by Frances Cha
I shook my head.
“Wait, you don’t live in a hanok complex?” she asked.
I sighed and wondered how I would explain it all to her, the antiquated unreality of my parents’ life. And besides, why would I be working my fingers to the bone in a hair salon if I was some heiress of a centuries-old hanok? It is a wonder that Miho has survived so long in this world with so little sense.
I went to find Sujin, who was staring at herself in the bathroom mirror again like a ghost with all her matted hair hanging down over her cheeks, and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Oh, just let me be,” she said in a huffy voice. I tapped her again, hard.
Can you go be useful please, I wrote and showed her. Miho thinks I am from a rich family and I need you to spell out what staying at my house will actually entail. Not that Sujin has ever stayed over before either, but she had been to my house several times in middle school, before the incident.
“Why on earth would she think that?” Sujin asked, but now with a gleam of mission in her eyes as she rushed past me to put Miho straight. I wanted to add that it was most certainly due to Sujin that Miho possessed this misinformation in the first place.
“Apparently you need to understand some things,” I heard her say to Miho in a bossy voice as I went into my room and banged the door shut.
* * *
—
SO HERE WE ARE, Sujin, Miho, and I, sitting together at the back of a rattling “express” bus with our bags piled high. Even downtown Cheongju—let alone the back hills, where my family is from—will not know what to make of the likes of us: a freshly upbeat Sujin, hiding behind supersize black sunglasses and a violently colorful scarf; ethereal Miho cocooned in an emerald-colored faux-fur coat; and apprehensive, mousy me. The only thing cheerful about me is my hair. I dyed it fuchsia ten days ago, in a fit of panic after buying the bus tickets home. The roots are already showing in an intentionally cool way (I hope). Manager Kwon loved the idea of my going pink and offered to do the initial bleach himself—he always pushes us to experiment with colors in our own hair, the more maniacal the better. He says customers are happier entrusting their hair to people with imagination. I know it will fade by next week, but for now it makes me happy, as if I have set off a signal to the world. Already, I have noticed how people react with great caution to someone with fuchsia hair, even if that person is mute.
Mercifully, the bus is half empty—most of the filial legions transited days ago to the provinces—and the driver estimates the travel time to be just under three hours.
Sujin and Miho are bickering about whether Sujin should visit the Loring Center and Miss Loring’s grave with Miho or not. Sujin has not been back since she left.
“I don’t understand, I thought you liked Miss Loring,” says Miho, looking hurt.
“You are so delusional,” says Sujin, looking at me wildly. “You can ask Ara. Did I like anyone at the Loring Center? Especially the white woman? I can’t believe you thought that for a single minute!”
I pat her back and write She hated everyone on my notepad. Sujin passes it to Miho.
“But Miss Loring was so nice! She left all of her money to all of us, remember? All of our school supplies, art supplies, our clothes—that was all her. You have to appreciate that?” Miho looks aghast at Sujin, who sticks out her lip, aggrieved.
“She liked you because you were talented and pretty,” says Sujin. “I never used the art room. She only liked kids who were special in some way because it made her feel good about looking after us. Like Yunmi in the grade below us. Miss Loring liked her because she was so beautiful and she could sing. She got her some music scholarship.” Sujin shrugged and amended, “It’s not that she disliked the rest of us, she just…Oh, whatever, you wouldn’t understand. And besides, I totally admit that I caused a lot of trouble, so it’s just natural she didn’t like me.”
“You just said it’s not that she didn’t like you,” says Miho.
“Oh shut up,” says Sujin.
Miho frowns and shifts savagely in her seat, jostling the pile of bags next to her. The topmost bag, which is hers, falls to the floor with a thud.
“Shit,” hisses Miho, staring at it with a stricken face.
We look at her.
“It was my present for your parents,” she says wretchedly, hopping down and pulling it up onto her lap. Unzipping it, she pulls out a large black box, which has the Joye department store logo etched in spidery, designer font.
“What was it?” whispers Sujin.
I had told both of them in vain that they shouldn’t buy gifts for my parents—they would be utterly wasted. But they had both ignored me—Sujin had brought a large green tea fresh cream cake from the new bakery in Shinyoung Plaza, where people lined up around the block. “At least you’ll like it even if your parents don’t,” Sujin had said when I wrote in exasperation that my parents didn’t eat Western desserts and they would have no earthly way of knowing that it had cost her almost 100,000 won. And if they were to ever find out how much it cost, their heads would explode and they would think that she was not only criminally wasteful but obscene.
Miho pries open the lid and sighs with happiness—the deep square box is packed with neat rows of absurdly perfect-looking blush roses. The fragrance that arises from them is startling and lovely in the stale bus air. Sujin and I look at each other—I’ve never seen an arrangement like this before, but it’s obvious they are monstrously expensive. And flowers are the worst possible gift to get people like us! Miho should know this and not waste her money! I start sighing again, and Sujin jabs me with her elbow.
“They are beautiful,” Sujin says. “That tumble didn’t hurt them one bit.”
“They’re supposed to be able to last a year, can you believe it?” says Miho. “Hanbin’s mother had the chemical technology patented in Korea last year.”
I sigh and smile at her and hope that she got a discount from her boyfriend at least although I highly doubt it. There is really nothing else to do but turn to the window. We are on the highway now and it is unbelievable how much construction is going on even as we speed further and further away from Gangnam. Each building is topped with a gargantuan orange crane reeling large beams and planks through the air. The scale of these new apartment complexes takes my breath away—I cannot imagine them all filling with people and furniture and light. Hundreds, no, thousands of apartments, so far away from the heart of the capital, and yet I will never be able to afford a single one, no matter how much I save all my life. In a way, I will be glad when we are almost home and the scenery will turn into rice fields and farm plots, and I will be reminded of how far I have come, instead of what I cannot reach.
* * *
—
AT THE TAXI line at Cheongju station, we have to wait half an hour for a car because no one likes to work on New Year’s Day. I read somewhere that many of the drivers who work on holidays are ex-convicts who cannot go home to their families because of shame. Fortunately there is a bench by the taxi stand and we huddle together for warmth, Sujin and Miho giggling at the hostile looks we are getting from the occasional passersby. “Home sweet home,” says Sujin, theatrically. It’s true, no one in Gangnam would give us a second glance—green coats and pink hair and all. Just the fact that we are waiting at the stand marks us as “other”—the rest of the disembarking passengers had cars and family members waiting on the curb with eager smiles.
After three years of being away, it’s hard to believe that this dinky two-story building the size of a chain grocery store back in Seoul is one of the main transit hubs here. When I was young, it had seemed to me that the rest of the world was compressed into this bus station, the people with the quicker steps and large travel bags heading for darkly glamorous lives.
A lone taxi loops around the deserted street and we load ourselves in with sighs of relief while Sujin giv
es the driver the address.
“There’s a big hanok estate around there, right?” says the driver, taking another look at us in the rearview mirror. “I heard they film a lot of TV shows there. That actor Lee Hoonki came a few months ago, my buddy drove him there once. You girls live in the area?”
“No, no,” says Sujin. “We just somehow are staying there for a few days because we know some people.”
There is a silence, and then Sujin abruptly starts chatting up the driver again, which is unusual for her. I wonder if she is remembering what I am remembering—that we are going to pass The Arch on the way to my house.
* * *
—
MAYBE IF I THINK about it hard enough, I will arrive at the conclusion that I didn’t come home for three years because I didn’t want to walk past the site of my injury. You see, there is only one road to the Big House and there is no way to avoid it.
I am sure most people don’t even register the little stone arch when they walk or drive past it—it is faded and so far off the dirt path that it is a wonder it was ever built. I must be the only person that attaches any significance to it whatsoever. When we were in middle school, that was where the bad kids liked to hang out after dark—every crevice was crammed with cigarette butts and gum wrappers and broken lighters. In the years following my accident, I never saw anyone linger there. Rumors about bloodstains and bad luck had made the rounds at the local schools.
* * *
—
UNTIL I LOST my voice, my parents had been saving money to buy a small apartment in the city, which they had been assured would double in value in the following decade. One of the other housekeepers in the Big House had a son who was a real estate agent with connections on the local zoning council, who tipped him off to government developments.
So, it was not only I who lost my way in life that day, but my parents. That’s why I left. I cannot bear to see my parents still living in the little annex on the Big House estate, when they should be going home every night to a gleaming new apartment now worth four times what they would have paid, thanks to the new train station. According to social media posts by old classmates, the formerly decaying district reverberates with fresh life and money. Instead, that money was counted out to specialist after specialist who told me what I already knew—that I had lost my voice and was unlikely to ever speak again.
I think the hardest part was seeing my parents so terrified on my behalf. I do not know what kind of life they thought I had been heading toward, given that I had never stood out academically in any way and had no flaming career ambitions, but my mother in particular became catatonic with grief and had to be hospitalized herself at one point.
It was only recently that I understood they were now worried that no normal man would marry me. The idea that I would never experience motherhood was so distressing that it unleashed a separate wave of guilt for their not having given me siblings. “We thought we were too old,” said my mother, twisting her hands. “We were selfish, and now you will have no one when we die.”
* * *
—
OFTEN WHEN I am in a place that is crowded and loud, I look around at all the people who are talking and I think about how much of their being is concentrated in their voices, and how I am living a fraction of that life. And then I play a useless game with myself—would it have been preferable to have lost my hearing or sight instead? The sickening self-pity sharpens when I actually listen to what people are talking about.
* * *
—
WHEN OUR TAXI pulls up to the main gate of the Big House, I have to tell the driver to keep going.
“Isn’t this the front door?” he says, confused. Sujin has to tell him there’s another entrance around the corner and Miho presses her nose against the window to get a better look as we whisk past.
It’s not as if my family is forced to use the back entrance—my parents use the front gate several times a day as they go about their jobs—but the back way is the shortest way to our little annex and I’d rather not see anyone from the Big House right now. The black car is parked out front—the bulky Equus, which must be fifteen years old but still as glossy as a mirror, thanks to my father.
My father, or Changee, as he is known by everyone in the neighborhood, has been the Big House chauffeur since he came back from the army in his early twenties. He was the master’s manservant’s youngest son, and he married my mother, the maid’s daughter; they had me very late in life. My father is a quiet man and he did not inherit any of his own father’s interest in weaponry. I heard Jun, the youngest son of the Big House, talking about my notorious grandfather to some school friends once. They were examining the enormous wooden staff displayed in his father’s meditation room.
“Seo-sshi made that—he was my grandfather’s ‘slave of the body,’ ” Jun was saying. “They say he killed several men with it.”
“Can he make us one? Is he still around?” asked one of his friends, and I leaned closer from where I had been cleaning the windows of the living room to try to catch a glimpse of them.
“Well, we have Changee, who’s the son of Seo-sshi, but he’s just a driver and I don’t think he knows how to make weapons. But maybe I’ll tell him to go learn and make me one,” he said. I had been about to muster up the nerve to tell them what I knew about that staff—how it had been used in a fight against a local gang in the market, and how a foreign man had offered a great deal of money for it. But when I heard what Jun said, I threw the wet rag I had been cleaning with on the floor, which was as rebellious a gesture as I could make. Vowing never to set foot in that house again, I stormed off to the annex, only to be told by my mother to run some rice cakes over to Big House kitchen because Jun had brought company over.
* * *
—
WHEN MY MOTHER and father were married, my mother moved into a small annex that had been hastily built at the far end of the estate as a wedding gift, away from the other servants’ quarters. Because it was the only structure on the estate that was not traditional hanok architecture, it was also easily the smallest and ugliest building in the complex—a concrete, oblong box with a blue roof that had two small rooms and a kitchen. My grandfather’s stern portrait had presided over my room all my life. It was in that room now that both Sujin and Miho would be staying with me.
A few days ago, I had texted my mother to ask if we could borrow more sleeping mats from the Big House. “That cannot possibly be asked,” she had responded. “How can you even think of such a thing?”
I had closed my eyes in exasperation when she texted back. There were entire wings that were lying empty and unused, and certainly dozens of luxurious, thick, embroidered sleeping mats. Lady Chang had petted me when I was younger—she would say yes if asked. But my friends and I would be sleeping on thin blankets instead.
* * *
—
AS WE SLIP past the back entrance, Miho comes to a dramatic stop in the middle of the path, surveying the grounds. “This is so beautiful,” she says in the dreamy voice that is starting to irritate me now. “How old is it? It must be centuries old, right?”
I shrug. It is at least a hundred years old, that I know. The Big Family is obsessed with their lineage.
“You never asked?” marvels Miho. Her eyes are hungry as they travel across the lotus pond, the pagoda, pruned pine gardens, and in the distance, the Big House itself, with its elaborately crafted woodwork and the sloping, gabled roof. Enormous stone frogs stand guard in front of each building’s entrance. The grass has been cut to perfection by my father—that is another one of his duties around the house.
“It’s not her family—why should she care?” snaps Sujin, and I grin at her.
“If I lived here, I would never leave,” says Miho, still staring.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, she keeps it up even when we finally reach the annex. Set
ting her bags down in the dim living room, she says it’s so cool to see where I grew up and how lucky I was to have my own room as a child.
My parents are not here, of course, even though I did text them what bus we were taking. It doesn’t matter that it’s a holiday—holidays are the busiest times, with all the extra cooking and cleaning and shopping and rituals.
I try to see it through Miho’s and Sujin’s eyes, and it is as painful as I predicted. The edges of the living room wallpaper have turned a shade of yellow, and in the far corner a triangular flypaper is studded with insect bodies—a few still flickering with life. I also hope Miho doesn’t notice my parents’ matching “Adidis” slippers in the foyer.
Miho smiles at me and asks where the bathroom is. I point to the right and walk to the kitchen, where Sujin has already poured herself some barley tea from a jug in the fridge and is eating a rice cake from a plate my mother left on the table.
“It’s kind of eerie how it’s stayed exactly the same,” Sujin says, gesturing around her. “I feel like I’m in middle school again. Your mother made these, right? You used to bring them to school.” Sujin pushes the plate toward me but I shake my head. Even as a child, I could see only how much work and cleanup they involved, and I did not like to eat them.
* * *
—
WE GO FIND my mother in the kitchen of the Big House. She is making dumplings with Mrs. Youngja and Mrs. Sukhyang at the round table. Waving their flour-coated hands, Mrs. Youngja and Mrs. Sukhyang yell in excitement when they see me.
“Look who it is! Ara! Pink hair! Oh my goodness! And you gained some weight!”
“No, she hasn’t, she’s lost weight!”
Mrs. Youngja and Mrs. Sukhyang immediately start squabbling while my mother waves me closer. When she soundlessly wraps me in an emotional hug, my heart gives a guilty jump as I take in how lined her face has become. Her skin looks powdery and thin, and uneven silver streaks her hair. Can she have aged this much in what seems so short a time?
