Magnanimity
by Kat Lewis
Samira Abbassy, Through Ingestion Grow her Wings, oil on gesso panel, 24 x 36 inches, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.
Magnanimity
Kat Lewis/ MAY 2021 / ISSUE 8
A ghost slid into Zuri’s DMs. Dread sunk through her gut like a dropped weight when the phone buzzed in her pocket. She wasn’t sure how she knew this message came from someone it shouldn’t have. Maybe it was the time of day—ten in the morning in Seoul, too late for anyone in the US to message her and too early for the lazy grantees in her program to be awake. Or maybe she knew the way her busted ankle always knew a storm was near—something inside her, something long injured, something never properly healed ached.
Zuri stood in her kitchen and stared out the window that overlooked Gyeongui Line Forest Park. Watching the ajummas in their visors power walk along the path, Zuri opened the Instagram DM:
ItsYena93: omg!!! r u in seoul???This ghost was Kang Yena, her roommate throughout high school, her best friend, her first girlfriend. Kang Yena who had taught her the Korean alphabet and all the curse words because that’s the first thing you wanted to know when you were thirteen. Kang Yena, who Zuri had taught how to play guitar, how to tie a knot in a cherry stem, how to cope with loneliness when their parents stopped calling. Kang Yena who had outed Zuri to the entire school three weeks before their graduation.
Now, Zuri was twenty-eight years old, and Kang Yena was someone she thought about more than she cared to admit. It had been seven months since she had moved to Seoul on her research grant. Every time someone asked Zuri why—out of all the languages in the world—a Black girl like herself studied Korean, Yena was the answer. And here Yena was, reaching out for the first time in ten years.
Zuri ignored the message.
As she went about her day reading academic articles and scheduling interviews, curiosity scratched at the back of her mind like a dog at a closed door until she finally wrote back: yeah! i live here now.
The two of them caught up as Zuri made doenjang jjigae for dinner and watched a drama on her iPad. Each time the phone zizzed against the table, disgust and excitement zipped through Zuri. Disgust in Yena’s sudden interest in her, in all that Yena had done to her. Excitement in the fact that the conversation was pleasant, that Yena got her to laugh at a few long forgotten memories of their school, that these messages could be the closure she needed to stop her heart from tripping into her throat every time a colleague asked, why Korea?
As Zuri brushed her teeth before bed, she ended the conversation, satisfied with the scant kindness she had received that was long overdue. There was no apology. Of course not. Spitting into the sink, Zuri wondered what an apology would do to her, if words alone could really make her feel any less heavy, any more human.
—
A week later, Zuri was nocking an arrow at an archery cafe when Yena messaged her on Kakao:
강예나: so this is very random, but would you want to go to Busan with me this weekend? my friend canceled on me and the trip’s already paid for. so its my treat. wanna come?This text felt like a slap in the face, like a violation of a boundary she hadn’t realized was there. Even though the last time Zuri saw Yena was on the stage of their high school graduation, Zuri’s last true memory of Yena was three weeks before that in the abandoned barn behind campus. Two classmates had caught them hooking up. Yena pushed Zuri off of her and said something so horrible that Zuri has yet to repeat it. Eighteen hours later, the whole school was calling Zuri all kinds of names to her face and worse, she thought, behind her back.
Zuri put her phone in the cubby with her jacket and jewelry, channeled her irritation into the bow and arrow, and stuck three bullseyes in a row. On her way out of the cafe, she checked her phone again. Yena had left another message. This time it was a single, lowercase word: please.
Zuri couldn’t help herself. Like any good historian, she approached life with the future at her back, the past at her present. But what did Zuri want out of Yena now? An apology? An admission of gaslighting? Or maybe she wanted to show Yena how great she was doing as a final fuck-you, that Zuri had won this ten-year-old breakup that had left her performing straightness every chance she got until she was twenty-three and finally understood it was time for her to become herself. No, what Zuri needed was to look Yena in the eye and ask the question that had been ricocheting like a bullet in her head for the last ten years: was it worth it?
—
In the bright expanse of Seoul Station, Zuri searched the crowd of travelers for Yena’s face and spotted her in Converse, a black biker jacket, and relaxed fit jeans. When their eyes met, Yena smiled and rushed over with an enthusiasm that surprised Zuri. She looked quite different than she did in high school. Her long hair that she kept lightened to a warm, chestnut brown was now its natural black, cut into a bob with bangs slightly parted on her forehead. Her red lacquered lips held a delighted smile, but her eyes—eyes that Zuri had stared into nose-to-nose in a twin bed from eighth through twelfth grade—looked sadder than Zuri had remembered them. Zuri wondered how she herself compared to Yena’s memory of her—her high school weave replaced with box braids, her face free of dorky, square-rimmed glasses and a general lack of confidence.
“Holy shit,” Yena said. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.”
Over the years, Zuri had imagined all the things she would say to Yena if she ever saw her again. Those words ranged from cutting and mean to cool and indifferent, and during the brief period in which she believed in magnanimity, even forgiving. And so, it disappointed Zuri that the first words out of her mouth were: “Yeah, it’s pretty wild seeing you here.”
“I wish you’d told me when you first moved out here. I could have shown you around,” Yena said this with a genuine heft that made Zuri look down at their feet.
Overhead, the PA system saved them from an awkward silence, announcing in Korean their train number, the platform, and the impending boarding time. “Should we head to platform two?” Zuri asked.
Yena looked up at the ceiling. “You could understand all that?”
Zuri walked towards the security checkpoint. “Yeah.”
Yena pushed her carry-on alongside Zuri. “You’ve come a long way from memorizing the alphabet and all the curse words I taught you.”
They showed their tickets to the guard and rode the escalators down to the tracks, oriented more like strangers than two people who had once shared a room for five years.
—
At Jagalchi Market, Zuri and Yena ate hoe and grilled fish in the restaurant upstairs, looking out at the harbor, its blue, blue water, and the tall, block buildings stacked along the shore. Halfway through the meal, they switched from English to Korean as Yena taught Zuri Busan satoori. Zuri tried to repeat back the phrase you looking for a fight? and she reached across the table for the water jug. The sleeve of her cardigan dipped into a deep red sauce.
“Ottokae.” Yena wet a napkin and took Zuri’s arm in her hands to dab at the stain. “You always get food on yourself,” she said in Korean.
The touch barrier now broken in this sun-filled restaurant, Zuri felt the heat of Yena’s hand through the sweater. The confused sensations of spite and home welled in Zuri’s chest. But something about the fact that this conversation was in Korean made the spite subside to a whisper and brought back memories of Yena smoking in that barn behind campus with her head on Zuri’s shoulder. Yes, in some small way, speaking Korean with this person who had hurt her most allowed them to reinvent themselves and who they could be with each other.
After lunch, they climbed the hill to Busan Tower, shot up the high-speed elevator to the observation deck, and took a touristy photo in front of a green screen, each of them holding up a finger heart. In the gift shop, Yena bought two copies of the photo. “One for you. One for me,” she said, handing Zuri the photo like they were seventeen again, like ten years and all the bullshit in between hadn’t happened. For a moment, looking at their grinning faces in front of the green-screened nightscape, Zuri almost believed it, too.
Just before sunset, they arrived at the five-star, beachfront hotel in Haeundae. Hands full with souvenirs, Yena hesitated at their door. “Shit,” she muttered to herself.
“What’s wrong?”
Yena waved her away and unlocked the door. A trail of rose petals led the way to the king-sized bed and formed an elaborate heart on the comforter. Candles lined the walls, illuminating the curtain-drawn room with a cozy, dim glow.
Zuri dropped her backpack in a corner and watched Yena push her suitcase towards the window. “I’m guessing your friend who canceled was a little more than a friend,” Zuri said.
“Fiancé, actually.” Yena picked up a handful of petals from the bed and crushed them in her fist. “Well, ex-fiancé now.”
“Jesus, fuck, Yen.”
“He was screwing my best friend.” Yena opened the curtain to reveal an inappropriately gorgeous view of the water purpling with sunset. “All my friends seem to be on their side. Shallow fucks. When all this happened, I saw a picture of you at Namsan Tower on Insta, and I don’t know.” She dabbed at her eyes and picked up one of the candles. “I don’t really have anyone else right now.”
Yena stood, backlit by the sun-setting window with the candle heavy in her hands like it might crush her. In that moment, Zuri understood the sadness in Yena’s eyes. Part of Zuri thought, good, and felt something like vindication. But that feeling quickly slipped away, replaced by quiet shame. She wanted to be better than that, but she wasn’t sure if she could be. Zuri took the candle from Yena and blew it out, a wisp of smoke filling the space between them with the scent of lavender and lemongrass.
—
The next night, after drinking enough somaek that the number of soju and beer bottles on their table became embarrassing, Zuri and Yena walked along the beach. Banners advertised the Sand Festival, and artists had scattered sand sculptures the size of moving trucks across the shore. Spotlights lit up intricate sand castles that were ten feet tall and shimmering sculptures of mermaids with scaly tails.
Yena stopped in front of a sculpture of Beethoven. “Thank you for coming here.” Her words slurred with sincerity. She hiccuped and said, “There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Zuri’s heart beat in her ears. It was time for her to make good on the reason she had come on this trip in the first place. This was her chance to settle things once and for all; with Yena drunk and more honest than she could have ever been when they were eighteen and the stakes of their flimsy lives felt so high.
“I feel terrible about what I did to you,” Yena said. “I swear to god I think about it every single day. I know it’s too late for me to say this, but I am sorry. So, so sorry.” Yena’s voice cracked. Zuri breathed deep, taking in the smell of wet sand and salt to stop her own eyes from stinging.
“Why are you saying all this now?”
“I think,” Yena said, pausing to weigh her next words. “The universe is punishing me. Ever since then, every time I came close to something I wanted, something that could make me happy, god or whatever would put it right in front of me just to snatch it away.” Yena looked Zuri in the eye and asked with sobering seriousness, “Can you forgive me?”
Zuri held her gaze. For the better part of a decade, this was all Zuri had wanted from Yena, an apology, an admission of the harm she had caused, but now that Zuri had it, she didn’t know what to do with it; she had already pulled herself out of the jaws of resentment.
“No,” Zuri said, the certainty in her voice surprising her. “I don’t think I can.”
Yena blinked hard. “What? Z, I was eighteen. And scared.”
“And you think I wasn’t?”
“Please,” Yena said, wrapping her hands around Zuri’s wrist. “I need this, Z. I’m telling you I’m cursed. I need to set things right.”
All Zuri could hear was I, I, I, I. At long last, she understood that this person and their shared past no longer had any hold over her. Yes, Zuri had made her peace, and now it was Yena’s turn. Zuri walked away from Yena, from the sand sculptures, from the ebbing tide towards the wide, neon-lit boulevard lined with bars and convenience stores, letting the crowd around her swallow the sounds of the shore, of Yena’s shouts after her, of the past, as it were.
Kat Lewis graduated from Johns Hopkins University, where she held the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund Fellowship. In 2018, she received a Fulbright Creative Arts grant in South Korea. Her work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, PANK Magazine, and The Rumpus. She is currently an MFA student at the University of South Florida.
Samira Abbassy was born in Ahwaz, Iran and moved to London as a child. After graduating from Canterbury College of Art, she showed her work in London for ten years before moving to New York in 1998. There, she established and co-founded the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and EFA Studios. She currently has a lifetime tenure at EFA Studios. During her thirty year career, her work has been shown internationally in the UK, Europe, the US, and the Middle East. Her work has been acquired for private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, the British Government Art Collection, the Burger Collection, the Donald Rubin collection (Rubin Museum, NY), the Farjam Collection, Dubai, the Devi Foundation, India, the Omid Foundation, Iran, and NYU’s Grey Art Gallery Collection. In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired The Eternal War Series #2 for their permanent collection, and in 2015, the 12 panel painting was shown alongside pages from the Shah-Nameh manuscripts to which it refers, in the Kevorkian Room, Islamic Dept. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her exhibitions have been reviewed by numerous publications including by Benjamin Genocchio in the New York Times, Ariella Budek in Newsday, Nisa Qasi in the Financial Times, and the Boston Globe.