by Bae Suah
“Then what?”
I sighed, worn down by her stubborn refusal to give up.
“I wait tables.”
“Oh my.”
She was quiet for a moment, then started talking again before I could even begin to think about how to end the call.
“But you said you’re a college graduate. You should be tutoring kids instead. That would be better for you. Cheolsu’s little sister is still in college, but she’s tutoring a high school student in math. She’s good at math. She was planning to work only over vacation and then quit, but her student’s mother begged her to stay. She said she’s never seen a more talented tutor than my daughter. The father is a chief prosecuting attorney, but their kids aren’t doing well in school. It worries them. Their father was a younger classmate of Cheolsu’s father when they were in college, so that’s how we know their family. And the job seemed reliable.”
“Ma’am.”
She was getting chattier by the minute, and I couldn’t bear to hear another word. I decided I had to end the phone call, even if it meant being rude. It could also be that I was too angry to take any more.
“Ma’am, I’m busy right now. I have to hang up.”
“My goodness, where is my mind?” she said, pretending to be apologetic. “Cheolsu said you’re planning to visit him?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you going this weekend?”
“I haven’t picked an exact date yet.”
“Oh, no, I was certain Cheolsu said you’re visiting him this weekend. I wanted to send him some food.”
“They don’t feed him in the army?”
I probably sounded curt. The more brusque my voice grew, the more slippery hers became, as if she were greasing her vocal cords.
“Of course they do, but you know it can’t compare to food made by your own mother. It must be so hard for him there in training.”
“He only has to serve for six months.”
If she had suggested visiting him together, I absolutely would have refused. Promise or no promise, seeing Cheolsu was not worth putting up with that much indignity and discomfort.
“If you visit him this weekend, could you stop by our house first? I made chicken. It’s not much; I promise it won’t be too heavy. You two can eat it together when you see him. That’ll be nice.”
“You’re asking me to take chicken to your son?”
To see Cheolsu, I would have to go all the way past the city of Uijeongbu, which I’d never been to before, transfer buses several times, go to a place called Yeoncheon, which I’d never even heard of, and find my way to an army base with a strange address. To top it all off, now I had to tote along a bundle of cold chicken like some kind of refugee. This was too much.
“I wish I could visit him myself.” She sounded crestfallen. “But Cheolsu told me not to come. He said the other boys all have their girlfriends visit them and he’ll be embarrassed if his mother shows up.”
“Is that so?”
“I just want to feed my son his favorite dish, so though I know it’s a burden for you, please do me this one favor. Anyway, he absolutely insists that I don’t go, for fear of making his girlfriend uncomfortable.”
She laughed. I pictured her eyes shining like a rat’s when she peeped at us in Cheolsu’s bedroom. I didn’t want to have to look at her face again, but I figured one last time couldn’t hurt. Once it was done, I would never have to see her again. So I gave in.
The last criminal sociology lecture was that Saturday night, but I requested the whole day off so that I could go see Cheolsu instead. In the end, I never got the chance to attend any of the lectures. Maybe if I had, it would have turned into a date. I pictured the instructor standing at the far end of the room, there, at the podium, while I sat in the very back in the dark, chewing on a pencil and listening to him talk about domestic violence. He would have been too far away to make out his face.
We all have many commonly held misconceptions about domestic violence. A typical example is the belief that domestic violence recurs in lower-class families or those with lower levels of education. Other examples include the assumption that the happier a family appears on the surface, the less likely they are to experience domestic violence; that when a child is abused, the abuser is whichever parent is less close to the child; that domestic violence within families is always linked to other social issues, such as broken homes, alcoholism, criminal records, and so on. These case studies show us that, just as with other social institutions, domestic violence has less to do with any inherent characteristics of the family as a primitive community of relatives and more to do with the changes wrought by modernization with its complex and diverse variables. As the causal factors, triggers, and control factors correlated with domestic violence intensify and diversify, it becomes harder for us to draw a clear conclusion.
The lecture would have gone on for three straight hours and ended with everyone turning in the homework. Since I wasn’t a student, I would have torn out a piece of notebook paper and written this note for the instructor instead:
I sat in on your lecture today. I kept telling you I was too busy to go, so you probably didn’t know I was there. To be honest, it was hard to follow. I’ve never taken any sociology classes or anything else like it, so of course it was new to me. I must confess that I was never a good student. You said you think you saw me last autumn when the fall semester was starting; that must have been at the tea party we held in the office to kick off the new semester. Since I don’t know what any of the part-time lecturers look like, I don’t remember meeting you. I’ve worked here for less than a year. I’ll probably change jobs soon. I’m not a full-time employee—just a temp on a one-year contract. I don’t know if you’re teaching criminal sociology again next semester, but I don’t think I’ll be running into you at school anymore. Finals are next week, and then it’s vacation. Winter is already here. Every time winter rolls around I find myself longing for things. A warm home. A heavy blanket. A wool sweater. A soft, light winter coat (that I can’t afford). A kind word when times are tough. White snow falling on this dirty city. Stepping into a phone booth set in the middle of a street like a stage prop. A secret phone number in my hand that I can call at that very moment. The snowy night so quiet it seems to be holding its breath. Listening to “Stairway to Heaven” on repeat while waiting for a bus that never comes because the snow is falling too heavily and the traffic has come to a standstill.
It feels strange to have attended your last lecture and to write what will be my last and only letter to you. At any rate, you and I have never knowingly met. And though we might one day a long time from now cross each other’s paths on the subway or at someone’s funeral or at a highway rest stop, we won’t recognize each other. It could indeed happen. For all we know we might even hold hands one day at a demonstration.
I’m not a member of any pacifist groups that denounce any and all antipersonnel weapons designed to hurt and kill people (and I don’t believe you are either), but if I were to receive an invitation to one of their demonstrations, I would most likely cancel any unimportant plans I had in order to go (and I believe you would too). The people who go to those things cancel any unimportant plans they might have in order to attend, either alone or with family. There would be so many people that you and I could rub shoulders without realizing it. Everyone would clasp hands and form a human chain from one end of the city to the other. Human beings are capable of becoming perfectly pure at some moment in their lives. It doesn’t matter if they’re royalty or literati, middle class, working class, or the lowest class. For many people that moment must be the moment when they are clasping hands with each other. Memory finds its way back through blood, through body heat. Right at that moment.
But now is not that moment. Right now doesn’t mean anything at all.
When I got home from work, I opened the kitchen cupboard to take out a loaf of br
ead and found a bottle of alcohol. My mother had started drinking again. I thought about getting mad at her but gave up on the idea. I must have been too tired. Getting drunk was her choice, as were her boozy-breath drunken ramblings that I hated listening to. Since her benders weren’t that frequent, I could put up with this one for a little while. My mother didn’t seem to care at all how badly she stank, or how ugly the whites of her eyes were, yellowed from the havoc she’d wreaked on her liver. She probably didn’t remember anymore, but a long time ago, she’d won a Miss Cambison Ointment pageant. She’d stood onstage in the kind of bathing suit you might see on female divers and fluttered the false eyelashes she’d glued to her eyes. But now, it was comical to associate that memory with the mother who was standing in the kitchen, giving me the side-eye, with red marks on her cheek from the pillow and wearing ragged, dirty pajamas.
“What’re you looking at?” she asked.
Tired of her gaze, I made toast and ranted inwardly: You’ve been home all day. The least you could have done was make dinner. My brother thinks the kitchen is no place for men, and my little sister is probably eating instant noodles with her friends at school. When my brother saw there was no dinner, I bet he crinkled his face into a smile and went hungry without complaint.
“No dinner. My brother must be starving,” I said.
“I had to go back to work at the hospital because of him.”
She forced her lipsticked mouth, which looked crumpled and crushed into a smile. She’d worked as a nurse before she started drinking. It was dirty work, too awful to describe. She did the kind of work that not even the patients’ own flesh and blood would do for them. My brother had always felt guilty about the fact that she had to do such work, and when she lost her job because of her drinking, he said it was better that way.
“What happened?”
“He needs more money for Japan. I don’t know why it’s so complicated. I went to the hospital to see if they had any work for me.”
“As if they’d have work for someone who drinks as much as you do.”
“I don’t drink. I told you I quit. I’m not lying.” She shifted her eyes around nervously as she protested. “They said they’re short on people lately and that I could start tomorrow. But even with an advance it won’t be enough.”
“How much more does he need?”
“A million won.” She let out a sigh.
“What he’s made so far doesn’t cover it?”
“What do you expect? He didn’t go to college, he has no skills, and his father and I are no help. Of course, he has no money to start a business of his own. He has an opportunity to earn money in Japan, but he doesn’t have enough to get there, and there’s no one he can borrow from.”
“Do you ever worry about me or Mia as much as you worry about him?”
“You got to go to college,” she said angrily. “Don’t act all high and mighty just because you give me a little money to live on. You can barely make ends meet with that tiny paycheck of yours. The kids you went to school with are all working in banks and investment firms. They’re making good money. But you make less than half of what they make, and still you complain all the time about how tired you are, and you make us all walk on eggshells around you. You owe me! Do you know how expensive it is to raise kids? Don’t even think about leaving this house before you’ve paid it all back to me. You’ve got a long way to go.”
The woman who called herself my mother opened her mouth wide and the reek of alcohol floated out, as usual. I put down my half-eaten toast and went into my room. For a moment, I considered whether they could rent my room out and make a little money that way. But the house was so old and dirty that there was no way they would ever find a tenant. My mother continued to yell at me from the kitchen.
“I didn’t think I’d be stuck living this way either! You think you’re so different from me? There’s no avoiding it—not once you’re old and broke. You’ll turn out the same way. You better remember me as I am now, because you’ll turn out exactly the same. Nothing will ever change!”
After my mother’s voice faded, I heard the kitchen cabinet open and the sound of alcohol pouring into a glass. She gulped it down. After a few minutes of silence, I heard sobs coming from Mia’s room. My little sister was crying.
The next morning I got up early and headed for Cheolsu’s house. The sky was overcast and the forecast said the weather would be even worse by the afternoon. It was as cold as it was hazy, and the damp, frigid air seeped all the way down to my bones. My sister and I had only one winter coat between the two of us. She was younger and frailer than I was, so on winter mornings I usually told her to go ahead and wear it since I wasn’t that cold. That morning, as well, I left the house with only my pink sweater for warmth. Cheolsu’s mother handed me the chicken in a disposable aluminum container tucked inside a paper bag. The chicken was warm, but it would soon cool and turn hard as a rock. I couldn’t stop myself from frowning. Cheolsu’s whole family was sitting around the kitchen table. I turned down their offers of breakfast and told them I’d already eaten. His father said grace. The praying family looked pious and cultured. When I thought about the fact that Cheolsu had had these kinds of mornings the whole time he’d known me, my body twisted with awkwardness.
“This is Cheolsu’s girlfriend. She’s on her way to visit him today.”
They all stopped eating and stared hard at me.
“Girlfriend? He never said anything about a girlfriend,” Cheolsu’s younger sister said, staring openly at my old, pilly sweater. “You know he tells me everything.”
“Why would he tell you about his love life?” their mother said sternly. “Anyway, this is your brother’s girlfriend, so be nice.”
The family probably went on talking about me after I left. Cheolsu’s sister would have said, “Why are her clothes so out of style? What school did she say she went to?” Cheolsu’s father would have asked, “What does her father do? Do they go to church? Where did she graduate from?” Cheolsu’s mother would have solemnly lectured her daughter that dressing neatly is all that matters, and she would’ve said that belittling someone for wearing old clothes is not the mark of a true human being. Then, when the daughter wasn’t around, she would have told her husband what Cheolsu and I were doing when no one else was home. “We need to give him a good talking to, but we have to remain objective and not get emotional when we do. He’s already an adult. He has to manage his own life. Could you talk to him? In the meantime, I’ll keep pretending I didn’t see anything.” Cheolsu’s father would momentarily experience the classic worry that that girl would be a ball and chain, an obstacle to Cheolsu’s future.
It was a long way to the army base. I took a bus to the subway, then the subway to Uijeongbu, and then an intercity bus for miles and miles. The streets of Uijeongbu, where winter was just taking hold, were dull and deserted. The cold had come on quickly and frozen the streets lined with lonely restaurants and shady-looking bars. Near the army base lurked women in blue eye shadow and tight clothes that clung oddly to their bodies. A restaurant with faded roof tiles, called The Rose Garden, stood bleakly at the end of the road. A perfectly gray street. An old and dirty street. The Rose Garden didn’t look anything like a rose. I sat on the intercity bus with no coat, as frozen as a scarecrow in an unsown rice paddy in the middle of winter, until the bus reached the stop where an old woman with chipped and worn nail polish told me I should get off. By the time I stepped off the bus in front of the army base in the middle of an empty field, Cheolsu’s chicken in its paper bag was completely cold. The bus left. At least I was not the only woman there—it was the weekend, after all.
“Who are you here to see?”
Women—all there to visit soldiers—filled the PX. A guard wrote down my name and ID number with a black ballpoint pen.
“Kim Cheolsu.”
The guard looked up at me. “Kim Cheolsu isn’t here
today. He’s out on a training exercise.”
“That can’t be. He told me to come today.”
“The exercise was announced at the last minute. But he’s not far. I can tell you where to find him. Do you want to go visit him in the field?”
“Sure.”
“It’s about four kilometers from here. The bus will get you there right away, or you can walk. Just take any bus that stops out front, then get off in front of the fishing hole. There are signs pointing the way to the base HQ. Follow those signs and they’ll lead you right to the drill field. It’s easy. Just head there and you’ll find him.”
Soldiers who’d been called to the PX were checking in before meeting with their girlfriends, mothers, and younger sisters. I would rather have died than leave the warm PX and go back out into the cold, windy streets, but I had no choice. I picked up the bag of chicken and headed to the bus stop. I stamped my numb feet while waiting for the bus. Luckily, it didn’t take long. I sat near the front. I was supposed to get off at a fishing hole? I tried to remember what the guard had said. In front of the fishing hole. The scenery outside the bus window looked completely different than before. Paddies and fields (I never could tell the difference between the two) and sheds and vacant houses whirled past. I couldn’t tell anything apart, as though I was looking at a piece of film that kept replaying the same scene. A little kid in dirty clothes was sitting in the street in front of a house, crying with his mouth wide open. After the bus had taken several turns and gone over a hill, I saw the same little boy in front of the same house, still crying. Was it really the same kid? I looked around and tried to jog my memory. Identical vacant houses, fields, paddies, sheds, and bus stops slid past. How long had I been on the bus? It could have been hours, and it could have been only five minutes. Was this bus going in circles through the same village? The sky was as overcast as it had been early that morning, and it hung down dark and heavy, as if snow would come spilling down any minute. Then there was the static electricity of this ominous winter coldly dominating the whole world. I waited and waited, but the announcement for the bus stop in front of the fishing hole never came.
