All Woman and Springtime

by Brandon Jones

  Mrs. Cha sat at the stool next to her. The expected chill that normally accompanied her was absent.

  “What’s your name, dear?” Mrs. Cha asked. Gi was surprised by the lack of malice in her tone.

  “Gi-Gi-Gyong-ho, ma’am”

  “Gyong-ho?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Were your parents from the dark ages? Did they think by giving you a boy’s name that they would turn their daughter into a son? I would say it almost worked, by looking at you.”

  “I don’t know, ma’am.” Gi was nervous talking with Mrs. Cha. She counted bottles behind the bar, then divided them by the number of steps up to her room.

  “I’m not really here by choice either, you know. You’ll get used to it. You will either get used to it or it will kill you. It’s that simple. Most girls choose to get used to it. Have a drink.” She turned to the bartender and shouted, “Gin and tonic!”

  The drink arrived, clear and bubbling. Gi counted the ice cubes, and then the bubbles, and then multiplied them by the previous number that was in her head. She took a small sip, and it lit up the back of her throat. She coughed. The drink was bitter. She took another sip.

  “It will give you strength. I’ll be right back.” Mrs. Cha got up from the stool, not quite able to mask the pain she felt in an arthritic hip, and left Gi with her drink. She returned a moment later with a bleary-eyed young man in tow. She said something to him in English, which he acknowledged with a nod. He was having difficulty standing.

  “Gyong-ho, this is Justin,” said Mrs. Cha. “He just paid for your services, so take good care of him.” Then she leaned into Gyong-ho and whispered in a frozen breath, “I told him your name was Toby. I gave you a boy’s name, too. I always wanted a son.” She then evaporated into the crowd.

  Gyong-ho was frozen to the spot. She knew what was expected of her, but she could not will her legs to move. Her breathing became shallow and the room started to close in around her. She calculated the square root of the number of barstools. Mrs. Cha was watching her from across the room. She looked back at her client and multiplied the square root of barstools by the number of eyelashes on his upper lids. The lids of his eyes were sagging over dull red orbs. She felt something thick collecting at the back of her throat, and she wanted to spit. She looked again to Mrs. Cha, who was talking with Asshole and pointing over to her. Asshole walked over and grabbed Gi’s arm. He said something to her client in English and laughed. He pulled her by the arm across the room and to the stairs while the client followed. At the base of the stairs, Asshole made a sweeping gesture with his arm, as if to cordially invite Gi and her client to climb them. As he did so, he squeezed her arm very tightly. The pain of his grip brought her back into her body, and she found the strength to go through with the task. She put one foot in front of the other and ascended the stairs.

  Gi passed Il-sun on the stairway, neither acknowledging the other. Il-sun was grimacing as if she had just tasted something foul. The sun was not with her: Gone were the woman and springtime. For Gyong-ho, this alone was the worst part of losing her virginity, seeing Il-sun in such a state. It was more horrible than being stripped by the drunken imperialist. More loathsome than feeling his weight pressing her into the mattress. More vile than inhaling his toxic breath as he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. Worse, even, than feeling her insides rip as he forced his way inside her. All that could be beautiful was now tarnished because Il-sun, herself, was tainted. Beauty itself had given up on beauty—what chance did she have of recovery?

  She raised herself from the mattress, her client passed out in a sodden heap. “Il-sun, I think I’m a woman now,” she said to herself, half aloud. She had a kind of understanding now of when Il-sun had said those words to her. She put her clothes on and walked down to the bar.

  69

  THE HUMILIATION OF IL-SUN’S life was now complete. She had given her virginity to Gianni, but she had not lost her innocence until she led the smelly American up the creaky stairs of the Blue Talon brothel. This was not the life promised to her by her mother: the one of a beautiful young woman with excellent songbun, courted by a good-looking man high in the Party. Something fundamental was now irreparably altered. It was suddenly clear to her that there would be no turning back, no reclaiming the life she believed was her birthright. All of that had changed. She snapped inside, all at once, and everything that used to be Il-sun drained out of her.

  She would never forgive Mrs. Cha, who had sent the doctor with his killing pills to undo her one shred of happiness. She was sure she had done it out of spite. Mrs. Cha had it in for Il-sun from the moment she laid eyes on her—that much was clear by the way she slapped her, and by the condescending way she spoke. She’s jealous of me, she thought. Of the way men look at me! Mrs. Cha had been pretty once, and maybe even beautiful. The hard fall from beauty had been unkind to her. Il-sun was determined to exact revenge.

  There was routine at the brothel: All roles were neatly defined, and the rules were simple and spelled out clearly. Each day there were chores and a precise schedule of when she was to be entertaining customers at the bar. It reminded Il-sun, in a way, of the orphanage and the orphanage mistress, and how, in spite of railing against the routine and responsibilities, they had given her a sense of order. Without that regularity there was nothing to guard against the press of chaos from the outside world, which threatened to swallow her whole. What she would give to be back at the orphanage . . . But that thought would only bring her down. She was Daisy now, and there was no going back. To Daisy, there never had been an orphanage, a factory job, a Gianni. As Daisy she could take control.

  It did not take long to make sense of the brothel hierarchy. Mrs. Cha was at the top, followed by Asshole, then the bartender, then the various Blue Talon thugs whose job it was to keep the place secure. It was clear where the prostitutes ranked—at the bottom, a commodity, like cattle or chickens. But the brothel was owned by Blue Talon, and Mrs. Cha was only its manager; she had to answer to someone: Uncle Lyong.

  Uncle Lyong, it was rumored, would sometimes come to the brothel to let off steam. He had not been there in the month since Il-sun had arrived, but Britney told her that he doted lavishly on his favorite girls with fine gifts. Il-sun thought back to Gianni and the thing he said: If you know a man’s weakness, you can own him. Mrs. Cha’s weakness was that she was not the boss, and Uncle Lyong’s weakness was being a man.

  If Daisy could not choose where she lived, or when she worked, or what kind of work she performed, then she had to make the most of her situation. If she had to be a whore, then she was going to be the top whore; and if she could not gain Mrs. Cha’s favor, then she would secure the affections and loyalties of the bartenders and bouncers—how did the Great Leader do it?—by promising bottomless love if only they could prove their worth. She would seduce Uncle Lyong and rise above Mrs. Cha.

  70

  CHO REACHED A BREAKING point. She kept looking down at her hands and thinking, The hands of a killer. She could still feel the sensation of Kang’s skull giving way to the heft of the frying pan. She could still see his glazed eyes rolling backward. She could see the pool of crimson blood growing, like a halo, around his head. She had seen much gore and death in the streets back home—a prostitute’s view hardens one to such things—but she had never before been its cause. She was blindsided by guilt and shame and regret, and those feelings would not stop.

  The torturous weeks spent in the filth, darkness, and discomfort of the shipping container had eroded her strength to the point where she barely knew herself anymore. She kept wondering, Why won’t I die? She had been a woman with strong knees and an iron spine, but now they could barely hold her upright. For a brief time, right after arriving in Seattle, she thought her strength was returning, that she would once again be the old Cho. She volunteered to be the first to get the tattoo, and she held her chin high her first day working for Mrs. Cha; but then her knees buckled for good, and she found herself on a long, dar
k spiral inward. There was no way out, no hope, nothing to strive for. She had held so much grief at bay for years, surviving on the street, just making it through each day, but now there was no holding it back. Grief poured from every cell of her body.

  In North Korea she had been kept alive by asking, “Will I live another day?” Somehow that question, the fact that in it was a pinch of doubt, buoyed her, caused her to fight for her life. Now, in the brothel, living through the day was nearly assured: There was plenty of food and guaranteed shelter. She did not have to strain at all for her physical survival, nor did she have to stake a claim on life or defend it, yet it wore her down. In fact, all that seemed to matter to anyone was that her heart was beating and her flesh was warm. There was no conceivable end to this captivity. Under Mr. Choy there had been a pretense that she was working toward the goal of her freedom; but here there was no such promise. She had no hope of this life opening to something better.

  Without being able to go forward, she started slipping backward, into her past. She saw over and over again the angry, broken face of her father as he cast her out of his home. His shame, she knew, was not that she had sold her body for food—he had eaten the morsels gladly, without question—but rather that he was bowing to social pressure in throwing her out. His anger was not at her, but at his own weakness at not defending his daughter, at feigning pride so as to save face in his community. He had failed to protect her from the ravages of the world, yet gained strength from the product of her labor. On some level he had known, all along, where she spent her days. Cho loved her father, and she went without a fuss. She helped him save face by leaving and never looking back.

  “Where do we go from here?” she asked herself when she stood outside her father’s door. She felt less lonely, speaking to herself in the plural.

  “Where do we go from here?” she said out loud in the Seattle brothel.

  71

  GI LOOKED OUT ONTO the street. Summer was making way for fall, and the few trees in the slice of view from her bedroom window were showing hints of yellow. She dressed herself in one of her three outfits, a light green summer dress that had been left behind by one of the many girls spirited away in the constant shuffling of girls, and went to perform her morning chores. She vacuumed the hallway and swept the stairs. Then she helped the kitchen crew clean up from breakfast. Afterward, she sat on a stool with her back to the bar, stone-faced, and waited. This had been her routine for the last three months.

  Mrs. Cha was sitting across the room at one of the tables, going over a pile of papers. Apparently there was bureaucracy even here. Mrs. Cha looked up and gave an acidic smile.

  “Good morning, Toby,” she said in English.

  Mrs. Cha’s voice traveled down Gi’s spine, causing her to shiver, and she lowered her head in a subordinate bow. She had understood Mrs. Cha—she spent all her leisure time in front of the television, decoding the English language. She knew that she was a bargain price, that Mrs. Cha was a mean old bitch, and that “Daisy” was a top dollar whore. In fact, she could understand most of what was said around her, even though she often wished she could not. She never dared to speak the new language—was learning English, the language of imperialists, a punishable antirevolutionary offense? Did that even matter anymore?

  Two customers were sitting at the bar. They had looked up briefly when Gi walked in, but then turned back to their conversation. She was not the kind of girl that they were after; at least, not until they had had a few drinks. Men came and went through the brothel at all hours, and it seemed now that all of them were just one man, a carbon copy, coming and going. It did not matter who he was, anymore, Korean, American, African, they were all the same. Various members of Blue Talon also frequented the bar. They were a razor-sharp bunch, well dressed and professional; Uncle Lyong insisted on it. Sometimes they were there to deliver drugs or new women, and at other times they were there solely for pleasure. Gi was spared having to service them. They always went for the pretty girls like Jasmine, Cho, and “Daisy.”

  Mrs. Cha stood up, wincing from the pain in her hip, and walked toward Gi. Gi felt herself shrinking as she approached, creating a dizzying parallax as Mrs. Cha grew larger in her field of vision. It was all she could do to keep from falling off her barstool.

  “I have a gift for you, Toby,” said Mrs. Cha, holding out her hand. “We need something to shine you up.”

  Gi opened her palm, and Mrs. Cha dropped a pair of sparkling clip-on earrings into it.

  “I bought them with your tip money. You do get tips, you know? They’re adding up.”

  The other women at the brothel lived for their tips, so that they could buy personal items—it was the only thing that gave them a sense of control over their lives. Jasmine spent hers on soaps, shampoos, lotions, and scents, Cho’s went almost entirely to cigarettes, and Il-sun—Daisy—who by far collected the most, spent hers on clothing. Gi wanted nothing to do with money. It made little sense to her, valuing things in dollars; and that which she most longed for could not be purchased.

  “See how good I am to you, Toby? Put them on,” Mrs. Cha said in English.

  Gi obliged, and the clips pinched her earlobes uncomfortably.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” she mumbled in Korean.

  It was almost noon when Gi had her first client for the day. She never made an effort to attract men. Normally Mrs. Cha was severe with girls who did not flirt and try to earn their keep, but for Gi she let it slide. Most of the men who went with her were lured by the price. She led the faceless man up to her room and closed the door behind her. She went through the motions, undressing and lying naked on the bed. These violations were painful and sickening, but over the months she had lost sensation in her body, as if it were no longer her own. She found that she could lie passively, allowing it to be done to her, while her mind escaped into ever deeper concepts, shapes, and numbers. Anyway, resistance only made it worse. She sensed that the men who came to her all wanted something more than they were receiving, some intangible connection that they tried harder and harder and faster and faster to make until they were spent and yet still unsatisfied. Whatever it was, she knew they were looking in the wrong place, that she did not have it to give to them.

  Gi handed Mrs. Cha three meaningless imperialist dollars, her tip, and returned to her stool at the bar. Mrs. Cha folded the money with a quick, practiced movement and slid it into a bulging bag at her waist. She then turned back to her ledgers.

  DAISY MADE HER first appearance in the late afternoon, once the bar had gotten considerably more crowded. Gi watched her materialize at the bottom of the stairs, all hips and attitude. She was dressed as a schoolgirl—Gi had learned that word in English—in a short red-and-black plaid skirt, knee-length white stockings, black Mary Jane shoes, and a low-cut white blouse. Her hair was pulled into pigtails on the sides of her head in an attempt to make her look barely pubescent. Mrs. Cha had one time ordered her to dress that way, to humiliate her for an insolent comment she had made; but Daisy turned it around—it was her most successful act, and now she enjoyed flaunting it in front of Mrs. Cha. Daisy stood for half a minute, framed by the entryway, without drawing the attention she wanted; she preferred when heads turned immediately. Gi could see a moment of frustration in her eyes.

  “Anyone knowing how to pleasing lady?” she shouted across the room in English. It was a phrase that Britney had taught her to say, and was one of several collections of syllables Daisy had memorized to work the crowd. It meant nothing to her. Gi would have loved to have taught her how to say the phrase correctly, but Il-sun hardly spoke to her anymore; and when she did, her words usually packed the sting of condescension.

  She had adapted to the work quickly. Daisy—a brash exaggeration of Il-sun’s pride, superiority, and self-centeredness—replaced Il-sun from the first day, as if she’d been planted there in the seed of the man who first lay with her. It seemed that she had erased the past, and with it the common experiences that bonded her to Gi, C
ho, and Jasmine.

  All eyes in the room turned toward Daisy, and she glowed in the attention. She reached down to the hem of her skirt and slowly drew it up her thighs. Then in a quick movement, she flipped the front of her skirt up to her waist, and held it just long enough to reveal that she was not wearing underwear. The men in the crowd cheered. Then she strutted through the bar, brushing past men, pinching them, and whispering into their ears.

  Daisy’s behavior was a shock to many of the women, whose captivity was a mark of shame and ever heavier sadness. Mrs. Cha demanded that all her girls smile and act happy, under threat of serious beatings; but it would not have taken a very keen eye to see beneath the act. The stress and strain of the situation, the loss of self and family, was hardened into the folds of the women’s faces. It was a wonder that the men who frequented the place could not see it, or that they could ignore it for the sake of their own satisfaction. But Daisy’s performance was unwavering.

  Mrs. Cha sat in the corner, coiled up, viperlike and seething. She could not deny that Daisy’s act and attitude were profitable, but she did not like losing control. Gi sensed a dangerous match brewing between the two, and she had no doubt who would get the better of whom, in the end. She had tried to warn Il-sun about it, but was snubbed. A self-satisfied smile erupted on Mrs. Cha’s face, and she stood, clearing her throat.

  “Gentlemen, can I have your attention, please?” she shouted in English. Mrs. Cha had a commanding presence, and the room went instantly quiet. “I think you have all had the chance to behold our lovely young Daisy.”