when I first looked up at the stands, I wanted to see them sitting together, hand in hand, my parents. But they were nestled within their own families, who had separated as usual into races. My parents looked as itchy in the hot sun as children in church, and as estranged as if they had never met.

I walked across the grass to be handed a fake diploma from an old white man, who was turning tomato red in the sun, which is good since the color made him look less like a corpse. The harsh reality was hitting me. I was wearing a sticky polyester robe and hat, and I didn’t recognize the man handing me the diploma or most of the kids in my graduating class, and they all seem to look right through me. That was me. The invisible kid that nobody saw or considered as they went about their lives. It was sad to think that out of the 500 kids I was sitting with, I had not made friends with even one. And it was deeply painful to think that while I had no one at school, I had even less at home.

In that moment I decided that it was THEIR fault, not mine. My parents weren’t capable of love. They weren’t capable of having relationships. They had never married, not each other nor anyone else. My mother seemed to love her dogs and my dad seemed to love his truck, but that was the only evidence that they could love. Since that day, I’m not as bothered by how they treat me. When my mother takes no interest in me although I’m living in her house, I figure she can’t. When my dad doesn’t call me for two years, I assume there is a genetic deficiency that prevents him from picking up the phone.

But Robert Lightfeather had moved from Colorado to ten minutes away from my mother’s Seattle house, in the middle of a pandemic. What does that mean? They were in the kitchen, laughing, having a good time. I can’t remember seeing either of them having fun. He was pulling things out of the cabinets, things that had never been used before, things like pots, pans, olive oil, a wooden spoon.

“You’re so predictable,” he said, as he grabbed packages from the freezer. “Always with the frozen stuff.”

“In my defense, it’s all new frozen stuff.”

“Really? You know this stuff lasts forever in the freezer. You should think about keeping fresh food, if you’re just gonna throw it away and replace it,” he said.

“Mari and I get our vegetables the way god intended, from restaurants,” Julie said.

“Hmp. I’ll make you guys some salad, next time.” he said, winking at her. Ewww. Gross.

Now that his brown hair was long, he looked more like his Chippewa father than Nana, a ginger. Julie Min, on the other hand, looked like one of those Korean ladies who live in Gang Nam and have rich husbands, perfectly coiffed at all times, wearing something silk. As for me, I had not showered in a week and was wearing a white t-shirt I picked up from a street vendor in Korea for a dollar. It was disintegrating and turning grey. I didn’t look like any of them. No matter what country I went to, I was considered exotic, which just means not normal. I’m tall – 5 foot 11 and a half. That’s probably good, if you want to be a model or a basketball player, but not that good if you want to hide.

In no time, the kitchen was going. Julie brought out three bottles of red wine and uncorked all of them. “This should get us started,” she said. When I first surveyed Julie’s house for alcohol, I only found red wine, a lot of it. I HATE red wine. It’s the primary reason that I didn’t become a full-blown alcoholic in the last year. But Julie handed me a gigantic glass, filled with what must have been half a bottle. Call it peer pressure, but I grabbed it, chugged it down and pushed the glass toward Julie for more. “Oh, ho, ho, yeah,” Robert said. “I didn’t think you had it in you,” Julie said as she refilled the glass. Finally, I get validation from my parents.

It was mesmerizing to watch my dad make fresh pasta. It was definitely not his first time.

“Oh, good. You’re making pasta. Your father is the best pasta maker. Better than any restaurant,” Julie said.

“I’ve never even seen you in the kitchen,” I said.

“Yeah, you don’t feel much like cooking when you have two jobs.”

“I didn’t know you had two jobs,” I said.

“Who do you think paid for you and your grandmother?” he said.

I didn’t know. I didn’t know he supported us. I didn’t know anything.

My mother poured me more wine.

“We always wanted to open a restaurant. We could have, too, god, with his fried chicken.”

“Why didn’t you?” I said.

“You need money, and that we didn’t have. Yeah, money,” my mom said.

The conversation stopped, and we listened to the plops of the tomato sauce and the whirl of the exhaust fan. Each person seemed to be in deep thought about every other person in the room.

Finally, Robert broke in. “You know what? There’s chicken in the freezer.”

I couldn’t imagine my mother poor and eating my dad’s friend chicken. They had really been together once. I felt a deep sense of guilt. It was one thing when they were monsters, but turns out they were real people with real dreams. I must have been the reason they split up. If it weren’t for me, they’d still be together, still be living in South Lake Tahoe, running a fried chicken restaurant. They’d be married. Julie would be happy. Maybe they would have kids, the ones they had after they were ready. I wouldn’t be here, but that didn’t work out that well for any of us. I was grateful for the red wine, which tasted just fine now.

Robert made the fried chicken, which tasted delicious, even restaurant delicious. We ate it at the dining room table, covered with fresh bread and pasta, salmon and peas and a green bean casserole, which reminded me of Nana.

I’m not sure how much wine I had, but the way Julie poured, I’m sure it was more than I ever had before. I don’t remember moving to the living room couch, but that’s where I woke up the next morning with a hangover so painful that the extraordinary events of the night before didn’t even enter my mind.

My mother was up and using the espresso maker, which sounded like my head was inside a garbage disposal.

“Moooooom. Stop,” I said in a rasp.

My mother laughed and continued.

She brought over a latte and kissed me on the forehead.

“See what happens when you leave your room?”

As I sipped on the latte, pieces of the night came back to me. Oh, yeah. I was the problem in my parents’ lives, not the other way around. They were once in love and I ruined everything.

“Did you hook up with dad last night?” I said.

“Haha. Don’t be silly. Your father and I are friends, very good friends. He’s the only one that knows me.”

“I didn’t know you guys were friends.”

“I know, baby.”

“I wish you would have told me,” I said.

“Huh. I’m sure it wouldn’t be at the top of that wish list,” my mother said.

“No, no, it wouldn’t,” I said.

My mother looked away, but I could see her eyes well up. I always wanted to be able to hurt her, but now that I had, and with so little, I wanted everything to go back to the way it was, before I moved in with her, when my parents were figments of my unforgiving imagination.

But the seal was broken now. My dad kept coming, every Saturday, and not only was I invited to their party, but I was an integral part. Over bottles of wine, which I abstained from, they told stories. They would egg each other on to share with me what they already knew. “Ooh, tell her about Munich.”

“Oh, yeah, tell her about how you took your SATs.”

I was the designated listener, someone that didn’t know anything about them. Finally, I felt like I belonged somewhere, even though I knew it was tenuous. It was this feeling that was changing me. I can’t describe how, but it definitely wasn’t in the way that I wanted.

What I wanted was to be more like my mother, to make bold life decisions, to wake up early, to be productive, to read. When I saw Julie’s room of books, filled with any book I would ever want to read, I had a fantasy that I would read them all, become better-read than Gilbert, but of course, I didn’t read one book, not one page. Gilbert, by the way, is my ex-boyfriend, who left me after college because I wasn’t good enough for him. Well, that’s not exactly what he said, but that’s what he meant. I wish I could push him into the lion’s den with my mother, let her tear his arrogant ass apart with her lawyer brain, make him feel small, the way he did me.

As it were, she wasn’t around when he dumped me. And no, I did not tell her. I didn’t think she would even care. Now that I know her, I wish I reached out to her, but instead I ran away to Seoul, where my uncle lives. I taught English to rich high school kids, who didn’t care that I had an English degree, but just wanted to talk to someone from America so they can be cool and pick up a good American accent. I’d meet them in a coffee shop somewhere and we’d just talk. I’d correct them so it sounded natural. “Do you have boyfriend?” “Do you have A boyfriend? No. I got dumped before coming here.” “What is dumped?” “That’s what you say when someone breaks up with you.” “Breaks up?” “Yes, your boyfriend doesn’t want to be your boyfriend anymore.” “Oh, jilted.” “No, it’s not that bad. That’s for when you’re engaged and they dump you.” “If you’re not engaged, why does matter?” “why does IT matter. I don’t know.” After an hour of conversation, they would give me an envelope of cash. They’d say thank you, bow at the waist and leave.

After three years of this, Harmuni and my uncle were pushing me to come back to the States and figure out a career. Even I had the sense that I was in limbo and I had to try to do something with my life. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? So, I ended up in San Francisco, where an old professor and her husband said I can housesit their loft while they travelled around South America. People were so much more trusting in January of 2020. I did a lot of walking around the City, wondering just how all these people managed to find jobs and live on their own. I still have no idea. I think eventually, I would have looked for a job at least. That seems to be the starting point for eating, which is probably a good starting point for surviving, which is all I could think to do.

But before I ever filled out a job application, the professors Sheridan had returned early due to Covid-related fears of being stuck in a third world country. Little did they know, they were coming straight into the eye of the hurricane. That’s when I moved in with my mother. Since then, I’ve done everything I could to push the topic of my future aside. It’s been easier than ever to do since the thought of MY future in anyone’s mind, had been replaced by the thought of ANY future. But avoiding your life is a fragile process and always temporary. It all came crashing down today, a Saturday.

The doorbell rang a little after 2, the moment I had been looking forward to all week. Almost simultaneously I got a text, assumed to be my mother from downstairs, but it wasn’t. It was Gilbert.

“How are you?” Y-o-u spelled out.

It was the simplicity of the text that shocked and confused me. At first, I thought it was a glitch in the phone, like maybe there had been too many texts over the years and now the phone was spewing messages from four years ago, the last time I had a text from him. But there was a timestamp. I stared at the message. The more I repeated How are you, the more ominous it became. Why now, when I was just finding myself. He wants to know what I’ve been doing since he dumped me. Why didn’t he text me while I was in Korea, when I could have at least said I was doing nothing but out of the country, which was inherently cooler and more accomplished than doing nothing in the US.

Who the hell is he to come back and judge me now, after all these years of silence. Ahhhhhhh. I threw my phone across the room. I heard the screen crack. My stomach sank, and I could hear my heart against my chest. Oh god. My whole life flashed before my eyes. And that’s not an exaggeration. That phone was most of my life. I waited a few minutes to calm my nerves before I picked it up. It looked like a piece of shattered glass barely holding together, against all odds. I pushed the power button and muttered what sounded like a prayer. Phew, it worked, and I could still make out the letters that enraged me, but I could not press the screen to reply.

Bidip. Mom: Come down.

Bidip. Gilbert: Been a long time.

Bidip. Gilbert: Been thinking about you (Y-O-U spelled out)

I started to panic. He wanted to talk. I wanted to jump out the window, but I didn’t know how to remove the screen. That I didn’t have enough ambition to escape my own room made my panic worse. It was a lack of ambition that got me where I am. Four years out of college and I haven’t had one real job. I can just guess what Gilbert has accomplished in that same time.

I met him sophomore year in Abnormal Psychology. He was taking vigorous notes in the lectures as if he had never known anyone abnormal. I noticed him, but he never gave me any indication he noticed me, until one day after class, he asked me if I wanted to share his notes.

We couldn’t be more different. He was very serious about his studies and knew exactly what he would do with his life – phD in nanotechnology then research. I still don’t know what any of those words mean. I got into school with solid grades, but I got my scholarship because of my essay emphasizing my ethnicity, which included Native American and technically African American. I played down my Asian American and white people from Kansas roots, which they had plenty of in college. I also wrote I was orphaned shortly after birth. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was close enough. I made the mistake of telling Gilbert about this. He never missed an opportunity to call me a liar and a cheater. Fuck you, Gilbert. You didn’t have to wrestle with feelings of inadequacy because your parents rejected you on sight. AND I managed to get good grades in high school with almost no encouragement from my Nana, who didn’t even believe in success.

You might be asking why I was with him in the first place. I would have dumped him after a few months, but over spring break, he brought me to his parents’ place, a small working farm in Mendocino County. The weekend I was there, his mom, Rebecca, had a big gallery opening with her new large canvas pieces. I watched her flow through the potential buyers, all of whom seem to know her. She introduced me as the daughter she always wanted. “Isn’t she beautiful? I’m gonna paint her. She should be famous, right?” By the end of the night, I knew everyone in the gallery. Rebecca was a star, and I was the star’s daughter.

On the East side of the farm, there was a large red barn, which was converted into an art studio. They installed large rustic windows, that flooded the whole space with natural sunlight. Her paintings were stacked 10 deep along the walls, except one wall, where she had installed an authentic bar from a 19th Century Virginia City saloon, complete with leather topped stools. Sitting there with her, sipping whiskey, I told her about my novel, which I started Freshman year but couldn’t push forward.

“You just need some confidence, pretty girl.”

“Oh yeah? How do I get that?”

“Haha. Just pretend like you have it and one day, you will.

Look at me. I ran away from home when I was 13, straight to New York. I just pretended like I was an artist, and tada I became an artist. I won’t tell you everything I had to do before I made a dollar from it, but it doesn’t matter how you get there, just that you do.”

She made everything sound possible. At her saloon bar, I could imagine living a whole life. I could see myself having a child, Rebecca there helping me, encouraging me gently. I could see finishing my novel, dedicated to Rebecca, whose love and support revived me. I could see a life with the warmth of a family, with a mother. I didn’t exactly fall in love with her, but I did fall in love with being her daughter, which I wanted more than anything. Marrying Gilbert seemed a small sacrifice. He wasn’t that bad. How could he be so bad being her son. But I was just twenty years and so was he, too young to know anything or to give up on love.

Obviously, I did not finish my novel, and that feeling that everything was possible lasted only as long as I was within a 10 foot radius of her. It turns out pretending to have confidence was as hard as actually having confidence. Still, she called me all the time. She mostly talked about herself. Turns out her life wasn’t as nice as it first appeared. I have no idea what a stable marriage looks like, but I knew hers wasn’t. She complained about her life, which sounded like a hell of her own making, filled with affairs, alcohol and drugs. Sex, drugs and rock and roll or at it were, Sex, Drugs and Folk Pop. Maybe one day, I’ll tell you all about her escapades, which are almost as interesting as my parents’.

Even before Gilbert dumped me, Rebecca had stopped calling me, which was fine since I was feeling like the only person dumb enough and idle enough to listen to her confessions for hours at a time. Turns out she didn’t want me either.

Bi-di-dip. Mom: “Where are you? Put on real pants.”

It was overwhelming to catch up on four years of sorting out my life, especially amidst a flurry of beeps coming from a broken phone. My god, what will I do when the pandemic is over?

Bi-di-dip. Gilbert: “Please talk to me, Mari.”

Bi-di-dip. Gilbert: “I miss you so much.”

STOP!

Bi-di-dip. Mom: “What’s taking you so long?”

It occurred to me that all I have now are my parents’ stories. I guess I have gotten something in the last year. I better hurry up and record them before the pandemic is over and everyone turns their attention back on me and my non-existent future. The recordings are this podcast. I’ll try to tell it like they told me. I can’t possibly verify them, but you can assume, as I do, that they made up at least some of it. I’ll warn you now. Most of these stories involve unethical and sometimes quite illegal acts. That’s probably why they’re so interesting. Oh, and let’s keep this between us. I doubt they would speak so freely if they knew.

Bi-di-dip. Mom: “Hurrrrrrrrrrrrry.”

Well, if I’m to record their stories, I better go get some more. I walked down the stairs and turned the corner, and when I saw what was in the living, I forgot all about myself. A blond woman, who looked older than my dad, was snuggling up next to him, like a purring cat. A handsome tall man, with black rectangular glasses, was examining the bottles of wine on the coffee table, like they were sculptures. My parents were glancing at each other awkwardly. They all seem to notice me at the same time. “Honey!” My dad said. “I want to introduce you to some people. This is Suzanne and her son Alfie.”

Alfie and I met eyes, and I got butterflies deep down in my gut. I knew everyone was watching me, but I couldn’t look away. “Hi, Mariposa. It’s nice to meet you. Your dad talks about you all the time,” he said.

Really? my dad talks about me to this guy. It actually never occurred to me that my dad had a life in Seattle outside of my mother and me. How? We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. I have met no one, not a single human being in the last year, but my dad had managed to meet someone that was wearing an engagement ring. I hoped that he was sleeping with a married woman and not what he said next, “Honey, we’re getting married.” Suzanne squealed and walked toward me with her ring out. I backed up in fear of her Covid ridden diamond ring and what it meant for the small family I was finally a part of.

“Oh, come on,” Suzanne said.

I couldn’t speak. I only went from person to person in the room, searching for something that made sense in their faces, but they all looked helpless, except Suzanne, who was smiling ear to ear, like she belonged in another house.

“Are you one of those paranoid people?” Suzanne said, admiring her own ring.

“Mom, you’re being rude,” Alfie said in the tone of a kindergarten teacher.

“I’m sorry dear. Am I embarrassing you?” Suzanne said.

It was clearly the beginning of a fight they have had before, and I was immediately on his side.

“You ARE being rude. You’re in someone else’s house. And yes, I am one of those paranoid people,” I said.

“Yes, me too,” my mom said.

“And me,” Alfie said.

My father looked down, unwilling to take a side. Coward.

“Say something,” Suzanne said to my father.

Everyone was on their feet. It felt like at any moment, something physical would happen. Alfie was tall, maybe even taller than my dad, who was hunched over attending to Suzanne. My mom was watching them, a glass of wine in her hand and a smile on her face. I couldn’t stop myself from checking out Alfie - the first man my age I’ve seen in over a year. I was embarrassed for him and myself. I wanted to go over to him and hug him in solidarity and grief, and maybe I would have, but I had made this whole scene over social distancing. He was so cute.

“Mari, why don’t you show Alfie the library. No reason for all of us to suffer,” my mom said looking right at Suzanne.
When Alfie and I didn’t move, she added, “Go. Both of you. Save yourselves.”

Have I mentioned that my mom can be pretty cool. I led Alfie toward the stairs and kept my head straight ahead, so he didn’t see me blushing. I was glad I had showered and changed into real pants, as my mom suggested. It is possible that my mom knows everything? I looked at Alfie and saw he was also blushing. We smiled at each other and started up the stairs. This day was turning out to be the biggest day of the pandemic, and it was far from being over.