We Do Not Part, page 5
* * *
I have made my way here at Inseon’s request. Because she said, I need you to go to my place in Jeju.
When? I asked.
Today. Before the sun sets.
What she was asking was close to impossible. Even if I took the quickest route from the hospital to the airport and managed to get on the next flight out to Jeju. I thought she was making an obscure joke, but she looked perfectly serious.
If you don’t, she’ll die.
Who will?
My bird.
I was about to ask what bird when I remembered the budgies I’d met when I visited her the previous autumn. One of the birds had greeted me hello and started chattering. I was surprised at how similar its voice was to Inseon’s. I hadn’t known budgies could imitate not only human pronunciation but vocal tones as well. Even more remarkable was that the bird had been able to carry on a quite plausible conversation by responding to Inseon’s questions with a mix of quips like “sure” and “yeah,” “no” and “dunno.” It’s not fair to use the word “parrot” to imply simple imitation, Inseon said. Not when a bird and I can converse like this. Sensing my uncertainty, she urged me, Go ahead—try talking to him. Tell him to come and sit on your hand. I hesitated, but her smile emboldened me to open the door of the birdcage and hold out my finger. Want to sit here? I asked. To my embarrassment, the bird immediately answered, No. Then, as if canceling out what he had just said, he hopped onto my finger. I remembered feeling moved by his near weightlessness, the scratch of his tiny feet against my skin.
Ami died a few months ago, Inseon continued. Now only Ama is left.
If I remembered correctly, Ami was the bird that had spoken to me. The one with yellow streaks on his otherwise white head and tail, of a paler yellow than lemon. Inseon had told me her birds were expected to live for another ten years—what had brought on Ami’s sudden death?
Please go and see if Ama is still alive, Inseon said. If she is, give her water.
Unlike Ami, Ama was completely white from crown to tail, which made her look more plain, and, though she didn’t speak, she could perfectly echo the sound of Inseon’s humming. Ama had flown up onto my shoulder at almost the same time that Ami had come to perch on my finger, and I could feel her body, as light as Ami’s, and the same rough texture of her feet through the fabric of my sweater. When I’d turned to look at her, the little one tilted her head and, for a few seconds, met my gaze with her left eye, which appeared almost pensive.
All right, I said, nodding, weighing the seriousness of Inseon’s request. I’ll go home, pack, then get on the first flight out tomorrow morning at dawn—
That won’t work.
I was a little surprised, as it was not like Inseon to interrupt.
That’ll be too late, she said. It’s already been a couple of days since the accident. I was rushed into surgery that night and incoherent until yesterday. I contacted you today as soon as the anesthesia wore off.
Is there no one in Jeju you could ask?
No one, she said.
I found this hard to believe.
Not even downtown Jeju or Seogwipo? What about the woman who found you?
I don’t know her phone number.
I thought I heard a hint of unusual urgency in her tone.
I’d like you to go, Kyungha. Look after Ama in that house. Just until I’m released.
What are you saying? I wanted to ask, but she continued before I could cut in.
Luckily, I filled her water dish the other morning. And made sure she had a good amount of millet, dried fruit, and pellets too, in case I was working until late in the evening. It might have been just enough to survive on for two days. But not three. If you can get to her today, there’s a chance she might still make it. But by tomorrow she’ll be dead. That’s for sure.
I understand, I said in an attempt to soothe her, but I couldn’t wrap my head around her insistence. I can’t stay in your house by myself until you’re released, though. I’ll go down there and make sure the bird pulls through, then I’ll bring her up here, in her cage. You’ll feel better once you can see for yourself that she’s all right.
No. Inseon held firm. Ama, she won’t be able to handle such a sudden change in environment.
I was at a loss. In our twenty years of friendship, Inseon had never once asked me for such an unreasonable favor. When she’d texted me to say I would need to bring some form of ID, I’d assumed the situation was urgent, that she needed me to sign a consent form for surgery or something similarly pressing. Which was why I’d jumped in a taxi straight away, without even stopping by my house. Was the pain and shock of this ordeal causing Inseon to act differently? Was she holding me responsible for what had happened while she was working on the project I’d suggested? Or was I really the only person she could ask? The only person who could drop everything at a moment’s notice to spend close to a month in Jeju looking after a bird, someone who no longer had a job or family or meaningful daily routine to attend to? No matter the reason, one thing was certain. I couldn’t turn her down.
* * *
Each time the raging winds scatter dark clouds over the offing, sunlight falls on the horizon. Snowflakes resembling a flock of tens of thousands of birds appear like a mirage and sweep over the sea, vanishing with the light. I press my forehead against the cold windowpane by my seat. The front wipers squeak back and forth as, outside, an endless barrage of large snowflakes pummels the bus and disappears.
I sit up straight and dig inside my coat pocket. My hand brushes against a thin pack of gum. I had bought it in a rush at a convenience store in Gimpo Airport as my boarding time was drawing near. I’d popped a square of gum into my mouth as the plane was taking off, and now I push a second piece out through the blister-pack foil and start chewing. I can sense a migraine coming on like ice cracking in the distance. I have no idea what causes these headaches, which last ages and are accompanied by terrible abdominal spasms and a drop in blood pressure. Never knowing when one might begin, I’ve taken to carrying medicine most days, but since I more or less came straight here, I don’t have any on me. However, once the prelude is over and the real symptoms start, any emergency prescription is useless. In my experience, gum is the only thing that helps in that critical moment right before a migraine begins in earnest. And once a migraine is underway, even the mildest juk does more harm than good as I can’t keep anything down.
* * *
Where are you headed? the bus driver shouts in Jeju-mal. I don’t have a bag with me and my oversized clothes don’t look like those of a tourist. He must think I’m from here.
To P—, I say.
Where?
I speak up. Could you let me know when we get to P—?
Though we aren’t far from each other, it seems the driver hasn’t heard me clearly. The roar of the wind outside drowns me out. I assume he’s asking for my destination because most of the stops we’ve passed by have been empty. I’m the only passenger on the bus, so if he sees from afar that no one is waiting at the upcoming stops, he can drive past without slowing down.
But at the very next stop someone is waiting to get on. A man in his thirties who looks to be a tourist is leaning into the road and waving his arms in the storm. As if he’s exhausted himself from standing around in the raging winds, the man climbs aboard the bus and slumps into the seat behind the driver without paying the fare. Only after he manages to shrug off his heavy-looking backpack and set it down on the seat next to him does he reach inside his jacket pocket and pull out a wallet.
This bus goes to the airport, right? he asks, tapping his transportation card against the reader.
Ah, the driver shouts in reply. For the airport, you should catch the bus going the opposite way. And no planes are taking off now.
You’re not going to the airport? The man’s voice is edged with an almost despairing fatigue. The route is clearly posted on the front of the bus, isn’t it? It says this bus goes to the airport.
It does, it does. But I’m saying this bus goes the long way, so you should catch the one already going in that direction.
I’ve waited all this time. As long as this bus gets there in the end, I’m taking it.
Could take us another two hours, though, says the driver, clicking his tongue. Well, if you want to go the long way around, I won’t stop you, but like I said, the planes are all grounded for the rest of the day.
I’m aware of that. I’m going to wait at the airport until tomorrow morning, says the man. Though he has been nothing but polite so far, he seems to be tamping down his growing irritation with the bus driver, who keeps slipping into overfamiliar speech.
Wait at the airport until morning? But they cut the lights off and kick everyone out at eleven.
Are you saying I can’t stay there overnight? The man seems surprised. What about the people who weren’t able to catch their flights today?
What do you mean? They’ll need to find places to stay, of course…You’re really in a bind, huh? Caught out in this weather with no backup plan.
The driver side-eyes the man in his rearview mirror, shaking his head at the sight of his baffled face, his open mouth.
The exchange ends there. Looking resigned, the man puts on his seat belt and takes out his phone. He’s probably searching for accommodations in the downtown Jeju area or else reaching out to people he knows. I shift my gaze to the window facing inland, which the man’s backpack half obscures. We are supposed to be headed toward a dormant volcano that stands at almost two thousand meters above sea level, but outside I see no such thing. A white mass of storm clouds and snow mist fill the air, rolling through the sky. The snow is falling in such a way that it doesn’t accumulate much on the coast, but at a slightly higher altitude the situation will be different. Up in those hills and woods and pastures, there will be nothing so merciful as the sunlight that falls like a miracle when the clouds momentarily disperse, nor any of the glittering snowflakes that flurry over the surface of the sea like low-flying birds. Once we reach P—, we will have no choice but to enter into the heart of that whiteout, in all its stifling density.
* * *
Is Inseon used to this kind of snow? Would a blizzard like this have been surprising or out of the ordinary for her? This rolling grey mass of cloud, fog, and snow. The fact that her childhood home exists as a precise location inside that huge storm, and that there is a bird—perhaps still breathing, perhaps not—waiting in that home.
That first year we started traveling together for work, because Inseon never brought up her hometown and spoke without a noticeable accent, I assumed she had been born and raised in Seoul. Then one night I heard her talking to her mother on the payphone in the lobby of our lodgings and realized she was from the island. She spoke in a dialect that was hard for me to understand aside from a handful of nouns. Smiling, she asked a string of questions, made a few playful remarks, then laughed at some private joke before setting down the receiver.
What were you and your mom talking about that was so funny? I asked.
Nothing much. She was telling me about another basketball game she saw on TV, Inseon replied easily, her smile lingering. My mom is like any other grandmother, really, she went on. She was over forty when she had me and is well into her sixties now. She doesn’t know the rules that well and watches mainly for the crowd. She gets lonely when there’s no work since her place is so out of the way.
She sounded impish, like someone letting slip their best friend’s little quirks.
She’s still working at her age?
Of course. The women work even into their eighties. When it’s time to harvest mandarins, they help out in each other’s orchards.
Inseon smiled again, returning to the earlier topic.
She likes to watch football too. Even bigger crowds. She watches marches and protests on the news with the same interest. Like she’s hoping to spot somebody she knows.
After that day, whenever there was a lull, whether on trains and buses, or in restaurants where the food was taking a while, I asked Inseon to teach me some Jeju-mal. I had loved the rich sounds and gentle intonations she had used on the phone with her mom.
At first, Inseon was reluctant. I doubt it’ll do you much good when you travel to Jeju, she said. Everyone will be able to tell you’re a mainlander. But when she saw that I was genuinely interested, she began to teach me the basics. I was most intrigued by the unfamiliar conjugations. When we attempted short conversations and I used the wrong tense out of hada—haen—hamen—hajaen, Inseon corrected me with a smile.
People say our word endings are short because we have such strong winds on Jeju, she said one day. The sound of the wind clips our words.
These were my impressions of Inseon’s hometown—an unadorned language of abrupt word endings, a girlish grandmother who loved to watch basketball when she longed to be around people—at least until that evening toward the end of the year, after I’d quit my job, when we met up purely as friends for the first time.
That night, we had a late dinner at a noodle shop whose windows looked out onto a two-lane road that was nearly empty of traffic. I remember the impending new year, the fact that we would soon be that much older, had been weighing heavily on us at the time.
It’s snowing, said Inseon.
I bit off my noodles and turned to the window.
No, it’s not, I said.
You’ll see it when a car goes by.
Soon enough, a sedan drove past, its headlights shining in the dark, and revealed a flurry of snow coruscating like fine grains of salt.
Inseon set down her chopsticks and went outside. I kept eating, watching her through the window. I thought she needed to make a phone call, but she’d left her mobile on the table. Was she going to take pictures? She had left her camera behind too, but maybe she was thinking through how she would film the scene. She often did this when we were out together, which left me with one of two options. Either I could look on with curiosity as she captured whatever she was seeing through her camera lens, or I could make myself comfortable and wait around while my mind drifted to other things.
To my surprise, Inseon didn’t come back for her camera. She stood outside, unflinching against the wind, both hands in the pockets of her faded jeans, her thin turtleneck revealing the slender contours of her shoulders and shoulder blades. Another taxi went by, its headlights gleaming on the snow sifting down. She looked like she had forgotten everything else in the world. Her unfinished bowl of noodles. Me. The date, the time, the place. When she finally came back inside, I noticed the dusting of snow that had fallen on her head, the way it melted in the brief span it took her to walk over to our table and clung like beads of rain to her hair.
We finished our food in silence. When you’ve known someone a good while, you intuit when it’s best not to speak. Eventually, after we had both set down our chopsticks and sat through a long pause, she began to tell me about the time she ran away from home as a teenager and nearly died. I was surprised. I knew how deeply Inseon cared for her mother, especially as she was widowed when Inseon was only nine and had raised her by herself until Inseon left for college.
You always describe your mom as a halmoni, so I thought your relationship with her was like the one I have with my grandma, I said. But of course there’s a difference between how I see my grandmother and my parents. With grandparents, things tend to be more straightforward…My grandmother’s a giver, just giving and giving without end.
Inseon agreed, smiling gently. She was exactly like that, my mom, she said. She really treated me like I was her grandchild. Never pressured or scolded me about anything. Her tone was careful, as if her mother were right next to us listening.
I have no bones to pick about my childhood either, she continued. Both my parents were naturally soft-spoken, so our house was always calm. It got quieter still after my father died. I always felt like there was no one else in the world but the two of us—me and my mom. I used to get stomach pains at night sometimes, and my mom would tie a string around my thumb and prick my finger right beneath the nail, then rub my belly all night long. Aieee, my little sorghum-straw daughter. Nerves of silk, just like your daddy…she would sigh to herself.
Inseon stirred her broth with her chopsticks, realized she’d finished her noodles, and set the chopsticks down on the table. She lined them up side by side as if someone would inspect them.
But that year…I don’t know why, but I hated my mother so much that year, she said.
* * *
There were days I couldn’t stand the burning sensation that climbed up my throat from the pit of my stomach. I hated the house. I hated the road I had to walk more than a half hour from that backwoods house to get to the bus stop, and I hated the school where that bus dropped me off. I hated the sound of the school bell, the bars of “Für Elise” that announced class was starting. I hated class, I hated the other kids who didn’t seem to hate anything as much as I did, and I hated the school uniform I had to wear every day and wash and iron every weekend.
At some point I started hating my mom. She just sickened me, like every other nauseating thing. I despised her the way I despised myself. I despised the food she made for me, hated watching her painstakingly wipe down our scuffed floor table or wear her graying hair in a matronly bun, and loathed seeing how she walked with a stoop like some whipping girl. My hatred grew until I could hardly breathe. It was like I had this red-hot ball of rage seething endlessly in my gut.
I finally walked out because I wanted to live. I felt like if I didn’t leave, that rage would kill me. I changed into my school uniform as soon as I woke up, packed underwear and socks instead of textbooks and notebooks in my bookbag, then regular clothes instead of my PE uniform in a separate canvas bag. It was around this time of the year, late December. My mom was leaving the village every morning at dawn to help harvest and pack mandarins on other orchards. As I nibbled at the food she had covered in a cloth and left out for me, I looked around the house for places where I might find some money. There was a good amount of cash in the biscuit tin under the TV where my mom kept the utility bills. That was the money she’d made selling the mandarins from our own harvest.
