201 8th Avenue South, Nashville
Tennessee 37203
(temporary address for two nights)
Dear Georgia,
Tucked in a soft bed sheet, so soft threaded thousands of times with cotton - after a long bath shedding my guilt of not having visited you this time around - I am embraced by clouded daylight. I am regretfully relieved that I chose not to see you. The farthest I could go down was Tennessee, 230.2 miles northwest from you to be exact.
I did visit you this past summer for the first time since the pandemic. I drove from the north, weaving through thick greenery until I saw the sign “Welcome to Georgia.” The car radio got fuzzier and my memories of you, your heat, your humidity, your hummings came right back as I passed a few Waffle Houses. My father loves their blend black coffee, sunny side up eggs, and well slapped hash browns. It lets him reminisce on his good ol’ military goon-dae days with his American soldiers in the 70s.
I took the right turn on Exit 7 on I-575, driving by the usual American suburban vignettes: Target, Goodwill, Home Depot, Cici’s Pizza, and the rest. Then, I saw the spa, 15 minutes from my parents’ house. I saw the spa that I watched on the news petrified. You know, the one where people were shot by this pastor’s son who did not want to commit his sexual sin again. March 16, 2021 completely changed my way back home, back to my parents, back to my memories. It has forever changed the way I find you, Georgia.
A big yellow sign “Opening Soon” was hung rather proudly with flowers piled at its front door. And for a moment, I thought about stopping by. What would I do though? Pray? Cry? Take a photo there and put it on Instagram, maybe with a hashtag #stopasianhatecrime? There was going to be no use for any of it, this whole business of grief mixed with sincerity and performance when I have my family stricken with covid, bills and legal papers. There isn’t room to mourn. The spa was going to open, folks were going to keep on living. And you’ve taught me that well - that with you, Georgia, folks keep on living. Folks taught me to pile in all of that mourning deep under the Kudzu vines.
I can’t get over how those aunties at the spas might have been my mother, her friends, and how my mother keeps on living without saying a word about it. Have you seen her? Tucked away northwest of your heart, wiping, waiting, weeding away her back and bones without nobody seeing her while her daughter and the like, the MFAs, educated cultural workers, couldn’t get enough of expressing our agonies. We were upset, no, we were angry and devastated. We were crying, sharing photos of our families, going out to the streets, texting friends, making art, donating here and there. We translated our bold statements on social justice in our parents’ tongues so that they have language of pain. We were proclaiming, ‘we must speak, we will not stay silent. No more.’ Have you heard us?
Back in 1996, you welcomed me and my family’s dreams. Or did you feel that we snuck ourselves in? You were holding the Olympics and maybe we thought that the flags of our hearts would be welcomed too. I thought your pizzas were too salty and twinkies too sweet, but I eventually learned to love your sweet tea and grits. Truly. We learnt your ways, to sing “Georgia on My Mind” with a smile. ‘Just an old sweet song’, little did I know that it was a lamentation.
I now feel betrayed by my belief you could be my motherhome, my go hyang. With your suffocating humidity and highways, you engulfed us with failing promises of that house, that pool, that cruise, but you know, the tragedy is we still believe in what you have told us we deserve - a right to pursue our happiness no matter the cost. Why was I so naive? Your sweet tea overpowered my apprehension and the fireworks at Stone Mountain led me to believe that I, too, could paint the colors of Americana like Norman Rockwell.
And here I am, soaking my throat with vodka drenched with sugar syrup, my feet on marble lights, my neck against a silky cushion, my mother, my Georgia, my Norman Rockwell palettes are disappearing through the fizzled white foam. And at the end of the day, I say fuck you. I choose this unreasonable pursuit of writing a song with no melody and choke on the words. Maybe that’s why you haven’t heard us? We don’t have a song. We don’t have a song of our own we sing when we are hurt other than the church hymnals the missionaries taught us, and how far can that take us when they circle us back to your god? And that’s why I need this ridiculous cocktail, an amnesic spell to ease the rage I feel towards you. And you know, I miss you terribly.
I will see you soon though, to soak my bleached hair back in your sweet, magnolia scented perspiration and make love with the ones I left behind. I will drive home windows rolled down playing The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I will groove and dry my sweaty tears, so I can brush my cheek against my mother’s with no hesitation. I will exclaim looking at her eyes, ‘let us pile the rest of our sorrows deep inside Kudzu vines and take that cruise to Bahamas and say adios to the days of wiping, waiting, and weeding to our backs and bones.’ I will see you soon, Georgia. I will see you soon.
Until then,
Gyun