This Burns My Heart (20 page)

“You see, ma’am, we’re all boys in the house. Me and my brother. And my father always wanted a girl. So he said this was God’s way of giving us our wish. But I think he did it because of the way she was dressed. He kept saying, ‘Look how nice her clothes are, she must come from a good family!’ He was excited to have a girl from a good family.”

Soo-Ja looked over at Hana, wondering how much of this entire ordeal she understood. Bae stopped talking and watched her as she watched Hana. Soo-Ja turned to him again. “Go on, Bae.”

“He told us to be very careful with her. That a girl isn’t like a boy, you can’t be rough with her. He also told us if anybody asked, to say she was our sister, but that her mother wasn’t our mother, which I didn’t understand. If my mother isn’t her mother, then how can she be my sister? But I suppose it makes sense, since you’re Hana’s mother and you’re not my mother.”

“Would you
like
her to be your mother?” teased Yul.

So this is how you talk to boys, thought Soo-Ja. You tease them about girls, even if that girl is your mother.

“Yul! Please,” Soo-Ja admonished him, though she did not really mean it. It was the first smile she’d seen on Yul’s face this entire time, and it made her glad.

The boy immediately nodded. “Yes! Yes, I would. You’re very pretty,
agassi.
”

“It’s ajumma. I’m not too vain to say it. I may be young enough to still be agassi, but I’m a mother now, and ajumma and eomma sound the same to me,” said Soo-Ja. “But Bae, go on. What else happened?”

“We all gathered around Hana. I know boys are not supposed to like girls, but she was very entertaining, we couldn’t stop watching her! It was like having a rabbit in the house. And she cried. Oh, she cried so
much in the beginning. And then my father said, if you keep crying, your mother is going to get really mad, and she won’t take you back. That’s when I knew something was wrong. But I couldn’t say anything.”

“And where was your mother through all this?” Soo-Ja asked as they kept walking, the streets completely deserted in front of them.

“She was serving customers. I think she was mad at my father, and was avoiding him. She looked horrified when Father brought Hyo-Joo, I mean Hana, home. She said, ‘Why would you bring me one more mouth to feed?’ And my father said, ‘She’ll earn her keep. She can work at the counter and serve customers when she’s older.’”

Soo-Ja tightened her grip on Hana when she heard this. Did her little girl know the life she had been spared? Of course she did, thought Soo-Ja, the way children always know everything.

“She’s a very clever girl, your daughter,” said Bae, smiling and showing his teeth for the first time. It seemed that he was enjoying being the center of attention. “This morning, she finally stopped crying. She said she liked it with us, and that the house was good. But could she please get some air? She said that it was stuffy in the room. So my father said all right and let her go outside.

“But then as soon as she got outside, she tried to run away. She reached to undo the latch on the gate, but it was too high for her. My father ran back out to get her, this look of panic on his face. He couldn’t believe that a three-year-old could be so clever. That’s why he made my mother take off all her clothes. So she couldn’t go outside. There was nobody to watch her, so we had to leave her alone at times, you know? My father just stuffed her under some blankets and she stayed there the whole day. And he was right. She didn’t try to escape with no clothes on. But I swear, I could see in her face that she still hoped to figure out a way to escape.”

So that’s why she was naked when she came out of the house, thought Soo-Ja. She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew this boy was telling the truth. Besides, if this man’s intentions had been bad, there just hadn’t been enough time, what with a small house full of boys and his wife and the customers drinking next door.

Soo-Ja looked at Hana again, who looked back at her with a pained expression on her face, as if to say,
Eomma, how could you leave me? Do you not know what I went through?
The tears had stopped, but her face was still wet.

I know, baby. Eomma knows everything. And eomma was bad, to let this happen to you. But now you can sleep. Eomma is here. You can sleep like a child again.

When they arrived in front of her uncle’s house, Soo-Ja lingered for a moment to give either of these two men the chance to leave. Was she being considerate, sparing Yul from bad company? Or was she afraid they would ask him questions, maybe adding two and two? The boy looked at them awkwardly, and she saw in his eyes that he didn’t want to go yet. He wanted to trade as part of some parent-child swap program and come live with them.
But, child
, she would have to say to him,
Yul doesn’t live here with me. I live with some other people. This makeshift family you experienced on our way here, with the four of us, it was as new to me as it was to you.

Yul also seemed to sense the boy’s hesitation. “It’s time for you to go home,” he said, and his firmness came as easily as his teasing earlier, and was just as effective, as the boy bowed to them and started to leave. But before he was gone, Yul reached into his pocket and gave Bae some money. “This is for you. Don’t show it to your father.”

The boy bowed again and—this is how Soo-Ja knew that what he’d told her earlier had been true—he smiled at Hana and said, “Good-bye, little sister. Be nice to your mother.”

Soo-Ja and Yul watched Bae run home, into a dark she found very foreign. After Soo-Ja and Yul could no longer make out the boy’s shape in the distance, they finally turned to each other. So this is that scene in the movie, thought Soo-Ja—the good-bye, first to the less consequential character, then to the important one.

Soo-Ja had felt this before, and she felt it again: that she was always saying good-bye to the only man she truly cared about. But she was wrong. For each time she said good-bye to Yul, he was a different man—one she knew even better, and for whom her feelings had grown
deeper. Now she loved him the way a wife might love a husband after a few years—love him after watching him perform an act of kindness, love him after seeing the way he is with other people, love him for the quality of his heart. But he was not her husband; she was not his wife. It was wrong to even think that way. But what was it that counted in the end, the life you lived in front of other people, for their benefit, or the life you lived in your own heart—where she loved him and he loved her back. And could she help it if that life just felt so much more real? Yet whatever happened in that other version of her life—kisses, sighs, joy—in this one he was just a friend, standing in front of her, unsure if he should go in or not, maybe suddenly remembering he had patients, a wife, a life to step back into as soon as he stepped out of hers.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to thank you enough,” said Soo-Ja, speaking softly. Blankets of fog shifted around them, and she felt as if they were wading through clouds. She could see sliced sections of tree branches and the gates of houses, but nothing whole; they seemed to float, all light and watery, without their usual density.

“You don’t need to. We’re friends. Friends take care of each other,” said Yul, as he reached for her and rearranged the wrinkled collar around her neck. He then gently patted Hana’s head; she lay asleep, wrapped in his windbreaker. Soo-Ja made as if to give it back to him, but he shook his head.

“Do you want to come in and meet my in-laws?” asked Soo-Ja. Even in the dark, she could see the sadness ebb and flow on Yul’s face, like the waves in the sea.

“What would you introduce me as?”

“It depends,” Soo-Ja said softly, looking into his eyes. “If I want to lie, or if I want to tell the truth.”

He stared back into her eyes. “I think one should always tell the truth. Except in situations like this.”

Soo-Ja’s heart leapt and then sunk. But she knew that she had no right to be disappointed. She was the one who turned away from him when he asked her to marry him, who refused when he first held out his hand and said,
Try me, and be happy.

“
Chamara
, Soo-Ja.
Chamara
,” said Yul.
Chamara.
What is the word that comes closest to it? Soo-Ja wondered. To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? There is no other word for it, no way to translate it. It is not a word. It is a way to console yourself. He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so.
Chamara
is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she’ll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying,
I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.

W
hen Soo-Ja opened the door triumphant, with Hana in her arms, feeling like Admiral Yi Sun-Shin back from his campaigns, the house awoke and Mother-in-law scrambled to turn the lights on. Soo-Ja knew they must have been in a state of suspense for the last two days. And then she saw him: Min on the floor, at first half asleep, then wide awake, leaping to reach for his daughter. Everyone gathered around them, with Mother-in-law clapping her hands, and the boys smiling and waiting for their turn to pet Hana. How odd to see them like this, thought Soo-Ja. Did they, in the end, love Hana more than she gave them credit for? Father-in-law was the only one not there, though her wondering about him didn’t last very long, caught up as she was in the warmth and excitement of Hana’s reception. This was truly a family, after all.

Soo-Ja knew Hana was tired and should be put to bed. She was tired, too. She had spent the last twenty hours on her feet, and she felt ready to topple over any second now. But she could not stop this scene, so rare and wonderful it was: everyone fussing over Hana, kissing her cheeks and taking turns holding and hugging her. Theirs was not an affectionate extended family. For all she knew, this might be the last time Hana experienced this kind of love from them.

Finally, after many hallelujahs from Mother-in-law and a thousand cheers from the boys, Soo-Ja told them they should all go to bed. Hana
herself could barely keep her eyes open. In a matter of minutes, all the noise gave way to a placid quiet, as if all of them had been given a potion from an apothecary. Their eyelids grew heavy, and they fell asleep in one swoop, all at once, their bodies covering the floor in all kinds of shapes, looking like one giant figure with many limbs.

In the middle of the night, Soo-Ja woke to use the chamber pot and found Na-yeong still awake. Soo-Ja told her to go to sleep, but Na-yeong said she could not. Soo-Ja decided to use the outhouse instead, in spite of the cold. As she rose to leave, she heard Na-yeong call out for her. Soo-Ja made a
shhh
sound and lowered herself back, coming to sit next to where she lay.

“What is it?” Soo-Ja asked.

“Are you going to tell them that I lost Hana in the market?” Na-yeong asked sheepishly.

“You didn’t tell them that?” Soo-Ja had wondered why no one had come to help her look for Hana. So that was why.

Na-yeong inhaled a deep breath. “No. I didn’t want them to know I followed you. That was wrong of me.”

“Na-yeong, I don’t really feel like speaking to you right now.”

But Na-yeong continued. “They were looking for Hana all over the neighborhood. I felt a little silly, watching them call out for her, when I knew she was nowhere near.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone that you followed me, or that you lost Hana in the market,” said Soo-Ja frostily. It wasn’t all forgiveness—she simply doubted that her in-laws would punish Na-yeong. But it didn’t matter—she had Hana back.

“Thank you.”

Na-yeong turned, as if to sleep, but Soo-Ja was wide awake now. Na-yeong had passed on her restlessness to her. “When did Min come back?” asked Soo-Ja.

“Right after you left. My mother told Du-Ho and Chung-Ho to go to the hiding place and tell
oppa
what happened. The three of them were
looking everywhere for you and Hana. Oppa was very sad. He thought he’d lost both of you.”

Soo-Ja thought about Min having to go back to the hiding place tomorrow. So that’s how long the happy ending lasted—only a few hours.

“And where’s your father?”

“He’s in Daegu.”

“Why did he go back early?”

Na-yeong shrugged. “I don’t know. But I guess we’ll see him tomorrow when we get back home.”

“I guess so. You should sleep now, Na-yeong.”

“Eonni…”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” said Na-yeong, and Soo-Ja could hear the anguish in her voice.

“Go to sleep.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“Go to sleep.”

When they arrived back in Daegu, Soo-Ja immediately headed with Hana to her father’s, so she could tell him what happened. But when she got there, Soo-Ja’s mother greeted her very coldly. She offered her something to eat, but with a strain in her voice. She seemed angry at Soo-Ja, but also appeared to be trying to hide her anger. Soo-Ja wondered what she had done this time. She assumed that her mother was still annoyed at having to host Jae-Hwa for so long. Jae-Hwa had taken her time getting her bearings, and had only recently left their house, to take a job at a factory that manufactured electric fans.

Soo-Ja and her mother sat in awkward silence, waiting for her father in the main room. Hana alone ate the rice cakes on the tray, smiling each time she put one in her mouth.

“I hope your husband’s family enjoys the second dowry,” Soo-Ja’s mother finally said.

Soo-Ja looked at her, confused. “Second dowry?”

“Your father worked very hard to build that factory. He can’t keep selling off parts of it. Things have not been easy since President Park took office,” said her mother sharply.

“Does Father need money?”

Her mother’s face suddenly changed, as if she’d just realized something. “You don’t know? They didn’t tell you?”

Soo-Ja started to worry. “Did something happen to Father? Is he all right?”