by John Warley
Am I holding you too tight? It is because the bus lurches from side to side and hiccups when the potholes find the wheels, and at any moment you may be jarred from me. Can I loosen your pojaegi? There. You may move your arms for greater comfort. Your perfect little arms.
I have a surprise for you. Later. Surprises are best when you must wait for them. I should know. You yourself were a surprise. Imagine my happiness when the midwife held you up. When she cut the cord, you turned from blue to pink and you cried and I cried with you.
When we boarded the bus, the aunties in the front seat swooned when they saw your perfect skin, so like a peach. We cannot fault them for jealousy. Perhaps they have daughters who do not have your endless smile; the smile reflected in the pearl-backed mirror. Yes, I brought it with me. But I will bring it out later, because I must keep my eyes open for the tall sign with the green dragon. That is where we must get off to wait for the next bus. Min Jung told me three times: “a tall sign with a green dragon.” I hope there is not more than one such sign, but she would have told me if there was a chance for confusion. She is such a good friend.
Are you warm, little one? Let me loosen your blanket. Better? The heat on the bus is set for winter, but today is so mild I may open a window. Min Jung said we must make this trip soon, as the mild weather cannot last. I wish the flowers were in bloom for you to see and smell.
Did I tell you the pearl-backed mirror was a gift from my mother? She must have loved me very much because to get such a thing she would have to have sold at least a pig or three goats. How she could have managed such an expense I do not know. She always looked and felt so special when she held it to brush her hair. I loved to watch her pause to turn her head first one way and then another. You would not have thought her beautiful, certainly not as you are beautiful, but when she held the mirror she saw herself as special. She would not let me hold it until I was ten for fear I might drop it. But, smiling, she held it for me, turning it at angles to show me all sides of my face and head. Her smile was like sunshine, but seldom did the sun come out because farming life was so hard for her. She always told me my life would be different, but it has not been so. Your father, Hyun Su, says our lives are Buddha’s will, but I was taught that Buddha does not decide our fate. Your life will be different, of that you can be certain. How can I be sure? Ah, that it what today is about. You will see me keep a promise to you that my mother could not keep to me. My little angel, you will not farm.
The windows are so dusty and dirty that it is hard to see the beauty of this land. Let me clear a space for you to look through. You see those mountains in the distance? Lovely, are they not? This is the beauty of Korea, a beauty that you must remember.
Did you know you were born during the festival of Dongji, the shortest day of the year? Yes, it is true. That makes you even more special. The midwife was not pleased to be pulled away from the festival, but my time had come—our time had come—and we had paid her in advance. Hyun Su told her you would be a boy. He listened to Uncle Jae, as he always does when they drink their soju far into the night. Uncle Jae went to the chom chengi, the fortuneteller. So much for her special powers. I could have told them the truth. Your heart beat with mine. Your moods I recognized as my own. When I felt your restless stretch at sunrise, I stretched with you. When I cried, my belly swelled with water, or so it seemed. When I shook with fear, you trembled inside me. Shaking with fear is part of life here, where men rule with fists. Oh yes, I have felt those fists, but you will not.
Is that hunger I see? Very well, come suckle. You will need strength for the day ahead, whereas I need only to stay awake while you nurse, as the motion of the bus wants me to sleep. If I sleep, I could miss the green dragon, and then we would be lost. Here, take the breast. From their frowns, the two ajummas beside us do not approve, but today is about us and not them. And pay no attention to the bruise. It is a little better today as the purple is not so bright. Hyun Su’s fist is no match for you and me. Women have other weapons. You will have beauty as a weapon. Learn to use it and you will never be defenseless. And you will be smart, like me, but without education I am not much more than the long-haired ox or the large udder cow. Such a life is this, when a dumb animal like me must …
But there it is. The green dragon. Hurry your nursing, little one, because we must get off here. Let me adjust your podaegi so you can ride in comfort on my back.
The city is near. Look at all the motor scooters, the cars, the buses on this road. Everyone in such an angry rush. Houses with rice paper windows and doors. Stalls selling salted squid, steamed rice, kimchi, and giant garlic—tastes you do not yet know. The people in the city must be very rich, like Min Jung, who drives a car and came to see us when you were only days old. Such a nice visit we had. We must believe her when she said that it is caring for her mother and her husband’s father that prevents her from helping us, but of course she did help us by giving directions.
Now we must find a bus with this number. She wrote it down for me. The cars are passing by so fast; such dust everywhere. The green dragon is very tall. I am glad it is not real. The rest of the day is real enough.
I have brothers you have not met. Three brothers older than I. My parents felt so blessed to hang the red chili peppers from our gate. Sons are celebrated. Daughters are tolerated. It has been that way since our ancestors came to this land. You will be celebrated. How do I know? I just know, in the same way I knew you would be born a girl, no matter what Hyun Su or Uncle Jae or the chom chengi said. Now we must climb on this next bus, which has a number matching the one Min Jung wrote down. She said to sit near the driver, who will tell us where to get off. One hour to the Jongam police station, she said. She measures time in hours, by a watch. How modern Min Jung is. You will be modern, too. You will wear a watch and drive a car and never work in a field. Now sleep, for our trial is coming.
How tall these buildings are. I wish I could read the signs I see everywhere. Some are so big they would stretch from Hyun Su’s house to the edge of the rice field, and so high off the ground they would look down on the cherry trees by the goat path. There is a large boy with a ball. And over there a smiling woman is stirring a pot. What is she making? Does she have a daughter to feed? And there are three men in white coats with something around their necks. It is all so confusing. The bus stops and begins again, so that I am beginning to feel as I did before she moved within me. I cannot be sick on the bus. The driver will put us out and then how would I find the police station with the high hedge? I do not think I can do this. But I must.
That was a very short nap, little one, but who can sleep with the cars and buses making all this noise and stopping for people who walk in front of them. The sun is high so we must be close. I want to get off this bus, yet I do not want to get off the bus.
Stopped again? The driver is pointing to the door. “Komapsumnida,” thank you. We are here, and there is the high hedge. There are the steps leading up to the olive door with the peeling paint Min Jung told me about. She has been right about everything. Such a good friend.
Here in the shelter of the high hedge, I must tell you things. I loved your father, but I loved him before we could be married. When he learned of my condition, he refused to marry me and beat me. He said I counted the days wrong. If I did it was a simple mistake, but one I cannot regret because it brought me you. I went to my mother. At first she insisted on nak-tae, abortion, but like the bad daughter I had become I defied her and refused. As I grew bigger, mother softened, and by the end, just before Dongji, she pleaded with her father, your grandfather, to let me keep you if you were a boy. But grandfather would not hear of it, boy or girl. “Impossible,” he said. “She has brought shame to the family. Get rid of it.” I asked the midwife to contact Min Jung, who brought with her a magazine from America, where everyone must be rich. It showed beautiful people living in castles. She said that you could be sent to America, to grow up with beautiful people and wear a watch and drive a car and not farm. She t
old me to bring you to this door, to hide in this hedge until no one is looking, and to set you down on the steps. That is why we have come to Seoul.
And now, my lotus blossom, my own sweet Soo Yun, I must leave you. Here in the shelter of the high hedge, we must say goodbye. You must not hate me for this. I am your mother, Jong Sim, and like my mother and her mother I must do what is best for my daughter. When I place you on the steps, you must raise your cries above my own so they will take you in. You are Soo Yun. It means perfect lotus blossom. Min Jung wrote your name and I have pinned it to your linen. Here is the pearl-backed mirror. I am putting it in your podaegi. When they take you in, they will find the mirror and know you are special. Min Jung said giving up the mirror is not necessary, but I must leave you with something more than a name. One day, in America, when you count hours on a watch and drive a car and do not farm, you may thank me. Be a good girl for your new mother.
Now, it is time. The steps are warm in the sunshine. Cry, yes, cry, and they will take you in. Listen to your mother. You must cry. Until we meet again in heaven, Soo Yun.
2
Hana
I am ambidextrous. Have been since I was six. I write, eat and throw with either hand. And answer the phone, which is how I remember the call from Jongam that afternoon. Superstitious nonsense probably explains this pattern I thought I had noticed, but for a long time the pattern seemed to hold: bad news came into my right ear because I answered the phone with my right hand. The death of my grandmother? Right ear. An auto accident involving my parents and sister? Right ear. My ex-boyfriend’s sojuaided epiphany that we should see other people? Right ear. Conversely, my promotion to head of the ward? Left ear. The call from the hospital to let me know my parents and sister were okay? Left ear. The plea from my ex-boyfriend to disregard the call he made the night before? Well, you get the picture, which is why the call from Jongam stuck in my memory. Calls from the police station with news of yet another abandoned infant belonged in the right ear. With three infants in every crib, we had no room for more. My ward was rated for thirty children, ages six and under, and when that call came in we hovered near fifty.
I looked out the window to confirm what I felt in my bones; the unseasonably mild January day had deteriorated into something more typical of Seoul in winter. Darkening clouds promised snow. Wind blew newspapers along the sidewalk in front of the bank across the street. Pedestrians cinched up coats against the chill I was sure to feel the moment I stepped outside. Jongam is a fifteen minute walk, but Korean weather in its worst mood can make that mile feel like a marathon. I told my assistant to keep the lid on; that I would return within the hour and to make a space in the nursery.
As I approached the station, habit and muscle memory carried me toward the old door, its green paint peeling now that a newer one on the opposite side of the building had been put into service. I retraced my steps and entered. The room has a perpetual smell of old vinyl and cheap aftershave. The receptionist motioned me through to an office in the back. As I expected, given the late afternoon hour, Captain Oh sipped tea with his deputy, Chan Wook Park. The captain was a jaundiced man with a massive head, thinning hair and sickly skin. I had spent enough time here to get to know something about him. Nearing retirement, he rarely strayed from his favorite topics of conversation, his vegetable garden and the unfair treatment Jongam received compared with other stations. When I entered, he motioned me toward a chair without breaking off the sentence he was then in the middle of.
“… so Sinmun-No and Ulchi-Ro, those districts get what they want,” he said bitterly. “Extra manpower, new equipment, anything. But at Jongam, we get leftovers. Always leftovers.” This theme never lost its appeal to the captain, who seemed to me to take little notice of and no comfort from the virtual absence of crime in Jongam.
Chan Wook Park, seated near me, said, “The door at least is new.”
Captain Oh gave a dismissive groan. “If they could have found a used door, it would have ended up here.”
Then I noticed a fourth person in the room. She sat in the corner, partly concealed by a filing cabinet. In her lap she held what could only have been an infant. On making eye contact, we both bowed our heads faintly as the captain described to his visibly bored deputy the layout of his garden.
“The snow peas in the first two rows, the corn sowed in the last row, the westernmost row, so as not to put other plants in morning’s shadow when it eventually towers above them.”
Chan Wook Park suggested the garden be oriented east and west, an idea the captain seemed to be pondering when a loud squawk from the woman’s lap reminded the men of the business at hand. Captain Oh looked at me.
“This is Mi Cha. She found it by the old door.”
Mi Cha looked to be about seventy, but with Korean women it can be hard to tell. “You should put up a sign,” she said with a hint of contempt in her craggy voice. “She would have died had I not come along. She may still die. She is hot with fever.”
Captain Oh, unaccustomed to being scolded, particularly by a woman, seemed to take this advice in stride. I later learned that Mi Cha lived nearby, a fixture in the neighborhood for longer than most remembered. She knew all of the policemen who worked out of Jongam Precinct. She used its doorway as liberally as she used her own, venturing over one or two times a day as a cure for loneliness and to deliver food for the men. She had perfected her memorable kimchi on the palates of three sons and eleven grandchildren, and the massive clay jar in which she stored it must have been bottomless. She lived alone now, but continued turning out her specialty in quantities adequate for the three shifts at Jongam, with whom she shared it compulsively. She had just returned from a six week visit to the country home of her middle son. In her habit of the last ten years, she turned up the walkway toward the old door, just as I had done.
I rose, crossed the room, and took a chair beside her. Together we stared down at the child, whose nicely proportioned face was florid with fever, her damp hair matted against the shawl Mi Cha had placed around her.
“I came in search of my dog,” the woman said. “Mojo. He has never run off, and I thought one of the policemen might have seen him. It is a good thing the child was crying so, because I may not have seen her. I changed her just before you arrived.”
At that moment the baby winced as if in pain and began to cry so loudly the men ceased conversation.
“Shut her up,” Captain Oh ordered.
Mi Cha shifted the child from her lap to her shoulder, patting her back in rhythmic measure. The cries and their volume increased.
“Let me try,” I said. At the instant of exchange, the child redoubled her cries. Her face, already flushed in the grip of fever, darkened to a pagan mask of crimson rage. Freed from the bunting, her hands gnarled into fists so compressed that they grew white from lack of circulation. Her cries came in waves, with each outpouring demanding new air from her lungs to fully register in pitch and amplification her complete indignation.
“Such anger, my little one, such anger,” I said, placing one hand under the head while my other hand supported the body. I smiled, and I suppose she must have sensed new circumstances in my hands and voice because, whether startled or comforted, she fell silent.
“You have a knack,” said Mi Cha.
“It will not last,” I said. “She needs a doctor.”
“What becomes of such children?” asked Mi Cha.
“She is very young. If she is healthy, she may be adopted by Americans.”
“By Americans?” The old woman shook her head, and the scowl which crossed her face at that moment was one of disgust, but whether reserved for Americans, or for Koreans who gave away their offspring, I could not read.
The infant grew impatient with our conversation. The discussion of her future held no interest for one with needs so immediate. As she squirmed and fretted toward another outburst, I thanked Mi Cha and turned to Chan Wook Park.
“Let me sign for her and go. She needs medicine.”
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As Chan Wook Park searched for a release, opening and closing desk drawers in haphazard inefficiency, Mi Cha asked if anyone had reported seeing Mojo. Captain Oh, preparing to leave and walking toward his coat hanging from a hook near the window, halted in mid-step. “And where is Mojo?”
“Gone. I left him in the care of my neighbor while I was away. She saw him yesterday, and I was certain he would appear today. I was coming to ask your boys if they had seen him when I found this infant.”
The fringes of the captain’s brow converged upon the center, furrowing the area between his wide-set eyes. “Mojo missing. This is most unfortunate.”
“He has never run off. I fear the worst.”
“Do not lose hope. I will have the men look out for him.” He turned toward Chan Wook Park. “Instruct the shift change to keep eyes open for Mojo. And the men getting off can watch for him on their way home. He is a fine dog. We need to locate him for Mi Cha.”
“Many thanks, captain.”
“We are like sons here, Mi Cha. What kind of sons would let their mother’s dog stray?”
“You are very kind.”
I pulled the child closer. Her heat radiated through me like a brazier. The captain’s concern for Mojo was touching, but in a country that eats dog he unwittingly made a statement about girls such as the one in my arms—little female corks set adrift by who knows who to float about in an uncertain ocean, where the tide is always rising and the shoals are sharp and submerged. I am one of them—a girl, that is—and this is why I do what I do.
Chan Wook Park found the release and I scrawled a signature. I was almost out the door when Mi Cha called.
“I almost forgot,” she said, walking toward me and slipping something from her pocket. “This mirror was wrapped up with her.”