Jenny Yang Cropp
________________________________________________________________________________________
Usage Error: Translator
When I tell my father about the restaurant where my mother was refused service, he tells me it didn’t happen.
But it did.
Napkins folded into bishops’ hats.
Lemon floating in heavy-stemmed glasses.
They would have sweat in our hands had we been allowed to hold them.
So he takes me there the next night, same restaurant, same table. Says, See. You belong here. You are mine. I sip the water cautiously. I am a secret he does not reveal. We eat steak.
My mouth is full when a letter from my mother arrives. It is the only letter she will ever write to me. It’s in a language I was never taught. I call to ask her what it means, but the steak spills from my lips, and she tells me I will need a translator.
Her English is good enough, my father says. When she fought for custody, she brought a translator to court. For sympathy. For show.
Love, she said in Korean. Which sounded to the judge like, I do not belong here.
Please, she said. Which translated to, These children should not be mine.
I see her now, alone at her table, sending messages I will read as years of absence, as white space waiting to be filled.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Jenny Yang Cropp’s debut poetry collection, String Theory (Mongrel Empire Press), was a 2016 Oklahoma Book Award finalist. Her poems have appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, Ecotone, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. She received an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University-Mankato and a PhD in English from the University of South Dakota where she served for two years as the managing editor of South Dakota Review. She currently teaches English and creative writing at Cameron University.