All Woman and Springtime (36 page)

When she awoke in her new room, she wondered if she was dead. Did the dead have beds with blankets? Did the dead suffer such deep, unbearable thirst? Then the young woman came in and fed her, and she knew she was still among the living—the girl was just so . . . plain, in spite of her brilliant auburn hair; and why would the dead need to eat? In a way, she was disappointed. Death would have made things easier. She put her hand on her belly, and instinctively she knew she had not lost the baby. It must have been fate. She still had a reason to feel special.

Gyong-ho was trying too hard to be helpful, and it was a little annoying. Il-sun loved Gi, but she hovered too close. She kept coming into her room to offer water and to fluff her pillows, holding an overly bright smile. Gi’s eyes were always on her—she had such a loud way of being quiet—and sometimes Il-sun just needed some room to breathe. The look in Gi’s eyes made her wonder if perhaps Gi craved her in the same way she had craved Gianni. Was it possible for a woman to want another woman in such a way? The book
John and Daisy
had certainly alluded to it. It seemed better to avoid Gi than to confront her.

Uncertainty gnawed at Il-sun from the inside. Would Mrs. Cha insist that she become a prostitute, even with a baby? At the very least she would have to wait until the baby was born to put her to work, and then perhaps Il-sun could find a way out of it. This baby would buy her time to adjust and come up with a plan.

Il-sun rubbed her belly and sang a lullaby.
I will be a good mother,
she vowed to herself as she fell asleep.

65

T
HE
DOOR
TO
THE
suite opened and Gi peeked out of her room to see who was there. She dreaded that it might be the frightening Mrs. Cha coming to spit curses at them. Instead, it was the same two men who had accompanied Mrs. Cha earlier that day, her bodyguards, but with another man who was carrying a small backpack and a toolbox. They came inside and closed the door.

“Mrs. Cha says it’s time for your tattoos,” said one of the men in accented Korean. Though he looked Korean, he was obviously not from there.

“Tattoos?” asked Cho.

“Everybody gets one,” he replied, pulling his shirtsleeve back to reveal a small tattoo on the light skin of his lower arm.

“Why do we need tattoos?” asked Jasmine.

“Because you belong to Blue Talon now. If you try to escape, anyone from the organization can recognize you by the tattoo. You will have to cut your leg off if you want to be rid of it.”

Gi blanched. She did not want to have anything permanently marking her body, let alone a brand that would connect her with an organization. Having a tattoo of a foreign organization would surely land her in the prison camp back home, and she still had hopes of returning one day. She wondered how it was going to be, living without one of her legs. How would she go about cutting it off?

“Please don’t try to resist. We’ll have to beat you if you do.” His tone of voice indicated that he would not gain any pleasure from doing it, but he would do it all the same, if he had to. The women had little choice but to submit.

Cho stepped forward to be the first, putting on a brave face for the benefit of her friends. The tattoo artist asked her to lie down on her left side, exposing the outside of her right ankle. He swabbed an area of skin with alcohol, then took a device that looked like a pen out of the toolbox. He then opened a package and took out a small plastic tip with needles on its end, attaching it to the pen. He set up a vial of ink on a bedside table, and then went to work. The tattoo pen made a buzzing sound, and as soon as he touched it to Cho’s skin she kicked involuntarily, stifling a scream. The two bodyguards grabbed Cho and held her down.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it to hurt like that. You can let me go. I won’t kick.”

The two men looked at each other, and reluctantly let go. The tattoo artist brought the needle to her skin again; this time she gritted her teeth and endured the pain. The artist worked for about twenty minutes, and Cho’s face was shock white and wet with perspiration. She was relieved when he pronounced the tattoo complete.

Gi looked down at Cho’s ankle, which was oozing ink and blood, and gasped. It was not the gruesomeness of the reddish purple mixture pumping out of the tattoo that startled her but the image itself. Gi knew without a doubt that she would someday have to cut her own leg off. The tattoo was roughly two inches in diameter, situated just above the condyle of Cho’s ankle. In the background were the symbols of the imperialist South Korean flag, with the
taegeuk,
or yin-yang, symbol rendered in blood red and dark blue, surrounded by four trigrams from the Chinese book
I Ching
. In front of the symbol, cutting across it at an angle, was a raptor’s talon, sharp and poised as if about to grasp its prey. Oddly, the talon looked appropriate on Cho’s body, her hands looking very much like the talon on the tattooed image. Otherwise, it was a horrific perversion of her flesh.

Seeing her friends’ discomfort, Cho quipped to the artist, “You did alright, but could you move it just a little bit to the left?”

The attempt at levity worked, and the women laughed.

T
HAT
EVENING
,
AS
Gi was lying down for the night, trying to keep the covers from rubbing against the dressings on her fresh tattoo, the door to their suite opened.

“Il-sun?” It was a man’s voice.

Gi got out of bed to see who it was. Jasmine and Cho had done the same. It was the doctor.

“Il-sun?” he asked again, looking timid.

Il-sun poked her head out of her room. “That’s me,” she said.

“You have baby?” he asked.

Gi was relieved that her plea for Il-sun’s condition had not gone unnoticed.

“Yes, I’m pregnant.”

The doctor reached into his kit and took out a cardboard package. He opened it and handed Il-sun a small wand.

“Could you please?” he asked.

Il-sun took it and gave him an uncertain look.

Jasmine, sensing Il-sun’s uncertainty, said, “It’s a test to be sure that you are pregnant. You’re supposed to pee on the end.”

Il-sun shrugged and disappeared into the bathroom. She came out a moment later and handed it back to the doctor. They waited while the doctor kept an eye on his watch, and after a few minutes he looked at the tester and nodded.

“Yes. Baby,” he said, and reached again into his kit. He opened a bottle and took out a pill. He then went into the bathroom and filled a cup with water, and handed both the pill and the water to Il-sun. “For baby,” he said, looking at the floor.

Something about the doctor’s mannerisms did not seem right to Gi. He appeared uncomfortable, but maybe he was just embarrassed to be in a room full of women in their nightshirts. Il-sun put the pill in her mouth and lifted the glass of water.

“Il-sun, no!” Gi shouted suddenly—an inner alarm was ringing. Il-sun gave her a funny look and swallowed the pill.

“Thank you,” she said to the doctor. “You are kind to look after me and my baby.”

The doctor did not reply. He simply turned around, his eyes on the floor, and walked out the door.

“What was that, Gi?” Il-sun asked, scowling.

“I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling.”

“He was only giving me vitamins. For the baby,” she said, and went back to bed.

66

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
THEIR
door opened and a woman wearing a miniskirt and a skintight tank top came into the suite. Gyong-ho recognized the outfit as the exaggerated sexualized styling of a prostitute, and she felt a sudden need to spit. There had been no need to ask what work they were expected to perform because Mrs. Cha had already referred to them as the new whores; but seeing their visitor that morning brought it back to reality.

“Mrs. Cha wants me to show you girls around the place,” said the woman. Her accent was South Korean. She had an air about her of perpetual boredom, and she spoke through a large pink wad of chewing gum. “She says it’s time you start pulling your own weight.”

“Do I have to come?” asked Il-sun. “I’m not feeling very good this morning.” Then she added, with a touch of pride, “Morning sickness.”

“Mrs. Cha said one of you wasn’t feeling so good,” said the woman. “Naw, you don’t have to come.” She spoke as if she was either too lazy or too bored to give her words proper enunciation or her verbs proper conjugation. Gi noticed the Blue Talon tattoo on her ankle and shuddered, her own tattoo stinging anew. They were now sisters, of a sort. “Follow me,” she said, and walked out the door.

Gi, Cho, and Jasmine stepped for the first time beyond the confines of their suite and into a long, narrow hallway. The corridor was inefficiently lit by a single, dim light that left both ends of the hall in darkness. The walls were cracked and peeling, and there was a vague, moldy smell coming from the frayed and faded carpet. There were other doors on both sides of the hallway, presumably leading to other suites. The women went down the hall to a set of stairs. The stairs were likewise poorly lit, and made of bare wood, but smelled better than the hallway. They creaked as the women descended.

The stairs opened into a large room with several small, round tables, a raised stage at one end, and a long bar running the length of the room. It was clean and nicely furnished. Behind the bar was a Korean man with a round face and a thin mustache, standing with his arms folded, scowling at nothing in particular. Sitting at the bar were two women, heavily made up and dressed for business in skimpy outfits, chatting idly with each other. At the end of the bar closest to the stairs was a stout door with a mean-looking, muscular man sitting on a stool next to it. He was reading a newspaper and looked up briefly when he heard the women enter the room.

“This is the bar,” said the woman. “Where we meet clients. It’s pretty much always open, but we normally aren’t busy in the morning. That guy at the door is as much there to keep us in as he is to keep the customers in line. I seen him break a girl’s arm before, when she tried to walk out. Broke her nose, too. He’s called
Asshole.
” She said
asshole
in English, then told them what it meant in Korean. “Uncle Lyong started calling him that, and now everyone does. He seems to like it, and anyway, the name fits.”

“Does that door open to the street?” asked Jasmine.

“Not exactly. I’ll show you,” replied the woman. They walked over to the door, and the woman said something to Asshole in English. Asshole nodded and then held the door open. The women stood in the doorway, looking out.

On the other side was a narrow room with dirty windows that looked out onto the street. The room was dingy and uninviting, a stark contrast to the room they were just in. There was a bar in this room as well, with a wary-looking bartender and several rough-looking men sitting on stools. They looked toward the women with hard eyes.

“This bar is a front for the real business in the back. If a guy wants a girl, or some blow or crank or pot, he tells the bartender a password and he lets him into the back room where all the action is. It helps keep the cops away. There’s no back exit, so everyone has to come and go through here. Those guys sitting there all work for Blue Talon. They carry guns and keep the place secure. If you have thoughts of trying to escape, even if you get past Asshole, you will still have to get by them.”

The woman led them again into the back room, where they turned and went through a door under the stairs. It opened into what appeared to be a disused restaurant, embellished with some out-of-place homey touches. There was an industrial kitchen in the back, a few tables, a television in the corner, and a window with a piece of plywood bolted securely where the glass should have been. They were the only people in the room.

“We call this the lounge,” she said. “We cook and eat here. Whenever you’re not working you can hang out in here, watch television or whatever. There’s books and games on that shelf in the corner. We take turns cooking and cleaning up. We eat pretty good. Just don’t piss off Mrs. Cha.”

“She seems mean,” said Cho.

“She can be a real bitch, but she’s not quite as bad as she seems at first. Just do what she says and stay out of her way.” She paused for a second to let it sink in. “Anyway, it’s our turn to cook, so let’s get to work before everyone starts grumbling.”

They went into in the kitchen and began making rice, preparing vegetables, and sautéing meat. Gi had eaten well, if simply, since she had arrived, which puzzled her: It was known that outside of
Chosun
the world was a bleak, uncivilized wasteland. In reality, the opposite seemed to be true. Gi had never eaten so well or so consistently as she had after leaving her own country, even being a prisoner.

“What’s your name?” Cho asked the woman.

“Everyone calls me Britney,” she replied. “You know, after the singer?”