Somebody's Daughter (39 page)

Kyung-sook opened the door to the church, its familiar woody, slightly musty odor rushed to greet her.

Saturday nights she cleaned, all by herself. Her soft cloth would slide noiselessly across the pews, in perfect rhythm to her breathing. She would quietly straighten the things on the humble pulpit, all the while receiving her peace in this walking meditation.

September third had come again. Her daughter's coming-out-to-the-world day. This time, she did not force her mind to other things. Instead, she merely moved about in gloomy silence, shed a few bitter tears during the lull time in the market. Soon it would be Chu-sok day, the day she needed to make obeisance to her mother and her other ancestors for three generations back. She would thank her ancestors for her profitable year at the market, she would tell her mother, again,
I'm sorry for what I did to your dreams of having a college-educated daughter. Please forgive me
.

Il-sik, as he did each year, would rebuke her for her adherence to these ancient rites. In his sermons he preached that the Korean people needed to move away from ancestor worship, fortunetelling by the chom chengi, shamanism, and Buddhism—these things were all sent by Satan to distract people from the True Way, Christo. Il-sik encouraged churchgoers to even physically restrain their friends and relatives when they headed out to the chom chengi or to the Buddhist temple.

But old ways are not so easily changed. He had to know that even the most fervent churchgoers had their prophecies read, made offerings to the mountain gods “just in case.” And no one Kyung-sook knew would make a marriage match for their children without having an astrologer make sure their zodiac signs and blood types were compatible.

For her part, honoring her ancestors through the Chu-sok rites were something she could not, would not, end. It was something she had done all her life, her mother had done it all hers, all the way back through the many generations delineated in the pages of the chuk-bok. She would again, on the preceding day, leave her market stall and spend the whole day shopping for and cooking a feast of her mother's favorite dishes. This she would spread out in front of her esteemed mother's burial mound, and she would implore her mother's spirit to return and enjoy this repast made by her daughter's hands.

Thus, the cycle of life. She had left the village and come back, and to some eyes, it was as if she had never left—she was the same.

But because of Il-sik, her husband, she had become a Christo-follower. Because of that other man, she had borne a child, one that she had not raised, one whose fate was—and would be—unknown to her.

In many other ways she had come back to the village changed, and she would continue to change. All people did, like a snake that sheds its skin: at some point the new skin becomes old, the old becomes the new.

Yet life was not a circle, as the Buddhists and Confucius thought. She would not be reborn at sixty to start a new life. No, her life was winding, winding, following the coil of a spring. At each point she was able to see behind her to what her experiences had been, but at each point, a little further up the coil, her perspective was a little bit different.

It would be like this until she reached the end of the coil, the time when she would go up to Him, if He has deemed her faithful.

She moved her cloth along the wood of the pews. The rough-hewn wood was slowly, slowly taking on a bit of a burnished glow, and this pleased her.

The coming of Chu-sok would also mean the night of the fullest autumn moon. The night of the Harvest Moon Festival, where all the village women would gather for the kangkang sullae. Girls, women, and grandmothers would all join hands, they would become an expansive circle that would slowly unwind. Then, one by one, each dancer would be lifted toward the sky for her chance to sing out her story, framed in the light of a luminous moon.

Seoul

1993

“Hello, you've reached the Thorsons. Sorry we can't take your call but we'd love to talk to you, so please leave your number and have a wonderful day!” There were various noises of the bird and the cats and the dog in the background.
Yip. Arf. Meow. Skrrech.

At the beep, I informed them only of the day of my return. I didn't want Ken and Christine and Amanda to meet me at the airport, to rush back into my life. I would make my way home, make a gradual adjustment back through the layers of my Minnesota life: English words, greenbacks, Viking-ish faces. Slowly, slowly I had to be debriefed, depressurized, to avoid a fatal case of the emotional bends.

Doug and I rode in silence to the airport. In the rice fields on the way, bareheaded men drove motorized harvesters, spewing blizzards of straw in giant arcs toward the sun. The big yellow billboard that greeted me almost a year ago, HYUNDAI—FOR BETTER LIFE had been corrected to HYUNDAI—FOR A BETTER LIFE.

At Kimp'o Airport, I saw some program-mates debarking from sleek black cars aptly named Princes. People kept coming out the doors endlessly: grandmas, uncles, cousins, aunts, like in the cartoons.

The airline people said to come two hours early, and we did. There was nothing to do but wander around a huge oval-shaped, arched-ceilinged room that reminded me of a hockey arena—I almost expected to hear the drone of a Zamboni.

At the center of the room, people slumped on the plastic-and-metal chairs, KNN blaring from TV monitors above their heads. Doug returned from a gift shop with a keychain that had a bell with a drawing of Hodori, the Olympic tiger mascot on it. A smiling neonatal tiger—in a land where all the native tigers had been killed for their penises (a supposed aphrodisiac)—Hodori wore a traditional Korean cap with the long propeller-like ribbon on it. Tae
Sunsengnim
had worn such a hat at the music performance for her group, Sa-mul Nol-I, to which she had invited me. Even though the
kaenguri
position was traditionally reserved for a man, she had been the one to play the shining gong. While keeping perfect time with her
chang-chang
ing, she had spun her head around so fast that the twirling white ribbon eventually formed a perfect, breathtaking circle.

The bell tinkled in my hand as we settled onto the uncomfortable chairs. Something smelled like old, ripe kimchi.

The departure board trembled, like leaves catching a breeze, and the
flap-flap-flap
revealed a BOARDING sign next to my flight, a red light blinking urgently next to it.

“This is it?” I said, rising.

Doug didn't say anything. He grabbed my bag and carried it to the line. He had assembled a collection of my favorite snacks: an ear of midget corn,
ddok
rice cakes, squares of roasted seaweed, and yes,
o-jing-o
, dried squid—I'd developed a taste for that salty, smelly, leathery stuff after all. I'd better finish everything before I landed, he advised, or customs would probably take it away. He had also written the address of his new boarding house in Seoul.

It was at once easy and hard to think of leaving Doug. The way his eyes could look so deeply into my truest self. His angular face, with that sweet spot under his chin, the little frog's belly of softness that perhaps only I knew about. I would miss him. But now that we'd found each other, we could go on, no matter where we were. I looked at him, my Doug, the features of his long-gone American father impudently pushing to the surface of his face.

“I love you,” he said. “And I
will
see you again.”

I laughed, wondering how he could think otherwise.

I showed the attendant my ticket, my passport with the eagle stamped on it in gold. She gave it a cursory glance, then handed it back, put her hand out for the
10,000 “departure tax.”

Then there was only Doug's hand on my arm holding me to this place. In just a step, Korea would be receding to that place where my Korean mother was, the place just inside my eyelids, on the cusp of a dream, where we could not speak or touch.

I moved. His hand fell away.

I looked back into the waiting area, past Doug's shoulders. The fantasy image I'd had of my mother—the long black hair, rosy lips, slender hands—those varied pieces flattened out and joined together to form a paper doll, its edges curling as the form caught an invisible breeze and went twirling, twirling, up to the high, domed ceiling of the airport, then out into the sky beyond.

“Um-ma, anyong-hi kae say yo,”
I said. Stay in peace.

“Goodbye, Sarah.”

I waved one more time to Doug, then entered the long tunnel. Because it curved, ten steps in I saw only wall when I looked back. In front of me, a large Caucasian man, a jarhead, toted an overstuffed Adidas bag, the counterfeit logo looking like marijuana leaves.

“Never coming back!” he said, to no one in particular. “Never coming back to this stinking country. The U.S. Army can fuck this country!”

In the plane, the stewardess spoke to me in Korean, asking me if I wanted something to drink.

“Neh,”
I said.
“Coke-ah col-ah chu sae yo.”
She didn't blink, poured me a Pepsi from its red-white-and-blue can.

The guy across the aisle looked familiar, Korean American. Military crewcut, slightly pale, thin, a Confederate-gray uniform banded in black.

“Excuse me,” I found myself saying. “What's the uniform?”

He looked over at me.

“West Point.”

I stared at the ice in his Coke. Where had I seen him before? I needed to say something more to him, before the hole of cordiality closed and we became strangers once again.

“What were you in Korea for?” he said, instead.

“To learn Korean on the Motherland Program.”

“And where are you going?”

“Minneapolis.”

He smiled.

“You're adopted, aren't you?”

I sat bolt upright, sloshing some of my drink. He laughed. “I can always tell. I am, too.”

A heavyish blond woman strode up the aisle, smiled at me, then carefully navigated herself through the narrow airspace between the young man's lap and the seatback, to dock in the middle seat.

“My mother,” he said, and I saw the pieces of the puzzle falling together.

“Gretchen Muckenhill,” the woman said. Now seated, she leaned over him to shake my hand. Our fingers could barely meet over the distance.

“An adoptee, too, Mom,” the guy said.

Mrs. Muckenhill's face softened, like warmed wax. “And what are you doing in Korea, all by yourself?”

“Studying Korean,” I said. I remained quiet a few seconds more, then asked the young man, “Did you find your family?”

He laughed. “Wow, your Korean must be great if you can understand Korean TV,” he said. Then he shook his head. “No, we had some leads, that was it. There was someone who thought she recognized my baby picture, but no dice. But geez, we met so many nice people while we were here.”

His mother nodded in agreement. “Oh, for sure. The Koreans are the most warmhearted, generous people, really. So many people gave blood. Such a shame there wasn't a match in all that.”

Now he was going to die, wasn't he?

“I'll get my marrow tested, if it will help,” I said. I stared at him. There was always the chance, I supposed, that we were related. Maybe my birth mother's sister also had a pregnancy she didn't tell anyone about, and then this guy and I were cousins. Maybe I was related to any of a zillion Koreans I saw. Maybe I had been related to Doug, whom I had slept with. Or Jun-Ho.

“That'd be great,” the guy said. “I'll give you the number of the Cammy Lee Foundation, a marrow registry for Asian Americans, where you can get it done.”

There were no outward signs of the cancer cells ravaging his body. Except for his thinness, which wasn't exceptional, he looked untouched by disease. I wondered how many cancer cells, lurking in secret, somatic places, would mutate and divide on this twenty-hour flight home.