Taste of Burning Sugar
JIHO LEE
I find it much harder to wake up these days. Some might say it’s due to ill will or a sudden feeling of liberation after the exams, where I circled endless rows of meaningless circles, one, three, four, one ... But I must strongly disagree with both of these speculations. No, I’m physically unable to get out of bed. I haven’t noticed it before, but something sticky has grown out of my face, spreading down my legs and pooling around my ankles. Like the strawberry jam my sister crudely spread over the batter one cold winter evening. Or like the consistency of the pus that leaked after the initial shock had faded from her fingers. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m glued to the bed. I’m unable to escape.
My sister had the most beautiful hair—so straight and fine, faintly scented with the soft, acrid tang of day-old milk left outside. When I was younger, I was addicted to that smell and the slightly conical shape of the head it perched on. As if eating an ice cream cone, I used to lick the top of her head, savoring the faint hints of baby powder and stained bibs, blinking innocently when my sister cried and my mother took her away. As my sister grew older, her hair lost that slightly deceptive and naive scent of childhood. Instead, it grew longer and darker, almost reaching her waist despite her small stature. Unlike me, she had straight hair—the kind that got easily tangled when it wasn’t brushed often, like the silk cocoons of small, squirming worms.
Yes, like a prized animal, my sister’s hair truly had a life of its own. My mother had preened and braided it into elaborate hairstyles to emphasize its even sheen and glamor. She never braided my hair that way. Of course, I had passively suggested this when my mother bought glittering headbands and bobby pins studded with imitation jewels. Looking down at my toes, at the hems of my frayed sneakers, I whispered this request as if asking for mercy, a pardon for my existence.
My mother retorted, “Don’t be silly. You don’t need bobby pins to keep your hair in place. You have curly hair, remember? Just like your father.”
And when I murmured a hushed, almost unheard apology, she said, “Your hair is just fine the way it is.”
But I didn’t understand. How were things just fine the way they were? I wanted to ask, but when I looked up, I realized my mother hadn’t even turned from the assorted pile of hair appliances. Plastic tiaras, ribbons, barrettes. Their sparkling rhinestones gently ridiculed me.
I also remember overhearing a conversation between my aunt and my mother.
“Isn’t it odd?” my mother exclaimed rather excessively. “All of us have slightly curly hair. The kind that frizzes up in the morning and in winter if it isn’t dried properly. But she has straight hair that stays glossy throughout all seasons.”
My aunt quietly sipped her tea. As always, she was a woman of few words.
Undeterred by the lack of response, my mother rapidly continued to fill the enveloping silence. “It’s too bothersome, really. You have to brush it frequently; otherwise, it will get all messed up. I have to trim her fingernails and toenails every single day. So that she doesn’t tangle them up in her scalp and straight into her hair.”
In her tone, I detected a sense of subdued pride. How my mother was only pretending to complain, whilst secretly she reveled vicariously in the attention directed toward my sister. Accepting blatant flattery towards her precious girl’s well-groomed locks, obnoxiously suggesting that my aunt should have “babies of her own.” My mother was ruthless when it came to my sister’s hair. She turned a blind eye to how my aunt shrank in her seat with every passing comment about raising a child, how wonderful having a daughter was, and how she should also get married because—Wait, how old was she again? Thirty? Are you that old?
In those moments, I wanted to scream. Not because I pitied my aunt or got embarrassed by the rampant small talk my mother tried to coax out of her. No. I wanted to scream because I couldn’t bear to stand there any longer, my presence drifting over their heads and dissipating into the thinly veiled mist emitted from the boiling teapot. Yet, like a specter, an ungainly piece of furniture occupying a corner of the dusty basement, I was sure my acts of desperation wouldn’t be acknowledged any more than my appearance. So I didn’t scream. Not when my mother responded that no, she didn’t want those nasty boys who yelled at her when they reached their teenage years, who broke her heart out of petty defiance. All she wanted was a daughter whose hair she could brush forever and ever and ever, like an endearing little plastic doll.
Still, my mother overlooked one fact: my sister was more stubborn and rowdy than any boy her age. When she wanted something, she screamed and hollered until her chubby face got all scrunched up like a pruned apple left out on a windowsill to rot. Her tiny mouth opened into a purplish, damp cavern. She balled up her fists, stomped her feet enclosed in white patent leather shoes, and wailed like she had lost something she thought she never had. Only her hair stood eerily calm on such occasions. It stayed flat and plastered to her sweaty forehead, never unraveling from the miniature bundle my mother had lovingly created. It seemed to gaze coldly at anyone who tried intervening with her rage.
“I don’t dislike her,” I later told them.
“I don’t know what came over me.” Liar.
“I’m sorry. I would never do it again. I’m very, very sorry.”
But what was there to say? It was just like that Korean language exam I took back in first grade, the question interrogating me with its impersonal typography: “What is the correct response the boy should make?” The picture showed a boy sitting on a bike, looking concerned, while a girl before him cried cartoon tears.
One: “I’m sorry.”
Two: “You were in the way!”
Three: “Stop crying.”
Four: “It’s your fault. I didn’t see you there.”
The answer escaped me for some reason as I stared at the grotesque, animated version of the girl’s sorrow. Despite the poor quality of the yellowed scrap paper the exam was printed on, the ruddy color of her flushed cheeks, the opaqueness of her tears, and the redness of her skinned knees were so vivid that they angered me. I ended up scribbling over the girl’s face in red so as not to see her sadness. I scored low on that test, and it was brought up, over sugar-coated words and careful consolation, at that year’s parent-teacher meeting.
I remember my mother’s impassive face as she said, “Must you always be so dramatic?”
Silence.
An automatic “I’m sorry.”
Then, a sigh.
I wonder where those unanswered questions ended up.
Another day, our aunt visited to give my sister an early elementary school entrance gift. She’ll be attending Yeonhwa Elementary after the winter break. Her shoes and hair have already been polished and pressed to exude maximum sheen. I somehow found myself unbothered by this constant fretting directed not at me. Instead, I’ve learned to wear a mask of placid indifference, smiling and maintaining that amiable grin just in case someone looks my way. No one does.
My mother fussed over the premium European 120-color crayon set my aunt had gotten for my sister. She said it was too valuable for a child to have such things. Besides, my sister could get careless and let the waxy colors slip and spread from her tiny fingers, covering the house in ill-spirited scribbles whenever she had one of her tantrums. My mother kept talking and talking until my aunt was embarrassed. But because my aunt’s younger than my mother, like a proper and obedient sister, she said that it’s fine. She wanted to give this to her. And no, it wasn’t much trouble at all. Finally taking the hint to stop, my mother theatrically clasped my aunt’s hand, exclaiming that she must take her out for dinner. My aunt longingly glanced back at my sister, who had already lost interest in the slender, alien stems of vibrance; with her back to our aunt, she continued staring at a picture book, harshly turning the flimsy pages until they tore apart. Sighing, my aunt retreated into my mother’s embrace, accepting the invitation to go out for food.
“Don’t worry. My husband has a company meeting today and won’t come back till midnight.” My mother’s joyous rapture is suffocating. “We can drink to our hearts’ content! Just like old times.”
My aunt smiled wanly and let herself be overwhelmed by my mother’s boisterous laughter. After they had departed, the house suddenly became very still, the front door closing with a definitive thud. I realized that my mother had not left us any dinner.
In a domineering tone, my sister announced that she’d decided to try cooking for the both of us. Because she wanted to be like that pâtissière in an animated show she enjoys—all golden hair and large purple eyes. She didn’t need my help, but I could stand there and watch since I was bored and had nothing better to do. Speechless, I trudged into the kitchen and watched as my sister struggled to take out the stainless steel bowls, the spotted eggs, and endless mounds of sugar. I felt bile rising in the back of my throat as she lost her grip after a particularly tumultuous visit to the pantry and unleashed sugar all over the floor. Uncaring, she stepped right over it. Barefooted, the sugar made a crunching sound when touched, just like freshly fallen snow.
“Maybe, sometimes, less is better,” I said as I watched my sister stir the jam into the already thick batch of sugar and flour.
She ignored me and kept whirling the cakey mixture: the red clots and the shiny yellow seeds clumped together with the doughy excretion. The small window that acted as ventilation was closed in a futile attempt to prevent the winter air from freezing the pipes inside. I couldn’t open it due to the coagulated mix of old oil and splashes of butter gathered around the frame. The air was stagnant and sweet. And I coughed and coughed and coughed from it until I finally caught my sister’s attention.
“Stop. You’re getting saliva all over my pancakes.”
Her tone was accusatory and vile, yet somehow insipidly harmless.
Noticing how her small hands awkwardly groped the spatula, I realized again that she would start elementary school in a few weeks. I could see her clearly: pigtails swaying side by side, hands firmly clutching the lacy straps of her Japan-imported backpack, the clicks of European crayons as they got crushed under the dubious contents of her lunchbox, the mottled remains of pancakes she insisted on carrying to her homeroom. Unconsciously, I tugged at my bobbed hair. It hadn’t grown out since my mother cut it with a pair of scissors, the blunt strands falling onto the tiled bathroom floor like a shredded exoskeleton. I could feel the coarse tangles eating into my skin, stretching my pores. I wanted to tear them out. My sister resumed chucking the remaining sugar from the bowl into the batter without consulting me. As she stirred it vigorously, tiny specks of sugar spewed in all directions. Some caught in my hair, large and glinting like exotic fluffs of dandruff. Some got on my face and soon melted like snowflakes when confronted with the sheer anger boiling within me.
My sister was now struggling with the valves on the gas burner. Her soft, clammy hands made it difficult for her to grasp the dials with much force. Droplets of sweat pooled between her furrowed brows. I saw one sliding into the sickening concoction.
“Do you need help?” I asked in a diminutive voice.
Glancing up disdainfully, my sister didn’t speak for a few seconds. Accepting the lack of words as grudging affirmation, I crept to her side. The velvety black dials on the stove seemed to glare at me as I pried my fingers onto them.
“Here, you just...”
I turned the valve, and a spark of ignition resounded through the room. A brief whiff of sulfur assaulted my nostrils before I could hold my breath. I wheezed repeatedly to get it out of my system. Yet my sister seemed fascinated by the glowing lump of light. Her normally inexpressive eyes reflected the incandescence of the flames, wavering like a pyre in the aftermath of immolation. The fire blazed inside the room as splinters of dust settled in the air. Their light fragmented at peculiar angles, weakly diffusing through the otherwise quiet.
It started timidly at first, but as I dialed up the valves, the fire flickered and turned bright orangey red. Without telling her, I poured in the batter. The batch settled with a wet, squelching sound. The room smelled faintly of sugar now, for my sister had spilled some on the gas burner the day before and hadn’t bothered to clean it up. The hazy fumes from the sizzling pan made me feel nauseated, and the stickiness of the burning sugar formed a thin veneer around my eyelashes, making them clump together. Still, that was when I saw it in her typically smug face—a faint hint of admiration. Feeling bold, I leaned forward and dialed the flame until it was lit ablaze, lambently lapping at the pan in kaleidoscopic flashes. Beside me, my sister gasped. Her pancakes were forgotten as she hesitantly glanced up at me. The thickness of the air in the room seemed perceptible now, like the smooth gleam of melting butter mixed with milk—the sweet taste I had desperately wanted to steal from her all those years ago, to be cherished, to be loved.
“Come on, touch it,” I whispered to her.
But won’t it hurt? her wide eyes seemed to question me.
No, it won’t hurt at all, I assured her.
Then, I promise.
I promise. Those calming words were tinged with a hint of retribution, a particular emotion I found so harmless back then. With newfound confidence, my sister gazed at the flame. Its light flared at irregular intervals, casting uneven shadows over her face. The shifting embers illuminated my sister’s translucent skin, their contours glowing in eerie shades of yellow, red, and green. The transition of the colors was so fast that it pained my eyes to look at it for too long—from pear yellow to raw red to mucus green, like a fading bruise. Slowly, my sister reached forward. The tips of her fingertips glistened with residual egg yolk, and the edges of her long hair hung towards the fire. Her entranced languidness made me want to scream, lash out, anything to slice through the unbearable silence. But I waited patiently, afraid of ruining this perfect moment. Closer, closer, closer ...
A flash.
(Light.)
A scream.
(Darkness.)
The burning smell became more unpleasant, like when our dog, Yomie, died of an infection inside her ears, and we burned her to collect her ashes. The same powdery scent of dust and hurting. The smell was strong enough that it overpowered my sister’s shrieks. Her suffering seemed unreal, like that voiceless screaming of the girl on the test paper. The boy’s amused apathy as he hid his knowing smile behind a worried gaze. Yes, the test paper. The disapproving, strained smiles of my mother. I must find it. Where is it, I wonder? Maybe it would tell me to do something.
But I remained impassive, fixated on keeping my silence as I watched my sister screech and shake her head. The flames had traveled up to her face now. Ready to lick at the fine hairs that were implanted there. I remember waiting patiently for her turn, for her face to melt into an ice cream cone I had always adored—so I could devour every last inch of her.
Outside, it’s cold and gray. I never want to wake up again.
JIHO LEE is a writer, video game developer, and artist. She has written many short stories about alienation and the lives of young adults in Korea. She is currently working on a new novel that blends magical realism with a stream-of-consciousness narrative, focused on storytelling and heritage, to depict the desire for human connection in the modern world. You can view more of her creative work at https://ujumiru.wixsite.com/jiholee.
