Who Ate Up All the Shinga?

by Yu Young-nan

  In Pakchŏk Hamlet, a brook ran down from the forsythia shrubs and through the vegetable patch in our yard. It never flooded or dried up, so for the most part it either gurgled cheerfully or whispered almost inaudibly, but our main room faced directly onto it, and during the rainy season it jabbered at us. In winter, the edges froze, but water kept flowing in the center of the brook. The ice was dappled with patterns that I found mesmerizing. I’d defy the cold and break off pieces and then crunch them up in my mouth. The sensation was incredibly refreshing. I felt like it was cleansing me to my veins.

  Mother and my aunts drew our water from the well in the center of the village, but I’d often scoop it up from the brook with my hands when I was playing in order to quench my thirst. The brook was where we washed our clothes, peeled our potatoes and yams, rinsed our greens, and, of course, washed our hands on the way back from the outhouse. That any of this might be unsanitary never even entered our heads: we had a never-ending supply of fresh water.

  My one conservation lesson came in winter. We’d heat our water in a huge cauldron. If I took a whole basin for myself, I’d get a harsh scolding. The grown-ups said that if I wasted so much water just washing my face, I’d be punished in the next world by having to drink up an entire tubful.

  That early dawn splash of water imbued me with silly fears as I lay in bed. I imagined that I was slowly drying out, like a fish hung up to preserve. At the Sajik-dong house, however, water spouted endlessly from the tap.

  The lady of the house welcomed us. She looked the same age as Mother, but she had on a fashionable pale yellow blouse with purple breast-ties and called my mother “Great Aunt.” She even spoke deferentially to me: “Congratulations on getting into school, Auntie.” I learned later that we had a higher generational standing in our clan, so her rank was equivalent to that of a grandson’s wife to my mother. She addressed Mother with honorifics, while Mother used less polite forms back to her.

  The lady called the housemaid and told her to make lunch. Then she took out the admission notice the school had sent and set it down in front of Mother. Mother barely glanced at it, treating it instead with the pleasure she’d reserve for rice cake that had spoiled.

  “Well, it looks like she’s passed,” Mother said, with a mild frown. “I was hoping she wouldn’t get in.”

  I was dumbstruck. Why was Mother saying the exact opposite of what I knew she felt? Our relative jumped up in protest. She praised me, saying that many neighborhood children, even those who’d gone to kindergarten, hadn’t managed to get in. Mother must have been waiting for just that opening. She lied blatantly once more, claiming not to have taught me a thing before the test. If I hadn’t passed, she went on, she’d been prepared to accept that schooling wasn’t in the cards for me and to just ship me back to the countryside. That would have made things easier on her, and she’d at least have been able to tell herself, without any regrets, that she’d done what she could. Confusion roiled within me as I stared at my mother. Here she was, acting as though she’d practically been praying that I wouldn’t pass, pretending she’d never made an enormous fuss.

  The housemaid brought in the lunch tray. It was respectably full, with white bowls and small covered dishes spread across it. But when we lifted the lids from the bowls, the helpings were minuscule. There were barely a dozen stewed black beans, and you could have gathered the fermented clams and seasoned dried pollack with a single swipe of the chopsticks. I was hungry, but the stingy city portions made me lose my appetite.

  Afterward, the woman wrapped up a huge bundle of material for Mother to sew. It included items for her own family and piecework she’d collected after spreading word about Mother’s skill as a seamstress.

  “I’m really indebted to you.” Mother expressed her thanks in simple terms, clearly struggling to retain her dignity. I wanted to get away from these adults who acted so unnaturally, but they kept going on.

  “Oh, come on, don’t even mention it. Have you thought about what I suggested the other day?”

  “You mean about sewing for kisaeng? Yes, I’d appreciate it if you have any good leads. I didn’t want to resort to it, but I can’t be choosy any more, seeing as I’ve got another mouth to feed and more tuition to pay this year . . .”

  “You’ve made the right choice. It’s no picnic sewing for families. But those girls are always wearing new clothes, and they can’t even tell what good tailoring is. It doesn’t matter to them how the collar or tie strips look as long as the blouse is comfortable and the flaps come together. . . . Why even hesitate, when they aren’t picky and pay so well?”

  “I didn’t want to give my in-laws anything to criticize me about at all. I hate the idea of hearing them ask how I can afford to send my daughter to school.”

  “It’d be one thing if you worked as a kisaeng. But what’s the big deal if all you do is sew for them?”

  “You know how those yangban types are.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll stick up for you if they say anything nasty.”

  “It looks like I’ll have to keep relying on you to find me work. I’m such a burden.”

  “One of the pieces I gave you today is from a concubine who lives in our neighborhood. Concubines are cut from the same stock, right? I’ll just have her ask around since she knows lots of kisaeng. She likes your sewing, so I’m sure there won’t be any problem. I can send the maid. You won’t have to go anywhere near a kisaeng house.”

  I was sorry I hadn’t missed one more question on the test. That way, I could have spared my mother all this trouble, but it was too late. All along, she had been sewing for a living. Besides the gaudy chest, the most significant items in our room were a small clay brazier and a sewing basket. As soon as Mother finished cooking, she’d take the firewood, which she bought one or two bundles at a time, and load it in the brazier before the fire died out. Then she’d press down on the wood with the iron. It was impossible to sew traditional clothing, with its delicate collars and the like, without smoothing it constantly, and so she used the iron all day long, heating it against the brazier.

  Even before Mother took up sewing for kisaeng, she was often given soft, beautiful silks to work with that were incomparably finer than the dyed cotton we wore in the countryside. Mother had lots of leftover scraps of pretty fabric and kept a heap wrapped in a small blanket. When I was bored, I’d put them together, pretending to make a crazy quilt, but Mother would jump up in horror and snatch them all away. In Pakchŏk Hamlet, girls my age knew how to hemstitch and broad stitch, and quite a few could even attach bodices to their own skirts. But Mother didn’t see the point in my learning any of this.

  “You need to study hard and become a New Woman.”

  Such was Mother’s mantra. I didn’t understand what a New Woman was. Nor, I suppose, did she. The phrase had been coined during Korea’s “enlightenment” in the early years of the twentieth century, and it remained as compelling to her as it was mysterious. It was impossible for me to understand the resentment-cum-fascination she exhibited toward women living lives so different from the traditional norm.

  Despite being my mother’s daughter, with her blood and her temperament, I had yet to experience enough of a woman’s life to want anything but freedom from all her dos and don’ts as soon as possible. She discouraged me from playing with our landlord’s child, and the thought of my going out and playing with the neighborhood kids was something else that made her jump up in horror.

  “The kids in this neighborhood don’t have any manners. You, though, come from a family with real pedigree. Don’t go out. If you play with them you’ll end up becoming one of them.”

  In the midst of sewing for kisaeng, she’d prattle on about pedigree. I wasn’t sure what exactly “pedigree” meant, but it was easier for me to get a handle on than “New Woman.” I could sense that she was talking about our family’s pride and emphasis on dignity. Maybe its meaning was also easier for me to grasp because I missed life in Pakchŏk Hamlet, and I felt diffe
rent from the other kids in the neighborhood. But all this gave me fodder for thinking of Mother as pathetic. Why was she so confident that everything she did was right? When she puffed herself up with pride over our country roots, her face had the same expression as when she bragged about her urban sophistication on visits home. This double face of my mother—arrogance because of Seoul in Pakchŏk Hamlet and vice versa—confused me, but only I saw through this weak point of hers.

  Mother couldn’t tether me to that sewing basket permanently, though. Her work may never have ceased, but she still had to take the finished products to our relatives’ house, so their maid could relay her piecework onward to the kisaeng. Mother would say that our debt of gratitude to her relative was as high as a mountain.

  You can’t keep a seven-year-old girl cooped up when her mother is away. I developed a taste for the outside world. In our neighborhood lived a tinker, a chimneysweep, and an A-frame carrier, together with their families. The A-frame carrier’s wife sold sieves and carried some twenty to thirty of them around her neck and shoulders, with different styles of meshing, from fine to broad, all hooked together by loops on their rims. She was a short woman, and her head would get buried amid these hoops and bob into and out of view as she walked. They had a daughter older than me who didn’t go to school.

  The sieve seller would depart her house in silence. In contrast, the chimneysweep beat a brass gong when he left his gate. He too shouldered his equipment, a long sliver of bamboo that could be rolled up and unfurled. At its end was fastened a massive brush, as big as a man’s head. It had traveled so often between chimney and furnace that it resembled a huge cake of soot more than a brush. The chimneysweep’s dark beard looked as though he’d attached a clump of the brush to his face. Given that you couldn’t quite see his mouth, it seemed completely logical for him to announce himself with a gong.

  Many other chimneysweeps passed through the neighborhood, but even those with visible mouths beat gongs. It was all very strange to me. Everything about the chimneysweeps had a dullness to it except their gleaming gongs. When they struck them, using a small club padded with cotton or the like, the gongs gave off a subtle, lingering tone. They beat them patiently, waiting for the reverberations to die away before giving another blunt stroke. Every time I heard this sound, I felt a sorrow similar to that I felt when I watched the ears of millet dance in the autumn wind.

  The chimneysweep had several offspring. There were many other kids in our alley whose parents’ livelihoods I knew nothing about. One day, one of the children started teasing me, “Hillbilly, hillbilly!” Soon, all the others, even the big kids, chimed in. I was already mimicking my mother’s smugness, though, and found the taunt ridiculous, considering the contrast between what I’d left behind in Pakchŏk Hamlet and the circumstances they lived in. I refused to cry in front of them, and in order not to, I drew strength from that pedigree my mother harped on. I had to develop a thick skin, if for no other reason than to defend the honor of the countryside.

  Although they excluded me and teased me when in a group, they’d call to me if they were alone when they saw me: “Let’s plaaay.” I liked the way Seoul kids said it. Our country dialect was similar to Seoul’s except for the endings we put on verbs, but I found it impossible to say “Let’s plaaay” in such a sweet, enticing way. Still, even when I agreed to plaaay with them, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. We didn’t even have enough level ground for hopscotch.

  One day, a friend and I were drawing on the ground or house walls with a slate pencil we’d picked up in the street. She suggested that we pull down our knickers and sketch each other’s private parts in the dirt. Why such a ludicrous game? Because we were bored stiff. When I grew older and saw odd drawings, including sketches of genitalia, in public toilets and so on, I remembered the time I’d done it. Instead of curiosity or disgust, I felt pity—I knew how bored the artists must have been.

  Once we had enough practice sketching each other’s privates, we showed off our skill on the wall of our house. Mother caught us and gave me a real hiding. She blamed my companion, but all we’d done was play together. It wasn’t as though she’d ordered me to make the drawings or anything. The way Mother ran down not just my friend but her parents was harder to take than the beating itself.

  I promised never to play with that girl again, but still did so behind Mother’s back. One day, while my mother was away, the two of us escaped from our neighborhood. I followed my friend through the convoluted alleys and stairways of Hyŏnjŏ-dong until we reached the street below, where we could hear the tram.

  Suddenly I was seized with anxiety. “Do you know your address?” I asked.

  “What’s the use of knowing that?”

  “But what if we get lost?”

  “Don’t worry. Just make sure to stick with me. All right?”

  She put her arm around my shoulder. No one had ever put an arm around my shoulder in Pakchŏk Hamlet. The girl was at least a hand’s length taller than me. As we walked, with her arm draped around me, I could feel myself becoming more animated. My friend was trustworthy. Mother, who’d branded her a bad girl and grilled me about whether we still played together, was the ignorant one.

  We walked along in high spirits, matching our stride, and crossed the streetcar tracks. A huge lot appeared. It was bordered on one side by a red fence that sat on ground several feet higher. The fence looked like it must have extended for at least ten ri—much too far for us to tell where it ended. It was also too high to peer over and see what was inside.

  A broad road ran alongside the fence above the lot; a set of steps, wider and straighter than the ones leading to our house in Hyŏnjŏ-dong, connected the road and the lot. On each side of the steps were smoothly grooved drains that had been set with cement. They were a perfect fit for a child’s bottom, and a number of children were sliding on them.

  My friend and I joined in the fun. I became so caught up in this new game I could never have experienced back home that I didn’t realize the sun was going down. For the very first time, coming to Seoul seemed worthwhile.

  Across the road encircling the fence was an intimidating high iron gate that no one would dare climb over. On either side, a policeman armed with a sword stood guard. We had to keep climbing up the steps to slide back down, and every time I saw them, I cowered. My friend said they wouldn’t come after me and not to be scared, but each time I slid down I felt a tingle in my spine, nervous that they might grab me by the nape of my neck. But the added anxiety just made our sliding that much more thrilling.

  The road had been deserted, but on one trip up the steps, we spied a group of strange men approaching along it in ranks. They were guarded front and back by sword-clad policemen and dressed in a sinister red, the color of dried blood. As they came closer, I noticed that they had iron shackles around their ankles. I froze.

  Fear registered on my friend’s face as well. She stomped her feet three times and spat. “Hurry up and do what I do,” she told me. “Otherwise, you’ll have bad luck.” Bewildered, I followed suit.

  We left quickly. On our way home, my friend said we’d just seen jailbirds. Seeing them could bring bad luck, so you had to ward it off. She couldn’t explain exactly what jailbirds were, except that they were bad people and that they lived behind the fence. The clanging of the shackles around their ankles made me believe that maybe we really had done something wrong in seeing them. I had spat and stomped the way my friend showed me, but I couldn’t rid myself of fear and disgust.

  And so I told my mother I’d seen jailbirds. I was already prepared for a whipping because I’d been so caught up in our sliding fun I hadn’t realized that the seat of my webbed leggings, which Mother had bought to replace my old windbreaker knickers, had worn through. Mother seemed to consider my playing in a prison yard a much bigger deal than my ruined leggings. She blew up in anger and became teary-eyed, lamenting, with long sighs, having to live near a penitentiary. She threatened to kick me back to Pakchŏk Hamlet r
ight away if I ever played there again. I promised her I wouldn’t. I wasn’t really afraid she’d send me back, but for her to cry in front of me was enough to whip me into immediate shape.

  Mother wasn’t daunted easily. While my aunts would sulk by the kitchen stove after a scolding from my grandmother, my mother would lighten the mood right away with a joke. I was shocked by how humiliated she was by my playing in a prison yard and meekly promised I wouldn’t be friends with the girl anymore. Grandfather had simply looked down on his fellow villagers as commoners, but Mother went a step further. She called our neighbors “trash.”

  Fighting was a constant backdrop to life in our neighborhood. Even the arena for marital quarrels shifted to the street. After a round of curses—“Bitch!” “Bastard!”—husbands and wives tried to enlist neighbors as allies: “Argh, I’m dying. He’s killing me! Ain’t anybody gonna help me?”

  When these skirmishes arose, my mother would press her iron firmly along the delicate curve of a kisaeng blouse and sigh in a low voice, “What trash! When are we going to escape from this horrible place?” Did she really forget at those moments that we got by only thanks to those who had lower status than we did?

  Mother was a woman of many contradictions. Although she was very polite to our neighbors and their families—the sieve seller, the chimneysweep, the plasterer, the tinker—the underlying message she conveyed was that she didn’t want to have much to do with them. Mother treated the water carrier differently, however, even though his social position was no higher.