KATIE LONGLEGS

Madeline Chun

Katie is the girl with long legs and shiny hair. When she walks into the chapel, always fifteen minutes late, the sermon stops, and her painted nails unravel all the gospel in the boys’ ears. When she walks out during the benediction, the women sigh, and the men’s tongues slacken as the Holy Word washes over their prayers.

Katie, how do you cast that look like a double hook on a fishing rod, leaving them gaping and gasping? And if I wear satin skirts, will I be “90% legs” like the boys who sit in the back pew say? From you, I learn how to apply mascara and how to sleep with your bangs over your eyes during Pastor David’s sermons and what Yejin and Noah did behind the chapel last summer.

“There are two types of people,” you say, tallying red fingernail indents up your pale arms, “Those who envy and those who covet.” The fifth grader who watches you and scribbles in her devotional journal: green and white skirt, velvet headband, maybe $40 total? The unnis1 who cover the pew with their Bibles so your longlegs have to sit alone. The old clergyman who scrapes aishhhhh across his implanted molars as your boots click down the aisle.

Katie, did you know my mother is scared of you? She tells me to stop accepting your hand-me-downs. She says no skirts with hems that say something they shouldn’t. No shoes that vibrato your ankles. No lipstick that stains the communion cup. And absolutely no red.

During the Thursday evening prayer circle, Mrs. Kim whispers behind folded hands. “You wouldn’t believe what I saw,” her creped lips crinkle, “it’s sickening.” When those legs walk by, the men stare and stare. Yes, the husband who sweats while he prays. Yes, the deacon who first offers her the communion tray. Yes, him in the back left corner. And him, front center pew.

“Eve. Jezebel. Delilah.” Pastor David spits. “Be careful.” He looks right at Katie, sweat on his brow, bangs over hers. “Proverbs 2:16. Wisdom will save you from the immoral woman.”

“See what they do?” my mother sighs. It’s easy, too easy, to twist her long legs into serpents and melt her eyes into nectar. A pillar of salt that scatters to the wind for everyone to taste.

Translations:

1 Unni is the Korean word for older sister or an older female figure.

2 “Be careful. Do you understand?” “I understand.”