by Samuel Park
Soo-Ja sat on one of the lawn chairs, holding a thick paper plate filled with spicy radishes, sulfurous eggs, and rice wrapped in seaweed. She made a point of sitting apart from the others, and away from Min.
But not soon after, a woman not much older than her, perhaps in her early forties, plunked down next to her. She had a perm, and big, heavy locks of curly hair. She must have been a distant relative, for she seemed to know Soo-Ja, though Soo-Ja herself didn’t recognize her.
“It’s very nice of your father-in-law to bring you to America,” the woman said, settling into her own lawn chair, and balancing the overflowing plate of food on her lap.
“Yes, he brought me here all right,” said Soo-Ja, savoring the irony.
“But then again, he’s always taken care of you, I hear. He gave you a business to run in Seoul, didn’t he?”
“Is that what he tells people?” asked Soo-Ja.
“And I heard he gave you a house, too.” The woman smiled broadly, revealing some gold in her back molars. Soo-Ja wondered if she did this on purpose, an older woman’s version of a young woman flashing a diamond engagement ring.
“Oh, yes,” Soo-Ja said, bewildered at her father-in-law’s distortions. “He’s so kind.”
“So how do you like America?” the woman asked, playfully waving her hands in the air, as if she were a magician and had just produced this country, for Soo-Ja’s benefit, for her to look at.
“It’s very large,” said Soo-Ja.
“I heard you just arrived from Korea. You’re very lucky.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. That country’s so hopeless. After the war, we should’ve all just emigrated and let it stay in ruins.” Soo-Ja looked at her closely, this middle-aged Korean face wearing Western clothes, a French logo emblazoned on her chest pocket: Pierre Cardin. “There is nothing good there, only pollution and people with bad manners. The local American paper here had a letter to the editor about how nasty Koreans are—they never smile, don’t apologize when they bump into you, cheat you in business. I think that’s all true.”
Soo-Ja took this in and thought of simply letting go at first, but she couldn’t. She stared straight into the woman’s eyes and spoke, and though she did not know where the words came from, she felt them vibrate through the deepest parts of her body. “Did you know Korea was the first country in Asia to have a standing army? And even through decades of being colonized by foreigners, it still managed to create world-class art, literature, and the finest tradition of brush ink paintings you’ve ever seen? When I visit the magnificent, centuries-old temples of Naksansa or Shinhungsa, or drive past the Namdaemun Gate, or think of the astonishing Tripitaka Koreana and the thousand Buddhas of Jikjisa Temple, I am always proud that in my blood runs a tradition of great scholars and artists.” The woman shifted, uncomfortable, but Soo-Ja held her gaze and did not stop. “Or when I hear a woman, dressed in a colorful hanbok, sing and dance the pansori, and do so beautifully, I find myself swooning with joy. This is what I like about being Korean: when we were attacked by all those different countries, and our names, language, and occupations taken away, we may have looked as though we were bound to our enemies, but deep down we never forgot our worth, we never let them into our heads. And that’s why we’ll be able to triumph in the end, and be proud to call ourselves Korean, and even a woman like you will be proud one day to call herself Korean.”
Soo-Ja wandered through the bright and airy house on her own, as the sound of the party outside filtered through the sliding glass doors and windows. She noticed the high, sloped ceiling, and how the sunlight bounced against the walls, creating a bubble of warmth. She had not expected her in-laws to have such a large living room, full of so much furniture.
In the living room, Soo-Ja sat on the soft L-shaped pink couch and let it sink comfortably under her, like a pillow molding to her body. She glanced around the room, noticing the color TV with long rabbit ears and a large dial, the record player with numerous knobs, and a series of commemorative silver and gold coins. By glancing at the objects gathered around the room, Soo-Ja could see hobbies taken up and abandoned: golf balls, a badminton racket, some fishing line. On the bookcase shelves, Soo-Ja could make out some of the English writing: a thick world almanac, a stack of Life magazines, and Korean-English dictionaries.
Soo-Ja had been by herself for only a few minutes before she noticed someone else in the room. It was Min, standing against the wooden railing by the stairway.
“I’m glad you didn’t start a fight, with all those people outside,” said Min.
“Are you giving me an opportunity now? I’m more of a ticking bomb than you realize.”
“I’m still not going to apologize,” said Min, coming into the room, and sitting across from Soo-Ja. “I’m doing what I think is right for Hana.”
“When did you ever do what’s right for her?”
Min leaned forward on the sofa, his hands locked together.
“You think you’re the only one who suffers for this family?”
“Name one thing you did for me or Hana,” said Soo-Ja.
“I stayed with you when my parents moved here!” Min suddenly shouted.
“And you always remind me how you regret that.”
“You think it’s so simple. You think I’m a bad person. Do you think it’s easy, to live with a woman who thinks I’m nothing?” Min’s voice rose and fell, as if afraid others could hear them. But they couldn’t. They were alone in this impossibly bright room.
“Then make something of yourself. I dream of the day you’ll do something courageous, when you’ll prove yourself,” said Soo-Ja.
“What do I have to do to prove myself?”
“I don’t know,” said Soo-Ja, pressing against the pink couch with her hands, as if to measure the thickness of the foam.
“You’ve made sacrifices for me, I know,” said Min. “You could’ve married someone else. But you stuck with me. Don’t think I don’t appreciate that. One day I’ll be able to make a sacrifice for you, and you’ll love me.”
Min looked away, toward the party outside. He watched his parents and his brothers and his sister smile and laugh at one another. Soo-Ja, following his gaze, looked out at the sea of bodies in the backyard, at Min’s big family. She noticed their laughter, their cheerful talk. She could see Min wondering what the joke was—the source of their happiness. She knew he would give anything to unlock it. If he lived here, he wouldn’t be alone even if he tried. She realized then how lonely he must have been in Seoul, with just Hana and her.
“You don’t need to sacrifice anything for me,” said Soo-Ja.
“I’d like for you to respect me.”
“I would have respected you if you had let me divorce you, all those years ago, and still keep Hana.”
“Is that what you want? For me to let you go?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Is that so you can go off with Yul?”
“I can’t, even if I wanted to. Yul said he was tired of waiting for me. There’s nothing left for me back in Korea,” said Soo-Ja, fighting back the sadness growing inside her. “And anyway, it’s not about me leaving you and going off with another man. It’s about you becoming the kind of person who’s willing to do what’s right for me and Hana.”
Soo-Ja noticed the sliding glass door open, and one of the guests made her way in. They would have to end this conversation for now. Min rose and turned his back to Soo-Ja, heading back outside.
“Yeobo …” Soo-Ja called out.
“What?”
Losing her father had been bad enough. Soo-Ja couldn’t bear to add Hana to her list of losses. Hana was all she had left—if she had to stay in this foreign land and serve as her father-in-law’s handmaiden in order to keep her daughter around her, so be it.
“If you and Hana really want to stay here, I—” Soo-Ja hesitated, her voice trembling a little, struggling to get the words out. It killed her to have to say it. “I’ll take your father’
s offer. I’ll work for him.”
chapter nineteen
The party ended late, long past sundown, after the small caravan of Fiats and Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles noisily left the driveway, one after the other, like a procession. Soo-Ja retreated to the downstairs area next to the garage, a kind of fancy chauffeur’s suite, with its own bathroom, separate from the rest of the house. Hana and Min had been staying there, Min sleeping on the floor, and Hana by herself in the large queen-sized bed. Now that Soo-Ja was there, she and Hana would sleep on the bed, and Min on the floor. There was also a small TV in the corner, on top of an old chest made of paulownia wood. Soo-Ja stared at its dark grain, made all the more noticeable by the lighter shades surrounding it.
“Grandpa wants to see you.” Soo-Ja heard Hana’s voice behind her. Soo-Ja rose, only to be struck by the incredible silence in the house. She realized that this was where she’d live, not the bustling house of a few hours ago, filled with sunlight and life; but this—this eerie home where unhappiness seemed to linger like dust on top of the furniture.
Soo-Ja walked up the stairs and found herself in the dining room, which had been turned into a kind of multipurpose area, with a second refrigerator, an old leather couch, a color TV, and a round white Formica table pushed against the wall. Father-in-law sat at his chair, waiting for her, holding a backscratcher that he tapped on his knees lightly, repeatedly, as if counting time. Mother-in-law sat on the floor, a few feet away, her back against the couch; she had a quilted blanket on her lap, and she was stitching the silk cover. Min and Hana sat on the couch, supposedly watching the TV, but the sound was turned too low for them to actually hear. As Soo-Ja sat down across from Father-in-law, she knew the others were just pretending to be busy, and they were there for this conversation as much as she was, like human props placed there for an important scene.
“I want to make something clear to you. You’re not here on vacation. You’re here to work,” said Father-in-law. “Work starts tomorrow. Early. Six o’clock. It’ll be a long day, twelve hours. You can have a little break for lunch, twenty minutes, but if a customer comes in while you’re eating, you leave your food aside and go wait on her. The work is not easy. We sell in bulk, which means carrying ten, twenty pounds’ worth of clothing at a time. All day. But I don’t want to hear complaints. You understand?”
“Yes, Father,” said Soo-Ja. She saw from the corner of her eye that Min and Hana’s heads were bent down. She was speaking for all of them.
“If you don’t like it, tough luck. Try showing up at an American store and asking for a job. You don’t speak English and you smell of kimchee. You have nothing to offer, remember that. You’re lucky that I even let you work for me. There are a lot of hungry people out there. At least here your stomach will always be full.”
“Yes, Father. Thank you, Father,” said Soo-Ja.
“We didn’t become successful and rich by being idle. We made sacrifices. We worked very hard.”
“I know, abeonim,” said Soo-Ja, thinking of the money he had taken from her father.
“Remember, too,” and this is when he changed his tone, to become the benevolent patriarch, “I’m not going to live forever. When I die, this house will be yours, and my business, too. So you see, even though I’m not paying you, you’re not working for me, you’re working for yourself.”
“Thank you, Father.” Soo-Ja knew already that when he died, Father-in-law would leave everything to his daughter, Na-yeong, and nothing to Min and her. She knew Father-in-law so well by now, she could tell when he lied—it was the only time he ever smiled.
“You’ve said a lot of harsh words to me in the past, but I forgive you. I forgive you because I live in a beautiful house and I have a lot of money, and that is so because I am a good person. You, on the other hand, you still have much to learn, but I can teach you how to be a humble, obedient daughter-in-law.”
Soo-Ja turned to Min then, as she was about to respond. She expected to see triumph in his eyes, but she found only sorrow. And that’s what made her voice quiver, when she finally said, one more time, “Yes, Father.”
Father-in-law then dismissed her with a nod of his head.
When Hana went into the bathroom of the suite to take a shower, Soo-Ja and Min found themselves alone again. They looked at each other with apprehension in their eyes, sensing this might be the prologue to another stage of their lives. It would be easy to follow this road, and live in America, and work for Min’s parents, and go on with things as they always had. Still, something in the air did not feel right, and it emanated from Min. Soo-Ja thought of the look of grief on his face during her conversation with his father. She saw how it hurt him, to see her abased like that.
“Why did you do that?” Min finally asked, sitting on the bed.
The only sound, other than his voice, came from the shower in the next room.
“Do what?” Soo-Ja asked, busying herself with pulling blankets and pillows out of the closet.
“Lower yourself like that.”
“I had no choice, Min.”
“What happened to you? You used to fight them. You used to stand up to them.”
“Maybe I’m tired.”
“I made a mistake, didn’t I? Bringing you two here?”
“What’s the use of knowing that, if you’re not going to do anything about it?” asked Soo-Ja. “Let’s go to bed.”
Soo-Ja glanced at her bags. She did not have the energy to unpack them, and decided to sleep in some old clothes she found in the closet. She did not know who else had slept in this guest room before, but whoever they were, over time they had left marks of themselves behind: a book of maps, a broken eight-track player, worn-out shirts and pants. The room belonged to no one, quietly absorbing what others had cast away.
“Soo-Ja?”
“What?”
She heard him swallow a few times before he finally spoke. “If I had found someone else—if I had talked some other girl into marrying me, you would have had a very different life, wouldn’t you?”
Min had broached the topic again, and this time she could not hide her feelings. Soo-Ja dropped the blankets for a moment and sat on the bed next to him. She felt the emotion rise in her throat, and soon her eyes welled up with tears. He had never hinted at knowing of her sorrows. This was only the tiniest of acknowledgments, and yet it burned deep like a welt.
“Don’t be foolish,” said Soo-Ja.
How could he possibly atone for the last thirteen years? How could she make him understand that her life so far had not been her inescapable destiny, but rather a choice she’d made? How could she tell him that all her frustration and disappointment in this marriage had not been set in stone, and did not have to happen? That she could so easily have been spared all of that, if only she had chosen Yul over him? It felt almost unbearable, to begin to explain to him the different life she could have had if she hadn’t married him. She could never convey the magnitude of that loss—the loss of the woman she’d never been allowed to be. It was better not to ask for any apology at all.
You will never understand what I have given up.
“If I feel bad about it now, imagine how I’ll feel forty years from now,” Min said ruefully, as if joking.
“This is no time to talk about this. Let’s go to bed. Your father said we’ll need to get up early.”
“All I’m saying is—I cannot change the past, but maybe I can do something about the future.”
“What are you going to do? Are you going to talk to your father?”
The Min she looked at now reminded her of the Min who’d once told her not to ask for her father’s money, the Min who had protected her from his own father’s schemes. He lay there, waiting, underneath those layers of self-preservation, and on rare occasions she’d caught a glimpse of the man he could have been, if he could have chosen his parents.
The sound of the running shower stopped. Min had gone upstairs for a glass of water, and Soo-Ja sat in the room by herself. She co
uld hear only the occasional noise coming from the bathroom: a comb being placed on the sink, a faucet being turned on and off.
Soo-Ja wondered if her daughter knew she was waiting, and wanted to avoid her. Finally, a few minutes later, Hana emerged, a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, and another wrapped over her adolescent body, tucked in at her breasts.
“Come here,” said Soo-Ja, as she stood and reached for the towel on her daughter’s head. She began drying Hana’s hair, pressing her hands gently against Hana’s scalp. “How is the shower here?”
“It’s nice to have your own, and not have to go to a bathhouse,” said Hana.
“You used to like going to the bathhouse. You used to like soaking in the warm tubs, droplets of warmth on your forehead.”
“Tastes change.”
“You like it here, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to miss your friends?”
“I can make new ones,” said Hana.
“But they may not love you like your old friends did.”
Hana reached for the towel from her mother’s hands. She sat on the bed and began drying her own hair, pressing it deeply against her scalp in fast, jerky strokes, instead of her mother’s slow, gentle movements.
Soo-Ja sat down next to her.
“I don’t like it when you’re like that,” said Hana.
“Like how?”
“You’re staring at me.”
Hana stopped drying her hair, resting the towel on her lap. Her hair hung wet and wild above her face. The sliding closet door in front of them was mirrored, and they could see their reflections looking back at them.
“Do you know that I love you?” Soo-Ja asked.
“Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“I don’t mind not being rich, like our relatives here. Not living the good life they live. As long as I have you. Without you, what do I live for?”
“I’m not going back to Korea.”
