The Loved Ones

by Sonya Chung

  In the kitchen Chong-ho listened for Soon-mi but heard only his own blood beating. He studied the ooze on his palm. With his finger Chong-ho spread the ooze so it covered other lines, not just the one. The liquid was thicker than he expected. Gummy and now cool. He held it up to his nose, and winced. Slugs produced various kinds of fluid—one for mating, for example, with alluring qualities; another for defense. Surely this was the latter. It made Chong-ho’s eyes sting and smelled intensely of something rotten he couldn’t name.

  At the sink, he squeezed soap onto his palm; spread it around carefully, then more vigorously. After he rinsed and dried, Chong-ho went upstairs to find Soon-mi. She’d been gone so long. Why had it taken so long to mail a package.

  In their bedroom he found her lying on her side—hands stacked palms together under her head like a pantomime of sleep, her eyes open. The tips of her sneakers hung over the edge, one sneaker mud-splattered all the way to her ankle. Two buttons of Soon-mi’s shirt, one at the top and one at her belly, had come undone; she wore one of Chong-ho’s ribbed undershirts instead of a bra. He’d noticed the other day a new package of undershirts in his drawer. Now he understood where the others had gone. Chong-ho rarely watched Soon-mi undress anymore.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, in the crook of Soon-mi’s curled-up middle. He wanted to stroke her cheek. Her neck. Kiss her eyelids so they would soften and close. Often he wanted to do this; he’d never stopped wanting to.

  It had been years since the two came to their understanding: the ardor they’d once embraced defiantly, like a holy calling, evoked too many shadows, the suffering of others; a trace of obscenity even. Celibacy—more than that, sensual austerity—was their penitence. They never spoke of it. They circled each other’s suffering and contained their desire with priestly stoicism; though not before any god. No one was watching. Only themselves, watching each other.

  They watched, and they abstained—a taut and cloistered accord.

  How long had it been? Chong-ho did not believe in keeping time on atonement. It surprised him that he even wondered. But there was something in Soon-mi’s present dishevelment that moved him: she lay there, loose and disarranged. Chong-ho saw now that Soon-mi’s cheeks were blotchy, her breathing irregular. He listened to the tremors. Something like panic was either rising or falling, he couldn’t tell which.

  Her glassy eyes settled on him, and at once Chong-ho was startled: he saw, unmistakably, the perfect fright—all passion and fragile trust—of the young girl whose love he had claimed more than forty years ago. It was as if Soon-mi had seen a ghost; the ghost had seized her ascetic spirit and left behind only flesh and ragged want.

  Chong-ho held up his palm. He rubbed at his lifeline with his thumb, three long strokes. Then he pressed his hand into the small of Soon-mi’s back. Immediately, he felt it—tiny flutter of a muscle. The live wire of their touch as charged as ever. He was surprised, but then not at all.

  How long? Here she was. It had been no time at all.

  Soon-mi rolled onto her back. She took Chong-ho’s hand, held it to her dry lips. Her eyes stared. Some days there was a faint light in those eyes. The light said, I am still with you. Today, the light flickered like an SOS.

  Chong-ho unlaced Soon-mi’s sneakers. The sneakers fell to the carpet with a soft thud. Soon-mi closed her eyes and pulled Chong-ho’s hands to her breasts. Then she let go, let her hands fall. When she opened her eyes again, Soon-mi looked at Chong-ho directly, and seriously.

  Take me back, she was saying. Take me back to the grove. High above on the ridge.

  Chong-ho did not have to recall. It was there, right there, always. Chong-ho began to move his callused hands over Soon-mi’s body, gently, slowly, underneath her clothes. Soon-mi closed her eyes, but Chong-ho watched her. She was the most familiar sight to him, more familiar than his own face, yet today he felt her flesh anew. Her bones and lumps and rough patches were a map of years and denials and disuse. They both closed their eyes now. That rotten smell came back to Chong-ho: he knew now that it wasn’t something, it was everything—like a feast abandoned to the flies. He didn’t wince; he took it in.

  Take me back. It was neither far away nor long ago. Chong-ho laid his forehead on Soon-mi’s broad sternum. He breathed warm breath into the valley between her breasts. The undershirt was thin and loose. He lifted the shirt and slipped his fingers beneath the waistband of Soon-mi’s pants.

  He took her back, back to the grove. Soon-mi whimpered, and moaned softly. He moved, and she moved, and they both breathed, smooth and calm like dancers on a stage, building toward a grand lift. Then Soon-mi cried out—a girl’s cry, brittle and virginal. She was both reaching and letting something go. She arched her back, and her body shuddered. Finally she let out one last low whimper: all her flesh gave way, sinking into the bed. Chong-ho watched Soon-mi as her breath deepened, then quieted. The furrow between Soon-mi’s eyes relaxed, and her mouth fell open.

  He sat with her, letting out his own held breath, then laid his hand on her forehead like a doctor feeling for a fever. Chong-ho still did not know what was behind her flickering eyes. What particular fear or sorrow had met Soon-mi on the road between home and the world and back again. He knew well how flashes of mortality could singe the soul without warning these days; but Soon-mi had never been one for morbidity. She was the fatalist (he the romantic) and took each day for what it was. Was it something from the long-ago past haunting her freshly? Or was it something to do with Hannah? Perhaps these were not so easily distinguished.

  Soon-mi curled onto her side and began to snore softly. Chong-ho stroked her hair and put his lips to her forehead. Then he left, clicking the door closed behind him.

  In James’s room, now Chong-ho’s study, Chong-ho sat at his desk and reached for the last notebook in the series he kept on a shelf he’d installed just above. They were tape-bound books he’d made himself, filled with poems—complete poems, line fragments, phrases arranged and rearranged. The first three notebooks had come with him from Korea. In recent years, he did not write often, and when he did, he wrote plainly. If Chong-ho were to title the volumes, which he did not, they would be, just, Sarang gwa chun haeng: Love and War.

  He sat with pen in hand, notebook open. His mind was moving, his senses high and full. He wrote:

  Hana-ae sarang, oori neun soopuro do ra ga

  Loved one, we go back to the grove

  we breathe pungent earth and sweet flora

  into each other’s valleys

  we show each other the way

  with hands

  hearts

  thick skin on thin

  together we climb and heave and sing out;

  but we are not young again

  our meal is meager

  it is enough.

  We bring our bones and lumps

  and rough patches.

  Our denials and disuse.

  Your flesh is as always my flesh.

  Your face more me than mine.

  Loved one, we succeed only, ever, at sorrow and love.

  Chong-ho closed the notebook, returned it to the shelf. He exhaled once, fully, then pushed out more air, and still more; until he was empty and hunched over the desk. He listened to the silence all around. A bus hissed to a stop across the street. People boarded. The bus lurched, and pulled away.

  Then Chong-ho’s lungs sucked in a sharp breath. He sat up. He began to heave and tremble; his hands made fists. A sob—a low rumble at first, then a coarse wail—poured out. He heard it in his ear as if it had come from another creature. Chong-ho fell forward, arms spread like a prisoner giving himself up; forehead pressed into the hard wood of the desk. Chong-ho’s shoulders shook, and he wept, but without tears—open-mouthed and now silent.

  In truth, it had been a long, long time.

  It had been as long as Chong-ho had been fatherless. As long as he’d stood accused and shamed and disowned.

  He lay sprawled over the desk for some time. His breathing calmed and s
lowed. When finally he lifted his head, the room had dimmed: a dusky glow illuminated the translucent shades. Chong-ho found himself standing but did not remember having done so. He walked out of the room like a sleepwalker.

  Before descending the stairs, he paused outside Hannah’s room. The door was closed, as usual. He did not open it but stood square before it. The door was like a blank, hard face. Soon-mi was dead asleep in the other room. Chong-ho stood square, and alone.

  Hannah. How long had it been? It had been nearly Hannah’s lifetime. This—these long years of parsimony, of their love cloaked in mourning garb—it was all Hannah knew. And of course she had been watching. There may not have been a god standing in judgment, but Hannah was watching.

  And wasn’t it for this that they’d sent her away?

  For her own good.

  Chong-ho had not asked questions about the family whose boy had drowned; but he knew that Hannah was not innocent. She had kept it a secret. This dark thing, like it was nothing. And the man, the father, he was black. She hadn’t said. Probably there were other secrets.

  From where else had she learned to lock everything away, batten down tragedy? It was for her own good that she go away from them. They told it to themselves; they had to believe it.

  Chong-ho knew now that he’d been right about Soon-mi—something from the long-ago past, something to do with Hannah. The years had passed quietly, too quietly. Hannah was graduating now, going forth. They would let her go completely. But if Chong-ho had resolved, Soon-mi had only deferred. Not because she disagreed, but because she took the failure upon herself.

  She had never been easy with Hannah, Chong-ho knew; never opened her heart. Never knew Hannah as her own, not like James. James was their child of hope and resolve; their love was full then, determined. Hannah came too late: whatever the girl needed from them had been spent. For Soon-mi, their plan had signified defeat, not resolve.

  Would Hannah too be known and loved? Chong-ho had no idea. He hoped she would. He hoped that her heart would not go rancid, abandoned on a banquet table. Such a fate would be the real obscenity. Chong-ho was content with his own lot: he had chosen love and admitted its sorrows. But what good is such love, the heart’s pure fervor, if only the lovers can live in its depths?

  Chong-ho turned away from the door and continued on—down the stairs, through the kitchen to the patio. The rain had ceased; the clouds were parting. He surveyed the yard and assessed the tasks remaining. Calculated what he could accomplish before dark. Behind him, the Baptisia pushed out tiny blue buds on bushes that had grown wild over the years. The drowned slug floated in the boot.

  7.

  June 17, 1988

  Dear James,

  Congratulations. Yours is the first wedding invitation I’ve ever received. It’s funny to see your name in fancy script, but it’s exciting too. You and Grace look handsome in the picture you sent. How’d you get her to say yes? (ha ha) I’ll send back the RSVP soon. (You shouldn’t say, “Ummah and Appah really want to see you”—as if.) Graduation is coming up fast, finally. Thanks for the advice about college; you’re right that it’s good to think about why you’re there and what you want out of it.

  —Hannah

  ps: On the front is Colette’s gravestone in Paris. It’s shaped like a bed.

  Once she started, Hannah realized that packing wouldn’t take long. Books, clothes, few personal items. She’d never made herself at home, like the other girls. She filled a large trash can with notebooks, term papers, old granola bars and instant cocoa, socks with holes in the heels …

  In the bottom desk drawer was a stack of letters. White #9s, a single trifolded sheet inside. Bound by a wide rubber band. She’d seen similar stacks in other girls’ rooms, but tied in satin bows or tossed into pretty boxes. A girl named Judy, who lived across the hall, received a letter every week, sometimes with an enclosed Polaroid. Hannah couldn’t understand why the boy sent pictures of himself with his handsomer friends. There was one with a bulldog puppy that was nice. Hannah couldn’t imagine holding the letters to her chest the way Judy did, but she did read them slowly. Certain lines stayed in her ear like a melancholy tune that’s also soothing. The letters reminded her of something she knew she didn’t want to forget: sadness can comfort; plainness can make you feel things. She read in one of her English textbooks that newscasters report on outer weather; poets report on inner weather. That was what the letters were like—reporting; inner. Hannah liked the way the sheets were creased and folded crisply, and so she always refolded them and put them back into the envelopes she’d sliced straight across with a letter opener. It was almost as if the letters had not been touched.

  Hannah opened the drawer and considered briefly tossing the stack into the bin. She felt that the letters, their music, would stay with her, whether or not she packed them. But then she thought of the time Judy saw her with a letter and asked who it was from. When Hannah answered, “A man I once knew, I looked after his kids,” Judy made a face. A stupid face.

  Hannah tucked the stack into her suitcase between sweaters.

  There was a knock at the door. “Yes?”

  “Someone downstairs for you.”

  “Coming.”

  Parietal hours were over, but it was senior week, the night before commencement; the rules went lax. Even so, Hannah fished around the entry table for the pen that had gone missing and, when she found it on the floor, signed in the boy she knew would be there (no sense risking it, so close now to the end). The boys’ academy down the road had graduated two days earlier. He was officially free and hadn’t yet left for home.

  Upstairs in Hannah’s room, he said, “You really have hardly any stuff.” He turned over a book in her pile of to-pack. “DurrAH,” he said, hamming up the accent. He’d gotten through intermediate French last term only with Hannah’s help.

  “DurrAHSS,” she said.

  “That makes no sense.”

  Hannah shrugged. “Are you all packed?”

  He laughed. The boy had a nice laugh. “No way. I have so much shit. They let us stay another week. My parents don’t come until Tuesday.”

  Hannah stood with hands on hips, surveying. What’s next. She would be ready—more than ready—to leave tomorrow. The boxes would go by airmail, straight to Rue Pascal; she would have to call a taxi. She could have asked the boy, he had a Wagoneer, but Hannah didn’t want him to see the address. Everything else she planned to take on the bus.

  “Why don’t you come stay with me, after tomorrow? My roommate’s gone, the house counselors are barely around. You can meet my parents. My little brother, too. He’s a trip.”

  Hannah was still thinking about whether everything left would fit in her second suitcase. She looked up, realizing what he’d asked, and smiled. “That’s nice. But, no thanks. I have to get going.”

  The boy pouted. “The invitation to Nantucket still stands.” He came up behind her and rubbed his hardness against Hannah’s lower back. Hands squeezing her shoulders. “My parents are cool; they’ll let us have our own room.”

  Hannah let him kiss her neck; she closed her eyes. He was warm, and nice, and not as stupid as some others. She was his first. He’d said so anyway, and he was so nervous their first time, and fast, that Hannah believed him. He didn’t ask if he was hers. Maybe he didn’t care, maybe he assumed; maybe he was afraid of the answer. Hannah realized quickly how easy it was with a boy who had never done it before: relax, let him do the moving, move just a little. Let him lay his head on your chest afterward. Say yes when he asks if you liked it. She knew that he was working his way toward doing more, making her feel more. But he wouldn’t get there. Hannah could not imagine surrendering to this boy in that way. For what he wanted, it should be fearless. With no question of wrong or right. But he was afraid of too many things—of doing something wrong, of not doing it right, diminishing himself in her eyes. It was fine the way it was. It was nice. It was how it should be, between him and her.

  The boy would
be going to UVA in the fall (over Duke), and Hannah chose to believe it had nothing to do with her. They’d only met last winter, at one of the coed mixers. They had talked about where they’d applied. Hannah had applied to just the one school, and she’d been accepted.

  “And there’s a private beach. In July, at high tide, you can actually ride waves.” His hands ran down her hips.

  Hannah had been thinking only of buses and boxes. An airplane. It would be her first time (second, actually, but she’d been too young to remember). When he said ride waves, Hannah stepped out of his reach and turned to look at him.

  “What?” The boy’s eyes shifted sideways—blue and swirly like marbles.

  What. Hannah wasn’t sure. It was a long beat. She’d been moving fast, moving toward the light at the end of … this. The boy came back into focus, and she almost told him what she had already decided not to tell him. Not to tell anyone—her parents, James; Coach Modeste, who had put in a good word for her with the assistant swim coach. That she wouldn’t be going to UVA in the fall. Wouldn’t be going to college at all.

  “Nothing,” Hannah said.

  The boy looked at her. Smiled. Always fucking inscrutable. For now, he enjoyed the challenge.

  “Help me pack,” Hannah said.

  In the morning, Hannah turned toward the wall and shoved him out of the bed, sent him on his way. Before he left she handed him The Lover and said, DurrAHSS, and he took the book and laughed. He kissed Hannah’s cheek and said, “See you later.” He planned to come to her graduation, didn’t know that when her name was called, Hannah would be on a bus to DC. It would matter little in the long run; he would of course grow tired of challenges.

  From the bus stop, before boarding, Hannah called Madame Glissant to confirm arrival time. Hannah would spend two nights in Friendship Heights. She and Monique would fly to Paris together. My family owns a building in the 14th, she had said on the phone. There’s a small flat on the top floor, very sweet. That first mention months ago had been only half-serious, but Hannah could not let go the idea. France. Paris. Where Colette lived and wrote. Where Claudine had her adventures. She wanted to pay her respects at Père Lachaise; to Duras too at Cimetière Montparnasse.