White Chrysanthemum

by Mary Lynn Bracht

  Before she can think of reasons not to go, Hana stuffs the cloth bundle into her underwear. Then she flies down the staircase two steps at a time. The eyes of the girls trapped in frames on the wall stare at her as she nears the bottom step, and she pauses to look at her own face. The thought that her photograph will remain there for even one more night makes her chest tighten.

  She stands on her tiptoes on the edge of the bottom step and reaches for the frame. It tips upwards and then slides down the wall. Hana catches it and quickly slips the photograph out of the wooden frame. She shoves it into her knickers with the bundle and then runs through the lounge towards the kitchen.

  Hana is nearly to the back door when she feels a deep certainty that there will be a voice behind her, a rifle aimed at her back, and her muscles seize. Her steps falter, and she falls to the floor. On her knees, Hana is prepared for the inevitable.

  Her heart flutters like hummingbird wings, but only gentle snores drift to her ears. Suddenly, she wants to turn back. The reasons to stay crowd her mind. Losing a leg if she is caught, potential death. And if she leaves, the other girls will suffer. They will be punished, thrown into solitary confinement, and maybe even die because of her selfish act. Keiko’s pleading voice cuts through the images. Don’t leave me alone.

  The front door opens on the other side of the brothel. Heavy boots stamp on the wooden porch before entering. She has to cross the lounge to get back to the stairs if she chooses to stay, and the night guard will see her. Her legs burn at the thought of the saw’s jagged edge against her skin.

  It is too late. She cannot stay, not even to spare her sleeping friends. She rises to her feet and hurries to the door. She lets out a shaky breath as she tries the metal doorknob. It squeaks, and she cringes, holding her breath until it stops turning. She breathes out, and then she pulls it. The door doesn’t budge. Heat prickles her cheeks. She pulls it again as hard as she can. It doesn’t move. The door is still bolted shut. She is a fool. Morimoto is laughing at her.

  This is her punishment for believing a Japanese soldier – for being so naive. She sees Keiko’s disappointment in her as clearly as if she is standing in front of her now. Hana has betrayed her. She chose to trust a man.

  Resigned to her fate, Hana leans her forehead against the door. She deserves to be punished. She deserves to die. She feels the cold edge of the knife against her thigh, making her feel faint. Before Hana realises what is happening, the door slowly pushes open. Push, not pull.

  The door is open. Morimoto didn’t lie. Footsteps march towards the kitchen. Hana doesn’t look back. She slides through the open door, shuts it behind her, and disappears into the night. There is no burden now, just the elation of escape.

  Hana knows the way to the bridge where Morimoto is waiting for her. It is at the end of the dirt path she can see from her room. The path leads a mile to the north, and he will meet her where it forks, just before the ramshackle military barracks. She can picture him as he waits for her in the darkness, his smile as she approaches. She can see him coming forward to grab her and kiss her cheek, her neck, her forehead, his embrace like a stranglehold, before hurrying her along the river to the life that he has planned for them in Mongolia. She can see him, and his question echoes in her mind.

  Don’t you want me to take you away from this place? She sees his face as he stared back at her, and now, standing outside beneath the night sky, she is free to answer his question.

  ‘No,’ she says firmly, ‘I don’t want you to take me away,’ and then she begins to run.

  The stars light her path. Hana runs as fast as her legs can carry her, not north up the narrow trail where Morimoto waits, but south, back to Korea and to her island in the sea. Her legs seem to know it will not take him long to realise she is not coming, and they are swift. They will not stop until she can see the shore where her sister once stood, anchoring Hana’s life to hers.

  She keeps Emiko’s image in her mind as she races through the darkness, but sometimes the face transforms, and she becomes Hana’s other sisters, the ones she’s left behind. She sees their horror when it dawns on them that she is gone, she sees Keiko’s horror. But Hana keeps running until her lungs burn and her chest aches. She pushes through the pain, as though it’s the deepest dive of her life, and she is swimming out of the ocean’s dark depths towards the light.

  Emi

  Seoul, December 2011

  An old woman sobs a few steps away from where Emi stands. A woman on the stage speaks into the microphone. It squeals with feedback, and the crowd moans while children cover their ears.

  ‘For the one thousandth Wednesday demonstration, we have a special unveiling. Two artists have created the Statue of Peace to remember the plight of the so-called comfort women. This monument is for all the women and girls who were forced into military sexual slavery, losing their childhood, their families, their health and dignity, and, for many whose stories we will never know, their lives.’

  She motions towards a group of women and they quickly move out of the way, revealing a blanket-covered statue. Two women in beautiful white-and-pink traditional hanbok gowns lift the blanket with a flourish. Emi strains her eyes to see the statue.

  Gasps and appreciative laughter ripple through the audience as they applaud the statue. Emi lifts up onto her tiptoes, struggling to see above the people standing in front of her, blocking her view, but she is too short. Slowly, she shuffles towards the statue, clumsily bumping into people as she stumbles past them.

  ‘Where are you going?’ YoonHui calls after her.

  Emi doesn’t answer her daughter. She just keeps going. She has to see it. She doesn’t know why it’s so important to her to see the statue, but she is suddenly filled with a determination to set her eyes upon it. She pushes past people, weaving a path through the crowd, her eyes fixed in the direction of the bronze figure. The crowd seems to melt away at her touch, as though they, too, feel the determination within her. She flows past them without difficulty until she is standing in front of the statue.

  Emi is breathless after pushing through so many people. The thin winter air is icy in her heaving lungs. She is face-to-face with the life-size sculpture of a young girl, no older than sixteen, seated alone beside an empty chair, her gently fisted hands placed neatly in her lap, her eyes gazing straight ahead, into Emi’s. She gasps, clutches her heart, and sinks to her knees. Hana …

  Snow flurries fall from the grey afternoon sky, swirling in lazy circles, descending in soundless wonder upon the scurrying crowd below. Her daughter shouts to her, a piercing cry trembling with fear. Hands seize Emi as she slumps forward, her face nearly crashing into the pavement.

  ‘Mother!’ YoonHui cries, running up beside her.

  They turn her onto her back, and YoonHui cradles her head in her lap. Lane arrives and their two heads hover above Emi like guardian angels. A halo of winter sunlight casts their faces in shadow. Emi sees her parents looking down on her, beckoning her to them from the great beyond. The urge to follow them pulls at her like an undercurrent. If she fights it, she will drown, but if she lets it sweep her out to sea she will disappear in a gentle lull. The statue’s sombre face sits above them all, and Emi turns to steal a last glimpse of it through a break in the mass of people huddled around her. Her eyes alight upon the young girl’s face, at once breathtaking and familiar. Recognition settles in her mind. Not yet, Mother. Father, not yet. Hana has finally found me. How can I leave her when she has come such a long way?

  Hana

  Manchuria, Summer 1943

  The sun’s early rays creep across the horizon. Hana moves further away from the road. Her feet are bloody from the stones and sticks on the rugged path. The night was quiet, with only a single truck rumbling down the road. She hid behind a shrub in the ditch as it passed, but she knows that as morning nears, a shrub won’t hide her from their eyes. She suffered from a bitterly cold wind that suddenly swept through overnight, and the bright sun is a welcoming sight.

&nb
sp; The dry grass pokes through the sores on her feet. If Morimoto is looking for her, he will only have to follow the trail of blood she is leaving behind. Hana stops and listens to the empty countryside every ten minutes as she catches her breath, on the alert for footsteps, heavy in boots, behind her. He’s out there somewhere, enraged that she would dare betray him. The thought of his anger sends prickles across her skin. She runs faster as the sun rises on her first day of freedom.

  Careful to keep the road to her left, she continues heading south. The land is beautiful. Gentle hills rise and fall in the distance. The grass on the plains reaches up to her waist. She can sit in the field and hide from intruding eyes. After a few miles, her feet cannot go any further, so she sinks to her knees and relishes her new hiding space, careful not to look at her bloody feet. Insects buzz and chirrup all around her. Tiny yellow flowers bloom on tall stalks. Arms from the earth beckon her towards the ground. Lying here like this, safe from the world, she could have already left this life. Only the pain from her throbbing feet reminds her that she is indeed still alive.

  Hana knows she must keep moving as Morimoto is surely hunting her down, but her feet beg her to stay put, just a while longer. She gazes into the sky and watches the clouds transform themselves into an assortment of shapes. A serpent erupts from the mouth of a whale, which splits into a sea of burial mounds before fading into faint wisps. They remind her of Morimoto’s cigarette smoke, drifting out of the cracks of her room window. The thought of him gives her chills, his hands on her body, his hunger sucking the breath from her lungs. Hatred fills her and her heartbeat quickens. She sits up and listens to the sounds around her. Would she hear him coming?

  She looks down at her swollen feet. Caked in black earth mixed with blood, they cannot be ignored any longer. She grabs a handful of grass and rubs them mostly clean. She endures the pain without making a sound. A bird sings its song nearby. The wind kisses her face. She finds a thorn lodged in a wound in the ball of her foot. It’s in quite deep, and she has to dig her fingers nearly past the first layer of flesh before she reaches it.

  At first she can’t grasp it because her fingers slip with blood. She wipes them on the grass. With dry fingers, she inserts them into the wound again. This time, the thorn pulls free. Recovering for a moment, Hana touches the grasses. They bend with the gentle wind, and she strums them like they’re a delicate instrument.

  Her father was musical. Before he became a fisherman, he studied poetry and often performed his poems to music. His words were lyrical and full of history, which made them political. When the Japanese began their world war by invading China, they grew tougher on the colonised Koreans, reinforcing the ban on all Korean history books and literature, prohibiting the study of Korean culture. Her father became an outlaw, and he fled from the mainland to Jeju Island, where he reinvented himself as a struggling fisherman. That is where he met her mother.

  After a fruitless day out at sea, he would sit on the beach with an empty net at his feet and sing an old forbidden folk song. Most of the other people on the beach distanced themselves from him, wary that a Japanese policeman might stroll by and see them listening to the Korean words of a Korean song, but not Hana’s mother. She stood up and shaded her eyes to get a clearer look at the fool singing such a ridiculous song, and when she saw the young fisherman with the empty net at his feet, she tilted her head back and laughed. He looked up but didn’t stop singing, and when she came near and sat beside him on the warm rock, he decided in that moment that he never wanted her to leave his side again. They were married and Hana was born within a year. It took longer for her sister to come along, but when she did their family was complete.

  At night, when the dinner dishes were washed and the four of them sat together warming themselves by the hearth, he would play the zither. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he would sing that old folk song that had made her mother laugh.

  Leaving? Are you leaving?

  Are you leaving me behind?

  How can I live without you?

  Are you leaving me behind?

  I want to hold on to you.

  But if I do so, you won’t come back.

  I have to let you go, my love!

  Please go and return swiftly!

  The song is a whisper on her lips. The forbidden words roll off her tongue. She feels defiant, singing in her native language, and she recalls how her mother made sure to close the shutters tight when her father picked up his zither. Hana keeps her voice low so only she can hear her song. She lifts her head above the grasses a few times, scanning the field for prying eyes. Seeing none, she continues to sing until her throat is parched.

  She has to find water, but her feet are too sore to go anywhere. Willing herself to move, she plays with the long grass, weaving it through her fingers. The stalks are sturdy, like bamboo strips, and she has an idea. Pulling a handful from the ground, she binds one end together with a few strands of grass and then weaves them into a thin braid. When it’s long enough, she wraps it once around the ball of her foot and ties it across the top.

  Rising to her feet, she takes a few steps to test her makeshift shoe. Her excitement grows with each step, and just as she squats to the ground in order to make a second one, the ties rip apart and the weave unravels. Not yet disheartened, she sits and weaves together a second shoe, and when it, too, falls apart, she weaves a third and a fourth, until her efforts fade with the sun’s dying light. She lays her head on the pile of withered and broken grass shoes, resting her tired eyes.

  Her sleep is plagued with dreams. Nightmares and happy memories swim together, mixing storylines and jumbling feelings so that she awakens with a scream in her mouth. A shock of orange birds launches into the early-evening sky. The insects keep silent. She doesn’t know if she has screamed or whether it was something else that spooked the birds into flight. She lies still, listening, waiting for something or someone to make a sound.

  It is distant at first. Just a slight sweep of grass pushed aside as though by the wind. But the longer she listens, the louder and closer the sweeps become, until she hears the crunch of stiff stalks beneath boots. Her heart lurches in her chest, and she wants to leap into the sky and follow the orange birds to safety. She forces herself to remain where she lies, still as a corpse. Any motion will move the tall grass surrounding her, signalling her location. Men’s voices whisper to each other, commands and responses. She strains her ears to hear his voice. Is Morimoto with them? Are they searching for her or someone else?

  Hana fears one of them will step on her arm or face or stumble over her and stab her through her heart with his bayonet. She closes her eyes and waits for the inevitable. They will find her, and then they will torture her. How long will they keep her alive before setting her spirit free from her abused flesh?

  A soldier is standing in the grass beside her. She can see his tan uniform through the blades of grass. His back is to her. He hasn’t seen her yet. Another soldier is whispering something to him and clutching his rifle.

  He steps backwards, the heel of his boot standing on the hem of her dress. She cannot close her eyes. She has to see his face. Is it him? She must see what expression crosses his face when their eyes meet. Will it be surprise? Or will it be triumph, lust or hate? She waits for him to turn round and stumble upon her.

  Then suddenly, another man shouts from across the field, and the soldier near her takes off, freeing her dress. She hears them running away from her. Their shouts increase in frequency, and then a gunshot cracks through the chaos. She remains still as a newborn deer hidden in the tall grass, holding her breath, listening and waiting for the sounds to fade away, for darkness to fall and for night to hide her once again.

  It wasn’t him. She is certain. If it was Morimoto, he would have turned round and found her. There is no way he could stand so close to her without sensing her presence. He is like an animal. He would have smelled her.

  She watches the hours creep by in the changing hues of the sky. Pa
le dusky blue darkens into deep sapphire and then the purple blue of night. Too afraid to move for fear the soldiers are still lurking nearby, she urinates on herself. The stink attracts flies. They crawl on her dress, buzzing, as they taste the soiled cotton. The odour is dark yellow like the stench in the outhouse at the brothel. No matter how much they scrub it down, the stink never leaves the rotting wooden floorboards.

  An owl hoots, and she imagines it swooping above the field in search of moles and mice. She listens for the rustle of feathers gliding on the wind. It hoots again and she finds her courage. She sits up, and very slowly, she stands. There is nothing to see beneath the night-time sky but darkness. Hands in front of her like a blind girl, she takes her first step, and then a second. Soon she is running; her shredded feet scream for her to stop, but her mind refuses their pleas.

  Hana is no longer certain she is continuing along the same direction as the road. She’s not even sure she’s still headed south. She was never able to commit the map in the sky to memory. Her father attempted to give her a sense of place in the vast heavens, but she always resisted. Her attentions were drawn down into the sea, into the calming darkness and the creatures within. She wanted to listen to the other fishermen’s stories about blue whales and swordfish and sharks. Her father’s stars never made an impression. Hana looks up into the sky, and the stars shine back at her in silence.

  After running uncertainly through the field, Hana hears a cry in the dark, low at first, transforming into a high-pitched screech. She hears the rhythmic chug of wheels turning on a track. The train. She has found her way. She darts after the sound, a sharp turn, following her ears. The clatter of metal against metal grows louder as she nears the railway tracks, until the train passes in a rush of air and sound.

  She wants to go in the direction it has come from. All the night trains head north. They’re full of supplies for the field, and travelling at night is their only cover from aerial bombers. At the brothel, she would listen late at night for the train’s whistle as it crossed the railway bridge into the military base. It announced its arrival once every week, or sometimes every two weeks if it was delayed by bombings of the tracks, and Hana’s stomach never failed to turn over. She arrived on one of those trains, labelled as ‘necessary supplies’ on their inventory checklist. When she dreamed of escape, she knew the railway tracks would aid her passage back home.