by Samuel Park
“Thank you for the invitation, but we really should—” said Soo-Ja, turning to Min.
“A woman who steals other men’s husbands!” burst out Eun-Mee, staring straight at Soo-Ja.
Soo-Ja felt her face turn hot. She understood, with no uncertainty, why Eun-Mee had brought her there—to unmask her, in the most public and embarrassing way possible.
“You’ve ruined everything in my life!” yelled Eun-Mee. Then, out of nowhere, as if to punctuate her words, Eun-Mee slapped Soo-Ja with the palm of her hand. The gesture made a sickening noise, and hit Soo-Ja so hard that it caused her to stumble and fall to the couch.
“Soo-Ja!” Yul shouted, jumping to her aid.
Her anger still unsatisfied, Eun-Mee reached toward Soo-Ja again, but Yul grabbed hold of her, restraining her with his arms. It took all his might to pull her away, as her body swung wildly in Soo-Ja’s direction, her elbows and feet kicking into the air.
Soo-Ja put a hand on her throbbing cheek, her mouth agape in shock. She felt her eyes well with tears, blinking madly. The moment felt blurry and out of focus. When she wiped the tears from her eyes she saw Yul dragging a screaming Eun-Mee into the bedroom. Soo-Ja thought about the house, the afternoon at the park, the warmth of Yul’s hand.
Soo-Ja’s cheek felt as if it had just been burnt with coal. It would probably bruise later, Eun-Mee’s palm leaving her mark. Soo-Ja shook slightly, her breathing deep and fitful. The same urge kept thrashing at her over and over, Get up, Soo-Ja. Get up.
Through all of this, Min said nothing, not moving from his chair. As Yul and Eun-Mee fought in the bedroom, their harsh words pounding the air, Min looked confused and out of place. The last few minutes, with all their commotion, felt unreal, the kind of thing you hear about secondhand, told in the form of gossip. It was strange to live it, to be a part of it, to be tossed and turned like Jonah inside the whale. Min would have to lie in bed for the rest of the day. He would feed off the events like a sick patient on a special diet, as if the wrong had been done to him.
After a few seconds, without helping Soo-Ja get up, Min rose from his chair. He headed to the kitchen, where he opened a cupboard and began taking out its contents. He found a tote bag lying on the floor and started filling it with packets of barley tea, jars of dried seaweed, and packages of anchovies. He added some peppermint candy, cakelike chocolate, and squid-flavored chips.
Soo-Ja got up on her own and joined him in the kitchen. “What are you doing?” she asked, using the wall for support.
He did not reply, just kept filling up the bag.
“They’ll know it was us,” Soo-Ja said. “And if you want things, we can buy them ourselves, or we can ask Yul if we can have some of this. But we can’t just take it. We can’t just take it without their permission.”
Min stopped for a moment and glanced at her, registering the stricken look on her face. He then resumed his looting, reaching for more and more food. On the way back home, he made her carry the bag.
For hours, Min lay on the floor without speaking, staring at the ceiling and eating his food. He opened each bag one by one, emptying it, then moving on to the next bag. Soo-Ja sat a few feet away from him. All day, neither acknowledged what had happened.
“Stop eating so much. You’re going to get a stomachache,” said Soo-Ja.
Min said nothing, just kept opening more and more packages, his stomach a pit, his hunger unable to be satiated. Soo-Ja grabbed a bag of anchovies away from him.
“Stop. Go to sleep,” said Soo-Ja, reaching up and turning the light off.
Neither of them moved.
“I’ve always been afraid of you leaving,” he said in the dark, as if he’d been waiting for some way not to see her. “Every day of my life I have this fear. I wake up in the morning and ask, Is it today? Is it today that she’ll be gone?”
“As long as Hana is here, I’ll be here, too,” said Soo-Ja. They were still in the same position as before she turned out the lights—Min lying on the floor, she still sitting.
“The only time I’ll be able to rest is when you get old, and no one gives you a second look. Then nobody will want you, and I won’t have to worry,” he said.
“That day will come soon,” said Soo-Ja sharply.
“From now on, when you walk on the street, keep your head down. I don’t want men to see your face,” said Min. “And no more skirts. And take off that jewelry you wear. You’re not a girl anymore. You’re not single.”
“You know who you sound like?” asked Soo-Ja, without hiding the chill in her voice.
“They were right about you. I never regret listening to my parents. They’re me. I talk to them and I hear myself. I should never have let you separate me from them.”
Min blew his nose, and Soo-Ja wondered if he was crying. In the dark, she couldn’t tell.
“You think it’s hard being you, or being Yul?” he continued. “Imagine being me, or Eun-Mee. If you had to choose, would you rather be yourself or be Eun-Mee?”
Soo-Ja wondered at that moment what it was like to be Min. When friends greeted them, they always greeted her first. When guests at the hotel passed by him, they did not nod or say hello. When they went to church, no one sat next to him. His invisibility wasn’t her fault, but surely it had grown worse after years hiding behind her strength. She wondered if Min would have been happier with a quiet, shy woman who would let him shine. A plump, stout wife who’d be thankful to have him, constantly cooking him his favorite dishes. He might have been happy, once, to have her as his captive, but over time he must have realized he was as bound as she was. The thing about capturing a prize fish is that everyone admires the fish, and soon forgets about the fisherman. You love the thing that makes you special, then hate it because it’s the thing that makes you special.
The next day, Min refused to take the train to Daegu for the Seollal holiday. He also refused to let Soo-Ja and Hana go without him. Seollal was Hana’s favorite holiday, when the entire extended family gathered to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Hana loved the sight of all the tables filled with food, as they feasted on mung-bean pancakes, steamed rice cakes, freshly cut apples and pears, sweet rice flavored with dates and honey, cinnamon punch, and rice nectar. She especially loved the ceremonial bow made to the elders, as the children wished them good luck in the New Year, and were rewarded with money in white envelopes. Hana was heartbroken when her father told her they wouldn’t be going south that year. She took this hard; with every passing year, she’d worry that it would be the last chance she got to see her grandfather. Soo-Ja told Min as much, but Min did not express much sympathy, as he was deprived of his own father as well.
chapter sixteen
“I’m surprised to find you at home. Everyone’s left town for Seollal,” said Gi-yong on the phone. They had not seen each other in weeks, but Soo-Ja could easily picture his smarmy smile, his blue vicuña overcoat, and his cramped office with secondhand furniture. She was surprised to hear from him; she did not expect to sell the land for at least ten years.
“It’s a long story,” said Soo-Ja, sitting at the front desk.
“Well, I’m glad I caught you. I have news for you.”
“You do?” asked Soo-Ja, intrigued.
“My hopes of making you my mistress are over,” said Gi-yong. “You’re going to be a rich woman, Soo-Ja.”
“What do you mean?” asked Soo-Ja, her fingers nervously intertwining with the coils of the phone cord.
“The government wants to develop your land,” said Gi-yong, rolling each word around his tongue like a lollipop.
“It does?”
“Yes. It wants to buy your land and start erecting buildings there.”
“How much are they offering?”
“Five thousand won per pyeong.”
“What? That’s ten times what I paid for the land!”
“Yes, but you paid for an empty lot in the middle of nowhere. They’re paying for what’s now officially the site of a planned commercial zone.
It’s still a bargain to them. We’re hoping big business will follow their lead and turn the area into a commercial center. I’ve said this all along, Seoul is too congested. The city can’t handle the traffic and the crowds.”
“I can’t believe it. This is wonderful.” Soo-Ja started shaking her head in disbelief.
“If you sell the land, you’ll make five million won. How much did you put in? Five hundred thousand won?”
“You knew this would happen, didn’t you? When you sold me the land, you knew its value would shoot up.”
“Yes, I had a tip from a friend in city planning. They were debating between a lot in Gyeonggi-do Province and ours. The lot in Gyeonggi-do turned out to be tied up in a family inheritance. Our lot would be easier for them to buy. They’re eager to start construction soon.”
“If you knew the lot would increase in value and so soon, why did you still sell it to me? Why didn’t you buy it yourself?”
Gi-yong did not answer at once. “You think businessmen are so cold and calculating, and yes, we are, but when it comes to the heart, we’re sentimental folks. I thought that if I helped you get what you wanted… you would like me.”
“Oh, Mr. Im, I like you tremendously right now,” said Soo-Ja, sidestepping his confession. “This comes at such an opportune time. It has been such a terrible week… Thank you for what you did.”
“Don’t be too thankful. There was, of course, a small chance they’d go with the other lot, in which case ours would probably sit idle and worthless for another thirty years.”
“Thirty years? You said ten, or twenty at most.”
“Never trust a businessman, Soo-Ja. Never.”
Soo-Ja laughed. A guest came into the hotel. Soo-Ja gave him a quick nod, but kept her attention, rapt, on the phone. “I have to go. But one last question: Any chance we can negotiate with the buyers?”
“It’s a tricky line there. The thing is, the government could, if they want, just seize the land. So what they’re doing is a gesture of goodwill, too. It is only an offer, but it’s assumed we’ll all accept it.”
“So everyone who bought lots is selling, too?”
“The ones I spoke to so far, yes.”
“Add my name to the list. And oh, one more thing…”
“What is it?”
“I love you, Mr. Gi-yong Im,” she said, in English.
Gi-yong laughed. Soo-Ja knew he could hear the smile in her voice.
“We’re rich! We’re rich!” Hana began to dance around the room, pretending to hit a wall, then falling on the ground, then getting up again, then hitting the opposite wall. Min, eating his dinner, stewed in his silence, sitting in his usual corner in front of a nong armoire.
“Sit down, Hana, and eat your dinner. You’re going to get hurt,” said Soo-Ja, waving her chopsticks at her daughter.
“How much did he say again?” asked Min.
“Five million won,” said Soo-Ja. She was pretending to be nonchalant, but her heart was doing the same thing Hana was doing, just on the inside.
“Don’t tell your brother it’s that much. He may want a cut of the profits,” said Min. Soo-Ja bit her tongue, nodding. One day she’d have to tell him the truth about the source of the original loan. “But you always had a lot of luck. This kind of thing only happens to you.”
“I’m lucky? Is that why I’ve been working as a hotel clerk for the past six years? And before that, I was basically a maid to your parents,” she said.
Min smiled. “My parents think we’re barely scraping by. Imagine their surprise when they hear this.”
“They like to think we’re barely scraping by. They like the idea that they’re better off than we are.”
Hana, as if feeling neglected, stopped running around the room and landed on her father’s lap, where she barely fit. Right now she was the giddiest twelve-year-old Soo-Ja had ever met.
“What are we going to do with the money?” asked Hana.
“What do you think we should do?” Min asked her, his head buried in her silky black hair.
“I think we should go to America,” she said.
Soo-Ja immediately looked up from her rice bowl. But why was she so surprised, when it seemed like everyone she knew fantasized about immigrating to America? Why should her daughter be any different?
“Who put that idea in your head?” Soo-Ja asked gravely, figuring it was Min.
“Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman,” Hana replied.
“Your America exists only in movies,” said Soo-Ja.
Hana quickly got up and reached into the nong for a cylindrical can of Pringles chips, left behind by some American guests. She’d been saving it. She opened the lid, and pulled out a chip shaped like a wave, admiring it.
“This is America,” she said, before biting into it. “I eat America.”
“Ah, and of course, she can’t travel alone, so you’d have to go with her,” Soo-Ja said, turning to Min, letting him know she was onto him.
“I don’t want to visit America, I want to live in America!” Hana almost yelled.
“Go. Go live with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Hana, the life you want is a dream, a movie-star life. If we moved to America, we’d start at the bottom. I’d probably still be a hotel clerk, just in a place where nobody can understand what I’m saying. Nicer background, same life.”
“But we have money!” Hana protested.
“Hana, I already told you before. We’re not keeping all the money. We have to pay back your grandfather in Daegu.” Soo-Ja smiled at herself, proud of being able to pay her father back for the money he had loaned to Min’s father so many years ago.
“I thought you said the money was for me! You told me, the reason you invested was so you could invest in my future!” Soo-Ja heard an unexpected desperation in her daughter’s voice.
“Yes. It is, of course it is. If we had sold the land twenty years from now, especially, all of it would be yours. But my father is still alive, and I want to pay him back.”
“It’s not fair! It’s my money.” Hana got up and ran out of the room, leaving the paper door open on her way out. Soo-Ja wondered if she spoiled her by letting her do whatever she wanted. How would she ever learn to appreciate their love?
Soo-Ja patiently rose and closed the door. She didn’t want guests to look in and see into their room.
“My parents still offer to pay back what they borrowed from your father,” said Min evenly, without looking up from his bowl of doenjang soup.
“What kind of insulting offer are they making this time? The exact same amount he borrowed, not adjusted for inflation, only enough to pay for a TV? Your father borrowed enough to pay for three houses!”
“You can’t get back what you lost.”
“What do you mean?”
“The years you spent with them. The money can’t make up for that.”
“I was their slave.”
“I know, I know. But they’re my parents you’re talking about!”
“You want to go to America, too, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he said quietly, the pinched sound hinting at some larger sorrow.
“And if it were up to you, we’d fly there tomorrow, right?”
“But you won’t let us,” said Min, letting more of his anguish emerge. “You’re trying to keep us away from them.”
“I’m not,” she said. “And I don’t have my parents with me, either.”
“They’re four hours away by train.”
“My father’s too sick to travel. I hardly ever get to see him.”
“But you see him. I haven’t seen my parents in almost ten years.”
Min was as restless as a cast-off lover. He would often talk about his plans to join his parents—plans that Father-in-law neither supported nor discouraged. In the past, whenever Soo-Ja listed the reasons why they couldn’t go—Min’s parents had betrayed them, she did not wish to live with them, she couldn’t leave her own parents—Min only repeated, But they are my fath
er and my mother. She knew at those moments that he did not, could not think ill of them, regardless of what they’d done to him. He rationalized the past, did elaborate somersaults in his head, concocted versions of the story in which his parents finally emerged as victims, and Soo-Ja—Soo-Ja, whom he had to live with, the one who was left—turned out to be the villain.
• • •
But the idea somehow took hold. It came back in the morning, in the bitter coffee and the spicy udon noodles. It lashed at her ears, tugged at her ankles.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I can go live with Grandpa and Grandma on my own,” said Hana.
“Don’t say that,” said Soo-Ja.
“Why?”
“Because I need you to need me.”
“It’s America!” Hana yelled, like a mantra. Soo-Ja understood her daughter’s frustration. She probably couldn’t fathom why her mother was keeping her away from sun-drenched afternoons and wide-laned streets and air so clean you could drink big happy gulps of it. In America, no one would honk in traffic, or cut in line, or speak ill of you. In America, every day was a vacation, including the workday.
When it wasn’t Hana, it was Min. Did they conspire to take turns cornering her? Soo-Ja wondered.
“She’s not just being frivolous,” Min said to her over lunch, between bites of thinly sliced beef and spiced cubed radishes. “She’s worried about her future. She’s not doing very well at school.”
How awkward it was, to have to hear news of your daughter from your own husband! thought Soo-Ja. “She’ll do fine. She’ll spend the summer studying.”
“In America, you don’t have to be good at school. You just have to know how to smile brightly and shake hands firmly. Hana could learn how to do that.”
“Listen, if she wanted to go to America to go to school, I’d give it a second thought. But you know Hana. She wants to sit by a swimming pool in a nice hotel, and marry some Kennedy.”
“Fine. We just might go without you then,” said Min, with his mouth full, pushing his empty plate away from him, the leftover chili pepper staining it red.
