by Min Jin Lee
It was the second week of June. Sunja had finished her shopping for the day and was going home carrying a loaded basket on the crook of each arm. Three Japanese high school students with their uniform jackets unbuttoned were heading to the harbor to go fishing. Too hot to sit still, the boys were skipping school. When they noticed Sunja, who was going in the direction of the Yeongdo ferry, the giggling boys surrounded her, and a skinny, pale student, the tallest of the three, plucked one of the long yellow melons out of her basket. He tossed it over Sunja’s head to his friends.
“Give that back,” Sunja said in Korean calmly, hoping they weren’t getting on the ferry. These sorts of incidents happened often on the mainland, but there were fewer Japanese in Yeongdo. Sunja knew that it was important to get away from trouble quickly. Japanese students teased Korean kids, and occasionally, vice versa. Small Korean children were warned never to walk alone, but Sunja was sixteen and a strong girl. She assumed that the Japanese boys must have mistaken her for someone younger, and she tried to sound more authoritative.
“What? What did she say?” they snickered in Japanese. “We don’t understand you, you smelly slut.”
Sunja looked around, but no one seemed to be watching them. The boatman by the ferry was busy talking to two other men, and the ajummas near the outer perimeter of the market were occupied with work.
“Give it back now,” she said in a steady voice, and stretched out her right hand. Her basket was lodged in the crook of her elbow, and it was getting harder to keep her balance. She looked directly at the skinny boy, who stood a head taller than her.
They laughed and continued to mutter in Japanese, and Sunja couldn’t understand them. Two of the boys tossed the yellow melon back and forth while the third rummaged through the basket on her left arm, which she was now afraid to put down.
The boys were about her age or younger, but they were fit and full of unpredictable energy.
The third boy, the shortest, pulled out the oxtails from the bottom of the basket.
“Yobos eat dogs and now they’re stealing the food of dogs! Do girls like you eat bones? You stupid bitch.”
Sunja swiped at the air, trying to get the soup bones back. The only word she understood for certain was yobo, which normally meant “dear” but was also a derogatory epithet used by the Japanese to describe Koreans.
The short boy held up a bone, then sniffed it. He made a face.
“Disgusting! How do these yobos eat this shit?”
“Hey, that’s expensive! Put that back!” Sunja shouted, unable to keep from crying.
“What? I don’t understand you, you stupid Korean. Why can’t you speak Japanese? All of the Emperor’s loyal subjects are supposed to know how to speak Japanese! Aren’t you a loyal subject?”
The tall one ignored the others. He was gauging the size of Sunja’s breasts.
“The yobo has really big tits. Japanese girls are delicate, not like these breeders.”
Afraid, Sunja decided to forget the groceries and start walking, but the boys crowded her and wouldn’t let her pass.
“Let’s squeeze her melons.” The tall one grabbed her left breast with his right hand. “Very nice and full of juice. You want a bite?” He opened his mouth wide close to her breasts.
The short one held on to her light basket firmly so she couldn’t move, then twisted her right nipple using his index finger and thumb.
The third boy suggested, “Let’s take her somewhere and see what’s beneath this long skirt. Forget fishing! She can be our catch.”
The tall one thrust his pelvis in her direction. “How much do you want to have a taste of my eel?”
“Let me go. I’m going to scream,” she said, but it felt like her throat was closing up. Then she saw the man standing behind the tallest boy.
Hansu grabbed the short hairs on the back of the boy’s head with one hand and clamped the boy’s mouth with his free hand. “Come closer,” he hissed at the others, and to their credit, they did not abandon their friend, whose eyes were wide open in terror.
“You sons of bitches should die,” he said in perfect Japanese slang. “If you ever bother this lady again or ever show your ugly faces near this area, I will have you killed. I will have you and your families murdered by the finest Japanese killers I know, and no one will ever know how you died. Your parents were losers in Japan, and that’s why you had to settle here. Don’t get any dumb ideas about how much better you are than these people.” Hansu was smiling as he was saying this. “I can kill you now, and no one would do a thing, but that’s too easy. When I decide, I can have you caught, tortured, then killed. Today, I am giving you a warning because I’m gracious, and we are in front of a young lady.”
The two boys remained silent, watching their friend’s eyes bulge. The man in the ivory-colored suit and white leather shoes pulled the boy’s hair harder and harder. The boy didn’t even try to scream, because he could feel the terrifying power of the man’s unyielding force.
The man spoke exactly like a Japanese, but the boys figured that he had to be Korean from his actions. They didn’t know who he was, but they didn’t doubt his threats.
“Apologize, you pieces of shit,” Hansu said to the boys.
“We’re very sorry.” They bowed formally to her.
She stared at them, not knowing what to do.
They bowed again, and Hansu released his grip on the boy’s hair just slightly.
Hansu turned to Sunja and smiled.
“They said they are sorry. In Japanese, of course. Would you like them to apologize also in Korean? I can have them do that. I can have them write you a letter if you like.”
Sunja shook her head. The tall boy was now crying.
“Would you like me to throw them into the sea?”
He was joking, but she couldn’t smile. Sunja managed to shake her head again. The boys could have dragged her somewhere, and no one would have seen them go. Why wasn’t Koh Hansu afraid of the boys’ parents? A Japanese student could get a grown Korean man in trouble for certain, she thought. Why wasn’t he worried? Sunja started to cry.
“It’s all right,” Hansu said to her in a low voice and let the tall boy go.
The boys put the melon and the bones back in the baskets.
“We are very sorry,” they said, bowing deeply.
“Never ever come around here again. Do you understand, you shit-for-brains?” Hansu said in Japanese, smiling genially to make sure that Sunja did not understand his meaning.
The boys bowed again. The tall one had peed a little in his uniform. They walked in the direction of the town.
Sunja put the baskets down on the ground and sobbed. Her forearms felt like they were going to fall off. Hansu patted her shoulder gently.
“You live in Yeongdo.”
She nodded.
“Your mother owns the boardinghouse.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to take you home.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve troubled you enough. I can go home by myself.” Sunja couldn’t raise her head.
“Listen, you have to be careful not to travel alone or ever be out at night. If you go to the market by yourself, you must stay on the main paths. Always in public view. They are looking for girls now.”
She didn’t understand.
“The colonial government. To take to China for the soldiers. Don’t follow anyone. It will likely be some Korean person, a woman or a man, who’ll tell you there’s a good job in China or Japan. It may be someone you know. Be careful, and I don’t mean just those stupid boys. They’re just bad kids. But even those boys could hurt you if you are not cautious. Do you understand?”
Sunja wasn’t looking for a job, and she didn’t understand why he was telling her any of this. No one had ever approached her about working away from home. She would never leave her mother, anyway, but he was right. It was always possible for a woman to be disgraced. Noblewomen supposedly hid silver knives in their blouses to protect the
mselves or to commit suicide if they were dishonored.
Hansu gave her a handkerchief, and she wiped her face.
“You should go home. Your mother will worry.”
Hansu walked her to the ferry. Sunja rested her baskets on the floor of the ferryboat and sat down. There were only two other passengers.
Sunja bowed. Koh Hansu was watching her again, but this time his face was different from before; he looked concerned. As the boat moved away from the dock, she realized that she had not thanked him.
5
As Koh Hansu was putting her on the ferry, Sunja had the opportunity to observe him up close without distractions. She could even smell the mentholated pomade in his neatly combed black hair. Hansu had the broad shoulders and the thick, strong torso of a larger man; his legs were not very long, but he was not short, either. Hansu was perhaps the same age as her mother, who was thirty-six. His tawny brow was creased lightly, and faded brown spots and freckles had settled on his sharp cheekbones. His nose—narrow, with a bump below a high bridge—made him look somewhat Japanese, and small, broken capillaries lay beneath the skin around his nostrils. More black than brown, his dark eyes absorbed light like a long tunnel, and when he looked at her, she felt an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach. Hansu’s Western-style suit was elegant and well cared for; unlike the lodgers, he didn’t give off an odor from his labors or the sea.
On the following market day, she spotted him standing in front of the brokers’ offices with a crowd of businessmen and waited until he could see her. She bowed to him. Hansu nodded ever so slightly, then returned to his work. Sunja went to finish her shopping, and as she walked to the ferry, he caught up with her.
“Do you have some time?” he asked.
She widened her eyes. What did he mean?
“To talk.”
Sunja had been around men all her life. She had never been afraid of them or awkward in their presence, but around him, she didn’t have the words she needed. It was difficult for her to stand near him even. Sunja swallowed and decided that she would speak to him no differently than to the lodgers; she was sixteen years old, not a scared child.
“Thank you for your help the other day.”
“It’s nothing.”
“I should have said this earlier. Thank you.”
“I want to talk to you. Not here.”
“Where?” She should have asked why, she realized.
“I’ll come to the beach behind your house. Near the large black rocks where the tide is low. You do the wash there by the cove.” He wanted her to know that he knew a little about her life. “Can you come alone?”
Sunja looked down at her shopping baskets. She didn’t know what to tell him, but she wanted to speak with him some more. Her mother would never allow it, however.
“Can you get away tomorrow morning? Around this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is afternoon better?”
“After the men leave for the day, I think,” she found herself saying, her voice trailing off.
He was waiting for her by the black rocks, reading a newspaper. The sea was bluer than she had remembered, and the long, thin clouds seemed paler—everything seemed more vibrant with him here. The corners of his newspaper fluttered with the breeze, and he grasped them firmly, but when he saw her approaching, he folded the paper and put it under his arm. He didn’t move toward her, but let her come to him. She continued to walk steadily, a large wrapped bundle of dirty clothes balanced on her head.
“Sir,” she said, trying not to sound afraid. She couldn’t bow, so she put her hands around the bundle to remove it, but Hansu quickly reached over to lift the load from her head, and she straightened her back as he laid the wash on the dry rocks.
“Sir, thank you.”
“You should call me Oppa. You don’t have a brother, and I don’t have a sister. You can be mine.”
Sunja said nothing.
“This is nice.” Hansu’s eyes searched the cluster of low waves in the middle of the sea and settled on the horizon. “It’s not as beautiful as Jeju, but it has a similar feeling. You and I are from islands. One day, you’ll understand that people from islands are different. We have more freedom.”
She liked his voice—it was a masculine, knowing voice with a trace of melancholy.
“You’ll probably spend your entire life here.”
“Yes,” she said. “This is my home.”
“Home,” he said thoughtfully. “My father was an orange farmer in Jeju. My father and I moved to Osaka when I was twelve; I don’t think of Jeju as my home. My mother died when I was very young.” He didn’t tell her then that she looked like someone on his mother’s side of the family. It was the eyes and the open brow.
“That’s a great deal of laundry. I used to do laundry for my father and me. I hated it. One of the greatest things about being rich is having someone else wash your clothes and cook your meals.”
Sunja had washed clothes almost since she could walk. She didn’t mind doing laundry at all. Ironing was more difficult.
“What do you think about when you do the laundry?”
Hansu already knew what there was to know about the girl, but that was different from knowing her thoughts. It was his way to ask many questions when he wanted to know someone’s mind. Most people told you their thoughts in words and later confirmed them in actions. There were more people who told the truth than those who lied. Very few people lied well. What was most disappointing to him was when a person turned out to be no different than the next. He preferred clever women over dumb ones and hardworking women over lazy ones who knew only how to lie on their backs.
“When I was a boy, my father and I each owned only one suit of clothes, so when I washed our things, we would try to have them dry overnight and wore them still damp in the morning. Once—I think I was ten or eleven—I put the wet clothes near the stove to speed up the drying, and I went to cook our supper. We were having barley gruel, and I had to stir it in this cheap pot, otherwise the bottom would burn right away, and as I was stirring, I smelled something awful, and it turned out that I had burned a large hole in my father’s jacket sleeve. I was scolded for that severely.” Hansu laughed at the memory of the thrashing he got from his father. “A head like an empty gourd! A worthless idiot for a son!” His father, who had drunk all his earnings, had never blamed himself for being unable to support them and had been hard on his son, who was keeping them alive through foraging, hunting, and petty theft.
Sunja had not imagined that a person like Koh Hansu could do his own laundry. His clothes were so fine and beautifully tailored. She had already seen him wear several different white suits and white shoes. No one dressed like he did.
She had something to say.
“When I wash clothes, I think about doing it well. It’s one of the chores I like because I can make something better than it was. It isn’t like a broken pot that you have to throw away.”
He smiled at her. “I have wanted to be with you for a long time.”
Again, she wanted to ask why, but it didn’t matter in a way.
“You have a good face,” he said. “You look honest.”
The market women had told her this before. Sunja could not haggle well and didn’t try. However, this morning she hadn’t told her mother that she was meeting Koh Hansu. She had not even told her about the Japanese students picking on her. The night before, she told Dokhee, who did the laundry with her, that she’d do the wash herself, and Dokhee had been overjoyed to get out of the task.
“Do you have a sweetheart?” he asked.
Her cheeks flushed. “No.”
Hansu smiled. “You are almost seventeen. I’m thirty-four. I am exactly twice your age. I am going to be your elder brother and your friend. Hansu-oppa. Would you like that?”
Sunja stared at his black eyes, thinking that she had never wanted anything more except for the time she’d wanted her father to recover from his illness. There wasn’t a day
when she didn’t think of her father or hear his voice in her head.
“When do you do your wash?”
“Every third day.”
“This time?”
She nodded. Sunja breathed deeply, her lungs and heart filling with anticipation and wonder. She had always loved this beach—the unending expanse of pale green and blue water, the tiny white pebbles framing the black rocks between the water and the rocky soil. The silence here made her safe and content. Almost no one ever came here, but now she would never see this place the same way again.
Hansu picked up a smooth, flat stone by her foot—black with thin gray striations. From his pocket, he took out a piece of white chalk that he used to mark the wholesale containers of fish, and he made an X on the bottom of the stone. He crouched and felt about the enormous rocks that surrounded them and found a dry crevice in a medium-sized rock, the height of a bench.
“If I come here and you’re not here yet, but I have to go back to work, I’ll leave this stone in the hollow of this rock so you’ll know that I came. If you’re here and I’m not, I want you to leave this stone in the same spot, so I can know that you came to see me.”
He patted her arm and smiled at her.
“Sunja-ya, I better go now. Let’s see each other later, okay?”
She watched him walk away, and as soon as he was gone, she squatted and opened the bundle to begin the wash. She took a dirty shirt and soaked it in the cool water. Everything had changed.
Three days later, she saw him. It took nothing to convince the sisters to let her do the wash by herself. Again, he was waiting by the rocks, reading the paper. He wore a light-colored hat with a black hatband. He looked elegant. He acted as if meeting her by the rocks was normal, though Sunja was terrified that they might be discovered. She felt guilty that she had not told her mother, or Bokhee and Dokhee, about him. Seated on the black rocks, Hansu and Sunja spoke for half an hour or so, and he asked her odd questions: “What do you think about when it’s quiet and you’re not doing much?”
There was never a time when she wasn’t doing anything. The boardinghouse required so much work; Sunja could hardly remember her mother ever being idle. After she told him she was always busy, she realized she was wrong. There were times when she was working when it felt like the work was nothing at all, because it was something she knew how to do without paying much attention. She could peel potatoes or wipe down the floors without thinking, and when she had this quiet in her mind, lately, she had been thinking of him, but how could she say this? Right before he had to go, he asked her what she thought a good friend was, and she answered he was, because he had helped her when she was in trouble. He had smiled at that answer and stroked her hair. Every few days, they saw each other at the cove, and Sunja grew more efficient with the wash and housework, so that no one at home noticed how she spent her time at the beach or at the market.