An Infinite Hunger

Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka

It’s the Tuesday night meeting for your mom’s Catholic charismatic prayer group. Your mom hands you the keys to the front office of the church so you can retrieve the milk crate of supplies from the closet. You have been given the privilege of setting up and breaking down the snack table. No other kid gets to be in the office by themself, not even your brother Mitch, who is in sixth grade, just two years older than you, and gets to do almost anything he wants. Because you’re a girl adopted from Korea, you are used to people saying you’re special, but it’s a feeling you rarely experience.

You get the honor of wandering the halls of the administrative wing at night, but you are also frightened by the darkness. You hurry from light switch to light switch, illuminating the way as if you’re playing the hot lava game and hopping from sofa to chair without touching the floor.

An enormous painting of a crucified Jesus, painted by a church member, hangs on the wall across from the office door. Parishioners pause in front of it each Sunday with their palms pressed together. When you pass it, you avert your eyes, shove the keys in the lock, and hurry into the office to flip on the light, but it doesn’t matter how fast you go or how you look the other way. You’ve stood in front of it so many times you know it by heart, the way the light shines down from heaven highlighting thick blood on Jesus’s crown of thorns, how it clumps in his hair and drips down his forehead, mixing with the glisten of sweat, how the raw inside of his skin is illuminated as it curls open where his flesh has been slashed, how the light accentuates the tension in his muscles, straining against the weight of his body held to the cross by metal spikes. Years later you will learn this technique is called chiaroscuro, and you will think of this painting.

“Regina, maybe you’ll paint something like this for the church one day,” your mom has said many times, not yet knowing you will escape this small town and run off to art school on the other side of the country. All she knows is you spend hours drawing in your room. She wants you to be a nurse when you grow up even though you hate the sight of blood. You want to be an artist. 

“Watch how his eyes follow you no matter where you stand,” your mom said, fascinated by the skill of the paintwork. So you stepped to the side and Jesus watched you, then the other side and still he watched, his sad eyes following you as you tried to escape his gaze. Later, in art school, you’ll learn why this happens, about surface flatness, the lack of three-dimensionality, but now, it’s terrifying.

She says Satan is always watching, waiting for opportunities to corrupt you, but what frightens you most is Jesus watching. The crucifixion is the saddest, most terrifying thing you know of, and it’s your fault, they say. Jesus suffered and died this way for you. For your sins.

You feel lucky your mom loves you. She tells you she loved you before she met you, even when you were still in Korea. She says you were chosen, which makes it sound like she loves you more than your brothers even though they are her biological children. But you know you weren’t chosen. You were just the next in line.

You carry the crate to the large meeting room. It contains a coffee maker and filters, a canister of non-dairy creamer, a box of Lipton tea, napkins, styrofoam cups, a plastic tablecloth, a roll of paper towels, and a bottle of Windex, all of which are organized now that you’ve taken over the set-up duties. No one in your family likes to keep house, but you like “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” You learned this phrase from a TV show that was making fun of an uptight person, but it made sense to you. When things are in order, you feel calm. You are a good cleaner, which is why you have this job and not your brother.

Tonight, Mrs. Martin hands you a heavy box of donuts. You take it to the back, peek inside, and notice a single pinwheel of happiness that is a French cruller. Your heart sings. You can already feel the airy, chewy, melt-in-your-mouth texture of the sweet, eggy dough. That the outside of a donut can be both crunchy and wet with glaze is your version of a miracle. You wonder if it’s disrespectful, a sin even, to think a donut is a miracle because miracles are for cancer or arthritis, epilepsy or migraines. You know this because every week they do a laying on of hands ceremony for someone who is suffering, and they pray for a miracle. You know it is sacred because you and Mitch have to be very, very quiet during this time. You plan to be the first to the French cruller, before your brother.

Your mom is concerned by how much you love food. You eat like a fat person. You’re going to get fat. Do you want to be fat? Your mom is very, very thin, though you know she hides junk food in the house and eats it at night after you go to bed. Sometimes you find it and sneak little bits, skimming the top of an ice cream tub hidden in the back of the fridge, taking a single cookie, or pressing your thumb into the crumbs at the bottom of the package to get the specks of crunchy sweetness, hoping she won’t discover what you’ve done. You know you’re stealing, and you know Jesus is watching, but you do it anyway.

Some nights, she feeds you cans of Slim Fast meal replacement shakes for dinner. You can choose strawberry, vanilla, or chocolate, and you always choose chocolate, to which your mom says “Of course you do” and shakes her head. Your dad and brothers get real dinner because they protest. You hate Slim Fast dinners, but you never protest. On Slim Fast nights you go to bed with a hollow ache in your gut that keeps you awake well past your bedtime, but it’s okay. You know you could’ve starved on the streets of Korea. They tell you this all the time, so you try to be grateful that, at least, you had something.

 

Except for the three people playing music, everyone sits on the folding chairs your mom has set up in neat rows. With his guitar on his lap, the leader of the music ministry sits behind the microphone signaling that the meeting is about to begin. His wife stands behind him with a tambourine, and his wife’s sister sits behind a keyboard, her hands poised above the keys. A small audio speaker sits off to the side. You always wonder why they need a speaker in such a small room with so few people. There are only a dozen people here, and you think: We are just like the donuts. You want to be the French cruller, which kind of makes sense because you stand out from everyone else.

They begin with one of your favorite songs about always being in Jesus’s sight, up to the heavens and below the sea. You sing along quietly.

When the music’s over, Mr. Steve, the prayer group leader, opens with a prayer. Mr. Steve has more hair on his face than on his head. His beard is thick and wiry, and he wears the long gray hairs above his ears slicked over his scalp. You like the way he smells, clean like laundry detergent and Old Spice. Mr. Steve was in the army during the Korean War. He likes to talk to you about Korea, and you listen patiently because he is nice, you’re expected to, and you feel sorry for him. Sometimes your parents let you watch M*A*S*H so you know it must have been hard for him there. Your mom says he is a very holy man because he has suffered.

Each moment that passes is a moment closer to the donuts. You watch the clock from the back row, where you sit by yourself with a bag of toys you brought from home. You can do what you want as long as you’re silent, but you are also supposed to listen. Today, you play ring toss on a handheld plastic toy filled with water. Smashing the buttons with your thumbs, you shoot air into the water to get colorful circles to land on rods. Mitch sits on the floor, back against the wall, with his Walkman and headphones. He is working on his Rubik’s Cube.

Before you left the house, your mom made you put back your collection of Garbage Pail Kids.

“It’s very inappropriate,” she said.

You wouldn’t have even had them except for the fact she let your brother have them. When you tried to argue, she said the things she always says when she is mad. Why do you think you’re so special? You only think about yourself. Why do you think you’re better than everyone?

Mr. Steve is speaking. He says Satan comes at us from the outside and the inside and we have to accept the Holy Spirit into our bodies like currents of electricity, charging us up with the love of God so we are ready to battle. They talk a lot about being under spiritual attack. The

people in the chairs say “Amen” and “Praise God” and “Thank you, Jesus.”

Toward the end of the meeting, Father Mark walks in. Mr. Steve stops his lecture mid-sentence, as if the Pope himself has just entered the room. You worry it’s a sin you don’t find him all that special. Your mom says priests are closer to God than regular people, which feels like the opposite of when they say God loves everyone equally no matter who they are or what they do. They say a lot of things that seem opposite, like how we should love and not judge even though they are very angry about sinners like Mr. Steve’s homosexual son who moved to California and won’t talk to them. They don’t like when you ask questions unless you agree with them. When you are confused, they just tell you you’ll understand when you grow up. No one knows that when you grow up, you too will move very far away from all of this, and you won’t talk to your parents either.

“Everyone, Father Mark is here with us tonight,” Mr. Steve announces, as if people couldn’t see that for themselves. “We are so blessed.”

Father Mark takes a seat in the back row with you. You refuse to make eye contact, but you know he’s looking at you, smiling. Whenever Father Mark joins the Tuesday night prayer group, which is not often, it’s a special occasion. Your mom jokes that Father Mark is handsome. With his short beard, thick sandy brown hair, and blue eyes, he looks like Jesus, she says.

You overheard the one Black girl on the school bus say Jesus was more Black than white.

“He had wooly hair and dark skin,” she said. “You think Jesus was from Europe?” She is a sixth grader, like your brother.

You asked your mom later, and she laughed. “Don’t listen to Taliqua. Her family is racist. They hate us whites. Lots of Blacks are like that.”

The girl’s name is Tenisha, and you felt sorry she had to live in a racist family. But you wondered: What did her family think of Asians?

 

During the closing song, Father Mark heads to the back of the room and looms over the snack table. You hope he notices how the bigger items are behind the smaller items, how everything is spaced neatly. Mr. Steve’s wife has shown you how to rotate your fist into the center of a stack of beverage napkins to fan them into a spiral. You have set up two even stacks of Styrofoam cups, just enough so everyone has one, plus some extras just in case. At the end of the night when you’re cleaning up, if there are only a couple of cups left you’ll know you’ve estimated well.

When Father Mark opens the lid to the box of donuts, you panic. You turn in your seat and watch him poking the donuts with his fingers. He doesn’t need to touch them to see them! He licks his sticky fingers, and you are shocked. Your mom would spank you if she caught you licking your fingers and touching everyone’s food. Father Mark waves at you, and you realize you’re turned all the way around in your seat. You spin back to the front and sit very still. If you don’t move, maybe he’ll forget you were watching.

But he could be touching your food right now. You feel protective even though it’s not your food per se, but it’s your charge, and you don’t want anyone to mess it up. Even a priest. He can wait like everyone else. And he better not eat your French cruller!

Then you feel ashamed for judging such a holy man. Maybe your mom is right about you. 

Mr. Steve ends the meeting with a closing prayer, and it’s officially snack time, and usually, you’re poised to be the first one to the food, but tonight, Father Mark comes over and sits next to you.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

Though you like seeing him in regular clothes instead of his Sunday robes, in his black shoes, black pants, and black shirt with the little white square in his collar, he still makes you uncomfortable. You scan the room for your mom, but she’s engaged in a conversation. It’s hard to make eye contact with Father Mark. You don’t answer, and you’re afraid you’re being rude.

“I hear you’re Korean,” he says.

You nod though you want to correct him. No, I’m American. Because it’s true. If you were a citizen of Korea, then you would be Korean. You are a citizen of the United States, so you are American. But you know American means white to him. 

“I understand you’re a very good little girl.”

You nod again.

“I also hear you love the Lord very much.”

Again, you nod. This reminds you of things Santa Claus says at the mall before asking what you want for Christmas. Mitch told you last year mall-Santa wasn’t real, but you’d already had a feeling. You don’t tell your mom you know he’s not real. You worry that because Father Mark is a priest, he might know you’re unsure if you love the Lord. Maybe priests can tell. You’re not sure how you can love someone you’ve never met.

Before you arrived to your family, the adoption agency sent a single picture of you to them: a blurry black and white photo of a chubby Asian baby, staring directly into the camera with intense narrow eyes and a wisp of black hair rising like smoke from your otherwise bald head. Your Korean name, case number, and birthday is handwritten on a white index card that sits crookedly on your chest. The photo is a one-inch by one-inch square, too small to fill the ornate silver frame that sits on a shelf in your parent’s bedroom. A pretty pattern of flowers traces the edge of the frame, but you—you look sad and ugly. Your brothers call it your orphan mugshot.

You want to love Jesus. Every night when you pray before bed, you ask him to help you love him more. Love is weird. You don’t understand how you can feel like you hate your brother Mitch sometimes and wish he just disappeared but also know you love him. When you think of how much you love your oldest brother James, who moved to Grand Rapids with some friends, it hurts in your chest like someone is reaching right up through you to grasp your throat from the inside. Love hurts like this sometimes because it makes you want people you’re not able to have.

Your brother Mitch likes to ask your mom who she loves the most—him, James, or you? She always says, “I love you all the same.” Even though you’re not supposed to, you love your mom more than your dad, and you love James more than Mitch. You’d never say any of this out loud, but you wonder if Jesus knows and if it makes you a bad person.

Father Mark says, “You remind me of my niece who was adopted from Vietnam. She lives in North Carolina. I’m sure you’d be great friends.”

You are glad she’s not in Michigan. You want nothing to do with other Asians. Being together would just make you both stand out more.

“Adoption is the Lord’s work. You both could’ve been abortions.”

You have heard this a hundred times. A thousand times. You know all about abortions. Pictures of twisted aborted fetuses, slimy and dismembered, cover the giant posters in the back of your parent’s bedroom closet along with the “Stop Abortion” and “Choose Life” signs they hold in front of abortion clinics on the weekends. You know Father Mark was arrested for chaining himself to the doors, which makes him even more of a hero. In kindergarten, Dawn Rachowski found a dead newborn squirrel on the playground. Kids gathered to poke it with sticks. When you came over to see what they were looking at, at first you thought it was an aborted fetus in the leaves, its tiny hairless body all curled up, purple skin still covering its eyes. That could’ve been you. So, yes, you guess you are thankful you weren’t aborted.

They tell you bad people birth babies halfway out of their mothers to harvest their organs and sell them to companies for millions of dollars. Sometimes you have nightmares you are being aborted in your biological mom’s womb, and when you wake up, you wonder: If she had been able to sell your organs, would she have been able to afford a nicer life? Then you’d be like Jesus, sacrificing your body to help someone else, and you’d certainly go to heaven, and isn’t that the goal?

Your mom walks over with a big smile on her face. Father Mark is holding your small hand in both of his.

“Your mother is a modern-day saint,” he says. Everyone says this about your mom.

You feel guilty you’re focused on donuts when you should be worried about all the aborted babies. From the corner of your eye, you can see Mitch piling food onto a napkin he balances on his palm.

Your mom bends down on one knee to be closer to you. “Father Mark,” she says. “Would you pray over Regina?”

“I would love to,” he says, and your heart sinks to the bottom of your stomach where a donut should be, and you worry that makes you a sinner.

Father Mark places a hand on your head. It is warm and big and makes you feel very small. Your mom places a hand on your shoulder. Adults touch you a lot. They hug you, pat your head, sit you on their laps like a doll. Mr. Steve and his wife join, and also a woman around your mom’s age, someone you don’t know well. Each adult puts one hand on you and their other hand on someone else in the circle, enveloping you in prayer.

“Holy Spirit, bless this child,” Father Mark begins.

You feel small in the warm circle of bodies. Everyone’s eyes are closed except yours. You stare at a pearly button on Mr. Steve’s wife’s lemon-yellow cardigan. Light reflects off the bluish-gray surface, and studying it, you can see yellow and light brown and purple and pink. This button is flat, but all the other buttons on her sweater have a ridge around the edge. You want to pop it off and shove it in your mouth, feel the smooth surface with your tongue like candy.

Father Mark continues about God’s divine plan to bring you here all the way from Korea so you could be saved by His grace and mercy.

When Mr. Steve says, “Praise God,” you are submerged in his warm breath and the smell of coffee, cigarettes, and sewer. You turn your head slowly so he won’t notice. You pretend to scratch your nose so you can cover it, so you don’t gag.

“Holy Spirit,” Father Mark says, “You have brought this child here to join Your family.

Her heritage comes from You. Our heritage comes from You, for we are all Your children.”

You like it when they say you are one family under God. You like it when they say race doesn’t matter and they don’t even see race. You don’t know how that’s possible, especially because they talk about you being Korean a lot, but maybe love makes you a special kind of invisible.

“May she walk in your light for all the days of her life. Thank you, Jesus, that this child was not an abortion.”

Mr. Steve’s wife lifts her hand from your shoulder and raises it in the air. “Thank you, Jesus,” she shouts, and then Father Mark starts speaking in tongues, and soon, everyone is speaking in tongues. It sounds like a mix of all the languages you’re not supposed to speak: Mexican, Arab, Chinese.

If you close your eyes, they’ll think you are praying, and maybe you are: You are praying for this to be over. You are praying to be more grateful. You are praying away your guilt. You are praying they won’t find out you’re a bad kid. You know on the car ride home, your mom will tell you how lucky you are for all these holy people’s prayers, and heat rushes into your cheeks.

The woman you hardly know starts to cry, and you feel ashamed. She rocks back and forth with her face turned toward heaven. Tears stream down her cheeks as she speaks in tongues, and she sounds like she’s speaking the language of suffering. Mr. Steve’s breath wafts down on you.

You glance at Mitch whose pile of snacks sits on a napkin on the floor next to him. Sometimes, though not often, they pray over Mitch. They ask the Lord to help him with football and homework and good behavior, to grow into a good man. No one ever thanks God he wasn’t an abortion.

Sometimes you look at the picture of you from Korea, and you wonder about your birth mother. What was she like—did her heart break when she handed you over? You are young, but one thing you know is this: It is worse to lose something you’ve had than something that never existed in the first place.

They finish praying over you and leave you alone. You head directly to the donut box. The French cruller is gone. You scan the room and see Mrs. Martin eating it, which is better than your brother eating it since she’s the one who brought it, but still, you want to cry.

At the end of the night when people start to leave, you begin your cleanup. Any leftover treats people don’t take home your mom makes you throw away, even though there are starving children in Africa, in China, in Korea. But before you throw the donut box away, you collect all the crumbs on the pads of your fingers and lick them off. You shove an entire chocolate chip cookie in your mouth. Your cheeks puff out like a chipmunk as you chew.

Jesus is watching. You don’t care. There is one Styrofoam cup left. You throw it in the trash and waste it. You eat more and more, until you feel sick. Your mom says people are souls, but not you. You’re an empty body, filling up and up and up to make the emptiness go away. The elastic waistband of your pants strangles your insides. It’s hard to breathe, but it’s your own fault. The Holy Spirit has not touched you. If he had, you wouldn’t hold so much anger inside. Maybe it’s evil. Maybe it’s Satan. Maybe you’re here to cause people pain. Maybe it would’ve been better if you’d been an abortion.

You lock up the supplies in the church office. You flip off the lights on your way out. Jesus looks down from the painting, and this time, you try to be brave and face him. But his suffering makes you feel so much shame you run, flipping the lights as you race down the hall toward your mom, running and running and running from the darkness behind you.