But it was only day one. She had to keep trying. She couldn’t go back now. She closed her eyes and prayed silently, Please, God. Please help me. Please let me know that it will be okay. Please.

After her ten-minute break, she stocked shelves with instant noodles, ramen, and moved on to condiments, soup bases, soy sauce, and doenjang. She sweat as she got up and down on her knees to replenish the bottom shelves. Her skirt became filthy, streaked with dirt over the once-pretty pastels. She felt like a fool now for caring so much about how she looked. What did it matter when all she saw were bottles of sauce, vegetables?

She should get used to the nothingness. It was so much better than being at home in Seoul, her empty apartment, all those reminders of the past. She was free now. She was free.

Mr. Park mentioned that eventually she could move to the cash registers up front. But she preferred the lack of social interaction, the invisibility of working in the back or stocking shelves. In the aisles, she could hide, blur into a wall of doenjang. She could disappear in a vacuum of condiments, bottles, and jars. Only the occasional glance of the handsome Korean man mattered. The fact that he appeared younger than her, in a way, made her attraction feel safe. It was silly and harmless.

Yet she also knew that she could not do this work forever. How many years could she spend lifting and kneeling? She was only forty-one, but still she felt day by day her body getting older, hurting microscopically more and more.

Her body had changed dramatically in her thirties from caring for her daughter. She had become strong, but now all she had were food items to lift, to raise. Now all she had was food. If she thought about it too much while working, she started to cry. So she worked harder and faster to kill the pain, the thoughts.

Once, in the back of the store, she had been lifting boxes of soy sauce off the ground onto a rolling cart. A door squeaked open, a slant of light on the floor. Adjusting his waistband, Mr. Park emerged from his office with a large black canvas bag in hand. The wooden grip of a pistol gleamed at his belt.

“Are you sure you can do this?” He winked almost imperceptibly as if he had dust in his eye.

“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you.” She tried not to look at him.

“How are you liking America?”

“It’s okay. I’m getting by.”

“Tough, ha?” He dropped the bag with a dull thud by his feet. Mina had the impression that it was filled with cash. He was on his way to the bank. The gun.

Bending his knees, he loaded one of her boxes onto the cart. “Well, no matter how hard it is, you got to keep going. Keep trying.”

“Yeah.”

“I worked hard, very hard. And now, I’m the owner. I own all of this.” He gestured toward the entire building, the entire universe as if it all belonged to him, too. He grinned so widely she could see the gold tooth in his mouth.

Aware of the gun at his side, she stepped back. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah, I’ve been here for—what, let me think . . . 1962.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Yeah, but you see what happens when you work hard?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“It pays off.” He lifted his brows and bent down to pick the bag off the ground.

She wanted to say, Really? She didn’t buy any of that. Not exactly. It was impossible to believe in a meritocracy when everyone around her, the women she lived with and the people she worked with at the store, could never own a supermarket no matter how hard they worked. They’d be lucky enough to own anything ever. Like her, they’d be renting rooms in houses. Everything in their lives would be hand-me-downs. Who did this smarmy man think he was? He probably thought she was some lonely woman he could tease and would be grateful for his attention, any attention.

She remembered her husband always had so much faith in her. He would never speak to anyone this way. He treated her like an equal. That may have been unconventional, but that was why she loved him so much.

“Yes, work hard, make money. All goes somewhere. Not a waste at all.”

“Okay,” she said, trying not to roll her eyes. Bending her knees, she picked up a box from the floor. He grabbed the cart, stabilizing it.

Using her foot, she pulled the cart back from his grip. “I got it.” She hauled the box on top and pushed it through the strip door out into the aisles, relieved to get away from him.

MINA DIDN’T KNOW THE OTHER RENTER’S NAME, BUT that didn’t matter much. She referred to her as female friends do in Korea—unnie, “older sister.” The other renter spoke English well, with even a bit of a Southern accent, a twang that sounded out of the Westerns Mina’s husband had watched. Unnie helped her set up her first phone account and shared all her maps and bus information so that Mina could get around town more easily.

Unnie loved Asian pears and tangerines so Mina would carry home a few of those, as well as something refreshing and cold, such as sikhye—a malted rice drink—which happened to have been her daughter’s favorite, too. On a hot night, Mina could drink a gallon of sikhye in a single sitting, but she restricted herself to a glass after dinner when she’d rest sometimes in the dining nook, damp with sweat, listening to the crickets through the open windows and the landlady watching the Korean news.

Because unnie often worked at night, only if their schedules permitted, she and Mina sat down to eat together, once or twice per week. They would talk about the day usually, or America in general, or unnie would translate a document, a billing statement for her, and that was it. They would never go into each other’s rooms where unnie read large English novels or listened to classical music that, even muffled through her door, elevated the entire house—notes connected and smooth.

One night in late July about a month after she had arrived in Los Angeles, Mina went into the kitchen, which smelled of onions and doenjang jjigae, to prepare something simple for dinner, enough to fill her stomach so she could go back to bed and fall asleep to the sound of the crickets playing their wings. At the stove, unnie stirred a large stainless steel pot.

“How’s work?” she asked.

Mina opened their refrigerator. “Oh, it was okay. It’s not so bad—could be worse, I guess. How’s work at the restaurant?”

“Eh, everything’s the same.” She glanced at the egg in Mina’s hand and smiled. “I’m making some more jjigae. Would you like some?”

“That’s okay, you’ve been too nice to me already.”

“Don’t worry about it. You look tired. Let’s eat together.” She grabbed the egg from Mina’s hand before opening the fridge and placing it back in its carton. “Just have a seat. I’ll take care of this.”

Mina arranged paper napkins on the vinyl place mats along with spoons and chopsticks. Who did this woman remind her of? Maybe one of the nuns at the orphanage? So many of those years, and the people within them, had all been a blur that she had blocked out of her mind—first through work, then through marriage and family.

After eating together for several minutes in silence, Mina asked, “How long have you been living here?”

“A couple years.”

“In America?”

Unnie laughed. “No, just in this house. I’ve been in America longer than that. I used to live in Texas. Do you know Texas?”

“I’ve heard of it. Yes.”

Unnie wiped her mouth. “Why did you come to LA?”

“My friend, a coworker from Seoul, lives here now. I haven’t been able to meet up with her yet. She’s always at her dry-cleaning shop.” She tried to smile. “But I’ll see her this Sunday at church. She’s going to pick me up.” The prospect of reuniting soon with Mrs. Shin, whom she hadn’t seen in years, had been a bright spot in her life.

“I see. That’s good you have a church.”

“What about you? Do you go to church?”

“No.”

The silence engulfed them again until the end of their meal when Mina stood to wash the dishes, eager to surrender to her bed.

And as the weeks passed, Mina could understand why unnie avoided church.

Although mostly well-meaning, the women there asked Mina about whether or not she had a husband, kids, as if they had forgotten her vague response from the week before. She wanted to lie and say that she never had either, just to avoid talking with them, but the women, without being explicit, looked down upon those who couldn’t marry. How could an attractive woman who had lived all her life in Korea, a country full of Korean men, not meet anyone? Something must be wrong with her. But what?

One Sunday, Mina and her friend Mrs. Shin sat with the other women in the dim downstairs dining area of the church after service for a lunch of gimbap, room-temperature japchae, and kimchi. After bearing their usual prodding questions, Mina finally became fed up with trying to avoid the stigma. She told them the truth.

“They’re dead,” she said. She said it again, louder. “They’re dead.”

The women froze, some with their chopsticks raised midair.

“All of them?” the nosiest one asked, food stuck in her teeth.