by Samuel Park
“It doesn’t matter to you, my opinion?”
“The responsibility of a mother is to give her child a good life,” said Hana a little stiffly, almost aware of how precocious she sounded.
“And you think you’ll have a good life here?”
Hana looked at her mother as if she were crazy. Of course she’d be happy in America! Here, even people without limbs had smiles on their faces.
“You already told Grandpa that we’d stay, so we’ll stay. And even if you said no, I’d still stay here, with Dad.”
“Why do you listen to your father, but not to me?”
“Because he always spends time with me. You’re always busy with other things.”
Soo-Ja made her hands into fists, her arms shaking. She struggled for breath, and fought back a wave of emotion rising in her chest.
“I have to work!” said Soo-Ja loudly, her voice piercing through the air. “I work so that you can play! I work for you. For you.”
“Mom, please stop. Somebody might come in,” said Hana.
“Am I—Am I embarrassing you right now?” asked Soo-Ja, desperate for the love of the girl in front of her.
Soo-Ja stared at her own reflection in the mirror. She had never lived for herself, and in that, she found her greatest mistake and her greatest glory. Her selflessness had not been entirely chosen, but rather forced out of her, by her family. She had not been allowed to pursue happiness; only to try to find some meaning in her sufferings, and look for a way, however small, to make sense of her disappointments. How could she explain this to her daughter? she wondered. Hana already seemed to belong to another world.
Soo-Ja stopped looking into the mirror and stared, instead, at the carpet below her feet. It was light brown, and it reached between her toes. Her voice suddenly became very quiet, like a whisper. “All right, then. It’s all decided.”
“I know what you’re thinking. But your life is your life, and my life is my life,” said Hana. “You made your mistakes, but they’re your own.”
“Yes, I know,” said Soo-Ja, forcing herself to smile. “You’re right. Forget what I said.”
“If you’re not happy about being here, you can go back and just visit us later,” said Hana. For Soo-Ja, each word felt like a lash against her bare skin.
“No, Hana. I’ll always be where you are. No matter how much you try to run away from me, I’ll always be where you are.”
Soo-Ja thought of her father’s letter. You keep running away from me, but I will always find you, he had written. She didn’t think she’d be repeating his words to her own daughter, and so soon. She was so struck by this, she did not notice that Min had been standing outside the door, in the hallway between the room and the garage, listening in, making no sounds of his own. He was like a prowler, already inside the house, just trying to figure out how to get out.
It took her a while to fall asleep. Soo-Ja was used to random noises at night—guests lumbering to the bathroom, couples tossing harsh words like tennis balls—and the silence felt otherworldly to her, the prelude to some shaman evoking mountain spirits.
When she was twenty-two, Soo-Ja dreamed of donning a diplomat’s suit jacket and flying through the atlas to dole out goodwill like peppermint candy from a bag. This was the diorama version of her life, the one you put in a magic snow globe and sell in souvenir shops. At the time, she was sad that she didn’t get to leave Korea. But now she wanted to tell her twenty-two-year-old self that she was lucky, that she got to spend a little more time with her father (if she’d left Daegu then, she would have missed the last ten years of his life), that she got to know her own country and came to cherish it like a loyal friend. There was not enough time later to say good-bye to your parents and your youth; the old familiar rooms fall away before you know it. She wanted so much to escape, and marry, and leave. She didn’t know back then that she had already found happiness, and that in going after it, she’d simply been walking farther and farther away from it.
Soo-Ja didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when she felt someone nudge her. She opened her eyes only a slit and saw it was not morning, but not night either—the light outside, shy and bleached out, announced only the promise of sun, not its presence. Min stood over her with an anguished look on his face, and when he saw she was awake, he began to nudge Hana, too. Min had an amped-up energy about him, and Soo-Ja realized he had not slept at all. Next to the bed, she saw that he had placed two bags—the one she’d arrived with, and the other, a smaller one, which she recognized as Hana’s.
“What time is it? What’s wrong?” Soo-Ja whispered.
“I called a taxicab. It’s going to be here in twenty minutes. It’ll take you and Hana to the airport.”
“What do you mean?” Soo-Ja asked, sitting up on the bed, struck by the urgency in Min’s voice. Min reached for her and gently wiped the sleep off her eyes.
“I want you to get out of here,” he said, pressing a note against her hand. “This is the account number, and the name of the bank. The money’s still there. It’s in a bank in Seoul.”
“Min, what’s happening?”
He looked at her as if he were taking a picture, as if this was how he wanted to remember her: in the dawn, with her hair falling softly over her face, her lips half opened, and her eyes, too, taking him in the way the sand takes the sun.
“What I did was wrong—bringing Hana here. I can see that now. And I hope that one day you’ll be able to forgive me,” said Min.
Soo-Ja swallowed and closed her eyes. The moment felt strange, unreal.
“Why are you up already?” Soo-Ja heard Hana’s sleepy voice, her body turning in the direction of their voices.
“You’re going back to Korea with your mother,” said Min.
“What? No, I don’t want to go back there,” said Hana, rubbing her eyes.
“You’re going to do what I tell you,” said Min, firmly but kindly. “For once you will listen to me. You’re free to disobey every other order I ever give you, but this one you have to listen to. You’re going home with your mother.”
“No. If she wants to go back, she can go back on her own. I’ll stay here with Grandpa and Grandma.”
“You think it’s so great to be here, don’t you? You don’t know what it’s like to live with them. I’m not going to let you go through what I did,” said Min. His voice shook a little, and Soo-Ja was struck by the intensity of his words. Soo-Ja thought he might continue, but he was overcome by emotion. “Being with them again reminds me of so many things. No one knows what I had to go through as a child—”
“I know what you went through,” said Soo-Ja quietly. She reached for him and held his head with her hands. Min had never spoken about his childhood, but over the years, Soo-Ja guessed the kind of torments he had suffered. “I know.”
Min finally regained his composure. “Go,” he said.
“Are you sure about this?” asked Soo-Ja.
“How much more can I take away from you, Soo-Ja? At what point do I stop?” Min’s voice cracked a bit, and he took a long breath. “I deceived you, Soo-Ja. I tricked you into marrying me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I deceived you. And I can never give back what you lost, but I can stop making you lose.”
Soo-Ja and Min sat in silence, and they could hear the birds chirping outside. It had become day while they were looking away.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’m going to stay here.”
“Why?” asked Soo-Ja, though she already knew the answer. “Why? What about Hana?”
“I want to be with my parents when they die. I want to take care of my father and my mother. It is my responsibility as the oldest. In spite of everything, I still want to be a good son.”
“You are,” she said. “I’ve always known that.” He’d never change, thought Soo-Ja. “But you’re making a big sacrifice.”
Min took the back of her hand and placed it against his lips. He kissed it once, t
hen left it there, so that she could feel his soft breath on her skin.
“Dad, no!” cried out Hana, who’d been watching her parents, weeping. “I’m going to stay with you. I don’t want to go with Mom.” Hana got out of the bed and jumped into her father’s arms.
Min held her for a second, then he made her let go, made her look at him while he spoke. “If you ask yourself, deep down, Can I really live without her, the answer you hear is No, I can’t live without her. Your mother did so much for you, and she loves you so much. Where would you be, if it weren’t for her? Where would I be?”
Soo-Ja heard the sound of a car engine running outside. The taxicab had arrived. Seeing it outside the window made the moment feel more real, and Soo-Ja suddenly felt the urgency of it. She glanced at Min and saw the pain in his eyes.
“Maybe… maybe we can send Hana here for her summer vacation?” she asked, hoping to make this moment a little easier for him.
Min sighed with joy. “Of course. Yes. Hana, I’m going to call you every day, and write you every hour.”
Hana finally let go of her father. Her face was wet with tears. She put on her clothes slowly, as if putting on an old self, once discarded, and now recalled to life.
Soo-Ja wondered if her daughter would hate her for the rest of her life. Of course she would. She was a teenage girl. She’d find reasons to hate her mother, and to love her, every day of her life.
And Min, who was this Min in front of her? Had he been there all along, and she had simply neglected to see it? Or did she make him day by day, inch by inch, build him lovingly and patiently, sparing him cross words, offering him a kind look here and there, so that one day, one day at last, he’d do exactly this and finally let her go? Soo-Ja did not love the man she married, but she loved the man she divorced. It just so happened that as she found her heart swell with joy for him, it was also time for her to leave him. She wanted to speak to this man, to get to know him, this man leaning over the window of the taxi, looking at her in the passenger seat, looking at her as if for the last time, but the words never got out of her mouth, as the taxi drove away, and she saw Min growing smaller in the distance, disappearing already into some nostalgic past.
chapter twenty
When they returned to Seoul, Soo-Ja and Hana resumed their lives as if nothing had happened. Soo-Ja went back to work, and Hana returned to school. They had the money. Soo-Ja had checked with the bank; it was all there. If she wanted to, she did not have to work again for a long time. But Soo-Ja longed for routine, for her life to be as close as possible to what it had been before. She had lost both her father and her husband, and she still felt the grief in her bones. When the divorce papers were finalized, Soo-Ja surprised herself by feeling sorrow, rather than relief. She didn’t know many other divorced women. They were like ex-convicts—people you talk about but don’t associate with. Did this mean she had failed, to some extent? She had always dreamed of the day she’d be free from Min, but when it arrived, it provided no joy.
At the time, Soo-Ja worried most about Hana, though her daughter seemed to take her father’s decision well. She even joked about it, said it made her more like American girls, whose parents were all divorced. Soo-Ja knew then that she’d lose Hana to America eventually. First the summers, then college there, then she’d probably move west for good, and marry an American boy. And Min, Min kept busy—he liked being needed by his parents, driving them around to play golf, going on fishing trips, having barbecues. Soo-Ja suspected he might even start dating soon.
And Soo-Ja? Well, she worked a lot. She thought about Yul and Eun-Mee, how they had probably managed to work things out between them. She could not bring herself to hurt their marriage, so she stayed far from both of them. Now that she was no longer married herself, it felt wrong to speak to Yul. Once, she saw him in the street, coming out of the New World Shopping Center. She turned and walked the other way, before he could see her. If they stayed away from each other, thought Soo-Ja, maybe at least one of them could have a good marriage.
But that is not to say she didn’t miss him. Soo-Ja thought of him almost every day, especially before she fell asleep in bed. And she figured maybe that was why she waited so long to return the money he loaned her—that was her last link to him, and once she gave it back, she would have no reason to speak to him. But finally she realized she had to learn to let go, and she gave Hana an envelope with a check inside in the amount he’d loaned her, and asked her to drop it off at his house. Hana went on the errand, curious but asking no questions. Soo-Ja waited anxiously for her daughter’s return, hoping for a word from Yul, or a reaction, but when Hana came back, she said Yul hadn’t been home, and she’d had to leave the envelope with the maid. Soo-Ja tried to hide her disappointment, as this felt a bit anticlimactic. No message from Yul, no final good-bye. Soo-Ja nodded and went back to work, and things might have stayed that way—calm, placid—if Eun-Mee hadn’t burst into her life once again, for the third and final time.
Eun-Mee came the very next day, unannounced. She did not look as well put together as she normally did—her hair hanging long with no headband or pins to support it. Even her clothes were somewhat middle of the road: a purple shirt with a large collar that hung almost as low as her chest, creating a V-neck, with the collar white and blue in diagonal stripes, matching the stripes on her skirt. And Soo-Ja did not notice this at first, but when Eun-Mee placed it on the counter, Soo-Ja saw that Eun-Mee had the envelope she’d given to Hana to deliver to Yul.
“Your daughter dropped this off at my house, didn’t she?” Eun-Mee asked, staring at Soo-Ja across the counter.
Soo-Ja closed her cash drawer and gave Eun-Mee the neutral look she reserved for difficult guests. “It’s for Yul.”
“You know Yul doesn’t live at the house anymore. You have a lot of nerve leaving this for him.”
Soo-Ja took the envelope from her and looked at it—its edges dirtied and worn-out—turned away, in limbo. By seeing its seal intact, she knew it had not been opened.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t open it,” said Eun-Mee. “I have no interest in reading your pathetic love letters.”
“What did you mean when you said that Yul doesn’t live at your house anymore?”
Eun-Mee did not answer immediately. Instead, she simply stared at Soo-Ja, as if in disbelief. “Don’t pretend you don’t know that we separated. I’m sure your husband told you all about the scene I made.”
“My husband?”
“Yes. When I came to the hotel after Yul left me. I thought he was staying here.”
“When was this?”
“The week after Seollal.”
“The week after Seollal? But only the week before, we had tea at your house—”
“Yes. Who’d think that would turn out to be a happy memory compared to what came later.”
“And Min knew about your separation?”
“Yes. I made him open every room in the hotel, even the ones occupied by guests. But Yul wasn’t here. He was at a different hotel. He told me when I saw him again, when he came back to pack things.”
“Eun-Mee, I don’t think we should have this conversation here. Do you want to come into my room?” Soo-Ja asked her, pointing inside.
“I was about to suggest that very same thing,” said Eun-Mee.
Soo-Ja called out for Hana and asked her to watch the front desk. When Hana came out, a bit out of breath, Soo-Ja saw Eun-Mee caress Hana’s chin lightly, as if she were a pet. Hana flinched a little, though her attention was immediately distracted by the envelope on the counter.
“I’ll explain to you later. Just put that somewhere safe,” said Soo-Ja.
As they walked to her room, Soo-Ja thought about Min. Eun-Mee’s story confirmed Soo-Ja’s suspicions that his decision to move to America had not come out of thin air—Eun-Mee’s actions must have given Min his sense of urgency. Min had hoped to keep her away from a newly separated Yul. To this day, Soo-Ja still didn’t know exactly what had transpired in her ab
sence, only that one day Min and Hana were in Seoul, and the next they were in America.
Soo-Ja slid the paper door open and led Eun-Mee inside. The room still had some traces of Min in it. Eun-Mee sat on the floor, and once she had moved some padded blankets and mats out of the way, Soo-Ja sat across from her.
“So you’re saying you didn’t know about Yul leaving me?” Eun-Mee asked, sitting cross-legged on a mat.
“No, Eun-Mee. I really didn’t. I’m very surprised to hear it. He didn’t tell me that when I saw him.”
“I’m not sure if I believe you,” said Eun-Mee. “I wonder if this isn’t part of some plan you hatched.”
“You’re the one always making plans, Eun-Mee. Me, I don’t look too far beyond the present moment. I can’t afford to.”
“So I’m supposed to act surprised when, by sheer coincidence, any day now, you happen to leave your husband, and find yourself conveniently unattached?”
“Eun-Mee, I can’t leave my husband. My husband has left me.”
“He left you?” she marveled.
“Yes.”
“Just as Yul has left me. So we’re going through the same thing then, experiencing the same pains and sorrows?”
“I suppose. It is a bit disorienting not to have Min anymore. I’ve been talking to myself a lot. I still cook for three, and have to throw away his portion.”
“But can you sympathize with my sufferings? You can, can’t you? Oh, I was foolish to think of you as a rival, when you were in fact an older sister.”
Soo-Ja held her tongue—she knew Eun-Mee didn’t mean any of her words. Soo-Ja could detect the theatrical tinge in Eun-Mee’s voice.
“Yes, I suppose we’ve both been left bereft,” Soo-Ja said, trying to remain noncommittal.
Eun-Mee reached for Soo-Ja, and ran her right hand fast a few times over Soo-Ja’s arm, as if she were undoing a crease on her shirt. This close to her, Soo-Ja could see her face was a bit swollen with past tears, and she realized Eun-Mee must have lost five pounds or so off her already thin figure since she’d last seen her.
“Now, older sister, if you could do something to assuage my pain, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Eun-Mee asked.
