by Eugenia Kim
“That’s him,” Inja said. “Ajeossi!”
“It’s you!” he cried.
With her nose against his cheek, she smelled home, and they both burst into tears.
“You’re so grown up!” He held her apart and seemed confused when searching her face. “The same but all grown up. A real beauty.”
“And you—showing all your distinguished years.” He’d take this as a compliment as would any elder worth his Confucian salt. Inja introduced him to Miran, and after he hugged her, his eyes widened at her appearance, too.
“Both such women—where did the children go?”
They were soon surrounded by cousins, the inevitable church people, and the best surprise—Ara with her husband and their toddler girl in his arms. Such shouting of introductions, cries of delight, wiping of tears—such utter joy.
And confusion. Somehow they spilled out of the flat ugly terminal and got sorted into various cars—here the churchmen proved most useful—everyone counted and promises made for visits tomorrow and tomorrow. In Elder Hwang’s car, Miran, Inja, and Uncle sat in the back, and her young-man cousin Seonil sat in the front passenger bucket seat.
“Inja child,” said Uncle, “you’re all grown up. I can’t get over it! I was expecting you to be like when you left.” He laughed. “How did it happen?”
Inja didn’t want to bring up painful memories, though he repeated this sentiment several times on the drive home, and she changed the subject, asking about his daughters and church. Seonil, in whom she clearly saw a young version of Uncle, seemed equally aware of the pitfalls of memory and helped her divert Uncle’s attention by asking about their parents, their own jobs, and what it was like to live in New York City. Seonil’s fascination with both her and Miran’s work made Inja understand that Korean women were still relegated to home economics and jobs in service and menial positions, or in education. Here she was, both feet firmly home in Seoul, but thoroughly altered because her footsteps had traced the hard-won paths of liberation and opportunity in America.
Conscious of Miran beside her, Inja did her best to translate and include her, and Uncle, Seonil, and even Elder Hwang were generous in asking her specific questions through Inja, such as what she’d studied at university, did she like Korean food, did they have traffic like this in New York, and soon—the work of translation performed best by the supremely patient or one able to be invisible—Inja merely answered the questions for her sister, who seemed to get the rhythm of these conversations and relaxed. Inja knew Miran understood more Korean than she admitted, especially to herself. Miran had built a wall between herself and the sounds of her childhood, sounds that had always been there for her. Inja hoped this trip would crack that barrier and that not only would Miran see her Korean background and how it had shaped her home life, but also that the experience would allow her to see herself anew.
“You sisters are much alike,” said Elder Hwang, “but she stands out differently. She looks more foreign than you.”
“It’s because they’re grown now,” said Uncle.
Inja understood Elder Hwang’s observation but was glad Miran couldn’t understand it. Even in the tight quarters of his tiny automobile, Miran’s very posture made her stand out as foreign, while her own backbone had immediately melded into the comfort of her homeland.
They rode up the street to home, and though the house was diminutive and dingier than what she remembered, Inja’s spirit surged with recognition and reminiscence. She stole glances at Hyo’s house across the street, but it was so dilapidated she knew his family no longer lived there. Uncle caught her glance and said, “They moved many years ago. The young man always had trouble with the police, especially when he went to university, and I think his mother took him south to protect him. His father lives in a big mansion in Pyeongchang-dong with his third wife. But he’s still a friend to me. I’ll always be indebted to him for the graves.”
She’d forgotten that Hyo’s father had regularly infused cash without strings into Uncle’s life at moments of need. Uncle said the former brick magnate took advantage of President Park’s generous tax benefits intended to expand core industries and had furthered his holdings with glass, ceramic, and porcelain. His mention of police trouble aroused concern and interest in Hyo’s whereabouts. Perhaps Yuna still lived in the same house—unless she was also somewhere unknown with Hyo.
They climbed out of the car, and the mix of smells filled her with nostalgia—the sweet perfume of the princess tree in the tenant’s front yard with its first blooms, the sharp warmth of hilltop breezes tinged with the faint dusky odor of sewers. One’s nose induced memories more vivid than images even after an ocean apart.
Aunt appeared more aged than Uncle, but perhaps it was the bad permanent frizz and dye job on her hair. Inja decided she would treat her to a beauty salon. Aunt’s mouth and chin retained wisps of her youthful beauty, though her eyes remained shrewd, even when they softened to fuss over Seonil. Inja recalled how having children had changed her and hoped it had benefited their cousins.
They had a simple dinner at the house, chattering madly to bridge the years, then Inja distributed gifts from America. Afterward Miran claimed sudden and thorough exhaustion. Though too excited to feel tired, sand did tug at the edges of Inja’s eyes, so Seonil found a taxi to escort them to the Top Inn several blocks away, a distance walkable without luggage, and perfectly clean with modern amenities like a hot- water shower, sheets, and padding beneath the bedding rolled out on the floor.
Thursday 4.19
The minute I wrote the date Korean style, I saw it was the same as the Masan Uprising from so long ago. Being back feels like everything was so long ago, and of course it was. I’m too wound up to sleep, but Miran is snoring like a man. Good thing we aren’t staying at the house! It’s so small and cluttered, and though I knew I would see it differently, I’m dismayed by how they live. I don’t think I could’ve tolerated staying there now, snobbish to say. Uncle seems to have gotten only sweeter. He keeps searching my face, as if the naive teenager he said goodbye to will resurface. I’m surprised to see him aged, but he’s less changed than I am obviously, and what is it they say—resilience of youth or, in my case, resilience of memory? I don’t think I should give money to Uncle because he might give it to the church like he did in Busan. I will have to find private time to get the real stories from Seonil or, god forbid, from Aunt. Wow, I just swooned with sleepiness so I see what Miran meant.
Seonil alone time
Ara alone time
cheap but good restaurants?
take girls shopping
visit graves + buy picnic so no brouhaha hullaballoo
church Sunday
Aunt beauty parlor
museum (?), palace, temples and sights Miran will like
markets?
English guidebook for Miran
Yuna?
Seonil excused himself from most of his university classes their first week in Seoul and shuffled them around town with Uncle and sometimes Aunt. The girl cousins joined the sisters in the evenings for dinner and bonded with Miran Unnee. After the first few days when Miran seem strangled with Korean words fighting to find their shape on her tongue, Inja overheard her speaking and laughing with them—simple stuff in simple language—and she was pleased to hear how much her resistance had eased.
They walked or tried to take buses, but the terrible fumes made Miran nauseated, and though taxis weren’t much better, they were cheap and not too hard to find. Then Elder Hwang decided he knew Seoul better than anyone and designated himself tour guide to the two young ladies from America, and they had their chauffeur—without cost but with its own price in limiting their freedom to roam. Propriety demanded they accept his suggestions about what to see. Seoul had only gotten uglier than what Inja remembered, though she knew her memory was rosy-colored with sentimentality. Signage was everywhere, but all in Korean and frequently wrong, which added to the difficulty of following directions. The narrowest s
treets had the biggest store signs masking how tiny each shop was, with most of the goods displayed in layers and piles on rickety tables and mats on the street. This was Miran’s favorite pastime, wandering the markets.
“But you never buy anything,” Inja said one night at dinner with the family at a restaurant near the house, by then six days in Seoul and accustomed to drinking lukewarm bottled beverages or searing hot coffee, and avoiding raw vegetables and unskinned fruit.
“I can’t bargain but it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing I’d buy. It’s just so cool to see what’s on display—from salt to quilts to plucked little chickens with their heads and feet. I saw a pig being butchered when you went out with Ara yesterday.”
“So that’s why you didn’t eat any meat last night, after she went through so much trouble and expense. You broke a rule.” Inja was kidding, though. Miran was one hundred percent on board: no cussing, no smoking, no hippie behaviors. As if she’d done it all her life, she covered her mouth when she laughed or chewed something unwieldy, dressed in a skirt and good loafers, and sat erect on the floor, her legs modestly side-saddled rather than crossed.
Miran wasn’t at all afraid to roam, but Inja was terrified for her alone in the city when they went separate ways. Her sister said she couldn’t bear to see another university, glossy government building, or new luxury hotel, places forced upon them by their host—Elder Hwang’s “price”—hoping to impress them with Park’s achievements. Inja had also seen sectors of debilitating poverty, especially driving through the Seongdong neighborhood by the river when she and Ara toured new medical facilities at Hanyang University, where Ara’s husband was taking night classes in radiology.
The previous evening, using the palace as her compass, Miran had found her way from Geumcheongyo market back to the inn, where Ara and Inja had picked her up to have dinner at Ara’s apartment. Inja was certain Ara didn’t often have meat, but that night she served fish and pork. Her husband was at the university, and Miran played with the baby girl, talking a blue streak of English, the child talking back with equal enthusiasm in her own brand of jabber. Miran’s disposition with children was a new and welcome discovery, and Uncle said dozens of times that she’d be a terrific wife and mother. Inja joined in the food prep at Ara’s electric stove, and they stifled guilty laughter remembering Aunt’s terrible cookery and her limp and bitter kimchi. “It’s why everyone in her family is slim,” Inja said, and Ara slapped her arm.
During that meal, morsels of pork kept appearing in Inja’s bowl, a mystery solved after she caught Miran’s chopsticks slipping her food when Ara was preoccupied. She’d had to eat double her share and had indigestion all night. The resistance of her stomach to home cooking surprised her, until she remembered those first weeks in Takoma Park when she had to take awful medicine and saw terrible things in the toilet afterward.
So now at this restaurant, the simple meal of fiery soups and boiled vegetables was a relief. Miran was saying, “And some of the shop owners make their displays artistic to the max, weaving fish in chains with straw ropes, scallions piled up like mermaid’s hair, big shallow baskets of rice, and all kinds of grains I can’t even guess at. What are those red blocks of some dried edible they tie up in neat packages? And the smells—fresh-ground red peppers and rotting produce, crisp against the pungent smells of earth.”
“What’s she so excited about?” said Uncle.
“She likes going to the markets.” Simpler to summarize her anthropological explorations.
“Yah, she’s easy to amuse—she’ll make a great wife! Go to Namdaemun—show her the art supplies—and how about Gyeongdong herb market? Get some ginseng for your parents.”
“Good idea.” Inja turned to Miran. “Uncle says you’ll make a great wife since you love the markets so much.”
She laughed and didn’t even roll her eyes.
“He suggests the herbal medicine market and a big commercial market by the South Gate.”
“Sounds swell to me, but does it fit your agenda?” When Inja had shown her the to-do list their first morning in Seoul, Miran had ribbed her need for order and control.
Inja sniffed and said to Uncle, “And what can we get for you or Aunt? Do you need special medicine? You seem as strong as ever.” He launched into a soliloquy about his vigor versus what the doctors were saying about osteoarthritis—how he walked everywhere, and how his artwork was still in demand. Seonil gave Inja a look then, and she added it to her discussion list for their private talk. They’d arranged the “alone time with Seonil” for that night, using the excuse that he wanted to show them his housing at Yonsei University, where he majored in history and philosophy.
Craving drinks—and cigarettes, said Miran—the sisters took Seonil to the New Namsan, a Western-style luxury hotel, and settled at a corner table in the darkened bar. They hadn’t been welcomed with much enthusiasm—the patrons were entirely men, Westerners and Korean businessmen—but when Miran ordered “Johnnie Black, neat, seltzer chaser, no ice” in English, the waiter’s bearing changed from outright rude to obsequious. Over Crown beers, Inja grilled Seonil about Uncle’s finances and health. She learned that without the tenants in the front house, there’d be no income—his kinds of jobs were rare. They depended on her mother’s checks, which Najin regularly sent even after her job at Fort Holabird had ended a few years ago, though she still made kimchi. Except for the increased workload for Aunt and the return to terrible cooking, they were happy when Ara got married four years ago and left them, freeing a bedroom and having one less mouth to feed.
“I have money for him,” Inja told Seonil, “but I’m afraid he’ll give it to the church. What needs to be done in the house? Is this something you can take care of?”
“Yes, with Mother’s help. They need a new refrigerator and repairs in the bathroom. They installed a hot-water heater in the front house, but they could use one too.”
“Aunt won’t tell him about the money?”
He slumped and frowned but said nothing. Even after a beer, Seonil displayed not a scrap of the sunny, happy little boy Inja remembered. He was quiet and painfully pleasant. She resisted reaching out to tickle his ribs to stir him up, and now she could guess why. “I see.”
He turned as if to study the diminishing number of people at the bar, and Inja said, “Miran, why don’t you get cigarettes.” Though she’d said it in Korean, her sister got the message and went out to the front lounge.
Inja ordered another round, and after the waiter left, she said, “Still fighting.”
“They’ve been polite to each other since you’ve come. At least the girls can understand what a normal home is like, even if it’s only two weeks.” He sat with hands between his knees, shoulders sloped, a practiced smile beneath intelligent but withdrawn eyes.
“And how about you? How are you getting along?”
“Fine. I stay out of trouble—I don’t even join the campus protests, though I support them and I should be out there.”
Miran came back. “I guess I’ve quit. It tastes awful. Here.” She slid the Winstons to Seonil. “Maybe you know someone who’d want these.”
He pocketed the cigarettes. “You should’ve bought cheaper Korean tobacco, but it’ll impress my roommate.”
Inja didn’t need to translate; Miran understood—more and more each day. In ending their conversation, Inja said to Seonil, half in English, “They call that keeping your nose clean, at least I think that’s correct.” And to Miran, “What’s slang for ‘stay out of trouble’?”
“Keep your head down. Keep your hands clean. Take it easy. Stay cool, man.”
He tried them all and they laughed—the first time he’d freely laughed since they’d arrived.
“Stay out of the doghouse,” said Miran.
Inja raised her glass. “Have you met anyone special?” she said, and was rewarded with a wash of light over his features.
“Maybe.” He blushed. “Too soon to tell.”
“Keep to the strai
ght and narrow,” said Miran.
“Who is she? Tell me more!”
“She wants to be an educator, to get her master’s degree in America. But everybody does.”
“Love it or leave it,” said Miran, making quarter rotations in her swivel seat.
“You too?” Inja said to Seonil about American studies. “Maybe I can help.”
“I’d like to, but I’m the eldest . . .”
“I understand, but let me know if you want to study there, will you?”
“Keep the peace, baby,” said Miran.
Seonil said, “I must keep the peace baby,” and drained his beer to their laughter. “I’m serious though,” he said. “Even after my sisters are grown and married.”
Miran asked what he’d said, and Inja patted her leg to say she’d tell her later. They sat quietly a few moments. “You were so young,” she asked him, “do you remember our grandparents?”
“Harabeoji, not that much.” He gave an odd smile. “What I remember is being afraid. He must have done something terrible with a turtle. I detest turtles—it’s like a phobia.”
“How strange.” Inja didn’t have the heart to tell him about the medicine he’d been forced to swallow—it would only validate his fears.
“He was already sick by the time I was born, wasn’t he?” said Seonil. “The night he died is mostly how I remember him, unfortunately. And the years after that, Father’s terrible dreams about him being buried in a coffin full of water.” He shivered.
“You remember that!”
“Only because when Halmeoni died and we buried her, it proved he’d been buried in an underground stream. Surely you remember—you were there. Ugh, I’ve got chills.”
Inja told Miran what they were talking about, and Miran confessed to finding the photographs of Grandfather’s funeral and being horror-struck by the gruesome images. “Mom shouted with nightmares for weeks,” Miran said. “But she always had crazy dreams, like you told me she dreamed you were a girl. I’ve always wondered if she dreamed about me.”