The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (19 page)

“I’m going home.”

“What then?”

“I’m going.”

At midday, there are no traces of people on the roads of the industrial complex. Only black smoke surging up to the sky. I trudge along the factory walls. I miss Chang. If only I could see him, all this might feel like nothing. I walk past the open gate, beyond which lie thirty-seven rooms, and head to the store. When I pick up a bottle of
soju
from the shelf, the storekeeper stares straight at me.

“You didn’t go to work today?”

“I got off early.”

“How come, someone visiting?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

I just smile and pay for the
soju
.

I am soon squatting on the kitchen floor, opening the cap and pouring half the bottle of
soju
into a rice bowl. I am drinking it down, my eyes shut tight. A nauseating taste crawls up my throat, making me collapse into a kneeling position. The chill from the cement floor seeps into my knees. I am still kneeling as I put the cap back on the bottle, slide it into a brown bag and place it inside the bottle cabinet of the cupboard.

The phone rang again. Not wanting to bother leaving the room, I plugged the bedroom phone back in and picked up. A woman with an unfamiliar voice asked for me. When I asked who it was, she asked back, “Are you her?” The voice mentioned the name of a women’s magazine and requested an interview. When I did not say anything, she asked again
if I was the person she asked for. When I did not answer, she said that she had read this morning’s paper and that she would like to interview me. I said I was leaving on a trip. She asked when.

“Right now. I was just on my way out.”

She asked when I was coming back.

“I’ll be gone about a month.”

“A month? That makes it difficult.”

I quickly wrapped it up.

“I’m sorry. Good-bye.”

I hung up and turned on the answering machine. H, awake now, asked in a hoarse voice what it was about. After gazing at H, still under the covers, I pulled out the paper that I had pushed under the bed and threw it in front of her.

“A women’s magazine is calling me after seeing this.”

“What is it?”

“Read it.”

I was staring at the hair fallen on the back of her neck while H read the paper when the phone rang again. Please leave a message, I will get back to you. As soon as the beep sounded, the voice of someone at another women’s magazine was heard. I would like to request an interview. Please get back to me at this number. While the tape was still reeling, I walked to the machine and turned off the volume.

“Folks found something to talk about.”

H lets out a little snicker.

“Actually I was afraid you’d read it and hide it under the bed.”

“So how did the writing turn out?”

“How would
I
know?”

After closing the paper and sitting still for a while, H asked, “Do you know Hyeong-su?”

“Who?”

“He’s Gap-tae’s friend.”

“The painter?”

“Yeah. Guess what. He had an operation for stomach cancer.”

“. . . ”

“His wife had stomach pains so he took her in for tests and he thought he might also get some tests done since he was there, and it turned out the wife was fine but he had stomach cancer.”

“. . . ”

“He had his entire stomach removed.”

“Really,” I said and glanced at H, sitting there blankly. Hyeong-su, this name out of nowhere. A slight laugh escaped my mouth. It had come out of nowhere, but while I was listening to H, my heart had become simple. H opened her mouth again.

“Don’t answer your calls for the time being. It never makes a good picture when a writer is talked about for something other than her writing.”

All day long, the faces of twenty-year-old cousin, seventeen-year-old me, and everyone from the Special Program for Industrial Workers at Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School in 1979 would not leave my mind. The bloated faces of those sitting pale under the blue fluorescent lights in the evening hours, dozing as we took classes on abacus calculation, typing, bookkeeping, and business English. And of Hui-jae.

At the corner of a street outside the subway in Industrial Complex No. 3, on our way back after work from the factory in Industrial Complex No. 1 to our lone room, is a marketplace. Every day after work we would stop by the market to get new ingredients for soup and on the day of our welcome ceremony at school, we again stop by to shop. To do so, we have to get off the bus one stop before home. It’s a hassle, but Oldest Brother will not eat unless the meal includes soup. The marketplace near closing time is a desolate place. There are piles of trash here and there. Empty plastic bags swishing around in the wind. An old woman is sitting not inside the market but on the street outside with pollock on an apple crate
. The fish have protruding eyes and bursting guts, and the last two are available for a bargain price.

“Do we have some radish at home?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s get the pollock.”

“Doesn’t it look like they’ve gone bad?”

“They look okay to me.”

Cousin pays for the pollock, gets her change, and hesitates for a minute. Then she takes my hand and sets out hastily.

“What is it, slow down.”

Out of breath, I shout at Cousin’s back. Only when we’ve gotten far from the fish vendor does she slow down her near-sprint stride. The plastic bag holding the pollock must have split somewhere because there is water dripping on the ground from the bag. Cousin picks up an empty plastic bag rolling on the ground to use over the torn bag. Then she leads me by the hand to one of the many snack stalls lining the market alleys. It’s been a while since we got our monthly allowance from Oldest Brother. Our payday is nearing, which means that we are running out of money for this month.

“Let’s come back when we get paid instead.”

Cousin giggles.

“It’s my treat. To celebrate the start of school.”

Cousin puts her bag down on a long bench and orders
ramyeon
noodles topped with slices of rice cakes and stir-fried potato noodles. The stir-fried noodles cost twice the amount of a bowl of
ramyeon
. I poke Cousin’s side.

“Why are we getting the stir-fry? It’s expensive.”

Cousin says it’s okay. She asks for an extra plate and splits the stir-fry into two servings and we slurp down the noodles with the warm
ramyeon
broth. Cousin’s cheeks, frozen taut in the night wind in March, turn soft and pink. When we leave the market and reach the overpass on our way back to our lone room, Cousin confesses to me.

“Actually, what happened was that when we bought the pollock . . . I gave her a one-thousand-won bill but I think the granny thought I’d paid with a ten-thousand-won.”

“. . . ?”

“She should’ve given me five hundred won in change but instead gave me ninety-five hundred.” Cousin spins the plastic bag that contains the pollock. “The granny suffered a big loss today,” Cousin blurts out in a nasal twang as she runs off, leaving me behind on the overpass.

Third Brother, now a university student studying law, comes to live with us in our lone room. When the four of us lie down for the night on two sleeping mats, there is no room to spare: our heads butt up against the desk and the vinyl wardrobe. In our lone room, our small low table is always set for a meal. Ever since Cousin and I started night school, the four of us never get to sit down together for dinner except on Sundays. Cousin and I eat dinner at the factory cafeteria before leaving for school, so we prepare dinner for my brothers each morning. We rearrange the breakfast leftovers, wash the spoon and chopsticks and set the table again with clean rice bowls. We keep the steamed rice beneath a blanket in the warmest spot of our heated floor, but it always gets cold.

After school, as soon as we get home, either Cousin or I head back out to the corner store, where they sell a hot briquette for twice the price of unlit charcoal. There is a long line of people like us holding tongs in front of the store at this late hour. But when Cousin or I show up, the storekeeper offers us a hot briquette before our turn, skipping over everyone else in line.

If anyone protests, the storekeeper says, “Hey, I’m in charge here,” then mumbles these words, as if to himself, “Looks like she just got back from school and that room’s icy cold, no parents there welcoming them with warm floors.”

The storekeeper has a scar from an old cut under one eye. On one arm, he bears a tattoo of a snake. Whenever I see the scar or the tattoo, I get a creepy feeling, but then, when I catch him sculpting ceramic figurines of the Virgin Mary or cherubs, I am charmed. Back in our room, while I slip the hot briquette inside the fuel hole and add a fresh briquette over it to stoke the fire beneath the floor, Cousin clears the table of dinner dishes and rinses new rice for breakfast. She also prepares ingredients for our next morning’s soup, so that all we have to do when we wake up is bring fresh water to a boil. When the hot briquette is in the fuel hole and I fill the boiler with water, the water circulates beneath the floor and heats the room. Once the fire is going strong, the floor gets scalding hot, but when the fire dies, it feels like sitting in a cold tub, much more frigid than any other kind of floor.

Cousin has skin like a chicken’s, prone to bumps and cracks. When her legs are exposed to cold wind, her skin gets chapped. She used to wear pants all of the time, but our high school uniforms only come in skirts. Now Cousin washes her legs and feet every night and rubs them with Tamina lotion. I wait for my turn to use the bathroom while she takes her time with the washing, but I’m tired and I often fall asleep before she’s done. No matter who goes to sleep first, in the morning we always find Third Brother against the wall near the desk; Oldest Brother lying next to him; me next to Oldest Brother; and Cousin between me and the opposite wall. My sleeping habits were formed back home in the country, where I slept in a big room by myself, taking up all the space I needed. Ever since Third Brother came to live with us in Seoul, I tend to whack Oldest Brother in the face, or accidentally kick his legs in my sleep. One of those nights, Oldest Brother bolts upright in the dark. I must have slapped him in the eye again while turning in my sleep. His hands shield the assaulted eye as he roars.

“What kind of a girl are you, with such wild sleeping habits!”

After that reprimand, I restrain myself, holding one arm across my forehead and one arm across my tummy. I try so hard
to be still in my sleep that now I wake up in the exact same position.

One morning, I wake to find a blister on my ankle, right on the knobby, peach-pit bone.

“I think the floor burned me.”

I show Cousin my blister.

“How do you get a burn from the floor? Couldn’t you feel it happening?”

Cousin has no idea how much I struggle at night not to turn in my sleep.