Jane (Summer 2003)

“Love is a habit,” Dong-Jin says. Or would say, if he put things that way. It’s what he means when he wakes up early on the Sunday before Chusok and wakes Jae with a series of gulpam, knuckles rubbing that sweet wall of toddler hair that always stands in surrender. It’s what he means when he strokes my cheek, then reaches under the cover for my swollen belly, saying, “Good morning, my wife, good morning baby, we’re going to the graves today! Aren’t the graves a great thing?” 

But I’m already thinking about breakfast and the aftermath: the never-ending cycle of dirty dishes, cascades of order and disorder. I pull the covers over my head, inhaling the sweet and musty smell of our bodies, holding onto the sound of laughter as Dong-Jin and Jae wrestle, but it is no use; there is the acrid breath of mosquito-repelling incense; there is the pat-pat-pat of someone jump-roping upstairs, there is the distant clang of brass bells from the scrap metal collectors. My in-laws will be here in an hour. It doesn’t matter what kind of feminist I am; if the place is a mess, they’ll judge me, not Dong-Jin and the mood will only go downhill from there. 

  Even before we moved to Seoul, we returned to Korea at least once a year, and while here, we went to the graves. For ten years now, I have been following Dong-Jin and his family in these rituals, and I know what’s ahead. We’ll leave our apartment armed with coffee, full of immediate concerns (did you make him pee? Did you bring the scythe?) and make our way through the tangled city streets, where new apartment complexes rise, and highways sprout like weeds. As we leave the restless and hungry city, following the Han river out into green fields, then through the satellite city of Namyangju, then up to the mountain graveyard, Dong-Jin and his father’s thoughts will turn to memories of the past, and they will begin to fight.

This is Seoul. This is the beginning of the twenty-first century. This thought is enough, sometimes, to arm me against the forces of discomfort with a war cry and a bayonet; I picture them coming at me, the bodiless eyes, the invisible walls of soju-breath, and the swarms of overwhelming signage, like buzzing like killer bees. One day, I vow, I will find that twisted gulf stream that exists in all crowded sidewalk traffic. I will learn to live in the spaces between cars and thin walls and alleyways. To find my own thoughts in the midst of the clang and squeal and babble of this city. 

But for now, there is breakfast to be made, dishes to be done, a bag to be packed.

(....)

Halmoni slips off her shoes and enters the apartment. She doesn’t look to my face for permission before placing her hand on my stomach. She knows that I can fake a smile but I cannot conceal the resentment in my eyes. She looks down and I look away, out to the verandah, to the traffic on the street, the florescent red crosses on the skyline. Sundays in Seoul are like this: either spent in prayer or in the mountains, dressed for an expedition to the Himalayas. After a few moments she moves her hand to another spot, like a doctor with a stethoscope. I feel her face turn to mine as she senses movement but I continue to look away. Some part of me needs to be free: if it’s not my skin, it’s my gaze. We write novels about love, full of the fireworks of romance or the howling agony of grief, but mostly we live like this, in small moments of capitulation. Fishing poo out of the toilet. Breathing the dust of a vacuum cleaner bag while searching for a missing lego piece. Allowing a woman who had no children of her own to feel like she shares this pregnancy, this baby, this life. 

Dong-Jin doesn’t believe in grand gestures. There is no gift large enough to win affection, no abracadabra to conjure love when it’s been lost like a letter in the mail, somewhere over the ocean; or scattered in the winds, or caught in crossfire, or lost in translation. Love is a war of attrition; you have to amass your troops and send them into the hills, guerrilla-style, looking for openings and weaknesses and applying constant pressure. They were still finding soldiers in the mountains, Dong-Jin tells me, years after the armistice was signed. They’d emerge, emaciated, still fighting. 

She withdraws her hand, and we face each other, finally smiling, relieved. “Himdir ji?” she asks sympathetically. I clench my jaw. Outside, church bells ring, calling acolytes. She means the pregnancy; it’s hard, isn’t it? “Anyo.” No, it’s not. Not difficult. Some disappointment flits across her face, which she generally keeps calm and unwrinkled. I am supposed to say Yes, but I cannot. All day long, I listen to the neighborhood women talk about how himdiro everything is. Sigh, it’s so hot, himdiro. Sigh, raising kids, how himdiro! Oh, my legs hurt but I still have to cook and clean, himdiro jookesso! It galls me, all this whining over trivial things as if there weren’t enough real hardship around to send someone smashing the windows. It grates me, like pebbles in my shoes, to offer complaint as a way of saying we’re the same. She offers it to me as an olive branch, as her way of saying thank you for letting me pet your belly but I take it as an insult, as criticism. The question thins my skin, and my “no” thins hers. A coolness spreads between us, and she straightens her blouse and moves into the kitchen, her posture that of a court lady on inspection.

Yu-Jin (December 1986)

It was from the outhouse that Yu-Jin got his first good look at his old home. Feeling peaceful and benevolent with a full stomach and empty bladder, he watched the warm fingers of the late winter sunrise re-awaken the land, and then the house became the center of a magical canvas of brick and wire and pipes and clanging and smoke. The hub of his childhood. Had he ever really looked at it before, ever considered its hidden rhythms, which no outsider could possibly sense, much less interpret?

As a child he had run as fast as he could from stink and the darkness of the outhouse, back into the protective arms of the hanok. So he ran, delighting in the grace and strength of his adult legs. Across the yard and up the stone steps, he slid the door to the sleeping chamber aside. But he had forgotten how to take those steps in the winter. He slipped, hitting his chin on the metal rail of the sliding wooden door with a crack.

“Yu-Jin-ah! What happened?” 

Father rushed from the side of the hanok, hands still dark with soot from the yeontan, and knelt next to him, tilting Yu-Jin’s chin up to look at the gash. The gesture sent a quiver through Yu-Jin’s body. How long had it been since he was touched, treasured, taken care of? In Korea he had taken touch for granted: bumping and pushing in the street, going to the public baths with his friends, scrubbing one another’s backs, sleeping together on yo mats, holding hands.  During those first few months in America, he tried to express his growing intimacy with his new friends by touching them, but he was met with a horrified pullback. He had quickly learned to respect that invisible barrier the Americans called “personal space.” Meanwhile he had endlessly fantasized about the moment of his return home: Father’s strong arms around him, his shirt wet from Father’s tears. 

But Father had not embraced him. Father had held his arms out straight and placed them firmly on Yu-Jin’s shoulders, nodding gruffly. “Yu-Jin-ah. You’ve grown tall, but you’re too skinny. Did you take those vitamins I sent you?” 

As Father gently wiped the blood away with his handkerchief Yu-Jin resisted the urge to bury his head in his Father’s chest and cry, the way he had as a child. Instead he pushed Father away and said, “Don’t you know that’s unsanitary? I’ll do it myself.”