I'll Be Right There

by Kyung-Sook Shin

  Miru wrapped the perilla leaf around a big spoonful of rice, stuffed it in her mouth, and smiled with her cheeks full. I smiled, too. I would never have guessed that I would be sitting here in my room with the two of them, sharing a meal and laughing. My mother would have liked watching Miru eat. To my surprise, she ate heartily, like my father. My mother would have patted her on the back and been all smiles, and she would have said that Miru’s way of eating brought luck. No matter what the situation, my mother expressed everything through food. If something bad happened, she said it was on account of being a picky eater, and if something good happened, she said it was a reward for eating every meal like it was a feast.

  “You’re a hearty eater,” I said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  Miru looked like no one had ever told her that before.

  “My mother would have enjoyed watching you eat,” I said. “She used to say that people had to know how to enjoy their food. She said that was how you could be sure to always get your share, no matter where you went. People who know how to enjoy food know the value of it.”

  My mother’s words still rang in my ears. She was fond of Dahn because of his appetite. Whenever he came over, she would set out extra silverware and made sure he ate with us. And just like she did for my father and me, she would push the side dishes closer to him and even place food on his rice.

  “Let’s visit your mother someday,” Miru said.

  If only we could. If only I could take them to see her someday.

  “My mother is dead.”

  It was the first time I had ever said those words to someone. Myungsuh and Miru looked up at me. The fact of my mother’s death hit me again, the same way it had when Myungsuh appeared before me like a beacon of light in the center of the riot-swept city. My mother is dead. The words echoed in my ears. A chill ran over me, but the feeling soon passed. Maybe I had already come to terms with her death while typing up the poems in We Are Breathing. Miru placed a perilla leaf in my bowl. I wrapped it around the rice, put it in my mouth, and chewed. I could hear my mother saying, Our little Yoon is such a good eater. As soon as I swallowed, Myungsuh put another leaf in my bowl. I put a leaf in his bowl as well. Then he put one in Miru’s bowl. We picked up the leaves, wrapped them around the rice, and stuffed them in our mouths at the same time, giggling as we chewed.

  I picked up a piece of brisket and held it out to the cat, but Miru stopped me.

  “She can’t eat anything with salt or onions.”

  “Why not?” I put the brisket in my own mouth instead.

  “Cats can’t digest salt.”

  “Then what should we feed her? She must be hungry.”

  “She won’t eat anything anyway. She’s very vain. She never eats between meals.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Miru looked at the cat as if to say, Isn’t that so? The cat sat there and showed no interest in the meat, even though she must have smelled it when I held it in front of her. Miru was right. I realized again how little I knew about cats.

  “I wonder why they can’t digest salt. That’s where all the flavor comes from.”

  It’s what my mother used to say.

  “That’s true. Come to think of it, I did once hear about a cat that lived near a salt lake.”

  “Salt lake?”

  “Yes. Where was it? Turkey? Greece? The path to the lake is crusted with salt. At night, the moonlight reflects off it, and it glows white. The description of the path is so amazing that I can still picture it in my head. People who are ill and at their life’s end go to that lake to soak in the saltwater, and the cat walks with them along the path and listens to their life story. The cat enjoys their stories and waits at the entrance for people to show up. Whenever someone shows up looking ill, the cat guides them to the lake.”

  “Where did you hear that?” I asked.

  “I read it in a book.”

  “What’s the title?”

  “I can’t remember. Do you remember the title of that book my sister had?” she asked Myungsuh. He cocked his head as if trying to remember.

  “I thought the path sounded so beautiful that I was obsessed with trying to picture the lake, but my silly sister was worried about the cat because she said salt makes them sick.”

  “I guess she knew everything there is to know about cats.”

  “She wasn’t always like that. I remember when she first brought the cat home. Her friend’s cat had five kittens, and this one was the runt. The stronger kittens pushed her away when they fed, so she couldn’t get enough to eat. When my sister saw that she couldn’t eat and kept getting her tail bitten, she brought her home. She was so small. It was easy to lose her. She could hide inside a manila envelope, and you would never find her. She looked like a ball of white string rolling along the floor. But despite her small size, she had sharp claws. I was fascinated by them. She scratched up all the furniture. My mother and Mirae used to fight about it all the time.”

  Myungsuh placed another perilla leaf on Miru’s rice. She looked down at it quietly and said my name. I looked at her. Her dark eyes locked on mine.

  “Can I have more rice?” she asked.

  “More? Really?” Myungsuh sounded shocked.

  We each had another bowl of rice and another bowl of soup. When we ran out of side dishes, Myungsuh took the containers out of the refrigerator again and heaped more food onto the serving dishes. He kept glancing at Miru as she ate.

  Stuffed, we left the messy table as it was and collapsed on the floor. The cat tiptoed languidly between us and leapt up onto my desk. She tucked her front paws together, arched her back, and huddled over to look down at us. She looked like a pile of fresh snow that had fallen only on that one spot. My cousin had told me that cats were independent and kept their distance from people. But Miru’s cat did not seem to mind when Myungsuh held her or when she was placed in my arms. Cats were also supposed to be sensitive and react to even the slightest touch, but Miru’s cat seemed to be unperturbed by anything. She had an elegant way of lifting her feet and arching her neck. Without quite realizing it, all three of us were staring at the cat.

  “She’s deaf,” Miru said.

  I looked at her in surprise.

  “She can’t hear anything.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s why she’s so quiet.”

  Finally, I understood why the cat barely moved and made so little noise.

  “They say ninety percent of that breed are deaf.”

  “What kind is it?” I asked.

  “Turkish Angora.”

  It was hard to believe that those lovely little ears could not hear a thing. I had thought, What a regal cat, too noble to be hanging out with someone like me, who sits in the street with no shoes on. When Miru told me it was deaf, I started to warm up to it. If I were sitting closer, I might have even reached out to stroke its ears.

  “How did you figure out it was deaf?” I asked.

  “She didn’t seem to recognize her name, no matter how much my sister and I called to her. At first we thought all cats were like that. But then we realized that no cat could sleep that deeply. We would see her sleeping under a chair when we left in the morning, but when we came home at night, she would still be asleep in the same spot. She slept anywhere and everywhere. As a kitten, she slept under cushions and inside plastic bags. When she got a little older, she slept on top of the bookshelf and behind curtains … She would sleep inside boxes … She would sleep and sleep. She was more like a lump of sleep than a cat …”

  When Miru said that, I pictured an animal called sleep.

  “When she finally started sleeping less, she started staring at everything that moved.”

  “Like what?”

  “Leaves shaking in the wind, bells dangling in the air, drops of rain sliding down the window, a ball of yarn rolling around, broken laces, glass beads, that sort of thing … She would stare at them. When they moved this way, she tu
rned her head this way, and when they moved that way, she turned her head that way.”

  “I see.”

  “One time, she was sitting in the window with her back to us. When we went to take a look, the first snow of the year was falling. The cat was watching the snowflakes dance in the wind. All day long, she moved her head in time with those whirling snowflakes. We took turns calling her name, but she never turned to look at us. That was when my sister realized something was wrong. The cat was deaf. I hadn’t even considered that possibility, but when I started watching her more carefully, I realized she wasn’t reacting to sound but to the air—the vibration of a door opening, the drumming of footsteps. I snuck up behind the cat once when it was gazing out the window and clapped my hands right next to its ears. But she just kept looking out the window. We took her to a dog hospital and had her examined. Sure enough, she really was deaf.”

  “Why did you take a cat to a dog hospital?”

  “We couldn’t find any veterinarians that treated cats.”

  “What do you call her?” I had finally gotten around to asking the cat’s name.

  Myungsuh answered before Miru could.

  “Emily Dickinson,” he said.

  “What?” I was shocked.

  “Emily Dickinson,” Miru said. “My sister picked the name.”

  Dahn’s face flashed through my mind. She named the cat Emily Dickinson? I got up and went to the desk and took out the very first book I had ever bought in this city—the collection of her poems. I pointed at the picture of Emily Dickinson on the cover and looked at Miru as if to say, You mean this Emily? Miru nodded. It seemed Emily had been with us even before we met. We were connected to each other through her, even though we hadn’t grown up together. Dahn had read her poems and then given them to me; meanwhile, Miru’s sister was naming the cat after her.

  “Ms. Dickinson probably wouldn’t be too happy about it, would she?” Miru said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That we named a deaf cat after her.”

  I hadn’t considered that. I looked at the cat and called out, “Emily Dickinson!”

  “Just call her Emily. That’s what my sister did.”

  It was just the three of us, but Miru brought up her sister so often—my sister did this, my sister said that—it felt like there were four of us in that room. Myungsuh opened the book of poems and read one out loud.

  I stepped from plank to plank

  So slow and cautiously;

  The stars about my head I felt,

  About my feet the sea.

  I knew not but the next

  Would be my final inch,—

  This gave me that precarious gait

  Some call experience.

  When he got to “About my feet the sea,” Miru joined in. It seemed they had read poetry out loud together before. Their voices harmonized. As I listened, I remembered Professor Yoon’s book and opened my bag. I took out the copies of We Are Breathing and gave one to each of them. I felt like the purpose of my long, unexpected pilgrimage across the city had been to deliver these books. I let out a sigh as if I had completed some arduous task. While Myungsuh and Miru opened their copies, I looked at the cat on top of the desk, the cat that could not hear a single sound in this world, and called out, “Emily—.”

  When the lecture ended, I slipped out of the classroom before Yoon could turn and see me. She sat in the very front. I was staring so hard at her all through class that I didn’t even hear the professor’s voice, but I couldn’t stop myself from dashing out of there as soon as class was over. Then I saw her in the middle of a deserted street that had just been stormed by protesters. I thought I was seeing things. She was standing among the tall buildings downtown with her back to me, her hair disheveled, nothing in her hands, barefoot. I called out her name, and she turned to face me. It was her. I remembered the first time I saw her, in the early morning fog next to the river in Ilyeong. It was hard to believe they were the same: that face dripping with tears like she had just washed it in the river and this lone pair of eyes floating in the middle of a city swept by demonstrations. But that’s what it’s like to live in this city—these things happen all the time, like it’s nothing.

  |||

  I read about the Genovese murder in the book I stole. It took place on March 13, 1964, before I was born. A woman named Catherine “Kitty” Genovese had finished a night shift and was returning to her New York apartment at three-fifteen in the morning when she ran into a suspicious-looking man who attacked her with a knife. Thirty-eight of her neighbors heard or saw her dying, but no one came to her aid. When Genovese yelled for help, the lights all went on in the apartment building, but no one opened their door or came down the stairs. One person yelled from their window, “Let that girl alone!” and the assailant ran away. Bleeding profusely, Genovese collapsed on the sidewalk. Nobody came outside to help her. The lights in the apartments went out, and the street grew quiet. The attacker, who had been hurrying back to his car, returned and stabbed Genovese again. She screamed again, and the lights went back on. The attacker ran away again. While Genovese struggled to crawl into the building, the lights went off. The attacker, who had only been hiding, came out once more and finished what he started. Genovese died after being stabbed in three attacks over thirty minutes. Each time she called for help, the lights went on and the attack stopped; when the lights went off again, the attack resumed. It was documented that thirty-eight people watched through their windows as Genovese was stabbed to death. Is this what it means to be human? I felt like putting the book back where I’d found it.

  |||

  Miru laughs more now because of Yoon. They’re like sisters. Since Yoon gave us our copies of We Are Breathing, Miru has been carrying it in her bag everywhere she goes. The three of us sit together in the professor’s class. Sometimes we stop by his office afterward. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Miru pay attention in class. He even calls her name when he gets to the end of the attendance sheet.

  Some of the people in class turn and look at her when he does this. Yoon looks, too, and smiles. Sometimes, in the middle of class, the professor will walk over to us and pat Miru on the back. I wonder if he and Yoon realize—aside from me, they are the only two people that Miru allows to see her scars.

  |||

  I met Yoon today, and we walked along the old fortress wall that used to encircle the city. She walks everywhere, even to school. It’s hard to picture her not walking. I’ve been following her and making my own new discoveries. As we walked along the wall, I told her about the Genovese murder. She listened intently.

  “She probably would have survived if only one person heard her screams, rather than thirty-eight,” she said.

  “You think so?” I asked.

  “That’s what psychologists say,” she said, and explained. “They say that’s how people’s minds work. If one person witnesses someone in danger, they won’t hesitate to help. But if there is a group of witnesses, each person will unconsciously wait and do nothing.”

  I asked her if that was because they all shifted the responsibility to one another, but she said it was not a transfer but a diffusion of responsibility.

  “According to psychologists,” she said, “the more witnesses there are, the smaller the sense of individual responsibility.”

  I asked if she was studying psychology, and she said it was one of her electives. Then her face turned gloomy.

  “But can human beings really be explained through psychology and psychoanalysis?”

  I stared at her. I don’t think she was expecting an answer, because she grabbed my hand and mumbled to herself:

  “How frightened she must have been each time the lights went out … Her terror was probably worse than the pain of being stabbed to death.”

  —Brown Notebook 4

  CHAPTER 5

  City Walls

  I used to take walks alone, but Myungsuh and Miru started joining me.

  We would walk side-
by-side until the road narrowed, and then we would fall into single file—Myungsuh in the lead, Miru in the middle, and me in the back. When the narrow road ended, we walked side-by-side again. Walking with them was different from walking alone. I thought I would not be able to see the city in detail the way I did when I was alone, since being a threesome meant we would be paying more attention to one another, but because there were three of us, there seemed to be more to see. If one of us pointed at something and said “Look at that,” we would all come together and look as one. I saw things I would have missed on my own. Miru mostly pointed at things in the sky: dark clouds, white clouds, a blazing sunset, the crescent moon hanging primly in the night sky, a halo around the moon at midnight, birds traversing the dark. I started paying more attention to the clouds at night thanks to her. I even looked for constellations like I did when I was little—first locating the Big Dipper and then using it to find Cassiopeia and Andromeda. Myungsuh mostly pointed out people: ruddy-faced manual laborers working hard to make ends meet; a middle-aged woman diligently turning hairtail fish as they roasted to a golden brown over a brazier set at the entrance to the market street; a grandmother with her back bent forward at a ninety-degree angle, walking so slowly that each step seemed to take a full minute as she carried vegetables to market; red-cheeked children, who looked as if they were growing taller as they played, charging after a bouncing ball; a drunken man perched precariously on an overpass with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  We made a game out of fixing things that had fallen over or were hanging crookedly. Signs knocked down or hanging askew, shoes dragged outside a door—whenever we spotted something, the three of us would run over together and right it. Miru became especially immersed in the game. Even when we weren’t playing, she was obsessed with correcting anything that was out of place. She returned trashcans that had been pulled out into the alley, and she even replanted flowers that had been planted for decoration. Once, while passing a fruit stand, she stopped to line up the apples in even rows. But when the owner came out, she hid her scarred hands in her pockets, and he thought she was stealing. We fixated on silly, pointless things sometimes to fight off our anxiety and loneliness. If Myungsuh saw two lovers walking hand in hand, he would try to step between them to force them to let go. Miru and I stopped him at first, but later we joined in the fun, trying to see how many couples we could separate within a certain distance. After a while, we started looking forward to doing it. Once, we saw an especially affectionate-looking couple, so Miru and I stood back and watched to see if he could actually separate them. When he succeeded, he flashed us a victory sign with his fingers, and we all grinned at one another. But then he pointed back at the couple, and we turned to see that they were walking closer together than before and holding each other’s hands more tightly.