The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (32 page)

“Where are you going?”

“Some of us are getting together to hang out in the intern’s room. You know, I think he really likes Yun Sun-im
eonni
. Didn’t you notice?”

“But Sun-im
eonni
is what, twenty-three?”

“Well, still whenever he sees me, all he talks about is her.”

Cousin slaps my shoulder.

“Tell me what you really think. Am I prettier, or is Sun-im
eonni
prettier?”

“You’re prettier.”

“You mean it?”

“Well, Sun-im
eonni
is pretty, too, isn’t she?”

“You’re right, she’s real pretty. She’s got that long hair and her eyes are always smiling. Just seeing her makes
me
feel good, so of course the guys go for that, right?”

Hui-jae
eonni
and I stay in our room all day, watching TV. New Year specials. Martial artists come on and demonstrate marvelous feats. They collect energy and turn out lightbulbs with their eyes, lay out seven, eight dozen eggs in containers and lie down on them. Even when a man with a huge build places a wooden plank on the man on the eggs and climbs up and presses down on him, the eggs underneath do not break.

Then one moment, Hui-jae
eonni
goes, “Uh, that man . . .”

I look at the man she is pointing at. The host asks how he got into these dangerous sports.

“I was teased a lot, because I had a slight build and girlish looks.”

As he answers with a smile, dimples form on his cheeks.

“So I took it up, to look more manly, one thing led to another and here I am.”

I tap at Hui-jae
eonni
, who is gazing blankly at the TV screen.

“So who is he?”

“It’s him.”

“Who?”

“The guy I told you about.”

Aimlessly, I turned on the TV. A singer named Park Mi-gyeong is singing a song with a strong beat. When you tell me you loved me, I feel it’s only an act. Subtitles run at the bottom of the screen. “No
Excuse.” Must be the title of the song. If your heart’s changed, don’t give me excuses. I tried stretching my neck to Park Mi-gyeong’s dizzy movements, then leave the room, the TV still on, and opened the fridge. Nothing to eat but apples. But it’s Lunar New Year tomorrow, I should at least make myself a bowl of rice cake soup, I tell myself and get my wallet, while Park Mi-gyeong goes on singing. No going back for me now, no. At the bottom of the stairs, I found a card in my mailbox. I pulled it out and checked the sender’s name. Handwritten with a nib pen dipped in ink. The same handwriting of the person who had sent me the suicide note back in September. Well, she clearly wasn’t dead if she could send a New Year card.

Standing there, I tore open the envelope. There’s no this or that, not even a single word about the suicide note that she sent me. I feel fortunate that I was able to feel your presence this past year. I wish you all happiness. That was all it said. I put the New Year card into my pocket, put my hand inside next to it, and stepped outside, pushing the door open. Cold wind brushed back my hair, which had been let loose from the ponytail. In the cold wind, I was suddenly overcome with solemnity. Felt my presence, she’d said? My presence?

THREE

Our skin cracked by different winds
We breathe
We sleep because we’re lonely
We cannot meet even in sleep
We see only another’s crown
Or show ours, only time to time
Our blistered soles colliding
Each of our heads in a different direction again we lay
breathing weary.

—Hwang In-suk, “Circle Dance”

T
his alley, where snow would not
melt. This alley, where a snowfall would turn into an icy path overnight. The world has many hidden alleys inside. Unlit windows. Cold telephone poles. Broken bricks. Tiny, labyrinthine rooms on the other side of the fence. Odor from the sewer. The smell of frying sticky sugar-filled pancakes. The long exposed hallway of an inn . . . The smell from the kerosene stove. A young factory worker with a boil on his head staggers drunk. Life’s anxieties seeping into the booming blare of his sad song. The gates that cannot never be locked, with so many people passing through. Piles of briquette ash. Frozen trash. The drunk young factory worker falls on his knees, holding on to a power pole. Dry vomit surging against the current, up his multiple innards.

Oldest Brother’s woman would have disliked this alley. Would have disliked the wig that he had to wear over his naked head, and also me, adjoined to him like a tumor.

Perhaps that is how it’s set out to be. The women of the world will disappoint the men and the men of the world will disappoint the women.

On top of that, Mom disapproves of the woman’s slender waist. The woman also disapproves, of Mom’s thick waist. The woman greets Mom with a head-to-floor bow when Mom arrives in Seoul. Mom turns her back. In Mom’s eyes, this frail, slender woman is not the kind who will stick to household work. While Oldest Brother goes to see her off, Mom makes a fist and pounds her chest.

“She come over often?”

“No.” The woman does not come over often. Since some time ago, she often does not show up after saying she would.

“With a waist that tiny, no way she’ll handle the work around our house!”

The work around our house? I ponder the country. Come to think of it, around our home in the country, there are no women with such a slender waist. Nor women with such smooth fingers, such silky hair, such big, dark pupils.

When Oldest Brother returns, Mom
sits him down.

“You know you are the eldest grandson of this family. Will she be able to serve up a single meal with a waist like that?”

“She’s a good cook.” Cousin lets out a giggle. “Cooking isn’t all of it.”

Mom does not even open the gift box that the woman brought. When Oldest Brother asks her to open it, she pushes it far away.

“She’s a good woman.”

Whatever Oldest Brother said, even if he called a bus a train, Mom would believe him, but this time she does not budge.

“Your feelings for her are deep, I can tell, since you met her out here, lonely and away from home, but no way I can allow it. Say you were a second born, maybe I might just let it be, but you’re the eldest. If I let her in to our family, it looks like I’m going to have to nurse her for as long as I live! I can’t allow it, never, you hear me now.”

Chang does not write back. I open the mailbox every night and face disappointment.

At any point in history, there would be furtive secrets; even if one were not living on but dying, there would nevertheless be tender memories; just as a plump child, his eyes glowing blue, continues to grow in that alley filled with wretched stench, just as our chests grew firm like white taro corms under our weary blue uniforms, at any point in history, there would be furtive memories to keep.

Will you remember me

and that I was at your side

even if one day I am gone, gone away . . .

Halfway into that alley, in the
labyrinthine house with thirty-seven rooms, Hui-jae
eonni
turns twenty-two or perhaps twenty-three. Three or four days later, the day I turn eighteen, twenty-one-year-old Cousin invites over Hui-jae, who just had her birthday, and sings a song with a slice of castellan cake in front of us, decorated with a matchstick. My beautiful, born in the middle of winter . . . my lovely one . . . Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

The Ministry of Education announces new guidelines on hairstyle codes, giving students freedom to choose how they wear their hair. Until then, we wore our hair in braids. How busy it kept us, brushing and braiding each morning. As soon as the new code is in effect, Cousin and I head to the hair salon at the Garibong-dong Market and have our long locks cut. Cousin gets a short cut and I a bob. Back after having our long locks cut, Cousin and I gaze into the mirror. All we got was a haircut, but it seems like we are strangers. Cousin turns glum, saying that she looks like a guy.

I called up J.

“Wanna come over?”

“Finished with your writing?”

“. . . No.”

“Then I can’t.”

“If you come, I’ll go get some blue crabs and steam them.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll make you pancakes with garlic chive.”