The Loved Ones

by Sonya Chung

  “But the fields … everything looks so rich,” Soon-mi says.

  “Yes,” the driver says. “My cousin is doing much better, they have food enough and his children are going to school. He invited me to bring my family to live with them, but …” He makes a pained sound, sucking spit through the gaps in his teeth. “I prefer the city. I am more independent. We get by, anyway.”

  Saemaul, Chong-ho thinks. Saemaul Undong: The New Community. What, he wonders, has become of the old one.

  They have been driving for almost an hour and a half when Chong-ho sees it: the Chinese parasol tree, in late bloom, deep-green leaves and creamy yellow flowers. It rises up from the melon field. It has grown taller and fuller, but it is unmistakable. Behind it he can just make out the gingkos that hover over the lookout shed.

  “There are no melons,” Soon-mi says softly.

  “They have let it go fallow,” Chong-ho says. His tone is disapproving. It is true that the soil must renew itself, but really Chong-ho is not concerned with farming techniques. In Chong-ho’s mind and heart, the melons from that patch will always be the fruit of Soon-mi’s family’s labor—not this new tenant’s, whomever he may be. Perhaps there is no tenant; perhaps it is Chong-ho’s younger brother who is now making decisions about the land.

  The taxi rumbles down the dirt road along the field, then climbs through the trees, circling the base of a blunt-topped mountain, two, three times around, ascending steeply. They come to a clearing—a cluster of low, flat houses and a dusty road that continues on toward more houses, a general store, a school, and, beyond that, farther up the mountain, a burial ground.

  “Here,” Soon-mi says suddenly, her forehead against the cold glass. Chong-ho, James, even little Hannah, look to her, surprised. The taxi stops short of the first house; forests of oaks surround on either side of the road. Other than that, nothing. “Look,” Soon-mi says, pointing. Chong-ho and James look out the window in the direction of Soon-mi’s finger, while Hannah sucks her thumb.

  “It’s just trees,” James says. With great effort, he holds back a complaining whine. His parents, this whole trip … he resents being dragged along. He is old enough and could have stayed home alone. But he knows better. His father made his decree. There was something of significance awaiting them, a family matter, whatever that meant. They would all go, no discussion.

  Hannah kicks her legs, bouncing on her mother’s lap. Her eyes move around like a searchlight.

  Only Chong-ho understands Soon-mi’s sudden command. It is always like this, between them; always has been. He sees the ancient stump at the head of the path. At the end of that path, a long way through the oaks, is a ridge, high above the village. There, thirty years ago, the two of them arrived one night, hand in hand—the master’s son, the tenant farmer’s daughter—breathless under the moonlight. They continued along the ridge until they found a grove of black pines, heavily canopied, a refuge for their illicit love. Hidden from even the moon and the stars.

  3.

  Sunday morning, Alice wakes to a pounding between her eyes and hot, sticky breath on the back of her neck. Her brassiere’s underwire digs into the ribs on her right side. On the floor beside the bed her dress is crumpled into a puddle of polka dots. The sun streams in through jalousie slats, and the room is sweltering; no one had thought to turn the fan on last night.

  This morning, rather. Alice can’t recall what time she came home; can’t remember coming home at all. She assumes they weren’t all together—she, Pauline, and Suzanne. Or were they? If not, who came home first, who last? Abruptly she sits up, her head spinning. Once she can see straight, she scans the room: who was to say they all came home at all?

  A warm, tiny hand flops into Alice’s lap. It was Suzanne breathing on her neck just before, curled up close, nearly spooning. Now Suzanne has rolled onto her back, mouth open, her other hand draped across her eyes. She is fully dressed, in collared gingham, buttons done all the way up except for the very top. Alice pulls lightly at Suzanne’s skirt and sees that she’s still got her hose on. Well that’s a relief, Alice thinks: what hysterics they’d be in for if Suzanne had lost more than just a little self-control with the soju.

  As far as Alice can tell, the only signs that anything unusual occurred last night are the bobby pins sticking up every which way on Suzanne’s head, her brunette tresses frizzed and flyaway like the “before” on a Breck commercial. That, and the fact that it’s Sunday, and Suzanne is not up and gone to church.

  Alice’s senses come to her one at a time. She smells Suzanne’s sour breath, then tastes her own. Sound arrives more slowly, like a dial turned up: soft snoring, Pauline sprawled out on her bed, head turned toward the far wall, one foot and one hand hanging over the edge, like the chalk outline of a murder victim.

  It had been Pauline’s idea to go to Itaewon—“We should celebrate,” she’d said. It was the end of summer term, and they had only one week off, after all, before classes started up again. They’d been working hard—five classes a day, and Korean immersion classes on Saturdays—since June. On Sundays they did laundry and grocery shopping, the occasional trip to Dongdaemun Market to shop for trinkets, then dinner with the Mattisons. Suzanne went to the Presbyterian church in the morning (there were no Lutherans, it was the closest she could find) and sometimes spent the afternoon with her church friends.

  Alice lifts Suzanne’s arm with two fingers, turns her wrist to see that it’s almost noon. Suzanne mumbles, rolls over; Pauline is stone still, the snoring periodically noisier and throaty. No church, no market-browsing today. If Alice can stand steadily on two feet, dress, and make it down the hall to the kitchen for a glass of water, it will be the day’s great accomplishment.

  Why Suzanne volunteered to call her fiancé’s cousin—a private on a hardship tour at Yongsan—Alice still can’t fathom. Suzanne said she’d met him once before, back home in Duluth at the engagement party, just before he shipped out. “A nice quiet type,” she’d said, and Pauline’s eyebrows went up and down. Dorothy Mattison had warned them about the soldiers, and everyone warned them about Itaewon; but Pauline was on a mission, to “blow off steam.” “Aren’t you guys curious? We stay inside these gates like it’s a convent or something. I need to get out.” She managed to recruit Suzanne to her cause.

  In fact, Alice had been feeling it, too: while they had everything they needed—a comfortable house, a kind (if overly maternal) supervisor, friendly and helpful colleagues, diligent students—the schedule had been rigid. They hardly ever went out at night. And here was prim Suzanne, eager to see this “other side” of Seoul. Suzanne’s fiancé was in Bangladesh doing missions work, and she suggested that this foray into the den of licentiousness was her Christian duty. “Christ would never just stay in the nice part of town,” she said, as she ironed her gingham. This comment had unsettled Alice: she thought of Laila, who had left her post as researcher and administrator in Concepción—too much paperwork, too much time in the office, she’d written—and gone back south, to a poor village outside Valdivia, to start an artisan cooperative with Mapuche women.

  Alice scoops her dress off the floor. She fishes through a laundry pile and puts on a pair of clean drawstring pants and a T-shirt. On her way out, she flips the ceiling fan switch. The blades begin to move the air in a hushed whir.

  Alice is rarely in the kitchen at this time of day. As she pours herself a tall glass of iced bori-cha from the refrigerator, she scrunches her face at the greasy countertops and cabinet doors. The house is modern, everything in the kitchen in white veneer with walnut handles, and it was spotless when they arrived. But the two girls in the west bedroom—younger girls, straight from college—had never lived on their own before, and they were sloppy. Alice runs a haeng-ju under the faucet and starts wiping down everything in sight—cabinets, countertops, stove, sink, fixtures. A mysterious urgency takes over as she scrubs harder and harder. Soon she finds herself on hands and knees with three sponges and a bucket of soapy water. The floo
rs are in fact the cleanest of all the surfaces, but still, she will scrub until it is all done. A memory of her mother comes to her: as a little girl, Alice would sometimes help Mary, the housekeeper, with chores, out of boredom, and her mother would scold her for it. Cleaning was for common women, she’d say, and Alice was not from common people. But after her mother got sick, when Alice spent more and more time with Mary, her mother put her pale hand on Alice’s cheek and said, “It’s good that you can take care of yourself. Eventually, we’re all on our own.”

  Alice scrubs and scrubs. The circular motions begin to work their way into the throbbing in her head, clearing out space, quieting the hammers.

  * * *

  What happened last night?

  They’d met Andrew—the cousin—at The Angel Club, a bar in the heart of Itaewon. The English-speaking taxi driver knew exactly where it was. They couldn’t decide if this was reassuring or not.

  Andrew was there with a group of fellow privates, huddled together at a table near the bar, drinking and laughing. The table was covered with Bud Light bottles and steaming bowls of boodae jigae. The boys were young—nineteen, twenty—and harmless. The restaurant itself was crowded, and noisy, and dark, and there were no other foreign women. Alice wished they’d come earlier—it was after ten—surely there would have been a few other DoD people, maybe some young Army wives. At The Angel, Alice was even more conspicuous than usual: both Pauline and Suzanne were shorter than she, and brunettes. The place was filled with Korean women, two to one over the soldiers. Some of the women were ordinary-looking, they could have been housewives; others were heavily made up, in short skirts and platform heels, their hair slicked and tightly curled. But all of them were obviously poor. Suzanne’s “mission,” Alice noted, might just be accomplished.

  “What were you guys talking about?” Suzanne asked Andrew, after they’d made room and pulled up extra chairs. Pauline ordered a beer, and Suzanne asked if they had wine, to which the waitress did not respond, but scribbled something down and then looked to Alice. “Soju,” Alice said, which elicited boyish hoots and murmurs from Andrew’s friends. “When in Seoul,” Alice said. She wanted to establish that she knew how to handle herself in the face of the staring eyes all around.

  Three Dog Night was playing too loudly, and across the room some kind of rowdy drinking game involved two women as the main players and a group of older-looking soldiers as spectators. The scene was not so unlike that of the bars in Gainesville, except that Alice was never conspicuous at The Rue or bars on the Ave. And there was something else, something that made her additionally uneasy—unspoken rules, both strict and unknowable.

  Alice wore a dress she’d bought at the Sunday market—modest polka dot boatneck, gathered at the waist, blousy—and she was glad. It dawned on her suddenly that it was the women in the room who made her nervous, who carried danger—not the men.

  “We were talking about the abduction,” one of the young privates shouted over the music. He had dark eyebrows and a Roman nose, New York or New Jersey in his accent. “It’s crazy. Nobody here knows anything. The news is wrapped up like a fuckin tourniquet. We get everything from the Army reporters, and they have a hard time getting it, too. It took almost a week for the local papers here to get hold of it.”

  “Get hold of what?” Suzanne asked. She sipped her sweet plum wine and waved away cigarette smoke with a pink little hand. She blinked her eyes wide.

  “Not you, too?” the soldier said, laughing.

  “Ah, lay off, Cassaro,” Andrew said. “They’re teachers. They spend all day behind walls, with Mattison’s wife as den mother.”

  Alice flushed but said nothing. She became aware of her frumpy dress.

  Andrew was on his fourth beer and starting to show it. He leaned forward, and the girls leaned in as well. “Kim Dae-jung? The opposition leader, President Park’s nemesis? He was abducted. Three weeks ago, in Japan. But we didn’t hear about it until a week later. Then, a week ago, he was released. They just dropped him off on the street somewhere. He made a statement, but that wasn’t released until just yesterday. Everyone knows Park and his cronies did it, but no one says so publicly. It’s amazing how an entire country can just agree to pretend like that.”

  “Are you bullshitting us?” Pauline had spent her childhood in England; remnants of her inflections surfaced most with expletives. The boys assured them they weren’t, taking turns telling what they each knew, excited to be in the know.

  Alice ordered another soju. The conversation receded from her, and her from it. She’d been here before: things were happening in the world, important things, terrible things. And she was not a part of it. She was in the dark, on the side, and doing what exactly? Why had she come to Korea? To hide, and avoid. She had been, once, a part of things; but no longer. In Curfeo, they may not have been protesting the war, or American imperialism, but still they were working for the greater good; solving real problems for real people. Sitting now with these American boys, she felt ashamed; but more than that, she felt a yearning—for a lost time and a lost self.

  The group continued to talk and laugh; they’d moved on to other subjects. Pauline and Suzanne scooted their chairs in closer and asked about other camptowns, where some of the boys had gone for training. Itaewon was “the best,” whatever that meant. Alice watched the other two girls relax and enjoy themselves. As it got closer to midnight, the number of women wearing makeup and high heels increased, and the soldiers got drunker. The boy called Ocampo stretched his arm out behind Pauline. Alice downed the half-bottle of beer in front of her—who knew whose it was—and then tugged at the neckline of her dress.

  “Alice? Alice? Are you okay?” Suzanne was shouting into her ear. Alice leaned away. Why was she shouting?

  Alice stood. Her chair wobbled over and one of the soldiers caught it before it fell. She mumbled that she needed to pee. On her way to what she thought was the bathroom, she dropped her purse, and when she bent down to pick it up, someone shoved her from behind; she fell over into a soldier sitting at the bar. He was an older man wearing a different uniform from the others, and he was alone. Alice noticed his eyes, which were giant dragon eyes, blood red around the edges. The man helped her to her feet, and Alice smelled his breath; she thought, dragon breath, and pulled away. She looked now again at the spot where she’d dropped her purse, and it was gone. Alice’s instinct drove her now, back toward the poolroom through the crowd, and she barreled through, not even noticing the stares. Then she saw her—a young woman in a fake-leather bodice and miniskirt, hair kinked and lips red—standing by a pay phone outside the men’s room with Alice’s green-leather purse clutched in her hand behind her back. Two soldiers, one black and one white, both tall and broad, stood with her.

  Now Alice really did have to pee. That discomfort, the bodily urge, put her over. She made for the woman, arms outstretched. The distance to the pay phone at first seemed short, but then it became infinite. There was the sound of bar stools scraping the floor, and a woman’s roar (hers?). Something happened then, everything happened. A sharp pain at the crown of her head. The last thing Alice remembers is a flash of her own reflection, distorted, monstrous. Was it a mirror behind the bar? A darkened window? She could see fat pink splotches on her neck—the sure sign she’d drunk one too many.

  The floor is shiny in the spot where Alice is scrubbing. She is dripping sweat and rubbing it into the linoleum. Her left shoulder aches. The floor is sharp under her knees.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Pauline jumps when she sees Alice there, kneeling. She’d come down the hall in a rush. “What are you doing?”

  “Sunday cleaning,” Alice says. Her voice is froggy; these are her first words this morning. She raises her hand and Pauline takes it, helps Alice to her feet.

  “There’s … someone here to see you.” Pauline’s expression is half-teasing, half-concerned. Her arms are crossed, and she flicks a tentative finger toward the window. Alice inches over and peeks out from a side angle, but she ca
n’t see the front door. She steps closer and leans, chin first, to see him standing there, cap in one hand, green purse in the other. He stands very straight, almost at attention; his khakis are perfectly creased. It comes back to Alice then, from last night, that reflection she saw: sunglasses, aviators, on a dark face.

  “Oh, my God,” she says.

  4.

  They walk through the village. Soon-mi stays close to Chong-ho, just behind his right shoulder. It was her impulsiveness that put them in this position, walking a mile up the mountain road with their luggage. Chong-ho does not speak of it, though; it is a forgiving silence, not a hard one. After the taxi drove off, they’d stood together at the entry path to the forest, all four of them, still and watchful for a few minutes. The children did not understand, but they stayed quiet.

  With her left hand, Soon-mi holds the front end of a large duffel bag while James holds the back. Hannah’s bottom rests in the crook of Soon-mi’s elbow; the child wraps her limbs around her mother’s waist and neck, like a baby chimp. Chong-ho looks straight ahead, suitcase in each hand. They walk with heads down, along the hot, dusty road, a private procession. Every so often an old woman or a child peeks through curtains. A shirtless boy sits on a wooden folding chair in front of a small, neat house, pulling at the legs of a grasshopper. When he looks up to watch them pass, Hannah waves.

  The switchback takes them into a canopy of ancient pine trees, then Chong-ho leads them down a narrower road that opens into a clearing. A tall, wall-like gate rises up before them. The gate door is ajar. Chong-ho hesitates about whether to ring, call out, or simply walk in. Soon-mi squeezes his arm, a fortifying gesture, and he reaches then to push open the heavy oak door.

  In the courtyard, a woman is stooped over a ceramic jar. A yellow dog stands beside her wagging its entire body, trying to alert her to the presence of strangers, though it does not bark. She swats the dog’s nose away, then raises her head and looks toward Chong-ho, who has stepped forward. The woman stands up, though still hunched, and squints. A deep frown pulls down her whole face, from forehead to cheeks to chin. In her eyes, though, are recognition, a hint of joy. Both Chong-ho and Soon-mi immediately apprehend what the conflicting expressions add up to; but to a child—to James, to Hannah—the woman appears tormented, and frightening. James lets go of the bag, takes a half-step back; Hannah begins to whimper and fuss, and the dog breaks into hysterical barking.