by Eugenia Kim
With a bucket of water and a rag, Inja washed the walls and remembered having heard that her father had built this house with his own hands. What did his hands look like, and would she ever know them? Now they were home, and a new life would begin. Now the war was over, and perhaps her American family would return. She stopped scrubbing, and water dripped from the rags and puddled on the floor. She hadn’t ever before wondered what it would be like when—or if—her parents returned, nor had Uncle ever mentioned such a thing. Her mother’s letters spoke of “our reunion” and “after the war,” a time that had now arrived. Unable and unwilling to imagine it, she sopped up the spill and edged the idea out of her thoughts as easily as she wrung out the rags.
12
* * *
Professions
Traces of sunrise tinted the dawn sky pink on Easter Sunday, 1954. Though the temperature was predicted to reach eighty by midday, the morning was cool. Miran donned a beige sweater over a peach-colored Easter dress that Najin had sewn, identical to the dress she’d sent to her sister in Seoul. Miran wondered if it was as scratchy around the neck for her sister as it was for her. She tugged on donated white gloves that looked almost new. Her mother wore a pale green hanbok—traditional dress because they would be in the company of wounded Korean War veterans at the Walter Reed Army Hospital for Easter sunrise service. Her father wore a black suit, his clerical collar and vest, and had laid his minister’s robe and shawl on the back seat of the Plymouth. He had been invited to give the sermon and had spent long hours writing his talk on sacrifice and resurrection that would end with a special note of gratitude to these American young men and their fallen brethren.
In previous years at this sunrise service, they’d stood on the ridge of a broad valley of lawn behind the hospital. As before, potted Easter lilies’ heavy sweetness lined the pathways, and hyacinths bobbed in the flower beds below azaleas of many colors. Today Miran and Najin sat on the reserved folding chairs in front of the platform, upon which Calvin sat with other clergy behind the pulpit for the Christian but nondenominational service. The seating area was set aside for military dignitaries, veterans’ family members, and soldiers who could walk with or without crutches, and a wider area of the yard was reserved for the wounded, who were escorted out in wheelchairs and on gurneys. Miran couldn’t help but stare at the stark white bandages visible on some of the men, scars that marred facial features, gazes that looked nowhere, gaps where limbs should be. She admired the men in white pushing those wheelchairs and gurneys, the women in navy blue capes and crisp nurses’ caps standing nearby, and wanted to know what had happened to these young men who’d gone to war in her parents’ country.
Her father, the shortest man on the platform, seemed to be regarded with respect by the others, and she was impressed by his command of the pulpit, his cadence in delivering the sermon. On occasion she had heard him give sermons in English as guest minister at the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, but this dawning day seemed to bestow on him a majesty she hadn’t known he possessed. She did not rustle in her seat, suck on Life Savers, or doodle on the program as she did at Korean church; she sat rapt to be able to understand all the words he spoke, if not the depth of their meaning. His message recognized these heroic men who suffered not for material gain and perhaps not for any purpose they could easily discern in such a distant and foreign nation, but for duty, for an idea of freedom. His passionate gratitude for their service gave her determination to be of service to the men in return. She would be a nurse.
Later that morning at home, while Calvin dressed a ham with pineapple and cloves, Najin and Miran sat at the table dyeing hard-boiled eggs, a first for the family. Calvin had bought the egg dye on a whim while grocery shopping for their big Easter dinner. Miran wore the one pair of rubber gloves in the house, and it wasn’t long before Najin’s fingers were multicolored from fishing the eggs out of their hot dye baths. Miran slipped a pale pink egg into the crate to dry, and Najin’s wet fingers accidentally dripped a little blue on its top. She laughed. “It looks like you, Yeobo! See, Miran, how it looks like Dad’s hair? Let’s get crayons and pens and make them people.”
They spent the remainder of the morning laughing and making a mess of things, the kitchen ripe with the smells of dye vinegar and baking ham. The gloves were too awkward for fine handiwork, and soon Miran’s fingers were as stained and colorful as her mother’s. Najin discovered how the wax crayons resisted the dye, and used this decorating technique to make likenesses of each of their guests for place cards. Such fun they had that morning, and all the guests laughed at their egg images and at Najin’s and Miran’s mutually colored fingertips. “She’s a true artist,” said Najin, smiling at her daughter.
Days later at the public library, Miran read about Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. Throughout that year, reading two steps above her grade level, she read books about student nurses. Those stories were filled with problems with head nurses and attractive doctors, crabby patients and friends who were mean to each other to get ahead. She decided to be a librarian.
That autumn they celebrated her Korean sister’s birthday, September 24, with hot dogs, cake, Pepsi-Cola, and balloons taped to the walls, just as they celebrated hers every December 12. Her mother gave her a hug, a deliberate act of affection so rare she wiggled out of it right away. Najin turned with tears in her eyes that Miran didn’t understand weren’t about her, and Calvin made a fuss of cutting the cake. “It’s a special time,” said Najin. “You’re both the same age until December. Like twins.”
Miran, disoriented, said, “No, it’s her birthday, not mine.” She didn’t even know this Korean sister who was supposed to be her twin and could barely recall seeing her in photographs. There were framed portraits of Miran’s grandparents in their bedroom, but none of her sister. And where were pictures of her father’s Korean family? The earliest photos she’d seen of herself were as a toddler on the ship traveling to America. She would be a photographer, like Margaret Bourke-White from LIFE magazine. She’d make a record of herself and her parents, and maybe the relatives to whom they continued to send packages would send pictures, so she could see if she and her sister of the same age for the winter months looked as closely alike as twins.
A few days later when she taped shut the next package going overseas and saw a Brownie camera and several rolls of film tucked inside, she understood it was one more thing war-torn Korea didn’t have. She would be a missionary and then she could also be a nurse, librarian, and photographer—and see for herself how near a twin she was to her foreign sister.
24 September 1954, Friday. Inja’s eighth birthday. Now the girls are the same age again. Sometimes I imagine out of the corner of my eye it is Inja at home, and such longing fills my arms that I go over and give Miran a hug. She squirms away in surprise. It is quiet with Miran back in school this fall.
134th package to Han Ilsun
6 yds. cotton flannel
2 women’s suit (Victoria’s)
3 heavy pants given by some club
2 hand towels
1 Pond’s cream
2 fluffy slippers for Aunt and housegirl
2 school dresses—twins with Miran
1 Brownie camera, 6 rolls film
2 painting colors and brush—birthday presents
art paper
kids’ scissors
2 picture books
4 Lux soap
22 lbs. $3.28
13
* * *
Postwar Story
The autumn after Armistice Day hardened into winter. What vegetation was left in Seoul’s mountainous forests—already stripped of trees during the war—was denuded to mud by the hundreds of thousands of returning denizens seeking to heat their homes or shacks, while Americans worked with the Rhee government to rebuild the demolished city. The cold north winds roared unhindered down the stark mountain slopes and rattled through the house. Aunt’s cousin Ara, ten years older than Inja, had come from the country to b
e housekeeper and cook. Their rice was no longer burnt or watery, and Ara addressed Grandmother’s needs—she had become incontinent and the diapers were a terrible chore. Ara had the same pretty oval-shaped face as Aunt, with narrow straight eyes like two lively lines on fine creamy paper. At first she was quiet and unsure, but soon her singing rang through the house as she washed floors. Plans for Christmas 1953 did little to brighten the dreary winter, until shortly before the holiday Uncle announced to the family that at last Aunt was pregnant. The ensuing jubilation was tempered by the lack of nutritious food for Aunt and other hardships of postwar restoration.
By the following springtime in 1954, the city of Seoul remained in disorder. Inflation ran high and reconstruction slowed, but main roadways were clear, and vendors crowded the markets. Many new shops—mere shacks—cropped up in Itaewon by the central American military garrison at Yongsan, as did the inevitable drinking establishments and shantytowns of prostitutes. Except in the vicinities of military bases, electricity was rare, streetlights nonexistent, and nearly all of the few vehicles on the streets belonged to the army.
Education was made a priority during restoration, and though Inja had attended school soon after returning to Seoul, she was now enrolled in a new elementary school for girls a thirty-minute walk from home. Uncle convinced Mr. Jeon, with whom they’d shared the boxcar, to buy the land of the burned-down house across the road, and workmen were building a Western-style brick house. Grandfather told Inja such a modern structure would chase away the communist ghosts, and she was relieved. She played with Hyo for hours in those piles of bricks, constructing forts, buildings, and soon an entire town, until the workmen needed the bricks to finish the house. Still, many were left in the yard, and they played and became friends, despite his family being rich and hers poor. Hyo told her he’d kept the chewing gum for a week, beating her record of six days.
On May 17, Buddha’s birthday and a school holiday, Uncle and Inja walked to church to drop off a bundle of clothes. She wore gray cotton trousers and a white blouse from the last set of packages, and as she slipped her hand under Uncle’s elbow, she smelled the mothballs her mother always tucked among the garments. Though her mother often wrote “when we are together” in her letters, no one mentioned specifics about a reunion. It had always been something to hope for, which was fine because it seemed impossible, but how and when would it happen? Would it be here at home or there in America? If it were to be the latter, how would she travel to America, and would all the family go? Aunt’s pregnancy and her grandparents’ frailty, as well as the unimaginable cost, would prevent them from leaving Seoul. And what would happen to Ara? Surely after losing Cook and Yun, they wouldn’t leave her behind. Inja’s footsteps crackled beside Uncle’s on the pebbly road, and they passed a temple bedecked with paper lanterns. She wasn’t supposed to pray to Buddha, and she was afraid to pray to God, not knowing what to pray for. Why would anyone pray for there to be no hope for something as exciting as an American reunion?
“Will they come to Seoul now?” she said, head bowed.
“What? Your family? Of course not!” Uncle gazed at her and shifted the bundle under one arm to hold her hand. “It’s darkest beneath the lamp,” he muttered, meaning one does not often see what is closest at hand. Inja breathed the mothball smell from her collar. “Things have changed,” said Uncle, and she knew he meant “since the war.”
“Your mom and dad can’t come back now. Your father is a big man on the radio that broadcasts democratic ideas to North Korea, anti-communist ideas, you understand?”
She nodded, impressed with her important father—on the radio! They didn’t own a radio, though one was often blaring in the square. “Is that him on the radio downtown?”
“Wouldn’t that be amazing? But no, those are all Seoul stations.” He stopped walking and turned to her. “Also, around the time you were born, he worked for the American military. The communists would target him as an American spy, a wanted man. With so many North Korean kidnappings these days, all kinds of people are disappearing, like that film star and her director husband, taken right off the street. It would be dangerous for him to return.”
It thrilled Inja to know he would be considered a spy, but she wasn’t sure how she felt about them never coming back. They resumed walking.
“Your parents are now trying to bring you to America, but it’s costly and complicated.”
They reached the church, and she paused on the steps and touched his elbow. “Does it mean I won’t have to go?”
“Not for a while. It could be a long time. Your mother is heartsick with missing you, and your father is trying to find a way.” Uncle dropped his bundle and held her shoulders. “Do you mind very much?”
To show that she was actually quite relieved, she wrapped her arms around him. When they disengaged, his eyes, wet with love, shone. He said something prayerful about the great measure of his sister’s love, such that she’d leave her firstborn with him. Inja examined him, her eyebrows raised in question, but he wiped his eyes and drew her into the church.
After they dropped off the bundle of clothes in the narthex, they entered the sanctuary and slid into a back pew halfway illuminated by colored light from an intact stained-glass window, dust particles wafting in its rainbow hues. Uncle patted the warm wood, inviting her to sit closer. “There’s something else you should know because you’re older now. You’ve lived through war, so I think you can understand how such a thing can happen.”
She was eight, but she knew he meant she was old enough to know why their church had most of its windows broken and covered with canvas, the Sunday school wing a jumble of crumbling walls and broken roof tiles, most of the congregation scattered.
“I will tell you a story about a baby who came before you were born.”
“Your baby girl? My cousin who died?” She’d heard about Uncle’s daughter on occasion, a fact from before she was born about a little girl named Sun-ok who’d gotten pneumonia. She figured it made Aunt’s pregnancy all the more precious to them. What a joy it would be to have a cute baby in the house!
He squeezed her knee, smiling, but with sad eyes. “It’s good of you to remember the cousin you never met. No, this is about a different baby girl.”
Inja settled in beside him, legs crossed on the seat, chin in her palms, the sun warm on her hair. Uncle’s voice echoed dully in the empty sanctuary like a bell with a muted clapper. “Did you know that during the war your mother was a midwife?”
He meant the war with the Japanese, not the war they had just lived through. “She helped women deliver their babies,” said Inja, “mostly poor women who couldn’t pay.”
“Who told you that?” he said, pleased.
“Halmeoni.”
“Yes, she helped many mothers like that. And this story is about such a mother. It was a cold winter, and everyone was hungry those days . . .” He explained that Inja’s father’s job with the American military government took him all around the country. He’d been named Minister of Education and was tasked with examining all the high schools and universities to see which should stay open, merge, or close. He traveled for weeks at a time and was away that night.
“A woman came to our gate and shouted for the midwife. She was already in labor, and it was strange that she hadn’t gone to the hospital. In the years under the Japanese, many women wanted to avoid their hospitals, but now it was all Korean doctors and American missionary doctors, and your mother hadn’t delivered babies for some time, so we were surprised. I went to see who was shouting, and the woman stumbled through the gate like an apparition. She was very distressed.” Long pause.
“Your grandfather and I were in the sitting room on the other side of the house, but we heard the piteous cries of the woman being helped by your mom, grandmother, and aunt. The baby was a porcelain-hued girl, but then she turned blue. Your mother told Aunt to take care of the woman, who was dazed, crying, saying crazy things. They worried she might have an infection or wa
s bleeding inside, but your mother was occupied with the baby. She held the infant, chest down, and rubbed her back, and she started breathing. I saw her in the kitchen where they’d prepared warm water and clean cloths. Yah, she was a beautiful baby! Skin like raw silk, small ears and a bud of a nose, thick hair—and everyone cooed to see such perfect features. Aunt came in to say that the woman had delivered the afterbirth and was calm now and resting, and we admired the newborn who mewed like a kitten and wiggled just as she was supposed to.
“Your mother wrapped up the baby and went in to give her to the woman, but she was gone.”
“Without her baby?”
“Yes.” Uncle seemed to have words teetering on the edge of his lips, but he remained thoughtful. “She ran away in the minute or two Aunt had left her alone. She took her clothes, even the wet and bloody things, stole a quilt, and disappeared. I ran outside in the cold, and even though there was curfew, I went everywhere trying to find her. I searched for many days and learned from some people in the neighborhood that she was a widow who had moved away some months ago. I never found her.” He shifted in his seat and gazed at the altar far ahead.
In that silence, Inja remembered the mother and her son from the river, separated in the kingdom of heaven. She had seen the picture of the children’s graveyard in her Bible book many times since, and it always struck her with a longing for something she couldn’t name.
“We asked at the hospital and among church people if someone could take the baby, but food was scarce and nobody could take her. Your mother registered the baby as abandoned and kept her. We were worried that your father wouldn’t approve, but he accepted her like that.” He clapped once, and the sound reverberated in the lofty damaged ceiling of the sanctuary.