“There are so many of them,” I said.
“So many!” Haemi raised her glass. “How did our parents do it?”
“They didn’t really. Not ours.”
She leaned on my shoulder. “That’s true. But still, so many.”
“I don’t even know how old they are,” I said.
She laughed. “You’re awful. Three, seven, eleven, and thirteen.” She drank and I followed. “I’m thirty-two and you’re almost thirty-four. We’re an old married couple.”
She was beautiful. I wanted to tell her about the first time I’d seen her—how I’d been caught by her face. The second time, by her hands. The way she had moved her wrists, those bowed moons so white and shiny. Our girls had those hands.
“What’re you looking at me for?” She tilted her face, half teasing. I kissed her, not caring what the remaining customers would think. She laughed when I pulled away and touched the scar on my shoulder. “Does it hurt?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She slid down my arm. “I’m awful, too. I don’t mean to be.”
“You’re unhappy.”
She raised her emptied glass. “One more?”
We poured another round and I ordered us a plate of jeon. We chewed on the oily scallion pancakes until our lips puckered from the pepper and soy sauce. She picked out the clams and constructed a small fortress. When there was nothing else left, she dropped them into our mouths one by one. I held her close. The curls she’d smoothed into a bun earlier in the night had loosened. I pulled a strand until it straightened, watched it coil as she slipped it behind her ear. She laid her cheek against my shoulder. This was the Haemi I had always wanted.
“You were right before. Something’s wrong.” She waved her chopsticks around her head. “Like I can’t move in here. Everything’s slow or too fast. I’ll do better. I’ll do that for you and the girls.”
“We’re here to help you. To get away from home.”
“And the neighbors.”
I cupped her wide, high cheek. “What you said before, you’re wrong. We can afford this. I’ll always have enough for our family.”
“I’m drunk.” She lowered her head into her arms. “Kiss me again and then let’s pay and go.”
On our walk back, she reached for my hand. The streetlights burned too bright. I wanted to stroll in the dark with my wife. I raised our linked fingers toward the beach. “Let’s put our feet in,” I said. She hesitated but let me lead her along.
When we reached the sand, she took off her shoes and left them on the wooden pier. She undid her bun. I grasped her hair, the nest of curls and air. She turned to face me. I pretended we were fresh, that the war hadn’t cleaved us from our youth.
“I used to come to the beach with these nurses, when I worked at the field hospital,” she said, her voice muffled against my chest. “I wonder where they are.”
“Do you think any of them settled here?”
“Maybe they’re dead.”
She broke from me and walked to the water’s edge.
“I’ve always hated the ocean,” she said. Waves fell against the sand and crawled back to the sea in a steady rhythm.
“Why?” I stopped behind her, unsure all of a sudden of what we were doing here. How the conversation had shifted so quickly from us to the war to death. It was dark away from the main street and I couldn’t see beyond our shadows.
“It’s too big, too scary,” Haemi said. “The ocean could sweep you away in one swallow.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel.”
She walked in, gasping.
“Haemi?”
Up to her knees, her dress gathered in one hand, the water high and rough. I called her again from the shore. “What’re you doing?”
“I don’t want our girls to be afraid, the way I’m always afraid.”
She fluttered a hand in the air without turning. I couldn’t tell if she was walking farther or if the rippling of the water only made it appear so.
I didn’t understand her. How she could claim to be afraid one moment and plunge in the next. I tried to raise my voice above the surf, the sudden deafening crashes. I tried to sound angry as I told her to come back to the shore.
A silver film of moonlight rolled off the swollen swells. I didn’t know her, my wife. The thought struck me. How strange we were to each other.
I rushed in, the cold lurching into my chest, forcing a ragged gasp out of me.
I reached for her shoulder.
“Haemi?”
“You don’t want me.” She said it quietly, but I heard. A wave broke around us. She let go of her dress. Wet, it clung to her legs and mine.
The next morning, I woke to a shift in the room. Everything looked the same, with the girls curled together on their bed, their bathing suits folded into an open suitcase. The swim rings and towels stacked by the bathroom door, and a hanbok flung over an empty chair.
Her belongings were here, her children. But Haemi was gone.
I took in our sleeping daughters, the slow curl to Jieun’s snores and how Mila always shrouded her head with a sheet. Their mother had finally left. A flash of relief, then a rush of panic, fear.
I went looking for her. An early morning walk, some time away from us. That’s all it was. She couldn’t have left so easily, not without the girls. The sky was pale and cool and too serene. Down the street, a vendor steamed silkworm pupae in a metal basin, and I suddenly felt starved.
“Can I have some?” I asked.
He rolled a square of newspaper into a cone. “You a visitor?”
“Only here for a few days.” I searched the road behind him, but we were alone. “I’d like some of the soup, too.”
He poured the pupae into the cone, dipped his spoon in the basin to get at the juice. “You should go to Taejongdae. Magnificent cliffs. I’ve been here since ’51.”
“I was a refugee nearby.”
He nodded. “The city of refugees. Then you know Taejongdae. It’s nicest in the morning.”
“Have you seen a woman walking around?” I leveled my hand by my neck. “This tall. Wavy hair. Pretty.”
“You’re my first customer.” He scooped more pupae into my cone. “Enjoy.”
I hiked up a hill, hoping to spot her from its peak. Instead, I saw how much Busan had changed. Gabled houses and nail-thin roads butted up against tall, multistory buildings and concrete pavement. Clean streets no longer heaped with sewage and shit. Even the light looked different, filtered through with electricity. Inland, I followed the lines of the Busan Perimeter down to the market where Haemi and I had first met. The makeshift shacks and the tented schools had been razed long ago. I tried to remember where her home had been, that tiny dwelling where I’d sipped tea during the war, when I’d wanted Haemi and the knowledge that life’s rituals continued. But I couldn’t find the house. There were too many streets, apartments, distractions.
She could have left for good. It seemed easy enough. For her to walk away from us, to walk away from her. Divorce her. No one will judge you. I heard this enough to make it sound appealing. But I wasn’t that kind of man and Haemi knew it. We were a country of the homeless, the orphaned, and the lost. Abandon her and live with the guilt or hold fast.
I bought juice, a bag of pupae, and returned to the hotel room. The girls were awake, playing with small shells in a circle. It was Jieun, not Solee, who gave me a look. “Where’s Mommy?”
“I brought breakfast.” I poured the pupae into a bowl. “Come eat.”
Solee’s gaze followed me around the room. She whispered something to Jieun.
“Street snacks for breakfast?” Mila asked.
“Vacation!” Eunhee said.
They chewed on the waxy, plump bugs and fought over who got to slurp up the brown soup. I passed around juice pouches. “Apple and pear,” I said. “We’re going to hike the Taejongdae cliffs and go to the beach today.”
When we were dressed and fastening sandals, Haemi returned. Still we
aring yesterday’s striped dress, the bottom thick with the remains of salt. She carried a small purse and a brown bag.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“The train station.” She pulled out tickets. “We’re going home today.”
The girls’ voices soared into a wail. I raised my hand to stop them. “We’re not going anywhere. I’ve paid for three more days.”
“I need to leave.” Haemi pointed at her ruined dress, at the world outside our window. It was sunny and perfect, the sand golden, the sea lush with color. I wanted to throw her into it. She was a crater of fickleness. It was poisonous, contagious. “I can’t be here,” she said.
“Leave, then. We’re staying.”
She picked up Eunhee and spoke to the girls. “Get your bags. I bought new tickets.” She turned to me. “We were stupid last night. Letting them go to the hotel by themselves. What if some man had found them? What if they had drowned?”
“That isn’t why you want to go,” I said. “I know that much.”
She dragged our suitcases to the door. “We’re stupid when we’re drunk. You stay if you want, but they’re coming with me.”
“I don’t want to,” Jieun said.
“This isn’t fair,” Solee said. “This isn’t what we agreed on!”
Mila hugged herself. “Why are we going so soon?”
Their voices swelled again. Haemi pushed a knuckle against her eye. Eunhee cried. They all cried, even Solee. I walked to the window. The water was choppy with wind. Whitecaps and blue thrusts. “You really are an awful piece of shit,” I said.
“We’re leaving.” She spoke only to the children. “Your daddy doesn’t even know how old you all are. He’s the piece of shit.”
The night veiled our backyard and though I couldn’t see, I sat under our tree anyway. I pictured the property I’d so carefully cultivated since marrying Haemi. The whole swath of land I once had. Over the years, half the fields had been broken off, peddled to tenants by government men who knew nothing about farming. Later, I’d sold the plots willingly, in the hopes of greater compensation. And farther on, the property I should have owned in Seoul, which had been taken from beneath my feet. Packing our bags in Busan, Haemi had insisted on returning to this leftover, dwindling scrap of land.
The sky had darkened into a summer monsoon by the time we got off the train. We carried our children in silence, drenched from the rain. When we arrived home, Haemi walked to our room and closed the door on me. I listened to her forced, strident breathing, the rush of sound as I walked away. Her unhappiness frightened me. I wanted to tell her I didn’t know what to do with her anymore.
The stars shined brighter here, away from all those city buildings. That was something I could say. You’re right. Why do we need to visit Busan when we have stars like these? It sounded silly even in my mind.
I found the makgeolli jug we kept buried in the summer. Dirt and sweet rice. These smells reminded me of Haemi and the first time I’d seen her drunk, standing as if on a ledge, in a makeshift bar where she shouldn’t have been. Dirt and sweet rice—but also anchovies and rain. It was makgeolli that tore my memory open, no matter what I wanted. I poured and drank anyway.
A few weeks before Eunhee was born, in the spring of 1964, Haemi and I had a fight. She was pregnant and I struck her, which made me wrong. I was a bad man, the girls said. They cried and pounded their little fists into my legs. I couldn’t handle the noise, so I left.
Haemi found me outside an hour later. I only wanted to stand in our yard and pretend I was alone, but then there she was with that swollen belly brushing against my hand. “Come with me,” she said.
She started walking.
At the neighbor’s rice field, she took off her shoes and stepped into the paddy.
I stood on the road. “What are you doing?”
“Join me,” she said.
Mud, thick from freshly flooded water, clung to her ankles as she balanced between the rows of seedlings. My feet were too wide. The shoots were new and frail. I didn’t want the owners to find us here.
Haemi stopped in the center of the field and waited until I gave in. The mud sucked at my shoes, and the water was cold, the wind and air, too. “What are we doing?” I asked again as I reached her. Haemi inspected the ground. Slowly, she lay down. I stared at her red, already swelling face. That moon of a belly accusing me.
“I’m hot. This is the only thing that makes me feel better.” She cooled her cheek in the water. “You need to lie down.”
She was too still, her limbs too pale. I didn’t want to, but I lay down beside her to make sure she was alive. I touched her stomach and tried to feel the baby. When my hand fell to her side, she locked her fingers with mine.
“I want this to be yours,” she said.
I did the only thing I could think to do, to show her that I was her husband and that she needed to get Kyunghwan out of her mind.
The whole time I was inside her, pushing into her, Haemi stayed quiet, motionless. Her eyes and mouth shut tight. Her arms crossed against herself. It hurt me. How little she loved me. She rammed her hands into my chest near the end when it was too late. I hunched over her, already out of breath. She wouldn’t meet my gaze. I grabbed her and pressed down on her stomach with our fingers entwined.
“Listen carefully,” I said. The water was everywhere. She wasn’t crying or she was. “I know what you did. But this?” I felt movement between us and pressed until the baby kicked. “This son is mine.”
I understood why she had wanted to leave our vacation in Busan. For her, it wasn’t the city where we’d met, or even where she’d survived. It wasn’t where memories of Hyunki or Mother or the war overtook her. It was Kyunghwan, always him, taking up all the space in her mind.
I drank the last of the makgeolli. I passed the girls’ room, where they slept, exhausted from the train ride and their protests. Their suitcases were heaped around them, half-open and slopping out clothes. I entered our room, where Haemi slept on her side with her hands cupped beneath her cheek. I kneeled beside her and kissed her, shook her. My fingers sank into her sunburned arms, so soft and thick. “Haemi.”
“What?” She jerked awake, blinking slowly. “What do you want?”
I stroked her face. “I thought you had left us this morning.”
She nestled farther into her pillow. “I didn’t. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.”
“We need to get better.” I brushed the blanket off her. “Listen to me.”
“We’re fine, Jisoo. We’re exactly like everybody else.”
I clenched her shoulder. She’d changed back into her hanbok, a plain white dress. “We fix this or I divorce you,” I said.
She sat up, cradling a pillow against her chest, her face fierce. “I’m going to die here as your wife. All I want is for you to do your job.”
“I’ll try harder, but you need to also.” I held her. “You can’t keep on like this. I’m trying, Haemi.”
“Did you really think Busan would be a good idea—to go there after the war?” She rose and her voice did, too. “You think I’m the one who needs to be fixed? You don’t fuck me. None of your other women have brought you a son.” She circled me like the snake she was. Toxic, fickle, savage. She was all of it, an undertow of everything I’d tried to swim away from. “You’re a cripple. That’s what you’re bitter about. Not me.”
I struck her. The breath loosened out of her rough and quick.
“You bastard.” Hands by her side, her cheek pink, that straight, unyielding back. “You’re the one who’ll never change.”
Haemi
1967
My girls find me at the river, their white underthings and shirts gathered in my arms. I am up to my ankles in water. It moves against me.
They stand in a fearsome row. Wild hair and bright colors, each wearing shorts that show the knobs of her knees.
“Mother,” Solee calls. “Come here to us.” She motions with both hands, waving arms wide a
nd high, as if I were on the other side of an ocean.
I wade back to my daughters. Jieun and Mila and Eunhee mimic their eldest sister, their fingers netting me in.
I know which rocks to glide over, how to balance my body against the current’s flow. They know, too. This is our river. We have spent all our fall weekends here.
They wait above on a hanging ledge of grass. I show them the wet clothes. “I was washing. All done.”
They don’t remind me that we have a sink in our home now. A basin large enough for all our laundry. With one twist of a metal handle, water gushes out. When Jisoo first installed the tap, the girls marveled at its force. They cupped their palms under its flow and drank like animals.
I climb to them. Solee plucks the wet clothes from me and lays them out on the grass. Yellow, dry blades poke through holes in the fabric.
“Remind me to stitch those spots,” I say. “Can’t have you looking like orphans at school.”
Solee glances at my shoulder and cheek, where my skin is still red from Jisoo’s morning anger.
“Right,” she says.
“Right,” they say.
“We brought gimbap.” Jieun pulls long rolls of seaweed-wrapped rice from her rucksack. They are perfect and cylindrical and gleaming.
We find our spot of earth, where the ground has molded to our forms. Mila sets bojagi cloths before us, and Eunhee claps her approval. We huddle in a circle.
In another rucksack, a knife waits for me, handle first. My girls know they are not allowed. They could hurt themselves.
“Thick slices, please!” Eunhee asks.
They lean in and watch with their easy wonder. Vinegar scents the air with each slicing. The smell lingers on the pads of my fingers, and I let them sniff in the sharpness until each of them turns away, noses wrinkled and aching.
We eat. Perfect rounded gimbap, the white gleam of sticky rice.
When all that remains are the seaweed bits stuck between our teeth, Mila overturns her swollen bag. “There’s more.”
If You Leave Me Page 32