The following Monday, maids were already at the work area pumping water and sorting dirty laundry when Sonju went to the kitchen. Only Second Sister was there. “Where is First Sister this morning?” Sonju asked. “The kitchen looks empty without her.”
“She is catching the 7:45 train with a village woman to go to the city market.”
“First Sister? To the market?” Sonju grabbed a ladle and stirred the beef soup that had started to boil. “And why does she need a chaperone?”
“She has not been out of Maari since she returned from the boarding school. And besides, it’s a proper safeguard for a widow.”
With a ladle still in her hand, Sonju stepped toward the open door, craned her neck to check the clock in the living room–7:20. Just then, First Sister came out of her room in a soft green top and skirt that Sonju had never seen her wear.
“First Sister is pacing the living room,” Sonju said to Second Sister as she put the ladle down on the counter. “And here comes the village woman.”
As soon as First Sister and the woman passed the well toward the gates, Sonju turned to Second Sister, “Why all of a sudden?”
“I told my husband you felt bad for First Sister. He saw you and her pulling the weeds at his brother’s grave.” Second Sister filled a small bowl with steaming rice and placed it on a tray. “Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see how bad things are. He and his father arranged this outing for her.” I would have liked to go to a city market too, Sonju thought.
When First Sister returned home that evening, Sonju asked her, “Did you enjoy your outing? Tell me what you did in the city.”
A flicker of a smile passed over First Sister’s face, the first smile Sonju had ever seen on her. “Umm, we went to the market, had lunch at a restaurant, then stopped by a fabric shop … We went to a public bath for a scrub. Yes, that’s what we did.”
Sonju could almost taste the smell and hear the sounds of the markets she used to frequent in Seoul. “I’m glad you had an exciting day. Why don’t you rest? Second Sister and I can manage the kitchen.”
First Sister hesitated. “Umm, Mother-in-Law …”
“I’ll tell her I pushed you out of the kitchen if she asks.”
On the way to her room, First Sister hesitated a few times and looked backward at Sonju with a tight, anxious expression. It broke Sonju’s heart.
That Saturday night, Sonju told her husband about First Sister’s outing. “It’s good she had a chance to get out, don’t you think? She had not stepped out of Maari for fourteen years.”
“Hmph,” he grumbled. “Nothing good will come of it.”
She glared at him. “You would rather she be kept locked up in this village? What joy does she have here?”
He stared at her. Her voice must have been sharp. Before he could say anything, she left the room, went to the garden by the kitchen and leaned on the cool plastered wall of the bath house. She and her husband upset each other so often. They were not meant to be a couple. The waning moon and scattered stars above seemed to nod in agreement.
On the first Tuesday of November, four hundred heads of Napa cabbages were delivered to the house. The Second House women and the two maids first brined them and for the next two days, they stuffed the brined cabbage, leaf by leaf, with a mixture of sweet rice paste, hot pepper powder, fermented baby shrimp sauce, minced garlic and ginger, and thin strips of white radishes. Then the stuffed cabbages went into tall, fat glazed earthenware pots. The servants buried the pots in the ground near the kitchen to keep the kimchi cold all through winter until spring.
Two days later, Second Sister’s morning sickness began, and she told Mother-in-Law about her pregnancy. Every clan woman came to congratulate Mother-in-Law. The early morning prayers didn’t stop as Sonju hoped.
Second Sister was miserable with nausea and vomiting. Sonju pleaded with Second Sister to stay in her room and let her and First Sister take care of the kitchen, but Second Sister declined and said, “I’ll get looks from Mother-in-Law. You don’t become a lady of leisure until both parents-in-law die.”
The day after First Sister made her fifth trip to the market with the chaperone, Sonju was on her way to visit Big House Lady when she saw First Sister’s chaperone in the outer courtyard chatting and giggling with another village woman. They were pointing at Second House. The village woman saw Sonju and nudged the chaperone. Their conversation abruptly stopped, and with a stilted smile, they greeted Sonju. They must have been talking about First Sister. Sonju cut her visit short.
Second Sister was at the well and saw Sonju. “That was quick,” she said.
“Yes. I have something to take care of.” Sonju didn’t see First Sister in the kitchen. There was only one other place she could be. In the corner of her room, First Sister was stacking neatly folded clothes. She was startled to see Sonju walking in. Sonju sat, and not wanting to alarm First Sister, spoke in a steady voice, “First Sister, on the way to the Big House, I came across your chaperone talking to another village woman. From the way they acted, I was sure they were gossiping about you. Do you know why they might do that?”
With fear in her widened eyes, First Sister regarded Sonju briefly and gave her a small nod before she said in a trembling voice that she met a man at the market and they made plans to elope. Her face contorted, she began to cry, rocking, trying to stop her torrential sobs with the back of her hand. After she gained her composure, she looked up at Sonju. “I have to take this chance. It’s a chance to leave, you see?” She covered her face in her hands and sobbed again. Then she gazed down and said in a resigned voice, “I must have been evil … in my previous life … to deserve this miserable life. Yes, I must have. I was living only because I didn’t die.”
First Sister’s last words pierced Sonju’s bosom with immeas-
urable sadness. She covered her face and quietly cried along with First Sister. She must help First Sister make this desperate escape, she decided, and wiped her face on her sleeve. “Where is your man and where would you settle?”
“Umm, if I can still elope …” First Sister rocked again. “He is staying at a lodging near the market. We planned to settle in a small fishing village in Jeolla Province.”
“I’ll try to help you,” Sonju said, leaving First Sister who started crying again, and went directly to Father-in-Law.
When Sonju told him about First Sister, he stared at Sonju speechless. She said, “Father-in-Law, this man may show up to take her, and things may get messy if you try to stop him. It will taint the family’s reputation. The chaperone has already started gossiping. Please let her go before she elopes.”
Father-in-Law looked away. Neither son was home. He thanked her for telling him, then said, “Keep her in her room until her departure tonight.”
As Sonju left the men’s quarters, she heard Father-in-Law calling for the old servant. She returned to First Sister’s room and told her to be ready to leave that night and remain in her room until someone came to get her. First Sister covered her mouth, and through her liquid eyes, smiled gratefully at Sonju. Returning her gaze, Sonju said, “Have a good life to make up for the lost years.”
When Sonju entered the kitchen, Second Sister asked, “I saw you go to First Sister’s room and then to the men’s quarters. What’s that all about?”
When Sonju told her, Second Sister gasped in shock. “She found a man to elope with? It’s so … I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” Looking at the bowl she was holding, she mumbled, “… so out of character for her.”
“First Sister will remain in her room until she leaves,” Sonju said. “No one other than Jinwon will be allowed in that room. We’ll have a maid take First Sister’s dinner to her room.”
After a minute or so, Second Sister put the bowl down on the counter and said, “I don’t know what to expect, you know, with First Sister gone. What will Mother-in-Law do?”
Sonju didn’t respond to Second Sister. Things were moving fast. First Sister was leaving. Nothing must go wrong.
On the yo mattress that night, Sonju lay still, unable to sleep. She heard soft footsteps. She rose to peek through a tear in the papered window of her room and watched the dark shapes of First Sister, the chaperone, and a male servant walk toward the gates. She blinked to clear the mist in her eyes, felt the corner of her mouth move up, and wrung her hands all at the same time. What would it be like to leave? Just leave and start new? Imagine! Sonju kept her eyes on the hushed figures until she heard the creak of the gate closing.
For days, Sonju revisited First Sister’s words, her smile through a pool of tears, her rocking, the three figures disappearing out of the gates in the dark. For days, she kept an eye on Jinwon and wished she would do something—smash something, cry, or scream. What did the mother and daughter say to each other on their last night together?
Sonju didn’t have to tell her husband about First Sister when he came home that Saturday. Before dinner, her husband said, “My father told me you were involved in First Sister’s leaving.” She couldn’t tell how he took it. She decided that the less she said, the better it would be. “Yes,” she said, and no more. He didn’t make any other comments about it. People in the village tsk-tsked but soon forgot and went on with their lives.
About two weeks later, out of the blue, the Second House family heard Jinwon singing at her highest notes, a sound that seemed to rip her throat apart on the way out. She still hadn’t uttered a word about her mother. It must be her way of dealing with her loss, Sonju supposed. How complicated Jinwon’s feelings must be, especially because she had consistently ignored her mother. But she was still a child, and it was her mother she lost. Sonju’s feelings for this adolescent, now practically an orphan, turned tender.
There was little change in the Second House after First Sister left, yet the atmosphere was somehow different. Contrary to what Second Sister had anticipated, Mother-in-Law acted the same toward her as before. Sonju was busier with one less pair of hands in the kitchen. It didn’t help that Second Sister continued to suffer morning sickness and poor appetite, saying once again, “All my teeth are loose. It was like this during the entire pregnancy both times before. And that’s not all. Chuljin and Jina were both breech babies and my water broke well ahead of the delivery.”
What she heard sounded so serious that Sonju began to think something might go wrong with the pregnancy, or worse, with Second Sister. The family would need extra kitchen help very soon. She rolled an invisible thinking stone.
Second Sister was losing weight no matter how much she forced herself to eat. She couldn’t hold down food. Then in December, Sonju’s husband said with that sulky look of his, “I had hoped for a post in Seoul, but I start a job in Pusan in February.”
She tried to lift his mood. “Isn’t that still good? It’s the second largest city.”
“It may delay my advancement.” Without looking at her he said, “I paid a visit to your father. I thought he would want us in Seoul.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I said I would appreciate his help in procuring a post for me in Seoul.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t seem eager. He said you took great pride in hard work. What did he mean by that?” He looked at her this time.
“I don’t know.” But she could guess. Her husband disappointed him by attempting to use his influence. Or perhaps her father knew that his wife would consider it too soon for Sonju to return to Seoul. They might never want her to live in Seoul where Kungu was. Even though she knew they couldn’t stop her from moving to Seoul if her husband secured a job there on his own, heat climbed to her face. She hid her anger and held her husband’s hand. “You’ll be successful without his help.”
She knew he was trying to find his way in the world as she was in her own way. She would follow him to Pusan and help him achieve what he wanted. What he wanted was not complicated—to become a high-level bureaucrat as he had said many times. Most of the large private companies were run by family members where he would have no chance of moving up high as he could in the government. She came to understand over time that he had a need to prove himself worthier than his brother. What else could he want or even hope for? Not a decision-making privilege in his family, certainly not the family farmland. That night she held her husband close to her chest and felt his heart beating.
The next day, after she saw her husband off, Sonju returned to the kitchen and prepared a tray of roasted barley tea, a cup, and sweet rice cakes to take to her room. She had come to savor the time alone after an uneasy weekend with her husband. So, she was annoyed when Jinwon appeared in the kitchen, took one look at the tray, and placed another cup on it. Sonju walked toward her room without a word and heard Jinwon follow two steps behind her like a little child, this child who lost her mother only a month ago. Sonju’s irritation melted away.
“What shall we talk about?” Sonju set the tray down on the floor between them.
Jinwon picked up a cake. She ate like a hungry chipmunk and said, “About my great grandfather …” She poured tea in a cup and gulped it down. “See, long after his sickly wife had died, he went to inspect the cotton field and saw a young widow.” She ate another cake. “He had a small house built and turned over the household responsibilities to my grandparents. After that, he sent his servants to the widow’s house. They covered her with a burlap sack and brought her to his new house to be his second wife.”
Sonju poured tea in her cup and took a sip. “He had her kidnapped? Why didn’t he ask her to marry him?”
“To save face for her. See, the idea is that she was a virtuous woman and had no choice but to marry her captor.” Jinwon grinned.
“Oh, I see.” Sonju ate one and pushed the remaining cake toward Jinwon. Jinwon picked it up and finished it in two bites. “How do you know all this?” Sonju asked.
“People talk.” Jinwon guzzled her tea. “My grandfather had a sister who was born with her spine all fused. She lived her whole life in a squatting position like this.” Jinwon lifted herself from the floor and walked with her knees bent sharply and arms swinging out. Of course, Jinwon hadn’t witnessed this, but still. Sonju held her breath for a moment. First, Father-in-Law’s deformed hand and now this. Jinwon sat back down. “My grandfather married her off to a poor man and gave him farmland. She died during childbirth.”
In her dream that night, Sonju was nursing a baby, but it changed form. A child with frog’s legs with four toes each and hind legs with human baby feet. It turned its sweet face, stared at her with clear eyes as if it were looking into her soul. Then it called out, “Mama, Mama,” all the while scratching her breast with three sharp claws attached to its tiny front leg. Droplets of blood formed on the three red lines on her breast. Sonju grabbed the claws. She woke up clutching the yo.
The vivid image of the baby’s claw stayed with Sonju throughout the day and wouldn’t leave, causing fear to crouch in the deep hollow of her belly. Then the next day, the sun shone on new snow that had fallen overnight. She wished she had words for what she saw—mounds and mounds of whiteness under the bright sun, not much else to weary her eyes and no sound to disturb her ears. She forgot about the nightmare. She forgot about the last three breathless months dealing with one thing after another. She took in all the white scenery her eyes could hold and filled her lungs with pristine air. It felt like happiness.
The following week, her husband surprised her with a Life magazine that was only two months old. The secondhand bookstores must be getting them directly from the Americans in Seoul. She was relishing her excitement at his thoughtful gesture when Second Sister entered her room and dropped a basketful of mending in front of her. Some clothes bounced up and settled back in the basket. Second Sister sank onto a pillow. “I’m doomed to get old here.”
Sonju picked a pair of pants from the basket and threaded a needle. “Why do you say that?”
“My husband turned down a transfer to Seoul. Again.” Second Sister’s lips twisted. “He wants to stay close to his parents, you know, his duty to his parents as the first son and all that.” She picked up a sock, and with fury, threw it back into the basket and sputtered, “I’m tired of living under my in-laws. First Sister left. You’ll leave, soon. And I’ll be here to face Mother-in-Law all alone.”
Perhaps she should stay, Sonju thought, but once her husband started his job in Pusan, she wanted to join him and help him succeed in his career. She didn’t offer to stay and felt like an unsympathetic, selfish person. They focused on mending in silence for two minutes, maybe five. Jinwon sang O Sole Mio somewhere nearby. Sonju said, “I like that song.” No words came out of Second Sister. Their mending continued in silence. Sonju felt guilty but her husband would need her too. When the mending was done, Second Sister picked up the basket and left the room.
For several days, Sonju said little to Second Sister, afraid she might upset her for not offering to stay at least until Second Sister had her baby. Instead, she focused on moving to Pusan in February to join her husband. Sometimes she worried. It had been over nine months, and still no stir in her belly.