Intertwined in Mississippi

Intertwined in Mississippi

It was September, but summer clung to Mississippi, its humid air refusing to budge. I was 6 years old, feeling sticky and nauseated inside the Greyhound bus.

My mother and I had just traveled from New York City. It had been my second airplane ride; the first had been from Seoul, Korea, to New York a few months before. I had been shy back in Seoul, one of the quiet kids in my kindergarten class, and now I was hardly speaking because I didn’t know enough words in English.

I looked out the window of the bus and saw richness and poverty. The land was lush, with green trees and bright flowers. The houses on them, however, had cracked paint and fallen shingles.

We got off the bus at Mound Bayou, where my mother, an obstetrician, would help usher the births of dozens of babies, and where I entered the first grade at a school run by aging nuns.

One girl in my class haunts my memory. I don’t remember her name or her face, but her hair was twisted into dozens of tiny braids, each clipped with a plastic barrette. The pins were purple, pink and yellow, carrying the shapes of poodles, rabbits and butterflies. When she turned her head, the barrettes clicked together like castanets. I felt honored when this girl took a seat next to mine at a large table. There was a pile of crayons in the middle of the table.

The teacher told us to draw pictures of our families. The other kids at the table dove in for the crayons. I dove in and took a crayon too. The girl with the barrettes laughed. I looked up at her, wondering what was so funny. “You’re the only one reaching for the peach-colored crayon,” she said.

I have had the luxury of being able to backpack through Europe, bicycle through China, sip mai tais in Maui. But my time in Mississippi remains one of my most cherished experiences, for it was there in a small rural school that I learned how to speak English, that I learned about the stark divides determined by money and race, and where I found kinship with a girl who wore poodles in her hair. It was Mississippi that gave me the curiosity to find out more about the world.

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 I had an affair a few years ago that lasted a lot longer than it should have. It ended when my lover, "John," died unexpectedly. The kicker is I was -- and still am -- married. For the last two years I had wanted to end the relationship, but I couldn't find the courage to do it on my own.

My question is, should I feel guilty for feeling glad that John is dead? I'm glad the affair is finally over, but I feel guilty that death is what ended it and that I didn't have the courage to end it myself.