On the eighth day, I ran out of food. My legs ached from walking. My feet were on fire with blisters and bleeding, and my stomach growled constantly. I was weak with fatigue. I stopped for the day along side two elderly Chinese women. They told me they were going to Dandong, China, across the Yalu River from Sinuiju. I spoke Chinese to them and they were nice to me. They gave me some rice and a pair of tabi for my raw feet. They said I could travel with them. At night before they went to sleep, one of the women asked, “What did you do in Dongfeng?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was exhausted and confused and nothing about the past two years made sense. After a few long moments, I said, “My sister and I worked for the Japanese.”
“What did you do for them?” the woman asked.
“I…I…” I stumbled, “we were supposed to work in the boot factory,” I finally said.
The other woman raised an eyebrow. “You worked for the Japanese in a boot factory?”
“We did not volunteer,” I said quickly. “We were not chinulpa. They made us do it.”
The women exchanged glances and said nothing more. They crawled under their blankets to go to sleep. When I awoke the next morning, they were gone.
*
Midday on the fourteenth day, I arrived at the outskirts of Sinuiju. I had run out of food and water again. My stomach had stopped growling a day earlier and my tongue was thick and dry. But I didn’t go to the city. Instead, I turned up the road that Soo-hee and I had taken to Sinuiju two years earlier. I was desperate to get home. I wanted to see my mother and father again. I wanted Soo-hee to be there too. But the last time I had seen my onni, she had been close to death. It wasn’t possible that she had recovered and found her way home. No, it wasn’t possible at all.
I forced myself up the long road to our farm. My heart raced when I saw our big, stucco house with the tarpaulin door. The gray-green roof tile was crooked and broken from neglect. Someone had cut down the persimmon tree and weeds grew in the yard. The front window was broken.
I stood in the road a long time looking at our house. I tried to think of what I would say to my mother and father if they were inside. I thought about turning around and going back to Sinuiju.
Finally, I went to the house and stepped inside. It was musty and dark. “Ummah?” I called out hesitantly. “ Appa?” My calls echoed off the walls. There was no answer. Cobwebs grabbed at my face. “Soo-hee?”
I went to the back of the house. In the field, tall weeds cast long shadows in the setting sun. I went to the well and took a long drink of water. I filled the bucket with water and took it to the kitchen. I took off my clothes and washed myself. I scrubbed and scrubbed until my skin was raw, but I didn’t feel clean. I washed my clothes and laid them out to dry. I wrapped a blanket around myself and lay on the floor of the big room. I curled up and went to sleep, alone.
The next morning, hunger pains knotted my stomach. I dressed, went out back, and dug up the onggis of rice and vegetables that Soo-hee and I had buried two years earlier. They had not been touched. I opened one. The brine and spices had not preserved the vegetables and they were rotten. The stench of it almost made me retch. I opened the other onggi. The rice was unspoiled, so I dragged it inside the house. I made a fire with dried weeds and brought some water to boil in a pan I had found inside the stove. I threw in some rice. As the rice cooked, I went out and found some carrots and potatoes growing in the field. I dug them up and took them to the house. I washed them and sliced them with a rusty knife from the kitchen drawer. When the rice finished cooking, I ate it with the raw carrots and potatoes. Eventually, my hunger pangs went away.
I looked around the house. There was a thick coat of dust on the floor and cobwebs in the ceiling. In the main room, only one chair and the low table remained. I went to the sleeping area. Mother’s cabinet was gone. But where it once stood, I saw an old photograph of my family taken during the New Year’s celebration when I was just four years old. My family, dressed in hanboks, stared out at me from the photo. Father stood tall with his beautiful young wife at his side. Soo-hee and I, innocent young girls, stood in front of our parents holding hands. I was so happy to have found the photograph, but for some reason, it made me cry.
I put the photograph inside my dress and went out to the field to dig up more potatoes and carrots. I found some garlic and dug it up too. I gathered dried weeds and sticks. I took it all back to the house and made a fire in the stove. Soon, the home’s ondol system warmed the floors. Next to the stove, I found some ground bori cha and Father’s tin cup. I filled the cup with water and a handful of bori cha and put it over the fire to seep. Soon, I had bori cha, bitter and strong.
I went to work cleaning the house. I swept the floor and spent an hour scrubbing the kitchen sink. I brushed the cobwebs from the ceiling and spent another hour cleaning the soot from the stove. I made several trips to the field, all the way back to the tall aspen trees, and gathered wood and brought it back to the house. I stacked it neatly next to the stove.
Then I scrubbed myself again until my skin was raw like I had done the day before. I braided my hair and washed my clothes again. When night came, I sat at the table drinking bora cha and stared out the window. I desperately tried to remember what it was like when Father and Mother and Soo-hee were still there and we read books by the firelight, but the images never came.
T WENTY
The next day I went to work on the outside of the house. I pulled weeds in the yard and climbed up on the roof to straighten the tiles. I scrubbed the stucco walls until my knuckles bled. I raked the yard smooth with a tree branch.
In the mornings of the days and weeks that followed, I searched on my hands and knees for the tiniest speck of dirt in the house and when I found one, I cleaned the entire house again. And each day I pulled weeds and picked stones from the field behind the house until not even a pebble was out of place. I gathered wood and vegetables until I had as much as we used to put up for the winter. And every night, I scrubbed myself raw and washed my clothes and carefully braided my hair and waited by the fire trying to remember my life the way it was before.
Then one gray afternoon as I was raking the yard, an old woman came up the road and stopped by where the persimmon tree had been. “Anyehaseyo” the woman said. “Are you the girl who used to live here?”
“Anyehaseyo,” I said with a bow. “Yes I am. Do you know where my family is?”
“I’m cold and need to rest,” she said. “May I come into your house?” I showed her in and invited her to sit at the table. I thought I had seen her before. She was bent from age and too much hard labor. Her clothing was tattered and stained. She coughed deeply several times and collapsed in the chair.
I offered her some rice and a few carrots. She devoured them as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. After she finished, she sat a while as if she had to gather strength. Then she eyed me. “I live down the road,” she said. “What is your name?”
“I am Hong, Ja-hee,” I answered. “My father is Hong Kwan-bae and my mother, Suh Bo-sun. The Japanese sent my onni and me away to work in the boot factory. The Russians told me to come home and wait here. Please tell me what you know about my family.”
The woman had another coughing spell, making her face turn purple. It took her a full minute to recover. “I knew your mother,” she said finally. “We worked at the uniform factory together.”
“You know my mother?” My heart pounded. I moved closer to the woman. “Where is she? Please tell me.”
“I am sorry to tell you young one, when you and your sister went away, your mother…” The woman lowered her eyes. “Your mother knew before you left home, that your father had been killed in the Philippines. The Japanese never sent him to Pyongyang like they said. They forced him to be a soldier and fight for them. She never told you that he had died.
“And,” the woman said, “your mother is dead, too.”
I clearly heard the word ‘dead’ but it was only a sound floating in the air.
“Dead,” I repeated, trying to understand what it meant.
“Yes,” the woman said. “One very cold day about two years ago, your mother hadn’t been to work for many days. The women from the factory found her sitting under the persimmon tree, dead from the cold. We buried her in the field with the tall grass just north of your house.”
“No,” I heard myself say. “You must be mistaken. It couldn’t be my mother you buried.” Then I remembered Mother had burned all the wood the night before Soo-hee and I had left for Sinuiju. I remembered her saying she refused to give the Japanese anything more. And I knew the woman was not mistaken.
The old woman stood to leave. “Go to Sinuiju,” she said. “The new government is taking a census. You have to give them your information. Perhaps you can find work there.” The woman thanked me for the rice and carrots and left through the tarpaulin door.
For a long time I sat alone inside my perfectly clean house and let the woman’s message sink in. At first, I was glad that my parents were gone so I wouldn’t have to tell them about Dongfeng. Then I was overcome with loss. My family was gone. Everyone I once loved was gone and I knew my life would never again be like it was, like I so desperately wanted it to be again. And I cried. Through my tears, I tried to see my future without Soo-hee by my side or my parent’s gentle love. But all I could see was the darkness of being alone. I wondered how I could go on, what I had to live for. I wished I was dead like the rest of my family.
And as I sat at the table, I finally remembered. I remembered the meals that my family had shared after a hard day’s work in the fields. I remembered my joy in seeing my grandparents when they visited during the New Year. I remembered how Soo-hee and I played in our front yard and my mother teaching us to read in the great room. I remembered trying to teach Soo-hee to speak Japanese and getting frustrated with her. And I was sad, but thankful that I could remember again.
And after I had remembered it all, I retrieved the comb from underneath my blanket and took it to the fire. I looked at the dragon with its claws and two heads. I thought of my great-great grandmother and my ancestors who had passed the comb to their daughters. Their spirits had brought it to me and I was now responsible to all those who had carried it before me.
I sat in front of the fire and let down my hair. And I combed it with the comb with the two-headed dragon.
*
Growing up, I never thought much about Korean traditions. I participated in them of course, because that was what my family did. Being young, I saw them as just something we had to do because we were Korean. But now that my family was gone, our traditions were important to me.
So the next day I rose before dawn and didn’t clean the house for the first time in weeks because Koreans do no work during the time of mourning. I didn’t cook rice and I didn’t eat. I wore my hair down as we did when my grandparents died.
I took a handful of rice and carrots and my father’s tin cup out to the field with the tall grass and found the mound of dirt where they had buried my mother. I tossed three handfuls of dirt on my mother’s grave, the chwit’o ritual that I had seen done at funerals when I was young. I took great care to smooth the ground and clean it of pebbles. With my eyes low, I placed the rice and carrots on the grave to nourish my mother’s spirit for its long journey. I put my father’s cup on the mound so she could give it to him when their spirits met.
I touched the cool earth and raised my eyes up. And in the aspen trees beyond the field I had so perfectly cleaned, I saw the faces of my father and my grandparents and all my ancestors. And in front of them all, I saw the face of my mother.
“Thank you, Ummah,” I said softly. “Thank you for all you did for me and for teaching me to read and write. I am sorry for what I did in Dongfeng and I’m sorry I couldn’t save Soo-hee. I have the comb you gave Soo-hee. I will take care of it as you said we should.” I took a handful of dirt and let it trickle through my fingers. I stayed a minute more, quiet and respectful, as I should have been when I was young.
I went back to the house, made a sack out of my blanket, and packed it with rice, carrots, potatoes, the photograph of my family, and the comb. I dragged the onggi of rice to the front of the house where the old woman would find it. And then I set off.
The sun had climbed over the hills in the east and the morning air was warming when I walked past where the persimmon tree had been. I turned toward Sinuiju. After a week of meals and hard work, I was strong and made good time. I was in Sinuiju by early afternoon.
I walked to the two-story military headquarters where the Japanese had been two years earlier. A Korean flag had replaced the white flag with a red circle. I went in the building to the large open room with the wood-planked floor. A few uniformed Russian soldiers worked at desks, but most of the people inside were Korean. There was an expectant buzz. I was glad the Japanese were gone. But honestly, it felt a little strange.
I approached a middle-aged, female clerk sitting at a desk under a sign that read ‘Records’ in Hangul. It was the first time since I was a little girl I had seen a sign in Hangul. “My name is Hong Ja-hee,” I said in Japanese. “I have come for the census.”
The clerk peered over glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Why are you talking in Japanese?” she said.
I lowered my eyes. “I am sorry,” I said in Korean.
She turned back to the papers on her desk. “We only take census in the morning,” she said without emotion. “You will have to come back tomorrow.”
“Please excuse me, ma’am,” I said. “If I must wait until tomorrow, do you know where I can stay tonight? I don’t have anyone here.”
“I don’t know,” the clerk said.
As I turned to leave, a man stood from a desk behind the clerk. “Wait,” he said. “Perhaps I can help.”
The clerk lowered her head as the man approached.
“I’m in charge of the census,” he said. “Come to my desk. I’ll take your information.” He smiled. It was the first time a man had smiled pleasantly at me in over two years.
T WENTY-ONE
This man was like no other I had ever seen. His skin was smooth, his hair long and shiny. Over his medium build, he wore an unusual, loose cotton shirt. He wore leather slip-on shoes the likes of which I had never seen before.
He pointed to a chair next to his desk and told me to sit. He asked my name as he retrieved a sheet of paper and pen from his desk. I sat straight-backed with my hands in my lap. I gave him my name and he wrote it down.
He asked my age. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know. What month is it?”
“September,” he said with a smile that reminded me of Father when he laughed at me for saying something funny. “Almost October.”
“Then, I am just seventeen.”
“Where do you live?”
“On my father’s farm, up the road, north about twenty miles.”
“Father and mother’s name?”
“They are dead, sir,” I said.
He looked at me and I saw kindness in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The Japanese killed many people. I’m in charge of gathering information about what they did here in Sinuiju. Please, tell me their names and how they died.”
I did and the man wrote it down, careful not to miss any details. Then he asked, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Yes, a sister, Soo-hee. She is… was my onni. She was two years older.”
“Where is she?”
“I think she is dead, too, sir.”
“I’m sorry. How did she die?”
“The Japanese took her away,” I said. “To China.”
“I see,” he nodded as if he understood and wrote something on the paper. “What did you do during this time?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell him I was an ianfu. So I said, “I worked in the boot factory.”
“The boot factory?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“I see
.” The man smiled his smile again and this time, he didn’t write anything down. He put the paper on top of a large stack, then put his pen in the holder on the desk. “I heard you say you don’t have anywhere to stay here in Sinuiju,” he said.
“Yes, sir. I came for the census and I was told I could find work here.”
The man leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “The city is full of people with nowhere to go. And there’s not much work, either.”
He eyed me for a long time making me feel as if I had done something wrong. I thought he might be looking at me sexually like the soldiers at the comfort station. Finally he said, “Perhaps you can help me and I can help you too. My wife is pregnant. It’s been difficult for her. She gets tired easily. We have an apartment with one of our friends near the river. If you would like, you can work for us for food and a place to stay.”
I thought of all of the men I had known over the past two years—Colonel Matsumoto, Corporal Kaori, Lieutenant Tanaka. I wondered if this man was like them. But I couldn’t walk back home, not this late in the day. And there was honesty in him. “I would be grateful for the work,” I said with a bow.
“Good. My name is Pak Jin-mo. Wait over there on that bench. I’ll be done here soon.”
*
Thirty minutes later, Jin-mo stuffed some books in a canvas satchel and threw it over his shoulder. He led me from the military headquarters to an area of town by the shipyards on the Yalu River. An evening breeze blew from the south and the day was pleasantly warm. The shipyard was crawling with men unloading supplies and military equipment from large gray ships. The ships were flying the same Russian flag that had flown over Dongfeng after the Japanese had fled. There were Russian soldiers in this area of Sinuiju and to my surprise, Korean men in military uniforms.
Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story Page 11