I sigh, rolling my eyes. "Eomma, I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't have any customers!" I gesture openly at the clearly empty aisles of the cluttered and colourful giftshop, annoyance tingling at my spine.
"Because you look like a dark spirit!" my mother spits back. "Look at you, all in black, with that hood and that scowl. You're going to get so many wrinkles, you know!"
"Wouldn't you love that, so that people can mistake me for the ahjumma!" I retaliatejust as a bell tinkles. Looks like we have customers.
"Hello!" my mother calls out cheerily, before shooting me a loaded look. I roll my eyes again before sarcastically plastering a semi-creepy smile on my face, cocking my head as if to say, is that better?
My mother looks so done with me.
Eventually the customer wanders up to the counter with a scented candle and a jar - that'll be five dollars! - before we are left alone again.
"Ow, what was that for?" I exclaim in English, clutching my arm where Mum whacked me.
"Oh, so you do feel pain," she remarks dryly. "I guess you aren't completely dead then."
"Yah!" my mum whacks me again. "Don't yah at Eomma, haven't I raised you well?"
I mumble incoherent things, pouting. I can never argue with Eomma, especially when she brings the haven't I raised you well card. Of course she has raised me well. She is the only one who raised me. My father left for a younger, lessKorean woman years ago, and it wasn't like my mother was going to do the same - snag a nice young bachelor for herself - because she had me to take care of.
Not that I would've let her. I hated strangers of any kind - bawled in their faces whenever they tried that coochie coochie coo crap on me. Everyone in my family thought I hated them.
I haven't tried to change their minds since.
"Sorry, we are closed!" my mother waves away our potential customers, even though there is half an hour left until closing time.
"Eomma! What are you doing?"
My mum winks at me. "Let's go to a restaurant. I'm feeling spicy."
I groan at my mum's use of the word spicy. She's been trying to make up her own slang lately, and I gotta say, it hasn't been catching on.
"Mum, nobody says that!"
She just cackles as we close up, emptying the cash register and switching on the alarm before dragging down the security barricade. The keys are extra jangly in my mum's slender fingers as she sings under her breath, clearly in a spicy mood.
