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The Mermaid from Jeju

Page 17

by Sumi Hahn


  Dr. Moon found himself wishing that he had passed first, if only to avoid all these decisions. It was worse than being trapped in a shopping mall. He scratched his forehead, struck by a thought. Flowers, limousine, reception menu, guest list, program, music—a funeral had the same parts as a wedding, except for the coffin. Reminded of the weddings that Junja never got to plan, Dr. Moon glanced at his daughters and winced.

  The good pastor repeated himself. He was used to the distracted attention spans of the bereaved. “Will the service be Korean style or American style?”

  Dr. Moon consulted his daughter’s expressions. Hana was dabbing her eyes; her hands looked just like her mother’s, square and strong. Okja’s grimace reminded him of his grandmother, who used to frown just like that before whacking him with a willow branch. Though both of them were Korean in appearance, the girls didn’t seem very Korean at all. Growing up in a land where people ate too much and laughed too loudly had turned his own offspring into foreigners.

  Dr. Moon finally answered, in a soft rasp. “American style because of my daughters.”

  They would mourn in black instead of white. His daughters, if they ever married, would do so in white rather than the rainbow hues of a traditional Korean wedding. No wonder Americans divorced so much. They cursed their unions by draping the bride in the pale shade of death.

  Dr. Moon could almost hear Junja chiding him. “You old-fashioned hick! Everyone in Korea gets married in white these days!”

  The pastor steepled his fingers before addressing the daughters in his groping English. “After service, you must give some speech. Eulogy. If you devout Christian like your mom, you can talk about some Bible story or verse. Or you can talk about her sacrifice coming to America for you. Something like that.”

  Dr. Moon sighed. Their American daughters understood nothing about sacrifice.

  * * *

  While the coffin was lowered into the rectangular pit, the mourners sang a sprightly hymn that had been intended to lighten the mood. Dr. Moon, who was tone-deaf, mouthed his “hallelujahs” soundlessly, as his wife had directed him long ago. Junja’s portrait stared at him, a stern reminder to stay silent. He coughed to tear his gaze away and looked down at the coffin. His eyes traced the dark swirls in the glossy wood and lingered over the polished brass trim. The shininess of the coffin bothered him in a way he couldn’t explain. Was it wrong to bury something so new?

  After the prayer was delivered and the roses tossed into the grave, Dr. Moon stood stiff as he acknowledged the bows of friends and acquaintances. His daughters flanked him, bending awkwardly. Was he imagining it? Or could he really hear the loud, pitying thoughts of his fellow church members?

  “They don’t even know how to bow properly!”

  “Poor woman, dying before her daughters got married.”

  “What will he do about those two spinsters? Aigoo!”

  As custom dictated, Dr. Moon would treat everyone to lunch. They, in turn, would slip him discreet envelopes to defray the costs of the burial and service. This was how the community bound its members to each other, even past death. Junja had always joked that the ones who died first saved a fortune in funeral gifts, while those who lived long would go broke with no one to mourn them.

  Dr. Moon looked around the restaurant, wondering how many of these people would be present at his own burial. He jumped as an echo of his grandmother’s long-silenced voice answered that question: “A long, long life for you because the spirits guarding you are so noble! You’ll find another wife to cook for you soon!” Her quavering voice was so clear, she could have been whispering in his ear.

  Everyone praised the delicious food, but Dr. Moon worried whether Junja would have approved his choice of restaurant, an all-you-could-eat Korean buffet. He chewed and swallowed as the church ladies brought him plates, encouraging him to eat more to keep up his health. His jaw started to ache, and every mouthful stuck at the back of his throat. He put down his chopsticks.

  “Eat more! That’s not enough!” Grandmother again. Dr. Moon scowled. Why was she in his thoughts after so many years? He turned to his neighbor and began chatting.

  After thanking the last departing guest, Dr. Moon drove home with his daughters. He asked for their opinion on the food and funeral. He fretted about the coffin, hoping that their mother did not find it too fancy. Because Junja would have prodded him to, he mentioned the eligible bachelors at the buffet. A doctor and a widowed lawyer, both men were an appropriate age and willing to consider either one of them as a prospect.

  He’s in shock, the two daughters thought as they listened to their father prattle. Surely, he would retreat into his habitual silence soon.

  The next day, as the sisters sorted their late mother’s clothing to donate to the church, Dr. Moon followed his daughters around, chattering. When Hana lifted the plastic film off a lavender wool crepe suit, he rushed over to stroke it. “Your mom made this. She copied from pictures of Elizabeth Taylor when I was in medical school. One of you must keep.”

  Hana set the suit aside. She pulled the lid off a box. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was a shiny green purse made of lizard skin.

  “This is real crocodile,” said Dr. Moon. “From Florida. Very valuable because crocodile is illegal now.”

  Okja grabbed their father’s arm. “Dad, I need your help in mom’s sewing room.” As soon as he left, Hana buried the suit and the purse under the donation pile.

  Inside Junja’s workroom, plastic bins filled with bright bolts of cloth and a rainbow of spools had been stacked against a wall. The sewing machine and its stand were already gone. Dr. Moon had been shocked by how quickly the church ladies descended to clear out Junja’s belongings. Ignored on a side table, travel brochures that the two of them had been collecting for his retirement still lay where Junja had left them, organized by destination: Hawaii, Australia, China, India, Greece.

  “I can throw these out, right?” Okja didn’t wait for her father’s answer before tossing the brochures into a garbage bag.

  Dr. Moon pulled them out again. He studied them, looking mournful. “Your mom only want to go to beach. No mountain. Only beach.”

  Dr. Moon continued talking as Okja took the boxes and bags to the hallway. He told her that in Korea a person was never very far from the shore, except in the far reaches of the North, which he had escaped as a teenager. Okja knew this much from her mother, but her father had never talked about what happened.

  His voice was a monotone as he continued. He described how their cart had been stopped at the border, at a military checkpoint. Soldiers were bayoneting the pile of straw on another cart, killing a family of four. He and his mother had trembled in their hiding place under the farmer’s seat, listening to the screams. Because the bayonets found only straw on their cart, he and his mother crossed the border, alive.

  Dr. Moon wiped his nose as Okja swallowed her shock. She was wondering what to say when her father looked out the window and saw a blackbird sitting in a tree. The bird turned its bright eye upon him and opened its beak.

  “When was the last time you visited your mother’s grave?”

  “Why have you been gone so long?”

  “Time to go back, time to go back! Caw!”

  Dr. Moon jumped. The brochures dropped from his hands, fluttering to the floor. “Did you hear that?” He pointed to the blackbird, which flew away.

  “Hear what?” Okja looked at her father with concern. “Are you okay, Dad?”

  Dr. Moon shook his head. Surely it wasn’t what he thought. He was in America, after all. Such things didn’t happen here.

  * * *

  That night, lying in bed, Dr. Moon listened to doors slam and toilets flush, the sounds of his daughters readying themselves for the night. Junja would have admonished them to be quiet. He hoped that sleep would silence the murmuring that filled his head. Grief? he wondered; or was it guilt for being alive when Junja wasn’t? Either way, the voices followed a strange script: they muttered and
complained, a restless mob.

  “When will someone bring us food?”

  “My throat is parched.”

  “How long do we have to wait?”

  The clamor grew so loud that he turned on his CD player and raised the volume. Bach, he was certain, would quell anything unreasonable.

  Safely boxed inside a Brandenburg concerto, Dr. Moon managed to fall asleep. Inside his dream, snowflakes fell, sparkling white hexagons that shifted and whirled with the notes. As the music ended, the blizzard ebbed, revealing a snowy mountain. Dr. Moon was standing in a parking lot where every car was capped with white pillows of snow. He studied the RVs, wondering if he and Junja should rent one to drive across the country. The snow started falling heavily again, and it grew colder. Shivering, Dr. Moon walked to a small coffee stand on the edge of the lot.

  A woman was standing behind the counter, attending to various machines. She was surrounded by a cloud of white steam. Dr. Moon coughed politely to get her attention. The woman turned around, revealing a pleasant face.

  “I’d like a mocha, please.” He spoke in his native tongue because the woman was obviously Korean. She nodded and began to prepare his drink.

  Something didn’t feel quite right. Dr. Moon began chatting about the weather, but the woman still didn’t respond. Such a strange, unsocial person shouldn’t be running a coffee stand, he thought indignantly.

  When she turned around to give him his drink, the woman was smiling. She’s quite attractive, Dr. Moon observed, before feeling a pang of guilt. He didn’t have to feel guilty, though, because … As he reached for the reason, it escaped him.

  The woman began talking, her smile revealing very white teeth and crimson lips. She joked in a flirting manner that relaxed Dr. Moon enough to make him blurt, “I think my wife would really like you! You should meet her!”

  The smile dropped from the woman’s face. As she stared, her pupils enlarged, engulfing the whites and transforming her eyes into black pits. The woman’s face distorted, lengthening and graying as her skin sagged away and her mouth mawed open. The figure loomed up, stretching tall and vaporous, before it plummeted toward him. Bony fingers stretched out like talons for his heart.

  Dr. Moon awoke with a gasp as his hands pushed something away from his chest. His eyes opened wide to darkness and the racing thud of his heart. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and shivered, unable to deny the truth any longer.

  He was being haunted by ghosts.

  Twenty-Seven

  As she lay dying, Junja observed her failing body with a calm detachment. She had almost drowned twice before, so the accelerating panic was familiar. The shock of it happening on dry land, while she was still breathing, was an unexpected twist. While her body ceased its struggle, her fear was replaced by curiosity. She had come this far before; she was about to go even farther. Her heart stuttered, four final beats, as her thoughts unplugged from her brain.

  Junja’s awareness burst outward, euphoric in its escape from her body. She hovered high above her hospital room, looking down at the machines that surrounded her bed like miniature props in a dollhouse hospital. To her changed perception, the physical plane now appeared as limited and flat as a picture on a TV screen.

  A blunt buzzing jerked Junja’s attention back to her body, which arced up and dropped back down. Jagged lines of electricity were jolting her heart, which pulsed red before fading again. She was being jumped like a stalled car. Medicine seared through her blood vessels as oxygen from a machine inflated her lungs. Each breath burned, turning her lungs white-hot, but the sparks did not catch. Machines screeched warnings in vain while masked doctors and nurses swarmed around the bed, trying to reanimate a corpse.

  Junja pushed away from that scene in disgust. She expanded her awareness toward the waiting room, where her husband and daughters sat frozen in poses of worry. Okja was praying, though she never went to church. Hana was clutching a scrap of tissue to her red nose. Her husband was holding his face in his hands. Was he crying? Junja tried to lift his chin to look, but her hands wafted through his face.

  A doctor entered the waiting room. The two girls and Dr. Moon looked up. The doctor cast his eyes down, as if in shame, before he began to speak. Dr. Moon’s face dimmed. Junja could feel her husband’s shoulders hunch as his body absorbed the blow. She tried to grab him as he toppled over, but he felt insubstantial, like air.

  Dr. Moon lay on the floor, eyes closed. Junja tried to stroke his cheek, but her hands passed through his face. She leaned in to listen to his heart, which skipped and faltered. With so much sorrow in their past, how much more could his heart endure? Junja wrapped her awareness around him, willing him her strength. She had failed her future grandchildren by dying too early; they could not be deprived of a grandfather too. As her tears sank into his face, Dr. Moon opened his eyes and blinked.

  Junja felt a familiar memory tug at her, like a fish at the end of a line.

  She drifted away from the hospital, searching for that memory. The gossamer strands that tethered her to the physical plane now trailed behind her like shiny tendrils. She floated past the tall spires of Philadelphia, feeling the days of her life eddy around her in patterns she had never perceived before. Everything that ever happened belonged to a vast ocean of time. Each moment was a wave, connected to every other wave. Junja could sense how the present turned into the past, like the shallows became the depths.

  She saw her husband and daughters in the minister’s office, answering questions about her service. She pushed onward, to her funeral, drawn by the sound of singing. That joyful hymn seemed more like dirge, when sung alongside a burial pit. Inside the rectangular hole, her casket gleamed, garish. If the worms didn’t care, she wouldn’t either.

  When Junja tried to push forward, for a glimpse of her grandchildren, she couldn’t see more than forty-nine days past her death. Her attempts to communicate with the living were distorted, like radio signals broken by static. Sometimes, her husband could hear her quite clearly; at other times, he seemed to be deaf. When she finally managed to capture his attention, he didn’t recognize her at all.

  The forgotten memory tugged at Junja again, insistent on being noticed. She followed the urge, wondering where it led. She skimmed over decades of days, which fluttered together in bright flocks. One year stood out, more vivid than the rest. She and Dr. Moon were newlyweds, new to the United States. They had lived in a red-brick building in the Bronx, and she had been pregnant with Hana.

  Junja followed the memory to its source, to the hospital where Dr. Moon had worked. Her husband—so young!—was in his scrubs, walking in the hospital cafeteria. He was lifting a glass of water to his mouth when his hand stalled halfway. The glass started shaking so hard that it rattled against his teeth. The water leapt out like a creature possessed, escaping in every direction. As the glass splintered around him, he had landed on the floor.

  Shadows from their past had risen up, dragging him down like an anchor. Junja, who had shared that burden, had already succumbed to its weight. She could still hear the clamor of those forgotten souls, begging for remembrance.

  Why fear something she had already survived? Junja steeled herself to act. She had to lighten the load that her husband now carried alone, but she could not do it without his help.

  Junja allowed her awareness to expand. She plumbed deeper, into the depths. A riptide of memories rushed through her, carrying her back toward a shore they had fled, so many years ago. What had been forgotten about the mountain must now be remembered, and what had been taken from the sea must now be returned.

  Twenty-Eight

  Two days after his wife’s funeral, Dr. Moon phoned his eldest daughter Hana, who had returned home to Brooklyn. When she didn’t answer, he called her younger sister in Chicago. Okja picked up on the second ring.

  “Hi Okja, I am going to Korea day after tomorrow. Don’t worry. Everything is fine.”

  “Uh, Dad, did you just say you’re going to Korea?”


  “Yeah, I buy the ticket today.”

  “Are you okay, Dad? This is kind of sudden.”

  “Everything is okay. This is just the Korean way when someone dies.” Dr. Moon nodded at the phone, satisfied he had fulfilled his obligation to his daughters. There was no point in telling them about the ghosts, which were a private matter. He was about to hang up when Okja’s tinny voice reached out.

  “Dad? Dad? Are you still there?”

  Dr. Moon brought the receiver back up to his ear. “You tell Hana, okay? I will come home soon. Two week.”

  Then he hung up.

  * * *

  Dr. Moon filled the kettle with water and set it on the stove to boil. He needed to put something soothing in his belly. Both his daughters had called back multiple times, with complete disregard for the expense. Their nasally words grated his ear. “Why are you going back to Korea so suddenly? You and Mom told us you never wanted to go back!” The interrogation had exhausted him, because he had to explain himself without mentioning the ghost problem, which he couldn’t translate into English properly.

  He blinked at the instructions before tearing open the instant ramen package with trembling fingers. Junja would have known what to tell them. She had studied English as a second language at a community college for five years, earning straight A’s.

  Dr. Moon filled the noodle bowl with boiling water. The tremor of his hands had become more noticeable since the funeral. Junja had been so strong and healthy that he had always assumed he was going to pass first.

  “Silly man! Don’t you remember what the fortune tellers told you? You’ll live long enough to have two wives!”

  Was that Junja’s voice? Or his grandmother’s? He waved his hand to indicate that he had gotten the message.

  Perhaps being away from the ocean for so long had dried up something vital in his wife, sapping her body of its vigor. They had lived only an hour’s drive away from the Atlantic Coast, but the water there never felt right to Junja. Maybe she would have lived longer in California, next to the Pacific.

 

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