Crying in H Mart

Zauner sees her mother’s cancer as an opportunity to make up for all the hurts between them, so she quits her jobs and puts her band on hiatus to move home to Eugene, despite her mother’s protests. On her flight home, she goes through her usual custom of grooming herself so her mother will find her acceptable; this leads her to remember the boxes her mother sent her throughout her college years, which contained Korean snacks and other gifts like clothes. Even though they left on bad terms, Chongmi still took time to break in a pair of boots she sent Zauner, “molding the flat sole with the bottom of her feet, wearing in the stiffness, breaking the tough leather to spare [Zauner] the discomfort” (69). Her mother never stopped taking care of Zauner; she even completes her own ritual of making Korean short rib when Zauner returns home.

Zauner’s father meets her at the airport. Zauner feels trepidation about going through this with her father; he was never a good caretaker and saw his financial contribution as his primary responsibility. His past as an addict and career managing a bar makes him ill-fit to handle this. Zauner also knows that he had affairs throughout her adolescence and adulthood; the things she once thought made him cool now seem like warning signs, and she worries they won’t get through the treatment well.

At the house, Chongmi is calm and cool. Zauner says she wants to learn to make all the Korean foods her mother made so she can take care of her, but Chongmi wants only tomato juice and passes off the caretaking responsibility to Kye, a family friend who is coming in a few weeks. After a night spent watching TV and petting Julia, the family’s golden retriever, Zauner retreats to her bedroom, which is full of the teenage posters and the sloppily painted record player cabinet that reminds her of her past self. She opens her window and goes out on the roof, reflecting on how different the circumstances are between now and the last time she went out there.

At the beginning of her mother’s treatment, Zauner waits for something to happen and tries to engage her mother’s food cravings, though she has none thanks to a reduced appetite. Zauner travels to Sunrise Market, Eugene’s closest thing to an H Mart, and feels surprisingly lost without her mother guiding her through the aisles. Zauner recalls taking Korean language classes at the Korean church and how the mothers took turns cooking dinner each week. Some saw it as a burden and provided takeout pizza, while mothers like Chongmi cooked traditional dishes. Zauner’s mixed upbringing made her feel like an outcast.

Zauner returns from the market and tries to get her mother to eat, to little success. She spends the evening making gyeranjjim, a savory egg custard. Her mother balks at this as well, and Zauner grows more frustrated. On the fourth day of treatment, Chongmi becomes nauseated, which continues for several days. It becomes so bad that on the way to the doctor, Chongmi deliriously tries to open the car door. The oncologist tells them to go to the emergency room right away, and Chongmi receives an IV to stabilize her condition.

When Zauner goes home that night to gather some things, she is struck by how insignificant her concerns were before now. When she returns to the hospital, her father tries to convince her to sleep at home, but she stays with her mother. Chongmi stays in the hospital for two weeks.

Zauner’s father does not handle this well. His father was abusive, and after he left the family, one of her father’s brothers continued to abuse him and gave him drugs at a very young age. His troubled adolescence was an outgrowth of this childhood, and he only found success when he traveled abroad to sell used cars on a military base. He took this success back with him to Eugene, but cancer is something he cannot “negotiate his way out of or outwork after hours” (88). He becomes a shambles during this time, unable to accomplish simple tasks and collapsing into grief. Zauner struggles to feel anything except resentment toward him.

After the extended hospital stay, Zauner takes her mother home and helps her with everything. While Zauner bathes her mother, she notices the black veins caused by her treatment. When she drains the bath, Zauner notices all the hair in the tub and quickly tries to keep her mother from seeing, but it’s too late: Chongmi sees her patchy scalp in the mirror and sits down to cry. Zauner is determined not to break down herself, so she settles her resolve and tells her mother the hair will grow back.

Three weeks go by, and Chongmi regains some strength. There is a plan for people to come help soon, starting with Kye, then LA Kim, and then Nami Emo if it’s needed, though Zauner doesn’t want to burden Nami after she took of Eunmi during her fatal bout of cancer two years before.

Kye’s arrival brings calm to the house, and she has them plant some vegetable seeds so they have something to look after each day. Chongmi refers to Kye as unni, which means “big sister” and is often used to refer to close women friends. As for Zauner, she becomes obsessed with going to the gym and running, irrationally believing that her hard work in this area will help her mother. She recalls how she was marked as different during gym class: She was not Chinese or Japanese but something the other students didn’t know about. At the time, she asked her mother to stop packing her lunches and stopped using her middle name, Chongmi, to be more ambiguous in her racial identity. When she complained to her mother about being the only Korean girl in school, Chongmi told her, “But you’re not Korean. […] You’re American” (96).

When Zauner returns from the gym, Kye has made a dish that Chongmi finishes. Kye has also helped Chongmi shave her head; Zauner rues that she didn’t suggest this first. Kye also cooks dinner for Chongmi and distracts her with Korean face masks and a pedicure.

The next morning, Zauner tries to get Kye to teach her how to make jatjuk, a pine nut porridge often fed to the ill, but Kye demurs. Zauner doesn’t know how to explain her desire to learn how to cook for her mother, so she instead becomes the “resident recorder” (99), keeping meticulous track of her mother’s medication, calorie intake, and illness progression.

As Kye’s visit goes on, Zauner worries about how much they are relying on her. Kye refuses to take breaks, and Zauner feels uncomfortably left out. She insists on taking her mother to an infusion clinic, which is right across from a spot on the Willamette River that Zauner used to float on with her friends. On the drive home, Zauner puts on the song “Tell Him” by Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion, recalling when she and her mother would sing along to it in the car. It’s a happy moment between them.

During that clinic visit, Kye takes it upon herself to shave her own head; Zauner’s mother is touched, but Zauner is concerned. Kye decides to stay longer than her three-week visit, and she becomes more controlling, moving Zauner’s place-setting so she can’t sit by her mother and arguing with Zauner’s father about what Chongmi eats. She writes a long letter in Korean to Chongmi and gives it to her at dinner, and neither of them will explain what it says to Zauner or her father. As medication makes thinking difficult, Chongmi slips back into speaking only Korean, and Zauner feels further left out. She is even conflicted about the pain medicine, since she feels as though it’s taking her mother away from her.

Chongmi says Kye does things no one has ever done for her, but Zauner thinks she would do them if given the chance. She explains that Kye had a difficult upbringing and is the second wife of her husband, whose children treat her cruelly. When Kye rejects Zauner’s concern about an undercooked egg that she intends to serve to Chongmi, saying, “This is how we eat this one in Korea” (107), Zauner can’t help but feel like she’s being rejected as not Korean enough to be part of her mother’s life.