by H. S. Kim
They cooked together. The red beans bled and colored the rice purple. Kelp soup bubbled in the pot. Nani set the low table.
“How is my little Mansong?” Mrs. Wang asked.
“Ah, Mrs. Wang, she is the cleverest child I’ve ever seen. She amuses Mr. O so much that he says that he is getting younger every day.”
“She belongs there after all,” Mrs. Wang said.
After breakfast, Mrs. Wang pulled a book out of a drawer and showed it to Nani.
“What is this, Mrs. Wang?”
“It’s my journal. I write in it every time I see a patient and every time I deliver a baby. It has taught me a lot. And I would like you to take over from now on. I want you to record all our visits with pregnant women.”
Nani’s confusion was written plainly all over her face.
Mrs. Wang explained, “First, you write the date, and then the name of the woman. Ah, never forget to record the name of the man who is involved. I mean, the father of the baby. And then you record what happens, what you see, and how you feel.”
Nani was silent; she was still very confused. Mrs. Wang suggested, “Why don’t you read one of my journal entries? In fact, you can read the one I wrote after Mansong was born.”
“Oh yes,” Nani said, still looking at the cover of the book.
“Let me find the page for you. Hand it to me,” Mrs. Wang said. She took the book and flipped the pages. “I think it is in the previous book. Let me see.” Mrs. Wang went to her drawer and pulled out another one.
“So many!” Nani exclaimed as she glimpsed the drawer full of journals.
“I started writing in my journals when I became a midwife. I was younger then than you are now. My grandmother told me to do so. And it is a very important part of the job. It sometimes saves lives,” Mrs. Wang said, thinking of Min. But thinking of him, she remembered something. “By the way, Min stopped by some time ago. Now, where is that?” Mrs. Wang got up and opened the door to a small storage room, where she kept her money jar. She dipped her hand in and said, “Here it is!” She pulled out a knotted handkerchief.
Nani took it silently. Something was inside. She opened it and found the jade necklace she had lost in the fire. Min must have found it in the pile of debris while he waited for her to come and see him one last time. She remembered sitting in the kitchen, hoping he would leave and not wait. Before going to bed, she had gone back over to the house but had found him nowhere.
The handkerchief was smudged black from the charred necklace. She put it in her sleeve and thought of Min for a long moment. He might show up someday if she kept the necklace. Wherever he was now, she hoped that he would do something worthy with his life.
Mrs. Wang was still flipping through the pages, distracted by some of her own writings. She stopped and put her finger between two pages and handed the book to Nani.
“I believe Min was my son in a past life. He keeps returning to my mind,” Mrs. Wang said.
Nani gasped. “Oh! What a coincidence! I feel exactly the same.”
Mrs. Wang rolled her eyes comically and said, “You can read that page and see if it makes any sense.” Then she lay down to take a nap.
Nani read what Mrs. Wang had to say about Mansong’s birth:
Life is absurd. I can only sigh, feeling utterly ashamed of myself. Mistress Kim died. Even before I arrived! But she left a healthy baby girl behind. Somehow I feel responsible for this baby. I put her under the care of Jaya, who has just given birth to a boy. She has too much milk, she complains. The living have as many complaints as the dead.
Mistress Kim’s house was ominously hushed. No one was present to receive the news of the death or the birth. Only two young maids, one of them practically a child herself. Earlier, a servant from that house had delivered a letter consisting of one sentence: “The mistress is in excruciating pain.” I laughed. All the aristocrats are in “excruciating pain,” and the peasants are about to die when the contractions begin. I told the mute servant I would come, by and by. He groaned and turned around to walk back down the mountain.
A little later, Dubak came up and said his wife would die if I didn’t come immediately. I said I would come soon. He said he would carry me on his back. I snorted and scolded him, but he insisted that he wouldn’t take one step from my house unless I came with him. So I walked down with him. His mother had prepared dinner for me. The newborn was enormous, so it took longer than anticipated. The happy grandmother so badly wanted me to stay to celebrate. So I had a few drinks.
Mistress Kim’s house was in the dark; even the torch light at the entrance was out. As soon as I opened her door, I smelled death. I checked the woman’s pulse. Too late. From now on, I shall spring up and go promptly when summoned, no matter who comes to fetch me, even if it means I will idle away half a day. Had I an assistant, it would be more efficient. Perhaps someday.
Tears welled up in Nani’s eyes. She was feeling overwhelmed. She was entering a new world she knew nothing about. She was moved by what went on behind the scenes. Nani remembered very well how scared she had been when Mistress Kim had stuffed her own mouth with a cloth. Mistress Kim lay on her side and gripped whatever she could get hold of. She and Soonyi sat, feeling hopelessly worried, watching their mistress writhe in agony, groaning hideously. Mistress Kim grabbed her hand and Soonyi’s in the end and wouldn’t let go of them. When the baby came out with a great flop into a pool of blood on the mat, Soonyi and she looked at each other, but neither could go check to see what it was that had emerged into the world. Soonyi sobbed annoyingly. And then, Nani heard that Mrs. Wang had arrived. She went out with a lantern, trying to control her trembling hands. She wanted to say something to Mrs. Wang, but her tongue wouldn’t move. She had been clenching her teeth so hard that her jaw ached. She couldn’t even cry.
Mrs. Wang was sleeping. Nani decided to peruse some more of the journal. It was amazing reading. She pored over it until dusk. Mrs. Wang got up and said, “Light the candle. You are going to ruin your eyesight if you read in the dark.”
“Should I start making dinner?” Nani asked. At Mr. O’s house, she had to start thinking about dinner as soon as lunch was over.
“I always eat what’s left from breakfast,” Mrs. Wang said.
“Then I will warm up the kelp soup,” Nani said, getting up. She went to the kitchen and took the jade necklace from her sleeve to wash it. It turned deep green in the water. She put it on and felt the coolness on her chest.
As she started a fire in the stove, there was a big thud from outside. Nani sprang up and went out of the kitchen. The old gate had finally given its last breath and lay collapsed on the ground.
“Big Sister!” Soonyi shouted. Bok picked up the gate and tried in vain to put it back.
“What brings you here?” Nani asked.
“Mirae—the little mistress—is in extreme pain. Her baby is on the way,” Soonyi said with a broad smile, happy to see Nani.
Mrs. Wang came out to see what was going on. She thundered, “Who broke my gate?”
“It fell all by itself,” Soonyi said. Bok was trying to fix it.
“There is a tool box behind the chicken cage. You can fix it. And I need to eat before I come,” Mrs. Wang said. She went to the kitchen where leftover kelp soup was boiling on the stove.
Nani followed her in and said, “Mrs. Wang, I think we should go now.”
“How am I going to walk all the way down to Mr. O’s on an empty stomach?”
“But in your journal you regretted that you hadn’t left promptly to see Mistress Kim,” Nani reminded her cautiously.
Mrs. Wang clucked her tongue and said, “What an awful mistake I made to take you as my apprentice!”
Mrs. Wang went into her room and dressed herself warmly. She told Bok to finish fixing her gate, and she headed down to the valley wi
th Nani. When they passed the old pine tree, Mrs. Wang said, “Bury me just beyond that tree when I am dead.”
“Why there, Mrs. Wang?”
“So I can keep an eye on you. As you pass by, I will tell you if you are doing the right thing.”
The moon rose. The two women walked by the barren rice field, talking about how the winter was almost over. Mrs. Wang said that she was going to plant cabbages and cucumbers in her backyard. Nani thought of reading all of Mrs. Wang’s journals.
At the gate of Mr. O’s house, Kumi came out with a lantern, looking like a frightened squirrel. Trembling, she guided the midwives to her mistress. Nani could already hear Mirae’s shrieking voice. She noticed that Mrs. Wang kept a steady pace, even though Mirae’s piercing cry was hard to ignore.
Mr. O was not available at the moment. He was reading a poem titled “Wheel of Fortune” with Mansong, which had been written by the country’s only known female poet from the previous century. He was explaining the title to his daughter. He stopped abruptly. Life repeats itself.
“Father, what are you thinking about?” Mansong asked, looking up at him.
Mr. O came to his senses and asked, “What did you say?” His daughter’s sparkling eyes stared at him intently, and he saw his reflection in her eyes. A long time before, when he was a little boy, he had stepped up to look inside a well. He saw a figure on the surface of the water. Behind it was a patch of cloud. The figure moved. He gasped, which immediately echoed in the well, sounding as if the well had gasped. A frantic maid pulled him back. He was dizzy. He told her that there was someone in the well. The maid looked in. She said, laughing, that it was his own reflection.
He had forgotten about this.
“My little one, I see myself in your eyes,” Mr. O said to his daughter.
“I see myself in your eyes, too, Father.”
He paused for a moment. Suddenly, the meaning of the conversation he had with the head monk some time before dawned on him. He is you. He is I. Mr. O pressed the middle of his eyebrows with his two fingers as if to expel a headache. But in truth he was trying to remember what else the head monk had tried to communicate with him.
Mansong yawned. She needed to be put to bed.
“Where is Soonyi?” Mr. O wondered.
“She went to fetch Mrs. Wang,” she replied dreamily, leaning on his arm. She fell asleep within a moment. He put her down on the mat and covered her with a blanket. Observing her small, peaceful face, he lingered before he blew out the candle. She resembled her mother, definitely, but from a certain angle, she also looked a little like his father too.
Mr. O slipped out of his daughter’s room. The moon filled the yard. Each time he walked about in his house, he was pleased that it was almost exactly the way the original was. In the dark, he knew it could fool even the spirit of his father.
A sharp cry issued from Mirae’s quarters, tearing him out of his thoughts. He was about to enter the gate that led to his quarters. It took a moment for him to realize where the cry had come from. He stood in front of the stone step. Mirae must have given birth. He was going to sit in his room and wait for a maid to deliver the message.
He went in his room, lit candles, and sat in the middle of the room meditatively. He felt the weight of his life. He was an old man. And his wife, young and exceptionally beautiful, had just given birth to a baby. “Ah!” he exclaimed, remembering his haunting dream a few years before, in which he was an ancient man and his first wife was so young and beautiful. Now he knew that even dreams are made of life.
He heard footsteps rapidly approaching his quarters. It was not a maid, but a servant running fast to him, perhaps to tell him that the baby was born. Or that his wife had died while giving birth. Or that the baby was deformed. All was possible. Whatever it might be, the sun would rise again the next morning.
About the Author
At the age of twenty, H. S. Kim moved to the U.S. After graduating from Teacher’s College at Columbia University, she taught Creative Writing and English as a Second Language to a wide range of students, including teenagers in Harlem, prison inmates in upstate New York, businessmen in Austria, Laotian refugees in Oakland, and foreign scholars at various universities. A born storyteller, H. S. Kim began to write fiction after settling down in Berkeley, California with her husband and two children. Waxing Moon is her first novel. Her second novel, currently under construction, will be a depiction of the 1970s in a divided Korea through the eyes of a child.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following individuals: Mary Bradford, Laura Gorjance, Cathy Hale, and Linda Wulf for proofreading and Amy McCracken, my editor at WiDō, for her excellent work and suggestions.