How to Greet the Mother Who Bore You

This story was originally published in Day One, a weekly literary journal dedicated to short fiction and poetry from emerging writers.

Before Teddy and his parents moved to Korea, the adopted nine-year-old knew almost nothing about his birth mother. But once they arrive in Seoul, the boy begins to scan the face of every passing woman, wondering if she might be the one who gave him away.

One evening, Teddy’s father brings home Mrs. Kim, a woman he claims is his colleague. Teddy is taken with her immediately, but he doesn’t understand why his mother doesn’t seem to want this woman around. So when she unexpectedly agrees to a trip with Mrs. Kim, the boy is happily surprised. As the three of them—two dark-eyed and dark-haired, one blue-eyed and fair—journey to the national park, his mother finally reveals the long-kept secret: the true identity of Mrs. Kim. Faced with the reality of someone he’d spent so long imagining, Teddy is forced into a painful understanding of his own oblique past.