“How do you communicate?”
“He knows a little Korean and even some Japanese.”
“Is he kind to you?”
Haemi and Yuri went on. They forgot about me.
Watching them, I realized we were lurching toward a new world—one where women could disappear with foreigners, where Americans would never leave us alone, where they didn’t simply provide us with money, but with their ways of living as well.
We weren’t rebuilding. We were shaping ourselves into a different form.
I felt duped by my own blindness. Like a man who doesn’t know he’s soaked until halfway through a creeping storm.
Hyunki
1960
When I was five and Haemi fourteen, I wanted to capture a hundred dragonflies. In the late summer evenings, Haemi would sit as I hopped from rock to rock, slipping into river puddles, trying to catch those tiny creatures with their flashing wings.
“Splash some water on them,” she said. “They’ll fly slower.”
Wet and discouraged, I stretched out beside her. “They’re too fast.”
Haemi sat with a pile of fluttery rose balsam petals. She layered them on her fingers, careful to stain only the nails. I helped her tie a long leaf around her pinkie to hold the crushed petals in place.
“If the orange color stays until winter, you marry your first love,” she said.
“Marry me,” I responded. “I’m going to be rich.”
She laughed. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not?” The idea of another man in our lives didn’t make sense to me. I pierced a petal and tried to drag the juice across her face. “I want a dragonfly.”
“Let me dye your nails and I’ll catch one for you.”
“I’m a boy!”
“Just one hand.”
I thought of my friends and how they’d tease me, but I wanted the dragonfly too much. I would hold its skinny, straight body in my hand. I would pin it to my wall. “All right, just one,” I said.
She lined my nails with petals and leaves. She pressed each finger and counted to twenty. “To make sure the juices bleed onto the nail,” she said. “Now you keep these on while I catch the dragonfly.”
As I waved my leaf-covered hand, Haemi pulled the back hem of her long skirt forward and between her legs, tucking it into her high skirtband. I laughed. Her pale ankles were knobby beneath her billowy makeshift shorts. She picked up a branch, broke off a thin twig. “Get the rice,” she said.
Haemi used a few grains from our lunch and my spit to form a gluey blob. She stuck it on the end of her stick. At the river’s edge, where the dragonflies buzzed, she slid into the water. “The trick is to jab upward.”
The creatures teased her, hovering around the stick and shooting away, but she was patient. Finally, with a majestic thrust into the air—she caught one.
The dragonfly wriggled against the trap, its body stuck, its wings fluttering. I flew into a shrieking happiness. It was beautiful, helpless, and mine. Even though I wasn’t supposed to—I was already sick in the lungs—I screamed. And Haemi, she did a wondrous thing. She jammed the dragonfly stick into the ground, sat down beside me, and screamed, too.
We sprawled our legs into the river and splashed, raising our orange-dyed nails to keep them dry. The water lapped up our knees. Haemi held out her hand toward something unseen. “If I were a boy,” she said, “I’d do this every day.”
I laughed. “But you’re a girl.”
Her forehead, shiny and white, caught the sun. “Of course I am.” She smiled. “Let’s go home.”
She pitched herself forward. With one turn of her wrist, her pants released and billowed into a skirt again. She stretched herself outward, all limbs and skin. I thought it was wonderful. How she was able to expand the world just for me.
* * *
Youngho and I whooped with excitement as we sprinted toward home after my last meeting with Teacher Lee. The August heat coated our shirts and shoes with a muggy dampness, but we didn’t mind. I rolled my hands in waves at the cemetery, slowing to copy the humps of the burial mounds. In one day, I’d leave this place, and I wanted to impress each image in my memory.
“I heard Seoul girls are different,” Youngho said with a grin as he caught his breath. “They’ll let you put your hand up their skirts.”
“And there’ll be Americans. I bet those girls would let me get a finger in.” Their flesh would be pink, and the hairs down there curly, springy, and yellow.
“They’re probably older,” he said. “Eighteen or nineteen.”
I grinned. “So?”
He threw a pebble at me with a laugh. “If you really want it, tell them you’re sick. They’ll sleep with you out of pity.” Youngho’s hands fluttered to his face. “Oh, Hyunki, you brave boy. Come here and let me breathe into your poor little lungs to make you feel better.” He pretended to untie his shirt and hitch up an imaginary skirt. We hunched over, laughing again. “Seoul tomorrow!” Youngho hooted. “You, a city boy!”
I imagined my first day. The walk from my boardinghouse to the high school was supposed to take half an hour. Along smooth, paved roads lined with trees, enormous brick buildings would sell brand-new American goods behind glass-paned windows.
“That’s what I get for being poor and stupid, you lucky worm.” Youngho shoved me. “You think there’ll be any demos left for you to join?”
I shook my head. The spring had been filled with protests after Rhee’s reelection. Youngho and I had heard the news on the radio, steaming with jealousy. As the Seoul students forced Rhee to resign, we’d turned the dials of our wireless and imagined the crowds. “We got the Second Republic we wanted, right?”
“Yeah, but can you imagine?” Youngho twisted a leaf off a tree. “To be part of the action.”
“You only want me to suffer here longer.” I punched his shoulder. After the election and news of the violent protests, Haemi had forced me to stay and miss my first semester. “You jealous?”
“Maybe a little.” He smiled. “If anything happens, write me and I’ll get on the next bus. Promise?”
“Done.”
We shook hands and passed the center of town without saying anything more. I wanted to tell Youngho that I’d miss him, that we could explore Seoul and seduce its women together if he came along. I ran my hands over hanging leaves, a cat lounging on a stone wall, and hoped that somehow he understood.
At the corner where we parted ways, he glanced toward my house. “Seems like a calm day.”
I stared at the stone wall and shrugged.
“I’ll see you later tonight. It’s going to be great,” he said.
“I hope we can handle it.”
“We will. Drinking with Jisoo-hyung!” Youngho threw his book into the air and caught it as he ran down the road, all grins and ease.
It was calm inside because no one was home. In the common room, I ate leftover fish and skimmed through a short story Haemi had given me. I thought “Rain Shower” would be about Seoul, but it followed two children in the countryside. I wondered if she was trying to make me feel guilty or giving me a way to remember our home.
I heard little-girl chatter blow through the front gate, and I set down the book. Soon after, bare feet slapped on wood as Solee ran across the porch and slid open the hanok doors. “Uncle!” She skidded into my room, plopped herself on my lap, and pushed the sweaty strands of hair from her forehead. “Guess what I saw today!”
Haemi waddled in next with her enormous stomach, steering Jieun in front of her. “Not right now. Do I look like someone who can do that right now?”
Jieun stared at Haemi’s looming belly and set her lip. She tucked her long, narrow chin to her chest and hitched her thin shoulders. We knew what would happen next.
Haemi blew out a groan. “Please don’t—”
“Come here, Jieun.” I shifted Solee, who was chattering about a certain chicken she’d seen, to my left knee and coaxed Jieun to my side. “Uncle H
yunki’s here.”
“Mommy’s mean,” she said.
“This baby’s jerking my insides. I need a moment, please.” Haemi lowered herself onto a cushion, bags still dangling from her arms. The handles cut into her swollen wrists, leaving strips of reddened flesh. “Did you eat?”
I nodded. “Fish and rice.”
She kicked a parcel in my direction. “Another present for your trip.”
A sleek tin box emerged from carefully wrapped paper. Solee flurried with excitement. “This looks like my teacher’s pencil case.” She opened the lid and Jieun stuck her fingers inside the compartments.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s to hide your medicine. Mother said you were worried about the boarding mates.”
“It looks like a jewelry box,” I said. “The girls can keep it. I feel good, strong.”
“You need to take the pills with you, just in case.”
“Jisoo-hyung said I’m fine.”
“He’s not a doctor. Anyway, at least thank Mother. She’s sick again and still out shopping for you.” Haemi shut her eyes and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “And how are you? Ready to run off to the big city and leave us all behind?”
I closed the lid and imagined it full of white pills. “I guess.”
“What does that mean?” Haemi snorted. “Don’t pretend you’re not excited.”
I focused on Solee, who’d returned to her story about chickens. Haemi was cranky with pregnancy, and it poisoned all her conversations. She snaked between crying and yelling, sleeping and marching through rooms with a wooden spoon she rattled against the walls to get our attention. She wrung our words around until even hardy Jieun felt guilty for an innocent remark. I tried not to speak to my sister more than necessary.
Jieun stuck her slim feet into one of the empty shopping bags. “Mommy?”
“Not right now.” Haemi lay down and dragged a floor cushion over her face. “I’m feeling awful. Watch the girls for a bit?”
“I’m going out. Saying goodbye to friends,” I said.
She lifted the cushion. “You’ve been saying goodbye for weeks. You can spare an hour for me, Hyunki.”
Solee looked up, her hands in the form of beaks. “Are you listening? The chickens were trying to eat each other!”
“Fine. An hour.” I lifted Solee and pulled the bag off Jieun’s feet. “Time to leave cranky-monster Mommy alone.”
Haemi frowned. “Don’t be like that in front of them.”
The girls giggled, aware that I was somehow making fun of their mother. I shut the door on Haemi with a large gesture, as if I were trapping a monster within.
My room was in the corner of the house and received the most light. In that sunny crook, on my desk, I laid out the items I would take with me to Seoul—the first chocolate bar I’d bought with my tutoring money, still uneaten; a collection of notebooks I’d kept since middle school, categorized by subject; a wooden pencil set I’d won at a local writing competition; clothes that wouldn’t mark me as a country boy. I ripped sheets of paper from one of the old notebooks and handed the girls some peelable pencils. When the point flattened, they liked to pull the string and watch the paper shavings fall to reveal the waxy core.
Solee lay on her stomach, curling the edges of her paper. I sat in between her and Jieun, rubbing their backs in turn. “What are you drawing there?”
Jieun pointed to her blotty image. “This is Mommy.”
I touched the large circle inside the squarish body. “Is that the baby?”
“Baby baby.” She scribbled over the circle, squeezing the pencil in her fist. “Gone! Mommy don’t want baby and I make it go.” She dragged the pencil across a final time, leaving a thick black gash.
“That’s not nice, Jieun,” I said. “Don’t make up mean things like that.”
“I not making up.” She drew spirals around the body. “She told me. She want baby dead.”
Solee looked up from her work. “That’s a lie. Uncle, she’s lying.”
“Mommy say so.” Jieun furrowed her thick eyebrows and again pointed at her drawing. “No sister. No brother. It dead.”
“Uncle, tell her she’s being bad!”
Jieun poked Solee with her pencil. “I not bad!”
Solee pushed Jieun’s face with one hand and snatched at the pencil with the other. “You are!”
All of a sudden, they were wild, yanking and hitting and screaming at each other. Their high, shrill voices pierced the air. Solee’s hair fell out of her ponytail and Jieun grabbed a thick handful.
“Hey!” I squeezed between their bodies and pushed Solee’s reaching arms away from Jieun’s red face and fists. They weren’t fast, but they wriggled without any fear of me.
I caught their shoulders and howled along with them. “Stop yelling right now!” I steered them to separate sides of the room. “Face the wall or lie down for a nap. No speaking for twenty minutes.”
“You mean, too,” Jieun whispered. “Mommy said so.” Sniffling in her anger, she settled onto the folded sleeping mats and crossed her arms. “I not sleepy.”
“Close your eyes anyway.” I smoothed her rumpled hair. “It’ll make you feel better.”
Solee watched us with her attentive gaze, as if I were the one in trouble. She was smart, intuitive. If Haemi had said anything that awful, she would know. When Jieun fell asleep, I returned the papers and pencils to her. “You need to be nicer to your sister.”
“She started it.” Solee rubbed her arm. “She poked me first.”
I sat beside her. “Did your mommy say anything to you? About the baby?”
“She didn’t say anything like that. Jieun’s lying.” She grabbed my hand. “You’re leaving tomorrow?”
“I’m going away to study. You know that.”
She squeezed my fingernails one by one. “Come visit a lot.”
I wondered if I would have time. If Solee would hold it against me if I didn’t. She was usually the accommodating sister, but in rare instances, she could hold a grudge with more ferocity than Jieun. “I’ll come back,” I said.
Solee drew a circle with eyes, a nose, and a mouth, a patch of hair and a lanky body. “This is you.” From the figure’s hand, she traced a line that wormed away. “This is me.” She pointed to a small dot at the far corner of the page.
In the kitchen, I watched Mother’s curved frame as she cut the stems off green chili peppers. She wore a handkerchief across her mouth to stop her coughing, and it reminded me of the mashed herbs she used to force me to inhale. She seemed as small as I used to feel back then. She hunched close to the counter, squinting. I wondered if it was worth mentioning what Jieun had said. But it was my last night, and I didn’t want to fight. I tucked the picture in my pocket. “Can I help?” I asked.
“I thought you were going out.” She stuffed half the cut peppers into a jar. “Look in those boxes over there. I bought some items for you.”
I opened the cardboard lids near the kitchen door. Thick button-down shirts in white, pale gray, blue. A folded suit wrapped in sheets of lightweight paper. “This is all for me?”
“I asked Jisoo for your measurements.” She smiled a flash of yellowed teeth. “They’re custom-made. The same tailor he uses. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
I stroked the jacket between my fingers. It was too nice, better than Jisoo’s suits or anything Mother had ever sewn for herself. I shouldered it on and touched the buttons on the sleeves. “Was it expensive?”
She clucked. “Don’t you even ask. Bend down so I can see.” She smoothed her hands across my arms. “My son in a modern suit. Your mind’s just as good as those city folks’ and I want you to look good, too. The wool’s nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s fancy city wool.” I laughed, rubbing the silk-lined pockets, the invisible seams. My name embroidered on the inside pocket. I felt myself standing taller, straighter already. “It’s too much, Mother. Thank you.”
I bowed low to the ground and felt
her cup my neck. I held her hands, the crimped skin. She was shaking, her cheeks flushed, but she smiled again for me. “You should rest. Have Haemi-nuna cook dinner,” I said.
Mother patted me once and shuffled back to the chili peppers. “I like cooking. It’s the only thing keeping me alive.”
“You’re sick. I’ll go wake Nuna.”
“Hyunki.” She frowned. “Be kind. She’s having a hard time.”
“She’s just pregnant.” I folded the jacket back inside the box. “She’s not even good to you most days.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to carry a baby for months, and now you’re leaving.” Mother raised a chili dipped in gochujang. “Eat this and go. Tell her you’ll miss her.”
I found Haemi sitting outside on a low stool, her legs apart and her wide stomach pushing her back. She smoked a cigarette beneath the evening sky. Her curly hair, loosened from its usual bun, hid her face from my view. I crossed the yard, stepping on the flat stones that led to the tree in the corner, and sat on the ground next to her.
She inhaled, deep and slow. “Do you remember our old place, where we grew up?”
“Sure,” I said, adjusting my seat on a spare rush mat. “I remember.”
“Describe it to me.” She stubbed out her cigarette with her foot. “Describe what you remember from before the war, when it was only us and Mother.”
“Why?” I picked up her stub, passed the warm, smashed cylinder between my hands. She didn’t respond.
“There were forsythia bushes everywhere,” I started. “In the spring, it was all yellow. We had a bark roof, I think. The house was cramped, and you’d complain that I kicked you in my sleep.”
“I walked there this morning.”
“It’s at least five kilometers away.” I touched her knee. “That’s why you’re tired.”
If You Leave Me Page 17