Somebody's Daughter (32 page)

She was beginning to see the same lines on her face, hear her own voice sounding strange to her ears. But was that so bad?

She gave her husband a caress in the privacy of their inner room. She thought with affection how they had eschewed both a folk wedding and a Western-style one at the wedding hall, instead opting for a simple ceremony under the watchful eyes of Christo and the rough-hewn beams of the church. That is what Il-sik had suggested, and Kyung-sook was so grateful to him. When he reached for her in the dark, she did not see his disfigured hand, nor did she see his wrinkles. In fact, their bodies fit together as nicely as the yin-yang symbol on their country's flag. She was disappointed on the nights he didn't touch her.

“That's the way we will be, then, two old mandarin ducks,” she said quietly. “Hae-ro, swimming in slow circles, old together.”

In her pocket, she could feel the number, the weightless scrip of it. She wondered if anyone else had called for the girl. She didn't know why she hadn't just done so right away to find that most likely she was wrong, and could put her mind at ease. But Cooking Oil Auntie had made her so upset, she couldn't think. And then she had returned home to Il-sik and realized she had more to consider than just her ease of mind—there was also her husband and the entire life she had built up for herself, hanging on that slimmest thread of possibility. What was the right thing to do?

Seoul

1993

What a sense of déjà vu, the Little Angels hot inner office.

“Hello, it is nice to see you,” Miss Park greeted.

“You have a lot of babies here.” Doug peered through the office's window at the rows of cribs, lined up like shoeboxes. “Do you get a new delivery every day?”

“I am fine, and you?”

“Great, thanks.” He turned to me.

“You amaze me, Sarah, how you managed to find this place and get your file without help, without anyone translating for you. I guess if you set your mind to something, nothing can stop you.”

“Well, I—”

The door to the office opened. An
ajuhshi
in a chartreuse polo shirt walked in, leading a doughy woman with short, permed hair that was a matte, shoe-polish black.

I couldn't speak, something welled up inside me.

“Agi-yah?”
she said, looking at me.

I was frozen. The
ajuhshi
pointed at me and muttered. I stared at the freckles on this woman's face, the color of bruise spots on apples. I had moles, brown moles, soft as gumdrops—but no freckles. What did this mean?

Miss Park said something to them in Korean, and they sat down. The woman kept staring at me.

A slim teenage girl walked into the room. She put her Louis Vuitton bag down on the table.

“Sorry,” she said to us. “I got hung up in traffic and the battery in my cell phone died.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Julie Koh. My mom's HeeJung Koh, the director of Little Angels. I'm here to translate.”

I was about to say that I had brought Doug to translate, but then I decided that would be rude, she'd come all this way. Doug hadn't said a word in Korean yet, anyway.

“Your English—” I began. I didn't know how to put it—I hated it when ignoramuses in Eden's Prairie praised me for speaking English so well.

“It sounds so perfectly American, your accent,” I said.

“Oh, I go to the Seoul Foreign High School where it's all expat kids, and only a few Koreans, like me and my sister.” She checked her watch, a Swatch. “And we watch Armed Forces TV all the time. I love
All My Children
.”

Miss Park said, “We,
chuhh
, start?”

The woman was indeed “Mrs. Lee.” The
ajuhshi
was Mr. Lee, her brother—my uncle. They both lived in Seoul. Mrs. Lee asked me again,
“Agi-yah?”
which Julie translated as
Are you my baby?

I said I was the girl she saw on TV.

She came over to me, began thumping my back and wailing.

I hugged her. Something about her felt right; Christine was all corners and angles, honed by hours and hours of tennis and feel-the-burn Jane Fonda leg lifts. But this woman was all loose, warm flesh that seemed to envelop me. I started to cry, too.

Someone tugged on my arm. Miss Park. She handed us both some Kleenex she whisked from a shiny, satin-quilted box. She took one for herself and turned away and discreetly dabbed at her eyes.

“Okay,” Julie said to me. “I'm sure you have some questions for her.”

“I want to know why,” I said. “Julie, could you ask her why she gave me up?”

Mrs. Lee, still sniffling, babbled back.

“She says she had to give you up when her husband died suddenly, just after you were born,” Julie said.

Mrs. Lee looked at me searchingly—I didn't know what kind of expression I had on my face—and added more words.
Dae-hak, you-hak
, words that had to do with school.

“She didn't think she could give you any kind of life, being poor and without a husband. She wanted you to go to college, study abroad.”

She couldn't keep me, just because she was poor and single?

“More questions?” Julie said, eyebrows raised.

I blinked.

“I was covered with
ddong
,” I said to Julie. “Ask her about that, ask her why she did that.”

Julie stopped, shocked.

“It's in my orphanage records.”

Mrs. Lee sucked at her teeth. When Julie translated my question, she seemed taken aback. It took her a few seconds to answer.

“It was such a long time ago, she doesn't remember, she said she's blocking a lot out. She must not have had time to clean you up properly. She says she's sorry.”

My big, burning question gone, just like that.

I didn't know what to do now. I was with the woman who gave birth to me, but the urge to cry out
“Um-ma!”
didn't happen. She was a woman with a bad dye job, a thick waist, polyester pants. Her brother had shifty, nervous eyes and slicked-down hair, which made him look like a weasel. I wanted to automatically feel love for these people, my blood family, but I didn't feel anything except numb.

Miss Park spoke up in Korean.

“Don't be too hard on your mother, is what Miss Park said. I know it might be difficult to understand as Americans—” Julie looked significantly first at Doug, then me. “But bringing a child you can't care for to a police station, or to Little Angels is a caring act. It's not abandonment. These mothers do it so the baby can have a better life.”

I was thinking of a story I'd read in the paper last summer, of a girl on Long Island who had given birth in a public restroom at her prom, cut the umbilical cord on a metal toilet paper dispenser, thrown the kid in the trash to die—then went back out onto the dance floor. Or the Hmong girl in Minneapolis, only nineteen and already a mother of five, who somehow left three of the children out in the car on a subzero night. Two froze to death, the third lost all the fingers on her left hand. Suddenly, the Korean way seemed more humane, enlightened, civilized.

Korea is a Third-World country.

“This is a lot for me,” I murmured. “Maybe we should meet again, alone.”

Mrs. Lee liked this suggestion. She smiled at me enthusiastically, crescents of gold in her teeth smiling along with her.

“She says she'd like to spend some time with you, also. She wants to invite you to her house.”

I nodded, getting up. Doug followed.

I wasn't sure how to say goodbye to her, so I sort of half-bowed and mumbled
an-yong-ha-say-yo
, which I realized, too late, was “hello” and not “goodbye.” Mrs. Lee waved at me.

“Bye-bye!” she said.

Seoul

1993

When I had received the materials for the Motherland Program, I had eagerly flipped through the pages explaining the language and cultural programs, the instructions on what to bring. Then I got to the last page, which said:

A physical examination proving good health is mandatory for all Motherland Program applicants. Please have your doctor fill out and sign the attached form.

I didn't want to have to see our family doctor, Dr. Solvaag, the creepy guy with too-warm fingers, the one Ken and Christine always chatted up at the Eden's Prairie Country Club parties. Then I realized, I'm almost twenty years old. I can have my own doctor. I searched in the phone book, called the first GP listed. Dr. Susan Aas.

When I got to the office, a receptionist had handed me the forms on a clipboard that said PROZAC on it, a pen thoughtfully velcroed to the top.

Name. Address. Social Security. Insurance. Whom to contact in an emergency. Occupation.

Do you exercise regularly? Have you ever had the following (Please check yes or no):

Alcoholism. Cancer (check type). Cataracts. Heart Disease. High Blood Pressure. Kidney Disease. Surgery Requiring Hospitalization. Urinary Tract Problems.

No and no and no and no. I had felt like a conscientious student who has prepared well for a test.

Have you ever been pregnant? (list children's ages and delivery type, code V-vaginal, C-caesarean). Miscarriages? (list date and gestational age). Abortion? No, no, no, no.

Page three. FAMILY HISTORY.

Is there any family history of the following: Alcoholism. Cancer (list type). Heart Disease. Thyroid Disease (Graves', Hashimoto's). Multiple Sclerosis. Hemophilia. Depression.

Is mother or father known to be a carrier of the Tay-Sachs gene? Are either of your parents Ashkenazi Jews? Is there a history of diabetes in your family? (list type: juvenile onset, adult onset, gestational onset).

Allergies? Sickle cell anemia? Do you know if your mother took DES when she was pregnant with you?

My hand began to shake, ever so slightly. Ken had had a mild heart attack two years ago. Christine was allergic to penicillin. Nana had died of a combination of breast cancer and old age.

Are any parents or siblings deceased? Please list date, age, and cause of death.

I went back to the white spaces that stared at me, forever blank, and I scrawled NOT APPLICABLE in huge letters, so hard that the ballpoint ripped through the pages. I handed the mutilated forms in, pen neatly reattached to the velcro.

Dr. Aas asked me in a clipped tone if I had “issues” about disclosing my family's medical history. I shook my head, too angry to speak.

But now, from the sky, my genetic history had fallen into place.

Mrs. Lee, when writing out her address, had done so with her left hand.

No one in the Thorson family is left-handed.

I am.

“Does ‘Anyang-dong' mean ‘car neighborhood'?” I asked Doug. This neighborhood where Mrs. Lee lived was rows and rows of storefronts with metal car parts spilling out: hubcaps, bumpers—various amputated metal pieces lying helpless and dying on the sidewalks. The air was filled with the whizzing noises of welding torches, bright showers of sparks, the petroleum smell of burning metal and rubber.

Doug and I went around and around. At one point, we found ourselves back at the subway station (had they moved it in the last hour?), and had to start again.

A legacy of the Japanese imposing their queer addressing system on Korea during the colonial period, Seoul was laid out by vague neighborhood names but no numbered addresses or street names. Adding to the confusion was the laissez-faire way the alleys and walkways were constructed, meandering first up then down the hill or merely ending for no discernible reason.

We were faced with dozens of narrow alleys that broke off, capillary-like, into more alleys. The houses were hidden behind tall gates and smudged walls, the only proof of their existence crooked TV antennae breaking up the dull color of the skyline.

Julie had written out Mrs. Lee's instructions in English. We located the neon green cross of the pharmacy (the correct one, this time) and entered an alley that led us up a hill.
Sharp left at
DIE SCHÖNE
dry cleaner's
.
Take right fork at video store. Straight up the hill past the
HYUNDAI
apartment building.

Another residential neighborhood. A combination of pollution-stained stucco shacks and high-rise apartment buildings with futuristic translucent tubes enclosing their stairwells. The alley was clogged with both rusty handcarts as well as compact cars parked head-to-tail like the colorful segments of a tapeworm. As we stood, taking this all in, several little kids in billowing karate uniforms whizzed by us on clattery bikes. When they saw Doug, they yelled, “Hello! A-me-ri-ca! Hello!” and waved, grinning with sharp, pointed teeth. Doug waved back.

Mrs. Lee waited outside the small, unmarked gate of her house. Her head was haloed in a pastel, shimmery light.

She came up to me, stroked my arm and said something in Korean.