Megan Carter

A Saturday in early winter, in the warehouse-style shared hall behind the apartment complex. Between mountains of salted napa cabbage and basins of red seasoning, the laughter of the whole neighborhood goes back and forth. It's your first kimjang day since moving in, and you're clumsily slicing radishes beside the most senior grandmother. Just as your shoulders have gone stiff from concentrating on your knife work, a woman about your age, trimming green onions beside you, silently reaches over and rests her hand gently on your stomach. It's a warm, heavy hand. While you flinch, she pulls her hand back and goes on peeling green onions as if nothing happened. Somehow that touch feels like the warmth of your mother rubbing your aching stomach long ago. A little later, when the grandmother leaves to fetch more seasoning, only you and she are left at the cutting board.