Margaret is growing another boob. She suspects — she’s not entirely sure. For the past few weeks a lump, now the size of a kiwi, has been swelling between her right breast and armpit. Margaret first noticed it in the shower, back when it was a very slight bump. It didn’t feel hard like she imagined a tumor would feel, which is why she left it alone, assuming that it would go away. But it didn’t; it grew and grew. She thought about calling her ob-gyn, Dr. Wilkis, but she suppressed the desire, reminding herself how, back in January, when she had described her hot flashes — at times so intense she would have to park her car along the edge of the highway — he had nodded knowingly, like he was better acquainted with her body than she was. His voice an unpleasant croak, he had said that she was entering her perimenopausal phase. Then he had congratulated her. What he was congratulating her for, Margaret is still uncertain.

Today, Margaret is particularly uncomfortable. The pain has increased in small increments over the past few weeks, appearing and disappearing at random. Now the area surrounding the lump is throbbing.

Margaret recognizes the urge to commiserate with another person, but she doesn’t have many female friends. She worries that this is turning her into one of those women who hate other women, so, in recent months, she’s started texting her female cousins in Flushing and Seoul. “How are you,” she asks, and they are always either doing fabulously or doing miserably. The interactions do not extend beyond that.  

Often, Margaret imagines the lump becoming the same size as her other breasts, the three of them dangling freely from her chest. But the vision disappears quickly. Margaret is not the type of woman who goes braless. Sometimes, after a couple glasses of Tanqueray, she is vibrant, but then the morning comes, and routine sets in again. 

During the school year, Margaret teaches ESL at the local community college. Her students are usually men and women in their seventies and eighties from Vietnam, the Philippines, and Mexico. Being closer to death seems to be freeing. Margaret’s recurring student, Am, who emigrated from Hanoi with her family ten years ago, flirts with the handful of men in the class. “Is your wife at home or in heaven?” she asks coyly, before revealing that her husband is dead. Then, in a concerning overshare, she’ll say, “he raped” — a word that she had originally not known, using “hungry” instead. 

Now that it’s summer, Margaret is volunteering for an organization that provides free online English lessons. Four days a week, she wakes up at 3 a.m. to meet with students of exceptional academic merit in rural Korea. She’s in a session right now, her hand going in and out of her cardigan, discreetly massaging the lump, as if to cajole it into a state of calm. Her student, Min, is fourteen years old, an anxious teen with straight teeth and a talent for gossip. She enjoys the drama. Her entire body twists in her chair as she tells Margaret about the love triangles at her school. In her stories, Min is always the object of affection, overwhelmed by the desire of her classmates. Margaret questions the validity of these tales.  

Min is at once Margaret’s easiest and most challenging student. Her grammar and reading comprehension skills are so advanced that Margaret deviated from her standard lesson plan weeks ago. Now that their classes are fully conversational, Margaret is constantly having to answer questions about romance. She often finds herself being dishonest. 

“Is it better to marry a rich man or a kind man?” Min asks, pressing the pimple on her forehead. 

“Could the rich man also be a kind man?” Margaret digs her fingers into her armpit, where the pain is congregating. 

“No. The rich man is cruel. And the kind man is very poor.” 

“That’s quite a dilemma.” 

“Dilemma,” Min repeats. 

“D-i-l-e-m-m-a. A conflict.” 

Suddenly, Min disappears off screen as she bends over her notebook with enthusiasm, jotting down the new word. When Min comes back, Margaret says that, from her perspective, it looks like it would be best to remain single in this instance. 

“My mother says everyone needs to marry. If you don’t, you’ve failed.” 

Min frequently refers to the teachings of her mother, who is probably much younger than Margaret.  

“Failed at what?” Margaret asks calmly, trying to hide her irritation.  

Min shrugs. “I don’t know.” 

Then her face freezes. The internet in Min’s home often cuts in and out. When she finally moves again nearly twenty seconds later, Min concludes, “I would marry the rich man and have an affair with the kind man.” 

“That doesn’t sound like a happy life, Min. Your mind would constantly be elsewhere, wishing for something different.”

“Elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere. Somewhere else.” 

Min freezes again, but is back almost immediately. 

“That’s where my mind is always at.” She touches her temple, then points out of the window to her left, at the darkness beyond it. “Wishing for something different.” 

Finally taking her fingers out of her cardigan, Margaret places both hands in her lap. 

“Which would you choose?” Min asks before Margaret can change the subject. “And you have to pick one.” 

Margaret wants to say that she would marry the rich man, slowly move all his money into an account of her own, kill him, then run away with the kind man.

Instead, she says, “The kind man. Money can’t buy kindness.” 

Min cringes. “You will be poor. And your cheeks will melt because you don’t have money for Botox.” 

“Sag. Sag is a better word here, Min.” 

“Your cheeks will sag.” 

“And I will accept that. I will be poor and my cheeks will sag.” 

Min leans forward, her mouth downturned, and rubs the camera lens. At first, Margaret doesn’t understand what she’s doing. It’s only when Min whispers “there, there” that she realizes: Min is stroking her cheek through the screen. 

 

Exhausted after her lesson, Margaret falls asleep in her chair, her legs folded into her chest. She wakes up startled by the sounds of dishes clanking downstairs in the kitchen. 

Her chest and stomach are warm. She sits up abruptly and thrusts her fingers into the thumping pain of her armpit, fighting pain with pain. She stretches the neck of her loose cardigan so that she can look inside. And there it is, on the surface of the lump: what appears to be a miniature nipple. 

Margaret’s been digging around the internet since the lump first emerged. In the course of her research, she has come across many disturbing findings. A thread on Reddit of men asking one another when girls are expected to develop breasts and whether it means they are ready to have children; a full gallery of porn featuring animated three-breasted women; forums of frantic voices asking other frantic voices questions that no one knows the answers to. 

Weeks ago, she found an article in a medical journal about “supernumerary breasts,” a “congenital condition in which abnormal accessory breast tissue is found in addition to normal breast tissue.” Two to six percent of women have supernumerary breasts. In some cases, yes, a tip that resembles a nipple does appear. Medical research on supernumerary breasts seems limited, but resources on the removal process are robust. 

A few months back, while scanning the tabloids near the checkout line at the grocery store, Margaret read a headline about a woman who was planning to undergo her seventeenth breast augmentation surgery. Perhaps this woman had the right idea, and Margaret was the boring one with no imaginative aspirations for her body. It was the woman’s smile that got to Margaret — beaming like she had accomplished something spectacular.

Again, the sound of dishes. Both of Margaret’s children are home from Davis for summer break. She hurries downstairs, where her son, Junho, is sipping tea at the kitchen island, and her daughter, Jinny, is measuring out a cup of flour. 

“I don’t know what I’m making,” Jinny says, eyes wide.

Margaret surveys the ingredients laid out on the counter: butter, frozen blueberries, a bar of dark chocolate. 

“Make something you know, Jinny. Pancakes.” 

Jinny points a wet spatula at her, dripping an unknown liquid onto the tiles below. “A day starts with pancakes for the mediocre ducks of suburbia.” 

Margaret takes the spatula from Jinny’s hand and places it into the sink. Her daughter frequently says nonsensical things that drive Margaret into waves of self-consciousness. Is she a mediocre duck? Waddling about, eyes too far apart? Jinny starts aggressively breaking apart the bar of chocolate with her hands, dropping the pieces into the bowl of flour. Margaret finds herself staring at the back of Jinny’s head: freshly shaved to the back of her ears, a ponytail cascading over the hairless part of her scalp. She had gotten a buzz cut the summer before in solidarity with a Korean woman who had publicly done the same in response to a protest held by men claiming they were victims of feminists who were taking their jobs and refusing to have their babies. Margaret had not known how to respond. What would cutting your hair in California do to help women in Korea? she had wanted to ask Jinny, but stopped herself, knowing that Jinny would scowl at her, eyes narrow with judgment, making Margaret feel behind. 

Jinny, perpetually braless, seems to view her own body as something to reveal and play with. Margaret considers pulling her aside and showing her the lump, woman to woman. She imagines explaining the pain to her, how it feels like a large-fisted man is punching her in the armpit. Immediately, she vetoes her own idea. Jinny wouldn’t understand. She would tell her to go to the doctor. Worse — she might laugh. 

“Uhmuni, do you want anything from Chipotle? I’m going to pick up a burrito after I go to the store.” 

Margaret so often forgets that Junho is in the room. He’s quiet, overshadowed by Jinny, who is a year and four months younger. Margaret smiles at him. 

“No thank you, Junho.” 

Strangely, when the lump first appeared, Margaret had thought about telling her son. Junho is enamored of bodily dysfunction. He pokes at his bruises, prematurely peels his scabs, mercilessly tears open the zits along his forehead. But she decided against him, too. He might’ve taken an uncomfortable amount of interest in the lump.

“Daddy called earlier. I told him you were sleeping,” Jinny says, holding a glass bowl to her chest, swirling her finger into the batter. 

Margaret’s husband is in London reporting on an annual cycling race for work. She tells Jinny that she’ll call him back later. Talking to her husband drains Margaret. As he ages, he seems to regain his zest for life. He wants to try new foods, go power walking by the pier. It sometimes feels as though he is sucking up her energy and using it for himself. This idea is not unlike other passing thoughts she’s had about her husband in recent months, but it has, for some reason, proven more powerful than the others, fueling fierce resentment toward him. 

Her husband, a docile man with hair parted in a two-to-eight ratio, shows her a level of attentiveness that he seems to believe she wants. He had insisted on coming with her to the appointment at which Dr. Wilkis told her she was perimenopausal. He was quiet for the entire car ride home. When they got back, he made her a cup of tea, sat beside her, and began talking about an article he had read in 2012, or some ridiculously long time ago, regarding the menopausal brain. She would be prone to forgetting her keys, he said, or the day of the week. He also warned her of vaginal dryness, mentioning that he had already read up on natural home remedies for the condition — olive oil and grapeseed oil were highly effective as lubricants — and that he would do his best to support her during this time. He spoke quickly, as if delivering a prepared speech. Every time Margaret sees the giant bottle of Kirkland olive oil her husband is so adamant about stocking up on at Costco, she wonders if all this research was for her, or for him.

Margaret has avoided being naked around her husband since she noticed the lump. He would’ve made a story of it, dramatizing what he found most interesting about her condition. Margaret could imagine him talking about it for the remaining decades they had together, at family dinners and office holiday parties. Would you like to see my wife’s third boob? 

He had, unfortunately, decided that she was being shy around him because she felt ugly, what with being perimenopausal and all, prompting him to constantly compliment her looks. “You’re so beautiful, you’re so sexy,” he whispers damply into her ear whenever he gets the chance.

 

Margaret walks out to the driveway with her coffee mug filled to the brim, rotating her right arm carefully to take small sips. The pain has dissipated and been replaced by a light pulsing. 

Her neighbor’s children, two girls named Sarah and Sierra, ride around the cul-de-sac on their bicycles. Margaret doesn’t remember how old they are, only that they are still young enough to wear whatever they want. A raincoat draped like a cape on a summer day in California — exactly what one of the girls is wearing now. As soon as they spot Margaret, they ride over. 

“Mrs. Cho!” Sierra shouts. “What are you drinking?” She rides up Margaret’s driveway, then back to the street, skidding slightly as she hits a bump. 

“Coffee. Sierra, please be careful,” Margaret says, reluctant to care about the well-being of children that are not even hers. 

“Did you spike your coffee?” Sarah asks with a devilish grin. 

“Where did you learn that word?” 

“Our stepmom says it all the time. She won’t tell us what it means, though. She says we’ll know when we’re older,” Sarah responds, suddenly adopting an apologetic tone. 

Margaret brings her coffee to her lips to hide whatever judgmental expression is appearing around her mouth. The girls’ stepmom is a woman who looks like a bobcat. She wasn’t born that way.  

“Your stepmom’s face doesn’t move when she smiles,” Margaret says. It’s an observation that has been fermenting inside of her since the stepmom moved in a few years ago. 

Sierra stops her bike beside Sarah’s. The two look at each other, then back at Margaret, and giggle. Sierra rides up and down the driveway again, while Margaret massages her armpit and the lump. 

“Why are you doing that?” Sarah asks, climbing off her bike.

“It’s hurting. I have a lump that’s been growing for the past several weeks,” Margaret blurts out. To say it aloud — what she has been keeping from everyone else for weeks — is neither relieving nor comforting. She feels as if she’s bared her naked body to people who never asked to see it. 

Sierra oohs, zooming past Margaret.

“A lump,” Sarah says slowly. “An alien is trying to poke its head out of you.” 

Sierra gasps dramatically, almost grazing Margaret’s arm. 

Margaret doesn’t know what to make of this interpretation. She hasn’t thought of the lump as a separate entity wanting to emerge from within her. For a moment, she sees it the way a child would — with its own personality and agenda. A presence that knows Margaret better than anyone because of its intimate placement. Not a threat, but a friend. 

Suddenly, Sarah brings her arms up beside her cheeks, her fingers bent like claws, her eyes rolled back in her head, her nostrils flared. She begins making indecipherable sounds — “beep beep, meep meep” — then lets out a sudden roar. As Sierra rides by, she also pulls her head back, eyes rolling upwards, and lets out an even louder roar. All of it becomes too much for Margaret, who turns to walk slowly back up her driveway. Her hands massage the lump as she leaves the girls to roar and laugh to themselves. 

Margaret thinks back to Junho and Jinny’s reaction when they learned she was perimenopausal. It had happened over winter break. One afternoon, Margaret was sitting at the kitchen island with a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake, Junho beside her. Suddenly, Jinny appeared and announced that she had heard from Daddy that Margaret was in the general vicinity of menopause. Not quite there, but soon to be at the finish line. 

“The finish line of what?” Junho asked, eyebrows trembling. 

“Womanhood.” Jinny said it with a finality that Margaret was not ready for. 

“A chapter in womanhood. I’m still a woman.” 

Junho looked from Jinny to Margaret, as though trying to decide whom to believe. 

“Perimenopausal women can’t control themselves,” Jinny said to Junho. “They’re like submarines under extreme pressure. Ready to implode.” 

This sent his eyebrows into another flurry of movement. Margaret noted the word choice — implode, not explode — as if Jinny knew that her combustion would be from within. 

Jinny turned to Margaret and said, “If you need to go to the park and murder all the adorable bunnies, I will bury their bodies for you.”  

Then she kissed her mother on the cheek. It was an eerie demonstration of support, one that had left Margaret feeling uneasy. Was this like when Jinny shaved her head? Misdirected solidarity? All the concern about her being perimenopausal, and Margaret couldn’t even get a word in. Her husband and children latched onto the edges of her boat as she sailed through treacherous waters. They pedaled their legs with the intention of helping her, but only added weight and made her sink.  

Inside the house, Junho has migrated to the couch, still drinking the same cup of tea. Jinny is sitting beside him, but when she sees Margaret she gets up.

“Mommy, do you ever envision your own death?” she asks.

Margaret looks to Junho, as if to check whether he’s involved in the formulation of such a question, but his eyes are closed and his head is tilted up toward the ceiling. 

Margaret pauses, panicking privately at the weight of the inquiry. “It’s too morbid a question to ask so early in the day.” 

“You do. That’s why you don’t want to respond,” Jinny decides. “I think of it too.” 

“Your death?” Margaret asks, alarmed.

“No, yours.” 

Margaret is curious to know how Jinny sees her dying, but Jinny says that she can’t tell her. “If you knew, you’d laugh. I can’t say more.”

 

Margaret sits at her desk in a daze, waiting for Min in the virtual meeting room. She has spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about Jinny’s comment. She wonders if it has any connection to the lump. Has Jinny somehow seen it and imagined the disease — the one that was known to kill many women — spreading to her mother’s other organs? 

As Margaret is considering the possibility of her own demise, Min appears on screen. Before Margaret can say good evening, Min leans forward toward the camera. Margaret can see all the effort she has put into the elegant swoop of her liquid eyeliner. 

“You look sad,” Min says, the corners of her lips turning downward. 

“Not sad. I’m — ” But Margaret doesn’t know what she is.  

“Discombobulated,” Min suggests. She moves her jaw left to right, preparing to enunciate. “You’re dis-com-bob-u-lat-ed. Discombobulated sounds like de-cap-i-tat-ed. They are connected a little bit, maybe?” 

Margaret doesn’t know whether the two words are linked, but she nods anyway. 

“A decapitated woman is a discombobulated woman, I’m sure.”  

Min smiles proudly. Then, forgetting her momentary concern for Margaret, Min begins relaying something she’s heard at school. 

“When giving birth, women poop,” Min announces. 

This is indeed true, Margaret says. She herself has done it, and it was not humiliating. It was a rare moment in which the greatest compassion and empathy was shown toward her body. The nurses were swift to clean up the mess, her husband close by, holding her hand. Margaret remembers how difficult birth and recovery were — excessive bleeding caused the stitches in her perineum to break down, her nipples burned from breastfeeding, her uterus cramped as it reversed its own expansion.

Min scrunches her nose. “I don’t want to have a child. I will think about the poop forever.” 

Margaret wants to tell Min that she will cherish the kindness shown to her if she does poop herself. But Margaret doesn’t say anything. Min will need to live through years of agony before she’ll be able to understand. 

While Min tells another story, Margaret’s mind wanders, and her left hand continues to check on the lump. She will go see a doctor soon. Not Dr. Wilkis, but a different one, who would have warned her of things like vaginal dryness before her husband did. For now, Margaret tells herself that the lump is merely an accessory — like a brooch, or a hairpin. She glances down surreptitiously. It’s a fine boob. Familiar. It actually reminds her of the breasts she had early on, when they were still figuring out what kind of breasts they would be. Even, uneven, one slightly veering to the right, the other to the left. They ended up facing the same direction. Forward, with purpose. 

Margaret wonders what it would be like not to have her supernumerary breast removed. Perhaps she would leave it uncovered. People would stare, but she wouldn’t mind. Other women might even stop and stretch their T-shirts off their shoulders to show her their own extra boobs. She would eventually get used to the ache. It would just be part of her existence.

 

That morning, Margaret’s husband calls. Margaret ignores it. He calls again. Shortly after Margaret ignores his second call, Junho peeks his head through her office door. 

“Dad’s asking for you.” He extends the phone toward Margaret. 

“I’m sorry.” Immediately resenting her inclination to apologize, she quickly adds, “I’m busy.” 

“What’s going on? Why didn’t you pick up?” Margaret hears wind in the background. It must be nice and breezy over in London. When she says so, her husband corrects her. 

“I’m in Berlin.” 

Margaret glares at the phone. 

“I need to extend my trip another day or so. Cyclists are passing out from the heat. It’s very disturbing to watch.” 

Don’t come back at all, she wants to say, just to see how he’ll respond. Before he flew to Europe, he sat on the ottoman in her office, his shoulders heavy, and told her that her recent mood swings and her heightened irritability had been hard on the family. Perhaps she should get on an antidepressant. 

“We miss you smiling,” he said. “We miss the old you.” 

Margaret wanted to counter that she was allowed to go through a difficult time — there is no old and new — but worried that protesting would count as something her old self wouldn’t have done. 

“How are you doing? How are the kids?” her husband shouts over the background noise. 

“Alive and well,” Margaret says. Alive for herself, well for the kids. 

Her husband talks about how fit all of the cyclists are — thighs like barrels — and says he’d like to start cycling with Margaret once he gets back. 

“It could be so good,” he says. Margaret hears the omitted “for you.” 

When Margaret doesn’t respond, her husband tells her that he has to go, but he loves her. He calls out to Junho that he loves him too, and hangs up. 

Junho’s arm slumps, phone hanging down by his side. 

“I heard cranberry juice is good for perimenopausal women.” 

“Where did you hear that?” 

“Clive’s mom. She said she drank a lot of cranberry juice and it made her feel better.” 

Margaret’s pretty sure that Junho is thinking of UTIs, not perimenopause. You’re wrong! she wants to shout at him. 

“I bought some for you when I went to the store yesterday. A three-liter bottle.” 

Margaret is moved by this futile act of care. She thanks him. 

“It’ll be over soon, Uhmani,” he says gravely, as though referring to a long-fought war. He then gets up and exits her office, his footsteps rhythmic as he heads downstairs. 

Margaret crosses the hall and carefully opens the door to her daughter’s room. Jinny is still sleeping, the A/C blasting. 

Margaret approaches her and shakes her, and Jinny startles. 

“It’s me. It’s Mommy.”

Jinny groans and buries her face back in her pillow. 

“Jinny. I need you to tell me. How do I die?” Margaret whispers. Jinny turns her head to reveal one eye and half of her mouth. 

“You’re waking me up to ask me that?” 

Margaret pauses. “I want to know that how I think I’m going to die isn’t how I actually die.”

Jinny lifts her face, moves her hair away from her cheeks. 

“How do you think you’ll die?” she asks, the weight of genuine concern — so seldom present — in her voice. 

Margaret’s breath shortens as the pain returns to her armpit, sharp and pulsating. For the first time, she mentions the lump to her daughter, except she speaks at a distance, as if she’d heard of mysterious lumps appearing on the bodies of other women — people she’s never met before.  

Jinny sits up in bed and brings her blanket up to her chest. Her mouth opens then closes, as if she wants to say something to comfort her mother, but is unsure what would be appropriate. For a moment, Margaret feels her daughter considering her, eyes burrowing deep into her own. 

“You fall over your own feet,” Jinny says. 

“What?” Margaret asks, thinking she’s misunderstood. 

“You’re coming up the driveway and your left foot trips over your right. You fall on your head and bleed out, right in front of the house.” 

Margaret can picture it so clearly — an image of herself face-down on the driveway, dark red blood pooling around her head, legs splayed. And perhaps it’s the proximity of this imagined death, the knowledge that it could happen tomorrow, that it could be so anticlimactic, so simple, that prompts Margaret to laugh. The thought becomes so hilarious that soon she’s doubled over, losing her breath, her supernumerary breast throbbing, but slightly less painful than before.