dani B)

“Who do you think you are? Is it too much to ask for a cup of coffee? You’re a woman, aren’t you? What do you think you’ll do once you’re married? I shouldn’t have to call for you all day long just to get a glass of water! You’re pretty stuck-up for someone with grades like yours.” My father said to my mother, “What’s wrong with her? She used to be a good girl. It’s your fault she turned out that way. All she does is sulk.” My mother’s face turned deathly pale. I witnessed all of this through the wide-open door of my parents’ room. “She takes after her aunt,” my mother said. “You know as well as I do how stubborn and empty-headed that younger sister of yours is. Besides, it’s not like I had her alone. Why do you blame everything on me?”
― Bae Suah, Highway with Green Apples

“The sound of the nail clippers must have annoyed my brother, because he stuck his head out the door and yelled at me to be quiet. My mother, who felt nothing for my father, discovered the glass I’d broken while doing the dishes and scolded me from inside the kitchen, as if she’d finally found the proper outlet for her frustration. Crickets chirped in the corner of the yard. I asked myself over and over, When will I ever get out of here?”
― Bae Suah, Highway with Green Apples

“It doesn’t make you carsick?” he asked. “It’s just a sketch,” I said. “And anyway, it’s not me drawing but a stranger inside of me who compels me to draw. When that happens, I have no choice but to draw, even while driving.” “Why do you talk like that?” He was always criticizing me for not sounding more like his mother or older sister. “Why can’t you just say, ‘I feel like drawing, so I have to draw.’ I think you like it when I can’t understand you.”
― Bae Suah, Highway with Green Apples

“I wish you were a different type of girl,” he continues. “The type who cries and refuses to let go when a guy breaks up with her. The type who says, ‘How dare you see another woman, I won’t stand for it.’ If you were that type, you would never have gotten this call from me. But, we were good in the beginning! You said so yourself.” Those words—You said so yourself—sound so oddly like begging that I find myself saying yes despite myself. He forgot it was my birthday. I don’t feel like reminding him, either.”
― Bae Suah, Highway with Green Apples