I thought at first I imagined the dark forest.
Weâd been driving for hours at that point, on the long road from Los Angeles to Phoenix, my parents in the front, my kid sister and grandma in the middle, and me in the back with the luggage.
Iâd forgotten to charge my phone the night before, which meant no music, no texting, and no games.
At least in L.A. there are things to stare at, buildings or people in other cars. In the desert, there are shrubs and more shrubs, a cow if you look close enough.
I shifted lower in my seat and drew my knees to my chest. The car hit a bump in the road and my kneecaps clipped the bottom of my chin.
I couldnât even ask my mother how much longer we had because we were in a fight. Earlier, at the gas station, Iâd suggested, quite reasonably, that I sit up front to charge my phone.
âAnd what,â my mother had said, arching a brow, âhave your grandmother sit in the back seat?â
That didnât go down well.
I understood, in theory, why I had to sit in the back. My little sister needed the booster seat. My grandmother, at eighty, needed space to spread out her legs. Once in awhile, an old injury of hers acted up, though you would never know it from the look of her. Iâve only ever seen two expressions on her face: happy or confused, mostly when I was speaking broken Korean to her or when she was speaking broken English to me.
âJennie-yah,â she would say. âEat?â
âYes, Halmoni.â She would make ramen in a metal pot.
âNo, Halmoni.â I would continue binge-watching Netflix shows.
To my three-year-old sister, she only spoke in Korean. They would sit together on the floor for hours playing with puzzles or jabbering nonsense words to each other. Throughout the car ride, theyâd laughed and clapped along to the same Disney Sing-Along Song DVD for three hours straight. In front of me, I watched as my grandmother, leaning over, said something in Korean to my sister, and she giggled. In the distance I heard the rumble of thunder as a storm approached.
If my grandmother had said the same thing to me, would I have laughed? Would I have even understood her?
It came at first like a Polaroid snapshot. One moment, we were driving through the desert, barren stretches of earth, on either side, and thenâsudden night. I blinked and I was alone in a forest, trees in every direction, like dark sentinels, towering, watchful. But it was more than a picture because I was there. My feet, encased in worn brown boots, were rooted in mud. I couldnât move. I felt a scream inside me, building and building and thenâŠ
The car, the desert, the low-pitched crooning of a Disney prince.
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