The Impossible Fairy Tale

by Han Yujoo

  In the future, the Child will not remember anything. No trace must be left. She feels as though someone is always behind her, watching. She must not catch their eye. The sound of the pipe doesn’t reach her ears. There are times a car engine sounds beautiful. With the tip of her pencil, she blacks out the scribble she had made on her desk just a moment before. Her fingertips sting. She doesn’t use a mechanical pencil. She wasn’t given one. With a pencil, she writes badly. She wrote badly from the time she learned to write. What had she scribbled on her desk just now? No one knows. It was all blacked out. She thinks today’s scribbles can become tomorrow’s evidence. Plus she writes badly. She wishes she could be erased. But every time she tries to erase herself, she only grows darker. Every day, she grows darker. Enough for her body to gobble up her shadow. At school, she exists like a shadow. Or she has become a shadow and is absent.

  Once during a spelling test, she wrote knell instead of kneel. This was three or four years ago. Since that day, she doesn’t want to risk hearing the kneel of her mother’s anger. She knells and waits for her mother’s anger to fade. She must always knell and make herself very small, like a dust mote, a grain, some kind of vermin. But even though she must grow smaller, the Child has the habit of wearing several layers of clothing to make herself look bigger. When she wears multiple layers, she feels less pain. Even when she is alone, she can’t remove all of her clothing, because when she removes a layer, and then another, clothes that are red and blue persist. She could not be erased or grow dark, just as she could not remove her clothes—these clothes that cannot be removed, clothes that will follow her to the grave. Every day her blood vessels grow transparent. Protective coloration. The Child hears Mia say, If you drop the pen from high up at the right angle, the pointy tip will pierce right into the person’s head. Absentmindedly the Child thinks that rather than aiming the tip at someone’s head from high up, jabbing it firmly into the throat is easier and far more effective. Not wanting to find or be found, the Child doesn’t open her closed mouth. Nevertheless, she must find. She must be found.

  Beginning on the first day of the new semester, March 2, 1998, it is the Child’s turn to be the class monitor for one week. On the next day, March 3, 1998, she is the first to arrive at school; she goes to the superintendent’s office and fetches the Grade 5, Section 3, classroom key. During the lunch break, she leaves her food in her desk and slips out of the school and goes to a locksmith shop. Ten minutes later two keys jingle inside the Child’s pocket. When school is dismissed, she goes back to the office and hangs the original key on its hook. There are sixty keys in the key storage cabinet. It occurs to her suddenly that she needs two months. No. She corrects herself; she needs more than two months. Because she must exclude Sundays. Because she must be trapped at home on days off. But more than anything, one key is enough. If she can’t have all the keys, it is better to have just one. The superintendent sees the Child, who is standing idly in front of the cabinet. You, come over here. The Child flinches. The superintendent draws near and hands her a carton of coffee-flavored milk. To a child. She takes the milk and mumbles, Thank you. As she slips past the school gate, she mutters: Thank you, bless you, excuse you, screw you, fuck you. Thank you, bless you, excuse you, screw you, fuck you. The children, who are skipping their after-school academies, mash up the dirt on the playing field, and steal the ball from one another, over and over again.

  The Child heads to the stands. The field that had been frozen all winter long is sloughing off its skin. The field, following the children’s intricate web of movement, will become miry, soon, like ulcerous gums. The wind is chilly and the sunlight is strong, but the Child can’t feel any warmth. She sits in the stands for a moment, feeling the sunlight and chilly air. The spring wind bites her skin, but her skin doesn’t hurt. All of a sudden, she thinks that she must either drink or discard the coffee milk. Before the thought becomes a compulsion, she needs to dispose of it. Thank you, bless you, excuse you, screw you, fuck you. The Child must not take the coffee milk home. Why? She has no idea why. She thinks she simply must not, that she must not take home what she happened to acquire, that what she happened to acquire must not be spotted by her mother. The Child places the coffee milk on the bleacher and gets to her feet. That pyramid-shaped carton casts a 3:30 p.m. shadow in the shape of a crushed pyramid, creating evidence that she is there at that moment. All of a sudden, she thinks she is in an extremely conspicuous spot. No one is watching her. No, her shadow finds her. She turns abruptly and scans her surroundings. No one is there. She slowly walks toward the school gate. She remembers that she never ate her lunch. She must not take her uneaten lunch home either. Because the rice, the soup, the side dishes, all of it might get hurled at the wall, or at her face. For no reason. But anyone can easily conjure up a pretext. The Child must discard or finish her uneaten lunch before going home. She can’t devote too much time to this task. Although she long ago became skillful at generating excuses, it would be better for her to avoid situations that require them, when possible. If you can avoid it, avoid it. Even if you can’t avoid it, you must avoid it. The Child can’t tell if her stomach is aching with hunger or with pain. She has heartburn. She learned the expression from her mother earlier than most children her age. She learned many expressions earlier than children her age. Expressions children hardly ever use. But she couldn’t own as many things as the other children. She simply owned a sufficient number of objects that could suitably hide shadows or scars. A nylon jumper and sweaters, socks and hats. And countless words. She knew how to shed tears, how to wail, how to whimper, how to cry and then laugh; she was sad, blue, melancholy, lonely, anxious, distressed, scared to death, terrified, horrified, appalled, petrified, miserable, ashamed, embarrassed, frightened, rattled, in pain, in unbearable pain, in unendurable pain, in unbelievable pain, in unacceptable pain, in enough pain to want to die. She doesn’t dare ask why. Perhaps there is no reason for pain. Aside from pain, she learned to feel nothing else. Her eyes must erase, rather than reveal, what she feels.

  A cat crouches under a car, parked beside a stone wall. The Child sees it. From many past encounters, she knows that the cat will dart off if approached suddenly. She meows like a cat. The black-and-white cat glares at her in silence. She takes out her lunch from her bag. It glares at her without moving. She removes each lid and overturns the containers onto the road, lining up the hardened contents. White. Red. Black. It glares at her with frigid eyes. She replaces the lids on each container, stacks them up inside her bag, and backs away. Until she escapes the cat’s eyes. The food freezes on the road. The Child must return home. Before she freezes. The time has come. But she forgot that she had to have used the spoon and chopsticks. The cat flashes its fangs. The spoon and chopsticks are polished clean, glinting inside the lunch pouch. Although the Child is used to being searched, interrogated, and tortured, being used to these things doesn’t lessen the pain. She is simply used to the pain. She must confess or admit that she threw out her lunch, or she must lie and say she ate her lunch with her hands. Regardless of the words she’ll utter, she must once more swallow the fact that she is in pain. The spoon and chopsticks will be used in a way that is outside their intended purpose. The Child will hurt, and because that time is approaching, she is in pain, already.

  6

  Right now Mia, with an expression that indicates she has no idea what is happening, is knelling, no, kneeling in the living room before her mother. Mia’s mother is glaring at Mia and Mia is about to cry, no, tears are already welling up under her lids. Why did you make up stories about someone else? Mia has no idea what her mother is talking about, but she doesn’t dare talk back, because it’s very rare that her mother gets this angry. Mia’s lips twitch as she tries to speak, and even though Mia tries hard not to cry, it’s too late. Drops of fat, swollen tears plop. She’s crying. It was always better to laugh than to cry, and every time she laughed, she gained something. But what about when she cried? Mia didn’t have much to cry about
. She doesn’t know the right way to cry. There is no artifice in her tears. She doesn’t know how to calculate sadness. At the very least, she doesn’t cry intentionally. Her shoulders and knees shake as she tries to hold back her tears. Did you see him kill the chicks? Did you see it with your own eyes? Mia gazes up at her mother’s face, wearing an expression that says she’s been falsely accused, as though she’s become a half mute. But unable to bear her mother’s blank expression, she soon lets her head droop lifelessly.

  Only moments before, Mia’s mother had received a phone call from Park Yeongwu’s mother, and moments before that, Park Yeongwu’s mother had received a phone call from Kim Inju’s mother. In this way, women with similar backgrounds, who had in common the fact that they had children in the same class, made or received phone calls, and while a certain story was relayed from one phone call to the next, from one voice to the next, Park Yeongwu was now rumored to have killed dozens of chicks, exhibiting a brutal violence rarely seen in children. He was said to have killed one by putting it in the microwave, another by burning it under a magnifying glass in the midday sun, another by putting it in a rice cooker, another by kicking it while wearing soccer shoes, another … and another … These stories of Park Yeongwu killing more chicks than the number of chicks that exist in the world began to spread rapidly among women in their late thirties to early forties, women who had just begun to recognize one another at PTA meetings, women who considered themselves to be middle-class and who assessed each other by glancing at one another’s clothing. The very first one to relay the story of Park Yeongwu and the chicks to a mother with somewhat childish exaggeration was Kim Inju. But the story began to grow, and when questions about the origin of the story swelled to uncontrollable proportions and came back, and whenever phone calls came for Park Yeongwu’s mother, who had unshakable faith in the son she had birthed, and whenever she herself made phone calls, spewing curses without consideration for who was on the other end of the line, Kim Inju, scared as a child could be, ended up saying that she had heard the story from Mia and that Park Yeongwu had said no such thing. Sickened by the sight of Mia sobbing wordlessly, Mia’s mother goes to her daughter’s room and begins knocking over objects at random. But as everyone knows, Mia doesn’t have anything she must hide. Whether it be an object or memories that are entangled with the object, whether it be the past or the future, whether it’s there or not, it is Mia’s mother, rather than Mia, who has things to hide. No, there is one object that Mia has hidden; it is one of the two journals, which Mia’s mother manages to find just then—that flat object stuck upside down in the corner of the desk. Mia is naive. She hasn’t read stories like “The Purloined Letter,” and she hasn’t yet learned how secrets are found or not found. There is no one to teach her such things. Mia is lucky. Is she lucky? Mia doesn’t yet know how to hide secrets, and so Mia may not have any secrets, and therefore Mia is lucky. Mia’s mother finds the second journal and begins to riffle through the pages. Dad … sweater … chick … Inju’s house … Dad … Mom … Parents who have birthed a child are able to kill it, and things like this happen because they think the child is their property; things like this happen whenever a child’s overgrown secrets are found—secrets parents are unable to accept, unable to accept that a child they had borne holds secrets, that the child has overstepped its bounds.

  Dad bought the sweater for me. I like it so much that I wore it to bed last night. Mia’s mother flips through the journal. Dad bought the sweater for me. I like it so much … She suppresses the anger that’s surging up and reads through each page. Not knowing whether the flush in her face is caused by a rush of rage or a certain shame, she lets her right hand, which had shot up as though she were going to strike someone, drop listlessly. I want a puppy. (I’m going to ask Dad to buy it for me.) Mom doesn’t like animals. (I went to the aquarium with Mom and Dad. I saw a strange-looking fish. It was called a moray eel.) I had ice cream with Inju. I felt cold. (Dad gave me a stamp with my name engraved on it.) I went to the bank by myself and opened up an account. It was because Mom told me to save up my allowance. (Mom didn’t come home. I was bored and scared.) I fried an egg today. I spilled the oil on the floor, so I had to clean it up with a rag. It was hard work. (Mom said I can’t get my ears pierced.) Mom tied my hair too tightly, so my head hurt. (Dad called in the evening.) Mom said no. (Dad said yes.) I got in trouble with Mom. (Dad made me feel better.) There’s a kid in my class who has a fountain pen. (Dad said only grown-ups can use fountain pens.) I told Mom that I wanted to cut my hair like a middle school student. (Dad said he would buy me a fountain pen when I grow up.) Mom said no. (I had a nightmare.) Mia’s mother holds the journal upside down and gives it a shake. The sentences that had been harboring secrets, secrets that have not had a chance to bud, begin to fall on the desk, the floor, and the top of Mia’s head. The chicks are dying. Dad bought me color pencils. Dad and I ate hamburgers together. Dad said he would wire money into my bank account. Dad drew me a picture. Dad said he would buy me a puppy, too.

  Mia’s mother would rather be denied, but she was already in denial, and Mia had two fathers, and so Mia could perhaps feel twice the denial that other children feel. For an instant, Mia’s mother wishes that Mia wasn’t the daughter she had borne, that her real daughter had been stillborn or kidnapped, that the child who was crying behind her had been switched without anyone’s knowledge. But because Mia’s forehead, Mia’s lips, Mia’s eyes, Mia’s knuckles, and Mia’s expression are all there and nothing is absent, their kinship cannot be denied. Not even for an instant. The child she could not desert, discard, disown, or disclaim is standing behind her. White psoriasis has bloomed around Mia’s mouth. Mia didn’t hear anything and she didn’t say anything. But Mia’s mother knows from experience that there are many people who have a lot to say, even though they don’t hear or say anything. Without a conflict, there is no story. At the very least, there are people who think so, many people. Mia’s mother thinks she is experiencing an unusual amount of conflict; these conflicts have gradually started to be revealed to the outside world, and once they penetrate everyone’s ears, her face—her many faces—will sink and fall. It’s chilling. Mia’s mother puts down her daughter’s journal and turns to look at the sniffling girl. Mia will probably stop crying soon, but Mia’s mother senses that everything began to go wrong a long time ago, and that everything will continue to go wrong. Dolls, books, pencils, and color pencils are scattered all over the floor. Mia is growing and Mia’s mother stopped growing a long time ago. Mia’s crying subsides. Without a word, Mia’s mother bends, kneels on the floor, and begins to pick up Mia’s things, one by one. Mia goes to her mother and says in a whisper, Mommy, I didn’t do it. Mommy.

  7

  Surprisingly, the key inside the Child’s pocket might remain undetected. If she is interrogated as to why she is in possession of an unfamiliar key, she has rehearsed several answers: her homeroom teacher sent her to make an extra copy of the classroom key; the class monitor must keep the extra key; she found the key on the street. But the Child must first provide an excuse for something else. An excuse for why her spoon and chopsticks haven’t been used when the lunch containers are completely empty; licked clean. And she does. She manages to invent an excuse on the spot. An excuse that is quite plausible. When she relays her few words, as clearly as she can, she is let off more easily than she expected. Nothing happens today. Not yet. When evening comes, she will be left alone at home. Then she will be able to breathe easy. But until then she must hide. She goes into her room, with her head bowed. But she must not bow her head too much, or raise her head too much. She must not tread too heavily, or too lightly. She must not draw too much attention; she must draw a moderate amount of attention. From the opposite room, she hears the ticking of the wall clock.

  A wall clock also hangs in the Child’s room. Next to her bed is an alarm clock. She can distinguish the busy ticking of the second hand of all the different clocks. Time is passing. She hopes that time
will pass quickly, that time will burn out at the fastest possible speed. She is twelve years old; she stopped growing before she turned twelve. She has never gone hungry. But the grains of rice that she has forced down have not become blood and bone, no one knows where they went. The Child will grow no more. Probably. Her face has already fallen. To the bottom, to the pit. Her face sinks and falls, over and over again. The top corners of most of her books and notebooks are torn. She habitually eats paper. Without being aware of it, she tears the paper into little pieces and puts them in her mouth. Paper tastes like paper. She can’t sense the taste of paper. Even though paper simply tastes like paper and only paper, she doesn’t know how much of the tasteless paper scraps she has swallowed. All that is certain is that she has grown up on paper, and that she has already finished growing. The torn corners that are perilously missing give evidence to that end. That is probably why she sometimes looks like a paper doll. Like a paper doll, though she is half-plant or half-animal, with the face of an herbivore. But she isn’t seen. No one sees her. The children don’t know her name or they don’t care to know it. She is crumpled up like a piece of paper. Her fingernails and toenails grow very slowly, but even before these slow-growing nails have a chance to grow out, they are cut short, so short the flesh underneath becomes exposed. She sometimes wishes that mice or ants would eat her nail clippings, just like in the old stories, and transform into her image, and then appear before her. The Child hopes that many children, many who look like her, will become her and take her place. She hopes that these children who appear in the old stories, in fairy tales, will wear her clothes for her. Then she would be able to hide herself. She would not have to grow darker. She would be able to disappear forever. She never cries. If she cries, crying becomes the reason she can’t disappear, and if she doesn’t cry, not crying becomes the reason she can’t disappear. The reason why one scar buds on top of another. The Child, who had grown up floundering between these two states, ultimately forgets how to cry. She waits for the mice, for the ants. After setting aside everything that is beautiful, she waits for the mice and ants. Things that are beautiful are useless. You can’t forget anything with them. You can’t heal anything. The Child has never seen anything beautiful. She has never understood what people call “beautiful.” While her nails are being painfully clipped, she opens her eyes wide and wordlessly accepts this punishment. The mice and ants flee and disappear before they can even come to her, as though the Child’s hands are a trap. Her fingertips hurt so much that she can’t write. In any case, she records nothing about herself. No trace must be left. She must disappear instantly, as though she has never existed, not even for an instant. She, too, writes in her journal. But she records nothing. Nothing about herself. Every time the journal is returned to her, she learns how to camouflage more and more words with other words. Cheek with leaf, bruise with wind, blister with light breeze, fingernail with butterfly, curse with song, calf muscle with stick, tongue with ice cream, palm with moon, hair with stars, sigh with whistling, grip with tree branch, shoe heel with footprint, glass shard with sky, spine with dog, thigh with cat, stick with streetlight, crying with bird, pain with bright colors. When I opened the window, a light breeze blew in. I wanted ice cream, so I went to the store. There was dew on the green leaves. I saw the yellow cat’s family. It was strange that their eyes were green.