by Eugenia Kim
Inja waved again, this time twisting her lips in a small smile, which gave her a strange grimace. Najin saw the effort of that smile, and she worried.
Several more pictures were posed and taken, and at last the photographer put away his equipment, goodbyes were said all around, and when the reporter asked Calvin to verify the spelling of everyone’s names and for their address, Miss Lone took over and shooed them off for home.
Inja hesitated when leaving the terminal. Najin steered her to the ladies’ room, and Miran followed. She restrained her desire to go into the stall with Inja, laughing at herself. Still, who could blame her. Instead she ran water in the sink, in case her daughter was modest to that degree. She doubted it though, having a good idea of what life in Seoul must have been like with her soft brother, his common wife, Inja’s ailing grandparents, a toddler cousin, and a country girl all in a few simple rooms. She barely remembered those rooms now, and without her mother or daughter in them, her concern for them dropped out of her mind like a forgotten childhood toy.
When they came out, Calvin slung his arm around Inja’s shoulders and led her to the car. Miran said she’d get up early to buy tomorrow’s Washington Post from the market—they subscribed to the Evening Star—and he said, laughing, “Good idea. Anything to get you up early on a Saturday is a good idea.” He stowed the train case in the trunk, and Najin sat Inja in the front seat between them. He explained the joke about rising early to Inja, who attempted a smile.
“She’s tired, Yeobo,” said Najin.
“Of course. Inja daughter,” said Calvin, smiling as if uttering those words had intoxicated him. “If you feel unwell, let me know. Your unnee Miran gets carsick, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you do, too.”
“She’ll be all right in the front seat,” said Miran.
The car hummed along the parkway. Najin asked Inja about her flight, and Inja responded, monosyllabic, though polite.
Calvin pointed out the Jefferson Memorial and the cherry blossom trees lining the Tidal Basin. Najin admired the blooms out loud and thought she saw light in her daughter’s eyes for the first time since her arrival.
She remembered what she’d learned about the cherry blossom trees from the many times she and Calvin had taken visitors to see them. The Japanese had given them to America in the year Najin was born, 1910—the year in which Japan annexed Korea. The first two thousand trees were delivered that year—a gift of collusion, thought Najin, to thank America for looking the other way when the Treaty of Annexation was signed. As it turned out, those trees were all diseased and replaced two years later with three thousand healthy trees. And so, even after Pearl Harbor, while people of Japanese descent were interned in remote camps, the trees flowered and made the nation’s capital uniquely gorgeous in springtime. Nature would always circumvent history.
Calvin and Najin kept up a flow of small talk, which one tended to have when the occasion was too momentous to discuss, and through it all their daughter seemed buried inside herself—from exhaustion, Najin supposed, and everything strange and new. Love and pity rushed through her. She wished again she could return to the fateful decision that had resulted in such pain for all of them.
She took Inja’s hand and examined how the nails were like hers, the thumbs and palms like Calvin’s, the long fingers like the artist’s fingers of her father and brother. She had thought she would feel content, and at peace, to have her child home at last, but it was peculiar—she’d forgotten Inja would be a young lady, that she’d have a complete and separate history than hers, and one with its own experience of tragedy, of war and loss. She would have to learn who this daughter was, though surely she already knew—she was her Korean daughter, the one made most beloved by absence, by guilt. She was her flesh and blood.
These thoughts were not useful, especially as her other daughter sat directly behind her, the draft from the back seat’s open window blowing on her neck. Inja appeared to be napping. “Did she say if she ate on the plane?” Najin murmured to Calvin. And they talked quietly about what the next few days would hold for their reunited family.
29
* * *
Arrival
To Inja, her parents and sister looked like their photographs, but different—her parents smaller and her sister taller than expected, the details of their features sharper and surprising. She imagined it must’ve been the same for them seeing her, especially considering the moment her mother so closely examined her after her father had dragged her down the airplane stairs. It was startling how expressive he was—like Uncle—and in comparison, how reserved her mother seemed. But Inja understood her mother’s reservation when she was introduced to dozens of people and was told to pose here and there for the camera by a bossy American woman whose clothes reeked of tobacco. The woman gave unsmiling instructions to her father, who asked Inja to smile and wave by the airplane’s curved door while her American family lined up below. Flash, snap, flash, snap. Inja longed for Yuna, who would laugh at her acting like a big starlet, but she couldn’t smile. She was relieved to learn the cigarette lady wasn’t Miss Lone, and then felt badly that amidst all the fuss she hadn’t said a proper goodbye to her seat companion, whose name was similar to Miss Lone’s. In the car, overwhelmed, Inja could barely interpret the sensation of being in between her parents on a sticky vinyl seat, with Miran occasionally leaning in from the back, a smile masking her open stare. Her father started the car, told her to tell him if she began to feel ill. Miran said something and he answered in English, and in the same breath said in Korean, “—and she’s worried you’ll get nauseated, too. It’s a beautiful spring day, so we’re going to take the scenic route by the memorials.”
Rather than absorbing the content of his speech, Inja’s thoughts clicked to acknowledge his carefree demonstration of what it meant to be bilingual. That must be her first and most vital achievement. She battled the sensation of being among the enemy.
Her mother’s questions were simple, but she felt compelled to keep things to herself and wished she could stick her head outside like Miran so the rushing winds of the scenic route would whip her hair against her cheeks.
“Were you comfortable on the plane?”
“Yes, Mother,” but not in the way you’re asking. Inja had taken comfort in knowing that every moment they flew east toward America, time would theoretically slow such that when she landed in Washington, DC, according to the calendar it would still be the same day she left—only half a day away. She didn’t want to be crying the entire seventeen hours it took to cross half the world. The stewardesses had been kind, as was the lady in the next seat. She’d shown Inja how to attach the seat belt, open the tray table, and later gave her a magazine, whose pages she politely and blindly turned one by one.
Father drove out of the airport and onto a highway he said was the George Washington Parkway. To have recognized “George Washington” gave incremental relief, proving she wasn’t completely ignorant of the English language and American history.
Miran leaned over and gestured. “That’s the Potomac River, named for the original Indian tribe who lived here.”
Inja thought she should respond despite catching only a few words, but she couldn’t move, stuck as she was between her parents. The scenery was expansive and pristine—mowed riverbanks sloping toward water glimmering in the sunlight, a river unencumbered by shacks or people using its wealth of clean water, an abundance of perfect grass below tall familiar trees, everything lush and bountiful with green. “Willows,” Inja said as a way to answer Miran.
“Widows?” Miran said.
Inja nodded, and when her father said, “Will-ows,” she wondered why everyone was repeating it as if she had never uttered a word before.
He patted her knee. “They’re just like at home. I planted a weeping willow in our front yard for that very reason.”
She thought of the willow shoots in their yard they’d harvested for grandmother’s feet—and then she put all thought aside.
They sped on th
e smooth black highway beside the glistening river—her father drove very fast—and he pointed out the pale snow of petals falling from the cherry blossom trees lining the riverbank. “Look there in the distance to that small domed building surrounded by columns. That’s the Jefferson Memorial, a tribute to our third president. He was one of America’s Founding Fathers and quite the Renaissance man. See all the cherry blossom trees in a circle there? That’s the Tidal Basin.” A little later they crossed a stately marble bridge flanked by statues of muscular men and horses made of what looked like solid gold, and he explained how a tidal basin worked with the Potomac River.
She understood these explanations were meant to ease her alienation, but all her muscles had turned into wood. With her mother’s thigh so close to hers, her skirt pocket scratched, and she took out the ridiculous tag Uncle had pinned to her sweater. Inja ran her fingers over his writing and saw the name her seatmate had written on the back after she’d examined the tag, which had amused her. Inja wished she’d had enough English to tell her that she found the tag amusing, too, and stuck it in her pocket. During the flight she would have explained that the tag with Uncle’s writing was a tiny souvenir of the special bond she shared with him.
Mother read the tag. “At least your uncle’s heart is in the right place.”
If Inja had been more astute to her feelings in those confusing first minutes of being in America, she might have recognized the stab of anger at her mother’s assumption that she could tell her anything about the beloved man who had been both father and mother to her.
Mother turned the card over. “Who’s this?”
“She sat next to me on the airplane.”
“I see.”
“She was very kind and gave me gum. Miss Aag-ress Ronegan.”
“K’rae, Agnes Lonegan.”
“I must to learn,” she said in English.
Mother held her hand. “We can learn together.”
Her mother’s dry touch sent a shiver up her arm, and to reclaim her hand she took back the tag and slid it into her pocket. The kindly Agnes Lonegan had rummaged in her purse while rattling off a series of questions. When Inja merely stared, Miss Lonegan smiled and said, “The universal language of giving,” and offered a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum.
“Thank you.” Inja had set it on the arm of her seat to chew later, but her seatmate took it and unwrapped it for her, so she had to chew it. “Very good. Good,” she said, wishing Miss Lonegan had just given her half, to save the other half for later. Sudden yearning for Hyo filled her eyes, and she turned to the window to watch the takeoff—seeing very little through her tears until the view was white with clouds.
Miss Lonegan chatted at her occasionally, and she tried to look interested, but she felt like that lonely girl crossing the park without Yuna beside her, supremely self-conscious and struggling to look composed. When Miss Lonegan was served a cup of coffee, and the stewardess asked what she’d like, Inja gestured she didn’t want anything—too afraid she’d have to use the bathroom, which she’d learned was at the back of the plane from the Northwest Orient brochure Miss Lonegan had taken pains to show her. She didn’t want to make her seatmate get up for her or have to climb over her. Inja took out her chewing gum, wrapped it for later, and tucked it into her shirtdress pocket, but Miss Lonegan said, “Dear, let me have that. The stewardess will take it.” She parked it on the edge of her tray table along with empty crumpled sugar packets. Inja must have looked at it with sadness because Miss Lonegan went through her purse and gave her the entire pack! “And there’s more where that came from, dear.”
In the car, Mother said, “She must have been kind—to have written down her name for you. Too bad she didn’t write her telephone number or address so we could thank her for watching over you.”
I am sixteen years old, Mother, and I thanked her myself. Somewhere in all her misery, she had managed to thank her as politely as she could. The remainder of that long flight she remembered as being imprisoned in the seat, exhausted from tears, afraid to drink anything, afraid of the terrible-smelling food set in front of her that Miss Lonegan had unwrapped for her, afraid to use the bathroom, afraid of what would happen when she landed, afraid of everything—and grieving—none of which she could admit to her mother.
But feeling the pack of gum in her pocket, she did feel badly about not saying goodbye to Agnes Lonegan, who, unlike her mother at that moment, had left her alone. But she was being unreasonable, melodramatic, and unfair. She would have to change her attitude or live the remainder of her life in misery.
The very thought drained her, and she closed her eyes.
Mother took her hand again and massaged the palm, and she stifled her instinct to withdraw it. She dozed, deeply enough so that when she woke, she was disoriented about where she was until reality descended and weighted down her heartache.
When they got home, it, too, looked to Inja like its photograph, but bigger, and though it was plain white stucco with turquoise trim, it seemed more colorful because of Mother’s opulent gardens. Big white and fuchsia azalea bushes bordered the porch steps, and the small front yard was lined with tulips and stout green hedges. Solid, huge, and a little forbidding, the house had a twin to its left but with green trim, and woods to its hilly right. Inja climbed out of the car and involuntarily shivered. Miran touched her elbow to draw her up the stairs, chattering and gesturing. Mother told her sister to change out of her Sunday clothes. Miran took her train case and went downstairs, “to the room you’ll share,” Mother said. Inja had a pang of anxiety to be separated from her sole belongings, but her tongue seemed glued behind her lips.
The rooms were enormous, like in Hyo’s house (but less shiny), tall and filled with big things, plentiful things, and draped with ribbons of green and pink paper. Inja tried to smile at Miran who came up and said she’d hung the streamers for her.
“It’s like saengil, Miran Unnee, is to see year and year.” Half-Korean, half-English.
“The birthday pictures?” Miran said a bunch of other things with the shy smile Inja remembered from her photographs, and again, “Hwanyeong,” welcome. Miran trailed them while Mother showed Inja the living room—with the piano!—dining room, kitchen, then in the back half of the house, a hallway room that led to a huge bedroom on the left with a giant bed—her parents’ room, the bathroom and sewing room to the right.
“For the first few nights, I think you’ll sleep here,” said Mother in the big bedroom.
At Inja’s look, her mother said, “Appa will take the sewing room,” which wasn’t what she was questioning. The only bed she had ever shared was with Grandmother—and thinking this made her remember that her mother herself had shared Grandmother’s bed, so it must have made some kind of sense to her. She wouldn’t be thinking that in the year since Grandmother’s death Inja had had her own room and her own bedding. But here in America, who knew what was proper?
A photographic portrait of Grandfather on the master bedroom wall surprised Inja—one that seemed familiar though she couldn’t remember ever having seen it, in which he looked a little more solemn than she remembered. A similar-sized photograph of Grandmother in a lacquer and mother-of-pearl frame sat on a small table next to the bed, and its placement revealed how hard it was for her mother to not have seen her own mother for so many years. Her mother had spent her entire life until age thirty-seven with Grandmother, and Inja had always known they were close. She remembered her promise to Grandmother that she’d be a good daughter, and just then she wished Grandmother were there in color and flesh to bridge the alienation between her daughter and granddaughter. Then she recognized that these particular photographs of her grandparents had been the models for Uncle’s color paintings that hung in their sitting room and had been used at each of their funerals. It gave her comfort to know these images were a constant between her two families.
Also on the improbably pink walls of that master bedroom—Miran would later tell her that Calvin had bought the
paint because it was cheap, and Najin hated the color but she hated waste more—in a frame half the size of the windows on each side was her portrait from her tenth birthday. It startled her to see how happy she appeared, but she had gone downtown with Uncle that day and been treated like a queen. The frilly dress also reminded her of Aunt and the birthday soup, and of Ara who had washed and ironed it at night so Aunt wouldn’t know. It had been but a single long day since Inja had left them, yet they seemed incredibly far away—far away and present at the same time. Inja was confused and tired.
She admired Miran’s annual school portraits lined up in the sewing room, big versions of the ones in the Family in America album, and noted the many decorations throughout the house: Korean embroidery scrolls of traditional scenes—girls on swing and seesaw, grandfathers playing chess—and paintings of a falcon and a tiger, both browned by age with their wooden dowels falling off. Above the black sideboard in the dining room hung a framed reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, a far better depiction of the event than the one in her Bible storybook. She hoped her trunk would arrive soon. There were no photographs of Father’s parents, and she remembered Mother writing they had never heard from them again after the war began. When she’d learned this news many years ago, she didn’t think much of it—many families’ members were separated or lost because of the war—but now she wondered if her father missed them like she missed her grandparents. Like she missed Uncle.
While Najin changed out of her hanbok and Calvin was on the telephone telling someone she had arrived safely, Miran took Inja down a wooden staircase into a dark and cool area of cement and small high windows—the first time she had ever stepped into a basement. Miran pointed out their mother’s kimchi-making station and the electric washing machine, and in a wide-open peach-colored space bigger than four sitting rooms combined, she raised her hands and said, “Ta-da! Here’s our room.” On one of the matching beds lay Inja’s train case, opened with its contents scattered about.