By then, I even found myself longing for the baggie of tollhouse cookies that Christine had forced on me at the last minute, that I had left on top of a garbage bin at Kimp’o Airport. At the time it had been a kind of adolescent exuberance—I’m an ocean away from Christine! But now, dammit, I was hungry. I didn’t want to admit that maybe Christine was right, that having never been in a foreign country before (unless you want to count fishing in Canada), I was ill-prepared to be here in Seoul. Korea is a Third-World country. Everything over there is very different than what you’re used to here.
“Mwoy yah?!” the crone screamed.
I had approached her, and her wooden cart displaying some kind of golden steamed bread, on tiptoes. She was squatting next to the cart, leaning against one of its battered wheels, eyes closed. I stared at her face, fissured with wrinkles. Her hair, thinning, greasy, shrimp-gray, was pulled back into a tight bun that looked like it was made out of wire.
She opened her eyes with an almost audible snap, as if she had always known I was there. Startled, I did what I always do when I’m nervous: I made a fist and chewed on my thumb as it poked out, I’ve-got-your-nose fashion, between my fingers.
“Yah!” she screamed again, her thin eyebrows converging like birds.
My head, bulbous and light above my body. The bread seemed a brighter yellow, as if lit from within.
“I’d like to buy some,” I said loudly, motioning with my fisted thumb.
“Mussen sori yah?” The woman leaped to her feet and began to slap the air around her as if she were fighting off a sudden swarm of gnats.
“Ga, Ga—GA!” she yelled, dancing.
Some passersby—students in primary-color track suits, housewives carrying plasticized shopping bags stuffed with giant leeks—stopped to titter benevolently.
“A-me-ri-ca, nambah wang,” said one of the track suits.
“You like-u practice Ing-leesh with Korean mans?” queried his friend. His sweatshirt said CHOSUN UNIVERSITY in English over what looked like the Cadillac crest. LUX ET VERITAS.
“Na-GA!” the crone screeched again, now waving a rusty cleaver.
I considered grabbing a hunk of the bread and running like hell. But no, too Dickensian. Something a street urchin, a desperate orphan would do.
I walked back the way I’d come, smelling the strange, smoky air, noting a heavy blue sky that looked close enough to touch. I could scarcely believe it, that this place existed, and I was here.
SARAH
Seoul
1993
“Neh is the word for yes,” said our teacher, Choi Sunsengnim.
She made us go down the row, the five of us, repeating.
“Neh.”
“Neh.”
“Neh.”
“Again, please,” she said, when she got to me.
“Neigh,” I repeated.
“Again.”
“Neigh.”
“Again.”
“Neigh.”
She stopped, flustered.
I have always had an affinity for languages. When I was ten and went to the weeklong Concordia Language Village, I learned Spanish so fast, Christine went around telling everyone I was going to be a simultaneous translator for the U.N. someday.
I had planned to pick up Korean just as quickly, and then leave the Motherland Program to strike off on my own. But this wasn’t some camp in the north woods of Minnesota. And Korean wasn’t Spanish.
I was at the bottom of eight levels at the Chosun University Elite Academic World Language Institute. Our class was referred to as ill-gup, as if we were sick. At the placement test, someone handed me a sheet of paper containing only the broken-stick Korean letters, not even anything as basic and familiar as NAME _________. When the teacher saw my befuddled face, she said something to me in Korean. Then louder. When it dawned on her that I didn’t understand a single word she was saying, she announced in a braying and modular English that anyone who knew absolutely no Korean should report to the ill-gup room on the first floor.
I found myself in a cramped room, a chilly breeze seeping through a cracked window patched half-heartedly with duct tape. The floor was unspeakably grimy, the blackboard had its corner cracked off.
Eventually, two Korean-looking guys, one squat and thick-necked, the other better looking and wearing a Princeton sweatshirt, walked in. Then, a pretty, willowy Korean-looking girl appeared. I thought I was imagining it, but the three of them began speaking to each other in Korean.
We were joined by one more student, a thirtyish, solemn-faced woman in gray nun’s habit, the kind that would have made her look like a hospital orderly if not for the black headscarf. Her eyes were the almost transparent green of iceberg lettuce. I was relieved that she didn’t join in the Korean conversation—that would have been too much. I ventured a greeting, Hi, I’m Sarah, but she didn’t respond. She seemed to think there was something fascinating outside the window, opaque with grime.
“Sarah-ssi, you never heard the word ‘yes’ at home?” Choi Sunsengnim said.
I shook my head.
“But what about your pah-rents? They never taught you any word? Not a one? Do you know u-yu, the word for milk? No? You never hear them talk, at least know the sounds?”
I shook my head, again, again.
“Your pah-rents never speak in Korean?”
I would be surprised and amazed if they did.
“They’re not Korean. I’m adopted.”
My classmates stared.
“Excuse?” said Choi Sunsengnim.
“I’m adopted. A. Dop. Ted.”
“Oh-moh!” Sunsengnim put her hand to her throat. “I-byung. I have heard of those like you, but I have never before met—” She drew in air through her teeth. “So your pah-rents, they are, are—”
I was wondering if she was searching for the word for white. Honky. Gringo. Paleface, etc.
“Cock. Asian.” The Princeton sweatshirt guy filled her in, sliding me a Bryant Gumbelesque smirk.
“Ah, yes, Caucasian,” the teacher said with satisfaction. “So you think of these Caucasians as to be your pah-rents?”
I shrugged.
“But your Korean pah-rents, what happened to them?”
You’re supposed to be teaching us Korean, I wanted to say. I wanted to learn. As quickly as possible.
No one moved.
“Your Korean pah-rents, what happened to them?”
I took a big breath.
“Dead. Car crash.”
“Oh-moh-moh-moh!” Choi Sunsengnim’s textbook hit the floor with a hollow crash.
For the rest of the class, she eyed me, the way one does when passing a horrible accident. You look, but want to pretend you’re not looking. You don’t want to have it known that you are the kind of person who can be horrified, repulsed, and fascinated all at the same time.
My new classmates—Bernie, Jeannie, Helmut, Sister Marie-Thérèse—were walking toward the main campus gate. Maybe they were going to lunch. I began to follow them.
Then Bernie Lee, Princeton sweatshirt, turned and saw me, cocker-spaniel-eager to catch up. He sneered. Microscopic crick of the lip, but a sneer. I swerved back into the school building, walking busily, arms swinging, pretending to have somewhere much, much, much (much!) more important to go.
In the dark alcove, students pushing past me, I shook with hunger—and ridiculous pride. The same pride that had kept me from asking for help in the first place just because the program handbook had said:
Although the International Students Residence has no cafeteria facilities, Seoul has an abundance of restaurants, cafés, and food preparation services, so this should not be a problem.
On the contrary, most students find that the variety of food available can be almost overwhelming.
I was expecting, what—manna dropping from the sky?
I slipped out the back of the building, where I found another small gate in the massive stone fence that encircled the entire campus. Just outside it, fo
ur lanes of traffic hurtled by. A few blocks down there was a metal-and-concrete pedestrian overpass conveniently waiting.
On the other side I found a maze of alleys, promisingly crammed with businesses. Many of the storefronts had rice-paper windows and doors, keeping their trade a mystery. I passed some clothes stores, then not one but two prosthetic shops, artificial arms and legs wrestling in dusty bins out front. Another store had its paper door pushed open to reveal rows of women bent over at sewing machines.
A few doors down, a photo studio. In the display window, a group of portraits. A couple in Western wedding clothes, a stiff-posed family. The photo in the middle of everything was of a pleasingly fat baby in what must be Korean clothes: a silk jacket with rainbow-striped sleeves, shiny orange pants that were tied at the ankle, and—I suddenly noticed—cut away at the crotch to reveal a shy, beetlelike penis.
Then, in the reflection of the window, the marvelous vision appeared: a 7-Eleven sign beckoning from across the street. Could it be? I almost knocked over two old ladies in my haste to get inside, where it looked exactly like the 7-Eleven at home, down to the Slurpee rotating on its tilted axis, cigarettes behind the counter, a cold-food section in the back, racks filled with chips. They even seemed to sell booze, judging by the rows and rows of green glass bottles, one of which said “alcohol drink” in English.
I ran to the back and lost no time grabbing a sandwich, then noticed that next to it in the refrigerated case was a flattened, shrink-wrapped squid. The shelf above it had takeout trays of what looked like wheels of rice wrapped in carbon paper. The sandwich in my hand was white bread, sure enough, but holding a slurry of pimento-red filling of unknown provenance. The bags of chips had pictures of smiling shrimps and raccoons on their wrappers—could they possible be made of raccoon?
A skinny young man with John Lennon glasses and possibly illegally tight jeans, brushed by me carrying a styrofoam bowl. He peeled the lid off and filled it with hot water from a spigot, stirring it with disposable chopsticks. A most delicious, salted smell wafted up in the steam.
It was a foodstuff I recognized. And even liked.
Ramen! I was saved—for now.
KYUNG-SOOK
Enduring Pine Village
1993
Her parents had named her Kyung-sook, Virtuous Modesty, but by now, most villagers called her “Shrimp Auntie,” or, on Sundays, “Esteemed Minister’s Wife.”
She was, of course, no longer young, no longer known for her thick, gleaming hair or her musical talents. Now, she drew her daily pride from her reputation as an honest merchant: she haggled out of habit, but never overpriced her offerings. The quality of her shrimp was unquestionable. And she had her cadre of faithful customers, whom she rewarded with a bit extra added to their orders, every time.
One of these regular customers was a girl, Small Singing, who was newly married. This girl couldn’t even read the labels that declared “Special Product!” on the tins of salted shrimp, but she did have that kind of country common sense that Kyung-sook appreciated: she didn’t dither on and on about whether the salted shrimp in this pile was better than in that pile. She brought the right amount of money so that Kyung-sook wouldn’t have to run out for change.
The girl, however, always left the shrimp stall with a frown, even with her extra grams of shrimp and with Kyung-sook’s polite language ringing sweeter than spring birdsong in her ears; Small Singing had grown up all her life hearing only the low language, just because her father’s job was cleaning shit out of concrete sewers with his short-handled brush. In her childhood season, Small Singing’s neighborhood nickname had been “stinkpot,” despite how she always took pains to make sure she was scrupulously clean, scrubbing even between her toes and in the part of her hair with the pumice rock. Now she was a wife taking care of an entire household, but except for Kyung-sook the Shrimp Auntie who called her Gentle Customer, the other merchants in the market still subtly disdained her, addressing her only as “You, there.”
No, her displeasure had to do with the fact that Shrimp Auntie had never acknowledged first, her moonlike pregnancy, and then, her precious baby boy. When she made her visits, Shrimp Auntie might amiably complain about the weather, ask about Small Singing’s family, but never a word about Small Singing’s bulging belly, or, when she showed up at the shrimp stall after the birth, about her beautiful baby boy. Even the most disinterested people found it fit to congratulate her on the success of her breath-holding exercises (done so zealously, they had often caused her to faint), her hundred continuous days of prayers to the Birth Goddess and the Seven-Star God, the bestowers of male children.
“Shrimp Auntie can be so cruel,” Small Singing complained to Cooking Oil Auntie, whose bottle-lined stall was across the way. “Even when I presented her with the hundred-pieces rice cake for the baby’s hundred-day anniversary, she didn’t say a word. How can she be so cold?”
Cooking Oil Auntie made a clicking tsk-tsk noise in her throat, bent to adjust the seed presser so that the drops of thick oil didn’t come out so fast.
“Don’t be such a silly girl,” she said. “Tell me, where do you see her children, the sons who will support her in her old age and provide her with grandchildren? Are they hidden in the barrels of dried shrimp?”
“Then she is like the thirsty calf looking down the well,” Small Singing huffed. “She resents what she can’t have.”
“Now, who is the one being cruel?” asked Cooking Oil Auntie.
“It’s not my fault that I am able to bear children. I did a hundred breath-holding exercises every day for a month. Shrimp Auntie married when she was long past twenty—and to an old man who’s a cripple to boot.”
Cooking Oil Auntie made the tsking noise again, mumbling about how the girl’s sighs and cries as she performed those vaunted exercises could be heard far beyond her family’s gate (and what was a few sessions holding one’s breath compared with having wild mugwort burned onto one’s bare stomach, as she had done to combat her own drawn-out infertility?).
Neither woman was aware that Kyung-sook the Shrimp Auntie herself was walking right behind their backs, returning from a delivery to the Gleaming Jade restaurant. Even though each merchant had his or her own patch of dirt, carefully marked off by wooden crates of still-flopping fish, fabric towers of ladies’ panties, display cases of mirrors and scissors, or buckets of dried crickets, no one owned the market’s air or the words that floated within it, so Kyung-sook, ears itching, had received every bit of that conversation as freely as if she had been standing next to them.
That girl, she thought, who did she think she was?
She watched Small Singing leave the cooking oil stall, heavy with groceries and the child strapped to her back by a quilted podaeki. She probably needed to add some meat to her load, or at least stop at the fishmonger’s before trotting down the dusty road back to her in-laws’, where she would wash, chop, peel, scale, and cook the day’s dinner, laboriously feeding wood or charcoal briquettes into the stove, the whole time the baby on her back crying for milk, the mother-in-law wailing that she was going to die of hunger before her infernal daughter-in-law would have some food ready.
Once the endless dishes of seasoned vegetables, salted fish, steamed rice, several kinds of kimchi were laid out, the house would quiet as everyone except Small Singing ate their fill. Small Singing was known to be a fine cook, so likely when it was her turn to eat, alone in the cold kitchen, only some dregs of vegetables, perhaps a fish head if she was fortunate, would be left to mix with the grains of rice still sticking to the sides of the blackened iron pot. To clean the rice pot, she would pour a kettle of hot water into it, then drink up the rice-water to fill her stomach.
Her mother-in-law, who had always secretly envisioned her son marrying someone who looked like those sleek, big-eyed women she saw in the fashion magazines and not the snaggletoothed daughter of the night-soil hauler, would often interrupt even this rude meal. Between burps and tooth-sucking, she would co
mplain that the seasoned bellflower roots, which Small Singing had scrubbed to whiteness with salt, then shredded painstakingly with a pin, had needed more hot pepper. In slicing the fruit for the last course, perhaps a bit of pale apple-flesh had been wastefully pared away with the skin. Small Singing would have to get on her knees, lower her eyes, and say, “Forgive me, Mother. I did wrong.”
Later, Small Singing’s husband, a filial son, would reiterate his mother’s message with his fists.
The next time Small Singing came to Kyung-sook’s stall, she would have a bruise under one eye, her lip would be swollen and split like a packed pig’s intestine sausage. The baby on her back would be dirty and crying. The late afternoon sun would be slanting through the spaces between the plastic roof-tarps, so Small Singing would implore Kyung-sook to hurry and give her a kun of shrimp paste, which she would wrap into her carrying-cloth and go on her way.
That girl thinks she’s better than I am because of that pumpkin-headed baby, Kyung-sook would think with wonder, shaking her head.
SARAH
Seoul
1993
“Sarah-ssi—” Choi Sunsengnim sighed like a deflating balloon before adding, “What will we do with you? You are falling far behind in class.”
“Thank God Sunsengnim finally said something,” muttered Bernie Lee, sotto voce. “She’s holding up the whole class.”
Okay, I admit I had trouble remembering the word for “car,” cha-dong-cha, and no one else seemed to have trouble with it. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. I studied all night. It was just that Korean words were so damn hard to remember.
Bernie was staring at me. He was wearing yet another orange-and-black PRINCETON sweatshirt, as if he feared we might forget where he went to college unless he reminded us, every day.
Somebody's Daughter Page 2
