Our Happy Time

by Gong Ji-Young

  When did I ask you to give birth to me? I had resorted to that sort of mud flinging once.

  You think I made you because I wanted to make you? If I’d known it would be you, I wouldn’t have! I should have gone to the hospital anyway, despite your father. That was her response.

  Since you couldn’t kill me when I was inside of you, I told her, I’m trying to finish the job now. So why do you keep stopping me? Why are you stopping me?

  That’s when she said, Then die somewhere where I can’t see you! Die somewhere where I can’t stop you!

  Those were our mother–daughter talks. When they were over, I would smash all of the innocent records and flower vases in my room. But now that I was over thirty and watching my mother who was now in her seventies, as she played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, I wanted to ask her something.

  “Don’t bother me! This song requires all of my concentration!”

  It was the same thing she always said. It reminded me of something that happened when I was little. We had guests over, and my mother had seated them all in a row and was wearing a pretty lavender concert dress, probably playing this same song, when she suddenly burst into tears and ran out of the room. She was muttering something as she went. One of the guests asked, What on earth is wrong with her? Someone else said, I think she said she’s too sad to keep playing. My dad explained, My wife is an artist, so she’s very sensitive. Just reading a poem can make her cry. And then he laughed. A few of the guests laughed politely. I was embarrassed. I could tell my father was tired of dealing with his pianist wife. It made sense. My mother had attended a top-tier girls’ high school, but my father only graduated from a commercial high school. I had no idea what top-tier meant.

  I waited quietly for the song to end. My uncle might have been right about crying, as I felt different after having cried my eyes out the night before. I thought maybe that was why I was able to stand there and watch my mother without getting upset, like a ray of sunlight shining down on good people and bad people alike.

  “Happy birthday, Mom. I didn’t get you a gift. To be honest, I didn’t know it was your birthday. But happy birthday for now, and I’ll give you your present later.”

  “You don’t have to say anything or buy me any gifts. Just don’t worry me!”

  “Still, happy birthday. Isn’t it better to say something even if I do worry you, rather than say nothing and worry you anyway?”

  “Now what’s gotten into you? You scare me to death. Last time, when you smashed your IV bottle in the hospital and glared at me, I thought you were possessed by the ghost of your dad’s mother.”

  There she went again. It was never a good sign when she said I resembled someone on my father’s side of the family. I used to wonder all the time what she prayed about when she went to church. I told myself to hang in there. It was her birthday, after all.

  “Mom, what was the happiest time of your life?”

  She smirked.

  “Wasn’t there a time when you thought you felt really happy?”

  I guess I just wanted to talk to her. I wanted to talk to my mother who was facing her death, a mother who might spend her final days in the hospital as cancer cells spread through her body again. I wanted to have a real conversation on my mother’s birthday, a conversation between a mother and a daughter who had returned to her old home after a long time away, to look down at a warm sunlit garden together and have the kind of real conversation that mothers and daughters have. I wanted to tell her, Mom, I don’t have any memories of being happy. I’ve had all of the things that other people don’t get to have, and I’ve eaten all of the things that other people don’t get to eat, but I don’t remember ever feeling happy. Either my tone was softer than usual, or maybe it wasn’t really in her nature to be so severe, despite the arrogance that came from having ridden to school on a palanquin carried by servants when she was young, but she surprised me by responding gently.

  “How could I have been happy? You know I was busy taking care of your grandmother and putting up with her senility when I was younger. I was afraid your father’s business would go bankrupt. Then, after raising three boys, I was ready to start playing piano again, but you dropped in and I had to give up piano entirely. You gave me so much trouble. And today’s my so-called birthday. I just had surgery and could have a relapse and die at any moment, but do you see those three sisters-in-law of yours anywhere?”

  I sighed to myself. Here we go again. Nothing was good enough for her. She had every nice thing you could possibly own, but it was never enough. When my father was alive, he kept her from having to wash even a single cup. He said she might damage a finger while doing the dishes and wouldn’t be able to play the piano that she loved so much. Nevertheless, nothing was ever good enough for her.

  “They have important things to do,” I told her. “A pianist, a doctor, and an actress! The first one’s nerves are on edge because of her recital. The second one is working at the hospital. And I hear the third is pregnant again? But Mom, whenever you meet your friends, all you do is brag about them. ‘My sons married a pianist, a doctor, and an actress.’ And your friends all envy you for it. But at least you have one stupid daughter, and since she’s not busy, she has the time to wish you a happy birthday in the morning. What luck.”

  “Go away! You stay out all night drinking and have to be carried home on your brother’s back, and now you’re starting up with me first thing in the morning? All I wanted to do was play one song after such a long time. Why do you have to torment me?”

  “When did I torment you? All I did was say happy birthday!”

  “Just looking at you gives me a headache. Now I’ve lost my appetite! And while you’re here, let me ask you this. Why on earth don’t you want to marry that prosecutor, Kang?”

  I laughed out loud. As I laughed, I had to acknowledge once again that people never change, that even I never change. What my brother had said last night was right. You can be facing your own death and have your cancer operated on, and be eating breakfast with your daughter who has come back from the dead herself and is home again for the first time in a long while, and still, people never change. Maybe that is the only thing that doesn’t change in this world.

  “I’m just like you, Mom,” I said through clenched teeth. “I, too, hate men whose families have no education. Admit it. You always looked down on Dad and Aunt Monica. So maybe I take after you.”

  Mom stopped moving her shoulders in time with the music and stared at me. She looked as if she was staring at something foreign.

  “You’re just like your aunt!” she said.

  I tried to hold it back, but I could feel all of my childhood emotions surging up inside me. That stern voice! There was no point in sticking around. Even though I tried to remind myself that it was her birthday, not even a birthday was enough to tear down the fortress walls erected by our pasts. It would take far longer than that to dismantle them. But then again, how was time of any use when no one was willing to try? Even if I had been even slightly willing to try, my old habits all too easily took down that willingness. It didn’t matter that it was her birthday, and it wouldn’t have mattered even if it had been the anniversary of her death.

  I walked away from the piano and cried, “I’m just like you. I thought I was like Aunt Monica, but I’m not. I’m just like you! And that’s why I hate myself!”

  Clang! My mother slammed her fists on the piano as if she couldn’t take any more.

  As always, I was playing the role of the unfilial daughter. Later, at the dinner table, my mother would explain to my brothers ad nauseam about how I had come home and hurt her feelings and ruined her birthday and shortened her life and made everything worse for them. My sisters-in-law would hide the bored looks on their faces and pretend to chew their food, while my brothers would make an effort to hear her out with the patience and filial devotion befitting the birthday of an old, weak mother who has had a breast cancer operation. Not that they had much choice since she
wouldn’t let anyone else get a single word in. Meanwhile, the meal would end, and once it did, someone would make this or that excuse, like students who have just finished a class they hate, and someone would get up first, and they would all file out. Then my mother would end the day by shouting at the cleaning girl, as if that were her way of saying good night. She would leave out all of the words that said she really just wanted to be loved and wanted to give love, and that she was lonely and wanted someone to be with her, and instead she would say that the dishes were chipped and the cupboards were dusty. There was no way I could stay in that house until dinnertime. I purposefully stomped all the way upstairs to get my bag, still no further away from being that teenager who had run away from home after fighting with her mom. I was on my way out of the house when I felt something inside of me burst. I could tell that something was happening on the inside.

  Everyone is sad. Sadness is a wealth that you cannot give away. That is because you can give everything else to other people, but you cannot give yourself to others. Everyone is tragic. Tragedy is a scar that you alone carry forever. River of tears, river of sadness, river of wailing. Unlike wealth, sadness is shared among all people evenly.

  – Ven. Bak Samjung

  BLUE NOTE 9

  Then we lived on the streets, like wet garbage, using the city’s back alleys as our pillows. There were other kids like us. They were looked after by a man who looked like he was in his forties. He offered us a place to sleep, and in exchange, we fanned out across the subway stations and marketplaces to beg for money. People were more generous to us since Eunsu was blind. We sat up all night making flyers that read: My little brother went blind after taking some bad medicine in the countryside when we were younger. Kind-looking men and women gave us money. Then, one day, it was Eunsu’s birthday. I asked him what he wanted to eat, and he said cup ramen. The man, whom we all called Blackie, fed us instant ramen, but never the kind that came in Styrofoam cups. It was too expensive and not filling enough. So one night, I stole a box of cup ramen from a corner shop in the market that I walked past every day, and I got caught.

  The moment the owner shouted at me, I grabbed the box and ran, but in the confusion, Eunsu, who had been standing nearby, got caught instead. The owner started beating him for no reason. My brother cried and called out to me over and over. If I had been alone, I would have run as fast as I could, but I couldn’t bear to leave him behind. I went back, returned the box to the owner, and tried to plead with him. The owner said it was the tenth time a box of cup ramen had been stolen from him, and he took us to the police substation. They said brats like us needed a good thrashing before we would wise up, and no matter how we tried to tell them that it wasn’t us and that this was our first time, we were sent to juvenile detention centre for stealing ten boxes of cup ramen. Eunsu was my accomplice. Right then, I made a decision.

  Never again would I beg. Never again would I plead. There was only one way to survive in this world, and that was by having money and having power.

  PART 9

  It is amazing how memory reveals things to us that were not apparent when the original events happened. Like a pin light that shines on an extra who is making small gestures off to one side of the stage, memory not only brings that moment back to life but adds to it. And that addition can sometimes contradict what we have believed to be our memories.

  Now I must return to the visitors’ room. The place where I have been meeting him. The place where our meetings would continue to follow the same script since we would never meet anywhere but that place. The place where life and death cross paths, where a single ray of light shines in the darkness. That place where crime and punishment and hope spill their blood on a lost battleground to defend a dying castle, where those who hold all of the power battle for supremacy, though that battle cannot be perceived with the human senses. It was my third visit to the prison with Aunt Monica. It was also the day that the old woman from Miari or Samyang-dong, or wherever it was, insisted on coming with us and bringing the rice cake she had made.

  We were waiting for the guard to bring him. No one spoke. Aunt Monica was slumped in her chair and biting her lips. The old woman was dressed in a light-blue hanbok. The color of the traditional dress clashed with her dark, wrinkled face. Inside a light-blue cloth wrapper on the table sat the still-warm rice cake. Outside the window, it was winter, but rays of sunlight as warm as the cake were shining down. Yunsu did not show up until thirty minutes after our appointed time. I have no idea what happened during that time between Yunsu, who was trying to avoid seeing us, and the guard, who was trying to make him come out. I could have guessed, but I didn’t have even a fifty-fifty chance of guessing correctly.

  Yunsu came in, and Aunt Monica stood up. I could tell from the fact that she didn’t greet him that she was nervous. The old woman fumbled with a gauze handkerchief, her body stiff, as if the dress were binding her. It looked as if she hadn’t worn it in a long time. I realize now that the three of us were probably all wondering if we were doing the right thing.

  Even Aunt Monica, who had devoted her whole life to love and forgiveness, was afraid of what was happening. We could tell that it was a frightening reality for her, regardless of whether the old woman said to Yunsu, Your sins are forgiven, rise up and walk, like a young Jesus from two thousand years ago, or whether it was all an act and she tore at his throat instead and raked her nails over his face as he sat there in shackles.

  Yunsu looked pale. I could not find any trace there of the memory of our first and second meetings, when his face seemed to say, I’m a human being, too. I doubt he would have looked any more afraid if he were looking at the gallows noose. His lips looked blue and were twitching slightly.

  This may not be the best expression, but the old woman was eyeing Yunsu as if he were a lost son who had returned: she looked as if she didn’t want to miss a single detail of his face or body. Everyone—the old woman, Aunt Monica and I, Yunsu, and Officer Yi—stood around awkwardly.

  “Please have a seat.”

  Officer Yi was calmer than the rest of us. He filled the kettle with water and turned on the switch. He had a certain sense of virtue about him, the kind you often find in public servants who have studied hard for the civil service exam. When I saw him do that, I realized that Aunt Monica had skipped her usual step of preparing hot water the moment she stepped into the room. The silence in the room was so heavy that we were all grateful for the beeping of the electric kettle when the water reached a boil.

  “Have you been well?” Aunt Monica asked.

  Yunsu looked dazed. He said yes and started to smile, but his face crumpled like tinfoil. The old woman had her gaze fixed on Yunsu’s shackles.

  “It must be so hard to be tied up all the time like an animal.”

  The woman mumbled but the room was so quiet, and she was not composed enough to control the volume of her voice, that it sounded loud. It might have been the word animal, but everyone became even more uncomfortable.

  “This lady is…” Aunt Monica stuttered. Her next words should have been, “the mother of the person you killed,” or to put it a little more precisely, “the mother of the person you murdered.” But she paused and swallowed hard.

  “The person… whose death you caused…”

  Aunt Monica swallowed again. I swallowed, too, in reaction to her. Sometimes words can be so concrete and so real, and therefore so cruel. Maybe that’s what they meant when they said the pen is mightier than the sword.

  “This is the mother of that housekeeper.”

  Yunsu’s head dropped as if his neck had snapped. They say people on death row die six times: when they are caught, when they are sentenced at their first, second, and third trials, and when they are executed. The remaining death happens every morning. When the wake-up bell rings, they ready themselves to die. If they receive rations and get exercise time, it means they are not dying that day. They say that if footsteps ring out in the hallway before the morning exercise, m
en on death row turn pale. But Yunsu looked like he had already been executed. To put it another way, because this stubborn old woman was the mother of his victim, he was already burning in the fires of hell. He was sitting right next to me, and I could see his chin quivering. For the first time, I understood that crime, like words once they are uttered, does not go away. It does not vanish like a breeze that swells and then disappears.

  “I came to see you!” the old woman said.

  Yunsu’s shoulders were shaking. His entire body was trembling like a twig in a small breeze. A human being—that’s all he was. It occurred to me that all of us, even murderers, must tremble and shake, and I felt a little sad.

  “Since it’s the holidays,” Aunt Monica said, “she saved up some rice so she could make you rice cake.”

  Yunsu mumbled something with his head down.

  “What was that?” asked Aunt Monica.

  “It was a mistake,” he said. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

  I still think that human beings are a queer breed. Strictly speaking, the woman was the victim and Yunsu the attacker—and an attacker who had committed the worst crime one person can commit against another, at that—so there should have been no shame in him saying those words to her. But in that moment, I suddenly felt like Yunsu was the victim. At the same time, I thought about the man I had told my brother about when I was drunk, the one I had unearthed from my memory. Even when I imagined myself killing him, he was still my attacker. I did not feel even the slightest trace of sympathy for him. Yet I felt the pain that Yunsu was going through as someone who had attacked another person.

  “I didn’t know what kind of rice cake you like.”

  The old woman slowly stood up and unwrapped the cake. The soft, flimsy sound of the cloth coming undone seemed to echo like thunder in that room. When I took a closer look, her hands were shaking too hard to untie the knot. Officer Yi got up to help her. When the wrapper opened, we saw white baekseolgi in a nickel bowl. She picked up a piece of the rice cake, which she had cut into bite-size pieces, and turned to Yunsu to give it to him, but she collapsed back onto her chair instead. Her lips were trembling like his.