LEE, Min Jin

Free Food for Millionaires

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Joseph shook his head. "Get out. Get your things and leave my house. I don't know you," he said, his speech formal. His arms hung limply against his body. Fighting was useless now. He'd failed as a father, and she'd died as someone to watch over. He left the kitchen, stepping across the broken pieces of a white ceramic water pitcher. From the living room, he turned around but refused to look at Casey. "I sent you to school. I did what I could. I'm done now, and I want you gone by morning. It makes me sick to look at you."

Leah and the girls watched as he walked into his bedroom and closed the door. Casey sat down in her father's empty chair. She stared up at the ceiling tiles, unconsciously counting them as she used to do at meals. Tina smoothed her hair in an effort to comfort herself and tried to regulate her breath. Leah sat still, her hands clutching the skirt of her dress. He had left the room; he'd never done that before. She believed that it would have been better if Joseph had stayed in the room and slapped Casey again.

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Pachinco

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Hoonie's mother kept her head down, handling her sharp knife confidently—each cube of radish was square and certain. When a large mound of white radish cubes formed on the cutting board, she transferred the load in a clean swipe into a mixing bowl. She was paying such careful attention to the matchmaker's talking that privately, Hoonie's mother feared she would begin to shake from nerves.

Before stepping into the house, the matchmaker had walked around its perimeter to assess the financial condition of the household. From all appearances, the neighborhood talk of their stable situation could be confirmed. In the kitchen garden, ponytail radishes, grown fat and heavy from the early spring rain, were ready to be pulled from the brown earth. Pollack and squid strung neatly across a long clothesline dried in the lacy spring sun. Beside the outhouse, three black pigs were kept in a clean pen built from local stone and mortar. The matchmaker counted seven chickens and a rooster in the backyard. Their prosperity was more evident inside the house.

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