I am I, not anybody else. The subject is understood.
For our morning rice, the ajuhma presented us with a full country breakfast: bean-sprout soup, a pile of sesame leaves washed in the morning dew, searingly hot chili peppers she expected us to dip in hot pepper paste before eating, cubes of radish kimchi, fried tofu, a bundle of wild onions, bowls and bowls of rice. And from somewhere, she had procured a warm bottle of fairy orange soda.
“Eat a lot,” she told us.
We took the bus back to Seoul, the subway back from the Express Bus Terminal. Doug held my hand the whole way. I couldn’t stop smiling at him. The subway doors opened at our stop, Cho-Dae—short for Chosun Daehakyo. I jumped out the door ahead of Doug, and we almost clotheslined a countrified ajuhma running past, bundle in hand, head wrapped in a towel. She burrowed into the crowd on the platform to bemused cries of Hey, what’s your hurry, Auntie? She was a strange, almost anachronistic vision, as if we had inadvertently brought her back from the River Circle Village with us, a seed hidden in our clothes.
We took the long way back to the Residence so I could stop for an ice cream. It was a Sunday, with shoppers, young families out in force, giggling junior-high girls crowding two, three at a time into photo-sticker booths. As we strode along, me chewing my General Yi’s Turtle Boat Ship ice cream, I found myself starting to look, that hopeful gaze, again. I looked at the shape of eyes, the curve of bone, the way hair fell off a part. I looked and looked. For chocolate-chip-colored moles and thick hair. At every woman d’un certain âge who walked by, all the way until we entered the Chosun campus.
KYUNG-SOOK
Enduring Pine Village
1993
Chosun University.
That had been her real destination all along, of course. The place where they said the girl would be.
But how to get there, the other side of the city? There were no trolleys anymore. Instead, buses in all sorts of colors and numbers went every which way. A kindly passerby told her that the “underground-iron-train” was the best way to go to the Chosun neighborhood, and he pointed out that the station was right there, under their feet!
Kyung-sook descended stairs that gave way to a long corridor that ran under the street. A faded, neglected sign said “Emergency Shelter”—it must have been part of the network of old bomb shelters from the 6.25 War. She followed the corridor to the end and found herself in the middle of a clot of people, whooshing trains, shoe stores, newsstands, underwear places, seaweed-roll vendors, machines spitting out money. The posted map revealed a jolly knot of bright-colored worms, the names of the stations unfamiliar. Great East Gate Stadium? Air Port? South of Han River? Poyang Satellite City?
When she bought her ticket, she asked the ticket ajuhshi how to get to Chosun University, but the man, bathed in a haze of smoke from his cigarette, mumbled a contemptuous reply and waved at the next person in line to step forward.
Clutching the colored bit of paper she had received, Kyung-sook wandered among the different lines: green, purple, red, yellow. Everyone seemed to know where they were going and were in a rush to get there.
Ironically, she ended up asking a whiteman for directions. There seemed to be a goodly number of foreigners in Seoul now. The Westerners were sauntering around with bulky rucksacks and short pants that shockingly bared their furry legs. They looked like nothing in their lives had ever troubled them.
But since none of the Koreans had stopped to help her, she tried a man leaning against a pillar, reading. He had a warm, brown face-hair and he smiled and answered in perfect Korean, “I would be pleased to help you.”
He pulled out a book that had a map of the subways in its center, and he showed her which line to take, where to get off. He even marked the stop Cho-Dae with a pen, then tore the page out and handed it to her.
“You’re very polite for a foreigner,” she said, wondering about the meaning of a station called chodae—“invitation.” An auspicious sign? “A thousand times, thank you.”
“A thousand times, you’re welcome,” the man said, nodding his head the Korean way before returning to his magazine.
Kyung-sook watched the other riders feed their colored bit of paper into the little machine, and she did the same, and boarded her train.
“Lady, what do you think you’re doing?” The policeman gripped her roughly by the elbow.
“I-I—” Kyung-sook had arrived at the correct station with no difficulty. But at the exit marked “To Street,” she hadn’t known what to do at the machine on the way out. Everyone else was putting in those little scrips of paper again, which the hungry machine gobbled up and let them pass with a green light. She didn’t have her ticket any more—hadn’t the first machine “eaten” it? Then it was the ticket ajuhshi’s fault for not giving her enough tickets. She had shrugged and started to crawl under the bar.
“It’s illegal to jump the turnstile,” he said. “Really, you should know better, ma’am, especially since you know we’re instituting a strict new crackdown policy on farebeaters like you.”
“I-I—”
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to bring you to the police station.”
The police station!
She knew what happened at Seoul police stations from watching The Dark Yushin Era—people sat tied up in dark rooms under a single harsh light and were beaten and tortured with electric shocks. Some of them never were seen again. She couldn’t do that to Il-sik!
Kyung-sook yanked her elbow with all the strength gained from years of slogging heavy barrels of shrimp, and she ran pell-mell back down to the platform.
The policeman was speechless for a moment, then he yelled, “Halt! You!”
Kyung-sook ran on. Another train had arrived, and waves of people poured onto the platform and up the stairs, tangling the policeman in the crowd. Kyung-sook could hear the man swearing, but then his voice was swallowed up in the rest of the din of the station.
…PLEASE DON’T SMOKE. PLEASE USE CAUTION WHEN THE TRAIN COMES INTO THE STATION. PLEASE DON’T SPIT ON THE PLATFORM. LOST ITEMS…
She pushed her way through the people, almost breaking up a couple holding hands—holding hands! She couldn’t stop to look back and marvel at such a scandalous sight. Instead, she ran on.
Thank goodness she had brought only the smallest bundle with her! She made it to the end of the platform and through another corridor. It led to a different train, the signs were a different color. Was the man still in pursuit? As she stood, trembling, among the people waiting, she tore off her headscarf—she noticed no one in Seoul wore those. She looked at herself in one of the large mirrors mounted on the wall. She was still so terribly conspicuous. That policeman was going to find her and cart her off to be tortured and Il-sik would never know what happened to her. He might even think she had found her daughter and then abandoned him!
“Oh Dear Heavenly God,” she prayed. Could he hear her up in Heaven when she was praying from so far under the ground? “Help me! What should I do? Please give me a sign.”
Down the tunnel came the sound of the train. Without looking up from their newspapers or pausing in their talking into their little boxes, the people moved to the designated yellow-painted areas that said “The Doors Will Open Here.”
Kyung-sook glanced over her shoulder. She would have to take this train, wherever it was going, just to get out of this station.
The doors opened with a whoosh, and she boarded, pushing, shoving with everyone else into the crowded car. A man with heavily oiled hair seemed to be leaning a little too close into her chest, so Kyung-sook pinched his arm, hard, through his suit that was shiny and gray like fish scales. The man swore and moved to a different part of the car.
“Where is this train going?” she asked a student in a navy middle school uniform. The girl was grasping the pole with one hand, holding her English textbook up to her face with the other.
“Toward Seoul Station, Grandmother,” she said.
Seoul Station, where the
train would be waiting to bring her home to Enduring Pine Village—to safety, away from the ills of this horrid city. She wasn’t meant to find the child, was she? God had given her an answer, Kyung-sook thought, although she couldn’t help being a little peeved that the student had called her “grandmother”—she wasn’t yet even fifty years old!
KYUNG-SOOK
Enduring Pine Village
1993
“You’ve been gone a few days,” Cooking Oil Auntie observed.
“Only a day,” Kyung-sook said, and added, “It was just a little kamgi, a sniffly summer cold. I feel better now.”
“You were gone somewhere,” Cooking Oil Auntie repeated. “I saw Song Grandmother go to take care of the house.”
Kyung-sook hummed, pretended not to hear her. She became very interested in watching the machine press the dark sesame oil out of the roasted seeds, drop by bulging drop.
“You know, the Mothers’ Association started their own general store,” Kyung-sook said. “They have sundries, even an electric freezer for ice cream—the little kids go wild for that kind of stuff.”
“I said, you were gone somewhere,” Cooking Oil Auntie repeated, a bit louder. “Where?”
“Oh? Oh yes, I also had to go to Seoul for some business.”
“What business could you possibly have in Seoul?”
Kyung-sook blinked. There was a spot, exactly round like a changgi chess piece, covering Cooking Oil Auntie’s face. Not unlike the one that had appeared before the cook-owner was killed.
“Oh, I went to see my imo.”
“Your imo is still alive and well in Seoul?”
Kyung-sook nodded and blinked some more. Maybe it was this bright sunlight flooding the morning market that was making her eyes play tricks.
“Well, while you’ve been gone, it looks like Okja is going to marry Sun-Woon after all.”
“Okja?”
“Unh, it seems that her rich girl rival had one big deficit …” Cooking Oil Auntie paused dramatically. It took Kyung-sook a second to remember she was talking about characters from her soap opera, The Date Tree.
“Eun-ju, that little vixen, couldn’t conceive! Her frantic parents tried everything: deer antler, breath-holding, prayers to the Birth Goddess—but she’s barren as a rock, hee-hee! Of course Sun-Woon, being a first son, must fulfill his filial duty. So remember how Okja found out she was pregnant and had decided to kill herself? Well, Sun-Woon’s parents gave him permission to divorce the vixen and marry Okja because two separate fortunetellers predicted he would have a son by the next Autumn Harvest Moon festival—that’s exactly when Okja’s due to deliver!”
“Oh, yes?” Kyung-sook said.
“Well, after all that waiting for those two to get together, now I’m sad this soap opera’s going to end—” Cooking Oil Auntie began to cough. One cough bled into another, and then another. She spat on the ground. A spidery tentacle of red floated in the mucus. Kyung-sook sighed.
“You said your son is planning to come visit you soon?” she asked.
“Haaaargh,” Cooking Oil Auntie said, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “These damn summer colds are the worst, I need to get some tonic from the Chinese herbalist—he was out of Siberian ginseng last time I was there. My son? He just started a new job—Samsung Incendiaries and Explosives—he certainly couldn’t take any time off for at least a year.”
“You might want to have him come up as soon as he can,” Kyung-sook said, and she sighed again.
SARAH
Seoul
1993
Choi Sunsengnim stopped writing on the board.
“We will have free-talk today,” she gasped.
Our classroom’s air conditioner, which never worked well in the first place, had given up the ghost. Smack in the middle of the sam-bok, the thirty hottest days of the lunar calendar.
Bernie, hot and irritable, began needling Jeannie about her eyes, which were finally starting to look more normal, so to speak.
Absent a week, Jeanie had returned for the last days at school with tiny, Frankensteinian stitches on her lids, which were swollen and red as if she’d been attacked by bees.
“Mein Gott!” Helmut had practically jumped out of his seat when he’d seen her. “You had the ssan kop’ol surgery!”
Jeannie nodded, even gamely answered some questions—no, it didn’t hurt, no it wasn’t dangerous—but then declared the subject off-limits.
Now healed into their more-or-less permanent shape, her eyes did look different. She reminded me of Katharine Hepburn in The Good Earth; Hepburn’s eyelids, fixed with tape, had looked neither Western nor Eastern, only strange.
“Free-talk in Korean,” Choi Sunsengnim said weakly.
“Did you go to a real doctor?” Bernie continued. “Or to a tol p’ari surgeon? I’ve seen their ads, for boob jobs, hymen-restoring surgery, too.”
“Shut up, Bernie,” Jeannie said, from behind clenched teeth.
“Just tell me, Jiyoung-ssi,” Bernie said, leaning almost longingly toward his former lover. “Why did you do it?”
“My aunt kept bugging me—okay?” Jeannie spat. “She kept saying, you’ll look better with ssan kop’ol, you’ll look better with ssan kop’ol. She even paid for it—I had it done at HanYong University Hospital—the best hospital in Seoul. It’s not the big fucking deal you’re making it out to be. I had droopy eyelids before, I felt like a fucking Shar-Pei dog. So now I can see better—okay? Even Gloria Steinem’s had plastic surgery on her eyes.”
“I read in the paper,” said the nun (and we knew she meant the real Korean paper, like the Dong-Ah Ilbo—those Chinese-character skills of hers!—and not the Korea Herald), “that one awful aftereffect of such a surgery is that sometimes, the lids do not close completely, when it is time for sleep.”
“Please,” said Choi Sunsengnim in desperation. “Speak in Korean.”
That was when the word ddong was brought up in class. It started when Helmut finally said something in Korean. He spoke of eating something called boshin-tang.
“How novel for you!” said Choi Sunsengnim, in relief.
“What is poe-sin-dang?” I was reduced to asking, still the worst student in ill-gup.
“‘Health tonic stew,’” said Helmut. “Sunsengnim, why do they call it that?”
“Because of tourists,” Choi Sunsengnim said, inadvertently slipping back into English. “During the Olympics, the president, he makes all the restaurants put up signs that say ‘health tonic stew’ over the ones that say ‘dog stew.’ If you go out in the country, though, sometimes you can still see the signs that say ‘dog soup’ or ‘dog meat.’”
Koreans, modern Koreans, eat dogs.
“Koreans eat dogs?” I ventured. Fluffy? Spot?
“Don’t you know anything?” said Bernie. “It’s a fucking sacred tradition. My uncle and I do it every year during the sam-bok.”
“I don’t like the eating of dog,” I said.
“But you eat cow-meat, right?” said Choi Sunsengnim. “American hambuh-goo?”
“Neigh.”
“So what is the difference? Meat is meat.”
“But dogs are different,” I said. “They’re—ah—”
“Pets,” said the nun, obviously pleased with her knowledge of this English word.
“Oh-moh! We don’t eat personal dogs!” Choi Sunsengnim said with horror and offense. “We only eat ddong-dogs.”
Ddong-dogs?
“That doesn’t sound very appetizing,” Bernie commented, once again shifting the class back to English.
“No, ddong-dog means like no one’s dog, like—”
“Stray,” said Doug, although later he would tell me that the best-looking dogs on the army base—the big, beautiful German shepherds in particular—had a habit of mysteriously disappearing.
“That’s it, stray. Belongs to no one. See, no one eats another person’s dog! But stray dogs, they are the most delicious.”
“Ddong kae,” I said, marveling. St
ray dog.
“Sal-ah-ssi, your pronunciation has gotten quite a bit better,” Choi Sunsengnim commented. The others nodded.
KYUNG-SOOK
Enduring Pine Village
1993
The cicadas were back.
The end of a seventeen-year cycle already. The buzzing would go on for days without ceasing until some people would swear the insects were nesting in their brains, others would be lulled to sleep by the steady hum. The government had begun a program of spraying poison on the trees in Seoul, saying that the noise disturbed the foreign tourists.
Mengmengmengmengmengmengmengmengmeng.
She went to the Three Peaks Lake so she could be among the gentle sounds of the water, the cooling color of summergreen oaks and white pine, where she could let the buzz-sound of the cicadas fill her veins with their unending thrum. She had been not-so-old the last time she heard that sound. Seventeen years was time enough for a tree to grow tall, for a baby to grow into an adult. Those years had just washed away like silt.
Il-sik’s look of utter relief when she returned safely from Seoul had touched her to the core. Somehow, during the time she was gone, he had found a way to take his anger and disappointment and bury it like a pot of kimchi. It was true that in a marriage, each spouse knows exactly where the other’s tenderest, softest secret spots lay, and that words could be sharper than a policeman’s worst torture instrument.
But then also, resisting the temptation to use secrets as a weapon, that was the truest kind of love.
Knives cutting water, the saying went, referring to these marital mercies.
The child, her flute, had been lost to her. But she was able to see how she had gained things as well—her life, the one she had built for herself, Il-sik, her dear father living in her marital home, cared for by her own hands. She had to admit, she loved this life.
Somebody's Daughter Page 27