The Kinship of Secrets

by Eugenia Kim

  Miran sighed and did the right thing. “I’m sorry, Dad. I had so much fun, and they’re so different from us.” She noticed he was taking a circuitous route home.

  “I know. It is your first extended visit outside the house, so some adjustment is to be expected. They do live quite extravagantly, but they’ve been generous with us, too.” He patted the steering wheel, and she remembered Dr. Kim had given them the car years ago when they were thick into the dog-and-pony shows. It was rusted in places on the chrome bumpers but without a single dent, and her dad had learned how to maintain the motor to keep it running reliably. “We just don’t have that kind of money, and even if we did, much of it would still go to support your sister and your uncle’s family in Seoul.”

  Her dad was so measured in his speech, always thoughtful and distant—and so unlike Dr. Kim, who joked and hugged Sarah with ease. Calvin turned the Plymouth onto Thirteenth Street, which led farther away from their house. “We missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you guys too,” she lied. Their daily calls to check in had made her crabby and monosyllabic on the telephone. “How’s Mom?” she said dutifully.

  “Making kimchi. Your mother was always a hard worker, and she’s much happier these days having that teaching job.”

  “I wish I were old enough to have a job. I could earn my own money and buy Mom a television.” Miran had planned to ask him for a weekly allowance beyond the milk money, but her outburst had squandered that opportunity. She hoped he’d get the hint with this approach.

  “Ask, and ye shall receive,” said minister Dad. “I’ll buy you anything you need, within reason.” He had gotten the hint, as this was his usual response to her occasional—and denied—request for a weekly stipend.

  “A television.”

  “Can’t afford it.”

  “Fifty cents a week?”

  “I have an idea for you to consider that’s better than that, and I’ve been meaning to discuss it with you. Miss Lone wants help with her finances.”

  Miran frowned. “You mean she needs money and that’s why I can’t have an allowance?”

  He laughed. “Not at all. She has a job for you, if you’re—”

  “—yes, I’ll do it,” she said. Miss Lone had been a frequent visitor to their house lately, bringing documents and having long talks with both her parents in Korean. Miran felt less shy with her now, as Miss Lone always took time to have a word or two in English with Miran—the usual stuff about school or her piano lessons, but it was something.

  “Before knowing what it is?”

  “Yes. What does it pay?”

  “Goodness gracious. Don’t put the wagon before the horse,” he said, smiling.

  “Don’t put the cart before the horse. Mom’s got that already,” she said, referring to her mother’s idiom collection.

  “Just testing you.”

  “No, Dad, you weren’t!” said Miran, and they laughed.

  Thus it was repaired between them, and Calvin told her that Miss Lone, being a spinster, wanted to invest in her future. She needed help charting daily rates for certain companies. It meant that Miran would learn how to read the stock market pages. The number of companies she’d chart could vary from five to fifteen, and the pay was a dollar a week. They were heading there now, something he would’ve told her earlier if he’d had an opportunity. She took this mild rebuke easily and apologized for her earlier crabbiness.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You’re welcome. Get ready for your first job interview.”

  She straightened her blouse, tucked it into the matching capri pants, and wondered how much it cost to buy a television. At Miss Lone’s apartment she aced the “interview,” got a lesson on how to read the New York Stock Exchange listings, and received graph paper, a colored pencil with red on one end for when the prices went down, and blue on the other for up, a ruler, and a list of twelve companies and their abbreviations.

  While Miss Lone and Calvin had coffee in the living room, Miran sipped a Pepsi at the dining room table and charted the first stock on the list: IBM, which stood for International Business Machines. She heard the grownups mention “immigration,” “congressional bill,” “laws,” and “resident” several times and with such intensity that on the way home Miran put stock prices and even the price of a television out of her mind.

  “Is it okay if I ask what you and Miss Lone were talking about?” Miran had learned “polite” was the best way to be nosy. “And why she’s been coming over so much?”

  “It’s complicated, but you know we’ve been trying to bring Inja here for years.” He turned onto Military Road. “Soon after the war, we began to ask government officials how we could reunite our family, and it was discovered that our visas had long expired. We hadn’t paid any attention to that business because of the war, and we had become what they called ‘illegal aliens,’ like creatures from Mars.” He smiled but grew quickly serious. “That very day I was issued a procedural arrest, meaning I had broken the law, but did not have to go to jail like a common criminal.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes, indeed. For years now, Miss Lone’s congressman has helped us gain the correct legal status to live and work here. I needed to have a green card, which meant we could be ‘permanent legal residents.’ Then, two private laws were passed last year that helped make us legal. That was the first step.”

  “Me, too?”

  “Yes,” said Calvin. “Your name was on that law with ours. Whatever happens to me and your mother happens to you, though it doesn’t apply to Inja since she doesn’t live with us. Miss Lone has advised us to pursue a different legal path to allow her to rejoin us, and part of that step is for us to become American citizens. New changes in the immigration laws have made it more complex, but you and I will study to become citizens soon.”

  “Cool.” She saw familiar buildings and houses go by as they crossed town toward home. And she wondered about Inja actually coming to live with them. Would she even like her? Something about that thought felt wrong, as if having a sister meant they’d automatically like—and even love—each other. But what if they didn’t?

  19

  * * *

  Collect Call

  A quiet Christmas and New Year’s 1958 came and went. The packages from Inja’s mother grew scarce, though her letters remained frequent. Najin’s job teaching Korean to intelligence officers had been increased to five days a week, and she still made kimchi for restaurants. Now she sent checks to Uncle rather than packages.

  Seonil, two and a half years old and curious about everything, had Aunt veering from laughter to wrath. One cold day in early March, Yuna came over to see Inja’s Bible storybook. They sat against the wall of the sitting room, and Inja explained the pictures, since Yuna was Buddhist. Grandfather hobbled in with a bowl of that awful nutritional medicine. The smell—something between mushroom and sewer—pervaded the room, and Yuna made an “ugh” face.

  “I’ll take it later, Harabeoji,” said Inja.

  “Your family suffers so you can have this!” He leaped across the room with sudden agility, and the medicine sloshed on her legs. He yanked her arm to stand, and she drank the potion, amazed at his burst of strength, and worse—that he’d thoroughly shamed her in front of Yuna. He took the bowl and left. Yuna closed the book and went home. What had happened to her beloved Grandfather? Everything was different now. With Uncle always looking for work and Seonil taking the rest of his time, Inja had no one. She put her head on her book and the tears ran.

  The next day Grandfather stayed in bed. Inja thought it was her fault. After school she lingered by his door while Uncle rubbed his stomach. “Bury me in a high dry place, in the sun,” he said. “A high dry place.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Uncle. “Your stomach always gives you trouble and you always get better.” But he promised he would.

  He couldn’t eat for four days. Ara fed him clear soup that dribbled down his beard. “Remember the slingshot an
d the birds?” Inja said to him. “Remember the little hollow bones?” Then she felt bad, since he himself was mostly bones.

  That night he kept everyone awake groaning in pain. Uncle took him to the hospital, and Grandfather lay in bed there nine days. During that period Uncle visited Mr. Jeon across the street to ask for a loan for the doctor bills. Mr. Jeon paid for the entire hospitalization and also bought a funeral plot for Inja’s grandparents on the mountain cemetery in Osan. Uncle remembered Grandfather’s request and chose a plot three-fourths up the mountain, and three-fourths more expensive. The cemetery director guaranteed it was dry.

  “How can we ever pay him back?” said Aunt.

  “He insists it’s not a loan. The price of his land and house has grown ten times, and he says he owes me for the good advice to build there when we came back from Busan. He’s been investing in real estate since then. Inja’s mother will help me pay him back.” Across the road the Jeons’ house lay on a sprawling lot that dropped to a breathtaking overlook of the valley downtown. All those childhood days Inja had played with Hyo in the yard, she had never noticed the view. Hyo went to a boys’ school, and she saw him now and then in the neighborhood, but his rich life made her shy, and she always turned her head as if she hadn’t seen him so he wouldn’t feel obliged to say hello. Tall office and apartment buildings rose throughout the city, and land with spectacular views like those from his yard had become precious commodities. “We should save to buy the adjoining burial plot for us,” said Uncle.

  “As if we can save,” said Aunt, ending the conversation.

  Grandfather came home without a diagnosis or treatment, though Uncle was certain he had stomach cancer. During his time in the hospital, Grandfather’s cheeks had hollowed and his stomach had grown distended, rocklike. He lay on his quilts, too weak to sit, and cried out for Uncle to massage his belly. Though earlier that winter Aunt’s complaints had escalated about the two senile old people whose demands overtook the house, she now treated him gently, dripping water between his lips.

  Inja loved her grandparents still—how could she not—but they were greatly altered, unwell and aged. Inja spent hours keeping Grandmother company, doing what she asked, again and again, telling her about school, over and over, and caring for her feet. Though cheerful and complacent, when confused Grandmother grew anxious and needed constant explanation until Inja had to go out, no matter the weather, so as not to repeat the same thing once more. “Why’s that man hollering?” she’d say. “Can’t you make him stop that moaning?”

  Grandfather’s biggest comfort was Uncle, rubbing his stomach. Inja knew he was dying. She thought about the crematorium in Busan, the bodies lurching in shrouds on the back of the trucks going up the hill. But her grandfather wouldn’t be incinerated like those dreadful dead dragged out of battlefields and ditches, their ash falling like snow over all of Ami-dong. Uncle had repeatedly promised him a high mountain grave—dry, calm, and close to the stars.

  He died two days after coming home, the evening before Good Friday. Inja was woken by Aunt’s funereal wailing, and the unusual subsequent silence confirmed what she’d guessed. In the moonlight Grandmother lay bathed in muted silver beside her in their blankets, sleeping peacefully, her face relaxed. Inja decided not to wake her. April winds rattled through the window crevices, and she donned a sweater and went to Grandfather’s sickroom, her bare feet grateful for the heated ondol floor.

  Ara and Seonil clung to the door frame, both crying soundlessly, which made Inja cry, too. Poor Harabeoji, to die in such pain. The blankets had been pulled away, and his thin chest and legs lay twisted and wrinkled in his clothes. Aunt and Uncle were doing something around his head. Even before she saw his face, she saw that his body was different, lax. They had tied a cloth under Grandfather’s chin to keep his mouth closed, and it shocked her to see how lifeless he was. He was not at all in that body, and this absence saddened and frightened her. She clung to the doorway with Ara and Seonil. But then she heard Uncle praying, giving thanks that Grandfather was freed from his agony. She thought of Grandmother, calm in her sleep, and it made her think of him that way, too.

  Uncle saw her, his eyes reddened and his nose running. Aunt, who also had teary eyes, gave him a handkerchief, her gesture tender. Uncle said a prayer, faltering, and told everyone to go to bed. He straightened the blankets, turned down the oil lamp, and sat on his knees near Grandfather’s body, where he would keep vigil all night until the undertaker came in the morning to perform the rituals of burial.

  When Inja crawled back into bed, Grandmother stirred, said something unintelligible in her sleep, a sigh coming deep from her lungs. Inja prayed for Grandfather, hoping he would visit Grandmother’s dreams to say goodbye. They had always been old to her. She prayed he would have the young man’s body he’d had before his back was ruined by the Japanese policemen on Sam‑il. She prayed he’d leave this earth at peace knowing that with Seonil, the august 400-year line of Hans would continue.

  Uncle shook Inja awake, and her eyes opened to the night-dark room. “Put something warm on,” he whispered.

  “What time is it?” She crawled out of the quilts.

  “About six o’clock. Ajumeoni is keeping vigil for Harabeoji for now. I shouldn’t leave, but we’ve got to telephone your mother.”

  Inja remembered, found socks and a jacket, and hurried outside for her shoes. Their pre-dawn neighborhood felt completely foreign, a town of shadows and vacancy. The moon had faded low on the horizon, and their footsteps on the dirt road were accompanied only by crickets. Her eyes fixed on each of the occasional streetlights until they reached its dim circle, where familiar corners and edges of buildings were visible. They walked on, and the familiar faded into the black beyond the light.

  Uncle said the telephone and telegraph office would open its doors at this hour. Even during the war, he had never called America because of the exorbitant cost. And since then there had been no news dire enough to send a telegram. Though she had passed this international communications office numerous times on their strolls to the square, there had never been a reason to go inside.

  “I’m going to tell them about Harabeoji,” said Uncle, “then you can talk to your parents for a minute.”

  Inja’s fingertips tingled, then every part of her shivered. She had never before used a telephone. As far as she could remember, she had never before talked to her parents.

  Uncle greeted the man at the counter. “We’ll make a collect call to America, Washington, DC. Can you tell me what time it is there?”

  The man scribbled some numbers and said it was five-thirty in the evening, yesterday. Inja had learned that in the southern hemisphere of the world the seasons were opposite from Korea, and time changed as the earth rotated. She understood this mathematically, but it never made figurative sense that now was yesterday in America. It only made sense when she thought of America as a place so distant that the very nature of time was altered.

  Uncle wrote down Inja’s parents’ names, the name of their district, and their telephone number, then he ushered her into one of six wooden booths with shutter doors lining the side wall. He sat beside her on its half bench and lifted the receiver to his ear. She put her ear to it, too, but no sound came out. She stood and swung the door open and shut to bring fresh air into the little booth, which smelled sour with tobacco, until he said to leave it alone. He told her how to talk on the telephone and to not talk long. He spoke quietly, in a monotone.

  The telephone man put on a headset and did something behind a machine. He conveyed their information, then waited, then spoke in Japanese, then waited a long time, then spoke loudly and carefully in English, waited again, did this one more time, then told Uncle to stay silent on the line while the American operator confirmed that her parents would accept the collect call.

  Uncle held the receiver loosely to his ear and told Inja to lean in. She heard buzzing and a tiny tinny voice. A pause, then a man answered in English, the tinny voice again, then a c
lick, pause, and the man again, his voice deep, sounding like it was coming from underwater. “Is everything all right? How is Inja?”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she covered it when Uncle gestured to make no sound. It made sense that her father sounded underwater when she thought about how far away he was. Uncle told her later they used radio to convey the call.

  “Maehyeong-nim,” Uncle said, using respectful address, “she’s fine. She’s right here with me. It’s Harabeoji. He died at ten fifty last night.”

  A long pause filled with crackling, then her father’s response, which Inja began to understand was delayed by distance. “Oh no! Yeobo, come to the phone. What happened?”

  Uncle told him about the hospital and the last few days after Grandfather came home. He mentioned the burial site. In the middle of this conversation, she heard her mother say, “It’s me. Inja is with you?”

  “She’s here. You can talk to her, but tell me if that burial site is acceptable.”

  He talked to Najin about the cemetery and money, then he lied, saying Grandfather did not suffer—Inja understood why he’d do this—and reassured them Grandmother was fine. He gave her the receiver.

  “Yeobosayo? Hello?” she said as instructed. The line clicked and hummed, the heavy device warm against her ear.

  “It’s wonderful to hear you, my daughter. You sound so grown up. Are you very sad about Harabeoji?”

  “A little.” Disoriented by the reality of her mother’s voice, she didn’t know what else to say, so she added what she thought her mother would like to hear. “He’ll be happy in heaven.”