My Sister's Octopus

“Wolf’s Milk” by Whitney Timbrook

The photo of your octopus is the first thing I see when I wake up. Resting in an aluminum tray next to something bulbous wrapped in foil, the cooked octopus is an elegant, deep aubergine. The octopus’s arms are tightly wound, the white of its fleshy interior head spills out onto a yellow gingham tablecloth. I imagine you and your—our—mother standing side by side at your small kitchen counter in South Korea, washing hands and tentacles alike.

For the past three years, I’ve often woken up to your messages and pictures, such as this one, on my phone. You send me your husband and daughter, a field of poppies, beaches and mountains, selfies with our mother, a bowl of noodles, persimmons. I save every image, as if it is part of a puzzle that will reveal who I might have been, each piece, a sliver of the life I could have lived with you. But you were just a toddler the day our mother came home from the Daegu hospital and told you I was dead. You didn’t know she had averted her eyes as they pulled me wailing from her warm body. You didn’t know I would be given to a new family in the United States. You didn’t know our mother lied to you.

You write in a message to me one day, “There’s so much you don’t know.” I read your words on my phone until they blur together. You’re right, Unni. I don’t know how to speak Korean or what our mother’s favorite color is. I don’t know how to cook an octopus or how one reacts when it’s stripped from the sea, what your house smells like, or if you cried when your daughter was born as I did. I don’t know what you really think of me, your younger sister raised by Americans—a ghost come back to life. I cradle you in the palm of my hand, but when I reach out to touch you, you aren’t there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara Streeter or Hea Sook Han (she/her/they) is a transracially adopted Korean-American, recovering interior designer, biological mother of two, and writer. She has words forthcoming or published in Longleaf Review, GASHER Journal, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, and Cutleaf Journal. Connect at https://sarajstreeter.com/ and on Twitter @_streetstreet.

About the artist

Virginia based artist, Whitney Timbrook, has been printmaking for the  past several years. Originally a ceramics artist, she blended her  ceramic and printmaking skills together to create large art  installations in graduate school. After graduating from Edinboro  University, she continues to focus on creating prints in her home studio  while teaching full time for Culpeper County Public Schools. Her work  focuses on organisms in nature that are overlooked by humans, and has  been shown in various places including: Thailand, Pennsylvania, New  York, Maryland, and North Carolina. Presently, she is focusing on  creating cyanotypes, screen and relief prints.