by Min Jin Lee
“But, but, I didn’t marry Mozasu. I don’t even live with him. So I wouldn’t make things worse for you and your brothers.”
Hana tilted her head back and laughed.
“Am I supposed to thank you for this great sacrifice? So you didn’t marry a Korean gangster, and you want me to congratulate you for this? You didn’t marry him because you didn’t want to suffer. You’re the most selfish person I know. If you want to sleep with him and take his money to set up a fancy place and not marry him, that’s your self-serving choice. You didn’t do it for me or my brothers.” Hana dried her face with her shirt sleeve. “You don’t want to be judged. That’s why you haven’t married him. That’s why you left Hokkaido to hide out in the big city. You think you’re such a victim, but you’re not. You left because you’re afraid, and you slept with all those men because you were afraid of getting old. You’re weak and pathetic. Don’t tell me about sacrifices, because I don’t believe in such crap.”
Hana started to cry again.
Etsuko slumped in her chair. If she married Mozasu, it would prove to everyone in Hokkaido that no decent Japanese man would touch a woman like her. She would be called a yakuza wife. If she married him, she’d no longer be considered the tasteful owner of a successful restaurant in the best part of Yokohama—an image she only half believed herself. Mozasu must have thought that she was a better person than she actually was, but Hana wasn’t fooled. Etsuko picked up Hana’s travel bag next to her chair and nudged her daughter to stand up to go.
Etsuko’s apartment was in a luxury building four blocks from the restaurant. On the way there, Hana said she didn’t want to go to the party anymore. She wanted to be left alone so she could sleep until morning. Etsuko unlocked the front door to her apartment and led Hana to her bedroom. She would sleep on the sofa tonight.
Hana lay across the futon, and Etsuko pulled a light comforter over her thin young body and turned out the light. Hana curled into herself; her eyes were still open, and she said nothing. Etsuko didn’t want to leave her. Despite everything, it struck her that what she was feeling was a kind of contentedness. They were together again. Hana had come to her for care. Etsuko sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked her daughter’s hair.
“You have this scent,” Hana said quietly, “I used to think it was your perfume. Joy, nee?”
“I still wear that.”
“I know,” Hana said, and Etsuko resisted the urge to sniff her own wrists.
“It’s not just the perfume, though, it’s all the other creams and things that you wear, and it makes up this smell. I used to walk around department stores wondering what it was. The smell of mama.”
Etsuko wanted to say many things, but above all that she would try not to make any more mistakes. “Hanako—”
“I want to go to sleep now. Go to that boy’s party. Leave me alone.” Hana’s voice was flat but more tender this time.
Etsuko offered to stay, but Hana waved her away. Etsuko mentioned then that her schedule was open the next day. Maybe they could go and buy a bed and a dresser. “Then you can always come back and visit me. I can make up a room for you,” Etsuko said.
Hana sighed, but her expression was blank.
Etsuko couldn’t tell what her daughter wanted. “I’m not saying you have to go. Especially after—” Etsuko put her fingertips across her lips, then quickly removed them. “You can stay. Start school here even.”
Hana shifted her head on her pillow and inhaled, still saying nothing.
“I can call your father. To ask.”
Hana pulled the blanket up to her chin. “If you want.”
Etsuko had to go back to the restaurant, but she settled on the sofa for a few minutes. When she had been a young mother there used to be only one time in her waking hours when she’d felt a kind of peace, and that was always after her children went to bed for the night. She longed to see her sons as they were back then: their legs chubby and white, their mushroom haircuts misshapen because they could never sit still at the barber. She wished she could take back the times she had scolded her children just because she was tired. There were so many errors. If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their bath a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp.
11
The children invited to Solomon’s party were the sons and daughters of diplomats, bankers, and wealthy expatriates from America and Europe. Everyone spoke English rather than Japanese. Mozasu had chosen the international school in Yokohama because he liked the idea of Westerners. He had specific ambitions for his son: Solomon should speak perfect English as well as perfect Japanese; he should grow up among worldly, upper-class people; and ultimately, he should work for an American company in Tokyo or New York—a city Mozasu had never been to but imagined as a place where everyone was given a fair shot. He wanted his son to be an international man of the world.
A line of black limousines snaked along the street. As the children left the restaurant, they thanked Mozasu and Etsuko for the fine dinner they’d eaten. Mozasu lined up the children in front of the restaurant and instructed, “Ladies first,” a saying he had picked up from watching American movies. The girls trooped into the gleaming cars in sixes and drove away. Then the boys followed. Solomon rode in the last car with his best friends, Nigel, the son of an English banker, and Ajay, the son of an Indian shipping company executive.
The disco was dimly lit and glamorous. From the high ceiling, twenty or so mirrored balls hung at different heights, flooding the large room with tiny panes of light that flashed and swayed with the movements of the balls. They had the effect of making anyone who walked across the floor shimmer like a fish underwater. After everyone arrived and sat down at the lounge tables, the manager, a handsome Filipino, got up on the elevated stage. He had a beautiful, round voice.
“Dear friends of Solomon Baek! Welcome to Ringo’s!” He paused for the children’s cheers. “For Solomon’s birthday fiesta, Ringo’s presents the hottest star in Japan—one day the world: Ken Hiromi and the Seven Gentlemen!”
The children didn’t seem to believe him. The curtain rose to reveal the seven-piece rock band, and the singer emerged from the back. Hiromi looked utterly normal, almost disappointingly so. He dressed like a businessman who’d forgotten his necktie and wore thick-framed eyeglasses just like the ones on his album covers. His hair was impeccably combed. He couldn’t have been more than thirty.
Solomon kept shaking his head, bewildered and delighted. The band was loud, and the kids rushed to the stage to dance wildly. When the long set ended, the emcee asked everyone to gather around the stage, and Ichiro, the cook, wheeled a spectacular ice cream cake shaped like a baseball diamond toward Solomon. Tall thin candles lit the large surface of the cake. A girl shouted, “Don’t forget to make a wish, baby!”
In one huff, Solomon blew out the candles, and everyone clapped and hollered.
Etsuko handed him the beribboned knife so he could cut the first slice. A spotlight shone on him as he poised the long, serrated blade over the cake.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
“I think I got it,” he said, using both hands to make a straight cut.
“Oh,” she uttered, seeing the ink under his nails. He’d washed off most of it, but a shadow of the stain remained on his fingertips.
Solomon looked up from what he was doing and smiled.
Etsuko guided his arm lightly to return him to his task. After the first slice, Solomon gave the knife back to her, and she cut the remaining pieces. Waiters passed out the cake, and Hiromi, who was sitting by himself, accepted a piece. Mozasu gave Solomon a fat blue envelope filled with yen notes and told him to give it to the singer. Ken Hiromi motioned to Solomon to sit down. In this light, Etsuko thought, no one else would notice the ink.
The band played another set, then a DJ played popular songs for the kids. As the party wound down, Etsuko felt pleasantly exhausted—the way she did after the restaura
nt closed. Mozasu was sitting in a booth drinking champagne by himself, and she sat down beside him. Mozasu refilled his glass and handed it to her, and she drank it in two gulps. She laughed. He said she did a good job for Solomon, and Etsuko shook her head. “Iie.”
Without thinking, she said, “I think she would have been pleased.”
Mozasu looked confused. A moment later, he nodded. “Yes, she would have been so happy for him.”
“What was she like?” Etsuko shifted her body to see his face. Little squares of light danced across his sharp features.
“I’ve told you before. She was a nice lady. Like you.” It was difficult to say any more than that about Yumi.
“No, tell me something specific about her.” Etsuko wanted to know how they were different, not how they were the same. “I want to know more.”
“Why? She is dead.” Mozasu looked hurt after saying this. He noticed that Solomon was now dancing with a tall Chinese girl with short hair. His forehead glistened with sweat as he followed the girl’s elegant moves. Etsuko stared into her empty champagne glass.
“She wanted to name him Sejong,” he said. “But it’s tradition for the husband’s father to name the grandson. My father’s dead so my Uncle Yoseb named him Solomon.” He paused. “Sejong was a king in Korea. He invented the Korean alphabet. Uncle Yoseb gave him the name of a king from the Bible instead. I think he did it because my father was a minister.” He smiled.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because Yumi”—Mozasu said her name out loud, and it surprised him to hear the sound of the two syllables—“was so proud of him. Her son. She wanted to give him the life of a king. She was like my father and uncle, I think. Proud. She was proud of me and my work. It was nice. But now that I’m older, I wonder why.” Mozasu sounded wistful. “What do we Koreans have to be so proud of?”
“It’s good to be proud of your children.” She smoothed down her skirt. When her children had been born, what she had felt was amazement at their physical perfection. She had marveled at their miniature human form and their good health. But not once did she consider a name taken from history—the name of a king. She had never been proud of her family or her country; if anything, she was ashamed.
“One of those girls came up to me today and said Solomon looked like his mother.” He pointed to a cluster of girls in the corner of the room. They wore bandeau tops and jersey skirts clinging to their thin hips.
“How could she know that?”
“She meant you.”
“Oh.” Etsuko nodded. “I wish I was his mother.”
“No. No, you don’t.” Mozasu said this calmly, and she felt like she deserved that.
“I’m no better than that woman clerk this afternoon, nee?”
Mozasu shook his head and placed his hand over hers.
Why did her family think pachinko was so terrible? Her father, a traveling salesman, had sold expensive life insurance policies to isolated housewives who couldn’t afford them, and Mozasu created spaces where grown men and women could play pinball for money. Both men had made money from chance and fear and loneliness. Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes—there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? Etsuko had failed in this important way—she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.
Etsuko removed her new watch and put it in his hand. “It’s not that I don’t want a ring—”
Mozasu didn’t look at her, but he put the watch in his pocket.
“It’s late. Almost midnight,” he said gently. “The children have to get home.”
Etsuko rose from the table and went to hand out the party bags.
Not wanting the evening to end, Solomon claimed that he was hungry, so the three of them returned to her restaurant. The place was clean again and looked open for business.
“A little bit of everything,” he said when she asked him what he wanted to eat. He looked so happy, and it pleased her to see him like this. She could count on him to be a happy person. Maybe that was what Solomon was for her and Mozasu.
At the very back of the dining room, Mozasu sat down at a table for four and opened his evening-edition newspaper. He looked like a middle-aged man waiting calmly for his train to arrive. Etsuko headed for the kitchen with Solomon trailing her.
She put down three white plates on the prep counter. From the refrigerator, she pulled out the tray of fried chicken and the bowl of potato salad—dishes that Ichiro had made following an American cookbook.
“Why didn’t Hana come? Is she sick?”
“No.” Etsuko didn’t like to lie to a direct question.
“She’s pretty, you know.”
“Too pretty. That’s her problem.” Her own mother had once said this about her when a family friend had complimented Etsuko.
“Did you have fun tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah. I still can’t believe it. Hiromi-san talked to me.”
“What did he say?” She put two large pieces of chicken on Mozasu’s and Solomon’s plates and a small drumstick on hers. “Was he nice?”
“Very nice and cool. He said his best friends are Korean. He told me to be good to my parents.”
Solomon hadn’t denied her as his mother, and though this should have been a nice thing, it only made her feel more anxious.
“Your father told me tonight that your mother was proud of you. From the moment you were born.”
Solomon said nothing.
She didn’t think that he should need a mother anymore; he was already grown up, and he was doing better than most kids she knew who had mothers who were alive. He was almost a man.
“Come to the sink. Hold out your left hand.”
“A present?”
She laughed and put his left hand over the sink basin and turned on the faucet. “There’s still ink left.”
“Can they make me leave? Really deport me?”
“Everything went well today,” she replied, and softly scrubbed the pads of his fingers and nails with a dishwashing brush. “There’s no need to worry, Solomon-chan.”
He seemed satisfied with her answer.
“Hana told me she came to Yokohama to get rid of her little problem. Is she pregnant? Nigel got his girlfriend pregnant, and she had to get an abortion.”
“Your friend Nigel?” She remembered the blond-haired boy who played Atari with him on the weekends. He was only a year older than Solomon.
He nodded. “Yup. Hana seems great.”
“My children hate me.”
Solomon picked at the ink beneath his fingernails. “Your kids hate you because you’re gone.” His face grew serious. “They can’t help it. They miss you.”
Etsuko bit the inside of her lower lip. She could feel the small muscles inside her mouth, and she stopped herself from drawing blood. She was afraid to look at his face, and though she had tried to restrain herself, she burst into tears.
“Why? Why are you crying?” he asked. “I’m sorry.” Solomon’s eyes welled up.
She inhaled to calm her breathing.
“When Hana was born, the nurses put her footprints on a card. They washed the ink off, but not very well, so when I went home I had to get it off. I don’t think she could see anything really, because she was just born, but I felt like she was looking at me like I was hurting her, and she just cried and cried—”
“Etsuko-chan, Hana will be okay. Nigel’s girlfriend is fine. They might get married after college. That’s what he said—”
“No, no. It’s not that. I’m just so sorry that you might have thought that I didn’t want to be your mother.” She clutched her stomach, and she tried to regulate her breath. “I’ve hurt so many people. And you’re such a good boy, Solomon. I wish I could take credit for you.”
His dark, straight hair clung to the sides of his face, and he didn’t brush it away. His eyes strained with worry.
“But I was born today, and isn’t it funny how no one gets to remember that moment and who was there? It’s all what’s told to you. You’re here now. You are a mother to me.”
Etsuko covered her mouth with her open palm and let his words go through her. Somewhere after being sorry, there had to be another day, and even after a conviction, there could be good in the judgment. At last, Etsuko shut off the water and put down the swollen yellow sponge in the sink. The curved brass spout let go its last few drops, and the kitchen grew silent. Etsuko reached over to hold the child on his birthday.
12
Osaka, 1979
Sunja had left her son and grandson Solomon in Yokohama and returned to Osaka when she learned that her mother, Yangjin, had stomach cancer. Through fall and winter, Sunja slept at the foot of her mother’s pallet to relieve her exhausted sister-in-law, Kyunghee, who had been nursing Yangjin faithfully after her own husband, Yoseb, finally died.
Yangjin lived on her thick cotton pallet, more or less immobile, in the front room, which had effectively become her bedroom. The largest room in the house smelled of eucalyptus and tangerines. The floor had been lined recently with fresh tatami mats, and a double row of greenery in ceramic pots flourished by the two sparkling windows. The large basket by the pallet, filled to the brim with Kyushu tangerines—a costly gift from fellow parishioners at the Korean church in Osaka—released a glorious scent. The new Sony color television was on, its volume low, as the three women waited to watch Yangjin’s favorite program, Other Lands.
