Page 28 of Hunger

"To pick up galbi. I won't stay."

"Of course. Of course you don't have to stay. When?"

"I don't know yet. This week. I'll call you."

"You'll call me."

"I'll call you."

She's quiet. I can hear her breathing on the other end of the line. The water has stopped running. I don't know what she's doing.

"?? ?,"she says.

"Umma."

"Yes. Okay. Yes. I'll save you some. I'll save you the most. I'll save you all of it. Just come."

"I'll call you."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

I hang up the phone. My hand stays on the receiver.

I don't know why I said it. I'm not going to go. I'm going to make an excuse later in the week and not call her back and the galbi will sit in their refrigerator until my father throws it out.

Except I don't know that for sure.

Something in me is different tonight. When she saidyou'll comemy mouth saidyesbefore my brain could stop it.

I go to my room.

The violin case is on the floor.

I sit cross-legged on the rug beside it.

I lift the lid.

The violin is there, the bow in its slot. The smell is still in the case.

I pick up the violin.

I don't pick it up to play. I pick it up to feel its weight in my hands, and it's lighter than I remembered. The wood is warm under my fingers. I tuck it under my chin without thinking, and the position is exactly what it was the last time I held it — the body remembering what the mind had long since given up on.

I lift the bow and check the hair. The hair is slack. I tighten the screw at the frog until the tension feels right, the motion automatic, my hand moving before my brain has decided to move it.

I open one of the rosin boxes. The Hill Dark. I draw the bow across the rosin two slow strokes the way Dr. Reeves taught me, and a faint puff of pale dust rises from the cake.

I tuck the violin back under my chin and draw the bow across the G string.

The note that comes out isn't music. It's the sound of a string that's been waiting too long, flat and dull, the wood under-resonating because it hasn't been warmed up. I draw the bow again, and the note is a little better.

I tune. The pegs are stiff and the strings are stubborn but I work them one by one until they're close enough to right. I playan open G, a D, an A, an E, and the intervals come back to me. I can't remember the last time I tuned an instrument. The motion is so habitual I'm doing it before I've decided to.

I play a G major scale.

My fingers are stiff. The first finger comes down hard and ugly and the bow doesn't connect to the string the way it should. The scale stumbles. I stop in the middle and start again.