Jenny Heijun Wills - Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.

. Gah-jee.

Minutes after I was born, my grandfatherthat is, my fathers fathergifted me a name. Then he signed a contract that struck me from the family registry. That ripped me away from my mother as she frantically counted my wrinkled and already-reaching fingers and toes. She pressed her mouth to my wet hair only once before I was taken away, what remained of the salty wax slip of her own insides thick and earthy on her lips.

For thirty years (and still to this day in the mouths of most), my name was replaced by one so expected it might have been Jessica or Meghan or Kimberly. Names of varying degrees of impossibility to Korean speakers. Mine is a name that I answer to, but that I wear only because Im accustomed to it. Because others are accustomed to it. Not because it suits me. Early on, I was scrubbed until my skin turned pink. I was programmed to speak English, then French, and to place my fork and knife side by side on my plate when I had finished eating. I disappeared into a life of cream-of-mushroom casseroles, Irish setters, and patent leather Sunday school shoes. I was buried under Bach concertos, feathered bangs, and maple sugar candy until my own mother wouldnt have recognized me.

But of course I couldnt stay missing forever, and around 2009, I was reborn somewhere in the dusky November mountains of Seoul. I came back to life with a long wooden spoon in one hand and flat silver chopsticks in the other. I came back when my Korean father called me by name, when my Korean mother called me daughter. When my youngest sister called me unni, older sister, and I understood what that meant.

I learned by mimicking others. I tried to fall in line with a culture practised by people who use given names only for those younger than themselves. I peeled giant apples in one long curl. I recognized spiciness by the redness in the bowl. I came back to life when all the ginkgo berries had fallen and the entire country of South Korea was filled with their cutting scent. I came back to life when all that remained were persimmons clinging to bare branches.

While my homecoming was something to be celebrated, it also planted lingering heartache once all the soju had been drunk and all the kisses had been given and received. I watched my parents, reunited after being torn apart on the day I was taken, fumble through what could have been our lives, if only. They came together, reclaimed the love theyd lost decades earlier. They thought theyd outsmarted fate. I thought I was happy.

I watched my own unnis life crack and splinter and shatter when it became clear that our father had always been pathetic and her mother had sometimes been both weak and cruel. She tried, my unni, to love me despite all the disloyalty that went into my making, but in the end we had nothing to hold on to. And although there is even less between us now, I still whisper stories to her into the sky, fallen eyelashes and dandelion fluff. Confessions and prayers to an older sister, related but not really. Wishes that, one day, everything will be forgiven.

Not actually a tree but a wooden vine that reaches skyward and pulls itself up, wisteria unfurls its fingers to the forest floor, beautiful strangler. Where do I fall on this insistent branch that erupts in tangles, shaking its loveliness in the wind as it chokes its neighbours and itself? A stem where two other branches meet? My fathers branch was already heavy with the weight of an older brother and sister. My mothers would blossom another brother and sister not long after I was lopped off. How gorgeous it all is until one draws back the locks of flowers and finds the poisonous seeds at its core.

When I was growing up, schoolyard rumour had it that my Korean mother was a sex worker and my Korean father was a fisherman. And that my mother was poor and my father was married. And that I had two older brothers, on my fathers side. Thats why, the mostly untrue gossip suggested, they decided to send me away. At home, there was also a story going around that I had been cared for by a foster family who fed me applesauce and rice pudding. That was unconfirmed, but what is known is that by the time I first arrived in Canada as a nine-month-old infant in the early 1980s, someone had already taught me how to say ummah, meaning mommy, and because it was my first and only word, I repeated it over and over again, entertaining my new family, who made note but decided it was meaningless baby babble. Decades later, when I was grown, I felt as if I was sailing away the exact moment I realized the cruelty of having learned that word at all. Anyhow, it was reported that as a baby I slept on my stomach. It was a well-known fact that no one paid a dime for methat is, except for agency fees, taxes, day-to-day upkeep, airline tickets, and other incidentals. This bears repeating. The costs were high, but it was not me per se that was so valuable. It was common knowledge that my new parents had considered Vietnam first, but it was closed to Canadians. They didnt care. They just wanted to help.