Sonju, page 6
Second Sister was watching and listening from the work area. Mother-in-Law shook her finger at Jinwon. “You will do no such thing. We are not merchants.” She left the room mumbling. Sonju’s husband smiled and watched his brother pull out his wallet. With money in her hand, Jinwon took off.
Sonju went to the work area and squatted next to Second Sister who was pouring water over soybeans that had started to sprout in a glazed pot. She asked, “What does Jinwon do with the money?”
“It’s a mystery to me. She will get another brilliant idea when the money runs out.”
“And money from winning card games?”
“I know she buys dried squid and roasted peanuts at the village store.”
“We have a store?”
“The hunchback, you saw him the other day talking to Mother-in-Law, didn’t you? He owns a small store near the school gate. He sells snacks, candles, matches—that sort of thing.” Second Sister covered the clay pot with a burlap cloth and stood up.
Sonju rose too. “Maybe she buys for everybody she plays with.”
“Not likely. She’s not a generous person.”
On the way to the kitchen, Sonju whispered, “Just think where we would be now if we had Jinwon’s ingenuity and force of personality to get what we wanted.” She just wished Jinwon would be more thoughtful for her mother.
September arrived with much awaited coolness in the air. For over a week now, Mother-in-Law had been muttering loudly enough for Sonju to hear, “It’s been over six months, more than enough time to conceive a child.” She soon began her ritual of burning incense and praying to Buddha first thing in the morning.
Every time she heard the soft tick-tock of Mother-in-Law’s wooden prayer bell, Sonju’s heart shrank. For the past few months, she had been wondering if she were barren like her aunt. Now that Mother-in-Law was speaking the words, the possibility of infertility seemed more real to her. Until recently she had thought that a child might bring a change to the misaligned state of her marriage, but now she wanted a child for her own to love and to guide. But what if she couldn’t conceive? Like what happened to her aunt, would her parents-in-law arrange a mistress for her husband to have his children?
She escaped to the hill. Down below from where she stood, the barley in the fields undulated like music and whistled when the wind changed its direction. There she imagined a very different life, the life she could have had. Once away from the hill though, she felt guilty for imagining so much less about her husband and their life together. She at times thought she focused too much on her disappointments and tried to let them go, but they all came back at every new disappointment. Like the time she flipped through his engineering books when he wasn’t around and found them utterly indecipherable, and having read no books since her marriage, she had asked him to buy some for her. She made the same request a few times. Eventually she stopped asking.
The week before, she had asked him what he talked about with his father. “Oh, about my studies and my future goals and about the discussions that came up in classes,” he said. “I would like to hear that too,” she said. “Hmph! What a useless curiosity!” he said and turned away.
The next time he mentioned his classes, she asked if there were any women in his class. He said, “No. After graduation, we will all go to the construction site and deal with the contractors and workers. They are all men.” Then he proceeded to tell her how well his professors regarded him. His lips moved in a curious way in a smile and his eyes shimmered as he said, “I’ll get strong recommendations from them when I graduate.”
She could tell that he was extremely proud of himself. She looked at his boyish face and said, “I’m sure you will. People like you.”
“I’m hoping for a post in Seoul,” he said. “It’s a quicker way to move up.”
She might return to Seoul soon despite her parents’ desire to keep her far away. She grinned. They couldn’t do anything about it because she was now married and was no longer under their care.
The workers cut the stalks with sickles, stacked them, and transferred them to rice straw mats in the outer courtyard. Afterwards, they separated the grains from the stalks with threshers. Then they spread the grains to dry, hulled them, had them polished, packed the white rice in rice rope sacks and stacked them in the storage building. Most of them would be sold.
The moon was getting fatter each day, which meant Chuseok holiday was approaching to give thanks for this year’s harvest. Half a dozen village women came to help the Second House women prepare for the feast. Several worked into the night under the light of the moon.
On the morning of the feast, the same village women with their children in tow showed up early to help. Then the clan members from the city came for the holiday and stopped by. The house was noisy and saturated with mingled smells—the raw scent of freshly picked fruits and vegetables; the scent of nutty smell of rice cakes steaming; and meat, fish, and poultry sizzling. The spirits of the ancestors were served first before the family had the feast in the living room and the sharecroppers and their children ate in the anteroom. Pinned between two women, a sharecropper’s little boy quickly shoved two pieces of rice cake into his pocket, then glanced around. Sonju looked away.
The next morning, the family walked to the burial mountain. A servant carried the food, drink, and a reed mat on an A-frame back carrier. Sonju, Second Sister, and First Sister carried the extra food.
In front of Father-in-Law’s parents’ graves, the servant spread the mat, and the three daughters-in-law laid out food and drink on the marble offering table. After the family bowed to the dead ancestors three times, they walked down to the first son’s grave. While the parents-in-law watched, the rest of the family bowed, then stood for a moment in silence. Sonju turned and saw Mother-in-Law wipe her eyes on her sleeve and smile down at Chuljin, the future head of the Second House family.
After lunch, the children romped in the yellowed grass or hid behind the bushes to relieve themselves. Father-in-Law pointed at empty grave sites midway up the hill and told his second son that he wanted those sites for his wife and himself. Sonju’s husband complained to his brother about the poor maintenance of the family burial site, so Brother-in-Law went down to the caretaker’s house and returned shortly, putting his wallet back in his pocket.
Without anyone noticing, First Sister was back at her husband’s grave and was pulling the weeds that had grown tall. Sonju walked down and squatted near her. Some weeds came up easily but others she had to fight. The stubborn roots of the dry, rough weeds surrendered only after clinging dearly to clumps of dirt and leaving scratches on her hand. The core of all living things, the will, should persist to the absolute end like that, and she too should have stood up to her mother to the end, she told herself, and swallowed her regret before moving on to the next weed.
First Sister’s Outing, 1947 Fall
The following Monday, maids were already at the work area pumping water and sorting dirty laundry when Sonju went to the kitchen. Only Second Sister was there. “Where is First Sister this morning?” Sonju asked. “The kitchen looks empty without her.”
“She is catching the 7:45 train with a village woman to go to the city market.”
“First Sister? To the market?” Sonju grabbed a ladle and stirred the beef soup that had started to boil. “And why does she need a chaperone?”
“She has not been out of Maari since she returned from the boarding school. And besides, it’s a proper safeguard for a widow.”
With a ladle still in her hand, Sonju stepped toward the open door, craned her neck to check the clock in the living room–7:20. Just then, First Sister came out of her room in a soft green top and skirt that Sonju had never seen her wear.
“First Sister is pacing the living room,” Sonju said to Second Sister as she put the ladle down on the counter. “And here comes the village woman.”
As soon as First Sister and the woman passed the well toward the gates, Sonju turned to Second Sister, “Why all of a sudden?”
“I told my husband you felt bad for First Sister. He saw you and her pulling the weeds at his brother’s grave.” Second Sister filled a small bowl with steaming rice and placed it on a tray. “Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see how bad things are. He and his father arranged this outing for her.” I would have liked to go to a city market too, Sonju thought.
When First Sister returned home that evening, Sonju asked her, “Did you enjoy your outing? Tell me what you did in the city.”
A flicker of a smile passed over First Sister’s face, the first smile Sonju had ever seen on her. “Umm, we went to the market, had lunch at a restaurant, then stopped by a fabric shop … We went to a public bath for a scrub. Yes, that’s what we did.”
Sonju could almost taste the smell and hear the sounds of the markets she used to frequent in Seoul. “I’m glad you had an exciting day. Why don’t you rest? Second Sister and I can manage the kitchen.”
First Sister hesitated. “Umm, Mother-in-Law …”
“I’ll tell her I pushed you out of the kitchen if she asks.”
On the way to her room, First Sister hesitated a few times and looked backward at Sonju with a tight, anxious expression. It broke Sonju’s heart.
That Saturday night, Sonju told her husband about First Sister’s outing. “It’s good she had a chance to get out, don’t you think? She had not stepped out of Maari for fourteen years.”
“Hmph,” he grumbled. “Nothing good will come of it.”
She glared at him. “You would rather she be kept locked up in this village? What joy does she have here?”
He stared at her. Her voice must have been sharp. Before he could say anything, she left the room, went to the garden by the kitchen and leaned on the cool plastered wall of the bath house. She and her husband upset each other so often. They were not meant to be a couple. The waning moon and scattered stars above seemed to nod in agreement.
On the first Tuesday of November, four hundred heads of Napa cabbages were delivered to the house. The Second House women and the two maids first brined them and for the next two days, they stuffed the brined cabbage, leaf by leaf, with a mixture of sweet rice paste, hot pepper powder, fermented baby shrimp sauce, minced garlic and ginger, and thin strips of white radishes. Then the stuffed cabbages went into tall, fat glazed earthenware pots. The servants buried the pots in the ground near the kitchen to keep the kimchi cold all through winter until spring.
Two days later, Second Sister’s morning sickness began, and she told Mother-in-Law about her pregnancy. Every clan woman came to congratulate Mother-in-Law. The early morning prayers didn’t stop as Sonju hoped.
Second Sister was miserable with nausea and vomiting. Sonju pleaded with Second Sister to stay in her room and let her and First Sister take care of the kitchen, but Second Sister declined and said, “I’ll get looks from Mother-in-Law. You don’t become a lady of leisure until both parents-in-law die.”
The day after First Sister made her fifth trip to the market with the chaperone, Sonju was on her way to visit Big House Lady when she saw First Sister’s chaperone in the outer courtyard chatting and giggling with another village woman. They were pointing at Second House. The village woman saw Sonju and nudged the chaperone. Their conversation abruptly stopped, and with a stilted smile, they greeted Sonju. They must have been talking about First Sister. Sonju cut her visit short.
Second Sister was at the well and saw Sonju. “That was quick,” she said.
“Yes. I have something to take care of.” Sonju didn’t see First Sister in the kitchen. There was only one other place she could be. In the corner of her room, First Sister was stacking neatly folded clothes. She was startled to see Sonju walking in. Sonju sat, and not wanting to alarm First Sister, spoke in a steady voice, “First Sister, on the way to the Big House, I came across your chaperone talking to another village woman. From the way they acted, I was sure they were gossiping about you. Do you know why they might do that?”
With fear in her widened eyes, First Sister regarded Sonju briefly and gave her a small nod before she said in a trembling voice that she met a man at the market and they made plans to elope. Her face contorted, she began to cry, rocking, trying to stop her torrential sobs with the back of her hand. After she gained her composure, she looked up at Sonju. “I have to take this chance. It’s a chance to leave, you see?” She covered her face in her hands and sobbed again. Then she gazed down and said in a resigned voice, “I must have been evil … in my previous life … to deserve this miserable life. Yes, I must have. I was living only because I didn’t die.”
First Sister’s last words pierced Sonju’s bosom with immeas-
urable sadness. She covered her face and quietly cried along with First Sister. She must help First Sister make this desperate escape, she decided, and wiped her face on her sleeve. “Where is your man and where would you settle?”
“Umm, if I can still elope …” First Sister rocked again. “He is staying at a lodging near the market. We planned to settle in a small fishing village in Jeolla Province.”
“I’ll try to help you,” Sonju said, leaving First Sister who started crying again, and went directly to Father-in-Law.
When Sonju told him about First Sister, he stared at Sonju speechless. She said, “Father-in-Law, this man may show up to take her, and things may get messy if you try to stop him. It will taint the family’s reputation. The chaperone has already started gossiping. Please let her go before she elopes.”
Father-in-Law looked away. Neither son was home. He thanked her for telling him, then said, “Keep her in her room until her departure tonight.”
As Sonju left the men’s quarters, she heard Father-in-Law calling for the old servant. She returned to First Sister’s room and told her to be ready to leave that night and remain in her room until someone came to get her. First Sister covered her mouth, and through her liquid eyes, smiled gratefully at Sonju. Returning her gaze, Sonju said, “Have a good life to make up for the lost years.”
When Sonju entered the kitchen, Second Sister asked, “I saw you go to First Sister’s room and then to the men’s quarters. What’s that all about?”
When Sonju told her, Second Sister gasped in shock. “She found a man to elope with? It’s so … I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” Looking at the bowl she was holding, she mumbled, “… so out of character for her.”
“First Sister will remain in her room until she leaves,” Sonju said. “No one other than Jinwon will be allowed in that room. We’ll have a maid take First Sister’s dinner to her room.”
After a minute or so, Second Sister put the bowl down on the counter and said, “I don’t know what to expect, you know, with First Sister gone. What will Mother-in-Law do?”
Sonju didn’t respond to Second Sister. Things were moving fast. First Sister was leaving. Nothing must go wrong.
On the yo mattress that night, Sonju lay still, unable to sleep. She heard soft footsteps. She rose to peek through a tear in the papered window of her room and watched the dark shapes of First Sister, the chaperone, and a male servant walk toward the gates. She blinked to clear the mist in her eyes, felt the corner of her mouth move up, and wrung her hands all at the same time. What would it be like to leave? Just leave and start new? Imagine! Sonju kept her eyes on the hushed figures until she heard the creak of the gate closing.
For days, Sonju revisited First Sister’s words, her smile through a pool of tears, her rocking, the three figures disappearing out of the gates in the dark. For days, she kept an eye on Jinwon and wished she would do something—smash something, cry, or scream. What did the mother and daughter say to each other on their last night together?
Sonju didn’t have to tell her husband about First Sister when he came home that Saturday. Before dinner, her husband said, “My father told me you were involved in First Sister’s leaving.” She couldn’t tell how he took it. She decided that the less she said, the better it would be. “Yes,” she said, and no more. He didn’t make any other comments about it. People in the village tsk-tsked but soon forgot and went on with their lives.
About two weeks later, out of the blue, the Second House family heard Jinwon singing at her highest notes, a sound that seemed to rip her throat apart on the way out. She still hadn’t uttered a word about her mother. It must be her way of dealing with her loss, Sonju supposed. How complicated Jinwon’s feelings must be, especially because she had consistently ignored her mother. But she was still a child, and it was her mother she lost. Sonju’s feelings for this adolescent, now practically an orphan, turned tender.
There was little change in the Second House after First Sister left, yet the atmosphere was somehow different. Contrary to what Second Sister had anticipated, Mother-in-Law acted the same toward her as before. Sonju was busier with one less pair of hands in the kitchen. It didn’t help that Second Sister continued to suffer morning sickness and poor appetite, saying once again, “All my teeth are loose. It was like this during the entire pregnancy both times before. And that’s not all. Chuljin and Jina were both breech babies and my water broke well ahead of the delivery.”
What she heard sounded so serious that Sonju began to think something might go wrong with the pregnancy, or worse, with Second Sister. The family would need extra kitchen help very soon. She rolled an invisible thinking stone.
