“Hey, I’m so sorry about your mom,” he said with a slight New York accent. “She was a good tenant. Always paid rent on time.” He coughed and turned to spit on the ground.
“Thank you,” Margot said. It struck her that he might have known her mother, seen her more than Margot had this past year. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she asked, “Do you remember the last time you saw her? What she seemed like?”
“Hmm.” He paused. “It’s hard to say. She dropped off her rent check a couple days early. Last Friday, I think?”
“Was there—I don’t know—anything odd going on? Anything around the apartment or . . .?”
Scrunching his brows, he ran his fingers through wavy hair, bright white at the temples. “Well, last weekend, I might’ve heard your mom yelling,” he said, biting his lower lip. “At night. But a lot of people fight. A lot of families fight, you know.”
“Yelling?” she asked, shocked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it was someone else in the building. A Korean woman.”
Heart pounding, Margot asked, “Do you remember which day that was?”
“Not really. Saturday or Sunday.” He scratched his head, avoiding her eyes. “It’s probably a mistake. Who knows? My apartment isn’t directly below hers. But my window was open, and I thought I could hear a woman yelling.” He shrugged. “I went back to sleep.”
“Was it just my mother yelling? Was there anyone else with her?”
He shook his head. “I’m probably mixed up, you know? I heard Korean and there’s not a lot of us left in the building, so—I figured it was your mother. But I don’t know.”
“Did you tell anyone? The police?”
“No, no, I didn’t. Honestly, I didn’t even remember this until now. Not a big deal. It could’ve been anyone. I mean, no need to get them involved with that. People fight. People get mad.”
“Was my mother usually noisy?”
“No, no. Very nice lady. This has always been a safe building. Very safe. No problems.” He dug in his back pocket and produced a Marlboro Lights packet half-wrapped in plastic. Slipping a cigarette behind his ear, he said, “It could happen to anyone, you know?”
Was he being cagey or was it just her imagination? Margot asked, “Are you new?”
“Excuse me?”
“I used to live here,” she said. “I don’t recognize you.”
“My wife owned this building. She died a few years ago and I’ve been trying to keep it together since then. You have no idea how expensive it is to own a building these days. We used to be the bad guys, you know? Now it’s like we can’t even make a decent buck, you know, with all the big companies buying everything. The electric bill is so expensive these days. Then you have tenants complaining all the time about the noise. There’s crime. Is it my fault? I try my best. I fix the security door. The next step is to buy a camera, but how much more can I put into this building? How much? It’s never good enough. Everyone hates the landlord.”
“Well, you own something, right?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“At least now that my mom’s dead you can raise the rent.” Her voice cracked. “Would that help pay for your camera?”
“What are you trying to say? I wasn’t complaining about your mom. Your mom was good. She was quiet. She had some visitors sometimes . . . A man used to come around here. A boyfriend, I guess. Rich guy. Who knows? She had friends. She was fine.”
“A boyfriend?” Margot’s mother had never mentioned or expressed romantic interest in anyone, even the occasional shopkeeper at the swap meet who courted her.
“Yeah, some guy, I don’t know. I don’t get in anyone’s business except when they’re parked too close to the driveway or whatnot. Some man. Nice car. Mercedes. I always wanted a car like that.”
“Fuck,” she said to herself. “Was it the person she was yelling at that night?”
“I only heard one voice that night. The boyfriend, he hasn’t been around for a while. Months maybe. Who knows? It was in the summer. I don’t like to get involved. It’s a safe building. No problems here. I don’t like to get involved, okay?”
“You could’ve told the police,” Margot said. “About the yelling.”
“What for? I was tired and it could’ve been anyone. I don’t need them snooping around here. Do you? Do you think the neighbors like that? What do you think the police are going to do for you? Do you think they care about your mother? Do you know how many die, get robbed, get killed in this city? I don’t need any more problems around here. Young ladies like you should focus on getting married, meeting a nice guy, having a family.”
She almost told him to go to hell but instead rolled her window up. Yes, he was right; her mother, and women like her, were an inconvenience.
But if she allowed that story to continue to be told, over and over again—that her mother was a nobody, anonymous, an immigrant who couldn’t speak the language, another immigrant who worked a job that no one else wanted, another casualty of more important things, a casualty of more important people—she would be letting them win, wouldn’t she? She would be allowing them to sweep her mother away like dirt and dust.
She and her mother deserved better than this. But how would she figure out what exactly happened to her mom?
If only she had left Seattle earlier, bought a plane ticket, she could have prevented her mother’s death, or at least found her soon after dying, rather than allowing her body to remain alone in that apartment. Why didn’t she try to get there earlier? Why did she brush off the fact that something was weird when her mother was not answering the phone?
As soon as she got back home, she’d leave Officer Choi a message about the landlord and the yelling from her mother’s apartment, the possible fight last weekend. She’d scour through her mother’s belongings. There might be some clue of who her mother might’ve been with last weekend. Who visited her? And who was this boyfriend in the summer? A boyfriend. That couldn’t be right. Her mother had a single-minded focus—work and their survival.
But could the boyfriend have returned? Could they have gotten into a fight? She’d have to find him now.
As the metal gate of the garage opened, chain squeaking and rattling, she realized with an overwhelming, enveloping sadness that a small part of her always wanted her mother to disappear. Not to die, but to leave her alone. She had imagined that kind of loneliness as freedom, but instead, here she was, treading water, without answers, without any land or any relief in sight.
Mina
Summer 1987
ON THE LOCAL BUS THAT GRUNTED DOWN THE LONG roads, Mina traveled to work among a mix of people, mostly Latino, Asian, Black, and an occasional white person, usually elderly. Mina had imagined America to be filled with white people as it was in the movies—all John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Cary Grant. She had never seen such a hodgepodge of individuals in one space. Who knew people could exist in quite this way, and could this project, America, even last?
Still unsure of herself, the languages, the gestures around her, she prayed that no one would speak to her. She tried not to make eye contact but watched peripherally, observing. A Latina mother escorted her two children, a girl and boy of about eight or nine, to school. A Black mechanic, jumpsuit greasy from work, rested his eyes, his arms folded into his body like a cocoon. An elderly woman with a walker, who always wore long dresses like a lady going to church, nodded at Mina. Smiling softly, Mina bowed her head in return.