I felt hot and sick as we walked home. I cried and that made me feel even stupider. Jieun dried my eyes with one of those lacy veils. “Where did you find that?” I asked between hiccups.
“On the ground, outside the church.”
“You shouldn’t have taken it. It’s someone’s.”
“Who cares?” She wiped some more. “Don’t cry.”
Mila and Eunhee petted my arms and cooed. They consoled me, my better sisters.
“I didn’t say that about my teacher.” I wrung the little Jesus and the rosy beads between my fingers. “I didn’t see him.”
“We believe you,” Jieun said.
“I draw you picture,” Eunhee said. “Make happy.”
“Me too. I will, too,” Mila said. “I’ll write you a poem.”
I stopped them at our front gate. We could hear Mother humming in the back. “Don’t tell her,” I said. “Keep it a secret, just us?”
We kissed our palms and connected our hands in a circle. “Sealed together,” we said, and kissed one another on the lips for extra promise. Then they all ran to Mother.
Cross-legged on a rush mat beneath the tree, she beckoned with open arms. “I missed my girls all morning. Come here to me.”
My sisters rolled onto their backs, fighting to be near her, to touch her hand or hair or hip. I felt queasy, my stomach clenching like I had smelled something too strong. I hadn’t said anything about a naked anyone. I hadn’t said anything like that. I could see the rumor unraveling in all directions. I knew how stories worked. Father had told me. Even words without feet can travel across the country.
Mother pinched my ankle, a quick nip, like a mosquito bite. “Frowny Solee. I was under this tree today and I decided. I’ll forgive you.”
“Forgive?” I rubbed the skin beneath my eyes and wondered if she’d heard about Teacher Shim. “For what?”
Mother hugged the girls closer. She kissed Eunhee’s head. “Come lie with us, Solee. Even the grass seems shinier today.”
I tried to tamp down my unease, flatten it like a balloon. We lay in a row, tilted our heads to the sun, and tried to drink up the rays in case they disappeared tomorrow. “In case spring decides to leave us,” Mother said. The branches threw shadows, slicing us into parts. A bird sang, but we couldn’t find it. “There,” one of us would say, and then it was gone, singing from another branch. When a fat cloud passed over us, Mother scavenged for white clovers. She taught us how to poke a hole into the base of the stem with our fingernail, to thread another clover in. “Your halmuni taught me this when I was little,” she said. “My mother.”
We made rings, bracelets, necklaces, and a clover crown. “Next week, we’ll picnic at the river,” she said. “We’ll make a flower blanket.” I liked Mother when she was like this, easy and floating, her mind still connected to our world. Her attention homed in on each of us for moments at a time so we felt special, seen.
When we grew hungry, we ventured inside. The tray tables were as we’d left them this morning—empty plates and bowls; hardened, half-eaten rice; chopsticks on the floor. Eunhee ran to the kitchen and reported back to us, her hands clutched to her stomach. “Nothing cooking.”
“Put on your shoes.” Mother herded us to the entranceway, clapping her hands. “We’ll treat ourselves. We can’t have you girls hungry.”
In town, we ordered instant ramen and bags of juice to go. “I don’t want to be around anyone else but you four,” Mother said. On our way home, we ran into Auntie Mun. I bowed, my arms weighed down with baskets, and the girls followed. We watched Mother. She didn’t like Auntie and the rest of her family.
Auntie Mun clapped at our haul of food. “I didn’t think Jisoo was the ramen type.”
“He’s on a business trip,” Mother said. “I’m sure he didn’t mention it to your husband. I told Jisoo your family can’t keep their mouths shut.”
Auntie Mun’s eyebrows hiked up. “You don’t need to be rude.”
“I can be ruder.” Mother swung her arm, her baskets thudding with the sudden movement, and thrust out her hip. “Should I show you?”
I saw the prick in Auntie’s gaze, how she reared and took in Mother’s wrinkled top and mussy bun, and realized she thought something was wrong with us. Her lips tightened into a cluck. I squeezed Jieun, who tugged on Mother. “Let’s go,” we said.
Auntie looked at me, her smile an invitation. “Is she this unpleasant with her daughters, too?”
Mother laughed. “You know that saying, You can’t spit at a smiling face? With yours, I can.”
“You already have grievances with half the people in town.” Auntie steepled her fingers against her temples and widened her eyes. “You don’t need to add me to the list.”
“Does Mr. Kim’s wife have a grievance with you?”
Auntie’s hand fell. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“People gossip so freely when they think no one’s listening.” Mother handed her baskets to Jieun and picked up Eunhee, who’d begun to whine. “About married women and their lovers. About Mr. Kim and a certain ridiculous woman.”
Auntie’s eyebrows struggled across her face.
“There are laws, you know,” Mother said.
“I really don’t know what you mean.”
Mother stared at her until she won. Auntie ducked her head, her face pink, and walked past us. “Goodbye, Mun Soonhee,” Mother called after her.
Back home, we heated a pot of water over an outdoor fire. The conversation with Auntie had loosened the stitches inside Mother. She talked fast, moved with renewed energy. I wanted to be this way, someone who could slant situations to her liking, who felt stronger after a fight.
“What were you talking about with Auntie?” I asked.
“Silly adult things.” Mother dumped the hard prepared noodles into the pot. “Don’t worry about it even for a moment.”
We boiled eggs. She sliced peppers, rice cakes, scallions, and told us stories. “This is how Uncle Hyunki and I cooked with Halmuni.”
“Tell us,” Jieun said.
“We didn’t have enough food. And no instant ramen! But it’s the same memory. Spring nights, hot broth.” She lugged out the biggest bowl we had, the one Father used on New Year’s and Chuseok, and poured in the ramen. We slurped together.
“Tastes like magic!” Eunhee sucked the noodles one at a time, fluttering her eyelids.
Mother cried a little, the tears smearing her face. She hugged Eunhee. “Magic,” she said.
I didn’t want to go to school the next morning. The balloon of unease had inflated inside me again, and Junghee’s rumor about the naked bodies made my palms sweat. Jieun knew without saying. She took over dressing the others and even braided Mila’s wispy hair. When they were ready, she opened the bedroom door. “I left Eunhee with Mommy. Ready to go?”
“Yeah.” I pulled on my jacket. “Thanks for helping.”
“I bet no one’s talking about it anymore.”
“I don’t care anyway.” I practiced my blank face. “Do I look like I care?”
Jieun sucked in her cheeks.
“Let’s go,” I said.
I walked Jieun and Mila to their elementary school. Mila held our hands and talked about her dreams, her favorite drawings, why apples were not a good fruit. At the gate, they both hugged me goodbye. Jieun smiled. “The foulest thing you can think of. Remember?”
“Dumbass,” I practiced.
“With more anger. You dumbass!” Jieun laughed at her own forcefulness. “Don’t worry. No one will be talking about it.” She ran to her friends in the yard.
But when I arrived at my school, I couldn’t find my friends anywhere. I was late and our classroom was empty. To the auditorium was written on the chalkboard. All the first-years were there in a line. Onstage, a woman and a man in white coats sat behind square desks. A teacher in the front yelled at us to be quiet. I looked for Kyunghee and Youngsook, but Junghee found me at the back of the line. “Do you t
hink this is about Teacher Shim?” She smiled openmouthed, like a dumb ox. “You think they found out? Maybe they’ll quiz us on what we know.”
A girl between us joined in. “I heard he’s going to be fired.”
“Why are you telling me?” I tried to look bored. I picked at the skin on my left thumb with my pen point.
“Why do you think?” Junghee whispered.
The girl smiled. “Is it true? That it was Kyunghee you saw?”
I stopped. Junghee caught my Monami pen and twirled it away from me. “You said it was a student with big breasts,” she said.
“And she’s got the biggest.”
“Give it back—I didn’t say anything!” I jumped but Junghee was taller and wider.
“Everyone, listen!” Teacher Park clapped her hands. “Pull up your sleeves. All the way. Tuberculosis shots.”
Whimpers wove through the room. We all turned to Teacher, our identical black bobs swiveling toward the stage. We’d heard these shots hurt, that they left a scar. I waited for more, but Teacher didn’t say anything else.
Junghee raised her hand. “I already have one. I don’t need to get it again, do I?”
“You better not be lying, Kim Junghee.” Teacher strode to the back, where we stood. The girls in line turned to watch, their heads rippling. Some saw me, pointed, and whispered. They were looking at Junghee. They weren’t looking at me. I stared at the podium onstage and hoped.
“Let me see.” Teacher Park examined the mark on Junghee’s right shoulder. The line loosened a little so the closest girls could see. A glossy, puckered indent marred her skin. It was ugly and craggy and pale, the size of a thumbprint. “Room 202. Teacher Kim will have work for you. Everyone else back in line!”
Junghee jeered at me as she collected her books. She stuck my pen behind her ear. “If they ask, I’m going to tell them you know everything.”
“I don’t!” I reached for my pen, but she moved out of the way.
“Enjoy the shot. It hurts,” she said.
I felt sicker the closer we got to the stage. Girls were looking at me, glancing sideways, their short hair swinging around their ears, mouthing things I couldn’t hear. Behind Teacher Park and the nurses’ backs, they pretended to jiggle breasts, tittering at their cupped hands. I shielded myself with all the curse words I knew. I skimmed the crowds, pretending I was Mother when she’d fought against Auntie Mun. But still I pricked at the whispers. “Naked.” “Solee.” “Did you hear?”
My shield broke open. All my classmates had heard. Junghee had taken my present from Uncle Kyunghwan. Father was missing. I was going to have an ugly scar.
When I reached the front of the line, Teacher Park rolled my uniform sleeve higher on my shoulder. “How are you doing, Yun Solee?”
I concentrated on the nurse ahead of me, her beige, rubbery gloves. “I’m well, Teacher.”
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
“I haven’t had this shot before.”
“Not about this.” She held on to my sleeve. “Anything in private?”
I shook my head.
“Principal Lee wants to speak to you afterward.”
I started to cry. It was my turn. The nurse waved me over. She held a plastic tube with nine barbs at one end, ready to puncture my skin. “There’s no need to get weepy. You’re a big girl now. A middle schooler!”
I prayed to God that I wouldn’t get in trouble. That the shot wouldn’t hurt. That Principal Lee wanted nothing to do with me. That somehow Father would come home and save me and return everything to its normal shape.
“Look away if you need to. Take a deep breath and count to three.”
It more than hurt. It seared. But when I screamed, it wasn’t because of the pain.
She strode in through the side doors, yelling my name. Girls in uniforms parted before her. They knew who she was, with her old-fashioned hanboks and her lurching moods, her upturned eyes and smooth, pale skin. The girls had always used Mother’s full, wide cheeks against me, saying they didn’t understand, with my big chin and slight eyes, how could I come from such a Miss Korea?
I spotted Kyunghee in the crowd, a smile wrecking her face. Youngsook stood on tiptoes trying for a better view as Mother stormed the stage.
“Yun Solee!” She grabbed me in front of everyone, pulled me off the chair in one ragged sweep. I stumbled to my feet, held up by her grip. I felt the bodies around us push back, gasping.
Mother pressed into the swell on my arm, not caring about the audience or her writhing daughter. “Is it true? Are you lying? Are you cutting down another person’s life?”
I heard a scream, a high-pitched girl-shriek, but it hadn’t come from me. My voice was lost, too afraid of her buzzing body. She wrenched me closer. “You do whatever you want, don’t you?”
She doubled, shadowed in front of me. The nurse’s strange, beige fingers grabbed Mother and tried to wrest her off me. “Please! You’re hurting her!”
Behind me, somewhere far away, Teacher Park’s voice carried across the room, tilting high to rein in all the chatter. “Everyone out! Shut up and turn around!”
Mother continued to shake me, my teeth clattering like gumballs, candy, stones. She pushed away the nurse. “You’re a ruiner, Solee. You ruin people.”
“I didn’t say anything,” I spilled out, my teeth too big in my mouth, hitting my tongue, my arm melting into a puddle of heat. “I didn’t say anything about Teacher Shim.”
She dragged me to the stairs, tumbled me down, my feet barely landing on the wooden steps. My shoes, new white sneakers, like flashes of clouds. “You ruined everything. Where’s my letter, Solee?”
I held on to the stage with one hand. She would rip me apart like a doll. I would be armless; the stuffing would fall out of me. I looked around for help—patches of black hair, the sound of feet running away. Mother’s face was too close, nearly touching mine, her hair stormy and undone. She crowded everyone out.
“Where’s my goddamn letter? What did you do with it?” She didn’t let go. She shouted and shouted.
* * *
Teacher Shim was dismissed that afternoon and my classmates didn’t speak to me for a long time afterward. Not because of my storytelling—the girls envied the power I’d wielded with my words—but because of Mother, her explosion and retreat. I imagined them whispering about us with their slight, satisfied smiles.
I didn’t care. What I didn’t understand was Mother. I didn’t know what she was yelling about, a letter from Father about his leaving? From the school about my lies? She took me out of class that day. She dragged me to the river and wept as I watched the bubble on my arm inflame, red and oozing. She said it wasn’t my fault, that it was always her. That she was always too late and too weak. She blamed the world we lived in.
I didn’t understand. I concentrated on my arm, too scared to watch her salt the ground. I imagined getting an infection. I remembered Uncle Hyunki. The way Mother had repeated the word tuberculosis when she’d returned with his body. I imagined him dying, then me dying. She would regret hurting me if I was dead. She’d weep at my tumulus, unable to stop. The girls alone without me. I was scared for us all.
I figured out what she meant only later.
The letter. My young, simple anger. I had thrown it away years ago. I dug up the ground in the backyard, but all the little pieces were gone. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, to give her that much. But Father had returned by then, and when I approached her in their room and kneeled before her bare, cracked feet, Mother didn’t respond.
She only stared at me with dark, blank eyes.
Part 5
Jisoo
1967
I wanted them to see the ocean. How it was different from the ponds and rivers of their hometown. I wanted them to feel its strength and want something greater than what Haemi and I had to give them.
The girls ran screaming into Busan’s blue waters. In their red bathing suits, they plunged and splashed with two
plastic tubes to share between them. Birds flapped high in the same sky Haemi and I had once stood under. All around us, parents sank into the wet sand and watched their children swim.
“The water’s too cold for them,” Haemi said, though it was mid-July and the sun blazed. A straw hat covered her face. She tilted its brim so it hit below her ears.
“They’ll be fine together,” I said.
We sat on towels drinking tea from paper cups. Haemi had rounded out in the past year, and in the sun, it looked wholesome, good. I let myself wonder if she was pregnant, only for a moment. She could tell when I thought this way, and she hated it.
“They’ll always remember this,” I said. “The time we took them to Busan.”
“You’re turning into a sensitive man at thirty-three?” She cupped my scarred shoulder in a quick, graceless way, as if by accident. “It’ll be a good memory.”
I wanted her hand on me. She touched easily or not at all these days—mostly not at all. Something flitted within her, from extreme to extreme. I hoped to fix her with this trip, with a reminder of how far we had come. Even Busan, once brimming with war-lost refugees, was now clean and thriving.
“Do you want to go into the water?” I asked.
She scooted into the shade of the tent I’d rented. It was square, white, and rippled in the wind. A red stripe on one of the posts marked it as ours. All the others on the beach had painted bands, each a different color. Families clustered underneath them, some clearly visitors like us, with bags, snacks, towels, fishing equipment. The locals had nothing but a sheet to lie on. Haemi trickled sand through her fingers, forming small anthills around her. “I like the sound from here, the waves.”
I touched her knee. She wore the new bathing suit I’d bought—bright blue with a yellow flower on the skirt. I stroked the slippery fabric. I liked how it revealed her body in segments, her limbs pale, unaccustomed to such exposure. “Let’s splash around with the girls,” I said.
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