All was quiet on the veranda after her husband left for Seoul the following evening. In the grey remnants of sunlight, Sonju paced the length of the veranda back and forth. For the past six days, she had been caged in his house with his people in a place where she knew no one. Before the wedding, marriage was just a vague idea. She now realized that she would have to be alert so as not to be swallowed up by him and his people.
The next morning, not knowing what to do with herself, she put on one of the Western dresses she brought with her and went to the kitchen to get lost in busy, mundane chores. She stood by the open door of the kitchen and asked Second Sister to allow her to help in the kitchen.
Instead of looking at her, Second Sister took a quick glance at Sonju’s dress and continued to prepare a breakfast. After she placed a spoon and a pair of chopsticks on a tray, she turned to Sonju and smiled. “I know what you can do. You can serve breakfast to Father-in-Law. He’ll like that.” She shot a quick glance again at Sonju’s dress that came down below midcalf. Sonju must admit that every village woman she saw had on a traditional long skirt and long-sleeved top. In the past, she had worn a traditional dress only for special occasions to see the family elders. She knew it would be a challenge for her to keep the long skirt off her feet during everyday activities.
The next day upon entering the kitchen, Sonju noticed Second Sister wearing a Western dress over woolen stockings. She must have had the dress all along but hadn’t dared to wear it. Sonju was amused and took it as a possibility that she could bring some changes in that household. To test that hunch, she asked with a casual air, “I would like to see the village. Is tomorrow a good day?”
Second Sister added a bowl of rice and warmed liquor on the tray. “Let’s wait until Mother-in-Law tells us.”
Sonju hid a smile knowing that Mother-in-Law would hear about her wanting to be out and know that her new daughter-in-law, only six days married, was asserting herself. That, at least, was something.
Other than serving Father-in-Law, Sonju had nothing to do except greeting a visitor or two or having a quick lunch with Second Sister in her room. During one of those lunches, she learned that of the three maids, one took care of the children at all times and the other two washed vegetables and fruit and dishes in addition to washing clothes and keeping the entire house clean. They had four servants who lived in the rooms facing the outer courtyard. Three of them worked in the fields along with sharecroppers. The fourth, the old servant, stayed around the house to run errands for the family and to take care of the upkeep of the house. There was a small kitchen at the end of the servants’ quarters where the maids cooked for themselves and for the servants. This arrangement wasn’t all that different from what Sonju was used to. Her family had only two servants and two maids at the house because the field work was done outside of Seoul.
Second Sister said, “First Sister and I do most of the cooking and mending clothes.”
“I am not accustomed to doing either but I will learn,” Sonju said, wondering what they did other than work. If she had known that she couldn’t get books here, she would have brought some with her.
Finally, on the tenth day of her marriage, Second Sister said that Mother-in-Law gave permission for Sonju to visit the clan elders that morning. “We have to dress in traditional clothes when we go out,” Second Sister said, “until the villagers get used to seeing us in Western clothes at home.”
After breakfast, accompanied by Second Sister, Sonju stepped out of the house for the first time. In the middle of the outer courtyard, she paused to breathe in the air that carried a scent of cool earth that was pleasing to her. At the edge of the courtyard, a red dirt road snaked along a knoll, on top of which stood the skeletons of tall trees, and above those stretched an endless sky. She had believed her future would be wide open like that. Her eyes became blurry, but she quickly tilted her head back. “Look at that sky. So immense. I think I could become a poet.” She kept blinking. When her eyes dried, she straightened her head.
“I don’t see poetry in this sky, but I’m glad you do.” There was a smile in Second Sister’s voice.
They walked down the steep slope to the right and followed a long mud brick fence. Second Sister said, “First, we’ll visit Big House Master, the head of the clan. He sat next to Father-in-Law at your wedding.” She went on to explain that their father-in-law’s grandfather had three sons. Big House Master comes from the first son, their father-in-law from the second, hence Second House Master, and Little House Master from the third. About thirty years before, Big House Master left the farmland under their father-in-law’s care and moved to Seoul to oversee the clan boys’ education. Three years ago, after Sonju’s husband passed the entrance examination to Seoul National, Big House Master returned to Maari.
After making a left turn again, they came to imposing double gates. Once inside the gates, they followed a stone path winding through a garden. The entire compound was terraced upwards with a house and a garden on each level. They took wide stone steps to the upper level.
A maid saw them walk up, and after a bow, hurried to the main house and announced, “Ladies from the Second House are here.”
Big House Lady came out to the anteroom, greeted them with a wide grin, and promptly led them down to the main level to the men’s quarters where Big House Master was sitting in front of a low table, the folds on his face revealing gentle living and a good temperament. Behind him hung a large scroll of poems in thick brush strokes. Every item in that sparse room showed understated grace—nothing fussy, shiny, or competing. The visit ended with him welcoming her to the clan.
Sonju and Second Sister visited seven more families and skipped the minor clan houses. The next day was reserved for a walk to the interior of the village, Second Sister said.
When they neared the outer courtyard of the Second House, Sonju asked, “When do I stop being a new bride?”
“When Mother-in-Law lets you leave the house on your own.”
The next day, Sonju and Second Sister started on the same narrow red dirt road but turned left this time and passed a cluster of small mudbrick houses with thatched roofs, then farther up the road a community well where several women were washing clothes.
In the midway along a well-trodden path, Sonju and Second Sister stopped near a gently sloping area where about two dozen low mounds lay. On the eastern side stood old pine trees, their trunks and branches bent toward the eroded graves. Second Sister said, “These graves belong to our clan’s ancestors. They came here to settle over four hundred years ago.”
Sonju’s own ancestors were buried on the outskirts of Seoul, but here, with the dead so close to the living, she mused that there must be a few good stories about ghosts in long hemp robes rising from the graves at night.
They resumed their walk and came to a plateau, where about ten meters below, several one-story modern structures squatted along a wide athletic field.
Second Sister pointed at the site. “Big House Master had this elementary school built. Most of the teachers are our distant relatives either by blood or through marriage.”
“Are there female teachers?” Sonju asked, her voice light and a half octave high.
“Yes, two. But they’re not from here.”
Someone was playing an organ at the school. Sonju looked in the direction of the music. She said, “I would have liked to teach but my parents believe only women from needy families work. I still want to teach one day.”
Second Sister turned halfway and moved her arm in a wide arc. “The village stretches far out there even beyond the hills you see. Most of the villagers are our relatives. The closer they live to Big House, the closer the blood ties are. Everyone in this village knows everyone else, even the ones not related to us, so when a stranger comes, people get stirred up.”
Sonju kept quiet and hooked dangling strands of curly hair behind her ear. Second Sister glanced at Sonju. “Your wanting to teach … we bury those ideas when we marry,” she said looking away, “at least here.” They turned and trudged home without a word.
On their right, at the northern edge of the plateau, the ground fell straight down to several parcels of farmland, each demarcated by narrow dirt paths. On one parcel, a peasant in ragged clothes was tilling the soil, his skin leathered by the harshness of the sunlight of many summers, and his obedient cow pulling the plow. From the chimneys of scattered thatch houses at the end of the farmland, smoke curled up in lazy ascent, then scattered away into mid-sky leaving a trace of burnt straw odor in the air. Sonju’s breathing slowed. She could picture herself living in one of those houses that had no fence to confine her, no gate to shut her in, and no one to answer to. Here was a place she could return to let her mind wander wherever it wanted to go.
That evening, at the sound of the train, she went to the kitchen and placed food and tea for two on a small table and carried it to her room. She waited. The family had already eaten dinner.
Her husband came into their room and asked her how she had been. She looked at him. His face, his smell, even his voice, were so oddly unfamiliar. He dropped his satchel on the floor and sat at the table. He wiped his face and hands with warm wet cloth she had set out on a tray. They had a quiet dinner together. Afterwards, she placed the table outside the door for the maid to pick up.
She was the first to speak, “Yesterday, Second Sister and I visited the clan elders and today we went to the interior of the village. There are some big ideas here—school for all children …” He grabbed a book from his satchel and began to turn its pages. “I was talking to you,” she said.
“Hmph!” His eyes still on a page, he asked, “Do I have to respond every time you talk?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t like it if I ignored you.”
“But I talk about important things.”
“I was talking about important things—sharing my experiences and thoughts with you.” His eyes were still fixed on a page.
He didn’t have to be short. I didn’t say anything objectionable, she muttered to herself. “I may find what you say unimportant to me at times,” she said, “but I’ll regard it as important because you do.” She then scooted over to her wedding chest and took out an English-Korean dictionary with curled corners from many years of use and one of five Life magazines she had packed in the wedding chest. She flipped the pages. Her mother had forced her into this marriage and look how it is turning out, she muttered to herself again.
“Can you read English?”
It took a moment for her to register her husband’s question. “What? Can I read English?” Without taking her eyes off the page she was not reading, she said, “A little, with the help of a dictionary. I mostly look at the pictures.”
The next day, he told his niece, “Jinwon, your aunt here can help you with your English.” Jinwon stared at him with a blank face. Sonju wanted to hide. Why did he have to brag? She hurried to the kitchen.
When he was home again the following Saturday, she found herself avoiding him by going to the kitchen for this or that, and when he left, she was relieved. She continued to serve Father-in-Law his breakfast each morning, which appeared to be an unspoken favor. First Sister never served any members of the family or guests and mostly remained in the kitchen or in her room tucked away, not seen, not heard.
One late afternoon, the female clan elders were visiting in the living room. Sonju was serving tea and snacks when they made comments to Second Sister’s four-year-old boy about having a new aunt. The boy started showing off and bounced around pointing at Sonju. “Yu Sonju. Yu Sonju. Her name is Yu Sonju.”
When Mother-in-Law scolded him for calling her name, Sonju said, “I told him my name.” Second Sister must have heard her son being scolded and rushed in from the kitchen. She tried to distract her son, but he wouldn’t stop until Mother-in-Law grabbed him and spanked him, landing two loud slaps on his bottom. “You are a rude boy,” she said. “You know very well you’re not to call grownups by their names.” Chuljin cried, and a maid led him out of the gate.
After the elders had left, Second Sister followed Sonju to her room, saying, “I’m sorry about my son’s behavior.”
Sonju smiled. “Actually, it was nice to be reminded of the days I was called by my name.”
“You miss home, don’t you?” Second Sister asked with a sympathetic look. “I have visited my family only once. My father was sent to prison for disagreeing with a local Japanese official.” She dipped her head briefly before she continued, “It’s not likely I will see my family any time soon. Never have I seen Mother-in-Law leave to visit her family. First Sister? She has never left Maari.” She paused with an unconvincing smile and said, “But what married woman visits her natal home often or has visitors even?”
In her room, Sonju thought it might be just as well that she wouldn’t be allowed to visit her family. They had already abandoned her, hadn’t they? Sonju hated her mother all over again. Then came the image of her mother touching her hair pin during certain moments, and her heart softened.
Sonju was fifteen when at her grandfather’s sixtieth birthday celebration, a woman pulled her into a small room in the back of the house and said, “Come. In this crowd, no one will notice us missing. I am your aunt.” Sonju had never heard that she had an aunt. “My mother’s sister?” she asked. The woman closed the door behind her and said, “Yes. Sit with me. You look so much like your mother. She and I used to be close.” Sonju studied this woman with gentle eyes and soft voice. She wasn’t regal like her mother, but she was gracious. Her aunt said, “When your mother was seventeen, she was to marry into a family close to the Imperial House. A month before the wedding, word that I was barren reached the man’s family. Her betrothed, being the last of the line, needed a woman who was likely to produce many heirs.” As she said this, a veil of sadness softly came down on her weak smile. She continued, “Even though Japan had annexed Korea fourteen years earlier, the royal connection mattered. More than it does now. The rejection devastated our family and humiliated your mother. For days, she hardly ate. She kept one engagement gift, the lavender jade hair pin.”
Ever since that time, Sonju thought she understood her mother’s decision to keep the hairpin. It was a reminder of her injured pride that strengthened her determination to have her daughters achieve what she could not. Sonju had often been sorry that she chose at times to see her mother in an uncharitable light, so she decided to try to think kindly toward her mother. But when she found her marriage difficult, especially after a trying conversation with her husband, she blamed her mother.
The first days of spring arrived with the smell of the dark damp soil after a quiet drizzle. A day or two later, shy heads of greens pushed up in the garden and on the rise. Soon afterwards, buds emerged on the cherry tree branches, and on them, tiny grey birds with red breasts chirped back and forth. It was spring, the season that had always awakened the restless excitement in her.
She took a deep breath and told her mother-in-law she would be at the hill near the school. Before Mother-in-Law’s narrowed eyes landed on her, she dashed out the gate, and by doing so, declared herself no longer a bride. At the hill, she looked down where a patchwork of parceled land lay like a quilted blanket, and beyond, sat silent mud brick houses with thatched roofs. Standing there she spent half an hour or more by conjuring up images of Kungu’s lean figure, his unhurried gestures, and the expressions on his face when he was telling her about something, when he smiled, when he looked her into her eyes. She was happy to find this refuge, a place where she could be alone in her own thoughts without worrying about being interrupted.
Two days later, she returned to the hill after lunch and again three days after that, and then every few days, each time anticipating to be reproached by her mother-in-law, but instead the family became used to it.