Who Ate Up All the Shinga?

by Yu Young-nan

  The postman came every third day. Naturally, he took his breaks from work in our outer quarters. Back then, you could give what you wanted to mail to the postman, so even when he had no letters for us, he’d stop by to see if we had anything to send. Grandfather would wait to welcome him, and then latch on to him for conversation—all the more so after his second stroke.

  The postman’s repertoire of stories collected as he traveled from village to village far exceeded the supply of letters in his bag. When Grandfather invited him to take a break from his rounds, I’d immediately relay this information onward, as if by tacit agreement, so refreshments could be brought out. Grandfather would be pleased and say affectionately, “Precious baby, you do just as well as my own tongue!”

  But oh, how I hated his rewards—steamed chestnuts or rice cake he wrapped in the damp, sour-smelling cloth he used to wipe away his spittle and bits of food.

  Sometimes I got scolded for not performing errands properly. Once he called me urgently. I rushed over, only to have him ask me to light a match for his cigarette because the fire in the brazier had died. I’d never struck a match. Now, we weren’t living in those ancient times when a daughter-in-law might be banished back to her parents’ house for letting the fire die, but we did keep a brazier going even during hot weather and didn’t need matches often. Although I’d seen others light them, I didn’t think I could do it myself and made a face. Grandfather then told me to hold the matchbox, and he tried to strike a match against it, but his hand shook so badly that every attempt failed.

  It was painful to see Grandfather looking so pathetic. Smoking was hardly a necessity, I thought. Wouldn’t it be better just to give it up? Then he said he’d hold the matchbox and told me to strike a match against it. I imagined the aftermath—if I struck it hard and the flame leapt at my fingertips, I’d throw the match down and fire would break out. Grandfather, unable to move, would burn to death! The mere thought of it raised goose bumps all over my body. I ran out in panic, bawling, as if I’d really made all my imaginings come to life. Back then, I cried at the drop of a hat.

  My fire phobia had a basis in reason, though: people referred to me as the girl who almost burned down her house. On one of my brother’s visits home from school in Kaesŏng, he brought a small burning glass with a handle. It must have been a teaching tool in his science class.

  I peered through the round, black-rimmed glass. Brother’s eye looked as big as a bull’s, and my finger looked as thick as my mother’s. Brother saw my awe and showed me something even more amazing: he took some paper and lit it by holding the glass to it. I’m still not sure why I found this so fascinating.

  The sunlight passed through the convex glass and funneled into an intense beam. It gleamed eerily, like the eyes of a cat hidden in the dark. Finally, as a weak plume of smoke rose, a hole appeared in the paper and consumed it in a thin, crimson strip. It reminded me of a shredded chili and stole my breath away. My stomach knotted up, and I felt a sudden need to pee.

  That night, I really did wet my bed. As a result, I believe to this day the old wives’ tale that children wet their beds after playing with fire. I still remember all this vividly, but I can’t, for the life of me, remember a thing about nearly causing a fire.

  Apparently, the incident occurred after the harvest. I had snuck off with the glass to play on top of a pile of straw that had been heaped up for plaiting thatch, and the straw began to smolder. In the yard opposite our main gate stood a barn of sorts—a structure that was covered but otherwise completely open, so that grain and chili peppers spread in the yard to dry could be stored right away in case of a sudden shower. Fortunately, a neighbor’s wife happened to be on her way home from the well and discovered the flames. Since she had a bucket of water on her head, she put out the fire without much difficulty.

  I’m not sure how this incident has been wiped clean from my mental slate, given that I could have burned down our house. I tend to be confident about my memories, especially those from my childhood, and so I can only shake my head, perplexed, wondering if the story was made up or exaggerated to stop me from playing with fire. Anyway, the phrase “the girl who almost burned down her house” weighed on me for a long time.

  My match phobia lasted until I graduated from elementary school. It inconvenienced me several times, but saddest of all was when I couldn’t light Grandfather’s cigarette. The conflict I felt is still with me—my troubled attempt to overcome my limitations for his sake, anxiety about my inability to do so, and self-loathing for my ultimate inadequacy.

  2. Seoul, So Far Away

  GRANDFATHER’S SECOND STROKE USHERED IN a decline in the family’s fortune. Even as a child, I recognized the thickening clouds. My younger uncle and his wife had left for Seoul. They were inspired by my mother, who was a force to reckon with. She had pioneered a life in the capital, and my grandparents’ resentment toward her began to soften. Actually, let me put that more accurately: their resentment began to soften once they found themselves benefiting from her ambition.

  On the previous school vacation, Mother and Brother had returned home. Brother was dressed neatly in his uniform, and Mother was the picture of confidence itself. She told everyone that Brother had been admitted to a public school, no mean feat. Not only that, she said, its graduates came up with civil service jobs easily, even at the Office of the Governor General.

  I came from a rustic scholar family that was just this side of illiterate. I’m ashamed to admit it, but Grandfather had neither historical consciousness nor Korean pride despite his constant boasts about our yangban status. His aristocratic noblesse consisted in looking down on families that occupied lower rungs in the pecking order, and his sense of class responsibility went no further than dictating that his sons’ wives come from clans of equal status in the so-called Orthodox Faction. Whenever he sized up anyone, he’d trot out his favorite saying: “You can deck yourself out however you want, but the bones give you away.”

  His meager loyalty to yangban ideals meant that even a civil service job with Japan’s colonial administration represented high status to him, and he could dream that his grandson, the heir who would carry on our surname, was destined to bring glory to the clan. And if that’s how Grandfather thought, who in the family would dare scorn my mother, whose son showed such promise of rising in the world? All the more so, since Younger Uncle, trusting in her support, had gone off to Seoul as well.

  At that point, neither of my uncles had children; after Younger Uncle departed, the household became drearier. Our house was large and built with attention to detail. I’m told that Father had constructed it before I was born, in the belief that all three brothers, together with their parents and their many offspring, would live under the same roof in eternal harmony and prosperity. With fewer people around, I had even more room for wallowing in self-pity, and nowhere suited me and my wallowing better than the pillar that divided the veranda in half. I’d lean against it, preoccupied, and gaze out beyond the entrance to the village. When my family caught me at this, they immediately sensed why I was so sad and lonely, especially my grandmother. She’d scramble to snuggle me and then coo huskily over and over, “My poor baby.”

  They thought I was waiting for my mother as I sat like that, and because they did, I believed it too. But it was a strange type of waiting, one I hadn’t experienced before, completely devoid of the sweet restlessness that had tinged my anticipation for Grandfather. “Ch’ŏk ch’ŏk, thumb stop, middle finger, if Mother’s at Wardrobe Rocks Hill.” I couldn’t accept that even if I played my game a hundred times, my waiting might be in vain. Any time someone remarked that I looked so sad because I was pining for my mother, I’d burst into hysterical tears. The more I tried to deny it, the truer it became.

  But a force stronger than my finger fortune-telling game was at work. One day, Mother appeared out of the blue, even though it wasn’t vacation. I was relieved. Here was proof that she had longed for me so much that she couldn’t bear it! B
ut she said that she’d come not because she missed me, but to take me back with her.

  “You have to go to school in Seoul too.” I couldn’t decide if I liked what Mother said. I thought I might have vaguely yearned for Seoul, but I’d never imagined attending school there. My grandmother practically fainted when she heard what Mother had in mind: “What? Sending a girl to Seoul for school?” Another dispute broke out in the family: “What did you do to make so much money you can talk about sending her to Seoul? Did I get that right? What if somebody hears you?”

  Mother stayed silent, so she continued, “Father’s only pleasure since his stroke has been watching this cute little thing come and go. And you want to take her away? How heartless can you get!”

  Grandmother’s shift from insult to pleading had no effect, so she switched tactics again. Confronting me, she asked, “Who do you like better, Grandma or Mommy? Tell me right away. If it’s Grandma, tell Mommy you want to live with me. Right now.”

  I had only one way out. I exploded in tears. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” I wailed. I couldn’t cope with being torn so senselessly. Even as an adult, I hated to see children asked, “Who do you love more, Mommy or Daddy?”

  Mother put an abrupt end to this pointless dispute. She didn’t have time to dawdle. Without consulting anyone, me included, she took my hair, as though she were going to comb it, and then chopped it off.

  Up to that point, I’d worn my hair in tiny braids, just like the other girls in the village. Until it grew long and thick enough to be gathered into a single braid, we divided it from the top in squares, like a Chinese chessboard, and tied each patch off with brightly colored thread or thin ribbons. The whole process took ages and had to be repeated daily; otherwise, you were left with a tangled mess. A single glance at a girl’s hair told you how well valued she was at home.

  My father’s sister had tended to my hair until she got married, as though grooming it were her hobby. Afterward, my uncle’s wife took over. She combed and plaited it, so it was neat and shiny, and I took secret pride in it. From a young age, I assumed that if people commented I was pretty or cute, it was because my hair impressed them. Of all my attributes, my hair gave me the most confidence.

  But Mother not only chopped off this precious, precious hair of mine, but shaved the back of my head to create a high hairline. Before I could protest, she bullied me into submission with the remark that this was how all the kids in Seoul cut their hair.

  “Oh my goodness! What an awful sight!” Grandmother’s jaw dropped. The feeling of so much hair missing on the back of my head was even worse than having my bangs cut in a straight line. I ventured out of the house tentatively and within seconds became the butt of my friends’ ridicule.

  “Nyah-nyah nyah-nyah-nyah, someone’s got a face on the back of her head!”

  In those days, bobbed hair was cut so short that it really did look as though the back of the head could have a face. But their teasing didn’t bother me too much because I now had a snappy comeback: “This is how kids in Seoul get their hair cut. But you don’t know that, do you?” I was already looking down on my benighted peers. My bobbed hair not only made Grandmother surrender, but alienated me from the countryside. I wanted to leave with my mother as soon as possible.

  I went to the outer quarters to say goodbye to Grandfather. He refused to look at me straight, but he seemed to know about everything that had gone on. He expressed his displeasure loudly: “Damn awful sight is right.”

  Then he rummaged through his pouch and tossed out a fifty-chon silver coin. I felt hurt. Why did he have to throw it toward me if it was a present? I slapped the rolling coin to a stop with my palm and then grasped it and thanked him. Grandfather seemed to need consoling for his heart-break more than I did for being insulted. I thought I’d start bawling if he showed any cracks in his gruff exterior. He snapped at me to leave right away.

  What Mother did may have deserved my grandparents’ anger, but she was still the senior daughter-in-law. More to the point, they had few descendants, and she was mother to the grandson who’d carry on the family line. Besides, she was a plucky woman who had the wherewithal to set up house in Seoul, where they said your nose would get stolen right off your face if you dozed off. The packages waiting outside made it clear that, whether my grandparents approved of her or not, they could not simply spurn her. They even hired a porter to carry an A-frame piled high with all sizes of bundles, stuffed with grain and red pepper powder. Grandmother went so far as to accompany us, decked out in her finest dress.

  The twenty ri to Kaesŏng seemed unimaginably far. We crossed fields and climbed hills. Everywhere that a field and a hill met was a village, some bigger than Pakchŏk Hamlet and others smaller, but the way they sat in their surroundings was familiar, as was the way the houses looked. I had accepted villages as part of a larger natural order. The fourth and final hill, Wardrobe Rocks Hill, was particularly steep, or so I must have thought because my legs hurt so much by that point. Mother told me to keep going. Songdo lay just beyond, she reassured me. I puffed. I huffed. Mother pushed me from behind. My mouth was parched with the exertion, but at long last I managed to scramble to the top.

  And then a sight I’d never witnessed before spread beneath me: the Songdo I’d heard so much about. I let out a cry, awestruck at this beautiful city gleaming silver. Its roads and houses dazzled me. I later learned that all its large new buildings were built in granite. The sandy soil gave the city its characteristic rocks and roads of white. So people live in places like this! I gaped as I stared, enchanted by the artificial order and neatness.

  Suddenly a blinding flash shot from a building straight into my eyes. The light was unlike any I’d seen before. There was no fire, but it was more intense than any flame. I clung to my mother in fear. She told me to stop being silly, that it was just the sun reflecting off a glass window. I could make out that a sunbeam was hitting something and giving off a ray, but I didn’t understand what she meant by “glass window.” She then explained to me that in big cities like Songdo and Seoul, everybody used glass for house windows.

  In Pakchŏk Hamlet, too, we had something made of glass. The grown-ups called it a saké bottle. It was placed under the veranda and stored kerosene poured from a canister. People live in houses with windows of glass! I was amazed, but at least half my fascination when I gazed on Songdo was anxiety. I sensed that I was standing not so much on Wardrobe Rocks Hill as on the border of two totally different worlds. I felt inexorably drawn to this unknown realm, but at the same time I wanted to take a few steps back.

  I could almost hear my heart pound. An instinctive fear gnawed at me—I was at a crossroads, about to turn from the easy life I had known onto a path of challenge.

  The descent wasn’t hard. Halfway down, we passed a cluster of huge hexagonal rocks that had given the hill its name. Sweet spring water gushed forth among them, and they really did look like a slew of wardrobes scattered about. I sat on one that resembled a long, long money chest and quenched my thirst.

  Finally, we marched into Songdo. We crossed railway tracks and passed alleys flanked by trim houses with tile roofs. Eventually, we turned onto a main thoroughfare of packed earth, lined with two- and three-story homes with glass windows. Songdo was filled with things I’d never seen before, but Mother’s attitude made me feel like I shouldn’t cower or gawk.

  Mother’s confidence as she strode along struck me as slightly unnatural, even if I couldn’t explain why. She seemed to be setting an example for me. All the girls had short haircuts that revealed the pale backs of their heads. I felt a newfound respect for my mother. Some older girls did have long braids tied off with a ribbon, but not a single girl wore the tiny braids I had sported in the village.

  Finally, we reached Kaesŏng Station. It was magnificent, and people were bustling about inside. What would I do if I lost sight of the grown-ups? I was terrified. I’d never imagined such a possibility before, and that made my fear all the more vivid. I cl
utched tightly at Mother’s skirt, as she piled up our bundles near the gate and went to buy tickets. We showed them to an inspector and went out to the platform, where I saw a gigantic ladder suspended in midair. Mother called it an overpass, but even then, she made sure to boast that it was nothing in comparison with the one at Seoul Station, which was much bigger and more crowded.

  We had an arduous trek, laden as we were. But when a train pulled in, Mother began to run, bundles in her hands and on her head, followed by Grandmother, who had bought a platform ticket so she could see us off. I darted after them, bundles in my hands too. Other passengers joined in the mad dash. I sprinted with all the speed I could muster and boarded amid all the confusion. The train made me think of a huge snake with glass windows. Grandmother helped us hoist our bundles on the rack above and went back out alone.

  She then stood on the other side of the window by where I sat. She was saying something, but I couldn’t make out her words. Of all those seeing off families and friends, Grandmother looked smallest and shabbiest, but that very shabbiness drew me to her. How amazing glass was! I could gaze clearly at her as her eyes welled with tears. I wanted her to gather me in her arms, so I could weep with her and have her caress me and murmur, “My poor baby.” I pressed against the window, squishing my face against it as though against a sheet of ice, but couldn’t get any closer.

  The train shrieked out a piercing, melancholy whistle and then began to chug away. Those saying goodbye to loved ones walked alongside until they gradually disappeared from view. I couldn’t see whether Grandmother had followed the train or just stood there. My tears poured forth in a torrent. I’d often sobbed loudly without crying, but I’d never wept silently when so many tears flowed. The heartbreak I felt was unbearable.