by Min Jin Lee
Despite numerous personal appeals, no one had been allowed to see Isak, but the family believed he was alive, because the police had not told them otherwise. The elder minister and the sexton remained in jail as well, and the family hoped that the three of them sustained each other somehow, though no one knew how the prisoners were being housed. A day after the arrest, the police had come to the house to confiscate Isak’s few books and papers. The family’s comings and goings were monitored; a detective visited them every few weeks to ask questions. The police padlocked the church, yet the congregation continued to meet secretly in small groups led by the church elders. Kyunghee, Sunja, and Yoseb never met the parishioners for fear of putting them in danger. By now, most of the foreign missionaries back home and here had returned to their native countries. It was rare to see a white person in Osaka. Yoseb had written the Canadian missionaries about Isak but there’d been no reply.
Under considerable duress, the decision-making authority of the Presbyterian Church had deemed that the mandatory Shinto shrine ceremony was a civic duty rather than a religious one even though the Emperor, the head of the state religion, was viewed as a living deity. Pastor Yoo, a faithful and pragmatic minister, had believed that the shrine ceremony, where the townspeople were required to gather and perform rites, was in fact a pagan ritual drummed up to rouse national feeling. Bowing to idols was naturally offensive to the Lord. Nevertheless, Pastor Yoo had encouraged Isak, Hu, and his congregation to observe the Shinto bowing for the greater good. He didn’t want his parishioners, many of them new to the faith, to be sacrificed to the government’s predictable response to disobedience—prison and death. Pastor Yoo found support for such ideas in the letters of the apostle Paul. So whenever these gatherings at the nearest shrine took place, their frequency varying from town to town, the elder pastor, Isak, and Hu had attended when necessary along with whoever else was in the church building at the time. However, with his weakened vision, the elder pastor had not known that at every Shinto ceremony, the sexton Hu had been mouthing Our Father like an unbroken loop even as he bowed, sprinkled water, and clapped his hands like all the others. Isak had noticed Hu doing this, of course, but had said nothing. If anything, Isak had admired Hu’s faith and gesture of resistance.
For Sunja, Isak’s arrest had forced her to consider what would happen if the unthinkable occurred. Would Yoseb ask her and her children to leave? Where would she go, and how would she get there? How would she take care of her children? Kyunghee would not ask her to leave, but even so—she was only a wife. Sunja had to have a plan and money in case she had to return home to her mother with her sons.
So Sunja had to find work. She would become a peddler. It was one thing for a woman like her mother to take in boarders and to work alongside her husband to earn money, but something altogether different for a young woman to stand in an open market and sell food to strangers, shouting until she was hoarse. Yoseb tried to forbid her from getting a job, but she could not listen to him. With tears streaming down her face, she told her brother-in-law that Isak would want her to earn money for the boys’ schooling. To this, Yoseb yielded. Nevertheless, he prohibited Kyunghee from working outdoors, and his wife obeyed. Kyunghee was allowed to put up the pickles with Sunja, but she couldn’t sell them. Yoseb couldn’t protest too much, because the household was desperate for cash. In a way, the two women tried to obey Yoseb in their disobedience—they did not want to hurt Yoseb by defying him, but the financial burdens had become impossible for one man to bear alone.
Her first day of selling took place one week after Isak was jailed. After Sunja dropped off Isak’s food at the jail, she wheeled a wooden cart holding a large clay jar of kimchi to the market. The open-air market in Ikaino was a patchwork of modest retail shops selling housewares, cloth, tatami mats, and electric goods, and it hosted a collection of hawkers like her who peddled homemade scallion pancakes, rolled sushi, and soybean paste.
Kyunghee watched Mozasu at home. Nearby the peddlers selling gochujang and doenjang, Sunja noticed two young Korean women selling fried wheat crackers. Sunja pushed her cart toward them, hoping to wedge herself between the cracker stall and the soybean-paste lady.
“You can’t stink up our area,” the older of the two cracker sellers said. “Go to the other side.” She pointed to the fish section.
When Sunja moved closer to the women selling dried anchovies and seaweed, the older Korean women there were even less welcoming.
“If you don’t move your shitty-looking cart, I’ll have my sons piss in your pot. Do you understand, country girl?” said a tall woman wearing a white kerchief on her head.
Sunja couldn’t come up with a reply, because she was so surprised. None of them were even selling kimchi, and doenjang could smell just as pungently.
She kept walking until she couldn’t see any more ajummas and ended up near the train station entrance where the live chickens were sold. The intense funk of animal carcasses overwhelmed her. There was a space big enough for her cart between the pig butcher and the chickens.
Wielding an enormous knife, a Japanese butcher was cutting up a hog the size of a child. A large bucket filled with its blood rested by his feet. Two hogs’ heads lay on the front table. The butcher was an older gentleman with ropy, muscular arms and thick veins. He was sweating profusely, and he smiled at her.
Sunja parked her cart in the empty lot by his stall. Whenever a train stopped, she could feel its deceleration beneath her sandals. Passengers would disembark, and many of them came into the market from the entrance nearby, but none stopped in front of her cart. Sunja tried not to cry. Her breasts were heavy with milk, and she missed being at home with Kyunghee and Mozasu. She wiped her face with her sleeves, trying to remember what the best market ajummas would do back home.
“Kimchi! Delicious kimchi! Try this delicious kimchi, and never make it at home again!” she shouted. Passersby turned to look at her, and Sunja, mortified, looked away from them. No one bought anything. After the butcher finished with his hog, he washed his hands and gave her twenty-five sen, and Sunja filled a container for him. He didn’t seem to mind that she didn’t speak Japanese. He put down the kimchi container by the hogs’ heads, then reached behind his stall to take out his bento. The butcher placed a piece of kimchi neatly on top of his white rice with his chopsticks and ate a bite of rice and kimchi in front of her.
“Oishi! Oishi nee! Honto oishi,” he said, smiling.
She bowed to him.
At lunchtime, Kyunghee brought Mozasu for her to nurse, and Sunja remembered that she had no choice but to recoup the cost of the cabbage, radish, and spices. At the end of the day, she had to show more money than they had spent.
Kyunghee watched the cart while Sunja nursed the baby with her body turned toward the wall.
“I’d be afraid,” Kyunghee said. “You know how I’d said that I wanted to be a kimchi ajumma? I don’t think I realized what it would feel like to stand here. You’re so brave.”
“What choice do we have?” Sunja said, looking down at her beautiful baby.
“Do you want me to stay here? And wait with you?”
“You’ll get in trouble,” Sunja said. “You should be home when Noa gets back from school, and you have to make dinner. I’m sorry I can’t help you, Sister.”
“What I have to do is easy,” Kyunghee said.
It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon, and the air felt cooler as the sun turned away from them.
“I’m not going to come home until I sell the whole jar.”
“Really?”
Sunja nodded. Her baby, Mozasu, resembled Isak. He looked nothing like Noa, who was olive-skinned with thick, glossy hair. Noa’s bright eyes noticed everything. Except for his mouth, Noa looked almost identical to a young Hansu. At school, Noa sat still during lessons, waited for his turn, and he was praised as an excellent student. Noa had been an easy baby, and Mozasu was a happy baby, too, delighted to be put into a stranger’s arms. When she thought
about how much she loved her boys, she recalled her parents. Sunja felt so far away from her mother and father. Now she was standing outside a rumbling train station, trying to sell kimchi. There was no shame in her work, but it couldn’t be what they’d wanted for her. Nevertheless, she felt her parents would have wanted her to make money, especially now.
When Sunja finished nursing, Kyunghee put down two sugared rolls and a bottle filled with reconstituted powdered milk on the cart.
“You have to eat, Sunja. You’re nursing, and that’s not easy, right? You have to drink lots of water and milk.”
Kyunghee turned around so Sunja could tuck Mozasu into the sling on Kyunghee’s back. Kyunghee secured the baby tightly around her torso.
“I’ll go home and wait for Noa and make dinner. You come home soon, okay? We’re a good team.”
Mozasu’s small head rested between Kyunghee’s thin shoulder blades, and Sunja watched them walk away. When they were out of earshot, Sunja cried out, “Kimchi! Delicious Kimchi! Kimchi! Delicious kimchi! Oishi desu! Oishi kimchi!”
This sound, the sound of her own voice, felt familiar, not because it was her own voice but because it reminded her of all the times she’d gone to the market as a girl—first with her father, later by herself as a young woman, then as a lover yearning for the gaze of her beloved. The chorus of women hawking had always been with her, and now she’d joined them. “Kimchi! Kimchi! Homemade kimchi! The most delicious kimchi in Ikaino! More tasty than your grandmother’s! Oishi desu, oishi!” She tried to sound cheerful, because back home, she had always frequented the nicest ajummas. When the passersby glanced in her direction, she bowed and smiled at them. “Oishi! Oishi!”
The pig butcher looked up from his counter and smiled at her proudly.
That evening, Sunja did not go home until she could see the bottom of the kimchi jar.
Sunja could sell whatever kimchi she and Kyunghee were able to make now, and this ability to sell had given her a kind of strength. If they could’ve made more kimchi, she felt sure that she could’ve sold that, too, but fermenting took time, and it wasn’t always possible to find the right ingredients. Even when they made a decent profit, the price of cabbages could spike the following week, or worse, they might not be available at all. When there were no cabbages at the market, the women pickled radishes, cucumbers, garlic, or chives, and sometimes Kyunghee pickled carrots or eggplant without garlic or chili paste, because the Japanese preferred those kinds of pickles. Sunja thought about land all the time. The little kitchen garden her mother had kept behind the house had nourished them even when the boardinghouse guests ate double what they paid. The price of fresh food kept rising, and working people couldn’t afford the most basic things. Recently, some customers would ask to buy a cup of kimchi because they couldn’t afford a jar of it.
If Sunja had no kimchi or pickles to sell, she sold other things. Sunja roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts; she boiled ears of corn. She had two carts now, and she hooked them together like the cars of a train—one cart with a makeshift coal stove and another just for pickles. The carts took up the better part of the kitchen because they had to keep them inside the house for fear of them getting stolen. She split the profits equally with Kyunghee, and Sunja put aside every sen she could for the boys’ schooling and for their passage back home in case they had to leave.
When Mozasu turned five months old, Sunja also started selling candy at the market. Produce had been getting increasingly scarce, and by chance, Kyunghee had obtained two wholesale bags of black sugar from a Korean grocer whose Japanese brother-in-law worked in the military.
At her usual spot by the pork butcher’s stall, Sunja stoked the fire beneath the metal bowl used to melt sugar. The steel box that functioned as a stove had been giving her trouble; as soon as she could afford it, Sunja planned on having a proper stove made up for her cart. She rolled up her sleeves and moved the live coals around to circulate the air and raise the heat.
“Agasshi, do you have kimchi today?”
It was a man’s voice, and Sunja looked up. About Isak’s age, he dressed like her brother-in-law—tidy without drawing much attention to himself. His face was cleanly shaven, and his fingernails were neat. The lenses of his eyeglasses were very thick and the heavy frames detracted from his good features.
“No, sir. No kimchi today. Just candy. It’s not ready, though.”
“Oh. When will you have kimchi again?”
“Hard to say. There isn’t much cabbage to buy, and the last batch of kimchi we put up isn’t ready yet,” Sunja said, and returned to the coals.
“A day or two? A week?”
Sunja looked up again, surprised by his insistence.
“The kimchi might be ready in three days or so. If the weather continues to get warmer, then it might be two, sir. But I don’t think that soon,” Sunja said flatly, hoping he would let her start with the candy making. Sometimes, she sold a few bags to the young women getting off the train at about this time.
“How much kimchi will you have when it’s ready?”
“I’ll have plenty to sell you. Do you know how much you want? Most of my customers like to bring their own containers. How much do you think you need?” Her customers were Korean women who worked in factories and didn’t have time to make their own banchan. When she sold sweets, her customers were children and young women. “Just stop by in three days, and if you bring your own container—”
The young man laughed.
“Well, I was thinking that maybe you can sell me everything you make.”
He adjusted his eyeglasses.
“You can’t eat that much kimchi! And how would you keep the rest of it fresh?” Sunja replied, shaking her head at his foolishness. “It’s going to be summer in a couple of months, and it’s hot here already.”
“I’m sorry. I should have explained. My name is Kim Changho, and I manage the yakiniku restaurant right by Tsuruhashi Station. News of your excellent kimchi has spread far.”
Sunja wiped her hands on the apron that she wore over her padded cotton vest, keeping a close eye on the hot coals.
“It’s my sister-in-law who knows what she’s doing in the kitchen. I just sell it and help her make it.”
“Yes, yes, I’d heard that, too. Well, I’m looking for some women to make all the kimchi and banchan for the restaurant. I can get you cabbage and—”
“Where, sir? Where do you get cabbage? We looked everywhere. My sister-in-law goes to the market early in the morning and still—”
“I can get it,” he said, smiling.
Sunja didn’t know what to say. The candy-making metal bowl was hot already, and it was time to put in the sugar and water, but she didn’t want to start now. If this person was serious, then it was important to hear him out. She heard the train arrive. She had missed her first batch of customers already.
“Where’s your restaurant again?”
“It’s the big restaurant on the side street behind the train station. On the same street as the pharmacy—you know, the one owned by the skinny Japanese pharmacist, Okada-san? He wears black glasses like mine?” He pushed his glasses up on his nose again and smiled like a boy.
“Oh, I know where the pharmacy is.”
This was the shop where all the Koreans went when they were really sick and were willing to pay for good medicine. Okada was not a friendly man, but he was honest; he was reputed to be able to cure many ailments.
The young man didn’t seem like anyone who was trying to take advantage of her, but she couldn’t be sure. In the few short months working as a vendor, she’d given credit to a few customers and had not been repaid. People were willing to lie about small things and to disregard your interests.
Kim Changho gave her a business card. “Here’s the address. Can you bring your kimchi when it’s done? Bring all of it. I’ll pay you in cash, and I’ll get you more cabbage.”
Sunja nodded, not saying anything. If she had only one customer for the kimchi, the
n she’d have more time to make other things to sell. The hardest part had been procuring the cabbage, so if this man could do that, then the work would be much easier. Kyunghee had been scouring the market with Mozasu on her back to track down these scarce ingredients and often returned home with a light market basket. Sunja promised to bring him what she had.
The restaurant was the largest storefront on the short side street parallel to the train station. Unlike the other businesses nearby, its sign was lettered handsomely by a professional sign maker. The two women admired the large black letters carved and painted into a vast wooden plaque. They wondered what the words meant. It was obviously a Korean galbi house—the scent of grilled meat could be detected from two blocks away—but the sign had difficult Japanese lettering that neither of them could read. Sunja grasped the handlebar of the carts loaded with all the kimchi they’d put up in the past few weeks and took a deep breath. If the kimchi sales to the restaurant were steady, they’d have a regular income. She could buy eggs more often for Isak’s and Noa’s meals and get heavy wool cloth for Kyunghee, who wanted to sew new coats for Yoseb and Noa.
Yoseb had been staying away from home, complaining of the sight and smell of all the kimchi ingredients spilling out from the kitchen. He didn’t want to live in a kimchi factory. His dissatisfaction was the primary reason why the women preferred to sell candy, but sugar was far more difficult to find than cabbage or sweet potatoes. Although Noa didn’t complain of it, the kimchi odor affected him the most. Like all the other Korean children at the local school, Noa was taunted and pushed around, but now that his clean-looking clothes smelled immutably of onions, chili, garlic, and shrimp paste, the teacher himself made Noa sit in the back of the classroom next to the group of Korean children whose mothers raised pigs in their homes. Everyone at school called the children who lived with pigs buta. Noa, whose tsumei was Nobuo, sat with the buta children and was called garlic turd.
