White Chrysanthemum

by Mary Lynn Bracht

  Hana did want to know. She deserved to know. After all, she was now a member of the diving women, and as such, she faced the same dangers they did each day in the sea against storms, sharks and drowning. Risking her life made her practically a grown-up. She had matured both in mind and body so much that a few boys who lived nearby had mentioned the topic of marriage within earshot whenever she passed them on the beach.

  One of them she even found slightly more interesting than the others. He was the tallest of the group, with the darkest skin but the lightest eyes and sunniest grin. She thought he also seemed the most intelligent, as he knew better than to shout at her like his friends did. Instead, he would appear at her mother’s stall and chat to them both as he purchased goods. His father was a schoolteacher but had to work as a fisherman now because the schools had Japanese teachers. He had two younger sisters and would need a good wife who enjoyed being around younger girls. She didn’t know his name, but that would come much later. Perhaps when her father was there to ask it of him, and perhaps they would be promised to one another.

  ‘Yes,’ Hana answered her mother. ‘I want to know.’

  ‘Fine, I will tell you, then,’ her mother said, and her voice was void of emotion. ‘Rape is when a man forces a woman to lie with him.’

  Hana blushed as her mother continued.

  ‘But rape by the soldiers is more than just one act. The girl the soldiers took was forced by many, many soldiers to lie with them.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Hana managed to ask even though her face had flushed to a deep red.

  ‘The Japanese believe it will aid them in battle. Help them be victorious in the war. They think it is their right to release their energy and receive pleasure, even when they are so far from home, because they risk their lives for the emperor on the front lines. They believe this so much that they take our girls and ship them all over the world for this purpose. This girl sent home, she is a lucky one.’

  She looked at Hana then, gauging her response, and when Hana said nothing, she stood and handed her the swimming shorts. Hana stared at the perfect stitching. She knew what it meant to lie with a man, or at least she had an idea what it was. She had never seen the act, but she heard it sometimes at night when her parents thought she was asleep. Quiet whisperings, her mother’s hushed laughter, her father’s muffled groans. She couldn’t make herself understand what it meant to be forced to do this, for many, many soldiers to force themselves on a woman at one time. Her mother had said the girl was lucky to come home. Hana didn’t mention what the women had said about the girl’s father going to an early grave.

  The door to the ferry’s cabin opens, and two soldiers enter. They scan the group and then reach for a girl, seemingly at random. A small cry escapes her, and the soldier smacks her. She quietens, shocked by the sudden blow. The other soldier continues scanning the girls.

  ‘Haenyeo girl, come out,’ he says. ‘Corporal Morimoto requests your presence.’

  Hana recognises the driver of the truck now that she hears his voice, but she remains where she is.

  ‘Hurry up, come on, you have been summoned.’

  A heaviness hangs in the air. The other girls’ eyes are surely moving to her location, giving her away. Afraid the slightest movement will betray her identity, she is desperate to keep still – yet small tremors shake her whole body. Surely he will single her out as she vibrates under his gaze.

  ‘There are no haenyeo here. You must have the wrong room,’ a voice across the cabin pipes up.

  A murmur of agreement rises among the other girls, but then the driver looks Hana’s way.

  ‘No, you, you there, girl, come here. I remember you. You’re the haenyeo. Come with me now.’ He rests one hand on the pistol holstered at his hip. ‘Don’t waste any more of my time.’

  There is nothing for her to do but obey him. She rises to her feet and steps out of the safety of the other girls and goes to him. He takes her by the wrist and leads her away like she is a prisoner marching towards a firing squad. The ferry’s narrow hallways sway with each undulating wave coursing beneath the vessel. Hana holds her free hand out to steady herself against the wall.

  ‘In here,’ he says, and opens a metal door.

  Hana steps inside. The door slams shut behind her. The metallic clang echoes as she stands face-to-face with Corporal Morimoto. He doesn’t speak, but his eyes send shivers down her arms. She steps backwards.

  ‘Lie on the bed,’ he says in a commanding voice. He motions towards a cot hinged onto the wall.

  Hana backs into the door. Her hand blindly searches for the doorknob.

  ‘There are two guards standing outside that door,’ Morimoto says. He speaks calmly, as though this is not a novel situation but merely a part of his daily routine, though his expression betrays his hunger. Beads of sweat glisten on his forehead.

  Hana turns and peers out of the porthole. He isn’t lying. Two guards stand on either side of the door, their shoulders barely visible in her peripheral vision. She turns back to face Morimoto.

  ‘Lie on the bed,’ he says again, and takes a step sideways, making space for her to pass by him. She hesitates. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and impatiently shoves it back into his trousers.

  ‘If I have to say it again, I will invite those soldiers in to join us, and this will be much more unpleasant for you than it has to be, when I’d rather keep you for myself.’

  He retains an air of calm authority, but Hana senses something more behind his demeanour. He is like a shark before it seizes its prey from the dark ocean’s depths, prowling beneath before the strike.

  The thought of two more soldiers cramming into the small cabin frightens her into action, and she does as he commands. He laughs when she curls into a foetal position on the cot, and he starts to unbuckle his belt. Hana closes her eyes. The leather strap slowly slides out of his belt loops. The hairs on her neck stiffen as he nears the cot. She fights the urge to open her eyes, instead squeezing them tightly shut. His hand startles her. His fingers lift the hair out of her face and caress her cheek. She can smell his breath now. He is kneeling beside her. His hand trails down her neck, her shoulder and over her hips, and comes to rest on her knee. She opens her eyes.

  He is staring at her face. She can’t read his expression. He appears flushed. She stares back at him, waiting for something terrible to happen. He grins at her, but his eyes are vacant. She flinches even before he lifts the hem of her dress.

  ‘Please, don’t,’ Hana manages to whisper. The words sound weak even to her ears, but he doesn’t stop.

  ‘Don’t worry. I came to know you quite well on our trip to the coast. I grew to like you, very much.’

  She squirms away from his touch but he grabs her thigh and squeezes so tight, she cries out.

  ‘You mustn’t make me tear your dress, or you’ll have to travel to Manchuria stark naked. Is that what you want, travelling for days and days on a train full of soldiers without a single piece of clothing to cover your beautiful body?’

  His eyes dare her to speak. She stops squirming but can’t keep from shaking. He’s taking her to Manchuria. Manchuria is the end of the world, much further from home than she imagined.

  ‘Good.’ His grip eases, and slowly, he lifts her dress up over her waist and pulls down her new nylons and cotton knickers. He folds them, taking the time to place them neatly on the edge of the cot. He stands, and she watches as he slips his trousers down to his ankles. She can’t take her eyes off his erect penis.

  ‘I’m doing you a favour; breaking you in like this is a consideration most girls like you won’t get. It’s usually a terrible surprise. At least this way, you will know what to expect.’

  He climbs on top of her, and she shuts her eyes. His breath in her face, his weight on her chest, these things she feels in the darkness behind her eyelids. Then he forces himself inside her, tearing her youth to shreds with each thrust. The pain is like a knife stabbed into the tende
r space between her toes, except it’s not happening there, it’s happening somewhere closer to her heart and to her mind.

  He pants through the exertion, grunting like a boar. She imagines that’s what he is, a black Jeju pig that lives beneath the latrine behind her house and eats human excrement. She holds this image in her mind so that she won’t picture what he is actually doing, even as she feels each thrust as a searing pain at her very centre. His grunts increase in frequency, until he shudders against her body, seizing as though in shock. Then he goes limp, lying upon her, pressing against her chest, pushing her body deep into the hard mattress until she can barely draw breath.

  When Morimoto finally rises to his feet, Hana turns away from him, curling back into a ball around her pain. She listens to the sounds of him getting dressed, the rustle of his trousers, the slide of his leather belt, the shuffle of his boots on the floor.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ he says.

  Hana turns to look at him. He points between her legs. She rolls onto her other side and peers at a small bloodstain on the sheet. Prickles run down her neck. The thought that she might die flashes through her mind. She keeps her knees tightly closed. He smiles at her.

  ‘It was everything I hoped it would be. Now you’re a woman,’ he says, and looks genuinely pleased. ‘Clean yourself up. Then you can rejoin the others.’

  He tosses a handkerchief at her and exits the room. It briefly floats through the air and lands like a soft petal on her stomach.

  Emi

  Jeju Island, December 2011

  The taxicab is late. Emi sits atop her suitcase next to the road with a steaming mug of ginseng tea warming her hands. She scrutinises each approaching vehicle, but only passenger cars drive by with people going to work or taking children to school. A few of the drivers wave at her as they pass, and one of them honks the car horn, startling her. Hot tea spills onto her pink trousers. She wipes at the spreading stain with her mitten-covered hand, ignoring the burning sensation on her thigh.

  Emi only manages to visit her children once a year. When she was younger she would visit twice a year, but never more than that. Her relationship with her children is distant. It’s easier to see them in her mind than in person. They never come back to the island, except when they returned for their father’s burial. They were already grown up when he died, but returning to their childhood home seemed to revert them back into children. They stood awkwardly by her side and wept openly, her daughter more so than her son. They only stayed three days and then they flew back to Seoul. They had stood at the airport, no longer childlike, both wearing black work attire, and neither had looked her in the eyes when they said goodbye. Perhaps, as she had with them, they had decided she was better seen in their minds than in person.

  Emi usually takes the ferry. There’s a bus stop down the road that’s not too far for her to walk to on her own. It goes to a port on the other side of the island, closer to the mainland, where a daily ferry sails to Busan. It’s an overnight and arrives early the next morning when there’s a free bus to Seoul, but the journey is too tiresome for her now. She no longer has the energy to cross her country at eye level and watch the trees and mountains slide by. Her bones ache, and sometimes she forgets things, so this time she must fly and hope the clouds will not block her view of the land.

  The tightness in her chest returns, and she closes her eyes. Don’t remember, she tells herself silently. It’s just an airport. One time. There and back. And then never again. She can let herself remember on the way back home. Her hand touches her chest, willing the pain to release, and she wonders all the while if she really will make it back this time. A car crests the slight rise in the road, and Emi opens her eyes. A horn sounds, announcing the taxicab’s arrival, and she stands to wave it down.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Grandmother,’ the driver says as he hurries to help her with her suitcase. ‘The roads are slippery and there was an accident back there. We’ll have to pass by it on the way to the airport.’

  Emi looks at her watch.

  ‘Don’t worry. We have plenty of time,’ he says, stowing her suitcase in the trunk.

  Emi doesn’t respond. She tucks her empty mug into her handbag. The driver helps her into the back seat and slams the door shut before scurrying to the front of the car and into the driver’s seat. In his hurry, he turns the car round too quickly, and it narrowly misses sliding sideways into the ditch. Emi grabs hold of the car door and prepares to crash, but the tyres regain traction, lurching back onto the road. Emi doesn’t comment on his driving. It’s not sensible to encourage conversation with a poor driver.

  When they reach the accident it’s still in the clean-up stages. The cars on the road are backed up, with drivers craning their necks to get a glimpse of the damage. A man stands on the shoulder, sobbing. He shudders, making the hem of the powder-blue blanket wrapped around him dance in jerky waves. The burned-out shell of a Hyundai lies on its side. A tow truck backs slowly towards it. Emi notices a Mickey Mouse doll lying in the grass. She spies red shorts through the brittle brown blades and looks away.

  ‘I told you there was a bad accident. I’m never late,’ the taxi driver says.

  His eyes don’t leave the man in the blue blanket. He stares at him in the rear-view mirror long after they pass him by. Emi wishes he’d keep his attention on the road ahead; she doesn’t want to miss her plane.

  The driver sees her watching him in the mirror and clears his throat before finally looking back at the road. He manoeuvres around two slower cars, and soon they’re out in front of the traffic, driving at a good pace. Emi can’t stop thinking about the doll lying lifeless in the grass, the man’s shoulders as he wept, the bloody red of those shorts. She feels in her bones that something precious was lost.

  At Jeju International Airport, Emi lifts her suitcase onto a luggage trolley and follows the signs to Korean Air. She doesn’t let her mind wander. She keeps it in check by reading the signs that guide the way to the ticket counter, the security checkpoint, the departure gate, and finally the gangway that leads to the aircraft that will take her to Seoul.

  Once the plane lifts into the sky, Emi can rest. She lets herself think about seeing her children in Seoul. Her son is meeting her at Gimpo International Airport even though she said she was happy to take the subway to her daughter’s house. He’s bullheaded and wouldn’t hear of it. He would rent a car and meet her at arrivals.

  ‘You’re too old to ride the subway on your own,’ he said on the telephone when she protested.

  ‘I’m too old to sit on a train for thirty minutes?’

  ‘You could get confused and lose your way,’ he answered, and she knew the matter was settled.

  The stewardess announces the flight to Seoul is a little over an hour, so in-flight purchases will be available straight away.

  A few days before her flight, Emi had asked JinHee to drive her into the town so she could go shopping, but JinHee had better advice.

  ‘They have very good gifts in the aeroplane catalogue. You shouldn’t go into town to shop. Just buy them on board the plane. That way you only need to take one carry-on. Your leg,’ JinHee said, motioning towards Emi’s errant leg.

  ‘I want good gifts, not junk,’ Emi protested.

  ‘It’s not junk. You can buy Chanel No. 5 perfume! You call that junk?’ JinHee shook her head.

  Emi pushes the call button and waits for the attendant to arrive and take her order.

  Her son is partial to whiskey, so she buys him a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Her daughter-in-law and grandson like chocolates, so she picks out two boxes of assorted truffles. For her daughter, she chooses a large bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume and thinks she will not tell JinHee. Her daughter is not married and has no children, but she has a dog. Emi selects a stuffed cat from the children’s section of the in-flight magazine, the closest thing to a dog toy she can find.

  The captain lands the plane with a cathartic bang. The passengers shriek with surprise and fear, and then e
mbarrassed laughter fills the cabin. Emi waits until most of the passengers exit before standing to retrieve her purchases from the overhead compartment. A young woman rushes past her at the last minute, and the bag slips from Emi’s grip, hitting her on the forehead.

  ‘Sorry, Grandmother,’ the young lady calls behind her, but doesn’t stop.

  Emi rubs her forehead. The bottle of whiskey is heavier than she thought. She worries it might bruise. A male flight attendant comes to her aid.

  ‘Are you OK? Can I get you an ice pack?’ he asks.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Emi says, and laughs. ‘I should move faster, perhaps.’

  ‘Are you sure? It looked like it hit you very hard.’

  He peers down into her face as though searching for blood. Emi shies away from his gaze, gathering her handbag and bag of gifts.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s probably just a little bruise. I’ve had worse,’ she says, and hobbles away from him, down the aisle.

  There are many things in Emi’s memory worse than getting hit in the head with a bottle of whiskey. A soldier’s boot. The image appears to her so suddenly that she flinches. She pauses to steady herself and catch her breath. Worrying someone might notice her distress, she straightens up and heads for the exit.

  ‘Thank you for flying Korean Air,’ the captain of the plane says to her with a bow as she passes him at the exit. He’s standing next to the pretty flight attendant who took her gift order. The buttons on the captain’s coat shine as though they are brand new, and Emi wonders if this was the young captain’s first solo landing.

  At arrivals, she spots her son standing a head taller than the ladies crowded around him. Emi is struck by how many women are waiting. She wonders if there’s something special happening in Seoul, but then she remembers and feels embarrassed for forgetting about her own purpose for being there. Her son’s concern is apparent when she comes near.