by Kim Soom
Her wish is to live and die quietly without troubling anyone and without being treated with disrespect.1
Taking out her black cash bag and sliding the drawer shut, she unzips the bag and lays out its contents—bankbook, wooden stamp, national ID card, a roll of cash amounting to 10,000 wŏn, and a jade ring.
She inspects each and every one as if it’s an unclaimed lost-and-found item.
She leafs through the bankbook—the first page, the second, the third, and the fourth. How incredible that all her savings are recorded in those pages! She’s never gotten used to the saddening notion that money is the only thing she can depend on.
She’s well aware of how much she’s saved, but she’s forever checking to make sure it’s all there, a little more than 20 million wŏn. She wouldn’t feel so high and dry if she’d managed to recover that 30-million-wŏn security deposit. And if her sister had returned the money she’d borrowed. . . . In an emergency her sisters would borrow money from her—after all she must have socked away some cash working as a live-in maid and having no one to take care of. Were they unaware she could no longer draw interest if she withdrew her savings prematurely? Did they know she was able to save by not splurging on nice overcoats and fancy face cream?
After she turned 60 no one was eager to take her in as a maid. Restaurants felt she would be a burden. And that’s when she moved to Ŭijŏngbu and did piecework attaching labels to necklaces. Having to crouch over her work all day left her with indigestion and her fingers so cramped she could barely spoon herself soup and rice.
She knows her savings will outlast her time on this earth, but still she uses it as sparingly as possible. The Creator knows how long she will live, but while she’s alive she has to have money. If her nephew decides to cancel the lease, the first thing she’ll have to do is find a place to rent. Whenever the former comfort women appeared on television she became curious about how they managed—even though the knowledge was vexing and disturbed her sleep. There was little in the way of work they hadn’t tried, but still they weren’t able to get a decent home to lease,2 or they barely eked out a living even with government assistance,3 or they made ends meet with part-time work.4
The former comfort women have found work as live-in maids, like her, at eateries, or as peddlers. She knows that some of them, despairing over their ruined lives, ended up at brothels.
Too anxious to stay home, she skips lunch and leaves. But she feels nervous wandering the alleys—what if she runs into the man from the city?
She comes across a wide-open gate. The yard inside is strewn with discarded furniture. Approaching the gate, she takes the rusty, corroded handle to pull it shut. The gate closes with a screech but opens again as soon as she releases it. She tries once more to close it tight. Knowing it will open again, she keeps hold of the handle.
She won’t walk past a home, even a vacant one, if the gate’s been left open. She has to close it first. She’s a firm believer that a house has a soul. To her the ambiance, warmth, and smell of the house are its spirit. Some spirits shine, some are serene, some are lonely, and some are dejected.
Whenever she closes the gate to a vacant home she feels she’s left a house in which she’s lived her entire life.
“Halmŏni.” She turns toward the voice thinking perhaps she’s misheard.
A man is smiling at her. The meterman.
“Halmŏni, what are you doing out here?”
She just looks at him.
“I mean, why are you here?” Sounding to her like You shouldn’t be here. “Did you lose your way home?”
“Home?”
“Yes, home!”
She shakes her head no.
“Your place is over there.” He points over her shoulder.
“. . . over there?”
“Yes, over there!” She doesn’t respond.
“Did you forget? Would you like me to take you there?”
How would it be possible for him to know where I live but not me? She decides to keep her mouth shut.
The unexpected run-in with the meterman leaves her feeling driven as she continues through the alleys. Something drops in front of her. She jerks her head up to see a dove hovering on a slate roof. Then looks down to see an egg at her feet. Examining the cracked white shell and the ruptured yellow yolk, her eyes grow tranquil like the surface of a lake. Did the egg fall by itself ? Or did the dove push it?
The man from the city must have stopped by the alteration shop. The woman will know what’s going on.
Dog held under her arm, the woman welcomes her while munching on a kimchi pancake. The woman has told her she takes a pill for her diabetes, but she’s always munching on something.
“A man from the city is going around the neighborhood . . .”
“From the city?”
“Yes, checking on . . .”
“Checking on what?”
“On the status of the actual residents . . .”
“Oh that. I can’t believe it. The city and the district cozy up to each other and drive out the longtime residents, and now they’re looking to privatize the project to save money. What the hell do they think they’re doing?”
Agitated, the woman sets her dog down. It crouches there motionless, like a still life.
Without realizing it she reaches for the dog and strokes it. “Poor thing,” she murmurs, as if she’s talking in her sleep.
“Poor thing?” the woman snaps.
“Yes, fifty puppies coming out of this little thing.”
“It’s people you need to feel sorry for, not a dog.”
“People?”
“Yes! Think about it. You work yourself to death, raise kids, get them married off—it’s endless. And what thanks do we get? When the parents get old, what do the kids do? They dump them in a nursing home, standard procedure.”
Just then they spot the old man and his son passing by the sliding door to the shop. Eyes fixed on them, the woman mumbles, “I don’t know why, but a few days ago he was banging his head against the wall . . .”
“Who was?”
“The son! No matter how the old man tried to stop him, he wouldn’t calm down, just kept banging his head till he was bleeding. You know, that idiot is stubborn as a mule. So the old man follows him everywhere, even to the pot. He ditched him once, you know.”
“What? Ditched him?”
“Yes, maybe thirty years ago . . . he got drunk out of his mind and was going around the neighborhood wailing and screaming that his kid had gone missing. Well, all the neighbors were suspicious, they figured he must have dumped the kid somewhere. I mean, someone saw the two of them leaving home first thing in the morning. Can you imagine what it’s like for a widower to have to live with a dumb kid?”
What if it was me? Would I have believed him? Or would I have been suspicious like the others?
“The old man was living with a woman who was ten years younger, and one day he comes home from work and finds she’s locked up the boy and run off—and the kid was still shitting in his pants. She must have wanted more out of life than getting old and broken down. I mean . . . old husband and idiot son . . . she must have figured sooner is better. Anyway, three or four months later, what do you know, the old man shows up with the kid. You should have heard the neighbors yapping . . . some were sure he brought the kid back out of guilt, some thought he really had lost the boy . . .”
“You mean he dumped his own son . . .”
“Sure, why not? But then he must have gone on a guilt trip and brought him back . . . don’t underestimate what people are capable of.”
“Yes, people . . .” She can only nod, over and over. Yes, it was people who took her away when she was barely 13. One moment she was at home, the next moment she’d been dumped in Manchuria.
The orange mesh bag is swaying from a gray metal gatepost. Something’s not right—the bag wouldn’t be swaying if a kitten were inside.
She hesitates, then steps closer and looks inside the bag. Emp
ty. Someone has set it free. Who could it be? Who would want to free it?
With the blue wrap around her neck she looks into the mirror. She couldn’t refuse the Seoul Beauty Shop woman’s offer to color her hair. While the woman is on the phone she stares at herself in the mirror. The blue wrap makes her look like a stuffed bird mounted on a wall, especially with her feet dangling in midair from the high seat.
The beautician ends the call and returns with the colorant.
She stopped coloring her hair when she turned 80. Women want to look younger, it doesn’t matter how much, but not her. Women dream of returning to their maiden days, but not her. At the height of her youth she wanted to age quickly.
“Michiko?”
“Yes . . .”
Her closed eyes open toward the mirror.
“Who’s Michiko? You kept saying Michiko, Michiko.”
“Did I really?” Her eyes open wide in response to the beautician.
“Yes, maybe half a dozen times!”
She doesn’t remember. That she called out that name in her drowsy state makes her shudder.
“Who is she anyway? You were calling her like a mother who misses the daughter she’s married off.” The woman’s hands are busy as she applies the colorant, but her face in the mirror is suspicious.
“Someone I used to know a long time ago,” she reluctantly explains, her eyes constantly moving.
“How long is a long time ago?”
“More than seventy years . . .”
“More than seventy years ago—which would make it . . . oh my god!”
“She died young, she had a terrible disease . . .”
While she was trying to process the meaning of “bedding with soldiers,” haha had told her, “From now on your name is Michiko.”
Hair washed, she returns to the chair in front of the mirror. Her new ink-black hair color and dry orange skin tone are a total mismatch.
She resents the beautician for coaxing her into coloring her hair, and at the same time pities her. The woman had a mastectomy and has regular check-ups at a clinic an hour distant by subway. Keeping her shop open for permanents and hair coloring seems intended to showcase how repulsive she feels about having to continue to make a living. The woman brags that her clientele goes back decades and the women still come to her even though they’ve moved out of 15-bŏnji. But she herself suspects there are days when the woman has no customers.
The woman drapes the blue wrap over her again and picks up a pair of scissors.
“Just a little trim!”
Before she can say yes or no the woman starts snipping. It’s not a trim but a cut. The nape of her neck feels bare.
Her face staring into the mirror grimaces. At the comfort station in Manchuria her hair was always dark, short, and bobbed, just like now.
While the woman is in the bathroom she places 5,000 wŏn on the table and leaves.
The mini-mart man is out somewhere, leaving the woman to mind the shop. From the room in back of the shop she’s lying on her side facing out toward the shop while she watches television. Her disheveled hair looks like a wig. Pumped-up cackling and applause come from the television.
She takes one of the black plastic bags from their holder and packs the eggs she’s buying. What if I get so old and weak I can’t even buy an egg? The notion frightens her. If only she can wash, cook, and dress herself till the very end.
“Here’s for the eggs.” Taking three 1,000-wŏn bills from her wallet, she sets them within reach of the woman, who fumbles for change in her safe before dropping a half dozen 100-wŏn coins at the door sill. The coins roll every which way, one of them coming to rest beside the woman’s bushy hair.
She’s about to reach for that coin but thinks better of it, gathers the others, and leaves.
Walking up the alley with her eggs, she stops in front of the hanok to catch her breath. She remembers that she once found the gate to this traditional house open and had to close it.
She checks the alley to make sure no one is watching, then opens the gate and goes to the dust-layered veranda. Perching herself on the corner, she surveys the weed-grown yard.
After a time she takes an egg from the bag and sets it on the veranda. She takes another egg and places it next to the first one. And then a third egg. Like a hen that’s found a hidden spot to lay. And then she leaves.
Where she sat on the veranda is a round trace of her presence, looking like a circle made by an eraser.
In the dim, shaded alley she comes across a dead kitten slouched on the paved surface, looking like a wad of gum that’s been spit out after the flavor is gone. She wonders if it was sick or if it starved to death. And of course this one, too, is brown.
She walks on by, pretending not to see the dead kitten, just like she’ll pass by a mesh bag with a live kitten as if she hasn’t noticed it.
But at the end of the alley she makes a round trip back and squats next to the kitten. Setting down the bag of eggs, she takes from her skirt pocket a white hankie embroidered in one corner with violet forget-me-nots. It’s one of the first items she ever bought, years ago, a cherished belonging that has never touched her nose. She wraps the kitten inside it.
If there is a Creator, she would pray to it to take the kitten to a happy place.
Her baby sister used to have a grocery list of prayers covering everything from her grandson’s studies to her chain-smoking husband’s addiction to nicotine.
If there’s one prayer she could offer up for herself, it would be a return to the riverside in her home village back when she was 13.
She greeted with scorn the news that man had set foot on the moon. As much as science had advanced, it couldn’t take her back to the riverside. The river of her home village was much more distant than the moon.
The old man’s yard is so littered with wire there’s no place to step. She’s arrived at his place without really thinking about it. The wall is a crumbled mess that leaves the entire yard in plain sight. The old man’s back is to her as he hunkers down stripping the copper from rolls of wire. Some of the wire is thin as an earthworm, some is thick as an eel.
Slicing off the cloth coating and ripping out the copper looks daunting. Securing a roll of wire with his left foot, he makes a long slit along the cloth coating as if gutting an eel. Then he peels the cloth apart and with pliers pulls the copper free.
He stuffs the copper into a sack, and the cloth strips go into a pile at his feet. He takes another clump of wire and repeats the process.
Casing an empty house, locating the electric line, opening the interior walls to rip out the wiring, bagging the wire and taking it home, stripping the cloth and pulling out the copper—harvesting copper from abandoned homes is serious business.
Turning away, she is startled by the son, who is smiling from ear to ear. She hurries off.
Beyond the crumbling wall she has an eerie feeling and looks back. The son is following her, and his smile has become a ludicrous smirk.
“Do you know me?” she asks him, wishing she was asking the Creator instead.
If there are ten thousand bees in a hive, does the Creator know each and every one of them? Even if so, the Creator couldn’t possibly know her.
“Do you . . . do you know me?” she repeats.
The son nods.
She turns away from him feeling in her heart that she is shunning the Creator.
Kang Tŏkkyŏng: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.
Kim Ŭnjin: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 2.
Mun P’ilgi: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.
Chin Kyŏngp’aeng: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 2.
12
AHUMID BREEZE LEAVES her hair strewn and her nose full of the chemical in her hair colorant. Alone in the alley, she wonders if the son has made it home safely.
She wonders what will happen when the old man is gone. Who will feed, dress, and bathe
the son?
Mother dying . . . Mother dead.
These telegrams had been posted a month apart, but Punsŏn received them at the same time. She didn’t reply to them and never again sent a telegram home.
Punsŏn was taken away by the Japanese MPs at the age of 14 while she and her mother were picking cotton.
“Don’t you take my little girl, you’ll have to kill me first!” her mother screamed as she clutched Punsŏn. The MPs stomped on her belly.
Punsŏn said she could never forget the image of her mother writhing and screaming in the cotton field.
When Ch’unhŭi ŏnni became lucid again she didn’t realize that some of the girls had left the comfort station during her illness.
“I don’t see Punsŏn, where is she?”
“You know, she went home—her mom died,” Pongae told her.
“What about Haegŭm?”
“She went to work in a silk factory,” Pokcha ŏnni chimed in.
Haha approached the girls in her click-clacking geta.
“Heaven will punish that bitch,” Ch’unhŭi ŏnni said as if chanting a spell.
When she was 17 she dreamed she had lost a tooth. A front tooth. There was no bleeding, though. She awoke with a jolt and found an old soldier, a captain, sleeping next to her.
“A family member must’ve died.” Pokcha ŏnni, so accurate in forecasting the soldiers’ movements, offered this interpretation of her dream, a service she performed for the other girls as well.
“Who could it be?”
“I wonder who . . .”
By the time she was 26 Pokcha ŏnni had no teeth left.
Her own paternal grandparents had passed on before she was born. Her father said that her grandmother had starved to death.
