Back in Maari, Sonju’s life took on a different tone. She smiled more and faced her husband without anger.
“Just one time,” she had told herself, but in mid-February, she went to Kungu again. This time, she told him all the details of her marriage. She told him about the child she miscarried and how she sat on the veranda looking at the spot it was buried, and how she still saw it in her dreams now and then. She then wept.
He listened keenly. After wiping her tears, he folded his hands around hers. “I’m so sorry about your loss. I had always hoped your husband and his family would be good to you.”
“His family is good to me. At times, I wish my husband would ask for a divorce. He can use my refusal to be intimate with him as a reason but he is too proud. How the public regards him is everything to him.”
“If he ever does ask, come to me.”
She nodded and said, “This is our last time.” The ache in her chest wouldn’t let up at the thought of never seeing him again, but it must be this way. If she left her marriage, Jinju would have to remain with the Second House family just as Jinwon had. That wasn’t an option for her. She leaned her head on his shoulder and wept. “When it’s time for me to leave, you stay in the room. Don’t say anything. Please do that for me.”
The next morning, she bought a ticket to Maari at the train station and sat on the long wooden bench next to an old man with a thin grey beard. Her eyes puffy and heavy from crying, she stared up at the high windows and felt the diffused light on her face. She abruptly rose, walked out of the station, and caught a taxi.
Kungu opened the gate. His eyes grew wide. “What happened?”
“I’m going to ask for a divorce. I know how to get custody of Jinju.” She glanced at his confused face yielding to a smile. “I’d better go. To catch the next train.” She hurried to the waiting taxi.
When Sonju arrived at Second House Sunday evening, her husband had already left for Pusan. She would wait for next Saturday to tell him.
When Second Sister asked why she went to Seoul so often, Sonju said she had some things to take care of. Second Sister stared at her but didn’t insist further.
While waiting for Saturday to come, Sonju considered the enormity of what she had to do. Her heart jumped and bumped.
When her husband came home, this time smelling of perfume, she felt rather sorry for him. He went to the men’s quarters to talk with his father, then to Big House. After dinner, Sonju played with Jinju for a while and read a story to her. When she saw her nodding off, she laid her on her yo and waited for her husband. Half an hour later, he came into the room and changed into his night clothes.
After he sat on his yo and was ready to lie down, Sonju said, “We have to talk. Our marriage hasn’t been satisfactory for either of us. It has become unbearable to me. I want a divorce.”
“Huh?”
“I want a divorce.”
He straightened his back, and after a long stare, he said, “In marriage, even if you’re unhappy, you endure it and make the best of it. A divorce? Absolutely not. It’s ridiculous.”
“I had an affair.”
“What?”
“When I went to Seoul, I reconnected with the man I have known since childhood.”
“You have a lover?”
“Yes.”
His face reddened and his eyes turned hard. He spat out, “You slept with another man. I can’t keep you.”
She kept her steady eyes on him. “I’m not asking you to.”
His face redder, he turned and flailed his arm, but collected himself and said, “I don’t know anyone who is divorced. What would people say? Wait a minute. Let me think.” He squeezed his temples with his fingers, his breathing becoming coarse. He dropped his hands and squeezed them into fists. His face still flushed, he hit his thigh with a fist, then took a few deep breaths. Afterwards, he lifted his chin and closed his eyes.
She waited.
He opened his eyes and seemed resigned. “We’ll divorce as quietly as possible. I’ll tell my parents that you had yourself checked by doctors when you went to Seoul and you can’t have any more children. I’ll tell them I want a male child and you have agreed to an amicable divorce.” He dropped his head and said, “I’ll tell my father next week. I need some time to sort through things.”
“I’m taking Jinju with me.”
He lifted his head, then his face blazed. “I’m not going to let another man raise my daughter!”
“Then I’ll tell people I’m divorcing you because you caused my miscarriage and infertility. I told Second Sister about your multiple affairs. What would people say when they find out that your wife left for another man? If you let me take Jinju, you can see her as often as you like.”
He stared at her with an incredulous look. “You will lie to keep Jinju?”
“I’ll do worse if I have to. You were ready to lie about me to your parents, weren’t you?”
He blinked, sighed loudly, then looked at her. His voice trembled as he asked, “Was I such a disappointment to you?”
She turned. His question so childlike and clueless that she felt tender pity toward him.
The following Saturday, Brother-in-Law had been with his father since he arrived home. From the kitchen, Sonju watched her husband come home and enter the men’s quarters to greet his father, his usual routine. Half an hour later, her husband walked out of the men’s quarters with his head hung low. Brother-in-Law bowed to her but no smile, no words of greeting. Her husband must have told them both about the divorce.
In less than five minutes, Father-in-Law sent for her.
“You called for me.” She knelt in front of him ready to hear her father-in-law’s words against the divorce. She looked at him with a resolve not to waiver.
His face was glum. He cleared his throat. “I have received a letter that you stayed at a man’s house twice.”
For a second, she was utterly confused. A letter? She couldn’t breathe.
He continued, “You will leave in two days. You will have absolutely no contact with Jinju until she finishes high school. Your contact will confuse her, and she will have problems bonding with her new mother.”
She let out a scream, “No! She is my child. I can’t live without her! I can’t! Please let me take her. She is my child.”
Father-in-Law’s mouth was firmly closed.
A woman’s cry, all muffled. Her own cry. Father-in-Law’s face was out of focus. Touching her own hot, wet face, she pleaded between halting nasal sobs, “Please let me take her.”
“We will take care of all the necessary legal procedures for the divorce. Your father will be informed.” Turning his face from her, he said, “I have nothing more to say.”
Jinju must not see her crying, she told herself. She hurried to the back garden, whimpering and tripping. She leaned on the prickly juniper fence, and covering her face sobbed into her hands. Her life without Jinju. It felt like a chunk of her was about to tear off. Her daughter. How would she live without her daughter? Her mind was blank, and she couldn’t think of any means to take Jinju with her. Her exhausted sobs dribbled out. Perhaps an hour passed. The earth swallowed the sun. Then a few faint stars appeared and trembled.
When Sonju went to her room shivering, her husband was on his yo, quiet and still. She lay on her yo next to her sleeping daughter. She felt Jinju’s little chest rise and fall, and heard an occasional puff of soft breath. Her life without this puff of breath next to her. Her own breath quickened and her heart squeezed. She sat up beating on her chest to get the pain out of it. She was dizzy. She was losing herself. Breathe in, hold, hold, hold, breathe out. Again. She would have to pull herself together. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. One day, Jinju would want an explanation.
The night hours were long. Feral cats shrieked. The wind whooshed. Windows rattled. Sonju wept silently under the blanket until dawn.
A maid brought a basin of warm water. All of her meals would be served the same way so the family wouldn’t have to face her for her benefit just as it was done to First Sister. After her husband left the room, she walked out to the veranda and out of the gates. At the train station’s office, she sent a telegram to Kungu.
That afternoon, a messenger brought a telegram from her father. She was not to return to her parents’ house. She wasn’t planning to, but her heart hardened nonetheless.
As she gathered her daughter in her arms, her tears came. Hiding her tears, she said, “You’ll stay with Mommy all day today, won’t you?”
“We’ll go to the hill?”
“No, it’s too cold outside. We’ll stay in the room. We can hold each other tight. We can play ‘I can see’ game.”
“All day?”
“Yes. This is how we play. I’ll go first.” She closed her eyes. “I can see Jinju. Her hair comes to her neck with bangs. She tilts her head back when she laughs. When she eats a candy, she holds her sticky fingers in the air away from her clothes. She hugs me really tight.” She opened her eyes and hugged Jinju. “Now, you go.”
Jinju closed her eyes, then opened them a slit, then quickly closed again. “Mommy is real pretty. She is tall, taller than Second Auntie and has curly hair that comes to here.” With her eyes still closed, she touched her fingers midway on her neck. “She smiles at me big. She smells good. She hugs me a lot. And she tells me stories.”
Would her daughter remember her five, ten, fifteen years from now?
In the evening, a telegram from Kungu arrived. He would wait for her. She rubbed the thinking-stone before putting it on top of the layers of clothing in her luggage. She took photographs of Jinju from the photo album and placed them under Jinju’s outgrown dress at the bottom of the luggage.
Father-in-Law called her to the men’s quarters. He said, “I heard your family doesn’t want you back. I hope this money will help you.” He handed her a bulging envelope.
Sonju raised her face and saw that his eyes were soft and full of concern. She gave him a kneel-down formal bow, the last as his daughter-in-law.
In the early morning darkness, she went out to the veranda and sat facing the midway of the rise where her unborn child was buried. She returned to the room, hugged her sleeping daughter one last time before leaving, and took the first train to Seoul. In the midst of the train chugging, a baby crying, a man’s eager pleading, a woman laughing, Sonju could still hear her own long animal-like cry begging for her daughter.