The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (3 page)

What did exist among us were assembly lines at sewing factories, electronics factories, clothing factories, food processing factories.

It is my destiny to leave my parents’ care early in life. All sorts of signs pointed toward this, even an online fortune-telling service that I tried out for fun. It said I would leave the place of my birth and experience hardships in my early years. Sometimes I ponder exactly when one’s early years end. I ponder this as hard as when I ask myself, “What is literature?” Then I conclude that thirty would be good. I am now thirty
-two, so that would mean the hardships of my early years have passed. At sixteen, when I pierced the sole of my foot with the pitchfork, while sitting on the veranda of the house with the blue gate, waiting for Brother’s letter, I got a vague sense that life was made up of vicious wounds. And that in order to embrace that viciousness and live on, I had to retain in my heart one thing that was pure. That I should believe in and depend on that one thing. If not, I would be too lonely. And if I simply lived on, I would some day, once again, pierce my foot with a pitchfork.

I am sixteen years old and on the last day of rice planting I take the night train and leave the house and the well that swallowed the pitchfork. At the edge of the village is the railroad, across from which Father runs a store. Mom tells me to go say good-bye to Father and to get on the bus there. Then she’ll catch that bus when it comes through the village center. Before leaving the house, the sixteen-year-old sister gazes down at the face of her seven-year-old brother, asleep after an early dinner. From the moment he was born, Little Brother had been glued to his sister’s back like a turtle and is always wary and full of fear that she might disappear. To Little Brother, who had grown up on Sister’s back, breathing in her smell, she is still the only one. To Little Brother, school is the only place that he has to release her to.

When Sister says, “I’m going to school, be back soon,” then Little Brother can say, “Yes, you will be back.” Even when he is playing outside, as soon as the sun sets, he will call out “Sister!” and run back into the house. Anywhere he might be, he calls out, “Sister.” When he is fetching eggs, when he is pooping, or picking persimmons. Once, out on the newly paved main street, he hit his head on a truck, and he still called out, “Sister, Sister, Sister” as he was being taken to the hospital.

“Sister, where are you? I want to go to Sister.” Left without a choice, his fourth-grader sister heads to the hospital straight from school, carrying her schoolbag. She sleeps at the hospital with Little Brother, has her meals at the hospital, and goes to school from the hospital. The way things are, Little Brother is not at all ready to part with Sister. If she were to tell him she is heading out to the city, he would burst into tears, so she dare not tell him she’s leaving and just gazes down at Little Brother’s sleeping face. Little Brother opens his eyes slightly and looks at Sister. He must have found it strange that she is dressed to go out when it is nighttime, and demands an answer, even in his stupor.

“Are you going somewhere?”

Sister says no, she is not going anywhere. Relieved, Little Brother closes his eyes. Sister puts her hand on the scar, still visible on the head of her sleeping brother. What a fuss he will make when he wakes up in the morning.

I haven’t even crossed the railroad tracks when I see the bus lights. I had spent too long gazing into Little Brother’s sleeping face. I am sixteen years old, and suddenly anxious as the lights on the bus approach.

“Father!” I shout out. Father runs out of the store, at the same time the bus arrives at the stop. “Father, I am off !” And without a proper good-bye to Father, I board the bus. I hurry to the back of the bus and look out the window. Father stands vacant and still in the dark. His face is not visible; only his silhouette stands vacant and still.

Since then I have not had the chance to live in the same house as Father. Even with Mom or Little Brother, we have not spent five days together under the same roof.

Boarding the bus in the village center, Mom asks of her sixteen-year-old daughter, “Did you say good-bye to Father?”

“Yes.”

But was that a good-bye? Shouting toward the store, “Father, I am off,” and not even getting to see Father’s face. I should have set out just a little earlier. Father’s silhouette glimmered in front of my eyes, as he ran out of the store and stood vacant and still in the dark. The bus is already leaving the village. What happened five minutes ago has already become a thing of the past.

Mom is dressed in traditional
hanbok
, an orange outfit. It comes with a lined jacket over her blouse, which is fastened with a chrysanthemum-shaped brooch instead of with ribbon strings. When I gaze at the brooch, Mom says, “You got this for me when you went on that school trip.” The thin white collar of her blouse is dirty. When she notices that I am glancing at her dirty collar, Mom says, “I’d meant to sew on a new one, but got too busy.”

At the train station in town, we meet Cousin, who will be going to the city with me. Her legs long and slender, Cousin stands carrying a large bag next to Aunt, Mom’s brother’s wife, who has become bone skinny. Cousin is a slender nineteen-year-old. I smell the raw odor of fish as Aunt’s hand caresses my cheek. Aunt takes her hand from my cheek to and touches Cousin’s hand. As they say good-bye, the mother’s hand intertwines with the daughter’s.

“And don’t you fight and argue.”

As she lets go of Cousin’s hand, Aunt’s eyes well up with tears. When it’s time to get our tickets punched, Aunt asks Cousin to write them soon. Leaving my haggard aunt behind in the waiting room, Mom, Cousin, and I enter the boarding area.

I press my palms on the window of the train car and look out at the platform. Good-bye, my home village. I am leaving you to fish for life.

Even on the night train, Mom does not speak. She would barely have had time to straighten her back all day as she finished up the rice planting, but Mom does not even doze off. From time to time she glances at me, sitting next to her. Farewells make one gaze intently into the other person’s eyes. And
make one realize things out of the blue—this was the shape of this person’s eyes, which one had never noticed before.

For ten days I had been ordering lunch at the same table and the woman at the restaurant finally struck up a conversation. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The busiest hour had passed. Somehow I had been coming to the restaurant at this same time each afternoon, and had begun to feel apologetic that, at this hour, when the woman would likely be ready for a break after the busy lunch crowd, I was pushing her back into the kitchen. The woman brought out my food, then after washing her face, she spoke to me as she applied lotion on her face.

“Where are you from?”

“I came from Seoul.”

“A long way, is it?”

Instead of answering, I smiled. I had just put a slice of kimchi in my mouth, so I couldn’t answer even if I wanted. The woman said that if I had told her from the start that I would keep coming back this often, she could have arranged a special menu with dishes prepared for her family for a cheaper price. I glanced at the menu on the wall. How much cheaper would she charge? The price was written below each item. A pot of kimchi stew for 4,000 won. Bean paste stew cooked with abalone, clams, or crayfish for 5,000 won. Spicy beef soup for 3,500 won.

“Have you come alone?”

To my relief, she did not add, A woman, all by yourself?

“Yes.”

“Tourist?”

“No.”

“That’s what I guessed. A tourist would not stay here day in and day out.”

I smiled again.

“Then are you here for work?”

Now I was lost. Could I say I was here for work? Had I come for work? Unable to answer, I said, “Well, kind of,” then smiled again. The woman must have understood my smile as “yes, I have come for work.” She brushed her permed hair back over her ears and brought out three clementine oranges on a plate.

“What kind of work do you do?”

I could not go on eating my lunch. I put down my spoon and peeled the skin off one of the clementines. The citric fragrance seeped into my nose, cool and fresh. The woman brought me the paper from another table. She probably remembered me reading the newspaper after eating each day. The spot on the paper where her hand had touched carried the smell of her lotion. Her hospitality made me feel embarrassed for not answering her question and I quickly said, “I’m a writer.” Right at that moment, the woman’s face, on which had age spots settled across her cheeks like a map, brightened up.

“Oh my, really? What an honor!”

Honor? Overcome with shyness, I let out a quiet laugh.

It was the first time that I had referred to myself as a writer to a stranger, to someone in an unfamiliar place . . .

Mom.

Mom’s dark eyes, like a cow’s. I had this thought for the first time that night. And it remains unchanged, then or now. How, even now, after raising us, her six children, Mom can still have such clear eyes. . . . There are times when Mom’s eyes push me deep into thought.

It is early summer in my sixteenth year and on the night train, Mom’s dark eyes well up with tears. This is Mom’s second time riding the train to Seoul. A while back, Oldest Brother needed some papers for his college registration but for some reason his
letter arrived only a day before the papers were due. It would be too late if they were sent by mail, so Mom took on the role of courier. She got on the night train with the papers.