The Calligrapher's Daughter (8 page)

“Hush,” she said through her teeth, and pushed again. Thus did I witness my mother’s strength and the miracle of her body birthing my
dongsaeng
, my younger sibling, a wet and wailing mess.

“A boy!” cried the midwife, her stern features lightened with pleasure. She cut and tied the cord and swept the baby aside to clean and check him, encouraging Mother to continue pushing to deliver the afterbirth. An overwhelming stench and a surprising mess of blood and tissue made me afraid again, and I turned from the baby to my mother. I was unaware how tightly I clutched her arm until she said gently, “Let go now, and help me bathe.” I was so happy she had returned to me that I burst into tears. My fingerprints remained white on her arm for the entire time it took to wash and help her to a bed freshly made by Kira. It was odd to see Kira treating my mother like a child, but her soothing clucks and instructions to lift an arm, turn the hips a little, and the sound of her rough hands coddling the quilts around my mother’s body helped restore us all.

The midwife laid the infant against Mother’s breast. “Huh!” said the old woman. “He’s a smart one, eh? Look how hungrily he suckles!” They cooed over the perfectly formed infant while Kira and I soaked stained linens and washed the floor. The midwife gave me dried anise leaves and shavings of angelica root for Cook to make a tea that would promote milk production, relieve cramping and revive the uterus. As I left for the kitchen, I heard the midwife whisper admiringly to Kira that she had never before witnessed such refinement during a birth.

By the time I returned, dignity had been fully restored in my mother’s room. I checked the corners, and no spirits were lingering. Mother showed me how quickly the baby took to each breast, and then her own breath and body quieted, and her eyes closed.

“Let her rest, now,” the midwife said kindly. “You did very well,” she added, as if I had done anything at all. I bowed gratefully and thought
that she was a most amazing woman to come and work the arduous hours of birthing, to help bring order, and life, out of chaos and pain. She wrapped the baby in white silk bunting and took him to my father.

I sat outside the door partially hidden by the linen chest when Father came, holding his son in upturned hands as if he held a sacred relic. Mother woke when he crouched beside her, and the smile they shared seemed so filled with light it made me breathless. In the dim room, Father’s features were as smoothly washed with wonder as Mother’s. He spoke with a voice as gentle as the sunset filtering through the high windows. “On the hundredth day, I will name him Ilsun, first son of Korea.”

I knew it was wrong of me to think that, as the baby’s elder, I was then first daughter of Korea, and I remained a motionless shadow. But I admit that I was smiling inside.

THE NEXT MORNING, the house still felt strange. I tiptoed into Mother’s room and, relieved, saw her sleeping peacefully. Wanting to be close to her, to be reassured after the previous day’s ordeal, I knelt by the bed and touched a finger to her forehead. A shiver coursed up my arm, and with it, a dream of tall palms bursting from an oasis of shimmering water. The dream desert’s clean light flooded my eyes, and the image nestled in my breast. I gasped with its sharpness, and my mother’s eyes opened, smiling at me, confirming the vision, and my heart swelled with this surprising bond between us. Cook entered with herb broth and a basket of towels and chased me away. Like hearing the last echo of a wonderfully read story, I wanted to keep the vision in my head as long as I could and went to my room to lie on the bare floor. Yes, two palm trees, like those in Bible pictures, two long straight legs reaching to heaven, and water that I knew was absolutely clear, as cool and sparkling as the stars in the night sky, water of a purity that only a dream could hold. I ached to ask my mother what it meant.

She would stay in bed for five days cosseted by blankets and servants—postpregnancy being the only time in her life when she would allow herself to rest. As the day wore on, I felt lost without Mother on her feet. I didn’t feel like reading or helping Kira or Cook, which I knew I should be doing. I wandered through the courtyard and saw my father sitting on his inner porch. I approached to see the prize he caressed in his
lap. He gazed at his son with such steadfastness that I wondered if he could see anything else. I was nearly upon him before he noticed me, startled. “Yah!” He turned and held the baby close. “Have you washed your hands?”

“They’re clean, see?”

“Don’t talk back! Have you no respect?” His rebuke and the deepening furrow between his eyes confused me.

“Abbuh-nim—”

“Where are your manners? Where is graciousness? What kind of things will my son learn from an inept peasant of a sister!”

I knew that I should bow, offer an apology and go away, but somehow my body wouldn’t bend.

“Look at your hands. It won’t help to wash—dark as a peasant’s! What will he learn?”

I had the terrible sacrilegious thought that it was I who had seen the baby born—I who
was
the firstborn—and that made me special, more special … I couldn’t finish the thought and forced my feet to retreat, remembering at the last minute not to run in my father’s presence. I turned at the edge of the courtyard to see him tighten the baby’s bunting and go inside.

Dried stalks of tiger lilies whipped my arms as I ran toward the pond in the far corner of the estate. I stopped, panting from running and holding in my angry tears. I had only wanted to see him! The toes of my gray rubber shoes touched the edge of the pond, its surface spotted with lacy green mire. I remembered the tiny white elbow I’d seen in the bundle Father held. I wiped my eyes and face with my fingers and looked at my hands and wrists—ruddy brown, carelessly tanned. Remembering what he’d said, I rubbed my forehead as if to erase my skin color, and tried to retract my hands into too-short sleeves.

I walked by the pond late into the morning and listened to the rhythmic whir of dragonflies’ wings, catching glimpses of their fleet black bodies reflected in clear circles left by melting ice on the algae-coated surface of the pond. Sometimes I saw my face mirrored as well, but I drew back to avoid the reminder of my features. Even if I swore to always carry an umbrella to shade me from the sun’s baking rays, my skin would never be as fair as that pure pale newborn’s. With a long stick, I stirred circles in the
water, and the algae shapes swirled as inchoately as my feelings. I was thrilled to have a sibling, especially the boy both my parents had long prayed for, but I also feared that things would be different, like how my father had turned toward the house. I trailed through the willows, their bare wispy arms softly brushing my shoulders, and I remembered how my mother said she was counting on me to be a good nuna to my brother. It calmed me to think that fulfilling my responsibilities as older sister might favorably shape the changes the baby brought to our lives. I headed back toward the house, hoping he’d grow out of infancy soon, so I could prove how good a nuna I could be.

LATER THAT WEEK, after school, I sat on my knees next to Mother’s bed, admiring the contented baby’s appetite.

“Let me show you something,” she said. “You should know this so you can understand your father better, and now your dongsaeng, and be properly respectful to them.” Mother lifted the blanket and her nightskirt, and with clinical description explained the origins of the blood staining the cloth between her legs, the soft, loose flesh of her still-expanded belly, the seepage of milk from dark, flowering nipples. Having washed together with my mother countless times and having witnessed the birth, I merely raised my own skirt to examine my child’s body with comparative interest as she described the biological process of life so recent that her body still trembled in remembrance of its violence and mystery.

“This is the great gift that God has given to women,” she said, “and women alone.” She smoothed her skirt and blanket over her legs. “Following the glory of Jesus’s example, we suffer with the greatest gifts we receive. This is something that a man will never understand in the way a woman will. Certainly a man’s seed is essential, but the creation of life is within us. For them it is outside. They are our fathers, husbands and our sons, and it’s your duty to honor and respect them, but this they will always be standing outside of.”

She patted my hand beside hers on the bed. “Do you remember how the palm trees sprouted from the lake in the dream?” A shiver ran up my back and became needle pricks down my arms. I looked at her fully, and my eyes rounded and fused with the warm blackness of her pupils. “Yes, my daughter, that was a dream of your brother. I knew when you touched
me that you had seen the same vision. I dreamed of those palm trees many times when he was inside me. The first time was the night before your first day of school. That day was a double blessing for us.”

I remembered that the trees seemed like long legs, so it made immediate sense that they would symbolize males. “That’s how you knew he was a boy.”

“Yes, and for you too. In my fourth month with you, I dreamt of catching a small white fish between my hands as I waded in a lovely stream, so cool, so fresh, so clean. Such a beautiful little fish, it made me laugh in my dream and I woke up laughing! That was you.” She took my hand, and I felt as close and safe as if snuggled underneath her quilt beside her. I was made full and whole in her love, and she didn’t let go of my hand for a long time.

“Dongsaeng was the trees?” I asked, and she nodded. “But why is there water in both dreams?”

“Men need water to live, but they cannot move as it does. Women are like the water that flows, feeds and travels over and under man’s two feet stuck solidly in the earth. We are liquid. It is from us that he emerges, drinks and grows. And so,” said Mother, brushing aside my hair sprouting wildly from restless braids and bronze combs, “when your father seems gruff, I want you to remember this. Women are especially blessed in a way that men can never grasp. Keep God’s love in your heart and remember this always.”

“Yes, Umma-nim.” I clasped my hands tightly together in my lap, to prevent the secret of water from leaking between my fingers.

THROUGH AN UNDERGROUND WEB OF LETTERS AND COURIERS, NEWS reached the men of the church that the nationwide demonstration for independence would be moved to the Saturday three days before Emperor Gojong’s funeral. Japanese troops had been mobilizing in Seoul to control the large expected crowds, and staging the protest on March 1—
Sam-il
—instead of March 4, would catch them off guard. I was excited to hear this news. Since mission schools were closed on Saturdays, it increased the likelihood that Father would allow me to witness Gaeseong’s demonstration. The day dawned dry, temperate and full of conviction. Branches tipped with flower buds and bursting leaves shone in the crisp morning sun. The tender pinks and baby greens of new growth
attracted masses of birds, whose happy chirps and trilling made the trees ring with song. Outside the city, newly tilled soil filled mountain breezes with rich earthy smells, and sometimes the stench of fertilizer wafted through the streets.

My father and many others gathered at the church at two o’clock to hear the Declaration of Independence read by Reverend Ahn. Mother was on her feet and managing the household as always, but Father denied her desire to join him, deeming it unseemly for her to attend a political gathering, regardless of how many women they knew who would be there. Joong would accompany him and would run home at the proper time to alert the family to unfurl flags in celebration of freedom. How confident we were, and how naive.

That afternoon in a patch of glaring light in the southern courtyard, Kira and I wrung diapers and spread them on hedges to dry. The water was winter-cold on my hands, but the bright day warmed them as fast as flame. We heard a strange roaring sound and looked at each other as it grew louder. Nearing, the roar clearly became a crowd of people singing and chanting, most likely approaching the paved boulevard a few blocks south. I ran to Mother. “They’re coming down the main road! Can we go, please? Can we watch?”

It took only a moment for her to decide. “Quickly! Get the flags. Call the servants!” Mother tied the baby onto her back and hurried down the street with Cook, Kira, Byungjo and me behind her unrolling our flags. We turned the corner and saw Joong sprinting toward us, all the spaces between his teeth visible in his big smile. He bowed to Mother and directed us to the next street. A parade passed through the intersection— a throng twenty times the size of a full church congregation. Men, women, boys and girls raised their arms in unison and shouted,
“Man-se!
Ten thousand years! Long live Korea’s independence!” We waved our flags, our arms raised high like flagpoles, and hurried to greet the crowd. Cook and Kira lifted their skirts to dash up the street. Soon we saw Father in the midst of the marchers, his old-fashioned sleeves flapping with each salute of
Man-se!
his face youthful and joyous as he kept chorus with the others. Mother untied the baby and lifted him high above her head, and Father saw them and waved vigorously.

“Please, can I follow?” I asked. I felt flushed with everything looking
lively and bustling and full of energy—the mass of people with their forward pulsing march, the froth of white sleeves and skirts brilliant in the sunlight, like a tidal wave whose force would sweep aside all ills. “Look, there’s Sooyung from church, and look! His sister too! May I, please?”

“No, what would your father think? Come now—
Man-se!”
The baby cried at the thunder of the crowd every time Mother hoisted him in unison with each
Man-se!
and the servants shouted and raised their arms. We marched alongside until the street narrowed, then watched the marchers turn the corner a few blocks ahead, waves of song and rallying cries fading, then swelling through cross alleys, then diminishing to echo in the wind. Road dust swirled in a sudden surprising silence. Mother wiped the baby’s face with bunting. “I’ll remember this momentous day for you, little son, so you’ll know what wonders you saw.”