The Picture Bride, page 19
“Hey!”
Jongho looked back at his mother’s voice and cried even harder. Blood was flowing from his temple.
“What happened?”
Willow rushed over and hugged Jongho. There was a cut right next to the corner of one eye. Jongho continued to cry as he pointed at the twins. A spinning top fell from the hand of one of them. Jongho stuttered that the twin had struck him with the top.
At the thought that his eye might easily have been hurt she felt dizzy with anger.
“Did you really hit him? He might have lost an eye!” Willow shouted at the twins without thinking that they could not understand. One twin began to cry, then the other followed.
Mrs. Robson and Marika came out, alerted by all the noise. Willow expected their mother to scold the twins. She assumed that she would apologize at the sight of Jongho crying and bleeding. Instead of apologizing, Mrs. Robson blamed Jongho for coming into the garden. There was no sign of the kind smiles when she’d received her embroidery. Instead, her expression was icy. The twins went to stand next to their mother and stuck their tongues out at Jongho.
When she saw that, Willow was furious. She thrust Jongho at Mrs. Robson. “Can’t you see that this child is bleeding? He was wrong to come into the garden, but is the garden more important than a child?”
Jongho cried even louder.
Mrs. Robson looked disdainfully at Willow, said something to Marika, then turned and led the twins away. Marika gave Willow a complicated look. Fuming, Willow picked Jongho up and went back to the laundry.
Washing his face revealed a small but deep cut. She was even more upset than when she had seen the scar on Taewan’s back. “What’s to be done? It’ll leave a scar.” She wanted to attend to Jongho, who must have been shocked, but she still had a lot of work left.
“Listen, I’ll buy you something nice later, okay? Now I have to work, so go out and play. But you must never go into the garden again. Is that clear?”
It wasn’t until she was about to leave for the day that she was given notice of her dismissal, together with the salary due. Without a word, Willow hoisted Jongho onto her back and trudged home. All the way she regretted not having begged to be given a second chance; it would be difficult to get a similar job again. Also, if she had known she was going to be dismissed, she would have shouted at Mrs. Robson more.
* * *
Willow found work cleaning the rooms and washing the bedding and towels at the Haesong Inn, where she had stayed her first nights in Hawaiʻi. The innkeeper’s daughter had gotten married and the innkeeper had hurt her back, so she urgently needed someone.
Taewan, who had to pass the Haesong Inn on his way to the office on North Kukui, said he would take her on his bicycle. From the inn to the office, it was only a ten-minute ride.
Willow held Jongho in her arms as she mounted the bicycle behind Taewan. As they sped along, the breeze reminded her of their family outing, when they first came to Honolulu and opened the shoe store, and she had ridden with Taewan to visit Waikīkī Beach.
When they reached the inn, Willow regretted that the ride was so short.
“It must have been hard work with the two of us,” she said, apologetically.
“Some people have to suffer all day long, so that’s nothing.” Taewan’s face was bathed in sweat.
“In that case, you can bring us tomorrow, too. That’s right, Jongho, isn’t it?” She wasn’t above using their son as an excuse to spend more time with her husband.
Jongho smiled and nodded, still excitable from the ride.
“Okay, I will. See you this evening,” said Taewan before riding off.
After their time spent together as a family, Willow regained her usual happiness.
* * *
The owner of the inn and his wife welcomed Willow.
“I’ve nowhere to leave the baby, so I’ll have to bring him with me. If you agree, I’ll work hard, and you can pay me less.” After working for so long among foreigners, Willow found speaking Korean strangely awkward.
“How could we be so cruel to a compatriot? We’ve known Jongho’s aboji since we came to Hawaiʻi on the same boat.”
Willow was moved by their kind words. The sorrow she had suffered at the Robson mansion was fading. Willow told Jongho to play in the backyard and immediately started to clean rooms where the guests had left. When he started exploring the unfamiliar backyard, she worried about the stream in front of the inn, but the innkeeper told her not to worry, she would look after him.
Haesong Inn was still crowded with picture brides. Just as when Willow first came, it was full of the laments of women in despair on finding that their bridegroom was unlike his photo. Willow, who understood their pain, wept together with them and comforted them. The salary was less than she had been receiving at the Robson mansion, but she was comfortable.
On a day in August, Willow left the inn in the evening, holding Jongho’s hand. An ambulance siren could be heard in the distance. Jongho pulled Willow’s hand and led her toward North Kukui, not home. He knew that his father’s office was in that direction.
“Hey, shall we have dinner with Aboji?”
That day, Willow had received a tip from a haole guest. Since she had some unexpected money, she thought the three of them could eat out for once. With Jongho jumping with excitement, they headed for North Kukui along the side of the stream. As the building housing the Independence League came in sight, Willow stopped, astonished. An ambulance was parked in front, as well as a police car, and people were swarming about.
Willow’s heart raced and her legs trembled. Jongho led the way ahead of Willow. They slipped through a gap between bystanders. Several people were being taken away by the police, and the injured were being helped into the ambulance. All were Korean.
“Aigo, what’s happened?” Willow screamed at Taewan, who was about to get into the ambulance, a handkerchief pressed to his brow.
He gazed at Willow in surprise.
“What’s happened here?”
Taewan, his face hard-set, didn’t so much as glance at Jongho.
“Are you badly hurt? Who did this?”
Taewan clutched her hand and said in a low voice, “It’s nothing serious, don’t worry. Just go home. Once you’re home, keep the door locked.”
Willow grabbed Jongho, who struggled, saying he didn’t want to go, hoisted him onto her back, and walked away. Her legs were trembling, but she clenched her teeth and hurried home. Had Japanese imperialism reached Hawaiʻi? She found it hard to breathe at the thought that violence had come upon her husband at the office.
It was past 11 p.m. before he came home. Willow had been anxiously waiting, but on seeing him with bandages wrapped around his eyebrows and head, she burst into tears.
Taewan had been injured by supporters of Syngman Rhee. After returning from Shanghai, Dr. Rhee had founded a group called the People’s League. As a group designed to support the Provisional Government, they had chosen Syngman Rhee, the president of the Provisional Government, as the president of their league. However, the magazine Pacific Times, the organ of the Independence League, had published an article titled, “Syngman Rhee: Whereabouts Unknown,” claiming that Syngman Rhee had caused division within the Provisional Government and then run away because he could not cope with the difficulties.
Infuriated by the article, women who supported Syngman Rhee had invaded the office, demanding that the disrespectful article be corrected. The reporters had shown the women a letter received from the staff of the Korean Red Cross in Shanghai, which the article was based on, and sent them away. The scene that unfolded in the evening was after the husbands of the wives who had been driven out of the office attacked. The raiders were taken to the police station, and the injured were treated in a hospital. Taewan, who was not seriously hurt, had returned to clean up the office after having his wounds dressed. But at about eight o’clock, the raiders had returned, beat up anyone they found there, and smashed the printing press.
Through tears, Willow said, “You mean it wasn’t the Japanese who attacked and hurt you, but our fellow countrymen? How can that be? Independence and whatever else, I hate it all. For me, you are my priority, not independence. Quit right now. We should leave here, like Jaesong’s family, go to Wahiawā and forget everything—Korea, independence, everything—and live peacefully.”
Taewan fell silent, as if he were at a loss for words.
The incident, which had been a fight between Koreans, caused a scandal after it was reported in the Hawaiian newspapers. The conflict between Koreans only deepened. For the next few days, Taewan went to work with a grim expression. Willow watched him nervously, feeling as if the worst was yet to come.
A few days later, he came home early, bringing pork and a toy he had bought for Jongho. It was a wooden car with wheels that turned. For Willow the car was more welcome than the pork. Jongho refused to be parted from Taewan that night. Expectation and anxiety were tightly joined in Willow’s heart as she hurriedly prepared supper with the meat he had bought for them.
They sat around the table. Jongho was so smitten with his father, who had kept him entertained, playing with the car while Willow had cooked, that he insisted on eating supper sitting on his lap. Seeing this brought tears to her eyes. The three of them, sitting together eating rice, even without side dishes—that was Willow’s daily dream. At the same time, seeing Taewan acting so different than normal weighed on her heart.
After eating, Taewan sipped water mixed with scorched rice. “I’ve heard from the Kaesong ajumoni’s husband. They need someone to work in their laundry. Their daughter is leaving for the mainland, and it’s too much work for the two of them alone.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I would discuss it with you.”
“What is there to discuss? Let’s go. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”
Seeing Willow so excited, Taewan paused before continuing. “I want you and Jongho to go to Wahiawā alone. Being with them is much better than living here with strangers. You know how decent they both are, and they were like brother and sister to my parents.”
Willow’s heart fell. “And what about you?”
Taewan turned his gaze away. “I think I have to go to China. Office work doesn’t suit me, and I don’t want to fight with the People’s League here. It’s not my compatriots I should be fighting against, but the Japanese. Chairman Park is forming the Republic of Korea Government. I have to go there.”
Any government established by Yongman Park was bound to be a government based on armed struggle. Willow was stunned. What she had dreaded was finally happening.
“Don’t go. I won’t let you go. You know how my aboji died! Maybe you don’t realize how much my omma and we children suffered. Don’t go. What if you never return?” Willow’s words mingled with tears. The room was filled with the sound of her weeping.
Jongho wiped the tears from her face with his small hands.
Seeing that, Taewan’s expression grew even more determined. “I have to fight, in order to ensure that your aboji’s death, and brother’s death, were not in vain. I want to be a worthy aboji to my child. If later, Jongho asks where I was back then, I have to have an answer, don’t I? If I don’t go now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. It can’t be otherwise.
“Jongho, your aboji’s going to come home after defeating the Japanese bastards and freeing our country, so you look after your omma like a brave boy, okay?”
Jongho nodded vigorously.
* * *
Taewan went with them to Wahiawā to help carry the luggage. With Taewan’s departure approaching, Willow regretted every passing moment that the words she wanted to say stuck in her throat. Even the fact that Hongju lived in Wahiawā was no comfort.
When they got off the train, they were struck by the number of soldiers in uniform. Some of the Koreans living in the Wahiawā region worked on pineapple farms or in canning plants, but most of them ran shops for the Schofield camp soldiers. Except for the soldiers, there were few haole to be seen. In the street lined with shops such as laundries, barbershops, restaurants, tailor’s shops, grocery stores, furniture stores, and shoe-repair shops, there were no big, impressive buildings like in Honolulu and the rhythm of life felt different. Taewan, carrying the luggage, walked in front and found the house, while Willow followed with Jongho on her back, swallowing back her tears.
The laundry run by the Kaesong ajumoni’s family was on Palm Street. The elderly couple had been waiting for their arrival and greeted them joyfully. The shop was located on the street side of a building with a blue tin roof, and at the back there were two rooms, with a wooden-floored space that doubled as the kitchen, that was barely large enough for a meal table. The laundry room and a toilet stood on one side of a backyard where the clothes could be dried.
Willow helped the Kaesong ajumoni prepare supper while Taewan talked quietly with her husband. As Willow moved about blankly, the old woman seasoned spinach and said, “It can’t be helped. We all have to play a role, without exception. Armed fighting isn’t the only kind of independence movement. It’s also being patriotic to send your husband off quietly.”
Willow reckoned it was easier to talk like that when it was happening to somebody else. Nevertheless, her words became a source of comfort and strength for her.
After Taewan decided to leave, Willow kept thinking of her mother. If she knew what was happening, her mother would say, “My daughter’s fate is just like mine.” Her mother had feared that what happened to her husband might stir up her remaining children to join a rebellion, and so she never spoke of it.
Had she not known what he was doing beforehand or had she not been able to make him stop, or had she maybe been proud of him? Above all, Willow wanted to know how her mother had gone on when he left home and there was no news. Was it only because of the children? Willow loved Jongho, but would that be enough for her to endure a life without her husband?
Willow filled Taewan’s bowl to the brim with rice and pressed it down.
The five of them sat around the table. Whenever Jongho found himself in an unfamiliar place, his shy side took over and he remained silent. The Kaesong ajumoni explained the situation with the laundry. The elder brother of her son-in-law, who was running a grocery store in Los Angeles, had written to his brother, who was helping run the cleaning business with her, suggesting that they go into business together. The two brothers first came to work on the sugarcane farms, but quite soon the older brother went across to the mainland, while the younger one, who had married the oldest daughter of the Kaesong ajumoni, stayed in Hawaiʻi. Since the son-in-law wanted to be with his older brother, and her daughter wanted her children to grow up in the United States, they had decided to go.
“They urged us to go with them, but there was no work for us there. What would we do? Besides, I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving my other children behind. Our younger boy keeps telling us to give up the laundry business and move to Honolulu, but we feel an obligation to our regular customers. That’s why I asked you to join us.”
They made most of their money doing all the washing for their soldier customers, from their uniforms to their towels and socks, for four dollars a month. The competition was fierce, and even regular customers might go elsewhere if someone offered a lower price. The Kaesong couple had earned a reputation for reliability, so they had a good number of regulars.
“My husband goes into the barracks every morning to deliver, and pick up, laundry.”
They decided that when the laundry came in, the Kaesong ajumoni and Willow would do the washing together, then Willow would do the ironing and repairs. Lastly, it would be the Kaesong ajumoni’s job to sort the laundry by customer.
“I’m going to do the cooking, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
“What a blessing to sit and eat the food you prepare,” said Willow with a smile.
“We’ll still be one pair of hands short, so I’m thinking of hiring someone else as well.”
She said she would pay her a salary of twenty-five dollars and gradually increase it. Willow, obliged to live apart from Taewan, would have been grateful just for her food and a place to sleep.
“Ajumoni, please look after my wife and child while I’m away,” said Taewan.
“Don’t worry. The work may be difficult, but I won’t make life hard for her. When we were living on the plantation at ‘Ewa, your omma took care of me like a younger sister. Even just for her sake, I’ll take good care of your family, so you must stay in good shape and come home safely.”
Her husband, who had already spoken with Taewan, nodded in agreement.
Taewan spent the night. The room that Willow and Jongho were to use was no smaller than that on Punchbowl Street. Once the three were alone together, Jongho clung to Taewan, babbling happily, and she could not help shedding tears. The couple had no time for themselves until Jongho finally fell asleep, after prolonged petulance.
Shaking his head, Taewan, who had been acting with more vigor since deciding to leave, sighed heavily as he spoke. “I’m ashamed that I haven’t been acting as a true family head should, and now I’m leaving like this. Please look after Jongho while I’m away, and keep yourself well. Later, we’ll have the rest of our lives to talk about the old days. Don’t worry if I don’t write often, because no news is good news.”
Willow had been biting her lip but now she opened her mouth. Remembering what the Kaesong ajumoni had said, she struggled over each word. “I will send you off peacefully. But still I want you to promise me one thing.”
Taewan raised his head and looked at her.
“You must not die. No matter what happens, you must come back alive. Jongho and I will be waiting for you every day.” Willow spoke with a trembling voice, but she did not cry.
12
UPPER VILLAGE, LOWER VILLAGE
