Sitting on the stoop, listening to the sounds of her sleeping family, Emi wept. She grieved with a mixture of sorrow and pride. Sorrow for her daughter’s choice, but pride in her strength to make such a difficult one. Her daughter was an excellent swimmer. Of all her friends, she could hold her breath the longest, swim the furthest, and fill her net the fastest. She would have surpassed Emi’s diving skills had she given the haenyeo life a chance. Now she would never know. Emi looked up into the sky, straining to see what her daughter saw when she looked out into the world. A black void greeted her, but there was consolation hidden in its vastness. YoonHui had pleaded for her mother’s approval; even though she didn’t need it, she had wanted it. Her determination did not outweigh her need for her mother’s acceptance.
When Emi looks at YoonHui now, she sees that little girl again, eyes full of determination but also still beseeching her mother’s approval. She has found love – few are blessed with such a gift – and she is happy. Emi has known so little happiness in her own life. Now that democracy and a sort of peace have settled across her nation, it seems only fair that her children should find some happiness. It would be a break in the cycle of suffering her country endured for so long. Emi nods her head at her daughter and ambles to the bedroom, her bad leg dragging slightly behind her, to get dressed for the day ahead.
Her daughter has laundered her pink trousers, and she puts them on. Emi pulls on the black sweater and gazes at her reflection in the mirror. An old woman stares back at her. Emi looks at her chest and wonders when the heart inside it decided to give up. She touches the mirror, her palm over the old woman’s heart.
Lane is waiting for them outside the apartment building. The cold wind whips her scarf around her neck. She holds out a paper bag filled with coffee-cake squares towards YoonHui.
‘We already ate,’ YoonHui says, apologetic, but Emi interrupts.
‘I’ll have some cake with you, Lane.’
‘I knew you would, Mother. It’s the best coffee cake around. We order it at the university for special events. Be careful, though. You’ll get addicted.’
Emi huddles next to Lane and takes one of the squares from the bag. She is full from the enormous breakfast her daughter prepared, and she rarely eats cakes. She hasn’t had much of a sweet tooth since she had four molars pulled by a dentist last year. She takes a bite and smiles. It tastes more like a cinnamon bun. She licks her fingers when it is gone.
‘Want another one?’ Lane asks, her nose red and dripping from the cold.
‘No, one is enough. It was very good.’
‘Come on, let’s go before we freeze to death,’ her daughter says, linking one arm into Emi’s and her other into Lane’s.
Lane looks quickly at Emi, and Emi smiles at her. Warmth spreads through her chest as they walk with arms linked, three across, towards the subway. Her daughter is like a little girl again, bouncing along next to Emi. It’s as though a weight has been lifted from her, and someone lighter and happier has emerged. Emi keeps the image in her mind, never wanting it to fade, and she heads to the demonstration, full of hope.
Hana
Manchuria, Summer 1943
Hana is finishing her breakfast of soupy rice and flecks of dried squash in the kitchen when she notices some of the other girls eyeing her without speaking. They are the faces that greeted her on the wall at the bottom of the staircase last night. Before she can say anything, Keiko comes up behind her.
‘It’s time to cut your hair,’ she says. ‘So that you fit in with the rest of us.’
Keiko brandishes a pair of gardening shears, and Hana already regrets the loss of her beautiful long hair. Keiko raises the shears, and Hana is preparing herself for the first snip when the guard, a soldier, disrupts them.
‘There’s no time for this. Just tie it back,’ he says to Keiko.
She does as he says before he orders them all up to their rooms to prepare. No one looks at Hana as they rinse their plates and file past her towards the staircase. She lags behind them, wondering what she is supposed to prepare for.
‘Wait a moment,’ the soldier says to Hana before pulling a camera out of a bag on the counter. ‘Sit still,’ he says as he fiddles with the lens. ‘Don’t smile,’ he orders before snapping two quick shots.
Hana barely has time to register that the photo was taken when he orders her to go back to her room and roughly shoves her towards the staircase. She ascends the stairs, but not before eyeing the faces peering back at her from the picture frames. One of the frames is missing. Hana notices it at the last moment, and her mind recalls the number beneath the empty space – 2.
Keiko halts in her doorway and appears to want to tell Hana something, but then bows her head and quietly disappears into her room. Hana touches the number beside her door. Her photograph will hang with the others. She is the face behind the door in room 2. A shudder runs down her arms.
As Hana sits on her tatami mat, she listens to the sounds beyond her thin wooden door. A murmur of men’s voices, low at first, reaches her ears. It’s coming from the lounge below, but then the intensity grows as they climb the staircase and soon it sounds like there are masses of people congregating on the landing. She fights the urge to go to the door and find out what is happening; it feels safer to remain still, as though if they can’t hear her, then they won’t know she is there. But it is all in vain.
The door swings open and she sees them, soldiers lining up for the new Sakura. Hana later learns that a new girl’s arrival spreads like wildfire through the camp, and all the soldiers show up early, racing to be the first to try her out.
The first soldier enters her room. He is large, his hands already pulling down his trousers. Hana doesn’t retreat into her mind as she did on the ferry when Morimoto raped her. She opens her mouth and screams. He freezes, just for an instant, and then he smiles.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK, it will be quick, I promise. I’m always quick.’
His trousers slide down to his ankles, and he kneels on the tatami mat. Hana’s back is pressed against the furthest corner of the tiny room, but it is not far enough. He just looks at her, and slowly, his penis begins to harden into an erection.
‘You’re a beautiful one,’ he says, and grabs at her ankle.
Hana kicks his hand, but it doesn’t deter him. He gets hold of her foot and slides her across the floor to the mat. Before she can scream again, he is on top of her. The weight of his body crushes her, but she wriggles beneath him, pounds on his back with her fists, claws his skin, and then bites his shoulder.
He lifts himself up, a brief moment of respite, and then punches her in the gut. The air rushes out of her. He doesn’t wait. As she gasps for breath, he shoves his hands between her legs and forces himself inside.
She still cannot pull air into her lungs. Yet he continues, thrusting again and again. Hana struggles to regain control of her body, her lungs, her limbs, but nothing responds. It is like dying.
He stops suddenly, his muscles tensed, and then slowly gets off her. Hana rolls onto her side, gasping for air.
‘I told you I’d be fast,’ he says, and pulls up his trousers.
As he leaves, another soldier enters the room. He takes one look at Hana and shouts out the door.
‘Hey, you didn’t use a condom!’
‘She didn’t ask,’ comes the reply.
The new soldier shakes his head and grabs Hana’s legs. His trousers are already around his ankles.
‘Please, stop,’ she says, finding her breath at last. ‘Help me, help me escape from this place. They stole me, I’m only sixteen, help me find my parents …’
Her words fall on deaf ears. He is already thrusting into her, rapidly, as though her pleas for help are calls for him to go faster, harder and longer. The second soldier uses his allotted thirty minutes. When the third soldier enters, Hana has started to bleed. She touches the red trail dripping down her inner thigh.
‘Look what they did,’ she says to the third soldier, hol
ding up her bloody fingers.
He pulls down his trousers and doesn’t look at her face. He pushes away her hand, turns her onto her stomach, and takes her. She screams, but he doesn’t stop. None of them do. Hana falls silent. She lies still as they plunder her body one after the other.
By the time the procession of soldiers finally ends, night has descended. Hana lies semi-conscious on her bloodstained mat, lost in unspeakable darkness. Morimoto’s words taunt her dreams. I’m doing you a favour … breaking you in … At least this way, you will know what to expect.
The sun slowly rises above the wooden fence encircling the compound. Keiko stands behind Hana, cutting her long hair with the shears. Small yellow birds perch above their heads on sagging laundry lines criss-crossing the yard. A dry wind ruffles their tiny yellow feathers as they chirp their pretty songs. The wind blows Hana’s hair across her face as she kneels in the dirt, listening to the birds. She wonders how such cheerful sounds can exist in a place filled with so much horror and pain.
‘It’s over now, little Sakura,’ Keiko says, dusting strands of hair from Hana’s bare shoulders with a dry cloth. ‘Now you are like the rest of us.’
She holds up a hand mirror that fits in her palm, and Hana can’t help but look at her reflection. The ends of her hair grace the soft line of her jaw, but that isn’t what catches her attention. A purple bruise has sprouted around her right eye, and a red mark in the shape of a heart stains her left cheek. Her bottom lip is cut and swollen, and her neck is rubbed raw from hands and forearms that choked her into submission. So this is what her pain looks like to others. She turns away from her reflection. It is no longer hers; it is now the broken image of a girl called Sakura.
Hana runs her fingers through the black dirt beneath her knees. Her fingernails are bloody and torn. If she keeps still as she kneels in the yard, her injuries hurt less, but she can’t stop clawing the earth. All her muscles ache; her most private parts throb from the violations committed over and over too many times. She could barely walk down the stairs when Keiko woke her. Now she’s sitting in the dirt, wondering if it will happen all over again.
‘Don’t fight them,’ Keiko says. ‘It won’t be as bad if you don’t fight them. They won’t leave until they’re satisfied. Fighting them will only make your suffering greater. Sakura, can you hear me?’ Keiko places her hand on Hana’s shoulder.
Hana shrugs Keiko’s hand away. She stops clawing the earth. She recalls learning to dive, how she once waited too long before swimming back to the surface and involuntarily gasped for breath, swallowing water into her lungs. If her mother hadn’t been nearby, she would have drowned. The excruciating pain in her lungs and the fear of drowning ensured she learned her lesson. It never happened to her again. Even when she ran out of breath deep beneath the water’s surface, she made certain to drift slowly upwards, to keep herself calm as her lungs screamed for air. She learned to endure because the pain from nearly drowning was worse. Pain is a teacher. The question is whether she can accept what she has learned from it, to stop fighting. It seems unfathomable.
‘How long have you allowed yourself to suffer here?’ Hana asks.
‘Too long,’ Keiko replies.
The bitterness in her tone catches Hana’s attention, and she looks up at the Japanese woman, who might be beautiful if she weren’t so thin. Keiko’s hair is jet black, except for a stripe of silver at each temple, which frames her face. She is taller than the other girls, and in contrast to their plain beige cotton dresses, she wears a colourful silk kimono. Hana touches the hem of Keiko’s kimono. It’s smooth and soothing.
‘I was once a geisha,’ Keiko says. ‘In Japan, I made a handsome living entertaining rich businessmen. This kimono was a gift from my favourite patron.’
She runs her hands down the sides of the kimono, and Hana is reminded of a white crane, standing by the water’s edge, its regal head lifted slightly, ignoring all around it, the trees, the birds in the sky, the air.
‘And where did they find you, little Sakura?’ Keiko asks, her eyes watchful.
Hana is tormented by this new Japanese name. All the other girls are named after the flowers nailed beside their doors, too, all except Keiko.
‘Is Keiko your real name?’
‘Of course, but you’ve changed the subject.’
‘Why do you keep yours and we lose ours?’
‘You don’t want to tell me where you’re from, little Sakura?’ Keiko raises one pencilled eyebrow, but Hana says nothing. The older woman reaches for a broom and sweeps the freshly cut locks of hair littering the ground into a pile. After a long pause, she finally answers.
‘You require a Japanese name, so you are given one. I didn’t require one.’
Watching her sweep the last strands of hair from the dirt, Hana suspects Keiko is lying. The wooden plaques next to their doors were all carved long ago and secured to the walls with nails long rusted over. Girls are given rooms, thereby given names. If Keiko has been there as long as the plaques, she should be rusted over, too. Keiko cannot be her real name. Perhaps they always keep a Japanese girl in that room, finding a new one when the old one moves out or dies.
‘How did you end up here?’ Hana asks. ‘Did they steal you?’
Keiko stiffens.
‘I grew old,’ she says simply. ‘An old geisha is worse than an old woman. A tragedy of the profession. I came here believing it would be a better opportunity. I would do my patriotic duty to Japan and service the soldiers, while paying back the debts I had accumulated when my patrons ceased to visit me.’
She looks across the yard, her eyes settling upon a sad persimmon tree with its branches nearly bare, struggling to exist in the poor soil. A shudder blows through her and her gaze suddenly pierces Hana’s.
‘Never trust a man you owe money to.’
Hana thinks she may never trust any man again. She looks to the ground and she watches her fingers scratch grooves into the dirt. She finds she no longer cares about Keiko or the plaques beside the doors and the names. She can only think about what the day ahead will bring. Perhaps it would be better to die now than to endure being raped over and over, day after day, until she dies like the woman giving birth.
‘Come, Sakura. Let’s eat breakfast,’ Keiko says, pulling Hana from her dark thoughts. She motions for Hana to come inside.
Through the back door, Hana can see the other girls gathered around a small table in the kitchen eating quietly. A few of them peer out at her, past the armed guard leaning against the door frame. Their faces are full of pity as they take in Hana’s bruises. She turns away, unable to meet their gazes.
That sort of pity has never been directed at Hana or anyone in her family before. Her island village is full of strong, proud people; even the children hold their heads up high. The Japanese occupation threatened to starve them by unfairly taxing their day’s catch from the sea, but they managed to bring in more and more with each new tax decree, feeding themselves nevertheless. It meant remaining out on the water for longer hours and risking their lives even during bad weather, but with the increased peril came pride in their hard work and earned success. They were colonised in name only.
Her island is filled with strong fishermen and diving women, the haenyeo, and she is one of them – at least, she thought she was. It never occurred to her that it could be taken away, that she would be forced to become … this.
Inside, the other girls talk about her as though she can’t hear them. They are Korean girls but speak in the mandated Japanese. They are all older than her; some appear to be in their twenties, though two seem closer in age to Hana. Keiko is the eldest, and now that Hana sees her in the sunlight, she thinks she is in her forties. Hana remains seated in the dirt yard, so Keiko carries a meal out to her in a small metal bowl: rice gruel with flecks of dried meat. Hana is starving, but she doesn’t touch the food.
‘She is too strong. That’s her problem,’ one of the girls says to the others at the table loudly enough for Hana
to hear her. Her name plaque calls her Riko. ‘I heard her fighting them like a little lion.’
‘That’s no good,’ the rest of them chime in, agreeing.
‘Better to be a weak girl and give in easily,’ the girl called Hinata says.
‘It’s easier than fighting. They enjoy beating us too much,’ Riko says.
‘Yes, they’re monstrous beasts, not men,’ Hinata says, and they all agree in between mouthfuls of rice.
‘She must be a farmhand … with those broad shoulders,’ Tsubaki says. There are general noises of agreement.
‘And her legs, they’re so muscular. Do you know where she’s from?’ Hinata asks Keiko.
Hana’s eyes meet Keiko’s. She is a striking woman and looks back at Hana with a sorrowful expression. Her eyes are soft, but her voice is strong.
‘Leave her be. She’ll get used to it before long, just as we were forced to. Or she will never survive this place.’
They nod and a few agree in apologetic tones. Hana detects no animosity from the girls, no ill will. Their curiosity seems genuine, but she can’t help feeling they betrayed her. They knew what was going to happen to her after breakfast the previous morning, yet no one warned her. And not one of them attempted to stop it.
As she kneels in the yard, Hana tries to remember the other girls who travelled with her on the train. Are they suffering the same fate? Hana was the last one to arrive at her destination, making her the last to know. She could laugh at her ignorance during those final few hours travelling north, but the sounds won’t come. Laughter has become a foreign language. Then she remembers SangSoo. They buried her tiny body in the middle of nowhere, so far from home. It is too much. Hana begins to scream.
The sounds escaping her mouth are inhumanly wretched, but she can’t stop. Her screams disturb the little yellow birds, and they take flight like a gust of wind, disappearing into the sun. The soldier leaning against the door frame orders the girls to shut her up. Keiko and Hinata rush outside and put their arms around Hana.
White Chrysanthemum Page 9
