“The last-one?”
“The last-one, the fifth daughter of Kim the junkman. You must remember—he didn’t even bother to learn his daughters’ names, he just called ’em One, Two, Three, Four, and Five.”
Kyung-sook almost jumped. A familiar name, unearthed like a forgotten kimchi pot.
“You mean—Yongsu?”
“Unh, Yongsu, the one with the boy’s name.” Cooking Oil Auntie nodded, eying a display of baby-finger shrimp, the kind you served with beer. “None of the daughters married very well in that wretched family, but Necessary Dragon—”
“She was my friend,” Kyung-sook interrupted. “In my childhood season.”
“Oh moh!” Cooking Oil Auntie sat up. “You don’t say! Well, Pig Intestine Sausage Auntie told me that Alder Pass shaman told the family that her spirit demanded they hold a yearly appeasement ceremony.”
“That’s claptrap, a shaman wanting to make quick money,” Kyung-sook said. “I don’t think she’s dead. There’s never been any word.”
“Of course she’s dead. She left the village unmarried, and never came back to check on her parents, even for their hwangap, when they reached that most venerable age of sixty.”
Kyung-sook started smoothing the next barrel’s shrimp.
“What I would guess,” Cooking Oil Auntie mused, “is that she froze to death as a beggar some winter. Or maybe she met her end with those Yankee soldiers on the army base—that was the direction she was heading when she left, supposedly. If that were my daughter, I’d do an appeasement ceremony, too: people who meet a bad end always leave behind restless spirits.”
Kyung-sook wondered how many years it had been since she’d last seen Yongsu. Twenty? Thirty? Her childhood friend, the one she admiringly called Older Sister, would have fifty years on her now.
“Ai-gu,” Kyung-sook sighed. “The spring breezes always make me sleepy.” She moved as if she wanted to sit down.
Cooking Oil Auntie took the hint. On the way out, she pretended to be swatting at a fly and palmed a few sweet curls of the baby-finger shrimp. She hummed as she walked back to her stall, the heels of her slipper-shoes raising a cloud of dust.
Kyung-sook’s hands suddenly started trembling. That memory, jumping out at her like that, over a chasm of so many years. It made her wonder, what else of her life had she forgotten—or made herself forget?
SARAH
Seoul
1993
“My name is Sarah Thorson,” I said to the Korean man sitting across from me, strangely relieved to be speaking English. We were at the Balzac Café. The neighborhood bordering the huge main gate of Chosun University turned out to be home to a number of these trendy coffee-and-juice bars named after dead French writers: the Rousseau, the Rimbaud, and around the corner, Proust.
“I am very happy to be making your acquaintance. Please let me introduce Jun-Ho Kim.” The man rose and bowed deeply from the waist. My first Korean bow! I tried to reciprocate, but it was an unfamiliar motion that collapsed in on itself, and I ended up executing a slightly eccentric plié.
“You don’t need a language exchange,” I said. “You already speak English fine.”
Jun-Ho Kim giggled, then lit up a cigarette. He had small, childlike hands, a 50s buzzcut. His oxford shirt was buttoned all the way up the neck, the kind of thing you see only in five-year-old boys mother-dressed for school pictures. I couldn’t imagine this child-man handling weapons in the army.
“Oh, I thanks you for your compliment, but I have much to learn,” he said. “I want to speak like the American.”
The waiter set my kiwi juice in front of me. I’d ordered it because I liked the look of the black-dot seeds suspended in brilliant green slush. In my mouth, it made my teeth feel squeaky, like when you eat raw spinach, and the tiny seeds stuck in my gums.
“We can commence in English?”
I nodded, not knowing he was going to use words such as “homolog” and “ontogenesis” for English practice. English was supposed to be my native language, but our exchange quickly took on a peculiar quality, like grabbing a 500-pound bull by its nose ring, as Jun-Ho led the conversation around the subjects of nuclear reactors in North Korea, his favorite American movies (anything with Meg Ryan in it), prostate cancer, dead French writers. From his knapsack he produced some ancient Newsweeks, their articles striated with fluorescent highlighter marks, and he asked me how to pronounce such words as “Buttafuoco” and “(Long Island) Lolita,” “sphincter,” and “epididymis.”
“Lo-LEE-tah,” I said.
“Okay, now we will commence with Korean?”
Jun-Ho asked me about my siblings. How many?
“I am the younger sister,” I replied. “Her name is Amanda.”
He paused.
“The way you say it, you are saying ‘I am the younger sister.’ I think you mean, ‘I have a younger sister.’”
After that, my mind went blank. I couldn’t think of anything to say except “thank you,” komapsumnida, what I habitually and automatically said to the 7-Eleven clerk after I bought my ramen.
Jun-Ho ventured more Korean, words that flew past my ears like bullets.
I toyed with my glass, empty except for a thin layer of aquarium-green slime at the bottom. I was tired. Jun-Ho was laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“I will speak some English, if that is okay to explain?”
“Fine, whatever.”
“Your name in Korean, it can mean many things.”
“My name?”
“Yes, in Korean, you are ‘child for purchase.’”
“What?”
“You are ‘child for purchase.’”
I had once heard Jeannie complain that discretion was not a Korean trait, that Koreans had no shame about demanding intimate details: How much money do you make? What’s your blood type? It was apparently acceptable to admire a stranger’s boy child by reaching into his pants and squeezing his penis, remarking on its heft and size. Choi Sunsengnim must have told Jun-Ho that I had been an “exported” child.
“‘Murderous assassin child,’ that is another,” he said, giggles turning to guffaws.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My hand clenched under the table. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“Your name,” he said.
My name. Sarah. “God’s treasure.”
“Sal-Ah,” he said. “Sal in the Korean vernacular means ‘to-be-purchased’ and ah means ‘child.’ Or sal in Chinese characters can mean ‘assassin.’ Assassin child, you understand?”
Choi Sunsengnim also pronounced my name as Sal-Ah instead of SAY-Rah, which I had attributed to the Korean propensity to tumble English r’s and l’s together. Now I wondered, was she also thinking of me as child-for-purchase?
Jun-Ho started speaking in Korean again.
“What?”
“I said, do you want to meet here at this location next week?”
Next week? I had planned to meet him only once to satisfy Sungsengnim. I should have known better. It seemed like every person in Seoul was trying to learn English. Every time I opened my mouth in public, a crowd of people would materialize around me, saying “hello?” “excuse?” and shoving business cards, which I couldn’t read, in my face.
“I will pay,” Jun-Ho said, when the hour was up. From under his seat he pulled out a rectangular leather case with a wrist strap—a purse, in not so many words—and took out a wallet. Inside there were only some pink bills—dollar-bill equivalents. My kiwi juice had been at least six or seven dollars, American.
“I can pay for mine.”
“Oh no. We are in Korea. We will do it Korean way.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, so I wasn’t sure he was totally innocent of the double entendre he’d just made. He returned from the cash register and, with a decorous bow, handed me a plastic-wrapped rectangle.
“A gift,” he said.
A packet of toilet paper that said Balzac Cafè (accent grave instead of accen
t aigu).
“In your opinion, next week at the congruent time is okay-dokay?” he said, sliding his empty wallet back into his pocket.
What else do you say to someone who’s just bought you a seven-dollar glass of juice and given you a present?
I said okay-dokay.
SARAH
Seoul
1993
I gulped, pretended not to listen, and strained to hear every word.
“… and the guy, he died from eating too much RAMEN!!!” Bernie was saying.
Ramen, my daily bread, so to speak. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. When I was lazy, I crushed the noodles in my hands and ate them raw.
“This guy made instant ramen for all his meals because he was busy studying for his law exams—did you know Koreans are the world’s largest consumers of ramen? No shit, I was surprised when I heard that, too—Koreans eat more ramen than all the people in China? Anyway, turns out the noodles had been fried in industrial waste oil. The company did it deliberately, too, to increase its profit margin. I guess they figured no one would eat only ramen for days on end.”
“Oh, I saw the headline in the Korea Herald,” Jeannie said, a hand sneaking onto Bernie’s knee. “People are calling on the CEO to perform ritual suicide.”
“Yeah, but it’ll turn out he’s some old high school chum of the President—he’ll get off. There’s no fucking accountability, look at that mall that collapsed in Pusan and killed all those people, not to mention the formaldehyde they put in the soju to give it an extra kick. I bought some at the 7-Eleven and it knocked me flat on my ass. I thought I was going to need to get my stomach pumped.”
“By the way, what brand of ramen was that?” I ventured.
“Horangi,” Bernie said with disdain. “It means ‘tiger,’ by the way.”
Thank God. My brand was KONG BEANS, the only one that had any English on its label.
Choi Sunsengnim glanced at the clock, began to rise from her seat. Behind her, the classroom door suddenly opened, and a guy carrying our ill-gup textbook walked in.
We stared. It had been so long since I’d seen a white person—besides the nun—that the newcomer looked strange and out of place, like he’d just walked in from the moon.
“Who are you?” Choi Sunsengnim asked.
He stopped in front of her desk.
“Doug Henderson.” His skin was an opaque white like school paste, and pocked with ice pick scars, suggesting he’d had bad acne as a teen. He was also a giant by Korean standards, over six feet, spindly like a houseplant that doesn’t get enough sun. A military star winked from the collar of his frayed flannel shirt.
“Must be one of those fuckwad army guys,” Bernie Lee speculated, as if the visitor wasn’t standing right in front of us. “The Eighth Army pays for them to take classes here.”
“I was sent down from Lee Sunsengnim’s class,” Doug Henderson said.
“Lee Sunsengnim, level-three Lee Sunsengnim?” Choi Sunsengnim stared at him, the same way she had stared at me when she found out I didn’t have Korean parents.
“Level-three Lee Sunsengnim?” she repeated.
“Sam-gup ae so nae ryunun dae yo,” he said.
I could hear people’s mouths dropping open with wet sounds, including my own. This guy spoke Korean. Really well. Maybe even better than Bernie Lee, who was the best in the class. I almost expected to see a Korean person emerge from behind as a ventriloquist. This was all a joke, right?
“Oh-moh, Mis-tah Henda-son,” Choi Sunsengnim said in awe. “You speak like a Korean.”
The guy shrugged and sat down in the only place that was open, the desk next to me. He didn’t look at any of us.
At lunchtime, everyone ran off together as usual. I gathered my things, wondering what I could eat for lunch besides ramen. Take a chance on a sandwich with its frizzled red fillings? Pick the rice out of those paper-wrapped wheels? Take a risk on raccoon-flavored chips?
Doug Henderson remained, like a rock. Like he was going to sit there until it was time for class again tomorrow.
“How about some lunch?” I said, impulsively.
He looked sidewise at me, then unfolded himself from the seat. Wordlessly we walked out the back gate, across the pedestrian walkway, down the first alley to a crumbly beige structure with a corrugated metal roof. I’d passed this place daily on the way to the 7-Eleven, but because I couldn’t read Korean, I had no idea the word meant restaurant.
We ducked the low doorway and entered the gloomy stucco shack. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the rest of our class materialized at a table in the corner. No one acknowledged us, except for the nun, who nodded in greeting as she chopsticked a clump of kimchi out of a bowl, holding the wide sleeve of her habit so it wouldn’t dip into the hot, red kimchi juice.
We took a two-person table on the opposite side. The table was an odd, square shape, only a container of metal chopsticks and spoons, and a roll of toilet paper on top of it. The seats were low and plastic, like children’s outdoor furniture. There seemed to be waitresses, middle-aged ladies in tight, unattractive perms, but no one had given us a menu. Doug was fixated on a peeling and stained piece of paper tacked up on the wall. It was all in Korean, the characters running up-and-down instead of side-to-side the way we’d learned them.
“What are you going to have?” I asked. In the kitchen, matrons with bulky arms that stevedores might admire were attending to rows of stone pots hissing on the blue-flamed gas range, or scooping rice out of a giant cooker. A sweaty waitress hoisted a tray of four bowls of stew, still boiling, onto her head, and plunged fearlessly among the clustered tables.
“I’m having lar-myun,” he said.
Oh, what the hell. This would be an adventure.
“Make it a double,” I said.
“Ajuhma—lar-myun, dugae!” He yelled at the waitress, the one unloading the tray of stews spitting steam. She glared, bowl in hand, callused thumb half in the soup, but then turned and shrieked in the direction of the kitchen,
“Onni! Lar-myun, dugae!”
Maybe five minutes later, she came back and set two bowls filled with—of all things—ramen in front of us.
She also unloaded tiny platters of lumpy things that collectively gave off a festering oceanic smell, like the beach at low tide.
I waited to see what Doug Henderson, the copper-haired boy, would do with these meal components. The waitress thumped another bowl in onto our table.
Kimchi: fermented spiced cabbage. Korea’s national food, as I had learned from our cultural activities visit to the Folk Village. You packed the raw materials—cabbage, hot peppers, garlic, ginger, shrimp paste, salt—in these ceramic pots big enough to cook a missionary in and buried it in the ground, like seeds. But instead of sprouting, it came back pickled and spicy and pungent as old socks.
Doug speared a clump of the kimchi, smutty with burning-hot peppers, and ate. He huffed on his noodles and pulled half the bowl into his mouth, like the character in The Five Chinese Brothers, the brother who could slurp up the entire ocean into his mouth.
We had yet to say three words to each other. Instead of eating, I watched the dust motes writhing about our heads in the ray of sunlight suddenly let in by one of the waitresses, who had pushed open a sliding rice-paper window.
Doug picked from all the little side dishes as he ate, orchestrating the tastes together, the way Amanda and I used to play “breakfast smörgåsbord” as kids: place a forkful of scrambled egg inside mouth, insert half a stick of crispy bacon, add a blob of jam or marmalade or Mrs. Butterworth’s, top with a bite of buttered burnt toast, close mouth and chew until the sweet-salty-greasy contents are all deliciously mashed together. Repeat until Christine tells you that what you’re doing is disgusting.
I tried the ramen. Oily red broth, delicious and MSG-y, the way ramen is supposed to taste. From the little platters of stuff, I ventured a strand of what looked orzo pasta.
The taste, pleasant. Sprinkled with black pepper, but no peppe
r taste. I ate more. Sweet. Chewy. When I pulled a piece out, exactly two bits of pepper came with it. I looked closer, and almost screamed.
Eyes.
The pepper was eyes. This wasn’t pasta, but some kind of worm or fish that had bifocal vision. Doug grabbed a bunch of them with his chopsticks, placed them in his mouth, ate a bite of noodles and raised his eyebrows to me as if to say, “good, huh?” He unrolled a few squares of toilet paper and wiped his lips.
When we finished—he didn’t ask why I left most of my meal untouched—Doug paid and returned with two sticks of Lotte gum that warned on the label, FOR LADY ONLY!
Outside, we blinked in the bright sunlight. It wasn’t quite spring yet, but one of the restaurant ladies, who Doug said are called ajuhmas, aunties, followed us out and set a pot of peonies by the door. The buds were still closed tight as fists. Christine kept peonies in her garden at home, and I knew that they needed ants to eat off the sticky glue before the globes could open. Korean ants must know to do the same thing. This thought cheered me.
I popped my gum into my mouth, hoping to get rid of the trace of some unpleasant metal-fish taste—from the worms?
Perfume exploded in my mouth. Without thinking, I spat.
“Shit,” said Doug, returning from wiping his mouth. “What the hell kind of gum was that? I feel like I just ate a bar of soap.”
I looked up from my own wad, glistening wetly in my palm, smelling chemically fragrant like room freshener.
“Ick, I assumed the FOR LADY ONLY thing was just the English gibberish they slap on everything,” I said. My 7-Eleven face soap, for instance, had Meg Ryan’s face beaming pixie-ishly from the wrapper over the bizarre brand name, SEXY-MILD.
Now talking, I continued to babble: “But I guess the wrapper was trying to communicate something real, like FOR HOOKER ONLY, YOUR FLOWER BREATH WILL ENTICE MEN LIKE BEES.”
Doug Henderson stared at me, as if in disbelief, then turned on his heels, a military move. The next thing I saw was his back rapidly receding down toward the mini-highway. He wasn’t looking back. If he did, he would have seen me standing among discarded green soju bottles, the pot of peonies, a broken plastic slipper, candy wrappers, and other jetsam and flotsam in the narrow alley, wondering if I’d already lost the closest thing I had to a friend in Korea.
Somebody's Daughter Page 4