Everything Belongs to Us

  “Are you coming?” Namin said. She had turned a corner into the apartment where he could no longer see her. He trailed after her voice. The narrow foyer dead-ended into a bedroom. The kitchen and living room were to the right. Adjoining the living room was a small balcony dominated by a drying rack hung with laundry. Women’s laundry. Pink and yellow things with multiple straps and narrow lacy bits. On the wall was a framed photo of an American family in an outdoor setting: graying parents and a young man with a crew cut, his arms around two women who seemed to be his sisters. Sunam assumed the young man must be Hal. He was extremely tall, standing at least a head above his mother and sisters. He had brown hair and a long, bony face with sleepy, downturned eyes.

  Sunam wedged himself into a chair at the kitchen table, trying not to touch anything. The table looked sticky and was piled high with several meals’ worth of dirty dishes: A fried egg yolk that had calcified into golden resin on the plate. A bowl littered with the last curlicues of instant ramen. Three overripe persimmons resting fatly in their own leaked juices. The fruit gave off a sickly-sweet scent like fermented syrup.

  Namin stood several paces away with her back to the refrigerator, arms crossed. He knew it was probably killing her not to tackle this mess, but once she started they’d be here for hours. At least he could be grateful for her restraint. He might have expected Kyungmin to offer them something to eat or drink, but she didn’t seem troubled. She picked up what appeared to be a stack of mail and went through it with a bored expression on her face, as if he and Namin weren’t there, waiting for her to say something. Since there was nothing else to do or look at, Sunam stared at the television set in the living room. Boys and girls were singing on the steps of a carpeted stage. Automated puppets in the shape of flowers nodded to the beat, or what he assumed was the beat. The sound was muted.

  “Well,” Namin said to her sister finally. “Where is he? You said he’d be here.”

  “As you can see, he’s not.”

  “Do you expect him anytime soon? We weren’t planning on waiting all day.”

  “You and your plans,” Kyungmin said curtly. “Not everybody lives according to your schedule.” She put down the mail and settled herself in front of the TV. Now the children were doing calisthenics, turning out one foot and then the other. A grown woman with exaggerated pigtails and smears of freckles led the group, beaming at the camera.

  “The bags outside,” Namin said. “What does that mean? Are you going somewhere?”

  “Use your brain, Namin. Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”

  Namin enunciated every word, as if she were talking to a child. “Then why are there bags packed outside?”

  “Furlough,” said Kyungmin. “The man says he has furlough. I put the bags outside because I don’t want them here. I suppose he’ll come get them before he leaves.”

  They listened to the buzz of the electric clock. When Sunam glanced at Namin, she was biting her lip, apparently having reached the same conclusions that he had. Furlough—at a time like this? Anyone could see the baby was due any minute.

  Namin crossed the room and snapped off the TV. They watched the screen suck itself into blackness, punctuated by a small, static click.

  “Well, what are you going to do, then, where will you go? Don’t you think we’d better talk about this?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Kyungmin said. “You’re always getting worked up over nothing.”

  “Nothing? Look at your belly. Is that nothing?”

  “It’s a baby.” Kyungmin said the word baby as if it really were nothing. “Am I the only woman in the world ever to have a baby? I’ll be fine.”

  “But what if he doesn’t come back? What if it’s not just a furlough—”

  “If?” Kyungmin said with a strange little snarl, a smile that had dangerously changed course. “Who said he’s not coming back?”

  “Yes, if,” Namin repeated. “What’s your plan? What will you do?”

  Kyungmin stood up, her hands supporting her back, her stomach pushed to its limit. “You’re always trying to act so smart, like no one else ever had a wise thought except for you. Did you forget who sent you to school and paid for all those fancy books? Do you think I couldn’t have gone to college and been just like you—so special, so smart? There’s nothing you did that I couldn’t have done, little sister. I just let you have it.”

  Namin made a sound from the back of her throat that was half sob, half hysterical laughter. “So. You did this instead—is that it?”

  Kyungmin started clearing the table, moving around the small kitchen as if Sunam were not there. He had to stumble over the chairs to get out of her way, and even then he was always in the wrong place—she seemed to make sure of it.

  “What part of this bothers you more,” Kyungmin murmured, squeezing soap on the sponge, then dropping it unused into the sink. “The fact that you think I’m ruining my life—or that I’m ruining yours? I know why you’re here. You thought you’d come out here and put on a nice show for your precious new boyfriend. Practice a little truth telling, check that off your list, so you can continue your perfect courtship with a clear conscience? If that’s the case, you have a long way to go. A lot of checks to clear, little sister. We come from the same place, you and me, we’re just the same. I see no reason to put on any airs. Not for any college boy.”

  Sunam watched the color drain from Namin’s face. Her complexion turned nearly white with rage, her hands and neck a dangerous shade of maroon. But when she spoke, her voice was firm and controlled. “We are not the same. We will never be the same.” She said it with such ferocity that Sunam knew the conversation was over.

  Kyungmin narrowed her eyes. “College boy, get your coat,” she said. “I’ve got things to say to you privately.”

  “Ignore her,” Namin snapped in a low voice. “You don’t have to go.”

  As if he couldn’t make his own decisions. As if he needed her permission to do what he wanted.

  “It’s fine, I’ll be back in a minute,” he told her. “We’ll leave right after.”

  —

  OUTSIDE, THE SOUND of children playing bounced off the concrete walls of the facing buildings. The happy shrieking felt like a balm after the tension inside. Kyungmin leaned her elbows on the open hallway partition, gazing down at the kids below.

  As they watched, it was clear the children had organized a war of mud pies. Under a low slide, three girls and a younger boy squatted, stacking a pyramid of snowball-sized clumps. They passed them off to the older boys, who ran from swing to jungle gym like a SWAT squad, celebrating silently when they made a hit. The other side had no cover and a sporadic stockpile, but they were bigger boys and had more intimidating throwing stances.

  Kyungmin pointed out the ones she knew.

  “That one, her father is American. She has a half sister, full Korean. Doesn’t talk even though she’s three years old. That boy lives downstairs. His father died of TB in the spring. That one came begging for salt after wetting her bed. I gave her a chocolate and now she calls me auntie. Her mother hates me.”

  Sunam looked where she pointed but said nothing.

  “Feel like taking a pregnant lady for a walk?” Without waiting for an answer, Kyungmin took his arm and started down the hall. Sunam assumed they would just take a lap around the complex. Instead he found himself being led out into the neighborhood. He thought about demanding to go back but kept going, propelled by curiosity.

  They walked through alleys where trash was heaped in the gutters and young women hung out windows, smoking. One of them called out, “Sister, who’s the handsome stranger?” and Kyungmin laughed and kept walking. At the next corner, the scent of roasted sweet potatoes filled the air, reminding Sunam how long it had been since he’d eaten. He bought a bag from the grandmother vendor, but Kyungmin insisted on paying. She offered the change to the woman’s granddaughter, who had been busy stacking gingko leaves into tight yellow fans.

  �
��Thank you,” the little girl said solemnly, carefully switching the leaves to her left hand so she could accept the coins.

  The grandmother tried to make her give it back, saying, “She’ll buy candy. Rot her teeth.”

  Kyungmin gently pushed the money back at the child. “She’ll get new teeth, grandmother.”

  So this was Itaewon. Signs in a hodgepodge of Korean and English advertising beer and girls. Huge awnings hung over entries and windows like Venus flytraps, both beckoning toward and hooding the activities within. Sunam feared someone—one of the miniskirted girls yawning in the doorway—would recognize Kyungmin and embarrass him as the other woman had, but they passed on without incident.

  She led them off the main street to a row of bars all named in English. Rodeo. Starlight. My Fair Lady. “We should really get back to Namin,” Sunam said.

  “Relax, college boy, I’m just thirsty.”

  They ducked through a double row of beaded curtains at a place called Tennessee. Inside, the words Memphis Girl glowed in blue neon over the bar, and a disco ball wobbled over an empty dance floor. In the far corner, a woman mechanically counted a roll of cash, then turned it around and counted it again. She nodded at Kyungmin but did not say hello.

  Kyungmin deposited him at a booth lined with red vinyl and helped herself at the bar, bringing back a can of 7UP and two shots of whiskey. For a moment Sunam thought she planned to drink one of the shots herself, but they were both for him. “Drink them quickly before she sees,” she said, nodding at the lady with the cash. He gulped them both, but the liquor was so watered down that it could have been anything. Noticing his expression, Kyungmin laughed. “Yeah, I know. She’s cheap about her booze.” Sunam nodded.

  “You wanted to say something to me?” he asked, just as Kyungmin said, “Let’s just get to it.” Now that they were sitting face-to-face, she seemed less outlandish. Her bright lipstick had worn off, and he could even detect the resemblances between her and Namin. He realized their features were quite similar, but Kyungmin had a way of squinting askance at him, completely different from Namin’s straightforward gaze.

  “I want to talk to you about my sister,” she said. “I want to know if you’ve told her the truth.”

  His heart dropped at the word truth—but how could she possibly know? “The truth about what?”

  “I’m sure you know what I mean. This relationship is not what she thinks, is it?” Kyungmin dropped her voice. “When Namin said she was going to that fancy school of yours, I knew it would be trouble for her. What kind of people would she meet there? Boys from good families. Rich girls. Huge clothes allowances. Fancy shoes, handbags. How can you compete with that? I said. I told her she’s better off where she belongs. Save herself the heartache.”

  He laughed with relief. Was this what she wanted to talk to him about? Namin’s supposed inferiority, her inability to compete? “She’s doing just fine,” he said. “Actually she does better than everybody—including me.”

  “But that’s not what I mean,” she said. “Boys like you, they end up marrying a certain kind of young lady. They’re not just interested in test scores—she puts so much faith in them. Her personal savior, those test scores. But they’re not nearly enough for a future, are they? You don’t have to lie to me, I already know. But does she know?”

  “She’s very ambitious,” Sunam said stupidly, as if he were Namin’s teacher, not boyfriend, giving an evaluation.

  “She wants the things that everybody wants.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Of course, nothing. But other girls already have the things she wants. They don’t have to be so ambitious. Everything—the good family, the right clothes, the fancy education—they have it already. They don’t have to start so far behind.”

  He wanted to disagree on principle. He wanted to declare his love for Namin, to disprove this thesis, which Kyungmin was laying out so calmly, as if they were discussing some movement in history that had happened twenty centuries ago. But she was right. Perhaps it was not true universally, but it was true in his case and there was no point in denying it.

  Nodding, Kyungmin said, “You and I barely know each other and I doubt we’d get along even if we did—but we’re both practical people. There’s a way the world works and we understand. Not like Namin. You think she’s hard, pragmatic. But she’s a dreamer. Idealistic. She thinks telling the truth makes things better—isn’t that why she brought you here? Thinking you’d respect her and love her more for being honest? You and I know—she should have never told you a thing.”

  “And what about you?” he asked, starting to weary of her lecture. “What will you do?”

  “About Hal, you mean.”

  “And the…” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say the word. Baby.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” she asked.

  “About leaving?”

  “About coming back.”

  There was no point saying things neither of them believed. She would find out soon enough, and what he said would make no difference.

  “No,” he answered.

  She twisted her upper lip under her teeth. Outside, a young Korean couple loudly debated whether they should come inside or go someplace else. The proprietor lady called out, “We’re open, come in,” but the couple decided to move on. Grumbling, she turned up her radio. The three of them sat in the otherwise empty bar, listening to the confident tenor of the radio host inviting listeners to call in for real estate advice.

  “If Hal doesn’t come back, this baby isn’t mine,” Kyungmin said finally.

  Sunam stared. “I don’t understand. Then whose?”

  “No one’s.” She looked away, ripping the paper sheath of a plastic straw to shreds. “If it has no father, why should it have a mother?”

  Classes resumed after the Chuseok break, and while Sunam had abstractly looked forward to the return of routine to offset the chaos he felt inside, coming back to campus only highlighted how small his world had become. Just six months ago, walking the quad of SNU had felt like traversing secret passageways. There had been a sense of countless doors, so many that he could not possibly know what lay behind them all. Now the whole of campus had become swallowed by people and places all too uncomfortably familiar.

  A thousand times in the weeks since that night on the roof he’d resolved to break things off with Namin, to do the honorable thing, at least in retrospect. A thousand and one times he’d reversed himself. There was always a good reason to put it off. She was studying for an important exam. She was having a terrible time with her family. She was having a rare good day, postexam, and celebrating her success. There were too many people around. They were alone, without any distractions to limit the damage of confessing. At first Sunam genuinely believed he was protecting her feelings, looking for the right time to tell her. Then he knew it was his own fear.

  And not just fear, but also his unwillingness and greed to let go of what, even now after everything that had happened, made him feel that he was someone important and special. Because Namin had chosen him—him!—people gave him a second look, wondering if he were not as ordinary as he appeared. Sunam knew eventually, inevitably, they would dismiss him as unremarkable after all. But for those moments when he was the mystery element that Namin the genius, the Machine, had chosen over everyone else, the recognition he craved was still within reach.

  And finally—foremost among all the selfish, cowardly reasons, there was something worse than fear. It was a paralyzing misery, leagues beyond guilt. Sunam could not bear to think how it would hurt Namin to know what he had done, betraying her with Jisun. Of all the sins—unfaithfulness, cravenness, deceit—this was the greatest. That it had been Jisun who had supplanted her.

  When he calculated how many days, weeks, had passed, he could not recognize himself as the person who had allowed it to go on so long. And when it happened again with Jisun, and when it became so frequent that he counted not the infraction
s but the times he had somehow resisted, Sunam knew it was too late to tell Namin the truth.

  The way I see it, you have two choices. Jisun reiterated these points as if she were merely teaching a logic lesson, not in fact an active partner in their current disaster. Stay with her or break it off. But either way, confessing won’t help. You see that, don’t you?

  The problem was that Sunam did see. If he wanted to stay with Namin, he could not possibly tell what he’d done. She’d never accept a betrayal of this magnitude. Even if she did, Sunam could never bring himself to face her after admitting such a thing. Lying and keeping secrets were hard enough, but moving forward after telling the truth was impossible.

  And on the other hand, what was the point of telling if the decision was to break it off? It would only heap more pain on the situation, like bombing an already burning house.

  Stay with her or break it off.

  It seemed he had chosen the first option. The default option. Jisun never included herself in the world of choices he had to make, but she was there, as present as all the other questions to which he had no answer. Stay with her or break it off.

  —

  THE FIRST SEVERAL times Sunam visited the house, he brought along a heavy bag packed with textbooks and kept several paces between them even behind closed doors. Jisun lay on the bed, reading and laughing at him while he maintained his position on the opposite side of her bedroom. He fiddled with her record collection and spoke loudly about mundane things so as to broadcast his platonic intentions to anyone who might be within earshot.