How My Mother Survived with a Can of Hairspray a Day.

As a kid, I hated going to Macy’s on Roosevelt Avenue of Flushing New York with my mother. She would haggle in broken English no matter how many times I told her this wasn’t the Namdaemun market.

“Stop mom!” I pleaded with her, “The price on the tag is the final price!”

She still nagged the pimply salesperson, “Twenty! Too much! No, no. Ten. Ten. I buy,” pulling on the sleeve of the salesperson the more the salesperson shook her head. My two younger siblings and I hid behind mannequins, but those stick-thin ivory-skinned ladies didn’t provide any coverage.

I am in my 40’s and we don’t go to Macy’s anymore. It’s been replaced by a Chinese shopping center. But if we were to go now, she would still haggle and win. I wish I stood by her when I was seven.

On Sunday afternoons, our house was standing room only. My father was a pastor of a Korean immigrant church, so our house was the fellowship hall after our rental hours of the colonial church were done. I loved playing all day with my Sunday school friends. We ran through the house in winter and took over the block in summer.

And the spread! Japchae, kimcheejjigae, bulgogi, doenjang jjigae. Men chatting in the living room and women chatting in the kitchen while chopping and dicing thousands of onions. When…