by Frances Cha
They don’t, of course, and my legs are shaking like a dog’s.
I wonder if I will not survive this moment, if I will combust instead. But I want to see the girl’s face, to see what it is about her that attracted him to her. I crawl back up to my seat and rewind—there must be a close shot of her in the front seat before they moved to the back. And, yes, here it is, the door opening and a girl getting in. The girl is Nami. Kyuri’s friend. The prepubescent idiot with giant breasts. The one who I am quite certain is an escort of some kind as well.
I watch as they ride in silence and then Hanbin parks and they both get out of their front seats and get into the backseat, and then the scene I was just watching unfolds again. They have not said a word to each other, so it is clear that this has happened before—probably many times. It must have started that time when I called him to come drink with us. I had gone home with Kyuri and I had not realized that they had stayed out longer.
I lie on the bed for a long time, unseeing in the dark, and then go back to my computer and watch some more. Then I have to go back to my bed again.
Over the next few days I go through every single recording on the card. My heart splinters every time I hear his voice. I learn from his phone conversations that he is being set up on seon with the daughter of the Ilsun Group, and the wedding date may as well be set.
The seon is to be next month, when she returns home from a culinary program in Paris.
* * *
—
IN A WAY, I think I am now experiencing true freedom for the first time in my life. That is the way to think of this—that this is karma, and also absolution.
* * *
—
I HAD BEEN drowning slowly in my guilt, for coveting him when he was Ruby’s, for going to him and daring to show him my heart. I had been inhabiting a world not meant for me.
* * *
—
HE WAS ALWAYS offering things. I shrank from accepting because I thought that was the way to show my love for him, to show that I loved him beyond material things and the world he represented, the connections that could launch a career in the time it took to sneeze.
I had not wanted to burden him in any way, and I agonized over how my decisions would look to his family, of whether one fellowship would look more respectable than another.
I never allowed him to see my work because the only work I have been able to create has been of Ruby.
* * *
—
I RELISH the thought of him attending my exhibition, only to find Ruby at every turn—her face, her body, her hatreds and desires, her apathy and disdain, her cherished treasures.
* * *
—
BUT BEFORE he sees her in my work, I will suck everything I can from him. I will be wild and unleashed. I will now take from him what I can. I have not heard Kyuri’s philosophies on men all this time for nothing.
* * *
—
I WILL ASK him to buy me jewelry.
I will ask him to buy out my exhibition, so that I can land another from the press on that alone.
I will leak to the women’s magazines—the thick bibles of paparazzi photos of the rich and famous—that he is my boyfriend.
I will build myself up so high in such a short time that when he leaves me, I will become a lightning storm, a nuclear apocalypse.
* * *
—
I WILL NOT come out of this with nothing.
Wonna
The baby is tapping again. When she does this my heart lurches and I stop in the middle of whatever I am doing and I put my hands on my belly to feel her.
I do not know what this is—it only started earlier this week. I cannot tell if this is what they call “kicking” or if she has the hiccups.
Whatever it is, I am so grateful that a gush of hope springs deep inside me and it is everything I can do to not break down completely in public. I want to share this with someone—anyone. I want to clutch the lady who is sitting next to me on the subway and tell her. I want her to know a little world is erupting inside of me. My baby is trying to talk to me. She is trying to live.
* * *
—
FOR THE PAST three months, I have been playing a little game with myself. I call it a game but it is more a series of negotiations. With whom, I do not know, because I do not believe in God.
The game goes like this. If my baby lives for another week, I will do this. Or I will give another thing up. Last week, I promised to never smoke a cigarette again even after I give birth—although I do not like to think that far ahead for fear that I will be punished for doing so. I don’t even smoke that much but I was running out of stuff to relinquish. The previous week, I promised I would never take fat pills again, even if I feel sick looking at my reflection. And the week before that, I vowed to never drink again to the point of blacking out.
I almost told my husband about this game but I caught myself in time. He would not think it exemplary or empowered or motherly, which is how it makes me feel.
During my last visit, the doctor told me now that I have crossed into the second trimester, the odds of a miscarriage are only 2, perhaps 3 percent, so I shouldn’t worry so much anymore. I told her that to the 2 percent, the experience is 100 percent and I still know something will go wrong with the pregnancy, I just don’t know when. She looked at me strangely and I regretted speaking. She has a face like a stone tower.
* * *
—
MY HUSBAND is in China again this week for work. This means at night, I can stretch my body across the whole bed and the sheets feel twice as delicious against my skin. I can roll toward either side of the bed and toss and turn to my heart’s content.
If there was a marriage handbook of do’s and don’ts, the first chapter should be titled “Buy a King-Size Bed.”
With a queen bed, my husband always falls asleep first and I end up glaring balefully at him as he shifts way past the halfway line. His arm or leg ends up plopping on my body and I cannot fall asleep, so I stare at the ceiling in hatred, then I jab his back and he rolls over to his side, but it is only a matter of time before he rolls back to me. And now that I am pregnant, I can no longer take sleeping pills, and with the first series of negotiations about my baby with the unnamed deities, I gave up my melatonin too. I should have stretched out my bargaining—giving up the dosages by 1 milligram a week perhaps. Since I was starting with 10 milligrams a night, it would have given me an extra ten weeks of sleeping aid. But I gave it up completely during the second week or so, and now, if I fall asleep around 3 or 4 A.M., I consider the night saved.
In the beginning of the pregnancy, it used to infuriate me when I couldn’t fall asleep because of him. I would shake his shoulders roughly and say, “You are keeping me awake.” He would apologize and lie straight on his side, almost falling off the edge because he was so far over, but inevitably he would fall asleep again and roll over to my side and it would be the start of another cycle of chafing.
What changed was that I started reading blogs that said insomnia is inevitable and permanent—once you get pregnant, you will never sleep again anyway. Even when the baby is sleeping you will still not be able to sleep and you will lose your mind.
That was when I decided to try to think that it was not my husband’s fault. It is my fault for bringing the queen bed into the marriage in the first place. My father was so amazed that I was getting married at all, let alone to a normal man with a job, that he must have sold something in order to buy it for us. If he was spending money he didn’t have anyway, I should have made him spring for a king. But the mattress salesperson did not even attempt an upsell, and said that this bed would be the wisest investment newlyweds could make. They should hang salespeople who tell such lies.
* * *
—
BEFORE MY HUSBAND
left for his trip, we got into a fight. “There’s a baby fair at SETEC this weekend,” he said. I was cooking kalguksu for dinner after work while he was clearing and setting the table. “Don’t you want to go look at some clothes and bottles and strollers and stuff? I know it’ll take more than a few shopping trips to test gear and figure out what we need. My father said he’ll give us some money. He’s getting his retirement settlement next month.”
I whirled around and fixed him with a stare of disbelief. “You are jinxing this,” I said. “Don’t talk about her! Don’t even think about her!”
His brow furrowed slightly.
“Wonna, this is ridiculous,” he said. “We’re already halfway into the pregnancy. You really need to tell your boss soon. And by the way, you are the one making assumptions. You shouldn’t assume it’s a girl. I’m starting to get worried about your disappointment if it turns out to be a boy. I hope you will love him just as much if it is.”
“Oh shut up,” I snapped. “I bet you are hoping for a boy!”
It was the first time I had spoken to him that way. Laced with venom the way that my grandmother used to talk. I knew I had hurt him because he then did a rare thing—he didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night and even the next morning. I think he expected that I would apologize, because I would catch him casting hurt looks at me throughout the night, but he underestimated me. I took no notice and he took his bowl of kalguksu into the bedroom and ate it sitting at my vanity while staring at his phone. I had to wipe away the droplets of soup splatter later that night after he had gone to sleep.
* * *
—
THESE DAYS, the only time I feel vestiges of fondness for him is at work, whenever and wherever the inevitable husband bashing starts. It used to happen on occasions where there were only female co-workers about—at lunch, or coffee, or while waiting for meetings to start—but these days it’s beginning to trickle into regular work conversations even when the men are present.
“This is really the last straw,” Bora sunbae would say. “He came home at 3 A.M. last night and woke up Seung-yeon and this morning he asked me to make some hangover stew. And when I said that I have to, you know, go to work, he said he was going to ask his mom to make some next time so that he can freeze it and have it on hand. Can you believe it? My mother-in-law already thinks I’m such a neglectful wife and mother.”
And then Joo-eun sunbae would chime in. “That is nothing. Do you know how many times my mother-in-law has been in my house this year when we are not at home? Just because they bought us the apartment, my mother-in-law thinks it’s her house. Whenever she knows we’re away, she ‘pops by’ to put her son’s favorite food in the fridge and of course she’s snooping all over the place! She asked me accusingly if I am using birth control the other day because she must have seen it in the bathroom in my bedroom. I can’t even change the locks because that would cause an epic shitstorm that would probably leave me out on the street!”
And I would sit and nod in consternation and sympathy and think warmer thoughts about my husband with his conveniently dead mother.
But if I had known what our long-term housing prospects would be, I might have traded in a dead mother for a live one with cash. Before my husband and I married, I had a vague feeling of reassurance that, oh, this man has a steady job in a top ten conglomerate so our income is accounted for. We’d save up and buy an apartment in a few years—wasn’t that what everyone did?
I didn’t realize that his monthly salary was only three million won. Or to be more accurate, I did not know that three million won was so worthless. The longer we are married, the more our bankbook seems to shrivel every time I take it out of the drawer.
I know that buying an apartment is a dream in the sky. But each month, I have been scrimping every penny, scouring for opportunities to have someone treat us for meals. In addition to toilet paper, I’ve started taking home the sponges and dish soap from the office kitchen. I wish there was some way I could resell office supplies. Our cupboard has a stockpile of very nice pens.
* * *
—
HE’S RIGHT ABOUT one thing, though, as much as I hate to admit it. I do have to tell work soon if I am to apply for maternity leave. I am hoping for more than a year, although I have heard that if it goes more than a year, it becomes unpaid. But these are just rumors that I have to verify. Our HR department is notorious for leaks, however, and if my immediate boss finds out that I told HR before I told her…my knees actually buckle to think of this.
I have been worrying about how to tell her ever since I began to think there was a chance that this baby might make it. How does one talk to a bitter, unmarried, workaholic female boss about such a thing? I am scared that she will say it is ridiculous to have paid maternity leave, especially since we can all assume that she will never get one. “No. No. No. Why should you be paid for not working, when everyone else works twice as hard as you? So that you can play with a baby at home? Women like you are the reason companies do not want to hire women. And that sets back women everywhere. If you were a man, how many days off would you take after having a baby? That’s right, none.” And then she will do what she can to demote me when I do come back to work, somehow in the name of feminism. If I ever try to leave at a decent hour—say, before dinnertime—she will concentrate her fury and aim it at me like a blowtorch. I know her tactics. I know her caustic, embittered mind. If she wasn’t such a raging bitch, I would feel sorry for her. Instead, my hate is a heavy rock sitting in the middle of my chest. Every day, it sinks a little lower toward my stomach.
My only resort is to pump Bora sunbae for information. She only recently joined our department, so I do not know much about her, but she has a son who is somewhere around three or four years old. I wonder if her boss in her former department was nicer than Miss Chun and whether she felt such fear about broaching the topic of maternity leave. I resolve to ask her about it at lunch, when one can glean such tantalizing tidbits about private lives.
* * *
—
AT 11:55 A.M., everyone on the floor stands up simultaneously and makes for the elevator, where we press the down button and let four full elevators come and go before we finally get to the lobby, twenty minutes later. It is the same every day and every day I wonder why I do not go twenty minutes before everyone else and say that I will come back twenty minutes earlier too. I’m sure everyone thinks the same thing I do. But no one does it except Department Head Lee.
When we make it to the lobby, I realize my mistake. Our team is going to Sun Tuna today for lunch. Not only is it sashimi, but it is tuna, the worst kind for pregnancy. I should have stayed in and eaten the cup of ramen at my desk. I kick myself mentally, but then I remember that I vowed to give up convenience store food six weeks ago. I would pretend an emergency phone call and extricate myself, but Chief Cho is buying lunch as a thank-you for coming to his wedding and it has taken three months of scheduling and rescheduling to get our entire team here. It would look terrible if I left now. It would be one less person to pay for, so he would probably secretly be happy, but he would still fake-fume about it for weeks. It is not worth it.
Through some strategic maneuvering, I am seated at the end of the table across from Bora sunbae, hoping no one will notice that I am not eating the tuna. I make a show of heartily eating the banchan and asking the server for more.
“So, is it wonderful? Married life?” Someone throws out the question as a courtesy.
Chief Cho preens. “Of course, it’s nice to come home to a hot homemade dinner every evening. I highly recommend it so far.”
“You better get started if you want children,” pipes up Mr. Geum. “It’s so hard to run around with the kids when you’re older. Your back hurts.”
Then someone at the other end of the table starts to talk about how old they feel and all the aches and pains they are experiencing these days and t
he conversation threatens to veer away from children. So I say hurriedly, “Are you planning on having more kids, Bora sunbae?”
She has a mouthful of tuna, so she almost chokes when she shakes her head vehemently.
“Are you kidding?” she asks loudly, so that everyone’s attention turns to her. “I am so done after one child.”
Chief Cho, who is older than Bora by at least three years, clucks. “Well, you know what they say. It’s hard when they’re young but they are your greatest assets when you are older. I personally want three.” He beams. “And all you young people, you better get cracking. Don’t wait like me. I regret it already.”
I see Miss Chun at the far end, stabbing her tuna with her chopsticks.
“A child is like a sinkhole for money,” says Bora. “The more money you throw in there, the bigger the hole gets.”
Everyone laughs. It is safe to assume from Bora’s wry tone that she is joking. She can talk about money like this only because she has a lot of it. Her husband is a lawyer whose father is a famous doctor of Korean medicine in Shinchon.
“Why?” I ask, willing my voice to sound lightly curious. “Why does a child require so much money?” I know that strollers cost more than one would think, and then once your children enter elementary school, you need to start paying for after-school classes and tutoring, which builds up exponentially, and then there is of course college tuition, but why a three-year-old would require a lot of money is beyond my imagination. Perhaps she is projecting those future costs? Or buying her baby ginseng extracts and silver spoon sets? The state pays for nursery school and I heard that they give you cash in monthly installments for having a baby at all, because they need the population to grow.
