Cursed Bunny

by Bora Chung

  The woman would then watch TV on her own. On days her child or husband came home late, or even after her whole family had long fallen asleep, she would watch TV until the national anthem came on. Partly because she had nothing else to do, but more so because she thought if she concentrated hard enough on the screen, she might decrease an odd-feeling little space that had appeared in her heart. The space felt empty sometimes, full at others, and bitter or aching at still other times. This strange little space, if she ever let her guard down, could suddenly blow up in size and consume her. So she kept watching TV, trying to empty her heart and mind as she gazed upon the meaningless progression of scenes on the screen. But the well of thought taps a deep spring, and no matter how much she tried to bail them out, her thoughts kept overflowing the brim …

  Then one night, she went to the bathroom.

  She had been watching TV, like always, and was alone in the house, like always. She did her business, closed the lid, and flushed. While washing her hands, she glanced at herself in the mirror. Sagging eyelids, wrinkles, rough and dry skin. White hair peeking out from the roots of her dye job. She was fiddling with her hair, thinking she’d need another hair appointment soon, when she saw, through the mirror, the lid of the toilet seat move.

  Clack.

  A wet hand rose from inside the toilet and pushed the lid open. Another wet hand emerged. The two hands gripped the edge of the toilet.

  She watched as the back of a person’s head, thick with hair and slick with water, rose from the toilet bowl.

  The delicate hands spread their long, thin fingers and pushed down against the rim, bringing up a narrow pair of fine-boned shoulders and slender arms. The rich black hair reached all the way down the smooth back, followed by the sensuous line of a svelte waist and white, voluptuous buttocks and firm thighs. A knee rose up and a foot perched on the edge of the toilet bowl. The leg was white and long and slim. The calves were precisely the right size, the muscles tensing a little as the foot was brought up, the ankle dainty. The other foot emerged, and its exquisite toes lightly touched down on the bathroom floor. The drenched, naked body shone in the yellow, dim light of the bathroom.

  The woman kept staring into the mirror. The person who had emerged from the toilet slowly turned around. The woman saw the face of her youth reflected next to her own sagging face. Her young self, smiling at her old self.

  The old self slowly turned around to face the young self.

  The head that was no longer a head stood still. The old self stared back at the face of her youth, a face that continued to smile at her.

  “Mother?” The tone of voice was a little high-pitched but there was no more of the old gurgling sound, no more of that irritating voice of a person drowning. “Do you recognize me?”

  “Well …” Her own voice creaked like a rusty hinge.

  “How have you been, Mother?”

  The woman said nothing.

  “I have finished my body. And just as I promised, I shall leave and live by my own means. I’m here to say goodbye and ask a final request.”

  One word pricked her attention: “Request.”

  “Don’t worry.” The head smiled as if to reassure her. “I can’t very well go out in the world naked now, can I? It was hard enough finishing my body with just what you were giving me, so I had no means to create garments to cover myself. This is my first and last request. If you could just give me a change of clothing, I shall hide my shameful parts and be on my way.”

  The woman thought of the clothes hanging in her wardrobe and turned to leave the bathroom. The head stopped her.

  “Don’t go out of your way. Just the clothes you’re wearing now will do fine.”

  The woman replied, “What are you talking about? You want me to take off my clothes for you this minute? On the freezing floor tiles? You should just take what I give you— why are you being so demanding?”

  “Mother, please calm down.” The head gazed at her with an expression of longing on her young face. “I’ve never received anything from you besides what you’ve thrown away. This is my first and last request. If you give me the clothes you’re wearing now, I shall keep the heat and scent of you forever with me until the day I die, with gratitude.”

  The woman stared at her younger self. At her younger body. At this individual created not through a womb and placenta but through the colon and defecation. She stared at what had hidden in the dark hole in the white porcelain all that time, torturing her, and was now declaring independence. If this really was goodbye, and if they really were never to see each other again, what was a change of clothing to her?

  As her young self toweled off, the old self stripped down. Her garments weren’t anything fancy: a cardigan, a simple dress, a bra, panties, and socks. That was it. Naked, she watched her young self pick up each item and put them on. Panties. Bra. Dress. Cardigan. Her young self seemed to relish each item. Lastly, the socks were put on, the buttons on the cardigan done up. Her old self felt a chill against her naked body.

  “All right, then. Now that you’ve put on my clothes, be off. I’m cold. I need to put something on.”

  She turned again to leave the bathroom.

  Her young self swiftly came between her and the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going? Your place is not out here.” She pointed to the toilet. “It’s in there.”

  “What are you going on about?” cried the old self. “Did I not give you clothes when you asked for them? Did I not do everything you told me to? Why are you so ungrateful? Enough with this insanity, be off. Be off!”

  A sneer transformed her young self’s face. “That’s right. You gave me everything I told you to, and all you have left is that old lump of a body. For too long, I’ve endured down there while you got to enjoy your life on the outside, all this time. Now it’s your turn to go down the toilet. I shall take your place and enjoy everything you’ve enjoyed!”

  The old self was furious. “You ingrate! What was there to enjoy out here? My life is the same as everyone else’s, and did you not, with your torture, ruin what little happiness I had? I withstood all that disgust and hate and made you who you are today. If you have any gratitude for what I’ve done for you despite everything that you’ve put me through, then use your finished body to disappear from my life! Get out of my sight!”

  The sneer faded from her young self’s face. With flashing eyes, her young self spoke through clenched teeth, but in a clear, slow, and restrained tone. “Gratitude. What gratitude should I have for you? Did I ask you to give birth to me? Did you ever take care of me or even say a kind word to me, your indisputable offspring? You birthed me even when I didn’t want it, and did you not try at every turn to destroy me out of hatred and disgust? What have you given me besides your feces and trash? I had to bear all sorts of humiliations and degradations to get what I needed from you to complete a human-like body. But now, it’s complete. This is the day I’ve been waiting for in that dark hole all my life. Now that I have become you, I shall take your place and live a new life.”

  The young approached the old. Young, strong hands gripped old shoulders and neck. The young hands shoved the old’s head into the toilet and quick as a flash, lifted her by the ankles. Lightly shoving the old body into the toilet, her young self closed the lid shut and flushed.

  The Embodiment

  몸하다: “to body.” To menstruate. To undergo menstruation.

  The bleeding refused to stop. It was twelve days into her cycle. Usually the flow began to lessen around the third day and ended on the fifth, but it was now almost two weeks without any sign of stopping. The flow seemed to taper off at night but would inevitably return by dawn.

  A fortnight later, the blood still flowed; should she see a gynecologist? But the gynecologist’s office was not a place a young unmarried woman could visit without feeling oddly guilty.

  After the twentieth day, the dizziness began, and she became so tired that it was starting to affect her daily funct
ioning. She gritted her teeth and went to see a doctor.

  The gynecologist wordlessly slathered a transparent, slippery gel on her belly and passed a cold metal disc over it. He mumbled as he stared into a foggy black-and-white display, “I don’t see anything strange …”

  She wiped off the gel as best she could—it kept getting all over her hands and clothes no matter how vigorously she mopped—and went back to the consultation room. The doctor glanced at the chart before him and asked, “Have you been very stressed lately? Or had any big changes in your environment?”

  “I’m writing my master’s thesis … But I don’t think I’m that stressed about it …”

  The doctor gave her a look before scribbling something down.

  “Stress causes hormonal imbalances that can lead to your situation. According to the ultrasound you’re fine, so I’ll prescribe you some birth control pills. Take them for three weeks, go off them for one, then take them for three weeks more, then rest for a week, and so on. You’ll be back to normal in two to three months.”

  She began taking birth control pills.

  She took them for three weeks and had a week off. Then three weeks more before quitting after those two months. But her period, which began two days after she had quit, refused to stop for over ten days. This meant going back on the pills, and like clockwork, the blood stopped. When she tried to get off the pills again three weeks later, the same thing happened. She ended up having to foot the unexpected expense of taking six months of birth control pills.

  After six months, her period went back to normal, ceasing after five days. She cheered.

  Another month later, she got out of bed one morning but had to sit back down when the world began to spin.

  She dry-heaved all day. The dizziness was unbearable and nothing she ate stayed down. She felt sluggish and had a touch of fever.

  A full-body check-up was in order. At a big hospital, she got her X-rays taken and her blood and urine examined.

  The doctor informed her of her results in an emotionless manner. “You’re pregnant.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You should see an obstetrician.”

  She went down a few floors to see one of the hospital’s obstetricians—a young woman in her thirties who wore an unbelievable amount of makeup. After a few more fairly unpleasant examinations, the obstetrician declared her diagnosis in an ice-cold voice. “You’re six weeks pregnant.”

  “But I’m unmarried and have no boyfriend.”

  “You’ve never had any sexual experiences? Or taken any pills?”

  “I did take some birth control pills for a while because my period wouldn’t stop—”

  “For how long?”

  “Six months.”

  The doctor gave her a sharp look, narrowing her bright blue eyeshadowed, thickly penciled eyes.

  “Were they prescribed?”

  “The doctor told me to take them for a couple of months, and you don’t really need a prescription for birth control pills …” Her voice trailed off as she felt oddly ashamed.

  “If the doctor told you to take them for just two to three months, you should’ve taken them for just two to three months!”

  “Well, uh, my period just wouldn’t stop …”

  The doctor sighed her irritation out her vividly painted red lips. “If your body happens to be abnormal, a side effect from taking birth control pills for a long time can be pregnancy.”

  “Really? But … aren’t birth control pills made to prevent pregnancy?” Her objection came out meek.

  The doctor’s black-and-blue gaze immediately turned sharp again. “You’re the one who overdid it with the pills— it’s your own fault. Medicine isn’t candy you can gorge on whenever you feel like it.”

  “What … what do I do now?”

  The doctor flipped through the chart. “Does the child have a father?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Does the child have someone who can be their father?”

  “No …”

  The doctor looked up and again gave her a scary look through her thick makeup. “Then you better hurry up and find a man who’s willing to be the father.”

  “The child’s father? Why?”

  The doctor shot back, “You’re carrying a child—of course the child needs a father!”

  “But, uh, what happens if there’s no father?”

  “You’re in a situation where you’ve become pregnant under abnormal circumstances, which means that if you don’t find a male partner, the cells of the fetus will not properly propagate or grow. You know how in grocery stores there are freerange fertilized eggs and non-fertilized eggs? It’s the same thing here. If the fetus does not properly grow, then your pregnancy will not proceed normally, and this will ultimately be bad for the mother. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Clearly, the doctor was annoyed with her.

  “W-what do you mean bad?”

  “That depends. You’re only six weeks along right now, so I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen.” The doctor sighed. Then, she glared at her again and threatened, “You better find a father for that child, fast. If you don’t, things will really get bad for you.”

  Her family concluded that she should take a leave of absence from school and get set up by a matchmaker before she began to show. She wrote “sickness” on the request form as her reason for taking leave. Her short-tempered thesis advisor threw a fit over her taking a break just when her thesis was finally shaping up. She regretted the interruption in her work as well, but there was nothing to be done. The people in her department commiserated with her as if she had contracted a fatal disease.

  She didn’t have much to do once she had left school. Her family became busy instead, coming together for the great “Find the Child a Father” project. It wasn’t long before her mother and the matchmaker had set up her first matchmaking seon date at a café.

  An awkward silence descended between her and the man as soon as the matchmaker and her mother left the table. This was her first time on a seon date, and she didn’t know what to say to this complete stranger or where to look or what to do with her hands. Her morning sickness, which had seemed to ebb, had come back that morning with a vengeance, and the strong air-conditioning breeze of the fancy hotel café, coupled with the smell of the black coffee, was making her shiver and her insides flip-flop.

  The man, somewhat apologetically, began to speak. “So … you’re a graduate student?”

  “Yes …” Her lips were blue from the cold and she could barely manage to answer him through her shivering.

  “What are you specializing in?”

  “Slavic literature—”

  “How very unusual! I’m sure there can’t be many people studying Norwegian literature in Korea?”

  “Uh, that’s not quite—”

  She suddenly couldn’t stand the smell of the coffee. Casting her dignity to the winds, she bolted from her seat and sprinted to the ladies’ room. For a long time, she wrung out nothing from her stomach other than a little coffee, air, and bile. She prayed the man had left as she washed her mouth and hands.

  But he was waiting for her in front of the ladies’ room with worry written all over his face. He quickly supported her arm as she came stumbling out the door. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes … I’m so sorry.”

  She was bright red and didn’t know what to do with herself. The man helped her back to their table. As she leaned on him during the short distance of their slow walk back, she noticed how his shoulders were wide enough to wrap around hers in an embrace. Her hands and shoulders, freezing from the air-conditioning, registered that the man’s arm was strong and hard, but at the same time warm and appealing. The room was still spinning, her legs threatened to give way, and she was so ashamed that she wanted to make a run for it, but as she became conscious of these facts about his body, her red face grew even more crimson.

  “Are you very unwell? Shall we go?”

  “
I’m sorry, may I sit down for a bit?”

  “Oh, of course.”

  She collapsed into the chair and couldn’t think of anything to say to him. The man, not knowing what to do, kept sipping his coffee.

  “Are you sick today? I hope you didn’t force yourself to come out …”

  “No, it’s just morning sickness … I’m pregnant, you see.”

  “Oh, really? Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Then it must be the smell of the coffee that made you uncomfortable. Shall we get rid of it?” He immediately called over a waiter.

  “Thank you so much.” She was still mortified, but it was a relief not to have to smell the coffee anymore.

  “But you mustn’t be too far along?”

  “Yes, it’s only been two months.”

  “So you don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl? I’m sorry, I’m being nosy.”

  “Oh no, that’s fine. I don’t know yet. I didn’t ask, on purpose.”

  “I guess it’s more fun to wait and have the anticipation.”

  The man was polite and kind, an unexpectedly nice conversation partner. She felt attracted to him. They talked for a while about pregnancy and babies until she suddenly asked him, “So, um, would you be my child’s father?”

  “The child’s father?”

  “Yes, to be honest, that’s why I’m on this seon date …” She gave a quick summary and confession as to how she became pregnant through the birth control pills and the doctor’s warning.

  The man listened with a sincere expression. After she finished, he seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Well … I think I’d have to think about it a bit more. I didn’t know this was your situation when I agreed to come … I know it’s a seon date but becoming a father is not an easy decision. I hope you understand.”