Resy treated me like a little niece. She was also my On-the-Job Instructor (OJI) and was to supervise my first three days of delivering mail. In the morning, she let me finish organizing her mail while she loaded her packages. Before delivering anything, she bought me lunch at Superior Palace, as she did for every new carrier she trained. (We both ordered the pork and bitter melon.) She said she liked the restaurant because they always remembered her husband’s shrimp allergy.
Back out on the neighborhood, she showed me a trick of using the edge of the magazine or letter to lift the cover of a mailbox and push in the mail in one smooth motion. At Carrier Academy, I was taught to use a knuckle to lift and hold open the mailbox, then turn my wrist to push in the mail. I saw how Resy’s technique shaved off a few seconds, but it was difficult to replicate. She laughed with pride when she saw me struggling and told me the knuckle way worked just fine.
I was let off early my first day of delivering. They only gave me half a route. Once I delivered at standard speed, they’d give me three fourths, then the full route.
On my drive home, my mind snagged on an idea. I never got to say goodbye to Esther. At once, I felt as if I were hearing about her death for the first time, slapped in the back of the head by the absurdity of her permanent absence.
My mind kept going where I didn’t want it to go, the psalmist confessing to God, “You have kept count of how many times I toss in my sleep; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”
The presence of God—a divine, cosmic witness—used to hush whatever caused my tears. It didn’t matter that nothing was fixed. As long as God knew what I was going through, watching me, bottling my tears, and counting my tossings, that was enough. God had been my divine witness, Esther my human witness, and both were gone.
With the concrete overpass winding above me and silent shipyards to my right, I was alone. No one was watching me. No one knew what I was going through. Then I imagined maybe Esther was like God, looking down on not only me but her family, our friends, knowing our thoughts, bottling our tears, and writing them down in her book. But this was a fantasy, and it gave way.
At home, Dolmangi saw me through my window to the backyard. He yawned and crawled out of the doghouse that Esther and I had assembled. His little tap dance at the door showed his enthusiasm to come back into the apartment. I brought his food and water bowl in as well. I wondered if he knew, through smell or intuition, that Esther was dead. At my kitchen counter, I ate the almond-butter, apricot-jam sandwich I had packed for lunch. With nothing to do and nervous energy to expel, I walked Dolmangi until his curly tail began to sag from exhaustion. Then I wrote Esther a letter, like we used to in high school. We had the same history teacher in different periods, so each of us would tape our letters to the bottom of the desk that we shared for the other to read. At the beginning of each history class, I lightly felt underneath my desk, avoiding old bumps of chewing gum and dried boogers, until I found her letter wedged between the wood and the metal. I’d surreptitiously write her a response in class, fold the paper, and secure it in the same spot.
I imagined this was only a momentary separation, a distance that could still be breached.
Esther,
I keep wanting to tell you about the postal service and how unrecognizable my life has become, but then I remember you’re dead, and that’s what got me in this fucking twilight zone. You would’ve liked my station with all the blue-collar immigrants and cheesy jokes. Hard workers who don’t take themselves too seriously, like you.
I miss you every day. I don’t know where you are or if you are. I worry about you.
I miss you sitting in my kitchen reading aloud from your diary while I cooked for us. The warmth of the stove, your voice, your thoughts. You ate my food even when I burned or oversalted it, as if it were delicious. Did you resent that I took that for granted? I wish I cooked more carefully for you.
I love you forever. If you still exist, I hope you are happy, at peace, and not alone.
That night I dreamed I was in Esther’s apartment room, stripped bare except for a pair of her old jeans on the floor. In my dream, I took off my pants and tried putting on hers, but they were doll-size and wouldn’t fit. I bawled in frustration. I walked toward the window that faced the stoop. Even though Esther’s apartment was on the second floor, she was standing on the other side of the dirty window. She was backlit by a light so bright I could barely see her laughing at my attempt to fit into her jeans. She looked sympathetic. I said nothing. I knew she wasn’t able to speak to me, no matter how much I missed her voice. But she looked so happy, perhaps a little pained. I stared ravenously at her face.
I gave up trying to sleep and sat up in the dark. I stumbled into the kitchen, opened a sparkling water, then changed my mind about it. I wrote her another letter.
Esther,
I remember the day we cleaned out your apartment. When your dad, your brothers, and I stepped out of your room into the hallway with garbage bags full of your stuff, your mom screamed. We all heard it, but we respected her for waiting until all of us were out of the room, out of her sight. We just kept walking quietly to the rented van. Her scream resonated with the one in my chest while also being incomprehensible and beyond me. Did you hear it where you are? I hope not. If I wished you hadn’t, why am I telling you now? Because no matter how hard I try, I have no certainty that you hear my thoughts anymore. Or because I am so used to telling you everything that I don’t know how to stop.
Our friends told me how good I was to help your family during their visit to San Francisco, taking them to the spot where you died, helping them pick up your backpack from the police station, gathering our friends to meet with them, coordinating the tree-planting ceremony, helping write your obituary, faxing your death certificate to your work. You know what’s crazy? I tried as hard as I did because a part of me believed that if I helped your family with the logistics of your death, it would bring you back. I knew it made no sense, but once the idea was there, I couldn’t stop spending every ounce of energy I had to help your parents and brothers. I needed to pay off whatever cosmic debt took you away. I was willing to do everything your death required—if only you could please come back.
I folded up both letters and put each in a separate envelope. On the envelopes I wrote her childhood address on the front right; I wrote mine in the top left corner. I peeled a stamp for each envelope and stuck it onto the top right corner, as all Americans had been taught in elementary school. I wondered if they learned how to write emails now.
I took out my phone and scrolled through my pictures until I found the one that I’d taken of Esther months ago at the beach. She was so backlit by the bright sky, the sparkling ocean, and the shining wet sand that it was hard to see her. She wore a black sweatshirt, faded jeans, and clogs, as one did at a San Francisco beach. She was repulsed by anything egotistical, but this didn’t mean she lacked flair—hoop earrings, rings, tinted lip balm, and the occasional tattoo she gave herself and her friends. In the picture, her grin displayed both rows of teeth, and her hands were in her backpack, in the middle of taking something out. Did Esther visit me in my dream to reassure me she was okay, or did my brain recycle this image?
I took out my Sharpie and wrote dec on the front of the envelopes, which was a return-to-sender abbreviation for “deceased.” I also crossed out each stamp with the Sharpie, which we were supposed to do when the machines forgot to postmark them.
I put both letters in my satchel.
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From Mendell Station by J.B. Hwang. Used with permission of the publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing. Copyright © 2025 by J.B. Hwang.
