The Kinship of Secrets

by Eugenia Kim

  “I remember the Juicy Fruit.”

  That smile! “You could buy a case of it now,” she said, then wished she hadn’t—it exposed her thinking about his wealth.

  “Yes, madam, and how would you like that delivered?” He made a little bow, and she laughed and kept her smile on him, appreciating how he covered her blunder. Their steps slowed in effortless unison. Though much was roiling inside, she also felt relaxed—an odd but pleasurable paradox.

  “How is your uncle?” he said. “The last time I saw him was more than a year ago, arguing with my father about Dictator Rhee before he was ousted.”

  She came to a halt, surprised—and intrigued—by his boldness. “Surely he didn’t call him that.”

  “He didn’t, but that’s what they were arguing about. It’s how I learned my father had grown rich with his regime.”

  Inja’s mind opened with the possibility of talking politics with Hyo, who clearly shared her uncle’s viewpoints, and she was intrigued that his tone hinted at conflicts with his father. Yuna had never been interested in the frequent student protests or what they meant. Inja only had Uncle with whom to discuss the news. He did talk to her about it more after Grandfather had died, but he preferred to tell her what to think. She wanted to talk to someone her age to know more about what she thought.

  Hyo stopped and kicked at the dirt road. She turned to say, her voice more fierce with envy than she had intended, “Were you downtown for Four-Nineteen last year?”

  “I was.”

  “You must tell me everything!” She sidestepped into the shade of a maple and hugged her schoolbooks. Last spring’s protests were exciting, tragic and historic, and students—like them—had changed the world. It became known as the 4.19 Student Uprising, a series of unforgettable public demonstrations that had ousted President Rhee.

  In the eight years since armistice, Rhee Syngman of the Liberal Party managed to retain his four-time presidency by altering the constitution, fixing elections, and arresting opposition party members as communists. Uncle, once a Liberal and now a Democrat, was angered by these maneuverings, as were the hundreds of students who protested regularly outside the National Assembly Building. “It can’t last forever,” Uncle had said, “like the Japanese rule didn’t last forever.”

  He was right. The death of a seventeen-year-old boy, Kim Ju-yeol, sparked an accelerating foment against Rhee. This southern villager was killed in March the previous year, and when Inja had learned about it along with the rest of the country, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. He and his older brother had gone to Masan City, not far from Busan, to take the Commercial High School entrance examination—two country boys hoping to advance their position and improve their family’s lives. They stayed in Masan five days to await the results of the examination, and one afternoon joined a protest denouncing Rhee’s most recent rigged election. Ju-yeol disappeared that night. Twenty-seven days later, his body surfaced in the waters near the Masan docks with a tear gas shell lodged in his face and protruding from the back of his skull. A photograph of his floating body was published in newspapers, and people thought he’d been tortured by the police with pegs to his eyes. Uncle had hidden this newspaper, but Inja had heard him shouting and Aunt exclaiming he was right, and so rarely did they agree on anything she wanted to find out why. She wished she hadn’t seen it. That poor boy!

  Ju-yeol’s terrible death filled the Masan streets with demonstrators getting angrier as they grew in numbers, until night fell and they were met by a barrage of police weapons. Many were shot outright, youth leaders were arrested, and Rhee installed yet another new law to cancel school throughout South Korea. Uncle said it was a stupid attempt to quell unrest; now the students had no reason to be anywhere but in the streets. With schools closed, Inja stayed home and studied her history books to understand more about what was happening. The only relatable event was Sam‑il in 1919, so eerily similar it made her wonder if they were stuck in a loop, a Möbius strip of history destined to repeat again and again until—she couldn’t imagine an ending, and that was the point. It would never end. She played with Seonil, sat with Grandmother, and together she and Uncle read the newspapers he brought home twice a day. She was aware how easily she’d slipped into Grandfather’s role, and how much pleasure it gave them both.

  In response to the massacre in Masan, university students staged a peaceful demonstration at the National Assembly Building and were attacked and beaten by thugs everyone knew had been hired by Rhee’s people. Word spread and by the end of the next day, one hundred thousand people rallied for an end to the dictatorship. Rhee called the militia, police, and even the Palace Guard to put down the demonstration. Hundreds were killed and thousands wounded. When Inja sneaked outside and climbed the hill, she saw smoke in the distance from fires burning downtown. It unearthed a forgotten childhood memory of distant smoke and falling under the cart, and Inja had to go inside to ask Uncle to confirm the memory. He filled in details of spotty memories she had about that time, and she was awed by what he had done to take them out of danger. She gave him a tight hug of thanks, and he told her, again, how she was his sister’s precious charge, and he would give his life to save her.

  On the sixth day of intense and widespread protests, hundreds of university professors formally joined the demonstration and marched together with kindergarten children to the National Assembly Building, an act that drew cheers and fostered hope. Uncle said it was purely Confucian to revere our scholars and bestow a wisdom on them they might not actually deserve. This, April 19th, was the 4.19 Student Uprising.

  Inja said to Hyo, “What was it like? When were you there?” She didn’t try to hide the admiration in her voice.

  “I joined the second wave with the university professors. I shouted until I was hoarse.” His eyes gleamed with passion, his grin tight with determination. “The sense of unity and purpose was unforgettable—and the power it had!”

  Rhee’s concessions that were meant to appease the demonstrators failed, and with foreign pressure and both the police and military beginning to defect, he stepped down. South Korea had a true parliamentary government for a short while, though neither the new president nor the prime minister could muster enough loyalty to truly lead the nation.

  “I’m jealous, but you should be proud. My uncle would be proud of you.”

  “And my father would be appalled, so please don’t mention it to your uncle. They disagree politically, but I think they’re still friends.”

  “They are, and I won’t.” It seemed she grew closer to people through having secrets.

  “Ultimately I don’t think it made a difference,” said Hyo, sighing. A month later the vulnerable presidency had been overtaken by military coup by General Park Chung Hee.

  They stepped back onto the road. “How about you?” she said. “How’s it been since Busan?”

  “It’s okay, too,” said Hyo. “No more siblings though. Still just me.”

  There was something he wasn’t saying, but she thought they might get to that next time. She changed the subject. “My uncle says your house has the best view in Seoul.”

  “I suppose.” They turned the corner to their street, and though they were both silent, it felt comfortable and natural. “You should come over to see it and judge for yourself.”

  “Okay.” Inja had never been curious before about the inside of that prominent brick house, but found she had a sudden keen interest in it. What was Hyo’s life like?

  “Tomorrow after school?” he said. “I’ll have gum by then.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said, laughing. “It’ll be good to say hello to your mother. I haven’t seen her in years.”

  He made a sound, almost a snort. “They’re never home. It’s me, the cook, the gardener, and the housemaid. My mother has a job now. She said she got restless after I started middle school, so she’s working at Father’s company. ‘To look out for him,’ she says. And he says he allowed it so he can look out for her.
”

  His tone made her turn to check his expression. Bitter, angry. She stopped and impulsively grasped his arm, forgetting that he wasn’t Yuna, forgetting that he was a boy. “What’s wrong?”

  “Never mind me. I’ve been in a bad mood today, that’s all.” Hyo held her fingers on his arm a brief moment, and she snatched them away. He laughed. “But I’m in a much better mood now.”

  He made it so easy to not be embarrassed. “Me, too, though I wasn’t even in a bad mood.”

  “And what about your mother?” he said.

  Inja was surprised he didn’t know, but why would he? As children they wouldn’t have talked about such things; they just played war and built cities with those bricks. She explained about her parents being in America and how they couldn’t come back considering the threat of North Korean infiltrators kidnapping her father, and how U.S. immigration laws made it impossible for even a daughter to be reunited with her family. It had become a practiced speech by now—to school entrance examination proctors, to teachers, to new church members. Once a year on her parents’ joint birthday, she and Uncle would look through the Cho family album, where they’d glued every photograph that came in her mother’s letters. Miran’s shy smile filled the frame of her photos. She was a straight-A student, played piano well, and read many books. Mother wrote that she loved bike riding and Campfire Girls—a group that did things together like visit old people and spend weekends in the woods learning how to cook over open fires, as if those were oddities one should learn how to do. Inja wondered what it felt like to ride a bike, to know the touch of piano keys while making music, and occasionally she wondered what her mother told her sister about herself.

  “Does that mean you’ll be going to America one day? Or will they come back?” said Hyo.

  She hadn’t thought about it for some time. “They’re trying to find a way for me to join them, but it’s been like this for so long, I don’t think about it much. I’m happy here,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

  “I’m glad.” He paused at his gate. “See you tomorrow afternoon.”

  She smiled and went through the front yard around the rental house to home. What had troubled him when she’d mentioned his mother? Hyo’s father had visited Uncle a few times, so she knew him better—a florid man with a square face who wore patterned ties, a huge gold watch, and who smelled like pungent sweetness. Uncle told her it was Old Spice, the most popular American aftershave lotion, and she kept the thought to herself that it did indeed smell like old spices. At least she had busy rooms full of relatives, while Hyo went home to that big house with only servants waiting for him.

  The next morning Inja dressed carefully in a white blouse, a blue-and-gray plaid skirt, and tied a turquoise scarf around her neck. She combed her hair into a ponytail and knotted a white ribbon over the rubber band. When she found Hyo waiting by their front gate, she turned scarlet. He looked much taller than the day before. He took off his cap and bowed to her, and the sunrise glowed on his parted shiny hair. Though the day was brisk and leaves flew wildly in the wind, she felt warm the entire way to school. They talked about their various teachers and favorite subjects—his, chemistry and history, hers, geometry and art. He said he hated piano lessons most of all, but his parents continued to hire the teachers, who, in his parents’ presence, often praised his talent, though he was certain he had none.

  “What I wouldn’t do to have piano lessons!” she said as their toes stepped in unison. “I used to hide outside of Myeonghi’s house in her hedges, listening to her play the same song over and over, and making the same mistake each time.”

  “She’s actually very good,” said Hyo, making Inja instantly jealous, an uncomely sensation. “I’ve been in recitals with her.”

  “Do you play duets?” she tried to make it sound nonchalant, but the way he laughed told her she’d failed.

  “No, we don’t.” He looked at her and kindly didn’t mention the vivid color in her face and neck. The humiliation lodged in her stomach, and she was surprised it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

  “When you come over after school today, I can teach you a little piano, okay?”

  “I learned the keys and scales at church,” she said, “but I’ve never learned a song.”

  “How about ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’?”

  Perfect because that’s what your eyes are doing. “Wonderful, thank you.” With that, she felt ashamed to have lied to her uncle about saying she was going to Yuna’s house that afternoon. She wouldn’t do that again. He’d completely understand that she wanted to learn piano.

  They neared the park before their paths would split to their respective schools, and Inja held back, wary of the other students. “They’ll tease you to death.”

  “I don’t care. We’re old friends. Do you care?”

  I do. About you. “Not one bit.”

  They entered the park together and suffered several widened eyes, titters behind hands, and whistles and catcalls from the boys. She didn’t mind at all.

  With permission from Uncle, Inja went to Hyo’s house three afternoons a week for informal piano lessons. His house was much as she imagined it would be: polished pale wood floors, American-style sofas in gold brocades, lacquer cabinets and shelves, modern kitchen and bathrooms, soft electric lighting in every room; and he had his own bedroom with shelves full of books, which she saw only by peeking in through the doorway. Those books garnered many talks between them, and he shared with her The Stranger by Camus, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, books by Dostoevsky and George Eliot—whose name confused Inja, though her novels won her over—along with masters Yom Sang‑seop and Hwang Sun‑won. These writings expanded Inja’s view of the world, even of her own national history in the way that only books can—by seeing through the eyes of the people who lived through those times, and others from foreign lands whose history and culture marked men so differently, their minds went to darker and deeper places than she had ever considered. She thought she wasn’t smart then, though she knew she had talent in art and found comfort in math.

  She came to admire Hyo as an intellectual whose passion for thinking about their purpose in life inspired her, and also made her believe he would, one day, be a great leader. Inja did not yet know the purpose of her life, and she felt that her quest was stunted by the looming possibility of going to America, always a concept that lay before her, and one she more easily pushed aside the more she spent time with Hyo.

  The Jeons had a special room for the piano with thick carpet on the floor and leafy-patterned drapes covering the window to dampen sound. She met Hyo’s mother, a heavily made-up woman who fawned over her to please her son. Mrs. Jeon gave Inja a half-hour of his piano teacher’s instruction on Saturdays. By Harvest Moon, Inja could play “Twinkle, Twinkle” and “Silent Night,” the melody with her right hand and one or two chords with her left hand, while Hyo played richer harmonies on the scales below. They spent many hours together like this, and soon their shoulders and thighs would touch on the piano bench and neither would move apart. Over time, on that piano bench where it was easy to converse with their eyes on the keyboard, she learned that his father had had several affairs, and now his mother was having an affair as well—one she flaunted in front of Hyo and his father. It was scandalous and unsettling to hear how they intentionally broke the sacred trust of family loyalty and love because of selfish needs and petty revenge.

  “I’m sorry” was all Inja could say when he told her, and “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you.” She dared to touch his knee.

  He grasped her hand. “It’s why I admire your family so much. You say they fight and complain, but they’re still faithful to each other. Maybe it has something to do with being Christians. But yours is still a complete and traditional Korean family—something we’re losing with Park’s urgency for industrialization. There’s a reason why the Russians are so powerful—it has to do with their national character and traditions, and though they may be five hundred times bigger,
it’s not that different from ours.”

  Inja squeezed his hand to soften her words. “You have to be careful about mentioning the president—or the Russians, Hyo. They’ll mark you as a socialist, or worse.”

  “I know, I know. But I admire how your uncle cared for your grandparents—your grandmother still. I told you that my father sent my aunts to live with my grandparents in Daegu, but he bribed them to go so he wouldn’t have to take care of his own parents. He was embarrassed by their country ways. There’s beauty in our traditions, and though it’s something I’m destined to do, I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine being the man of a house where they still hate each other so. I suppose I am my father’s son then, because I’d rather run away than live with them for the rest of my life.”

  Inja had nothing to say, though she wished it were different for him. Aunt and Uncle still yelled at each other, but she had also seen moments of tenderness between them, especially after Seonil was born. She thought of Yuna’s broken family and remembered how Grandfather often spouted the Confucian tenet that the family unit was the core of the nation, and without solid families, no nation could maintain its strength. “Even if I were a boy,” she blurted, already knowing her attempt to console was selfish—and as such doomed to failure, “I wouldn’t know what to think of a future with parents I’ve never met in a country I’ve never been to.”

  He smiled. “Let’s trade places.”

  In an instant, his relaxed humor startled her into the understanding that sometimes being selfish was more honest—and successful—than trying to think of what the other person would like. But at his suggestion, she cried, “Oh no—you’d hate living in our tiny house! You couldn’t possibly do Halmeoni’s feet,” which led to a discussion about her duties at home, Inja careful to not reveal the secret of Grandmother’s frostbitten toes. The mood had lightened, and he tinkered on the keyboard to sound out a top song he said he’d heard almost hourly on the radio, “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King.