Stars Between the Sun and Moon (2 page)

“‘I have a little girl,' I told the man. ‘I am happy with my life now. I don't want to change it. Goodbye.' Then I ran back to find you.”

My mother was crying quietly now, her tears dampening my hair. “‘I love you' means many things,” she said. “It is like that sparrow.” She pointed to a tiny bird flying across the path of the setting sun into the pine trees. “If love comes to us, we must let it land. But we must also be prepared to let it go.”

Chapter Two

Youngrahn was sent
to help my mother because my father had recently been transferred to a factory in Suhdoosoo, a small village in the mountains. He came home every few weeks to check on my mother. As she neared the end of her pregnancy, she was suffering from cramps in her legs. She napped several times a day. Youngrahn didn't prepare meals or sweep the kitchen floor after we ate, however. She spent all her time applying powder and lipstick, going to the cinema and eating our food. While my mother grew larger around the middle, the rest of her body got thinner. The baby hung in her stomach like a big ball. Youngrahn, on the other hand, grew rounder in her face, belly and legs. “Your father is my oldest brother,” she said to me when I asked for a spoonful of her noodles. “What is his is mine.”

My mother did the laundry in big metal pots in the backyard. I was too little to do more than watch as she lugged the wet cotton blankets to the clothesline and threw them over it. She grimaced from the exertion.

My auntie Youngrahn looked on as my mother stood me naked in the kitchen, except for an undershirt and my panties and washed my shivering body with cool water from the well, scrubbing my hair with our white laundry soap. Whenever Youngrahn mentioned food, my mother would stop what she was doing and cook white rice or porridge. Umma seldom talked to me now except to issue orders, and she never sang anymore.

On a cool day in the tenth month, as the clouds whistled across the ice-blue sky, my auntie announced she was leaving. By then, I was wearing all three pairs of my pants and all four of my shirts to keep warm while I played in the leaves outside. My aunt packed up all the white rice in our cupboards, as well as her nail file, white face powder,
chima
and hair curlers. She wrapped them in some
bojagi
fabric and then tied it all together into a bundle, the traditional Korean
bottari
.

With the first
layer of snow covering the ground and the trees standing bare against the howling wind, my mother woke from her sleep screaming. The sky was still black. I threw off my covers, ran to the window and placed a wooden board over the glass, thinking that the chill seeping in had caused my mother's night terrors.

My mother screamed even more loudly, though, and I knew she was in labour. She had shown me on several occasions what I was to do when this time came. Now I went into action. I dug out the sheets and towels she had washed and folded, then threw on my coat and boots to fetch some wood from the shed. I piled the wood in the stove in the kitchen, just the way my mother had shown me: twigs and pinecones on the bottom, thicker pieces of wood over that and more twigs on top. I stepped back and lit the bottom layer with a long match.

Each time my mother and I had rehearsed this, we would stand watching the flames as they rose and enjoy the feeling as the warm air began to move through the stovepipes underneath the kitchen floor. Tonight, though, I went back out into the dark to get the
ajummas
, married women, the wind slapping my cheeks raw. These women would help my mother bring her baby into the world.

In the early hours of the morning, the house finally became quiet. One of the married women told me my sister had arrived. I stepped gingerly toward the baby, hands over my eyes, afraid to see what the screaming had produced.

I peeked through my fingers to see the tousled black hair of the baby, who was swaddled in a white sheet and suckling at my mother's breast. My father had chosen the name Sunyoung if it was a girl. My mother's face was wet and swollen. Her hair was wet, too. The sheets around her were stained with blood. But when she looked over at me, smiling, her eyes shone like a full moon over the snowy corn fields in midwinter.

One of the married women said next that my mother needed to eat and asked me to fetch some food. My mother groaned and said there was not even a grain of rice in the house. The married women sighed to one another, showing their dismay.

My mother told
me that when the baby was a few months old, we would all move to the mountains to be closer to my father's work. My mother said I would like living in Suhdoosoo. The air there was so clean, she told me, that my lungs would feel as if they had been washed with cool water from the well. The mountains would be covered with thick snow in the winter, perfect for tobogganing, and with
jindalae
blooms in the springtime.

“You know,” my mother said, bending down low so our eyes were level, “your name means first flower. You were born in the fifth month and at the beginning of that month, the
jindalae
begins to blossom. By the middle of the month, it is at its fullest.
Jindalae
paves the way for all the other flowers to come.”

My sister's presence in the house promised friendship. It promised someone who would remain close, unlike my cousins, who were smug about getting all of my grandmother's pampering. At night, my mother slept with little Sunyoung on one side and me on the other, her green and white duvet covering us.

I liked the way my sister's tiny fingers curled around mine. I lay beside her during the day as my mother packed our belongings into wooden crates.

I would sing a lullaby that my mother had once sung to me. “Sleepy, sleepy, my baby, sleeping well, my baby. Dogs, don't bark! And don't cry, roosters!
Jajang, jajang, oori aga, jaldo janda, oori aga, muhng muhng gae-ya, jitji mara, ggo ggo dakdo, oolij mara
.”

Sometimes my mother joined in. I was happy that song had returned to our home once again.

My grandparents came with us to the train station the day we were scheduled to leave. Summoning my courage, I boldly asked my grandmother: “Why do you get so many candies but never give one to me?”

She folded her arms angrily across her heavy chest. “We have a relative, a son-in-law, who works in the mine. He breathes in lots of metal dust, so he is given the candies and sometimes finger cookies, as
youngyangjeh
—vitamins.” My grandmother clicked her tongue. “Won't you learn? These are not the things for you to ask.”

I felt my face burn as I took a step backwards. I need vitamins too, I protested silently. And why did my cousin get candies when I didn't. Accidently, one of my heels landed on my grandfather's toes.

“Watch where you are going next time.” He spoke in a slow, expressionless voice that made me feel cold, even on a hot, sticky day. I looked away as his tiny eyes bored into me. But as I began to move away from my grandfather, he grabbed my arm, pinching the flesh underneath with his strong fingers, then leaned in close.

“Take this,” he whispered, placing something in the pocket of my navy-blue wool coat. His face was so close to mine that I could smell cigarettes on his breath. “Don't tell anyone,” he said, letting go of my arm and patting me on the head. “It's our little secret and it's the only one I'll ever give you.”

I nodded nervously.

I reached inside my pocket and wrapped my fingers around two hard rectangular objects. My eyes lit up. It was candy.

At the station
in Suhdoosoo, my father met us with another man. The man was much older than my father, and his big head and crooked bowlegs made him look like a frog. The man collected our things and piled them into a box-shaped automobile with a smoke stack on top. It was a “gasoline car,” the man explained. He drove the four of us to our new home, a long and narrow cement house attached like a train compartment to a row of similar dwellings. The houses had been built for workers at the power generator station where my father was an engineer helping to design a tunnel system.

My mother set to work instantly, building a fire with wood she found in our new shed. I helped as best I could, unpacking pots and pans, but my attention wandered. Out the window, I could see the winter sun setting behind the snowy mountains. In the fenced-in yard next door, I spied a circular contraption. “A
baeguneh
!” I exclaimed at the sight of the merry-go-round. The wind was shaking it ever so slightly back and forth.

As I watched, some children tumbled out of a large black door into the fenced-in area. They climbed aboard and hung onto the silver bars on top. One boy ran alongside, pulling on the bars to make the whole thing turn. The children spun so fast that their navy-blue hats flew off. Their laughter made me eager to join them.

“If I can go to school,” I told my mother that night as I ate my rice and she nursed Sunyoung, “I'm going to like this place a lot.”

But as the
days passed, I found myself more alone than ever. The weather was too cold for us to go for walks, and my mother was busy with the baby. Whenever my sister slept, so did my mother. There was no talk of my going to school. I had an eye infection and had to be quarantined at home until I was better. I was left to gaze at the garden next door through the cracks in the ice-glazed window.

Before I knew it, I was celebrating my fifth birthday. It was much like my fourth, with a bowl of white rice for my morning meal. My mother tied my sister onto her back with a piece of fabric, and the three of us went walking in the mountains amidst the fragrant
jindalae
. I found a piece of string just as my feet hit the cement road to our house on the way home. For the next month, that string would be my one and only toy. I wound it around my fingers, twisting it into all sorts of shapes, including snowflakes and goats, until it finally broke.

I dreamed of three things: my sister being old enough to play with me, going to school and riding on the circular contraption and my mother's periodic returns from the food ration centre with the next fortnight's worth of food. Whenever she brought the rations, my sister and I feasted on the raw noodles right on the kitchen floor.

Sadly, my sister was not growing up fast enough, and my eye was not getting better and the food rations were never quite enough. I did find some unexpected playmates: lice. The little bugs nestled in my sister's soft, fine hair. Placing her between my legs, I used a small stick to remove them. It passed the time until my sister got bored, climbed up on her chubby legs and wobbled over to the cupboards where she always found pot lids to bang together.

Sometimes my mother would sneak up behind me while my sister was playing. She'd slide me in between her legs and remove the lice from my head. “I want to tell you a story,” she said one winter day as we sat together. It was our second year in the mountains. I settled in eagerly to listen.

“There once was a brother and a sister who were left at home while their mother went to work. Their mother wanted them to lock the door and not to let anyone in. The brother and sister did as they were told, but one day a tiger snuck its paw in through a window and said in a high-pitched voice: ‘Open up. This is your mother. Unlock the door.'

“‘I do not believe you are my mother,' said the little girl.

“‘Feel my hands,' said the tiger, who was wearing soft white gloves. Its hands indeed felt like their mother's. The brother and sister ran to the window. The tiger was wearing a cotton dress similar to their mother's, but its tail was sticking out the back.

“‘What do we do?' asked the little boy.

“‘Run,' said the little girl.”

My mother held me closer, changing her voice whenever she changed characters.

“The brother and sister ran outside and climbed a tall oak tree, all the way to the top, where they sat and watched the tiger. The tiger chased them but found it difficult to climb the tree.

“‘Put sesame oil on your hands. It will help you grip the bark better,' the little girl called down to the tiger. But of course, the tiger could not grip the tree with oil on its paws.

“The little boy, who was not as clever as his sister, called down to the whimpering tiger, ‘Use an axe.' The tiger ran to the children's home and grabbed their father's axe. When it returned, it started carving out footholds in the tree and began climbing. As the tiger neared the children, the little girl called out to the sky. As she did, she spied a magpie, a lucky bird.

“‘Dear sky, if you want us to live,' she called, ‘send down a brand-new rope. If you want us to die, send down a rotten rope that makes us fall.'

“A brand-new rope slipped down from a cloud, and the little boy and girl climbed all the way up to the sky and became the sun and the moon.”

“What happened to the tiger?” I asked, hugging my knees in suspense.

“The tiger, who had heard the little girl's plea, also called out to the sky. It wanted to become the stars in between the sun and the moon. The sky dropped down a rotten rope. The tiger, which was even less clever than the little boy, had got the girl's words mixed up, and it thought that it could climb the old rope. It gripped the rope tightly and heaved its body around the rope with all its might, only to fall into the middle of a field of millet stalk.”

“Oh,” I sighed. “Poor tiger!”

“That is why,” my mother continued, “in some parts of Chosun, whenever someone cuts into millet, the inside of the millet stalk is red, representing the tiger's blood.”

I settled my chin on my knees and thought about the story. “If you are good and have a kind heart,” I said slowly, “all your struggles and pain will be rewarded with what you want most. But if you are mean-hearted, you will fall to earth. I think that is what the story means.”

“Do you?” asked my mother, her eyes flooded with tears. She wiped her damp cheeks, got up to make some rice and did not say another word to me.