Who Ate Up All the Shinga?

by Yu Young-nan

  Mother may have seemed meticulous, but she could actually be very lax in some ways. Although everyone, including herself, acknowledged her skill in managing money, she never realized that coins had been missing from her own meager purse. I still feel gratitude and affection toward her for these lapses.

  If she’d been suspicious and pressured me, she’d have pried the truth out. Even now, it makes me reel to think of the shame I might have wound up feeling.

  After that incident, I never stole Mother’s money again. Ditto other people’s possessions. As she wished, I never picked up money on the street. Actually, I’ve never spotted a sum of cash or anything else enticing enough to tempt me to be greedy, but whenever I pass money lying on the ground, without the slightest sense of conflict I find myself smiling, remembering Mother. Of course, I don’t for a moment think I’m doing a good deed. It’s just a habit I picked up and only I’m aware of. I cling to it with equal amounts of fondness and annoyance, the way you might hold on to a useless old item for no other reason than it has your parent’s thumb stains all over it.

  It’s hard to say what would have happened if Mother had discovered my penchant for theft. I was very sensitive to being humiliated. If I couldn’t preserve my pride, I might have been so hurt that I’d have begun acting up and become unmanageable. Personally, I don’t believe that people are born good or evil, but that we keep reaching crossroads between the two throughout our lives.

  A dreary, brutal atmosphere hung over Mount Inwang through the summer. Only toward the end of the monsoon did water trickle down into the valley.

  The path that led up to the shaman shrine was lined on both sides with a stone wall. Off on one side, a sparse thicket remained. Toward dusk, the cries of dogs being clubbed to death drifted down from this area. Boys would rush in swarms toward the forest at these heart-rending yelps, their eyes glinting with excitement. A straw-plaited cord dangled from a tree where the hounds were hung and bludgeoned. The smell of roasted dog meat lingering about the place made the bare ugliness of the forest frightening and revolting.

  As the summer heat grew more intense, even my reserved brother found it hard to remain cooped up in the room. As soon as we finished dinner, he’d lead me by the hand to Fairy Rock for some fresh air. They were my happiest moments in those days. I would swell with pride because, of all the people who came out to enjoy the breeze, Brother was the most handsome.

  To show my affection, I roamed far and wide to gather nettle flowers. I’d then have him hold one side of their leaves and plait them into a curved dipper for him. As I plucked the flowers, I’d look for snacks out of habit, but only tough, inedible grasses grew on the barren earth around Fairy Rock. Sometimes my hands would fall to my side, and I would wonder idly: Who ate all the shinga that were so plentiful back in the countryside? Brother recognized my homesickness. He’d count off on his fingers to show me how many days were left until summer vacation.

  The countdown hit five days. Mother took me to the market that went on in the evenings between Yŏngch’ŏn and the crossroads at Sŏdaemun. Daily sundries were available—kitchen knives, chamber pots, brooms, and the like—but most stalls specialized in fabric. Cloth curtains were draped along these stalls beneath makeshift awnings. The vendors kept up an energetic patter as they hawked their wares. I was captivated by their rhythmic cadences and the splendor of the gauzy fabric under the electric lights. Un-surprisingly, the fabric stalls were surrounded by the largest, noisiest crowds.

  Mother intended to make me a Western-style dress. As soon as she draped a piece of fabric over me, the merchants fussed about how perfectly it suited me, and my pulse raced. Mother, however, was no pushover. She bargained at several stalls, giving up when she couldn’t get the price she was looking for. Closing a deal was even harder because she was determined to buy just enough material for a short dress, and the traders sold cloth not by the bolt, but by the length of a blouse and skirt. Finally, she settled on a scrap of white fabric with navy blue polka dots.

  After taking my rough measurements with a ruler, Mother cut the fabric sloppily, tossed it over me, and made some large preliminary stitches to sew it up. She then finished it the following day on our relative’s sewing machine. It made for a decent dress. Mother’s stitch work was renowned; in addition to clothing for kisaeng, she had once sewn every item for a rich family’s wedding, but she had no confidence in her ability to make a Western dress. She had me model it for her several times, anxiously checking front and back. Brother offered some stingy praise. Not too awkward, he said. Mother was grateful for even that.

  Going home seemed real at last. I had butterflies of excitement in my stomach and couldn’t sleep, a feeling I hadn’t experienced even on my first school outing, when we went to the grounds outside the Government-General building, the imposing structure that served as headquarters for the colonial administration. It inspired awe in a country girl like me. Instead of a wall, it was surrounded by high iron bars that let you see what went on within. Policemen armed with swords stood guard at each gate. When we arrived in the vast yard behind it, our teacher repeated a list of things we were forbidden to do and dismissed us. I ate lunch with Mother, who had come with me. The only real pleasure I got from the outing was amazement at seeing with my own eyes that this huge building was where she wanted Brother to work someday.

  On the last day of the semester, my teacher asked the pupils who’d be going to the countryside to raise their hands. We were required to come to school twice during vacation, she said, but those who gave prior notice that they’d be going home to the countryside wouldn’t be marked absent. Only then did I learn that just two or three children per class spent their vacation in the countryside. I felt genuine pity for the native Seoul kids who’d be spending their whole summer in the city.

  All day long, you’re going to be stuck in alleyways, playing marbles or skipping rope. The best treat you’ll have are the snacks you get by begging one chon at a time off the grownups. Meanwhile, I’ll be jumping around in the country like a puppy. Everything there is alive and breathing and moving around in the breeze. Tomorrow, I’m going to get to climb up hills and walk through fields and splash in streams. I’m going to get to breathe in air that’s got the smell of grass and wildflowers and soil.

  Just imagining this brought me an elation reminiscent of stepping at dawn in early summer onto the dewy, green path and its carpet of dayflowers. I wasn’t just homesick. I had a ravenous hunger, and it was about to be satisfied. For the first time, I felt a sense of superiority over my peers in Seoul. Having a reason to pity them put me in a terrific mood.

  My joy was a little premature, though. On the last day of school, I received my report card. It was just my first term of first grade, but we were still marked. We were evaluated on a scale from six to ten, and my average was eight. My score seemed to have been rounded up, for other than two nines and a six in singing (the lowest possible mark), the rest of my marks were sevens. Mother never nagged me to study or looked over my homework carefully. She might have been aggressive enough in pursuing my education to violate zoning rules, but that was more or less as far as her concern went. Her indifference came, I think, from an arrogant belief that her children would excel without any special attention on her part. Brother had always been first in his class, although she’d simply left him to his studies. He had even skipped a grade at the country elementary school. She took great pride in all this. And so, when she saw my report card, she almost fainted. Her grief-stricken remarks had their own unique flavor: “Dear Lord, what a disgrace! Flying geese in my own child’s report card! I never dreamed I’d see the day.”

  Mother referred to sevens as geese for a reason. The son of the housemaid at our relatives’ in Sajik-dong was in elementary school, and the maid never tired of boasting what a good student he was. But Mother once caught a glimpse of his report card and saw that he’d received a seven in every subject. The Chinese character for seven, , when written in a cursive series, c
ertainly can seem like geese in flight. Mother had a knack for lightening serious moments with jokes, but her reference to geese in that boy’s report card doesn’t strike me as an example of her sense of humor. Instead, I think it reflects her smugness in looking down on other people’s children, while considering us paragons. Mother’s disappointment made her regret her previous mean-spirited remark.

  Only when Mother intimated that now we wouldn’t go to the countryside because she was too ashamed to face my grandparents did I burst into tears and kick and stomp. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, and I had no confidence that I could do better. Fortunately, Brother found a fitting way to comfort Mother and her bruised pride. He pointed out that I had nines in Japanese and math, so it didn’t matter if the other grades weren’t too high. His interpretation thrilled Mother. She immediately took it a step further, adding that only children without academic talent did well in singing, gym, and drawing.

  Late that evening, my aunt and uncle came to see us, since Brother and I had just received our report cards and we’d be leaving for home the following day. Mother was no longer dejected at all; she showed them my report card, embellishing Brother’s reading of the situation. She made it sound as though she’d never come across a scholastically minded child who had received good marks in gym or singing. As the saying goes, “Whatever goes wrong is your ancestors’ fault.” And so, in keeping with this maxim, I still blame Mother for the fact that I am tone deaf.

  My aunt and uncle agreed wholeheartedly with Mother’s strained interpretation. They were our only close relatives in Seoul, and the customs of the day dictated that when a man passed away, his brothers become surrogate fathers to their orphaned nieces and nephews. We were constantly visiting and consulting each other. Since Auntie and Uncle had no children of their own, the bonds of love and affection between us all went beyond mere obligation.

  Uncle lived in Pongnae-dong, on the other side of Yŏmch’ŏn Bridge. He made deliveries for a Japanese fish wholesaler, while Auntie worked as a bookkeeper at a trading company. Uncle always had the whiff of fish about him. He looked like a true laborer. Auntie, however, appeared more sophisticated by the day. I really admired her. She wore a fashionable hairdo, with the front and sides swept upward Japanese-style, and put on her makeup tastefully as well.

  Once I went with Mother on a visit to Auntie at her work-place, a large warehouse stacked high with crates of goods. Several teenage boys were bustling about. They were clad in jackets that resembled Japanese haori robes and had the store name emblazoned on the back. My aunt wore a blue clerk’s smock over her blouse and skirt, and the way she directed the boys, adding the title “mister” to their names as she addressed them, made her seem very professional.

  I learned later that Auntie had started out as a live-in maid in a Japanese home. Meanwhile, Uncle had had to struggle terribly, sleeping in an attic above the ice storage of the fish merchant. Auntie spoke decent Japanese and was a quick study in everything she did. Within a few months, she had earned her employer’s trust, and he gave her a job at the general trading outfit he managed. At that point, she was finally able to set up house with Uncle again.

  My aunt and uncle would often pick days they weren’t working to invite us over for a feast. The meat and fish they treated us to suggested that they made good money, but their living conditions were even worse than ours. A row of a dozen or so perpetually sunless rented rooms stood around a yard that seemed more like an alleyway. Sheets of galvanized iron blocked the sky, and the ground was uneven and soggy. Uncle’s home lay at the end of this cul-de-sac. To reach it, you had to wend your way painstakingly (and often unsuccessfully) among puddles of filthy dishwater. The neighborhood might not have had Hyŏnjŏ-dong’s water problems, but it was less sanitary.

  “Inside the gates.” “Inside the gates.” For Mother, the neighborhoods within the four great gates of Seoul were the only desirable places to live. She hoped to move there, but there were slums like the one Uncle lived in “inside the gates” as well.

  ************

  Finally, we arrived at Kaesŏng Station. Mother disembarked proudly, showing off a son in a fresh summer uniform and a daughter in a Western dress. My grandmother, elder uncle, and aunt were all there, waiting for us. Grandmother embraced me and then turned around to offer me a piggyback ride. I refused.

  The mountains and rivers in my hometown were green and fresh. As I climbed the hills, plucked wildflowers, and rinsed away my sweat in the streams, I again felt pity for the children stuck in Seoul. Shinga stalks were as abundant as ever, but by this time of year they had grown too tough to snack on.

  Nevertheless, fresh produce had come into full season in the vegetable patch. Nothing can match the sweetness of that freshly picked, steamed corn. And to come upon a slender, sensuous squash, lying under lush, dew-laden leaves early in the morning, before the heat spread—ah, sheer rapture. The expression likening an ugly woman to a squash? Obviously an invention of ignorant urbanites. The phrase is unfair even if it refers to old squash: Who’d be afraid of aging if we ripened as gracefully as squash?

  Grownups were at their busiest, which made the season even more delightful for kids. Little boys went around shirtless, their bellies protruding like a frog’s. Some even had their little peppers exposed. If melon juice dripped onto their tummies and they were annoyed by swarming flies, all they had to do was jump into one of the many rivulets.

  The tiny brook on the way to our outhouse wasn’t deep enough to jump into, but its banks sported tiger lilies in full bloom. Since the blossoms from the trees in our backyard—apricots, cherries, wild pears—had already fallen, the flowering tiger lilies with their orange petals speckled with purple struck me as all the more gorgeous.

  Seeing all this delighted me, but the one who delighted in seeing me was Grandfather, whose condition had declined dramatically over the previous six months. His paralyzed left cheek had become horribly sunken and twitched with occasional spasms. Now he even lacked energy for the anger he’d shown when he tossed me the fifty-chon coin. He looked so pitiful that I thought I was going to cry. As I kneeled next to Brother to offer him a bow, I pledged to myself that during vacation I’d do all I could to run the errands he wanted.

  That summer, a baby girl was born into our family, providing me with a cousin for the first time. Given that Auntie was taking care of the household chores, I must have seen her swollen belly; presumably, too, my delighted grandparents would have been fervently praying for a smooth birth, since this was her first child and she was already in her thirties. For some reason, though, in my memory the baby just arrived out of the blue.

  One night my eyes fluttered open, either because I’d sensed there was no one next to me or because I’d heard low murmurs. I found myself alone. I’d fallen asleep in the main room, but now I was in the room across from it. I went out to the veranda to be by Grandmother’s side, but I noticed that the main room was lit up and tugged open the door. Mother waved her hand behind her, motioning for me to shut it again. Grandmother was kneading something in a basin. “Grandma, are you killing a chicken?” I asked groggily. Mother shooed me out, trying to stifle a smile. I returned to my bedding and fell back asleep.

  Although we reserved beef and pork for New Year’s and the Harvest Moon Festival, we served chicken for guests and on birthdays, so I’d seen them slaughtered often enough. It still baffles me that I could have thought that Grandmother was killing a chicken. Surely my baby cousin cried as she was bathed? My absurd question gave the grownups something to chuckle about for a long time to come.

  With the baby’s arrival, our house became livelier than it had been for ages. This tiny being brought bright smiles to a home that had been darkened by the shadows of death and disease. Grandfather was overjoyed. He chose the baby’s name, combining the character for “bright,” myŏng, with sŏ, the syllable that all the children in my generation of the family shared. With a trembling hand, he wrote out in calligraphic Chinese �
�Avoid Impurity After Birth” and had it pasted on our front gate. Where I grew up, scrolls, instead of the more usual ritual pieces of rope, were hung to announce a birth and bar outsiders.

  Some relatives and neighbors expressed regret that it had not been a son, but Grandfather would have none of it. We should be grateful for a smooth birth, he rebuked them; asking for more was to invite bad luck.

  I started hovering over the baby and rarely went out to play. I no longer felt the way I used to with my friends. Part of it was that the Seoul look Mother had foisted on me made things awkward with my former playmates, but the real problem was in my heart. After half a year in the capital, I felt superior to the other children in the village and consciously tried to convey that. I’m sure I must have seemed terribly obnoxious to them.

  Our homecoming during winter vacation that year was even more of a spectacle. We didn’t have special winter uniforms at school; instead, we were encouraged to wear long navy blue frocks. I went home wearing mine over a black blouse and skirt and had skates draped over one shoulder. I’m not exactly sure when Brother started skating, but I do remember him bringing a pair home as an award from school and watching people gliding on the pond at Ch’anggyong Palace.

  Although skating was the most familiar of the sports that people in Seoul enjoyed, I never had an urge to try it myself. I’d never even worn skates before. Wherever it was that we acquired them, I do recall that when Mother had me try them on, she pronounced them a perfect fit, saying that I’d be able to skate on the frozen paddies. But I couldn’t even stand upright with them on in our room. Nevertheless, Mother assured me that I’d be able to glide right along in them when I was on the ice. Since I’d seen Brother skating gracefully along with several others, I accepted that it would come naturally as long as you had the right footwear.