Sonju reached Kungu’s house in mid-morning Monday. His maid picked up her luggage at the gate and led her to the guest room. She then walked out without a word but returned with a table of rice, tofu and beef soup, and with a side dish of kimchi, sautéed anchovies, and seasoned seaweed squares. Before Sonju could thank her, the maid had already turned and left the room.
Sonju nibbled at the food, then placed the table outside the door. After two sleepless nights in Maari, a fog of drowsiness rolled in, her breathing becoming slow and weak, her body rubbery. Struggling to keep her eyes open, she laid the yo on the floor and slid under the blanket. Nightmares of one familiar face morphing into another, accusing fingers, her retreating to a corner. She screamed, but no sound came out. She woke up confused, fell asleep again, only to waffle between sleep and wakefulness and wading through eerie dreams.
At the sound of a door opening, Sonju tried to rise from the yo, but only managed to barely open her eyes to see Kungu hang his overcoat, jacket and tie on the wall and roll up his shirt sleeves.
Coming toward her, he asked, “Did I wake you? I should’ve been quieter.” He helped her up to sit and lowered himself next to her wrapping his arm around her and said, “The maid prepared dinner for us. Do you feel like eating now?”
After dinner, they sat on pillows leaning against the wall, each staring at the floor. One or two minutes had passed that way when he took her hands and squeezed them a few times. He then said, “Why don’t we put your things in our room? I made a space for them in the wardrobe and the bureau.” He carried her luggage to his bedroom.
She hung her clothes and put away her empty luggage in the wardrobe.
He said, “After your visits, I found your hair on the floor and on my clothing. It was a nice reminder of you. Such a small thing, yet it was a great comfort to me. And now you’re here to stay.”
At those words, tears broke loose and flowed on Sonju’s cheeks. She had been thinking about the daughter she left behind ever since she left Maari. He wiped her tears with his shirt sleeve as he used to as a boy and looked into her eyes. She told him about the letter and losing custody of Jinju. “I could’ve had Jinju with me if not for the letter. It was all agreed,” she said choking with sobs. “Who had me followed? Brother-in-Law? Second Sister asked me why I went to Seoul so often. Would he have done it? If not him, then who? Why would anyone want to ruin my life? How can I live without Jinju?” She sobbed all over again. She lived without Kungu for five years. That was hard, and now she would have to live without Jinju for much longer.
She passed the night cuddling up to Kungu thinking about what Jinju might have done upon waking and not finding her mother there. She could hear her cry, see her frantic search for her mother. She couldn’t sleep until the early morning hours only to wake up two hours later.
In the morning, Kungu saw her puffy eyes, and a pained look came over his face. Before he left for work, he pleaded with her to be sure to eat something.
Not long after he left, Sonju heard the sound of the gate opening and closing. She listened to the maid’s busy steps and water slushing and pouring, which reminded her of the Second House maids washing at the well. She opened the bureau drawer, lifted Jinju’s neatly folded pale-yellow dress, brought it up to her cheek and inhaled her daughter’s scent. How was she to bear her daughter’s absence each day for fifteen years? It had been only one day. She had to do something to hurry the hours until Kungu came home. She went to the living room, took The Idiot from the bookshelf, put it back after reading the same dozen pages she had read before, then took another, doing the same, not remembering what she had read. After the maid left for the day, she took wet rags and repeatedly wiped the floors and the windowsills until sweat dripped and stung her eyes.
That evening, she told Kungu, “I need to do something. Why don’t we let the maid go? I can handle this house on my own.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I don’t want you to do without a maid. She works only Monday through Friday eight to three and Saturday nine to twelve. She needs this job.” He smiled and cocked his head for her response. She nodded.
“By the way,” he said, “would you come to my bank tomorrow with your registered stamp? Let’s open an account in your name. I’ll put some money in it.”
“I’m not without money. I told you I have money from my father-in-law.”
“So, you’ll have more. I’ve seen my mother struggle to save. She always said a woman must have money of her own.”
The next morning, she opened an account in her name for the first time in her life.
Sonju had been living with Kungu for three weeks. After he left for work, she stared at the scraggly plants and shrubs in the garden along the fence and thought she could redo the garden. At the storage shed, she found a regular shovel and a rusty hand shovel. She asked the maid for the direction to the neighborhood market.
She didn’t have to go far to encounter looks and whispers from women she had never met—merchants and shoppers elbowing one another, stealing glances at her, and whispering among themselves. What were they saying about her? She kept walking avoiding their eyes and ignoring their whispers and gestures. At the end of the market street, she found a garden shop. After her purchase, she hurried home.
In less than an hour, a young man delivered the shrubs and plants to the house. Sonju arranged them in the garden, viewed them from different angles. She dug, scooped, planted, filled, packed, and watered. Black dirt lodged under her nails, blisters formed on both hands, and her shoulders ached, but her gloomy thoughts remained at bay. She would take blisters and body aches gladly not to slip into sobbing and pathetic stupor.
When Kungu came home, she showed him the shrubs and plants, naming each one and told him what the garden would look like in two or three years. She realized she was excited. During tea after dinner, she told him what had happened at the market, and he said, “It must be hard for you, but try to remember that those people are not important in your life.”
He was right. They were not important to her. Besides, she had faced the hostile villagers in Maari before. She could manage this, she said to herself. “Tomorrow, I’ll buy stationery to write to Jinju,” she told him.
His face brightened. “That’s a good idea. She will know one day how much you thought of her during your separation.”
She went back to the market the next morning. She bought paper, a pen, and a rectangular box covered with silk fabric with images of chrysanthemums and rocks. When she returned, she sat at the low table in the bedroom and began:
1952 March 21
My daughter Jinju,
You are all I think about. This sudden change … I don’t know how to manage it. Forgive me for leaving you. When you are grown, I will explain what happened to your Daddy and me, why I had to leave.
I always thought I would share your joys, disappointments, and frustrations. I thought I would go through all that with you. Most of all, I thought you would know that I love you no matter how you are and what your choices may be.
I don’t know how I will stand not seeing you. Please remember me. I love you. I wish I had said those words to you every day.
After she wrote the letter and put it away in the box, her thoughts wandered to possible calamities that might await her daughter and Kungu. Other children might taunt her for her mother being divorced. The gossip might reach Kungu’s superiors.
That evening she asked Kungu, “If your superior found out about us, would you lose your job?”
“No. I’ll tell the truth. He knows me well.”
She thought, he had lived by that ever since a boy.
His hand gently squeezed hers. “There’s a positive aspect to your estrangement from your parents. You have no one to answer to.”
“That thought didn’t occur to me. Since I’m out of the norm and put aside, I don’t have to be acceptable to anyone, do I?” She was momentarily elated. “I’m freer now,” she said, yet she didn’t feel free. “But Jinju. Children can be cruel, and she is so young.”
Kungu wrapped his arm around her. “Some children are. Her family will protect her.”
Sonju thought of her father-in-law and mother-in-law. They would protect her.
In spite of her incessant thoughts of Jinju, Sonju’s life settled into a regular rhythm and gentle touches. Every morning, she tied Kungu’s tie, a ritual she needed to perform for her comfort. Yet the persistent, recurring thoughts remained—what it must have been like for Jinju to find out that her mother wasn’t coming back and how it was explained to her. Forgive me, forgive me.
It was particularly painful for Sonju on her daughter’s birthday wondering if Second Sister did something special for her daughter. She wrote a long letter to her daughter. She felt moody and unsettled that day.
On Monday, Sonju was at the market picking a fresh bundle of wild vegetables when a young woman’s voice called out, “Sonju!” A thud in her chest. She turned.
Okja, an old classmate, approached her with a wide smile. “What a surprise to see you. Are you visiting?”
Sonju hesitated. “No, I live here.”
“Then we are neighbors. We need to visit. I’ll bring my children to meet your daughter.”
Her friend Misu must have told their classmates about Jinju. Sonju said calmly, “I don’t have my daughter with me. I’m divorced.”
“Divor …” The classmate shifted her purse from one hand to the other, looking flustered. “I need to go.” She turned and walked off.
Sonju clutched her empty shopping bag. Now all her classmates would know about her divorce and her daughter. Her girl cousin would find out and tell all her relatives. Their whispers will turn into questions, and her proud mother would dip her head in shame. It broke her heart. She ran, and upon arriving at Kungu’s house, went straight to her room and wrote a letter to Jinju asking for her forgiveness.
The next day, Kungu presented her with a box of fancy stationery and said, “You had a tough time yesterday.”
One late morning in May, after passing about two dozen stores lined up on both sides along the street, she stopped near the entrance of a small bank where a middle-aged woman set up buckets of fresh flowers. In one of the buckets, pink peony petals were about to burst out of their crowded layers.
She was walking home holding three stems of peonies when she noticed the same classmate she had encountered before coming straight at her. Two meters away from her, the classmate said, “I hear you’re living with a lover. People talk.”
Sonju stared at the accuser and didn’t drop her eyes.
“An adulteress, that’s what you are. Leaving a child for a lover,” the classmate said, her voice rising. “Don’t you have any shame? You tainted the good name of our school.”
While being harangued, Sonju tried to figure out a way to leave the scene. She didn’t want to go around the classmate. Doing so seemed cowardly. “Think what you will. Move out of the way,” Sonju said, and clutching the peonies to her chest, walked right ahead as Okja, her mouth gaped open, stepped aside.
Back home, she placed the flowers in a vase on the bureau and wrote another letter to Jinju.
Someone knocked at the gate. Sonju opened the glass door of the living room as the maid went to the gate. Lately the maid had been talking more to her with softer gestures and at times even smiling.
“Who is it?” The maid asked.
“We are her family.”
Sonju’s heart jumped. She took a deep breath. At her nodding, the maid opened the gate cautiously.
Her mother, with her mouth pinched shut, walked toward Sonju a few steps ahead of her younger daughter. This wouldn’t be a sit-down-and-have-tea visit. Standing in the living room facing her mother, Sonju met her mother’s fiery eyes and waited for the downpour of accusatory words.
And it poured. “Your father is in poor health from the shock of your shameful act. He doesn’t receive guests. He hardly talks,” her mother said with force in her words and heavy breathing between sentences.
Why did they come? Sonju wondered. They had disowned her.
Her mother pulled out an envelope from her purse. “Your divorce papers came. I don’t want them in my house.” She slapped it down on the bureau. Sonju glanced at it, then watched her mother become more agitated. Her mother’s contorted face hardened, and her lips trembled. Her mother at that moment was almost unrecognizable. She walked a step closer to Sonju. “Many women smarter than you follow the conventions.” Her mother’s voice quavered, becoming louder. “What you have done, what you are doing is worse than death!”
“Mother! Mother!” Sonju’s sister called.
Her mother’s nostrils flared as she expelled air. This was the woman who used to tell her daughters to always restrain. Her mother’s words provoked bitterness in her afresh. She felt her anger rising. Her mother had no right to force that marriage on her and drop her off to strangers like an unwanted baggage and not take any responsibility for her action. Sonju said, “You shouldn’t have forced me into that marriage. I paid for your mistake.” Before her words turned harsher, she turned around, entered her bedroom, and closed the door behind her. She heard them leave. Her hands shook.
After collecting herself, she wrote to her friend Misu, explaining everything—her affair, divorce, and life with Kungu. She asked Misu to meet her at White Crane near Kungu’s house.
A week later, Misu walked into the dimly lit tearoom dressed in a well-tailored pink suit.
“I’m glad you came,” Sonju said.
“My husband doesn’t know about you,” Misu said. “If he did, he would have forbidden me from seeing you.”
Forbid her? Was Misu trying to tell her what sacrifice it was to show up for a fallen friend? She wanted to throw a sarcastic retort to Misu, she really did, but instead she said, “Thank you for coming.”
“I feel somehow guilty. I’m partly responsible for your situation. When I told you where Kungu works, I didn’t know it would lead to an affair.”
Did Misu come to relieve her own guilt? And that scolding tone. Sonju said, “I’m not holding you responsible for my divorce. It was my choice to have an affair. If you decide not to see me, I’ll understand.”
After fixing her eyes on Sonju’s for a moment, Misu rose and walked out into the sunlight.
In the smoke-filled room, Sonju remained in her seat, looking at the empty chair when a young waitress came for her order.
Several days later, she received a letter from Misu.
1952 May 22
Dear Sonju,
I thought about our conversation and felt bad about leaving you abruptly. You once asked me what I would do if I were not happy in my marriage. I thought about that question but don’t have an answer. I guess I would have talked to you, and you would have listened.
You were always different from me, but we were friends then, we are friends now.
Misu
Sonju wanted a friendship gladly given, not obligated. She sensed that a fracture had run across their friendship. In spite of that, she immediately sat down and wrote:
1952 May 26
Dear Misu,
I was moved by your letter. Thank you. I want us to be friends for a long time regardless of where our lives take us.
Sonju
She hadn’t heard from Misu in reply and wasn’t sure if there was anything left to their friendship. She didn’t know whether to cry or get angry. She felt lost and didn’t know what to do with her unsettled mind. Her thoughts turned to her daughter, and she ached in the flesh. She missed her so. Then one day during tea, Kungu asked if she regretted their affair. She told him, “I bedded with you because I didn’t want to live with a regret. As far as Jinju goes, she was to come with me. Until the letter.” Who wrote that letter? she asked herself again.
In early June, Sonju’s mother and sister appeared at the gate again. They sat for tea. Her mother started weeping. Her sister sighed and gazed at their mother with such sadness and pity that Sonju couldn’t bear to look at either of them. It unsettled her deeply to witness her mother weeping. This was the same mother who had always seemed impervious even when she was sick.
Her mother stopped weeping and said to Sonju, “Your father is not improving.”
Exasperated, Sonju asked, “What do you want from me? If I plead for your forgiveness and give you an assurance that I will repent, would that change anything between the family and me? I will still be the divorced daughter who shamed the family, still won’t be invited to the home, and you will not accept Kungu.”
Her mother stared at her for a long time without words and left with her younger daughter before finishing the tea. Why did their visit always end in the same way with nothing resolved? Would her father’s health improve if she said the words they wanted to hear? She knew she was hard and cold for not asking forgiveness, which made her feel worse.
A few days after her mother’s visit, Kungu said, “I think a change of scenery would be good for both of us. Let’s go to the countryside.”
On Sunday when the sun was high, they took a bus to a remote country place south of Seoul and walked where cosmos bloomed along the edges of a narrow dirt path, their colors varying from white to magenta. She studied those simple, open-faced flowers, the lacy leaves, and tall thin stems swaying gently in the breeze. She said, “Look at these frail plants, attended to by no one. Yet, they manage to stand tall and bloom fully in their own sense of glory. There’s a lesson in this.”
He smiled and squeezed her hand, the other hand shielding his eyes from the sun. “Life seems perfect at this moment,” he said.
Under the shadow of his hand, Sonju saw happiness in his eyes and felt deeply contented for the first time in her life.
Three days later, Kungu returned from a visit with his uncle’s family. Sonju never accompanied him. He had said they hadn’t asked about her. She knew he wasn’t happy about it, but he was grateful to them for taking him and his mother in after his father had passed away.
“I don’t like visiting them.” He squeezed his temple between his thumb and the forefinger, and said, “Every time my aunt sees me, she talks about her second son. She says he was either captured by North Korean soldiers or was brainwashed by the communists and chose to go to the North.”
Sonju remembered how she worried about Kungu not knowing whether he died or lived. “It must be hard on them not knowing.”
“I feel bad for them. I came home but their son didn’t. My stomach reacts violently when my aunt talks about her missing son. I don’t want to be reminded of it. After each visit, it takes me a while to get the fog out of my head.”
“Fog? What do you mean?” This was the first time he mentioned it.
“I cannot think clearly. I’m forgetful at times. There are things I don’t remember about the war.”
He had headaches too. She said, “It’s only been a little over a year since you came home. You were forced to fight with the enemy. You almost starved. Your aunt could be right. He might have gone to the North. It’s not unheard of.” She held him until his muscles relaxed.
Kungu visited his uncle less and less often. Sonju worried that his uncle’s family might blame her for it. She worried about his fog too, but after a while, those worries dissipated, and she forgot about them.
On the first day of monsoon rain, Kungu was sitting in front of old newspapers that he had spread on the floor, applying a coat of polish to his shoes.
Sonju said, “Remember we talked about how we can bring changes to this country? I have always wanted to teach, but what school will hire a divorced woman? I want to study but no university will accept a twenty-five-year-old woman.”
Kungu picked up his shined shoes and gathered the shoe polish and brush in the paper. “You can still study on your own. There are textbooks,” he said.
At that suggestion, Sonju started frequenting bookstores and bought books on art, architecture, and philosophy in either Korean or Japanese translation. She devoured them. She bought used college textbooks. She realized that she missed out a great deal by not going to a university. There were things in the textbooks that she couldn’t comprehend. She would look for a book that explained the way she could understand.