Somebody's Daughter (38 page)

“Oh-moh! We don't eat personal dogs!”
Choi
Sunsengnim
said with horror and offense.
“We only eat
ddong-
dogs.”

Ddong-
dogs?

“That doesn't sound very appetizing,” Bernie commented, once again shifting the class back to English.

“No,
ddong-
dog means like no one's dog, like—”

“Stray,” said Doug, although later he would tell me that the best-looking dogs on the army base—the big, beautiful German shepherds in particular—had a habit of mysteriously disappearing.

“That's it
, stray.
Belongs to no one. See, no one eats another person's dog! But stray dogs, they are the most delicious.”

“Ddong kae,”
I said, marveling. Stray dog.

“
Sal-ah-
ssi
, y
our pronunciation has gotten quite a bit better,”
Choi
Sunsengnim
commented. The others nodded.

Enduring Pine Village

1993

The cicadas were back.

The end of a seventeen-year cycle already. The buzzing would go on for days without ceasing until some people would swear the insects were nesting in their brains, others would be lulled to sleep by the steady hum. The government had begun a program of spraying poison on the trees in Seoul, saying that the noise disturbed the foreign tourists.

Mengmengmengmengmengmengmengmengmeng
.

She went to the Three Peaks Lake so she could be among the gentle sounds of the water, the cooling color of summergreen oaks and white pine, where she could let the buzz-sound of the cicadas fill her veins with their unending thrum. She had been not-so-old the last time she heard that sound. Seventeen years was time enough for a tree to grow tall, for a baby to grow into an adult. Those years had just washed away like silt.

Il-sik's look of utter relief when she returned safely from Seoul had touched her to the core. Somehow, during the time she was gone, he had found a way to take his anger and disappointment and bury it like a pot of kimchi. It was true that in a marriage, each spouse knows exactly where the other's tenderest, softest secret spots lay, and that words could be sharper than a policeman's worst torture instrument.

But then also, resisting the temptation to use secrets as a weapon, that was the truest kind of love.

Knives cutting water, the saying went, referring to these marital mercies.

The child, her flute, had been lost to her. But she was able to see how she had gained things as well—her life, the one she had built for herself, Il-sik, her dear father living in her marital home, cared for by her own hands. She had to admit, she loved this life.

My daughter, I want to tell you about your mother, and I want to say this prayer for you
…

She had begun this letter, and it had run to many pages, until her hand had knotted up so painfully it looked like her husband's. At the market, she had purchased sheets of the nicest pounded mulberry-bark paper, brought those pages all the way to the lake.

She cleared a small space in the grass, drew a ring of dirt as if she were a geomancer, and put the papers in the middle. In the background, the mountain peaks waited. She did not know the child's name. The girl on TV had been called “Sal-Ah,” which she was sure was a mistake on the part of the translator. Kyung-sook knew in her heart, the girl's American parents would not have given a baby a name that meant “child to buy” in their country's tongue.

She put a match to a corner of the papers and stood back as the flames consumed the small pile. The edges of the bark paper writhed and danced joyfully as the smoke swirled up into the sky. Soon, all that was left were a few silky ashes, which Kyung-sook rubbed into the earth with her hand. Part of the prayer for her daughter would remain in the earth, the rest gone up to Heaven.

Seoul

1993

The time to go had crept up and pounced like a stealthy animal. We Motherland Programmers were packed and ready to leave.

I had been tempted to stay with Doug, who had decided to extend his Korean stay for a few more months—it was easy to get English-language tutoring jobs anywhere in the city. For me, all it would take to refresh my visa for three months would be to follow him down to Pusan, hop on a ferry to Fukuoka, Japan's closest port, and return to continue things as they had been, in Seoul, the two of us.
Pudae chigae
and karaoke bars, watching the lavender-pantsed men at T'apkol Park, eating
samkyupsal
, the three-layers-fat pork that you wrap in a lettuce leaf and stuff, whole, into your mouth.

Yet something was pushing me away from Korea. Jun-Ho had written a hastily scrawled letter in which he said,

Choi
Sunsengim
gave me a gift wrapped in bright purple Mylar. I didn't open it until later, when Doug and I were killing time in the TV room.

Underneath the wrapping was a skinny metal object, cigar-sized. Fake glass gems glued onto it. At first I thought it was a very ornate pen, but when I took off the hidden cover, I saw it contained a small blade, notched at the top, like a bowie knife.

“That's a strange gift to give someone,” Doug commented.

“What?” I said. “A letter opener?”

“You're supposed to use it to kill yourself.”

“Excuse?”

“Don't you remember it from the Cultural Treasures Museum in Taejon?”

I had been there, another class trip. But after seeing so many gold crowns, jade chopstick holders, and replicas of the Turtle Boats, I'd become too dizzy with Korean things to remember them all.

“This is the chastity knife. The one women wore on the blouses of their
hanbok
. If you were ever raped, you were supposed to kill yourself to preserve the family honor.”

“Uh huh.” I tested the point of the blade on my finger. It made a dent, but didn't break the skin.

“But see, the blade is very short. You
seppuku
yourself, but you can't hurt someone else with it.”

I looked at the veins running under the thin skin of my inner wrist, the color suddenly inviting. “You sure remember a lot from that museum visit.”

“Some things are more memorable,” he shrugged.

I put the whatever-it-was into my bag. Its jaunty red tassel glowed in the darkness of the interior of my purse.

Bam-BAM-BAM!

On the TV, Sylvester Stallone, bullet bandoleers X'd over his chest.

“Rambo says, Elephant Ice Cream is number one!”

“Lambo,”
the voiceover translated.
“Numbah wang.”

Another commercial. Meg Ryan in a white nun's outfit, patting a horse. Hawking SEXY-MILD.

Then the crude graphic of the spinning globe. The nightly news.

The big story: a bank holdup. Grainy security-cam footage of a bank. The perp—identity disguised not by the usual nylon stocking or hood but by a surgical mask, as if he were a doctor running amuck—wielding a gun (although Korea has very strict gun-control laws). While the male employees cowered behind chairs, a beslippered
ajuhma
jumped over the counter and started wrestling with him. He awkwardly pointed the gun, seemed confused as to how to use it, then gave up and hit her on the head with it. They showed her later getting some kind of citation from the mayor of Seoul, a white bandage wrapped around half her head.

Then, familiar music.

Michael Jackson!

“Michael Jackson will be in Korea with his friend, Liz Taylor!” Doug translated. He was going to be in Cheju Island, relaxing, looking to perhaps establish an Asian outpost for Neverland.

“The Korean people have always been very gracious to me,” he said, in his wispy little-girl-man voice.

“I heard Liz Taylor is getting married again,” said Doug, who kept up on American goings-on by going to the USIA to read
People
.

“I'm hungry,” I said. “Let's go to one of those noodle-salad places.”

We were about to finally summon the energy to shut off the TV. But then we both recognized the word
adoptee
. And the word Minn-ah-soh-ta.

Footage of a young Korean guy arriving at the waiting area at Kimp'o Airport.

“My name is Brian Muckenhill,” he said, in a familiar Midwestern voice. He was from Blue Earth, Minnesota, population five hundred and three.

“I'm here to try to find my birth family.”

Shock.

“Because of
ahm
,” Doug said. “Cancer of the blood. He needs a bone marrow transplant and no donors could be found in the States. A biological relative would have the best chance.”

Thousands of Koreans had come out to help, plastering posters of his picture in the crevice of every tiny hamlet. Makeshift marrow testing centers sprang up everywhere. Entire military units came out. I strained to see the screen, as if I might see Jun-Ho within the masses, which looked so alike, short haircuts and uniforms. Like a set of toy soldiers.

“The Koreans are impressed,” said Doug, translating a reporter's words, “that a non-Korean family could love this boy so much, someone who is not of their own blood. So Koreans want to come out and help, to get their marrow tested and help him find his family.”

A young woman was on the screen, eyes large as a doe's.

“‘He is, after all, Korean. And Koreans have to help each other.'”

“He's a cadet at West Point, so the U.S. government's paying for the best treatment. But if he doesn't get a bone marrow transplant, he'll most likely die by the end of the year. He was a quarterback on his high school's football team. That blond girl you just saw—that's his girlfriend back in Blue Earth, Minnesota. Man, how come you Korean adoptees all end up in Hicksville, Minnesota?”

“Something to do with the churches. The adoption agencies all have some kind of name like Catholic Charities or Lutheran Services,” I said, distracted. “So how about his birth family, did they find them?”

“Mm, they went to the orphanage and searched the files, like you did, and they found a baby picture, so next they're going to broadcast it on TV and in the newspapers.”

I found myself unexpectedly weeping, throwing myself against him.

“Hey, take it easy,” Doug said, but his eyes were soft.

I wanted to claw and rend, hear the scream of fabric tearing. I stretched out the neck of Doug's T-shirt until it hung down like loose skin. I was aware that Brian Muckenhill had terminal cancer, but all I could think of was that
he
was going to meet his birth mother—and I would never, ever know mine, never have that hand to touch. It occurred to me suddenly that I didn't even know if my birthday was September third, the day I was found, or September second—today. Jun-Ho said that the exact time and date of one's birth was very important in Korean astrology, that fortunetellers could tell you your entire destiny from those two pieces of information, which most people have. Christine and Ken managed to skip that thorny issue by doing the cake and presents on the anniversary of the day I arrived in Minnesota, my “Gotcha day” they called it, March 17.

Gotcha meant nothing. A human-set date chosen by others. Not like my birth, the date and time that I, by that eternal and mysterious baby instinct, decided to leave the womb. No one should be without this knowledge. But it wasn't forgotten, or unclaimed at the bottom of some dusty file. It was, simply, gone. Like her.

I wanted to scream so loud that every person in Korea, in America, in the world beyond would cover their ears and grimace.

Enduring Pine Village

1993

On Saturdays, when she was done with her time in the market, she went over to the church to prepare it for the next day's service. Small Singing had left her stall with a smile because Kyung-sook had mentioned that the bone-shaped birthmark on her son's neck was an auspicious sign.

Shrimp Auntie works so hard, said some of the observing villagers. She takes care of a husband and a father, her business, and the church.

Do you remember her mother? She had the best singing voice in the village. No one could sing “My Hometown” like she could—she wouldn't leave a dry eye in the place!

The daughter didn't inherit any of that singing voice, now did she?

Oh my, no. The girl was tone deaf—her singing voice was like a couple of cats screeching.

But she was smart, I remember. Didn't she go to college in Seoul for a while?

Shrimp Auntie? I don't think so. She's just been a wife and daughter, for all I know.

I seem to remember she left the village to go to college.

You're getting too old to be the village gossip—you can't keep your facts straight. It's a pity Cooking Oil Auntie has passed on—now,
she
knew what was what. You're getting Shrimp Auntie mixed up with her childhood friend, last-one daughter of the five daughters of Kim the junkman. That girl ran off to North River County to the Yankee army base, not Seoul.

Oh, perhaps you're right. Aigu, but these old bones ache! But probably not as much as Shrimp Auntie's are going to, after she spends all evening bent under those benches. Then on Sundays she plays on that Western pi-a-no so the parishioners can sing their Christo ballads—she has that much musical talent, at least.

She loves her God, that's why she does it.