Waxing Moon (15 page)

24

Mansong turned one. So did Jaya’s firstborn. But the winter was a bad time to celebrate a birthday because food was scarce, and the cold, dreary weather kept people inside, all bundled up. Jaya had waited for the occasion to strike a deal with Mr. O: she wanted a piece of land for being Mansong’s permanent caregiver. She was practically the mother in every sense of the term, everyone professed. But the funereal atmosphere at their landlord’s suspended her ingenious plan. In the meantime, she went around grumbling to her fellow peasants about how much it cost her to have another mouth—not just a mouth, but an upper-class mouth—to feed. The sheets of ice on the road, however, kept her inside because her belly began to obstruct the view of her steps when walking. Behind her back, village women gossiped about how enormous she had gotten; she seemed about to give birth to triplets. Mr. O must have provided generously for Dubak’s family when everyone else was feeding on cabbage soup with barley. That was the conclusion they drew in the end, and they felt resentful.

Indeed, that winter Mr. O’s household was in a somber mood. No laughter broke out; no word was spoken without restraint; everyone whispered or gestured. When the ice in the creek melted, even though the water was still flesh-cutting cold, the maids from Mr. O’s household rushed to it with the laundry. They met up with two other village women, part-time employees for Mr. O from time to time. The water gushed down the creek impressively, accompanied by a pleasantly deafening sound, and they had to shout to one another to be heard, and it felt really good to shout after the long, silent, repressive winter at Mr. O’s house.

“So cold!” Nani said, dipping her hands in the water cautiously.

“It is!” a woman nicknamed Quince—literally, Ugly Fruit—said.

“Hand me the sheets,” the other woman, nicknamed Cliff due to her flat chest, said.

“It was the coldest winter that I can remember,” Soonyi said.

“As long as you remember?” Quince guffawed.

“How many winters have you lived?” Cliff teased her.

Soonyi blushed. “I hear that this has been the coldest winter in a decade,” she said, pulling back the loose strands of her hair.

“Soonyi, stomp on the laundry. This is too bulky,” Nani said.

“She weighs as much as a feather. What’s the point of Soonyi stomping on it?” Cliff laughed, getting up to do the job herself. She slapped Soonyi’s buttocks and said, “You need to put on some meat there if you ever want to be eligible.” Her plump behind swayed as she stomped rhythmically on the pile of sheets.

“There’s a new maid at Mr. O’s, I hear,” Quince said. “Good looking, I hear,” she added. And she winked at Cliff. The two village women laughed until tears squeezed out, but Nani scowled. She never understood why some of the women talked that way when marriage hadn’t brought
them
a better life. In fact, the husbands of both of these women were scumbags, lazybones, good-for-nothing drunken bums. That was why they had to come out early in the morning to wash someone else’s laundry: to feed their husbands, who had not earned decent wages in years!

“Tell us about the new maid,” Quince said, smirking.

Nani ignored them, pretending that she couldn’t hear anything, and she kept beating the laundry with a bat, splashing water in all directions.

Quince pinched Nani on her bottom from behind which made her jump. The other three burst out laughing, and Nani said, “Stop it! You are acting like children.” And she shot a warning glance at Soonyi. The other two laughed, crying, panting, and sniffling.

“I am going to have you both fired,” Nani threatened, but realized immediately that was not the right thing to say. She had no authority over these women.

There was a brief moment of sulking silence. Quince broke out belligerently, “What makes you think you can talk to us like that?”

Nani said nothing.

“You could be my daughter,” Quince said, and Cliff nodded hard in condemning Nani for disrespect.

“Thank the gods I’m
not
your daughter. What gives you the right to pinch me on my bottom? My own mother would have never done that,” Nani said sharply, surprising herself.

“Listen to you! Is that how your mother taught you to speak to your elders?” Quince roared.

“No, she didn’t teach me that. She taught me to respect the elders who deserve respect!” Nani cried.

“You little smartass!” Quince got up as if to strike her.

“Calm down.” Cliff also got up. “Look, Nani, you owe her an apology. Say you’re sorry and that’ll be the end of this,” she said.

“She owes
me
an apology,” Nani said.

“Listen to her. That’s what happens when you eat rice from the same pot as the aristocrats. They despise their own kind. They think they are floating on the clouds, way above us,” Quince said sarcastically. She was actually a little afraid that Nani might report the incident to Mr. O, and she might end up with no employment. She couldn’t afford to hang around at home all day until the farming season started.

Nani did her laundry. Tears trickled down her cheeks. On the contrary, she felt she was at the bottom of a pit, not knowing how to escape. There was no way to divorce herself from her servile status: born a maid she was going to die one. Just like her mother.

“No need to cry. It’s all a joke,” Cliff said.

Nani wiped her eyes. She didn’t want to deal with the women anymore. She beat the laundry as hard as she could.

Quince began to complain about her husband, who stayed out late at night, drinking, and the gods only knew what else he was doing. The other night, she had to carry him home when he was found passed out on the street. She found out about it because her dog barked like crazy. She went out to find him lying unconscious. Once on her back, he threw up all over her. Oh, the foul smell! She said she wasn’t going to fetch him again; she was going to let him freeze and die on the road.

Only Cliff was listening with her ears pricked up, for she had spent that night with Quince’s husband. He had fed her sweet words she had never heard before. He pouted, saying his wife was no fun. He would do anything, he said, to go back in time so that he could marry Cliff, not Quince. Every time he came to visit her, he flattered her not only with words but also with little gifts.

Nani’s purple hands were becoming numb from cold, and the tip of her nose felt frozen. After the arrival of Buwon, Mr. O’s son, the amount of laundry seemed to have quadrupled. Some days, she felt all she did was laundry. The baby produced at least twenty diapers a day, among other things, and those weren’t just to be washed. She had to boil them to really clean them, and then they also needed to be ironed. Mistress Yee also produced a lot more laundry than ever before: whatever her son drooled on had to be washed immediately, be it her cushion or her skirt or her pillow.

The women wrung out, folded, and packed the cleaned laundry into four bamboo baskets to carry it back. Quince and Cliff followed Nani and Soonyi; each had a basket on her head. At the back entrance to Mr. O’s, Quince wanted to know if she and Cliff should follow in and help with hanging the laundry. Nani said no, she and Soonyi could take care of it easily.

In the backyard, Nani told Soonyi to hang the laundry. She needed to go to the kitchen to prepare lunch. The kitchen maid who had been on leave because of her dying mother had finally been dismissed. After her mother’s death, her father fell senile and she had eleven siblings to take care of. Naturally, Nani took over her job.

There was now another maid, even though she was only taking care of Buwon. When he was born prematurely, he could not latch onto his mother’s nipple. Mistress Yee noticed part of his upper lip was missing, and she dropped him on the floor, screaming, “Take him away!” That wasn’t the only thing about his appearance that scared her. He had a rather large, misshapen head, and one leg was slightly longer than the other. She and Mr. O argued about that. She insisted that one was longer and Mr. O denied it. And this argument went on for some time, until Dr. Choi confirmed Mistress Yee’s view.

When Nani arrived in the kitchen, she found Chunshim drinking water like a thirsty horse. Mistress Yee had wanted Min to marry Chunshim, but he wasn’t around to be married off. Chunshim greeted Nani, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. Nani ignored her and took out the chopping board and began to slice dried green peppers. Chunshim stood there thoughtfully and then she exited the kitchen. Nani lifted her head and clenched her teeth. But a second later, Chunshim poked her head into the kitchen and said, “I know you’re angry at me. But it’s just a misunderstanding.”

Nani dropped her knife on the chopping board and got up. She didn’t know what she was going to say.

“Look, I know you think I am engaged to your guy. But I am not,” Chunshim said, quietly.

“I am not concerned about that at all.” Nani flushed.

“Oh,” Chunshim said, genuinely surprised. “That’s not what I hear.”

“Whatever you hear, it doesn’t concern me,” Nani replied sharply.

“I am grateful that Min introduced me to this household because . . . after my husband died, I didn’t know what to do to feed my baby,” Chunshim said.

No husband was in the picture, but she fibbed on anyway.

“Look, I don’t really care,” Nani said.

“Well, I just don’t want you to think I am going to do anything you wouldn’t like. Min has helped me lots, but he is not in love with me. He’s never done anything dishonorable. You can trust me on that,” Chunshim said.

Nani sighed after Chunshim had left. “He is not in love with me. Huh,
he
is not in love with
me?
” she imitated Chunshim sarcastically. “But maybe
she
is in love with
him?
” Nani yowled. She sprinkled sesame seeds in a pan and put the pan on the fire to toast them. “Huh, he is not in love with me, she says. I don’t give a damn if he is in love with her or with a dog!” she said and scowled.

The last time she had seen Min was the night Buwon was born. She cleaned and fed him. She drenched him with wine to ease the pain and dragged him to the storage room. In the middle of the night, when Mistress Yee screamed and awoke everyone in the house, Nani ran to Min to tell him he needed to go and hide at Mrs. Wang’s, but he had already disappeared. All he left was his vomit at the entrance of the storage room, which Nani had to clean up, then and there.

“He is not in love? He’s been in love with
me
all his life!” Nani said, suddenly feeling incredibly jealous.

“What are you talking about, Big Sister?” Soonyi asked, standing at the entrance of the kitchen.

Nani blushed, wondering how long she might have been standing there.

“What should I do now?” Soonyi asked.

“Once and for all, Soonyi, I want you to use your head and figure out what you should do instead of asking me constantly what you should do!” she barked.

Soonyi pouted. And then she said, “I can’t.”

Nani stared at Soonyi for a brief moment, and then they both burst out laughing.

“Go and find out if braised chicken sounds good to Mistress Yee,” Nani said, raising her eyebrows.

25

Mistress Yee took a long time over lunch. She examined the taste of each bite on her tongue suspiciously, asking what the ingredients were and sometimes spitting it out, demanding to know if everything had been thoroughly washed. Finally, Buwon was brought in. He had just taken a nap and had a bowel movement, reported Chunshim, placing him on a yellow silk mat to be viewed.

With his partially missing upper lip, he looked hideous when he smiled. Even though Chunshim was just a nanny, she felt strangely responsible for his appearance and tried to make nothing of it by smiling and clapping when Buwon stretched his mouth to smile.

Mistress Yee lowered her glance and observed her son as if an exotic fruit had been brought in from a faraway land. She showed, however, no curiosity or interest, but contempt. Buwon smiled, producing sweet baby sounds.

“What a good boy! He is such a good boy. He hardly ever cries,” Chunshim complimented him.

His head was still enormous. Dr. Choi had said that it was large because it was distressed during the birth, and he had assured her that it would shrink, by and by. But that son of a bitch had lied! Mistress Yee could see plainly that Buwon’s head was growing by the day; in fact, that was the only part of his body that seemed to grow. Mistress Yee winced.

“What’s that on his forehead?” Mistress Yee asked, frowning.

“Ah, that, Mistress, he scratched himself with his fingernails. That happens with babies. My son scratched himself at this age all the time,” Chunshim explained frantically.

“Don’t you ever bring up your son in my presence!” Mistress Yee squawked.

“Forgive me, Mistress. I will never make that mistake again,” Chunshim said, lowering her head.

“Out!” Mistress Yee waved her arm dismissively.

Chunshim wrapped Buwon in a silk layette and withdrew. Mirae took the silk mat and folded it away.

“Bring me the box,” Mistress Yee ordered, half lying on her cushion.

Mirae brought out a lacquered box in which Mistress Yee kept her secret. Dried dark green leaves were wrapped in a parchment. Mirae knew exactly what her part was. She crushed the leaves and rolled them in a paper. She licked one side of the paper to glue it to the other. She lit it and handed it to Mistress Yee, who sucked it, deliciously, with her eyes closed. Her delicate blue veins rose on her temple. “Ah,” she said and exhaled deeply, untying the ribbon on her upper garment.

Sometime later, Mistress Yee passed out, or looked passed out. Mirae collected the articles quietly and put them back in the box. She removed the remains of the rolled-up parchment from her mistress’s hand and puffed just once before she discarded it. She sat there, thinking what would happen if Mr. O stepped in right then. Of course, Mistress Yee wouldn’t have smoked had Mr. O been home. At the moment, he was away at the temple. He had left suddenly the other day, and only when he arrived at the temple did he send a servant to bring what he needed for a stay longer than a couple of days. Mistress Yee had told the servant to report that she was ill, very ill. So far, no message from Mr. O had come. Surprisingly, Mistress Yee hadn’t shown any signs of desperation, but Mirae knew it bothered her mistress. The only thing that prevented Mistress Yee from throwing one of her fits was Buwon, a daily reminder of her downfall. Whenever she saw him right after her lunch, she felt aghast and went hurriedly out for a walk or smoked in her room and passed out. When she woke up, her wan face looking confused, she talked funny, she called out a name no one recognized, or she acted like a little girl, and it always took a few moments for her to come to grips with reality.

Something worse might happen, Mirae’s intuition told her, but she didn’t know what or which side she would take. Suddenly, she found herself wondering what Nani was up to. She slipped out and sprinted to the kitchen where she found Nani and Soonyi laughing about the way Quince had swayed her buttocks. They couldn’t stop laughing, even when Mirae appeared at the entrance. Soonyi, covering her mouth, wiggled her tiny bottom in an effort to imitate Quince, and Nani kept laughing, ignoring Mirae.

A moment later, Mirae asked, forcing a smile, “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, one of our laundresses, she shook her buttocks in front of us, and she farted loud. Then she—” Soonyi couldn’t continue. She began to giggle, bobbing her head. She wetted her lips with her tongue. Nani giggled, too, as she dried the dishes with a muslin dishtowel.

“I didn’t hear the fart!” Nani said, gathering herself.

“Well, I did,” Soonyi said. “It was as loud as a cannonball. You-you couldn’t—oh, my—you couldn’t hear—oh, my tummy, oh, it hurts—you couldn’t hear because of the running water,” Soonyi managed to say and laughed, a teardrop oozing out of the corner of her eye.

Mirae didn’t ever find their jokes or tales funny. But she smiled, sitting on the stool, taking a dried persimmon stuffed with walnut. Nani snatched the plate and said, “There are no more persimmons after this. Mr. O is going to ask for the walnut-stuffed persimmons as soon as we run out of them. He did that last year. I had to go around the village, hunting for whatever was left. I had to barter with a chunk of dried beef for a few persimmons!”

“Does Mistress Yee want something?” Nani asked.

“No,” Mirae replied, chewing the persimmon.

Nani surveyed Mirae, who normally didn’t come to the kitchen unless Mistress Yee sent her.

Mirae wondered if she should tell them about Mistress Yee, what a degenerate she had become. But what was in it for her if she gave away the secret?

“Is she all right?” Nani asked, looking concerned.

“She is far from being all right. I don’t know what’s going to become of her,” Mirae said aloofly.

But neither Nani nor Soonyi asked any questions. Nani sighed, polishing the wooden trays. Soonyi was sharpening the knife on a whetstone, waiting for Nani to say something. But Nani stacked up the trays and began to fold up the dishtowels, saying that the winter seemed to take a long time to say its farewell.

“She passed out,” Mirae finally said. She wanted their undivided attention.

“What do you mean?” Nani asked, alarmed.

“She passed out,” Mirae repeated.

“How?” Nani asked urgently.

“She smokes the bad stuff,” Mirae explained.

“What’s the bad stuff?” Soonyi asked, widening her eyes.

“Mirae, you need to explain in plain language,” Nani commanded her because she now saw that Mirae might be toying with them.

“Don’t you breathe a word of what I have to say,” Mirae began.

“Hold it!” Nani exclaimed. “If you shouldn’t share what you know, you can just stop right there. We are not the only ones with ears.” She was surprised to have said exactly what her mother had said once to another maid.

“What do you mean?” Mirae asked.

Nani’s mom had warned her that birds and mice eavesdropped on secrets, and that they chirped and squeaked, so the whole village would know them within a day. Thinking of her mother, Nani said, “Mistress Yee would kill you if she found out what you are doing.”

“So don’t tell her what I am about to say. I am not trying to gossip behind my mistress’s back. I am worried about her. She is smoking the leaves, and sometimes the Chinese powder. When she sees her son, her spirit sinks low and she smokes. Mr. O should know about this, so that he can do something about it,” Mirae babbled. “I came in here to make some tea for her. When she wakes up after smoking, she is always so thirsty.”

Nani was dismayed. Her mother had said that addiction to opium would ruin even the emperor of China.

“Well, please don’t tell anyone. Although we might have to tell Dr. Choi about this when he comes to check on Buwon,” Mirae said. “Or maybe it’s just a phase,” Mirae added authoritatively.

Nani put a pot on the stove and said, “This is not good.”

“No, it’s not,” Mirae said.

“Is it really bad?” Soonyi asked.

“Really bad,” Nani responded, sighing theatrically.

“I know,” Mirae said.

Chunshim poked her head in and asked, “Can someone help me?”

“What is it?” Mirae asked.

“Don’t be afraid to come in. No one’s going to bite you. You always just poke your head in as if the kitchen were not worthy of your feet,” Nani said sarcastically.

“No, it’s not that. I want to be able to hear the boys. What are you all doing here?” she asked, smiling broadly.

“What is the help you need?” Mirae asked.

“Oh, Buwon has diaper rash, and I am going to need warm water to bathe him. Can you prepare water and bring it in?” Chunshim asked.

“At your service,” Nani replied.

“Thank you. I can always rely on you,” she said gratefully and ran back to the room.

“She has it real easy,” Nani said, going out with a large pot to fetch water.

“Is she always this grumpy?” Mirae asked Soonyi quietly.

“What?” Soonyi asked.

“Nothing,” Mirae replied, and left the kitchen, forgetting the tea, for she had never intended to make it in the first place.