“I don’t want to pretend,” I said.
She held my hand in hers, followed the lines on my palm. “You hear everything as an occasion to cry, as an event that will ruin you.”
“So what if I do?”
“It’s not practical.”
“I don’t care.” I turned from her again. Practical. When I was young, before Hyunki was born, Mother would knot flowers together for me to wear around my wrists, my neck. She’d adorned me solely for the pleasure of beauty, without any other purpose. “I’d rather be this way than like you.”
Mother sighed. “He bought it for me. New members are standing in front of the congregation next week. I needed a proper dress for church. If none of you will come with me, at least I can look presentable.” She brushed my shoulders with short strokes and nodded. “Done. Out of your mind now.”
It wasn’t true. I slipped into Mother’s closet while she prepared the fish for the next morning. I searched her small wardrobe of neatly folded clothes, from summer ramie to double-layered cotton for the colder months. There was no yellow.
“So?” I walked around her room. He could meet other women if he wanted to, I decided. I retrieved Mother’s sleeping mat from the wardrobe and unrolled it across the floor. I found her pillow. I didn’t care. I would flirt with Jonathan. I would even flirt with Son Jongho. I would retaliate against Mun Soonhee and Jisoo both.
“Mommy?” Solee stood shirtless at the door with pillow marks lining her square face. I watched her plump stomach rise with each inhale. “Jieun waked up.”
She beckoned me to our room with her tiny hand.
I couldn’t think if I wanted to. Jieun wept until I untied my top and she bit down. Solee hovered, always fascinated by this process. Jieun’s tight, assured mouth on my nipple. How my breasts leaked with milk. The pain of gums sucking and clamping.
“I help.” Solee sat beside me and stroked Jieun’s arms. “You tell story.”
“Mommy’s tired today.”
“Bird bridge. Stars. I want hear.”
“You tell it then,” I said.
“No. I no want.”
“I don’t want to, either.”
She scooted away from me. “You, Mommy. Please?”
“Leave me alone, Solee.” I wished Hyunki would walk by. He would hold his shadowed fingers against the wall and transform his voice into a threatening tiger or bear or goddess. But he was probably studying, readying for a world away from us.
“I want story,” Solee said again. She kicked at her blankets.
I slapped her feet. “Fix those blankets immediately.”
She cried out, wet and resentful. She petted her soles as if I’d actually hurt her and screamed higher and louder until Jieun joined in with her relentless infant shrieking. “Silence from both of your mouths,” I yelled. I slapped Solee’s feet again.
Among all the noise, I almost felt better.
“Why are they so upset?” Jisoo stood at the door. Solee saw him and quieted. Jieun stopped, too, as if in chorus with her sister.
“I thought you were out,” I said.
“I was. I am. Just need to change.” He crossed the room, searched his wardrobe, and pulled on a silky purple button-down shirt. A shirt that would match a yellow dress.
“Who are you voting for next week?” I nodded at him to sit beside me. “I heard you chatting with Son Jongho.”
“I don’t want to talk about that stuff right now. I’m going out.” With his good arm, he slung Solee onto his hip. He petted her wispy hair. “Be nice for Mommy.”
“She not nice.” Solee burrowed her head into his neck. “Me nice.”
“Maybe Mommy’s cranky. Should we make her feel better?” Bending low so she’d squeal, Jisoo said, “Kiss her forehead. Ten should be enough.”
Solee laughed as Jisoo counted each of her kisses aloud. It was easy for him. To make her happy, to leave. At the door, he said, “I’m celebrating the tenant win tonight,” and closed me in.
Solee crawled to the blankets. “Come, Mommy.”
I slid in beside her and held Jieun tight to my chest. With one hand on Solee’s face, I told the story. The right way, with the princess and the stars and the birds that built a bridge with their bodies so the princess could cross the Milky Way to reach her shepherd boy.
I told the story again and again, until she fell asleep.
I walked in the dark, through fields, over new seedlings. I walked past the market, the watering line, Hyunki’s school, the tiredness that had settled in me with Soonhee’s and Mother’s and Solee’s words—with Jieun’s small, slathered body coming out of my own. I walked until I was sure. The stalks were gone, but this had been the field.
It was a brown and dry scrape of land now. I retraced our positions. Here little Hyunki, here my open books. I remembered the smell of barley. How it mixed with our sweat. Here, Kyunghwan. Here the pencil holder I’d made for him with orange string and a sun-whitened watermelon rind. I’d dyed the threads in a pool of water tinted with rose balsam petals. Here, me.
“My father’s meeting a new woman,” Kyunghwan had said one afternoon.
I’d looked up from my mathematics paper, the numbers floating away. His interruption had annoyed me. Then, I’d parsed the meaning behind his words. “A woman? Which matchmaker did he use?”
“I guess it’s all right.” He’d twisted a barley stalk. “It’s been a year.”
I had known he was upset, that I should comfort or distract him. But instead I’d felt relief—relief that his father and my mother had never encountered each other by the water mill over the past year.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” I’d said.
“Maybe. I saw her. She’s pretty. Breasts like this.” He had squeezed the air in front of his chest, and I’d swatted his leg.
A dog barked in the night, and Hyunki’s little round glass tumbled from my hand. I sat on the ground in the middle of this same empty land. I imagined barley, rose balsam, him. If Jisoo had a woman, I could have my memories.
Jisoo
1958
I did everything right. My tenants deferred to me without complaint. The neighbors shared their oxen, workers, and hospitality, and the elders listened to me at town assemblies despite my lack of local lineage. I was ascending in the world in which Haemi had wanted to live—all with one good arm. And so, if I wanted to spend my time elsewhere, I could do as I pleased.
Yuri, in a blue woolen dress and white sneakers, came to the door. “You again?”
“I need a break,” I said.
“They’re about to eat dinner, but come in. Sangwoo’s been asking about you.” She led me to a playroom cramped with children. It was a cold winter day, and the sound of sniffling filled the space.
Sangwoo, a curly-haired boy of six, ran toward us. “Uncle! I’ve been practicing cards so I can beat you.”
“Grandmother Lee’s going to announce dinner soon,” Yuri said. “You only have a few minutes while we set up. Go on.”
Sangwoo and I wove between the groups of kids to his favorite corner. Settled on floor cushions, I asked, “Have you been studying? Eating well?”
He pushed out his belly. “I’m growing fat!”
I laughed. “You can get even fatter!”
“Look.” Sangwoo balanced a box on his knees and thumbed through it with intent. “We got these yesterday.” He displayed a piece of clothing I’d never seen before. It was an all-in-one garment with a hood and the feet attached. “One of the babies peed in his in the middle of the night. The soldier-man gave me the orange one because I was the nicest.”
“Which soldier-man?” I asked.
Before he could answer, Grandmother Lee called from the kitchen. The children around us dropped their toys and ran, yelling their predictions. “Tteok-bokki!” “Miyeok-guk!” “Rice and fish!” “Spinach soup!”
I held on to Sangwoo’s belt loops. “Wait a second.”
Yuri teased us from the door. “Is Uncle keeping you ho
stage?”
“I have a gift for him,” I said.
“Quickly then.”
I showed Sangwoo the package I’d brought. He fingered the twine. “For me?” He ripped the paper wrapping with both hands. Inside, a wooden duck on wheels, painted yellow with a tiny brass bell around its neck.
“You pull it by the string,” I said.
“Look!” He marched in a circle, dragging the duck. The wheels turned with a loud, satisfying rattle.
“Say thank you to Uncle and go eat,” Yuri said.
He hugged me and ran through the door with the yellow duck rolling behind him. A cheer came from the kitchen. Sangwoo’s happy shouting.
Yuri crossed the playroom and leaned against the main window with a mug on her lap. Snow collected on the glass behind her. She sipped. “You favor him.”
“He looks healthier each time I visit.”
“Why don’t you adopt him then?” She straightened and walked around the room collecting toys. “Only the Americans will. They won’t all get adopted, you know.”
“I know it’s hard.” I picked up the last of the toys and brought them to her. She let me touch her arm for a second. “Come sit with me. How have you been?”
“Go back to your own children, Jisoo.”
Melancholy clouded her movements, and I was here for a break from that. Even so, Yuri looked just as young as she had five years ago. I rubbed the sleeve of her blue dress. “Remember how Jongyul whistled the first time he saw you in regular clothes? We were worried that all you nurses would abandon us overnight.”
She smiled but lifted her arm out of my reach. “I need to help in there. The kids are inside all the time now that it’s cold. It drives Grandmother Lee crazy.”
“I’ll help, too.”
“It’s after six.”
“I can stay a little longer.”
She shrugged, picked up her mug from the sill, and walked away.
In the kitchen, the children sat at two long tables. The older ones held babies in their laps; the crippled sat close to the door, where they could be easily helped; and the half-breeds grouped together at the other end. Grandmother Lee served soybean soup in tin bowls. Yuri poured water into cups.
Sangwoo sat with the other orphans his age. Some had been found during the war, some afterward. Others were the offspring of lepers. All of them were skinny, scabby, and slowly returning to a more human form.
A boy with a lazy eye tapped my hand. “Where’s my toy, Uncle?”
“And mine?”
“I want a duck!”
The children looked up with their spoons dangling. Yuri saved me. “Uncle needs to pass these waters. The duck is for everyone.”
We worked our way down the tables. “I told you,” she said above the children’s heads. “You can’t give to one unless you’re going to give to them all.”
“Sangwoo knows how to share.”
“Do your daughters always share?”
I set a cup in front of a little girl. “Of course they do.”
Yuri smiled. “Fine. Your children are better behaved than mine. Time for you to go home, Jisoo.”
“I like being here.” I watched her lift a crying toddler to her chest. She moved around the orphanage as if the children were all her own, with a simple ease I admired. But I came for them, too. The way they stilled sometimes, lost, and looked at the door as if waiting for someone. They were without parents. I understood this loss.
“I don’t need people talking,” she said.
“Does it matter if it’s not true?”
She raised her eyebrows. “What do you think?”
“Fine, I’ll go.”
“Bring your wife next time.”
I nodded. This was how we always parted. She extended a hand, and I set it aside for another day.
The winter darkness made it seem later than it was. I entered my home and immediately felt Haemi’s anger. She followed me to the dining room with Jieun asleep in her arms. “You’re late.”
I smelled grilled mackerel, rice, kimchi-jjigae. The table wasn’t set. Not even the hot tea poured. Her irritation caught me in the throat. “Where’s dinner? I’m hungry.”
“We’re hungry, too.”
“Then go get our rice. We can eat together,” I said.
Haemi paced, bouncing Jieun as if she were an infant rather than a two-year-old. “She cried all day. I don’t know why she’s so sensitive.”
“Let me hold her.” I carefully lifted Jieun. For a moment, Haemi leaned her smooth forehead to me. She nestled into my chest and her body relaxed. I stroked her curls, her pointed ears. I wanted her to stay, for the weight to be an apology for her crabbiness. She straightened.
“Solee’s been asking for you. I’ll call her,” she said.
Haemi returned with steaming rice and our first daughter. Solee ran to me with her thick open arms and happy smile. She squeezed my side, careful not to jostle Jieun. “I counted the beans in Halmuni’s jar! To forty, Daddy. She gave me a rice cake and said I was the best granddaughter in Korea.”
“My smart girl! I think your halmuni’s right.” I settled onto a floor cushion. “Were you nice to your sister?”
“She was grumpy because a tooth’s growing in.” She reached for Jieun’s lip. “Want to see?”
“Don’t wake her,” Haemi said as she arranged the table. “I just got her to stop crying.”
“You wouldn’t want Jieun to do that to you while you’re sleeping.” I stuck a finger in Solee’s mouth. “How does that feel?”
She laughed. “Not good.”
“Someone must be hungry!” Mother entered with a tray full of food, her sickled frame trembling from the weight. “The mackerels you bought were perfect, Jisoo.”
I rose to help. “I can get more tomorrow. Let me take that.”
“We’ll trade.” She lifted Jieun from me and squeezed my hand. “You all eat first. I’ll wait for Hyunki.”
“Come sit.” Haemi gestured to the banchan and chopsticks. “Hyunki stays at school so late these days.”
“I’m not hungry yet, and this one’s waking up.” Mother hitched Jieun with a calming croon and walked back to the kitchen.
“She must feel more comfortable back there,” I said, once we started eating.
Haemi snorted, ripped her fish into small pieces. “She’s old and she knows it. She’s scared of being thrown out of her own home.”
“It’s custom to eat separately. She probably prefers it.”
“If we were following custom, I should be eating back there, too,” Haemi said.
“I’m a baby bird.” Solee raised her head and flapped her mouth like a beak. “See? Bbi-ak! Bbi-ak!”
“Stop playing and eat.” Haemi yanked Solee’s chin down to her bowl. The noises died in her throat.
“What’s wrong with you?” I pointed to Solee, who held a palm up to her face. “You’re angry at her because I was half an hour late?”
“Forget it, Jisoo.” Haemi ate loudly and quickly. She mutilated Solee’s fish, portioned it into circles. She exaggerated their hunger as punishment. “Tell me something interesting at least. What’s happening with the tenants?”
“It’s winter.” I slurped the kimchi-jjigae as if I were starving, too. “It’s all paperwork.”
Haemi stared. Her hair was neat, her clothes pressed, but still something in her face made me uneasy. I didn’t understand her. If the smallest thread in her happiness loosened, she followed it without reason.
“You don’t need to concern yourself with my work. Why do you care?” I asked.
She yawned in a theatrical, false way. “Because I need something to keep my head busy so I don’t die of boredom.”
“What I do is complicated.” I offered my last square of tofu to Solee. “I don’t want to talk about it when I get home.”
“Fine.” Haemi took my empty bowl. “I’ll get you more stew then.”
She turned my appetite around. I didn’t understand her dis
content, how she was bored without justification. She acted the part of a dutiful wife yet had no real concern for me. “I don’t want any more jjigae. Get me a drink,” I yelled, but she was already gone.
“The mommy bird eats up the food and then mushes it and gives it to the babies,” Solee said, quieter, talking only to me now.
I hugged her. Her chin was fine. “What’s wrong with Mommy today?”
Solee poked my knee. “Can you ice-skate? I want to learn.”
Haemi returned with a full bowl. “Learn what?”
In front of my wife, I wanted to be the better parent. It was silly, but I felt the need. I crouched to Solee, expanded my voice and energy. “Some of the smaller rivers in Seoul freeze over so thick you can skate all winter. I’ll teach you.” I eyed Haemi. “I’ve started looking into getting back my father’s land.”
“In Seoul? Closer to the dictator?”
“Rhee will be gone in two years.” I pushed the bowl away. “I heard one of my father’s uncle’s cousins is doing well in the yeontan business. Maybe I could get into that, too.”
“You want to move to Seoul and sell coal briquettes?” Haemi laughed. “We’re not leaving. That’s a promise you’ve already made.” She heaped spinach onto Solee’s rice.
“My tummy’s full,” Solee whispered.
“Eat it anyway.” Haemi turned to me. “Mother would be scared. You think she’d survive that trip? And everyone we know is here.”
“You don’t socialize with anyone,” I said.
“And if there’s another war? They wouldn’t call you now, not with that thing.” She nodded at my arm. She wouldn’t even look at it. “But Hyunki could be in trouble.”
Anger spiked in me, blunt and full force. A heat in my chest I wanted to thrust at her dismissive hands. I threw down my spoon. It skittered across the table, hit the chopsticks. “I can’t eat with you in this house.” I grabbed Solee, straining my arm just to show Haemi.
She knew, though, and clucked, “You’re being stupid. It’ll hurt later.”
“Let’s get something sweet to eat. Daddy wants a treat,” I said to our daughter.
Solee squeezed her ears.
If You Leave Me Page 15