As the train came to a stop, its metal wheels screeched as if they resented having to halt. Sonju steadied her headdress with one hand, and with the other, lifted her shiny ceremonial coat and dress above her shoes. She took a step down. A whiff of heat from the engine and the acrid smell of burned coal surged up and prompted her to pause and turn her head. Her mother nudged her and said, “This is a short stop.”
The moment Sonju’s feet touched the ground, two men in crisp traditional garb carrying a bridal palanquin on their shoulders sauntered toward her and squatted a few meters from her. On the palanquin were painted writhing dragons with their open mouths and red tongues that appeared to leap out of the swirls of red, green, blue, and gold paint. Good luck? More like menace, Sonju scoffed silently.
She saw a dozen village women in long Korean dresses close around her, and before she had a chance to take a deep breath, strong arms on each side of her steered her through the palanquin’s narrow door. Seated in the cramped box, Sonju straightened her voluminous dress, and thought how incredible all this seemed. In Seoul, a rented shiny black sedan instead of a painted box would have carried a bride. It all seemed a farcical play of the old Korea, but it was happening to her in real time.
Upon a woman’s signal with her raised hand, the head palanquin carrier barked, “One … Two …” At three, the palanquin lifted and soon rocked and tilted with each step the men took down the steep slope. Sonju pushed her toes to the floor with all her might so as not to lurch forward. She remembered to keep her head modestly dipped, her face composed, and not to look anyone in the face, not even the laughing and bouncing young village children following alongside the palanquin.
To her left, on the uneven sloping ground, Sonju spotted patches of iced snow that the sun could not reach to defeat the winter’s last stand. Nearby and far off into the distance, she could see nothing but stark, lifeless farmland. No rows of shops, no markets, no office buildings, no paved roads. Was this what her parents wanted for their daughter? Couldn’t they see it was all a mistake? She remembered then that they were putting her away out of reach of Kungu. She tightened her jaw.
People’s muffled voices came from the wedding procession trailing behind, and once in a while her mother’s sharp Seoul accent stood out. Sonju stared at her clasped hands. A month ago, her sister accompanied her to the used bookstore, her safe place to meet Kungu since high school. She had hoped to see him and say good-bye, but after half an hour, asked the owner to pass her note to him. Even now the image of Kungu with her note in his hand caused her throat to close up.
After jolting and tilting for a while, the palanquin came to a wide dirt road below, then jostled uphill until it reached a large outer courtyard on a high plateau. At the end of the courtyard was a house with a series of papered doors and a long, narrow covered porch. As the palanquin proceeded toward the house, the wafting odor of meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, and steamed rice grew steadily stronger.
“The bride is here!” a boy yelled and darted in through the open gates of dark wood. Several people peeked out before the palanquin passed through the double gates and entered the inner courtyard. All around, people filled the courtyard like beansprouts growing in a bowl. They pushed, shoved, bobbed their heads, and talked in hushed voices in the slow dragging dialect of the central south: “A modern woman from Seoul, from yangban class, I hear.”
“An aristocrat, eh?”
“I hope she’s not a snooty city woman like you know who.”
“Do you think she is pretty?”
“She looks pretty in an unusual sort of way, I would say. Big eyes, dark eyebrows, thick lashes.”
“A straight high nose, wide mouth, and square jaw.”
“You know what they say. A woman with a high nose has a difficult fate.”
“Hush! This is her wedding day.”
As soon as the palanquin stopped in the middle of the courtyard, two women in matching blue silk dresses broke out of the crowd and helped Sonju descend. Sonju raised her shaky hands in the formal bridal pose—her right hand over her left, palms down, her right thumb barely touching her forehead. After the three of them took their shoes off, the two women guided her to the anteroom where more people stood waiting. The crowd parted as Sonju and the two women proceeded to the middle of a large living room. She couldn’t see much except the tips of her embroidered wedding slippers below her long red satin skirt. The women positioned Sonju at the front of the wedding table, and one of them told her to lower her hands to her waist. Her eyes still lowered, she found herself standing next to the groom in front of the roomful of old people in traditional clothing. They were sitting in a row, cross-legged and watching.
A booming voice rose from the opposite side of the groom, “The wedding ceremony will commence. The bride will bow twice to the groom and the groom once to the bride.”
She lowered herself to the floor in a formal bow, and as she rose, took a quick glimpse of the groom in a deep purple ceremonial robe and a black headdress. He was boyish-looking, clean and well-shaven with a short nose and a pointed chin. He was stocky and not much taller than she was. He was a stranger.
As instructed by the voice, she and the groom stood side-by-side and bowed to his parents, to her parents, and to other relatives in the first row. Next, the voice had the two women come forward. “Now, the bride will bow to her first sister-in-law, the widow of the eldest son. And then to her second sister-in-law, the wife of the oldest surviving son of Second House.”
As she knelt to bow, Sonju glanced at her first sister-in-law whose sallow face seemed to have never been acquainted with a smile. She was a thin, tall woman in her mid-thirties with her hair done in a married woman’s style—a sleekly combed head with a tight bun at the nape of her neck. All the village women Sonju had glimpsed so far were wearing their hair in the same severe way other than her second sister-in-law who had chin-length bobbed hair.
When the bowing was over, Sonju became a member of the Moon family. From this moment on, in this village, she would be called Her Husband’s Wife, Daughter-in-Law, Sister-in-Law, and eventually, Her Child’s Mother, but never Yu Sonju. She had become merely a person related to someone else with no identity of her own.
Her eyes were ready to moisten when she sensed movements around her. People were getting up and sitting back down. Tables were set and food was brought in. Plates and bowls were placed in front of each person at the table. Chopsticks clicked and spoons clanged. A few women urged her to eat, but being the bride, Sonju was mostly left alone. Lulled by the jumbled voices and laughter together with ripening odors of people, food, and alcohol, her thoughts drifted to how her life would be different than she had planned and how she would be kept out of all the happenings in Seoul.
Some hours must have passed because the daylight began to wane. There were exchanges of parting words and bowing heads when Sonju’s parents rose to leave. Sonju stood in the anteroom and watched as her mother glanced at her, then while turning, touched her hair pin. Her mother soon passed by the garden and disappeared through the double gates. Sonju thought this was how her parents planned to discard her, like an unwanted baggage dropped at the foot of people she had never met. The indignity of it! Her anger superseded any feelings of fear, pain, or sorrow of separation.
She bit her lower lip hard and returned to her seat in the room where the guests were talking among themselves. She lowered her gaze to the valleys and mountains of the shiny satin folds of her ample skirt and thought of the easy days of play and friendships with Misu and Kungu. During her middle school, she once asked Kungu if he had ever lied to his mother. He replied, “No, she tells me to have the courage to be always truthful and to be guided by my conscience, then one day I would know that I lived a good life.” Gazing at the boy who would not lie, Sonju had made a promise to herself not to lie again. She wanted to be worthy of his friendship. And here she was. Her marriage was a hoax. She would have to lie if asked why she married into this family, much below her class and a distance away from Seoul. She became angry at her mother again for putting her in a situation where she would have to lie.
A tap on her shoulder startled her. Sonju hadn’t noticed that dusk had settled and the room was emptying out.
“You must be exhausted.” Second Sister smiled and helped Sonju stand. Sonju followed Second Sister and was led to a room where under a low light from a bulb hanging from the ceiling lay a white cotton yo mattress on the floor. A folded, deep red silk blanket covered the lower half of it, and two pillows lay side by side at the head of the yo. Sonju turned her head away from the bedding to the opposite end of the long room where, against the wall, sat a large wardrobe and two identical wedding chests that her mother had sent a week before.
Second Sister assisted her in removing the headdress and the robe, and when Sonju thanked her, her voice, not having spoken all day, was stuck somewhere in the back of her mouth and sounded like someone else’s. Then she hesitated, swallowed, and looking at Second Sister, asked, “What now?”
After a quick glance at Sonju, Second Sister said with a smile, “Your husband will be in shortly.” She pointed at a floor pillow. “You can wait here.”
Sonju slowly sank onto a pillow next to the red blanket. All the marriage talks, yet her mother had never told her what to expect on the wedding night. Glancing at the yo then at Second Sister, she asked again with a slight quiver in her voice, “What now?”
Second Sister’s brows jumped up for a split second, then came a delayed smile. “According to the custom, on the first night, your husband will undress you. You will bleed, a sign that you are a virgin and the marriage was consummated.”
Why would she bleed? She just had her menses two weeks ago. Did the wedding in this village involve a ritual of cutting? Her breathing quickened. Before Sonju had a chance to ask, Second Sister said, “I laid an extra sheet on the yo for you. You want to save the stained sheet. Mother-in-Law may ask about it.” She held Sonju’s hand for a moment. “Your hands are shaking. I would stay here as long as you need me to but I think your husband is waiting.” She turned and walked to the door.
Sonju dug her fingernails into her palms to stop the shaking and breathed in, held the breath, breathed out. Second Sister rested her hands on the doorknob, lingered, then left the room after a backward glance.
Shortly after, there was the sound of a man clearing his throat at the door. In his light blue baggy pants tied at the ankles, the groom walked in without the robe and the headdress he wore earlier. On his deep blue vest over the light blue shirt hung four amber buttons, which swung and caught the light from the lightbulb every time he moved. He took off his vest and gave her an awkward smile before he turned off the light. He sat on the yo and pulled her toward him. His grip was strong, and for a second, she was frightened. He proceeded to loosen the sashes of her bridal blouse and skirt and then another layer of blouse and skirt. She was left with only her underclothes. While he was doing the same with his clothes, Sonju turned clutching her underclothes. He laid her down, then stumbled in the dark to tug off the sash of her remaining clothes. She recoiled from his touch and clasped her clothes to her chest.
He whispered, “Here, move this way.” He drew her to his chest, his hand roving on her underclothes again.
She pushed his hand away. “Please, don’t.”
“This is what married people do,” he said. “Just … stay still.”
He undid the sash of her undershirt and pushed it up. She pulled it down. His breath hot and humid as he shuffled and untangled both of their clothes, then pushed her underskirt up to her waist and pulled her underpants off. She drew her knees up, but he pushed them down. He then got on top of her, fumbled, and opened her thighs with his hand. His flesh touched hers. She felt pressure, and a sharp pain. She swallowed a quick gulp of air as her hands grabbed the yo.
He rocked, grunted, rocked, grunted on and on, then moaned and stopped moving. Finally, he rolled off of her. A thick liquid flowed on her thighs and on the sheet. So much blood. He must have broken her inside. And the smell of the man lying so close to her, a smell so bitter and unfamiliar—she couldn’t stand it. She wiped herself with the sheet and moved to the edge of the yo, and with haste put her pants back on. She turned on her side away from him and wept quietly because she hadn’t been able to stop him, because she couldn’t stop her mother.
They were silent for half an hour or more. Neither of them moved. Then his hand gripped her shoulder and turned her body flat on the yo. He got on top of her again. She lay passively with her body tense and her hands in fists. The pressure came. “It hurts!” she sprang up, screaming between her teeth.
She sat and sensed him move closer with his extended hand. She moved away, straightened her underclothes, and tied the sashes in several knots. She waited until he stopped stirring before she lay back at the edge of the yo with her back to her husband, feeling throbbing pain between her legs. She closed her eyes, saw Kungu under the moonlight in the garden and smelled his scent that always evoked the warm early summer air. Her husband started to snore. She felt his presence at her arm’s length and wondered if she lacked a moral bearing for thinking of another man while lying with her husband. But what else did she have now that was still hers alone?