stories by streetlight

7/29/2019 Stories by Streetlight

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Stories by Streetlight

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Storiesby

Streetlight

Esther Haelan Ra




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The Mejum Ajumma

In almost every town in Korea, there is at least one convenience store, called a mejum, located at aneasy distance from every home. Iseul had walked in on her first day of school, just to explore, and her

first impression of the mejum or the mejum ajumma — the woman who operated the store — was

anything but pleasant. A boy had been complaining loudly, ―Ajumma, how come everything here is so

expensive? Can‘t you make things cheaper?‖

―The price is exactly as I decided it and I can‘t make it any cheaper even if I wanted to,‖ the

ajumma snapped.

―This place is a total monopoly! I hope you get ruined and nobody ever comes to your ex pensive,

bad-quality, bad-customer-service store again,‖ the boy barked back smartly.

The mejum ajumma went quite wild. ―You horrible boy! Stand right there and say that to me again!

How could you have been educated I don‘t know, but if I was your mother I‘d skin you alive for being

so rude! How can you just curse a whole store like that? You‘re the one who will get ruined, you‘ll

never get accepted into Seoul National University and you‘ll just crawl into some cheapskate out -of-

the-way university that nobody‘s ever heard of, and get rejected from every job worth having, and

then you‘ll start a convenience store of your own, uglier and dirtier than mine, and let‘s see if you can

make everything the price of dirt and listen to rude boys shouting in your face then!‖

Spittle was spewing out of the ajumma‘s mouth, her soot-colored curls frizzed out like the antennas

of a bad-tempered Martian, the mass of her yellow, wrinkled flesh twisted, rose and fell again, and her

too-small eyes were screwed up in fury. Iseul was horrified. Feeling heartily disgusted at both the rude boy and the frenzied ajumma, she quickly left the mejum and hurried into her home without buying

anything.

The next time she came to the mejum, it was for boxes, not food. She had a parcel she needed to

send, and she needed a box. The mejum ajumma frowned at her through her squinty black eyes and

rubbed her nose.

―I don‘t have any spare boxes right now, but…wait! A new box of Lotte wafers came in yesterday.

Let‘s display the wafers on the second shelf and then you can have the leftover box if you like.‖ The

ajumma bustled over next to her with a heavy box full of light, crispy golden wafers, and kneeling,

Iseul stacked the packages up neatly on the shelf as neatly and deftly as though she were planting

flower bulbs.

―Don‘t get your pretty skirt all dirty by kneeling like that, young lady,‖ the mejum ajumma objected.

―Do I really need to go over and help you?‖

―Oh, no, I‘m done, thank you very much,‖ Iseul said, smiling as she got to her feet and hugg ed the

box to her chest.

―Good. Have a wafer.‖

―Thank you, but I‘m on a diet,‖ said Iseul, looking longingly at the pretty little rows of delicatewafers crisscrossing like gleams of sunlight.




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―As if you have any flesh to get rid of! You‘re all skin and bones.‖

―But more skin than bones, ajumma.‖

―Ai-gu! Girls like you make me sick. Try being forty-something like me and then you‘ll start

worrying about real life issues. You make me nervous with your silly teenager talk of losing weight

when you have legs like matchsticks about to snap; just grab a wafer and get out of here, young lady.‖

Iseul plucked a wafer from the shelf. She began to think the mejum ajumma was kinder than she

had initially suspected.

She ate the wafer and it was delicious. From that day on, she became a frequent visitor of the

mejum.

The ajumma was always watching Korean soap operas, always the same sappy soap operas with buxom black-eyed girls and strong melancholy men fighting and making up again on the flickering

laptop screen.

―Don‘t you just adore Kim K —?‖ she asked Iseul, sniffling and dabbing her eyes. Her lipstick was

badly smudged, making a little efflorescence of stale wine bloom at her gray lips. ―There aren‘t any

real men like him in the world. Oh, this is so awful. Why did he go and marry that little bitch in the

skimpy skirt? Why do men always go after the pretty girls with cosmetically altered faces and

shortened skirts and plastered-on makeup? Those shrimp chips are one thousand two hundred won.

Oh, beasts – all of them!‖ She leaned over and sounded the nose-trumpets with all her might.

Iseul counted out the coins and dropped them into the mejum ajumma‘s rough palm. ―The boys inour school are like that, too. They equate prettiness with kindness, and all the plainer girls are

relegated to the ‗friend-only‘ region with a smile of pitying scorn, while they worship the prettier girls

from afar, whispering about their model-like legs and perfect poise.‖

―Ai-goh! Young lady, males are all the same,‖ said the mejum ajumma wisely, shaking her head.

―Marriage is a senseless institution.‖

Iseul agreed. ―You kiss and cook and slave and work and give up your whole life for a guy who

takes out the trash and leaves for prettier, fresher girls when he‘s tired. The best thing to do is to be an

independent woman and adopt a bunch of smart kids who‘ll go to SKY universities and support you

financially when you get old and social service doesn‘t help you out.‖

The mejum ajumma stabbed her thumb savagely into her cash register. ―You got a point there,

young lady,‖ she said. ―But you aren‘t going to do it yourself, no you won‘t. You‘re going to go and

get yourself a nice little boy with a plump wallet and sleek hair and a few years later you‘ll watch

soap operas because it gives you an excuse to cry when life sucks.‖

Iseul smiled bitterly. ―Maybe that‘s true,‖ she said, and tore her bag of shrimp chips open. ―Thanks,

ajumma.‖

Next time she came the mejum ajumma was watching Jewel in the Palace reruns.

―Seriously, ajumma? That drama came out when I was in preschool,‖ teased Iseul, peering over at




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the computer screen.

―Korea is so full of han, suffering. They have this well of bitterness inside them. Sometimes it

comes out to create such beauty, winged blue roofs and Goryuh pottery and hanbok in all the colors of

the rainbow, and sometimes it comes out in intense jealousy, in awful political intrigues and pushingthe next generation to try harder, go farther.‖ The ajumma fast forwarded to the part where Dae Jang

Geum knelt by the side of her dying mother, sobbing as she stuffed berries into her mother‘s mouth in

the dark. ―Ah…! Now if only I had a good little daughter like that to look after me. My daughter is

fifteen years old, just your age, and she‘s a little horror. All she does is lock herself up in her room

every day and play games. Games, games. Nothing but games and webtoons and screaming back at

me when I tell her to study. I bet if I was dying like that in the woods, she wouldn‘t come and feed me

so much as a single berry. She‘d pig out on them all by herself, yes she would!‖ She began to shout,

wallowing in the cheap lime-green sweater and baggy marketplace pants she was wearing like a

frustrated pig stuck in a swamp of mud.

Iseul wished the mejum ajumma would be quiet and hurry up with calculating the cost of her yogurt.

She would savor every delicious bite of the mejum yogurt on her way home, and skip dinner. Her

father would yell at her, but then again, he was always yelling. At her and Mom. Mom would yell too,

for coming home late, but the clean, well-lit mejum was so much more comforting than the slovenly

darkness and stale-food squalor of her dim apartment.

―I don‘t want to spend the last years of my life counting out money to rude, fresh-mouthed teenager

wannabes with tight jeans and poufy lips. I need to do something meaningful with my life.‖

―Excuse me?‖ Iseul coughed, indignant.

―I want to travel. I want to run away from home and from the mejum and fly around the world witha rich hunk who can buy Paris for me.‖ The mejum ajumma heaved f orward, scraping together the

yogurt, the can of coffee, and the bar of candy with a dull thud. ―The paper cup‘s an additional five

hundred won.‖

―Just for a paper cup? That‘s ridiculous.‖

―We all have to survive, don‘t we? Five thousand and fifty won in a ll. And five hundred won for the

paper cup.‖

―Never mind the paper cup, I won‘t buy it.‖ Iseul dropped the money in the mejum ajumma‘s hands,

and the mejum ajumma counted the coins very slowly, each thin metal disk falling with a faint tinkleonto the hard white counter.

―We have a new soda pop that‘s just come in. Real cheap. One plus one deal, so if you buy one you

get another.‖

―No thanks. I just want my yogurt.‖

The mejum ajumma rubbed her eyes wearily. ―You still on a diet, young lady?‖

―No, I gave up.‖

―Good,‖ the mejum ajumma said hopefully. ―Then come more often, since you‘re not on a dietanymore.‖




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Slowly a peculiar bond began to grow between Iseul and the mejum ajumma. The mejum ajumma

always waited for Iseul to come into her shop, bells clanging at the door, and she would immediately

shut down her laptop and begin chattering away on the most random subjects. She would oftenquestion Iseul closely about her own family, and ask her if her mother was good to her, and whether

she had a boyfriend, and so on. At first this irritated Iseul most frightfully, but now she was used to it,

she was used to the mejum ajumma, her most powerful emotion in relation to the mejum ajumma was

a calm comfort in having at least one person who wouldn‘t just up and walk out of her life. Though

the mejum ajumma was not her friend, Iseul grew to know her secrets and philosophy better than

almost anyone else on earth, excluding perhaps the immediate family, and she was glad she had a

clean, quiet refuge to escape to whenever her mother or father were fighting.

They always called each other mejum ajumma and agashi, that is, young lady; neither of them

knew the other‘s real identities, and this cool, comforting sense of distant anonymity brought them

even closer together.

There was a time when Iseul suddenly realized, with a force of epiphany which struck her through

the veins and left her gaping, that she was not the only one who needed the mejum ajumma‘s presence.

The mejum ajumma needed her, too. Once, and once only, Iseul had found the mejum ajumma sitting

at the counter stool, howling. The tears were running down her face in torrents, and she was not

looking at soap operas, but had her mass of dyed black curls sunk into her wet hands. Iseul said

nothing, but bought two cups of tea from the mejum and made her drink it, down to the very last drop,

until the ajumma‘s noisy wails subsided into stormy sniffles. Then Iseul held her hands, very gently,

closed up the mejum for her, and watched her go home in a taxi. They never mentioned this incident

to each other again, but from then on the mejum ajumma‘s eyes always lit up when Iseul entered themejum. Then it was the ajumma who unquestioningly accepted Iseul into her mejum at eleven o‘

clock, when it was time to close, and kept it open an hour longer, watching Iseul cry like mad and

repeat over and over again, ―I‘m not going home, I‘m not going home, I‘m not going home ever

again.‖ The mejum ajumma was not a quiet comforter; bustling around, she made a great fuss, crying

along with Iseul, patting her and saying, ―Now you get up and shut that pretty mouth and stop bawling,

young lady,‖ and ―Now I‘ve microwaved you a bean paste bun, and I‘ll give you a thrashing if you

mention that silly diet again.‖ Half an hour later, ―Your mamma‘s coming to pick you up, Iseul, she‘s

crying her heart out with worry, she‘s your mamma, yes that‘s what she is, so go on and give her a

hug.‖

The mejum soon became Iseul‘s second home.

The mejum ajumma suddenly stopped seeing soap operas. She claimed to have suddenly plunged

into a soap opera of her own. She had fallen in love, in her mid-forties, to the most perfect of men, a

delight, a real king among men.

―It was fate,‖ said the mejum ajumma dramatically, waving her plump plain hands in the air, ―I

knew my prince would come to me someday, my General conqueror, my true love. My love‘s muscles

are just right when they wrap around me, and I love the smell of his hair and the glint of his eyes. He

makes the world go round and my head go dizzy.‖




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―So it seems,‖ Iseul replied, rather dryly. She felt it quite unfair that a fat, middle-aged mejum

ajumma with a sallow double chin should be having a thrilling love affair when she, a high-school girl

at the prime of her life, had never even had a boyfriend yet. It is always irritating listening to another

person‘s love stories, especially if that person is not particularly attractive.

―He loves me. Darling man! He, who is strong and handsome and could date the finest young girls

in Korea just like that,‖ she snapped her fingers together, ―he chose me of all people, a plain old

mejum ajumma! Te-he-he, think of that, young lady!‖

Iseul blew out a thread of air as she inspected the new Post-its that had come in. ―I think I‘ll have

the pink ones, please. So what about your husband?‖

―Oh, him! That ninny doesn‘t know anything that goes on under his nose.‖ The mejum ajumma

giggled hysterically and waved a large brown paw. ―He told me I was specially ugly today, how could

I have ever been lucky enough to find a man like him to marry me, and he doesn‘t know I have a

prince ten thousand times handsomer and kinder than he is, he-he-he! Oh, it is a fine thing to be ableto laugh at one‘s husband. That‘s one thousand won.‖

A few weeks later the mejum ajumma declared that she was going to get a divorce and live with her

new boyfriend.

―And your daughter?‖

―Oh, of course she‘s very angry. She threatens to kill me if I leave her alone with her father. But my

boyfriend doesn‘t like children, and honestly, even I, as her mother, can‘t stand listening to her snap

gum and play Avengers all day in her room, so what can I expect from a handsome man at the peak of

his love life?‖

Iseul paused quietly for a while, then said, ―I‘ve always hated the way parents, when they divorce,

act as if it‘s only their relationship that‘s getting torn apart. It‘s not just them. It‘s their kid‘s world that

falls apart. It‘s a whole family getting ripped in half.‖

―Now I wish you wouldn‘t say such things, of course I understand it‘s hard on my silly daughter.

It‘s hard on everybody, but it‘s hard on me most of all, because I have to leave my nice comfortable

home. But I always have my mejum. It‘s a good steady business and I can always watch soap operas

here.‖

―I thought you didn‘t watch soap operas anymore, now that your own life is so dramatic.‖ Therewas, it must be admitted, a slight tang of sarcasm in Iseul‘s tone as she tossed a pink Post -it onto the

counter.

―Oh, I‘ll never stop watching soap operas. When I‘m so sad I wanna die, or my kid starts throwing

things at me and screaming, or my husband just tells me I‘m an ugly, filthy pig and gets out of the

house, I slump down just so far and then say, ‗I‘ll go watch a drama.‘ Hah! Here‘s the change.‖

The next time Iseul came back she was shocked. The mejum ajumma was not there. A wiry girl

with Cleopatra bangs, shiny lip gloss and a glittery low-cut tank top sat fiddling with her hair at the

counter. The laptop full of soap operas had been replaced by a gleaming smartphone, and an older boy




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was at the cash register, trying to figure out how to count change. The dim light bulb had been

changed for a hard bright one, and the old-fashioned nineties music that had been whining out of the

radios in sappy, saccharine streams was replaced by bright, trendy K-Pop songs with a fast beat.

―Where‘s the mejum ajumma that used to work here?‖ Iseul questioned the girl at the counter as she paid for her yogurt.

―Oh, old Park Jae-hee ajumma? She‘s packing up to leave. She‘s gonna work here this Saturday for

the last time, and then she‘s gonna leave.‖

Iseul stood silent, speechless, as the girl neatly and quickly counted out five hundred won and

slapped it into her palm. The transaction was over too quickly, too efficiently, there was no laughing,

no whining, no talking at all, and the girl waited with her lipstick-plastered glass smile for Iseul to

leave.

So taking her yogurt, she left.

On Saturday Iseul came to the mejum and said, ―I heard you were going to leave.‖

―Oh, yes. I have to. Love calls, you know; the wings of love. Isn‘t that quite wonderful — really

poetic, in a way? My husband agreed to sign over the whole house to me. He‘s going to leave with my

daughter, and I shall have the whole place as a love nest all for myself.‖

The mejum ajumma was speaking very quickly and fluently, but the hard hysterical smile that lifted

the tips of her mouth was quivering slightly, as if under a strain that might snap any moment. She was

wringing her hands nervously, and her laugh had a bright, metallic quality in it, quite unlike theunrestrained howls of laughter she had indulged in when watching slapstick comedies on her laptop.

Iseul gazed at her, and the hole inside her grew. The mejum ajumma, avoiding her eyes, chattered

cheerfully on.

―How do you like the new music? It‘s the most ‗in‘ thing the young ones could recommend. What

will you buy now?‖

―I don‘t know. I‘m just looking around.‖ Iseul slid open the ice cream container door, then closed it

again, slowly and listlessly. She did this several times until the mejum ajumma called out, quite nastily,

―Stop doing that, all the cool air is flowing out and the ice cream will melt.‖

―Sorry.‖ Iseul let go of the door and backed away, her eyes large and wide.

―Ai-go, silly girl. That‘s fine. Just hurry up and decide what you‘re going to eat.‖

Iseul seized a yogurt ice cream bar and slammed the container door shut quickly. She threw down

her money and watched the ice cream melt, the cold radiating in slow, frosty white waves into the

transient warmth of her hands. She swallowed hard and did not leave the mejum. She wanted to go

home, but she thought, I can‘t bear to go home today, not today, everyone will be angry. Or gone. And

the silence will be harder to bear than the screaming. So she stood and watched the ice cream melt and

did nothing.

The mejum ajumma snapped her laptop shut, shoving it into her backpack. ―I‘m closing early for




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the day. Need anything more, young lady?‖

―No. Yes. I…I want a chocolate bar, I want…‖

―My darling will come home soon. I must go home and prepare a candlelit dinner for him. We‘ve

already married and we‘re going to go on a honeymoon to Paris, just like I told you.‖

―And your daughter isn‘t going to go with you?‖ asked Iseul dully.

―No, of course not. I won‘t be able to bear it. Two weeks of her screaming and screeching over

every dish in the restaurant, playing games on her smartphone wherever we go, and telling my darling

that he‘s not worth her daddy‘s little toe—that would be just awful. No, I‘m leaving that brat with her

dad. Besides, she‘s a fat thing and heavy to lug everywhere; I hate the way her lips stick out like a

frog‘s.‖

Iseul glanced quickly at her reflection in the ice cream door glass. Her lips looked rather frog-like

today. She looked and looked, she realized she was quite ugly and inadequate. She knew that however

much she struggled with her diet, she would never be able to change her original features. She knew

that this was her place, a dusty town mejum, and wondered intensely why she was never happy in the

tableclothy restaurants with icy pats of butter and rose-vases her second father took her to. She looked

at her reflection, she looked up at the ceiling with dark, cat-urine stains, and she saw no meaning in

life.

All of a sudden a surge of the most furious rage rose up within her for this unknown daughter, who

was getting abandoned by her mother for a stupid man who was a fool enough to go marry a forty-

something mejum ajumma. It‘s not fair, she thought. There‘s nothing that stays in the world. Not your

mother, not your father, not even a stupid mejum ajumma. She opened the ice cream container door slowly, then shut it again, seething with misery inside.

―Now I told you, young lady, not to do that with the ice cream door!‖ barked the mejum ajumma.

―Why?‖ sneered Iseul. ―Do you care more about your ice cream than your own daughter?‖

The mejum ajumma blinked. ―I don‘t see what you mean. My boyfriend…‖

―NO!‖ shouted Iseul. ―DON‘T!‖

There was dead silence. Then the mejum ajumma said, ―Huh?‖

―Your love life, your remarriage, the way you‘re just leaving you daughter like a piece of

trash…you always tell me not to go on a diet but you don‘t like fat girls, you don‘t like frog lips and

you‘re a terrible mother!‖

―Now that‘s quite off the line, young lady, you…‖

―You can‘t! Paris, soap operas, muscles…it‘s all the same to you, isn‘t it! Have you ever thought of

how your daughter might feel? Watching you and your husband fight all the time? Knowing that you

love your stupid new boyfriend more than your own daughter?‖ She was opening the door and closing

it again, open and shut, open and shut, faster and faster in agitation until it jammed in the middle.

― Now watch it, young lady, that ice cream door cost me a fortune and…‖




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―You can‘t do this to your daughter,‖ cried Iseul, wrenching at the ice cream door frantically, ―you

can‘t do this to me.‖

―Calm down,‖ said the mejum ajumma, coming closer.

―Don‘t LEAVE!‖ screamed Iseul, and with a ferocious jer k she pulled with all her might. All at

once the ice cream door flew open, forcing her to reel backwards and smash into the shelf of yogurts.

Glasses and cartons came crashing down in an avalanche of dairy products. One burst with a

satisfying splatter on the floor and exploded foamy white over the dirty floor, pooling in a large, pure

white heart void of all color except creamy blankness. Yogurt splashed in waves across the tiles and

left Iseul breathless, panting, in a panic. Then the last glass tipped over and smashed into a million

pieces at her feet, spraying honey tea everywhere, and suddenly it was over. There was a complete

silence. Iseul felt calm, albeit light-headed, and stared in front of her, feeling terribly, terribly empty.

The whole world had just splattered and spilled out of her heart. She had nothing left to rage about —

only the most utter, profound weariness.

After a long moment,

―I‘m sorry,‖ Iseul said, very quietly.

The mejum ajumma picked up a carton, inspected it, and tossed it into the bin. ―That‘s all right,

young lady,‖ she said, very gently. ―Sit down and I‘ll make you something to drink. You‘ll feel better

after a cup of tea.‖

The mejum ajumma invited her behind the counter with a sweep of her plump arm. Iseul stared,

irresolute.

―Go on, young lady. Sit down. It‘s all right. We all feel like that sometimes. I‘ve wanted to burn this

horrid mejum down seventy times every week. There now.‖

They both sat down, looking shyly at each other, and the mejum ajumma hummed softly, soothingly,

the theme song from a Korean drama, as she mixed a cup of green tea.

―I‘ll pay you, ajumma. I‘m so terribly sorry.‖

―That‘s fine. I was going to clean up the mejum anyway. Don‘t worry. I‘m not even going to do this

mejum anymore. I‘m moving away, my…boyfriend and I. A new life…and don‘t worry about my

daughter. I think I‘ll take her with me, after all. I‘m not such a wicked mother as you think me, I…‖

The tips of the ajumma‘s lips suddenly quivered, strongly and violently, but then she regained control

and managed to smile. ―I‘ve often felt like stamping a whole sea of yogurt under my feet myself, just

to vent my f rustration, but I reverted to soap operas instead. So you see, young lady, you mustn‘t get

angry at me. I‘m not such a wicked person as you think. I‘m just tired.‖

Iseul looked at her slowly, sadly. ―So am I,‖ she whispered.

Iseul filled the bathtub to the brim with hot tap water and sank down. She didn‘t move, enjoying the

soft, silky texture of the soapy water caressing her nakedness, and just soaked. She was exhausted,

and taking a bath is a good excuse to stop thinking for a while, though the last few minutes of drainingout the cold water full of her own filth was always depressing. When she had pulled herself together,




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when she had purified herself in body and soul she would go and do her cram academy homework,

look over the Olmec and Chavin civilizations and memorize two hundred hanja letters, but she

couldn‘t find the will to do anything right now. Her mother came in just as she had pulled on a ragged

bathrobe and was sitting, bare-legged and shivering, near the broken heater. Iseul felt a dull twinge of

surprise. She had long given up expecting her mother home at this hour.

―Darling,‖ her mother said, ―you look so pale and cold! Come here and let‘s eat dinner. I‘ve

decided not to go to the company dinner today, they‘ll do nothing but get drunk on soju and act like

animals. See, I‘ve bought you some of your favorite strawberry yogurt. Let‘s talk.‖

Iseul stared at her mother, speechless. It had been years since her mother called her darling, years

since they ate dinner together. Tonight her mother exuded a glow of quiet warmth which was so rare

that the pleasure it brought was almost painful.

Iseul got up and hugged her mother, tightly. ―Thank you. Where did you buy this yogurt?‖

―At the mejum down the street. The mejum ajumma suddenly had a fifty percen t off sale for all the

yogurt, I don‘t know why. Maybe it‘s because she‘s leaving the mejum. I don‘t know. Poor woman! I

feel quite sorry for her.‖

―Why do you feel sorry for her, Mamma?‖

Her mother peeled open the yogurt lid and sat down, the lines around her mouth folding like the

petals of a flower into a quiet, sad, tired smile. ―They tell me she‘s lost all her money working to

support her daughter, who‘s run away, and after a big fight with her husband she‘s gone to look for her

daughter by herself. That‘s why she‘s closing down the mejum.‖

―What?‖ Iseul started up. ―That‘s not true! She remarried another person. She‘s going to Paris.‖

―What dog‘s barking is that? No, I heard definitely that the mejum ajumma is ruined, and she‘s

packed up to go look for her daughter. Ah, she‘s a lonely woman, that mejum ajumma! – And all the

neighbors tell me she worked so hard for her daughter, and she loved her so much! Oh, Iseul, darling,‖

stroking her daughter‘s head, ―how glad I am to have you with me! I‘m very sorr y. I know I was never

a very good mother. But don‘t ever leave me, dear. I need you.‖

And with tears glinting in her eyes, and that same sad smile rippling across her lips again, her

mother pulled her close and kissed her, just as she used to do when they were very little. And for the

first time in what seemed like forever, ever since her father had left, Iseul put her arms around her mother and cried.




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Life Aptitude Examinations

MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS

Time: A lifetime for 3 questions

1. You are born into a family. How do you grow up?

(A) Your mother and father are happily married, with mutual respect and even some love for each

other. Your father is a responsible, diligent man who sits with you in the evenings, teaching

you math and wrestling. He is not afraid to tell you that he loves you. Your mother always

has a kind word and a warm smile for you when you come home. She does not pressure you

about grades, but encourages you to meet your full potential. She does not try to live

vicariously through you or take over your life. She is charming, clean, lovely, and knows how

to cut kimbap slices just right. The kind of mom you‘re not ashamed to hug in front of your

friends. You look back to your childhood and say, ―Those were happy times.‖

(B) Your father and mother both work successfully at big corporations. You grow up in an

English preschool with many privileges, and when you come home your mother gives you a

cool, sweeping kiss with lips that smell rich with perfume. Your father comes home in a neat

suit and nods distantly at you; you are afraid of him. Your mother always asks you if there are

any cram academies you want to join. You love them but you don‘t know who they are, these

people you are living with. Home is always cold.

(C) Your father is desperately overworked. He comes home late at night, eyes haggard and

bloodshot from drinking soju, wine, at his company, and with lines of worry running deeply

in the folds of his drooping flesh. Your mother lives vicariously through you; she is busy, in

her own way, bustling hastily to and fro from mother‘s meetings. Whenever you come home

she is at an ajumma meeting, sipping tea, giggling and chattering loudly as she brags freelyabout everything you‘ve ever done. Ashamed, you slip quietly into your room, where she

follows soon after, nagging you about your homework. When test scores come out, she gets

angry, screams, beats you and says, ―Are you the child I was bragging to my friends about?‖

Your father does nothing but look on with bloodshot eyes.

(D) Your father and mother quarrel over everything, from a mistaken purchase to a too-long

phone call. You‘ve seen the way blood wells up and trickles from wounds, you‘ve seen your

father scream and throw vases and furniture at the wall, smashing things, and you‘ve seen

your mother clean up silently afterward, crying. Your mother stays home less and less. She

comes back at later hours, for shorter, colder lengths of time. And one day she stops coming

home at all. Then your father begins venting his rage on you.

Directions: Each of the following questions has five suggested answers. Choose the one

that is best in each case.




12

(E) None of the above. Or, all of the above. It is possible.

2. You fall in love. So what?

(A) You used to be friends, and now that you‘re in love everything is seventh heaven. You study

together at libraries. You break off kimchi with chopsticks and feed it to each other. You sip

from the same cup and gaze into each other‘s eyes. Moonlit nights tak e on a new splendor

and a golden sun sets flaming on your entwined finger in the form of a ring. Every morning

you wake up, safe in the arms of your beloved, secure in the knowledge that you are special

to at least one person in the world. You marry, and begin a family just like (A) in Question 1.

(B) You fall in love, and he seems to return it. Then he doesn‘t. He comes and kisses you and

strips you of your clothes and pride and independence and you join together, hot flesh against

hot flesh, and then he gets up and walks out and doesn‘t look back. You call him up for datesand he gives stupid excuses. He strokes your hair when you‘re alone and walks past you

without answering your greeting in front of his friends. Then he stops answering you when

you‘re alone together. Then one day you look around and realize you‘re just alone.

(C) You fall in love, and he loves you too, but his love is full of anger. Everything you do makes

him angry. You wear pants and he gets angry that you don‘t care about your clothes. You

wear a skirt and he gets angry that it‘s too short. You gaze adoringly at him and he tells you to

stop following him around. You‘re friendly with other boys and he glares at you, furious, and

tells you to stop flirting. He tells his friends that he only started dating you because you were

hanging onto him. The thread of love grows thinner and thinner, and then it snaps, and he‘s

gone.

(D) You fall in love, and you marry, and your whole life is thrown away slaving away for him.

You multitask, working jobs, and when you come home you start screaming and fighting. He

throws things. You throw things. He slaps your cheek. Sex becomes empty and emotionless,

and it becomes a repetition of your parents‘ routine of (D) in Question 1. You sit in the room

after your kids go to school and cry, and feel that your life is worthless. And you finally

understand why your mother left.

(E) All of the above, or none of the above. Life doesn‘t really tell you what it‘s going to throw.

3. You go to school. What happens next?

(A) You go to school and get good grades. You are accepted into a SKY university where you

become the top of the major, date several charming individuals with GPAs as high as yours,

and engage in a variety of fulfilling extracurricular activities. Upon graduation, you are

accepted into a successful job at a big corporation which you find stimulating and

challenging. You buy a costly apartment in Seoul. Your children are sent to English preschool

and can speak several languages by the time they enter international middle school. You get

promoted to increasingly higher statuses. You retire. Your grandchildren are dutiful and

healthy and clever. Your hobbies are stimulating and challenging. You have lived a good old

life.

(B) You go to school but you get average grades, with an occasional B or C. Your friends play




13

computer games with you and you start dating and going through any of the options in

Question 2, which makes studying difficult. You go to many cram academies but you aren‘t

sure what you‘re learning. Your parents are never happy. You take the test and go to an okay

university and get an okay job. Workdays are hard and relentless, and you come home weary

and tired. Your flat shoes fall apart on your worn feet. Your hair grows broken, gray, and thin.You grow old, and looking in the mirror, you see a faint old person growing more and more

distinct every day.

(C) You go to school but you don‘t get good grades. Your friends dislike you and bully you for

being quiet and sulky, and your parents fight all the time. After getting yelled at in your home,

you get looks of disgust at school. You come to school every day but you sleep, other kids

notice that you don‘t even muster the will to try anymore, and the teachers seem to find

inexplicable pleasure in crossing your sheets with huge ugly Fs.

(D) You go to school, but you‘re so miserable that one day you don‘t s ee the point that you just

drop out. You start hanging out with people your age who smoke, fight, and live in the PC

Rooms on every corner of the street. Your mother keeps screaming at you to study, until one

day you get so irritated at her constant screaming you grab the kitchen knife and stab her.

Blood, hot and shocking red and pungent, bursts out of her intestines and splatters on the

floor. Panicking, you drop the knife and run. You run and run. And you don‘t look back.

(E) More than the above. I can imagine.

TIME’S UP! LAY DOWN YOUR PEN AND YOUR BODY. YOU ARE NOW DEAD.




14

Colors Unfading

1.

It was a dull, flat day, the day I met Ki-cheol, and I didn‘t know why I had joined the science

competition. It was the first and last time I ever made an attempt to form more than a passing

acquaintance with science, and it was a complete disaster. The moment I saw the logs and Avogadoro

numbers and molarity calculations and awful ugly abbreviations with their cold, pristine-perfect

scientific jargon I whimpered and shriveled up inside. But my mother wouldn‘t listen to reason.

―You got a hundred on your last chemistry midterms,‖ she argued firmly, signing my name in big

bold letters, so spiky that they reminded me of pine trees crawling across a wasted horizon. ―It‘s time

you broadened your perspective to more than silly cartoons and chicken-scratches; colleges look very

highly on these new-fangled science competitions.‖ ‗Chicken-scratches‘ was the word Mother always

used for my sketches and paintings, as in, ―Darling, is it okay if I throw all these chicken-scratches

away into the bin? They‘re cluttering up the kitchen walls.‖ It was an affectionate joke between us, but I felt unusually irritable and took it as further evidence of my mother‘s disapproval of my career

and antipathy to art in general and therefore to me. I crossed my arms, saying, ―I can‘t do it, Mamma.‖

Two weeks later I was sitting in a laboratory with some of the cleverest science students I had ever

seen. With the fervor and efficiency only a Korean ajumma could possess, she had actually found kids

who knew how to mix a buffer solution or calculate the vibrations of a running motor — students, in

short, who had nothing in common with me. In their coolly intellectual way they accepted me as an

equal. Then the experiments began, and they found out the truth.

I dropped a vial. I miscalculated an equation. I unscrewed the stopcock too early. I mixed a solution

too late. In short, I had done everything completely wrong, and by the end of the experiment, threestiffly glaring students confronted me, their voices thin and sharp.

―Are you aware that we paid money to enter this contest?‖ one demanded.

―Yes,‖ I whispered meekly.

―If you mess up our experiment by fooling around and not paying attention one more time, we‘ll

have to ask your mother to withdraw you from the contest.‖

―I‘m terribly sorry,‖ I stammered, swallowing hard, ―I just…‖

―If you‘re sorry, don‘t let it happen again. We‘ve just spend two freaking hours doing an

experiment you ruined. I‘ve cancelled all my cram academies just for this contest and —‖

Ki-cheol, who had stayed silently watching us from the corner, his hands in his pockets, now spoke:

quietly, but in a voice that made the whole room hold its breath.

―Lay off her, Sung-joon. She doesn‘t know anything.‖

These words were pronounced in a voice of calm, emotionless superiority that struck me cold.

Somehow, his scorn burned more deeply than the others‘ angry vociferations. I felt that I would rather

have been slapped.

When the others gr abbed their bags to leave and said, ―Ki-cheol, you coming?‖ he replied distantly,




15

―Nah, I have to check over some of my calculations, man.‖ As soon as he said that, I braced myself,

knowing that the worst was yet to come; so I crawled up on my desk and perched there nervously like

a scrawny chicken waiting for the knife to fall. In a moment, it did.

―Why‘d you even try out for this contest? You don‘t like science very much, do you?‖

―I – I wanted to draw what the reaction looked like,‖ I mumbled, which was partly true.

―Oh, great. Science and art! You‘re a real Leonardo da Vinci, aren‘t you?‖

That dug deep. ―Look,‖ I blurted, crimsoning till the tears began sloshing up into my eyes,

threatening to spill over, ―I‘m really, really sorry, okay? I – I know I‘m a failure at science. I know I

was an idiot. I‘ll tell my mom today I‘ll quit and—‖

―Whoa, whoa, relax. You‘re not hurt, are you? I was just teasing. Hey, how old are you anyway?‖

He was thin, with deep-set eyes and a pale face, but I felt his grimness was not of one who hadnothing to say but of one that concealed too many things; the very impenetrability with which he

surrounded himself made me feel even younger than I was, which was only by a few months.

I was stung. ―Sixteen, just like you. We go to the same school, Ki-cheol! Just because I‘m an idiot

at science doesn‘t mean—‖

―It was just a simple question.‖

―Well, I—‖

―Stop being hysterical. You‘re going to start crying again, aren‘t you?‖ He smiled grimly. I wanted

to hit him, and utterly disgusted at both myself and him, I turned abruptly away. After a moment‘s

silence he spoke again, and this time his voice had changed: it was quiet, gentle.

―Come on, Suelin…stop being so unhappy. It‘s really nothing. Everybody‘s just nervous. I

calculated a few things incorrectly myself. And after all, it‘s the first time. We can try again tomorrow.‖

I sighed and turned to him. ―I‘m sorry,‖ I repeated feebly.

―There‘s nothing to be sorry about. I‘d probably mess things up if I went to an art competition, too.

I wouldn‘t be able to tell a Jack Pollock from my little brother‘s vomit.‖ He smiled. ―Hey, maybe you

could design the panel and pictures for our science showcase. It‘s really important and those stupid

three-folded panels have a way of falling down just when the judges walk by. And you like art better

than science, don‘t you?‖ His voice had softened into one of real kindness at last, and I was both

touched and soothed. I turned myself to him, and I was grateful.

―Thank you: I‘d like that.‖ We parted that day without incident.

The next day, I heard the other kids on my team complaining again about how I had messed up the

whole project, and Ki-cheol said, ―Look, I did the calculations wrong, okay? And then I didn‘t dry the

vials properly. I was the one who blew it, so stop blaming Suelin for everything. Besides, she‘s

making this awesome panel for us. Have you even seen the design yet? No? Well, then, why don‘t we

just shut up and start this experiment?‖

I felt immensely grateful to Ki-cheol for standing up for me like that, particularly when he had




16

never seen my design for the panel at all. He came to me again later when the meeting was finished

and said, ―The panel going okay?‖

―Yes. I‘m really sorry about what happened with the kids. You didn‘t have to do that—‖

He cut me off. ―You‘re terribly sorry for everything. Just stop being terribly sorry and let‘s get to

work.‖

―You didn‘t mess up on the calculations.‖

―Yeah, I did. My handwriting was so sloppy that the teachers thought my ‗log‘ was a scribble and

so that whole part got deleted completely. I‘m ‗terribly sorry‘, too.‖ He flashed me a grin.

―Do you want to take a look at my design?‖

―Yeah. I‘d love to.‖ He shoved his hands in his pockets, and I led him to the back of the school,

where I had set up a large panel with the standard three folds. But instead of photographs pastedacross its surface, bright splashes of color were thrown across the folds, coated with cellophane, to

highlight the resulting colors of our experiment; flasks, carefully folded paper cylinders lit up like

Chinese paper lanterns, leaped out in several dimensions from the panel, and when Ki-cheol leaned

down and opened hidden drawers in the sides of the panel foamy acids blossomed out from bright

glass containers.

―Wow,‖ he breathed. ―This is…just…wow.‖

He shook his head and turned to me, and gave me a sudden, rare smile. It lit up his whole face and

threw light and color into his eyes. ―You‘re special, Suelin,‖ he said, quietly, and it was as if he was

seeing me for the first time.

I blushed. ―No,‖ I said. ―I haven‘t even finished it yet…I still have to light up the hanji strips on the

panel.‖

―You have a really special talent,‖ he repeated.

Later, when the other kids asked him how my panel was going on, he shook his head wordlessly

and said, ―Oh, she‘s awesome. The panel isn‘t just a panel, it‘s – it‘s a work of consummate art. You

have to see it. I‘m so glad we got teamed up together.‖ And from a distance, looking down and

thumbing through my papers, my whole face lit up with a glow of pleasure at his kind words.

At the science competition, the experiment was pulled off without a hitch. Everything went

smoothly, Ki-cheol‘s calculations were completely correct, and our group won second prize. The

judges commended us particularly for ―the innovative use of design in displaying the results of this

fascinating experiment‖. Ki-cheol grabbed my hand and shook it hard when it was over, saying, ―We

did it, Suelin! You did it! Your design was the best of all!‖

When the night was over, Mrs. Kim, Ki-cheol‘s mother, pulled me to her side and began strolling

through the science competition building‘s corridors with me. ―Well, was Ki -cheol polite to you?‖ she

asked. ―He‘s sweet, isn‘t he? I feel so lucky to have him as my son. He‘s so special and so smart. And

handsome, too. Why isn‘t he more popular with the girls? Anyway, he always manages to hook a prize

whenever he sails out into these complex competitions! It‘s just that they are so expensive. Oh, my!Do forgive me for this unabashed bragging session, but I am apt to get into this rhapsodizing strain




17

whenever I think of my hero. Indulge me, my dear.‖

―He is a wonderful person, really remarkable,‖ I said.

―Who is the kindest person at your school?‖

I thought about humoring her, but then I realized that what I was about to say was actually the truth

– at least to me, that day. ―Ki-cheol. He has been very kind to me.‖

―Really?‖ She was very pleased. ―He‘s so insecure he isn‘t usually very caring towards others.‖

―Oh, but he‘s so considerate. He always thinks of other people‘s feelings.‖ And I told her the details

of how he had stood up for me.

Mrs. Kim gave a gasp of pleasure. ―You good, dear girl! Oh, you‘re so right, my Ki-cheol is so

wonderful. I could go on and on about what a special person I think he is, b ut I won‘t bore you with

the details. I‘ll just say I am SO proud of Ki-cheol and all his achievements and his good nature. Butyou are such a good girl to listen to my foolishness! Ki-cheol was right.‖

―What do you mean?‖

―He always said you were very sweet and clever. You know he was really, really unhappy about the

way you‘d accidentally marked your OMR card for your midterm exam? He was really upset about it,

and then I got impatient and said, ‗Why don‘t you try taking a look at your own test scores fir st, I

think you have ample food for misery there.‘ Yes, he likes you very much, does Ki -cheol.‖

Mrs. Kim had to stay for a parents‘ meeting, but Ki-cheol walked me home. On the way I told him

that my one wish was to have a new notebook.

―Why don‘t you have one?‖ he asked.

―I‘m the youngest of our family. Mother never really buys me anything new, so I always get hand -

me-downs from my siblings, and while I don‘t mind, I‘d really like to have a notebook of my own

where I can sketch down faces. Colors. Ideas.‖

Then he told me that he had originally attended a science academy for the gifted and had wanted to

go straight to Seoul National University.

―Then why didn‘t you? You‘re really smart. You could have made it.‖

―We couldn‘t afford it. And my dad got into a fight over the principal over some personal issue.‖

―Are you happy here?‖

―Well, I did feel kind of lonely at first. Nobody really likes a gifted- program dropout.‖ He gave me

a crooked smile, then looked down. ―I‘m happy now, though,‖ he said, so quietly I could barely hear

him.

When we reached the front of my apartment, he dug his hands into his pockets and said, ―You‘re

lonely, too, Suelin.‖ It was a statement, not a question.

It was true. I felt the chilly night air pass through my coat, permeate my flesh, and blow ice into my




18

cheeks. ―Kind of,‖ I admitted.

He smiled at me. ―Then why don‘t you find someone to love you?‖ he asked.

I laughed. ―Who would love me? I‘m as safe from love as the beggar is safe from robbers.‖

He advanced one step nearer to me, and his smile faded. ―You‘re really stupid, Suelin,‖ he said, and

the world tipped a hundred and eighty degrees.

He always walked me home after that. And bit by bit he would reveal shards of his spirit to me. The

life he lived that I didn‘t know. The shadows in his past. And the simple relish of life that dimpled in

his smile whenever he turned and looked at me.

Then one day he had to move to Gang-nam, where the best private academies were all located, and

he couldn‘t walk me home anymore. Before his departure Ki-cheol and I walked along a park where

the cherry blossoms were drifting and the birds picked at the breadcrumbs we threw to them. When he

had to leave, he pressed a gift into my hand; I opened it to find a new notebook, full of creamy white

vanilla paper. Tears ran down my face then, and I said I would never stop drawing, if it were only for

him.

2

By the time the second semester began, I was head over heels in love with Ki-cheol, and everyone

knew it. Sometimes the teachers gave us sharp sidelong glances that burnt like brands when we would

walk together in the hallways, and once my Korean teacher called me up and asked me if we were

officially going out. The question hurt more than any other I had ever received, but I looked down andtold her, in all honesty, that it was not true. She looked suspicious, but let me go, saying, ―Just keep it

clean and don‘t do anything wrong. And make sure neither of your grades fall.‖

He never actually told me he liked me, and I was never quite sure. I spent months walking the fine

line between friendship and love, trying so hard not to cross that border, and it hurt like mad.

Sometimes I wanted to sit down and cry. And then it seemed certain that he liked me, and I felt happy

all over again just because he glanced my way. And then I saw him with someone else and I felt that

horrible feeling growing in my stomach again. I memorized everything he did or said throughout the

day and then when I got back home I played them over in my head again and again, wondering what

he meant by that, wondering why he did that, wondering why he didn‘t do that…until I wanted toscream. I began to wonder when this was going to end.

Time passed by. Several months came and went, and it was August. Sometime between late

summer and early autumn, Ki-cheol hit the melancholy period of adolescence. He had grown bored

not only with me but with life itself, and roamed hither and thither, ruminating gloomily about his

future. He had learned to see reality squarely in the eye, and he didn‘t like it.

The odd thing was, this time he didn‘t tell me about his anger. In fact, he tried to hide his pain from

me. This wasn‘t like him at all. What did he have to hide? I would have been able to comfort him if he

told me. But he was drifting away from me into the darkly dappled waters between childhood and

adulthood, and he was leaving me behind. When I came up to him, he would walk away quickly witha bitter smile, eyes downcast, saying, ―Later, Suelin.‖ And ‗later‘ never came. And thus time went by.




19

One day, when Ki-cheol and I were walking down the path from school, he turned and said, ―Let‘s

go this way. I have something to show you.‖ We went down a straggling dirt path, tearing through

leaves and branches, until we were in the middle of a clearing littered with empty plastic cans. The

smell of promised rain, the hot sweet scent of trees, and wet grass made me giddy. Then Ki-cheol put

his arms around me and his lips fell onto mine, hot and full of life, like the sap oozing from the treesaround us. My lips parted and fell open as of themselves, and even though I was pushing away with

all my might from within I was also hugging myself to him as close as possible. Then his kisses,

gentle at first, became violent and rapid, running from down my lips to my neck, and even though I

really began to push away he held on tighter. Panicking, I tore myself out of his arms and fell back,

panting and crimson red with agitation. He looked at me with wild eyes, and I couldn‘t recognize him

for a moment. Then I was suddenly extremely frightened, and jumping away, I ran down the road and

back home as swiftly as I could. When I reached my room, I pulled off my skirt and found that the

wet grass had mashed up on my skirt and stained my hips and thighs. My whole skirt was messed

with wet green, and it never did wash out. Not the dress or me. I could feel that wild, drenched grassy

green deep inside me.

As stupid as it sounds, that‘s how Ki-cheol and I stopped talking to each other. Several friends of

mine came by, asking me what was wrong between Ki-cheol and me these days, but I just swallowed

my tears and blurted, ―I don‘t know.‖ And grumbling, my friends retreated, saying, ―I‘ve always told

you he was playing with your feelings, anyway,‖ or even better, they would come to me with rumors

about how he was seen flirting with a pretty girl from another class. I don‘t know why you‘re telling

me this, I would repeat, my eyes filling with tears, Ki-cheol has nothing to do with me. And like that,

like some drifting piece of news, my friends told me that Ki-cheol had transferred to a science

program in Seoul. That he had moved out of my life.

3

My teacher was right. For a while my test scores plunged downhill, and I lived in absolute misery,

trying not to flinch whenever I saw Ki-cheol‘s name appear as the winner of some science

competition in the newspapers. Then one day during the end of my second year in high school, Ki-

cheol called me at midnight.

―Happy birthday,‖ he said.

His voice hadn‘t changed at all. Shocked, I clutched the phone so tigh tly that my fingers turned

white and said, ―Thank you. Are you happy, then, at your new school?‖

―No,‖ he said. Then after a while, ―Remember that notebook I gave you?‖

―Yes.‖

―You still have it?‖

―Of course I do. Why?‖

―No, just…wondering…‖ His voice faded away, and then he said, ―Um. You remember that day in

the woods?‖




20

―Yes…‖

―I‘m sorry. I really didn‘t mean…shit. I didn‘t mean to bring this up on your birthday. Okay, I‘m

hanging up now. I‘m sorry.‖

―That‘s okay. We were both young and a little stupid, that‘s all.‖

―Yeah, well…I guess I‘m still stupid.‖

―Why?‖

―Because.‖ He paused. ―Because I should have learned to let go of you by now.‖

I held the receiver in my hand. A long silence.

―I haven‘t,‖ he said, very quietly.

Then I said, ―Perhaps I‘m stupid too, because I haven‘t been able to let go of you, either.‖

I broke down in tears and hung up, but he called me again. We called each other for nearly thrice

every week after that, and once he came to visit my school, bringing me a present wrapped in plain

brown paper. But when I ripped it open during class, I felt my eyes sting at the sight of twelve brand-

new colored pencils, all freshly sharpened by hand, and lying in a row like the spires of a pretty

colored castle.

It was like this for four, maybe five months, and then he abruptly stopped contacting me again. For

about a month I waited, expecting him to call back again someday. But finally, I realized things

weren‘t going to work out. I pulled myself together, pulled up my grades, and graduated high school

with decent scores. My math and science were abysmal, but as art schools didn‘t require much from

me in those areas, I focused on my drawing. I was accepted into Kookmin University‘s Department of

Design, a place famous for irate professors, sleepless nights, and mountains of homework on drawing

assignments. I couldn‘t wait. I was plunging into a life of my own at last.

4

One day, as I was talking with my roommate and, as usual when I was idle, doodling away on the

notebook Ki-cheol had given me – I still had it, after all these years – my roommate came up to me

and said,

―You know what, Suelin? I was telling my friend about you today, and he really wants to meet you.

Do you want to come down and meet him?‖

―Is this a blind date you‘re setting up for me? Because I‘m not interested.‖ I flopped upside-down

on my bed and squinted at her, trying to measure the ratios of her face and sketch it out on my paper.

―Cut it out. And no, it‘s not a blind date. He says that he gave you a notebook once.‖

I jerked straight up, blowing strands of hair out of my face. So Ki-cheol was in Seoul! But what did

he want from me? For a while I hesitated, but in the end I made up my mind and agreed go down tomeet him.




21

I found him sitting at the university café with a book, and he closed it and smiled at me. ―Hey.‖

Ki-cheol had grown even thinner; he looked tired and haggard, with dark circles rimming his eyes,

but in his face I saw the same still secretive expression which had locked himself away as a boy, and

he still exuded the same bracing smell of cold air and soap. I paid for a glass of ice cream, then sat insilence for a minute while he looked down at his hands and gazed at the ice cream melting, and then I

asked him, trembling all over,

―Why…why did you send for me here?‖

―I‘ve missed you,‖ he said, simply, and just like that, it was as if I had shrunk into a pale little

schoolgirl again, waiting desperately for the person she loved with her heart beating on her sleeve. I

looked down and said, carefully,

―So how have you been doing, all these years?‖

―Oh, I‘ve been fine,‖ he said. ―What about you? I heard Kookmin University‘s Department of

Design was really difficult. How do you survive?‖

―I get along. So you got into Seoul National University at last, just as you had hoped for!‖

―You still remember that?‖

―Of course I do. I remember what you said, where we first met, what we did. I remember why I

liked you. I remember everything. So…are you happy now, at last?‖

―No.‖ He searched my face. ―I don‘t think I ever was.‖

―Why not? My roommate said that you found a girlfriend. What is she like?‖

His eyes darkened, and his brow creased into that look of withdrawal and reserve I had always

flinched at as a schoolgirl. ―Tell your roommate to go —‖ He grinned crookedly and shrugged. ― No. I

don‘t have a girlfriend.‖

―So it‘s not true?‖

―No. Of course it‘s not true.‖ And it wasn‘t. I later found out he was telling the truth.

Then I asked him something I had been dying to know for ever so long.

―You knew I liked you, didn‘t you? Be honest.‖

―…Yes. I did.‖

―And you didn‘t really like me. You just liked being liked. And that‘s why you always acted so

strangely.‖

―No, that‘s not true,‖ he said quickly, looking up. ―I liked you better than anyone else I knew. But I

wasn‘t ready for you, and I both needed you and needed to run away from you. You were too…pure.‖

I felt ashamed of my emotion, of my trembling. And I was afraid that, university student and

independent woman though I had now supposedly become, I might begin sobbing. I hastily

swallowed a scoopful of ice cream to conceal my agitation.




22

―And what about you?‖ He asked after a while, his eyes flickered up to mine. ―Are you happy?‖

Without warning, my heart gave a painful wrench.

―No,‖ I murmured, ―I guess I was never really happy, either.‖

He gazed at me for a moment, then looked down. As our silver spoons tinkled against glass bowls, I

closed my eyes and remembered the color of the night at the bus station, the stain that still lingered on

my school skirt, and that streak of gold in his eyes when he leaned forward and looked into mine. All

those colors were in me. All those colors were me. As the hours passed softly on, like the play of

sunlight on the plane-leaves, I realized unmistakably that this would be the last time I ever met Ki-

cheol. I also realized I would never quite fall out of my first love for him, but I also knew, as surely as

I sat there that day with the taste of cold sweet cream on my tongue, that I would also never be able to

quite trust him – or anyone – the same way again. Time and time again I turned my head aside, to

conceal the tears that kept dropping in silence and staining the blank pages of the notebook Ki-cheol

had given me, so many years ago. Pages I knew I would be filling, one day, with colors that wouldnever fade from my spirit within.




23

In the Land of the Morning Calm

Based on a true story

Once upon a time in the land of the morning calm, the land called South Korea, there was a boy

named Sung Yeol who lived with his mother. She was a quiet, elegant lady with hair spun black as

night and hands as fine and delicate as two white lilies, a lady who knew how to sip cool

chrysanthemum tea without slurping and raise something as mundane as washing dishes to the

elegance and mystery of a distant ritual. Then his father died, and things changed.

Their visits to parks and aquariums ceased abruptly. He missed feeding the ducklings at the pond

and he missed staring at sharks through thick glass walls, his cheeks and hands pressed to the cool

surface glowing with rich light refracted from the cobalt-blue water. Instead, he was sent to an English

speaking preschool, where advertisements screamed ―We create the global leaders of the century andopen the doors to an endless choice of top universities and job oppertunities through the guidance of

the most qualified experts in the field!‖ Later he would wonder why these ‗qualified experts‘ couldn‘t

even spell ‗opportunities‘ correctly, but then he merely deplored the sad fact that he had to sit for

hours blinking dumbly at a big, blond, bosomy teacher with sparkly eyes as blue and impenetrable as

stones, her flabby lips pouring forth a steady stream of what sounded dimly in his ears as

incomprehensible barbarian nonsense. Sometimes when he came home from preschool his mother

would cup his hands in hers and say in her soft, fluty voice, ―Now tell Umma what kind of English

you learned today‖, and he would reply, quite honestly, ―I don‘t know,‖ and squeeze her hands to

show her he was sorry.

Her hands had changed.

His mother‘s hands, formerly so white and silky and seamless, shriveled and hardened into two

hands as bright, as red, as glossy hard as two crab claws. She had taken up a job as a washerwoman

and worked hours and hours every day, mopping up floors, shaking out trash, and scrubbing

passionately at dirty cutlery. Whenever he came home she was very exhausted.

―And what English did you learn today, darling…?‖

―Hello nice to meet you how are you fine thank you and you.‖ He rattled off several phrases and

then helped her take off her coat, stroking the cold, weathered hands as he spoke. And never the wiser,

his mother would nod, shading her darkly circled eyes and saying, ―Oh! How smart you are, my littleone!‖

When he was in middle school he won many contests and brought home various prizes. But one

day when she gave him some precious money for new books, he was suddenly struck with how very

little that money was and how silly it was to throw it all away on a book. So he used his money for a

hot bowl of ramen at Kimbap Heaven, and it was while slurping up the curly red hot noodles that he

was struck with the idea of earning money on his own. After a short, thorough inquiry, he landed a job

serving cheap rolls of rice and ramen at Kimbap Heaven and mopping up afterwards every afternoon

after school was over. This arrangement worked very nicely and he felt very proud of himself,

thinking, ―I‘ll be able to give all this money to Umma when it‘s over, and buy her something pretty at

last; how surprised and happy she‘ll be!‖ But his grand plan failed when his mother walked into

Kimbap Heaven one day and was horrified to see her son mopping up the floor. In an instant she had




24

whirled him out of the shop and thrown her rubber gloves and washing basket at him. She grabbed

him by the ear and slammed him against the shoe-board at home. Years of washing had given her

once-delicate arms unprecedented strength, and Sung Yeol felt a flash of white pain etch across his

vision as he crumpled to the ground, clutching his head and sobbing desperately.

―Is this the only reward for which I slave away, day and night, throwing away my life?‖ she

screamed at him, so mad tears were flying everywhere. ―Do you want to grow up to become like me?

Mopping floors? You crawl on the ground now, you crawl on the ground forever! You hear? You

won‘t become like me, Sung Yeol! You can‘t!‖

Then they were both crying as if their hearts would break, but neither had the courage to reach out

and comfort the other; joined but torn apart by their sorrow, they both clung to the ground, weeping

bitterly together…

As soon as the month was over he quit, and the dearly earned money he had dreamed of giving so

proudly to his mother was swept away with cold disapproval into his future savings bank, ―for your college,‖ she snapped.

As soon as middle school was over his parcels were packed and his name enrolled in a private

boarding high school for gifted students. In the weekends he was not allowed to come home, but his

mother signed him up for every ―specially recommended‖ course in the cram academies nearby. They

each cost a thousand dollars a month, and she took on another job that worked longer hours, more

strenuously. He clung to her skirts and soft frayed sleeves as he was being hustled onto the bus, and he

cried, ―When will I see you again, Umma? I want to see you.‖

―And I want to see you too,‖ she said, smiling gently, ―but at university.‖ And with that, the doors

folded shut, enclosing him off in the fusty, car-leather smelling claustrophobia of the bus that was totake him into his new life.

―We will prepare you to enter university,‖ his teachers said. ―Leave everything to us.‖ They locked

him in a room with thirty boys and girls just like him, chained to wooden desks equipped with books,

pencils, and pens. ―Let us help you with your tests,‖ they said, and drilled equation after equation into

his head. Chalk scratched and wailed across blackboards. High-tech computers whirred to life as

flickering, high-color teachers sprang to life on the digital screen. As soon as classes were over he was

dragged to another set of rooms, only this time all the desks and chairs were separated by thin wooden

panels and hard white lights. They were not allowed to leave this room until twelve o‘ clock, when

they were forced into bed and all the doors locked. At six the next morning they were roused by the

roll call and they marched forth into the cold again, for a whole new day.

Sung Yeol‘s legs grew weak and flabby with long hours of sitting down; his arid, opaque eyes grew

lackluster and his hair cluttered with lack of sleep. He looked in the mirror and shuddered at the

conglomeration of darkness and sallow yellow and pale brown that dragged his face down into the

depths of study. He grew thin and homesick, but he also grew hard and cynical, he learned to fold his

report cards up quickly whenever his friends passed long sidelong glances over his desk and he

learned to refuse to help other kids when they came to him with their homework. He learned to cram,

staying up all night until acne broke out across his face, swigging down can after can of Red Bull and

coffee and feeling his stomach churn and his mind burn. Again and again he thought, I can‘t do it. But

then the next day arrived, with its endless quizzes, tests, endless lists of words to memorize, and herealized, I have to do it. I don‘t have a choice.




25

Once a psychologist came into their class to give them a special lecture, and at the end he offered to

counsel some of them privately by handing out slips of paper on which he had written the question,

What is the hardest thing about your school life?

There were various replies.

I always feel that I’m behind. I don’t even want to be the best, I just want to be able to keep up…

There are no true friends to whom I can reveal myself completely.

The pressure of my parents’ expectations stresses me out.

I don’t have any time to date pretty girls. Plus all the pretty girls have become fat and ugly with too

much studying.

I don’t have the desire to study anymore. It ’ s no longer a pursuit for knowledge but a pursuit for

university, then a job, and then…

There’s nothing hard about studying. It’s the easiest thing in the world. The problem is that I can no

longer imagine what else I can do.

I don’t know what the heck I should do with my life.

Sung Yeol thought very hard about this question. He tried out many answers, but crumpled them all

up and threw them away in vain. The problem was that he just didn‘t know what the problem was.

Why am I studying in the first place? For just one moment, he allowed himself to whisper this fatal

question. After I finish studying, perhaps enter university, get a job…what next?

By the time he pressed pen to paper, the psychologist was gone, and it was time for math class

again.

His hours of studying crushed down on his back, so hard he heard his spine snap and his bones

crack. He felt the crusty fingers of knowledge breaking many tiny bones all down his neck and waist.

Sung Yeol wept with pain. One night there was a snowstorm and all the cram academies and the

school shut down for the day, but he had forgotten how to play, and was violently sick at the thought

of reading. So that day he opened his textbooks and began studying again. He no longer remembered

how to laugh freely. He felt as if something was perpetually lodged in his left eye, it stung so much

whenever he looked down at the words. Then when his left eye closed down and the words began to

thicken into a swamp of unreadable black insects pouring across his page, he knew he was ready.

Finally, it was the morning of his test. He was sitting in a room at his cram academy, running his

pencil down the paper listlessly and waiting for his bus to arrive when his teacher opened the door.

―There‘s someone here to see you,‖ he said.

Then Sung Yeol heard a fit of faint coughing, the squeak of a doorknob, and a soft, hesitant voice.

Hello?




26

It took an extra beat to reverberate, to ripple and fill the spaces of the house, as if it was coming

from the bottom of a well. His mother‘s voice.

It was a hesitant hello, as if she wasn‘t quite sure that she was supposed to be here. It had been so

many years. Quietly he stretched out his hand and took a step forward.

His mother came hobbling out slowly, her eyes milky and her mouth lined with long years of age

and wor ry. ―Yes?‖ she croaked. Her mouth opened a little, and her eyes became cloudy. ―Where is my

son?‖ She pulled out her cell phone, squinted hard at it, then dropped it back into her coat pocket. ―He

is supposed to be here.‖

He knelt down, and she reached out with soft, wrinkled hands to run her fingers over the lines on

his mouth and nose.

My mother can no longer see me, Sung Yeol realized. She has broken down completely for me. He

tensed under the cracked, jagged lines in her palm, at the roughness of her hands and the sharp nailswhich she hadn‘t been able to cut. He felt his heart fail at how cold her hands were, and at the thought

of how many years he had been unable to warm them. Can this really be my mother?

This young man has known no happiness in his life, the old woman thought, running her hands over

his face. The deep creases in his forehead, the premature lines in his mouth, his voice sounds young,

but drained of all life, and he has the sagging weariness under his eyes of a fifty-year-old. Can this

really be my son?

Both of them looked at each other, and Sung Yeol felt very empty, and very unhappy. There was no

effusion of emotion, no hysterical outburst; instead, only the silence of intense, unspeakable pain.

―It‘s me, Umma,‖ he said softly. And just like he used to when he came home from English

preschool, he added, ―I‘ve missed you.‖

She smiled, but her lips were trembling. ―Well, it‘s finally the big day,‖ she said, adjusting his tie

with stubby, cabbage-stump fingers. ―The test is only once a year! You mustn‘t get nervous. I‘m sure

you‘ve worked hard. Are you ready?‖

He looked at his mother long, and silently. Finally he replied, ―I just want you to see me as your son

for once, Umma. Not a student.‖

His mother nodded knowingly, but she didn‘t really understand. ―Always my son, always the best

of sons,‖ she said. ―You‘ll get a perfect score. Don‘t worry.‖

―Yeah.‖ He didn‘t want to say much more. He got up and looked at the clock. ―My bus is here. I‘d

better go.‖

―Why, you‘re not going in that outfit!‖ cried his mother in distress. ―Here…take my coat, at

least…!‖

―That‘s fine, really,‖ he said stiffly.

―Please, Sung Yeol,‖ she said, ―I don‘t want you to become cold.‖

Somehow this simple offering of her coat moved Sung Yeol more deeply than all her previous




27

encouraging words. On impulse, he hugged her, tight, almost as if he was a little boy again. He was

shaking. As he left, he pulled on her coat.

That day he dressed neatly in spotlessly formal attire. They fed him a special recipe stimulating his

mental aptitude and digestion. And when he was putting on his coat, the students in the younger

division cheered as he was escorted into the brightly burnished hallways. Flight landings and takeoffs

were banned for 13 minutes during a listening test for Korean in the morning and for 20 minutes for

the English listening exam in the afternoon. His hips creaked and his shoulders shook as he walked

into the test room, slowly.

―You‘ll be able to do it well,‖ cheered the teachers, ―so well,‖ the younger students cried jubilantly,

their eyes bright with expectation. He smiled faintly; his eyes felt heavy and the room swam with

colors of blood.

The examiner stood in front of the classr oom. ―Please hand in all cell phones before the test begins,‖

he called out.

Sung Yeol shrugged off his backpack and searched for his computer pen. He had already left his

cell phone at home in the morning, just in case it might ring. He sat down in his chair, and baited his

breath. The bell rang, and the test began. The first subject was Korean Language.

The questions were easy, far too easy. Hadn‘t he solved similar questions, thousands and thousands

of times? His pencil whizzed across the paper, and he felt a little breath of euphoria mingle and rise in

his throat, tickling his tongue and making him shudder. He smiled and lifted his head, and exuberance

filled him like the bubbles of golden cider. For the first time in years, he felt happy. I can do this, hethought with amazement. I could actually get a perfect score on this test, just as Umma wants. She‘ll

be so proud…

Suddenly, a loud, shrill ring screamed through the classroom. Everyone jerked their heads up like

puppets on a taut, tight string. Sung Yeol looked around. Who in the world could be so stupid? One

ring of the cell phone would disqualify the test taker for the test completely, and for the next test after

that. Three years of a half-dead life — thrown away. Two years of the future — burnt to ashes before

one‘s very eyes. Sung Yeol was filled with pity for the unknown person.

RING! RRRRRRRRRRING!

Then, to his horror, he felt the sharp buzz coming from his own coat pocket. No, he thought, his

mind going blank white, I left my cell phone at home! I left it at home! This can‘t be possible!

He plunged his hand into his coat pocket and brought out a vibrating white cell phone. Instantly he

realized the awful truth. It was his mother‘s cell phone: she had left it in her coat pocket.

RING! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRING!

The examinations officer walked up to him and laid his hands on his shoulders. ―You are

disqualified from the exam,‖ he said in a loud, metallic voice that rang in the air, pounded through his

skull, and left him numb and wild-eyed.

―No!‖ he cried, and his voice rose to a shrill scream —―NO!‖




28

The door was flung open, and the examinations officer was dragging him out of the room. Sung

Yeol scrambled on his feet, his voice strangled with anguish. ―Let me explain!‖ he screamed, rushing

at the door. It was locked. Several other officers walked up to him and wrenched him out of the

hallway; Sung Yeol was screaming frantically, a madman, his fingers bloody with scraping.

Everything was going white. ―You can‘t do this to me! I‘ve lived my whole life for this tes t! I can doit! I can! No! No! No! NO!‖

I lean over my test paper, listening to his screams growing fainter and fainter in the distance.

They take him away, far from his desk, far from the classroom, far from the school. Sung Yeol‘s

screams echo down the hallways, but he must be taken away before the Listening Section of the

English subject begins.

Even from within the locked room, I still hear his phone ringing.




29

Goosie’s Garden

It was very tiring, those walks back home when school was over, because we were already

exhausted from listening to classes for hours, and the unremitting blaze of Daegu suns was so awful

we felt sure we‘d get sunstroke someday. But we never did. Young, elastic, and with a relish for life,

we always managed to survive, and the roaring heat of the streets made the coolness of our home but

all the more refreshing. We had finished our classes, and it was nearly suppertime; we could already

smell the fish and tofu cubes boiling in the dwenjang soup. The hot sun beat down furiously on the

waving jade-green foliage curling in a strong dash of colors around the heavy, gnarled tree branches;

the heat was so strong the pavement sizzled and we felt faint, walking up the subway steps and

winding round the alleys to find our way home. But then Goosie met Giwon, leaving me to walk

home alone. And then I suddenly realized just how hot, dirty, uncomfortable and tiring a walk home

could really be.

Goosie‘s real name was Gooseul, which meant bright marble or bead, but she had crisp black curls

that were so unruly that she always gave the impression of having just landed from a tumbled flight, a

propensity to flap her arms around wildly when she grew excited, and a habit of sticking out her neck

when she ran that made her nickname stick, and everyone called her Goosie, even the kids that barely

knew any more English than hi or how are you.

Darling little Goosie. I loved her very, very much. She was so sweet. And with such nice eyes. I

liked her eyes very much; they were just like marbles, bright and perfectly round and very clear and

honest, simply looking straight at you without any pretense whatsoever. I think it was the simplicity of

her large, lovely eyes that made Giwon like her.

I still don‘t understand what made them care for each other so affectionately. You can bet it wasn‘t

conversation, because they were still both in the very first grade of elementary school and they rarely

talked to each other; it was more a matter of chasing each other around, over tires and under cafeteria

tables, laughing, shrieking, and tickling. But in a month they were the most famous couple in school.

They always held hands when they walked up the stairs, and waited for each other when classes was

over, and ate lunch together, causing kids to squeal after them:

Ulaeri-ggolaeri!

Who likes who?

Giwon likes Goosie,

Just look at those two!

Giwon likes Goosie,

That’s who!

Ulaeri-ggolaeri!




30

…And so on. I asked Goosie what in the world they were talking about, and Goosie clapped her

hands together in the kind of simple childish excitement one can never really give vent to after

graduation from elementary school, and declared, ―Oh! I suppose it‘s time to introduce him to you,

Big Sister!‖ She ran off, and in a moment had chased down Giwon and dragged him, wildly resisting,

to me. Proudly she said, ―This is my big sister. She‘s a great genius who can speak the language of people with long breads and frog dishes [I had learned a little French in preschool, and often uttered

foreign phrases to Goosie when I wanted to impress or silence her], and she knows how to make

flowers bloom and tell you the names of all the rainforests in the world, and if you don‘t be nice to her

I‘ll never play with you again!‖

She said this in dreadful earnest, but it must be understood that she had just come fresh from

preschool and took her responsibility as a little sister very seriously. Giwon‘s jaw dropped open a little

under this heavy edict, and turning to me, bowed ninety degrees as he would to a teacher. I was

tickled, and laughed within myself till I grew warm, but the atmosphere was so serious I endeavored

to be serious also; tucking up my chin and drawing my lips together firmly, I patted him on the back

and said with the solemnest gravity how pleased I was to make his acquaintance, and how much I

craved his favor for my good wild Goose. Goosie laughed, and Giwon snickered and said, ―I know

she‘s wild, but she definitely isn‘t good.‖

I don‘t think I ever spoke with Giwon any more than that for the rest of our acquaintance, so I was

never really able to understand why Goosie was so fond of him; all I remember of him is a blushing,

kindly-faced boy who was always running and laughing. And perhaps ‗fond‘ is as good a word as any

when speaking of the touching simplicity of their innocent friendship. Neither of them explicitly ever

denied or confessed that they liked each other, but they were undeniably special to one another. On

Giwon‘s birthday he invited Goosie with him to an amusement park, and thanks to Goosie‘s refusal to

go without me I enjoyed all the privileges of pigging out on cotton candy and scary rides whileGoosie and Giwon held hands and ran lightly around the whole park like two happy, careless birds.

I grew quite jealous at Giwon for monopolizing Goosie on my walks home, for she always stayed

behind to play at his house, but otherwise I was quite happy for them. I was only in the second grade

myself, and in truth I never thought much about Giwon; and Goosie was very sweet to me, and always

made it very clear that even Giwon took second place in her heart next to me. Our bonding time was

when we lay in bed at night, chattering for hours about our teachers, our favorite foods, and what we

would have if a genie granted us three wishes. One evening Goosie was unusually reflective, and

when I prompted her to tell me what was the matter she turned over, squishing her curls beneath her

cheek, and said gravely,

―Teacher An Jol-hee was married today!‖

―Oh, yes! You were at the wedding, weren‘t you? I‘m going to miss her.‖

Goosie shook her curls out of her eyes and said, stoutly, ―But…Teacher was crying! Big fat drops

of water. They smeared her makeup all over and dripped colors onto her white dress, so Mommy had

to run up and wipe it away with a napkin. Why was she crying, Big Sister?‖

Ah! A fresh test to my wisdom. I immediately sat up and thought hard for a moment, eager at the

challenge, and then said judiciously, ―It must be because she is leaving her family behind. Of course,

she is sad to leave her old life, even if her new one will be very exciting.‖




31

Goosie mused over this for a while, then suddenly exclaimed in alarm as a new thought struck her:

―Oh, Big Sister! Then do I have to leave you when I marry, too?‖

I was seized with surprise. This had never quite occurred to me. I propped my chin up in my hands,

thinking hard, then said triumphantly,

―We shall live right next to each other on a hill, and connect our houses with a secret underground

tunnel. We can visit each other anytime we like. And our children will be best friends, and play with

each other all the time. Our families will practically live together, you see.‖

―Ohh,‖ Goosie said, reassured, and snuggled back into her pillow. ―That sounds nice. You can plant

lots and lots of flowers on the hill, Big Sister, and I‘ll raise lots and lots of puppies.‖

I wanted to be a botanist, while Goosie had an inordinate passion for every furry animal alive.

―And have the puppies dig up all my flowers? No thanks!‖

―Oh, don‘t worry. Puppies are very smart and we can train them to fertilize your gardens with their

poop at just the right places. And they can help us dig for worms.‖

―What does that have to do with flowers?‖

―Nothing. Just that Giwon wants to be a fisherman.‖

―Are you going to have babies?‖

―How do you have babies, anyway?‖

I hesitated. This was another challenge to my knowledge that I felt was not quite complete, and this

annoyed me.

―Oh, they plant babies in your belly kind of how I plant flowers in the apartment road path.‖

Goosie was not satisfied. ―Giwon told me that if a Mommy and Daddy touch their belly buttons

together, a baby will pop out in the middle.‖

This sounded quite authentic, and I nodded authoritatively. ―He knows a thing or two, that Giwon,‖

I said very wisely, and Goosie settled back in her covers. After a moment she declared: ―Belinda.‖

―What?‖

―I‘m going to name my daughter Belinda. It‘s a pretty name. It sounds like sugar icing and a curl of

snowflake or meringue, doesn‘t it?‖

―Oh, yes, it does. And I‘ll name my daughter Hyacinth.‖

―And if he‘s a boy, he can be Barbarian. Belinda and Barbarian.‖ Goosie giggled.

―And mine will be Helot and Hyacinth.‖

We both laughed, and fell asleep then, holding onto each other‘s warm hands in the cold night,shivering under our blankets but very, very happy.




32

A few days later at night Goosie turned to me and told me, with an air of great grandeur,

―Big Sister, I am engaged.‖

―Are you really?‖ I was not very surprised, but turning toward her I looked at her finger.

Anticipating me, she lifted it up in the moonlight; somehow he had managed to squeeze a thin, glittery

plastic ring on her chubby finger, and she was beaming all over with pride.

―Good little Goosie!‖ I leaned forward and kissed her, smiling tenderly. ―I love you very much.‖

After that relations between Goosie and Giwon shifted several degrees. They were much more

solemn with each other, and even when they shrieked and chased each other their engagement lent a

sort of dignity to their mud plays. They stopped holding hands, that was childish, but he began

bowing with a flourish every time he met her instead, which made everyone laugh at him the more;

but Goosie picked up her skirts delicately and curtsied deeply to him in return.

Had either of them, at that time, really understood what love, or engagement, or marriage was,

things would easily have been very different. But they were very young, and this play-engagement

gave them such pleasure it was refreshing to just watch them; and when we left, Goosie was still

unaware of what love was. She was sure that her warmth and closeness to Giwon was natural, and, as

it was, quite inevitable. Yet, when we moved away to Yongin at the end of the year when Goosie

moved into third grade, and Goosie stood staring at Giwon, her eyes squinting and blinking with

pooled tears, there was some real pain in their parting. Giwon, who had always been very shy about

talking with Goosie in front of me, ran up and gave her a big hug. And he was very sad.

―Goodbye, Goose,‖ he said, stumbling back a step and banging his head on the ornament swinging

from above. He and Goosie were both united in incorrigible clumsiness, and they always came home bruised and scratched from tumbling or bumping into things. ―You were my very best friend, you

know.‖

―And you were mine, too,‖ she said, with her sweet, ringing voice, keeping back the tears that filled

her eyes — and bouncing into her seat, she clutched her hands to her heart, and whispered theatrically

to me, ―Will I ever meet my husband again?‖

―Don‘t worry,‖ I said robustly. Having never had any boyfriends or even any especially nice girl

friends in my school, I had no regrets at all about a fresh new start. ―You‘ll meet him one day, I‘m

sure.‖

And to my surprise, I was quite right. Three years later, when Goosie had advanced to the

prestigious ranks of sixth grade, and I to middle school, we had returned to Daegu to visit our

grandmother and grandfather for Korean New Year‘s Day when we ran into someone very familiar at

the playground.

―Giwon!‖ Goosie cried out, in astonishment.

It was Giwon, and he was the same as ever. I felt a little jolt of shock seeing him again as well. He

had grown much taller, wirier, with a mop of dark hair that shaded his still rosy, kindly-looking face,

but his tiny, squinty, twinkling eyes had grown large, clear, with a perpetually, calmly surprised look

like the black surface of an undisturbed lake when a bird has flown over it.




33

He looked at Goosie. Then he puffed out his cheeks and goggled his eyes and said, ―Wow!‖ For

Goosie, too, had quite changed; she ought to have been called Gooseul, now, for her too-full cheeks

had become rosy pink, her messy windblown curls had been tamed into mixing with ribbons. But her

bright, beautiful eyes were every bit as honest, clear, and naïve as heretofore.

I suppose I had changed the most and yet the littlest of all three, for I no longer felt any pleasure in

cotton candy, or jumping around in playgrounds, or giggling without reason, or jumping into mud

puddles, and felt quite cynical about the illusions of love in my lofty position as a sixth grader. Most

importantly, I no longer planted flowers. I had begun to attend cram academies and feel the pressure

of homework fall upon my shoulders, snatch away my hoe and gardening tools, and crush the necks of

my plants with cold, quiet hands. Yet I was still as amused as ever to see Giwon, I still adored Goosie,

and I still enjoyed observing the two of them as the ‗wise‘ older sister.

―Hello, Giwon! I‘ve missed you!‖ Goosie exclaimed at last, crimsoning pink.

―Hey.‖ He tilted his head slowly and gave her a smile. ―Long time no see, Goose.‖

―Really! It‘s been three years! I still remember this slide. Oh, you used to push me down the slide

all the time, and I‘d smash my face onto the mud beneath. You were very mean!‖ she recollected,

laughing.

―Did I? What a beast I was. Thanks for reminding me. Oh, how glad I am to see you again,‖ he

burst out, his eyes lighting up and a mischievous grin dancing on his lips as of old.

She squeezed his hand in reply, and leading him over to the slide, they sat down and began

chattering energetically away about a variety of topics, just like three years ago. I stood on tiptoe and

said with what I felt was great tact and thoughtfulness, ―I shall tell Grandmamma that you may be latefor supper, Goosie. I‘ll pick you up in about half an hour, shall I?‖

―Okay!‖ The corners of Goosie‘s firm, round puckered lips lifted, and she beamed with

irrepressible joy.

For a half-hour, full of curiosity, I helped Grandmamma prepare dinner and chop up potatoes. Just

as I had finished sliding the potatoes into the soup, I heard a knock on the door.

―Go see who it is, my dear,‖ Grandmamma said pleasantly.

I wiped my hands on my apron and ran forward, throwing open the door. ―Why, Goosie—! You‘re

already back? I said I‘d pick you up.‖

I was shocked at her reply.

―No need,‖ was the weary, small-voiced response, extremely different from the joyous laugh with

which she had last spoken to me, ―no need, no need,‖ and her little step toiled sadly into her room and

shut the door quietly.

―Goosie, darling? Whatever is the matter?‖ I stood outside her door.

―Go away, please, Big Sister.‖ Then the sad voice relented, and Goosie peeked out of the door,

saying, ―I‘ll tell you later: not now, please.‖




34

That night, I snapped off the light quickly and jumped into the blankets on the floor. Slowly Goosie

undressed, slowly and tiredly as if drained of all strength. Her thin shoulders dropped and she dragged

her feet; she crawled into the blankets, and gave a quiet, discreet sniff. She was silent and her eyes

were cloudy.

―Well?‖ I asked.

―Oh, Big Sister…it was awful. We were talking about the nicest things ever, and it was just like it

had used to be, and everything was so nice and comfortable, and then he suddenly leaned forward

and…kissed me!‖ She stopped.

―Well,‖ I said, puzzled, ―and wasn‘t that exciting? You‘ve always liked him, haven‘t you?‖

―I suppose so,‖ she said, after a moment, mournfully. ―But – I don‘t know – it felt wrong, somehow.

He wasn‘t kissing me right. It was strange! And he did it so quickly and carelessly, and then pushed

himself back and looked at me with such a strange smile! — as if he had just kissed me to see what myreaction would be like! Almost an…experiment kiss.‖

―You‘re being paranoid, Goosie.‖

―Perhaps I am.‖ She paused. ―But then – right after he had kissed me, another boy from our school

– you remember Joo-an? He was walking by and he yelled that old song,

Ulaeri-ggolaeri!

Who’s kissing who?

Giwon’s kissing Yejin,

Just look at those two!

Giwon’s kissing—

―Then he stopped and cried, ‗Hey, Giwon! Why are you kissing that girl? Didn‘t you just give Yejin

chocolates and tell her you were in love with her, this morning?‘‖

Goosie turned abruptly to the wall and pinched her pillow with cold fingers, again and again.

―Oh, Goosie!‖ I said, and turning her round again, I hugged her tight.

Goosie was silent for a long time. I thought she had fallen asleep, but then she said, softly, ―Maybe

I shan‘t have puppies on our little hill, either.‖

―Why not? You certainly should.‖

―But there are no worms to dig up…and besides, you said you were no longer going to plant

flowers.‖

It was true. I now looked forward to moving into a flat of my own, with modern white balconies




35

and asymmetrical staircases overlooking a dazzling city in Seoul, not a pastoral white-tipped house on

a hill. But I didn‘t say so. I just hugged Goosie even tighter and said, ―Don‘t reject your dogs just

because there aren‘t any flowers or worms. I wish I hadn‘t stopped believing in my flowers, either.‖

―Then will you still plant your flowers?‖

―I don‘t know. Yes. I will.‖ But my voice had no conviction in it, and she turned to me, her eyes

blazing fiercely in the dark, and said passionately,

―You‘d better tell me the truth, Big Sister! Are you going to give up on your flowers or not?‖

―Goosie, are you crying?‖

―Of course not. Answer the question.‖

I looked at her. She was.

―No,‖ I promised her, softly, ―I‘ll never give up on my flowers. Or you.‖

Goosie looked up at the ceiling, her tears twinkling in her eyes, and gave a great gulp. She pulled

her sleeve across her face and sighed. Then she turned to me, and hugged me back at last. In her usual

warm, loving voice she said dreamily, before her eyes fluttered asleep,

―Then I‘ll still keep my dogs on my little hill, and they‘ll watch over your flowers…‖

I smiled tenderly at her and brushed her cheek with my hand.

―Goodnight, little Goose,‖ I said. ―I love you very, very much.‖




36

New Year’s Eve

It was the last day of the year, and Miseul was alone.

Three hours. Miseul looked up at the clock, counting the steps of the arrow quietly beneath her

breath. Tic. Tac. Toc. Three hours and seven minutes since they had left the house. And the next day

would be New Year. In a few minutes the guests would arrive for their Korean New Year‘s Eve feast.

Oh, what…agony! Tic. Every sharp, precise, knifelike slice of time – tac – seemed like a razor to her

overstrung nerves, and with wide red eyes she watched the narrow red arrow turn. Oh, yes…the New

Year feast! Then Miseul would have to wear her fake smile and hug and kiss flowered prints, powdery

faces, cheeks lined with the dust of cars and the stench of alcohol and cigarettes, saying, ―Oh, how

glad I am to see you!‖ How glad indeed. She could have wished every single guest at Dokdo for all

she cared.

Tic. Tac. Toc. Miseul rose to her feet with a rustle of her filmy, pale pink skirt, which had been

crushed from weeping on the shabby little couch for so long, and moved restlessly about the room,

from the shabby sofa to the leather armchair with all the stuffing spilling out onto the floor. She threw

open the windows and leaned out, taking in deep breaths of air; longing to escape from the coarse

cramped apartment within, yet finding none in the hot cramped streets without. Then she reeled back,

coughing from the cigarette fumes of the old man downstairs who would never stop smoking,

however politely she requested him to stop, over and over again. No, nothing would ever be better;

her heart quite failed her. Tomorrow would be New Year, her parents had quarreled and both had left

the house, and she felt very, very lonely.

Meow. Meow. Miseul opened the door to see a yellow cat crying on her threshold. Three days ago

Miseul had seen the starving cat roaming about the house with all of his ribs protruding like knives

from his furry skin, which was stretched as tight as leather on a drum. Pity had overcome her initial

fear, and she had set out a dish of tuna and milk on the windowsill for the hungry cat. Ever since then,

the cat had lurked around the house, lashing his tail and meowing piteously every night. Miseul

remembered the day before, when her mother had seen the cat stretching on their doorstep and kicked

him two flights downstairs. Her father had seen it and called the apartment security office to get rid of

it, but by the time they had arrived, Miseul had managed to coax the cat away as far as possible.

―Come on, Kitty! You really shouldn‘t be here. Haven‘t you learned your lesson after that kick

yesterday?‖ Miseul opened the door wider, and knowing she shouldn‘t, she let the cat jump lightly in.Holding her breath, she ran her fingers down the cat‘s spindly spine gently. The cat shivered and

purred, lashing his tail around her legs. ―You poor thing. Out in the cold. Don‘t you have anywhere

better to go on New Year‘s Eve?‖

The cat flicked the bushy end of its tail at her face and sauntered into the living room, its long nails

skittering over the worn wooden floor. Miseul followed the cat and poured out a dish of Pasteur milk,

faintly comforted at the sight of how his belly grew full and warm with each lap of the creamy white

liquid. Just as he was taking the last lick, she heard the doorbell clang. Miseul gasped, thrust the cat

into the bathroom, and opened the door.

Her mother had returned first, tall, beautiful, and swaying under the weight of a dozen full shopping bags. That was just like Mother, Miseul thought, storming out of the house in anger but always doing




37

something useful on the way. Never forgetting her ultimate duty – not to her husband, or to her

children, added Miseul bitterly to herself, but her duty to the sake of appearances.

―Don‘t just stand there and gape like an idiot,‖ snapped Mother, kicking off her high heels and

massaging her ankles. She was one of the only Korean mothers Miseul knew who wore slim highheels for every occasion, even for a quick visit to the supermarket. ―Go put those grocery bags on the

ta ble. Put the milk in the refrigerator. Don‘t you have any eyes in your head? Do I still have to tell you

every single thing to do?‖

Miseul silently dragged several heavy bags onto the tiny kitchen table and began to reorganize them,

putting some in the fridge and placing some gingerly on the counter. Behind her, Mother was hissing

out a steady stream of vituperations against Daddy:

―…that madman has probably gone out to drink, I can‘t live with him any longer and I mean it, I

thought last year things were changing but it‘s not, what‘s the use of New Year if nothing changes

with time, he always starts things and makes people go insane, he‘s mentally abnormal, he‘s…‖

Miseul suddenly stiffened – not only because she disliked listening to her mother‘s criticisms of

Father, but because she had suddenly heard a long, high meow.

―What was that?‖

―Nothing,‖ said Miseul, a little too quickly. Frowning, her mother marched to the door and whipped

it open with a histrionic flourish. ―There are so many dirty cats around this awful apartment,‖ Mother

said irritably. ―What will the guests say? They probably think we all have fleas.‖

―Who did you invite to the feast anyway? Nobody‘s going to say that.‖

―I don‘t know if I‘ll even do this damn feast. It‘s ridiculous setting up this masquerade, parading

our poverty and showing off our shabbiness to our relations when they know our abject situation

perfectly well. They should be the ones inviting us to their surplus-abounding old dinners. They‘ve

probably already stuffed their fat, good-for-nothing bellies with enough pork and tteok-guk to last

themselves a year. Why are we always the ones who must suffer, when we are the poorest?‖

―That‘s because Daddy is the eldest son.‖

―And that‘s just as ridiculous, because I have all the burdens of being a first son‘s wife without any

of the benefits. I think it‘s perfectly humiliating, the way we have to lay ourselves out to his relatives‘

criticism every year, listen to them flaying each of us alive and comparing us with the air of superiors.

Pointing to my dress and saying, She‘s bought it from charity.‖

―Oh, please. You‘re being morbid. Nobody notices those things.‖

―Yes they would. They know these things. They know your hanboks, your traditional Korean

dresses are two sizes too small, that the scent on my hands is the scent of the fruit I‘ve been peeling,

not of Elizabeth Arden, that your father cannot afford to buy anything but that same threadbare winter

jacket he‘s been wearing every visit they come, and that all our food has been bought wholesale and at

a fifty percent discount…‖ In an uncontrollable, darkly-feminine manner, Mother covered her mouth

and stifled a sob. There was nothing to be ashamed of in a fifty percent discount, but Mother always

felt that the haggling and husbandry, the contrivances and even the savings of poverty to be




38

disgraceful, vulgar. There was something so royal and splendid in the faint, rich aroma of

extravagance; in the ability to gracefully flutter through the air-conditioned shopping mall, selecting

everything by taste alone, instead of stomping through the hot rotten-melon-smell of a crowded open

marketplace at Dongdae, swatting away flies and looking only for the cheapest, lowest prices.

―Don‘t cry, Mother,‖ said Miseul sadly, cupping her mother‘s pale face in her hands. ―Never mind

what they think: as long as we are happy.‖

―But I‘m not happy!‖ Mother cried, not unhappy but enraged. ―Oh, darling, I am very sorry for

being so unreasonable the day before New Year, but indeed, Miseul-a, you would pity me if you knew

all. I am very, very unhappy!‖ And she gave herself up to quiet, heartbroken sobs.

The door opened quietly, and Daddy entered. Mother suddenly pulled herself up and turned her face

aside: more from the unwillingness to show her stained makeup and smeared eye shadow to her

husband than from anger at him, Miseul knew. She also knew that hugging her father hello just now

would seem to look like taking his side, and her mother would be hurt. Therefore she merely rose toher feet and stood staring at her father in mute silence.

―Where have you been?‖ he asked his wife.

Mother ignored him. ―I should never have married,‖ she said to Miseul. ―If you‘re ever going to

meet someone like your father, you‘re better off single for life.‖

―Where have you been, Miru?‖ he asked again, his voice thin and strained.

Mother turned to him, her lips tight. ―Don‘t go on ruining the last day of the year any more than

you already have,‖ she said softly. ―I‘m warning you. Don‘t talk to me right now.‖

His face hardened, and he took a step forward and touched her arm. ―Don‘t be ridiculous, Miru,‖ he

said. ―And don‘t talk to me in that way in front of my own daughter.‖

―YOUR own daughter!‖ she laughed shrilly – her voice a violent starburst in the night sky. ―Oh,

that‘s rich!‖

―What is that supposed to mean?‖ His voice grew dangerous. ―If you talk to me so shamelessly

before our own child…‖

―What are you ashamed of to talk about in front of your own daughter? What are you trying to hide

from her?‖

―Don‘t talk to me in that way!‖ His voice rose.

―And how do you talk to me when she‘s not here?‖ Her voice jumped several octaves into a scream.

―How do you treat me when you don‘t have to play a façade in front of her, you dirty -minded, two-

faced, evil —‖

Suddenly, a long, thin yellow wail issued like a banshee‘s gasp from the bathroom.

―What‘s that?‖ Her father threw the door open, and his eyes bulged out. ―WHO PUT THIS CAT

HERE?‖ He whirled around at his wife. ―I TOLD YOU I HATED CATS!‖

―I didn‘t put this cat here, you madman!‖ she screamed. ―You probably did, just because you know




39

I have a phobia of felines!‖

―I‘ll kill it now,‖ shouted her father, reaching forward for the cat.

―You kill everything!‖ shrieked her mother.

―I‘ll kill you if you don‘t keep your filthy mouth shut!‖ he shouted, losing his temper completely

and smashing his fist into the wall. His knuckles split and blood splashed onto his shoes. ―I‘ll kill—‖

―Shut up!‖ Miseul suddenly screamed, throwing her hands over her ears. ―Shut up, shut up, shut up,

just shut up, both of you!‖ She began to shriek uncontrollably, in hysterics, screaming over and over

again, ―Shut up!‖ until her father reached forward and slapped her face.

Then Miseul had jumped to her feet and was running, running out the door and out of the house, all

the way across the road, past the barriers where her parents had said she was permitted to go, all the

way to the bridge. She could still hear screaming voices ringing in her ears. Then she clutched the bars

of the bridge and looked down at the dark water swirling beneath her. Sobbing bitterly, she was

watching her tears flood into the whirling, black, lightless mass below, only another drop in a stream

of many sorrows, when she felt something warm and wet dig into her arms.

It was the cat. Somehow it had escaped from her home, and followed her here. It was climbing up,

clawing and scrabbling at her bosom and reaching up towards her arms, sniffing her eagerly. Miseul

cried desperately, she was sobbing in rage and fear and love, and she lashed out, scratching and

tearing at the cat while still holding him tight to her side.

It all happened in a moment. The cat, in the confusion and excitement, let out a yowl of fear and

sank his teeth into her hand. Miseul gave a piercing scream and threw out her arm in panic, shaking

her arms with all her might. The next second she heard a great splash, and suddenly her whole body

was weightless. The cat was gone.

Somewhere far down in the waters Miseul heard the cat let out one low, long wail. She leaned over.

She looked down at the swirling waters, invisible.

―Kitty,‖ she shrieked. ―Kitty!‖

Her head spun. She ran down to the riverside, her arms outstretched, and searched frantically in the

river for some sign of life. No: in the darkness, all she heard was the irreversible roar of writhing,

swirling water.

Miseul felt her heart wrench violently within her. I am just like my parents, she thought. Give me

life, and I kill it. Perhaps that‘s what my parents are doing to me right now. Perhaps they‘re killing me

without meaning to, perhaps even while loving me.

―Oh…‖ she cried. ―Why am I even alive?‖

She turned back to the road and began walking. She walked fast, her hands in her pockets,

conscious of the way she was hunched and the shallowness of her breathing, closing off all sound

from her ears until she heard nothing but silence.

The trees gave way to lamps again. Metal fences ran beside the road, plastered with windblownscraps of paper. Tule fog hung above the ditches, spilling into the road, dimming the ghostly halogen




40

lights that burned in the houses Miseul passed. She heard the clock striking twelve, and she went on

alone, tears flying, her clothes still torn where the cat‘s nails had ripped through it. She was crying so

hard the tears and sweat soaked her collar to darkness and dampness. She felt that she would never be

happy again.

Tic, tac, toc.

Dong.

Dong.

It was New Year.




41

The Family Reunion

An Sora had just returned with her mother from their weekly trip to the outdoor market. Entering

the room flushed from the flaring heat of the streets and jostling throngs of bargaining crowds, her

mother quickly loosened her tight bun of curls and walked hurriedly to the kitchen.

―What are you doing, Mamma?‖ asked Sora cheerfully, setting down her parcels and scrubbing her

hands with soap and water. ―Why don‘t you sit down and rest?‖

―It‘s your grandmother‘s birthday,‖ her mother replied. ―We‘re going to have a little party, and the

whole family is going to come to our house, so I must get supper ready. Go change your clothes, dear.‖

But Sora lingered, twisting a rubber band round and round her thumb until she mustered up the

courage to ask, ―Are all the kids coming, too?‖

―Yes, they are all going to stay for dinner. Dreadful!‖ Her mother spoke lightly. ―And none of them

will help me wash the dishes, I know. Manners these days. Run along now.‖

―I‘ll tell Jiung-ie,‖ said Sora, and jumping up and knocking over a chair with a bang, she dashed

down the hallway, slamming doors for the joy of it. She was ten years old, and having been

homeschooled all her life, seeing her cousins had always been a pleasant treat. Sora was a roundly-

built child, with tidy, clustering curls, the kind of bright, blooming cheeks that are seen only on very

healthy children, and had a simple, cheerful, pleasant face.

Jiung, her sister, had dreamy dark eyes and long glossy hair, spent whole days sitting at the piano,

lazily playing anything and everything she came across. She was beginning to feel the fullsignificance of her thirteen years, and consequently affected to be elegantly careless about everything,

but in music she could not succeed, and everyone knew quite well her passion for it. Blundering

judgments and thoughtless discussions on the subject by people who knew nothing of it kept her in

incessant irritation. She played superbly; everyone praised her talent, and Sora felt her sister drifting

further and further away from her with mixed resentment and admiration.

―Jiungie, Jiungie! Mother says that everyone‘s coming for Grandmother‘s birthday, and we‘l l have

rice cakes, and a party, and our cousins are going to come!‖ she called out, her eyes sparkling.

Jiung nodded at her. A year ago she might have slammed doors and danced with Sora at the news;

now, under the weighty responsibility of her young-ladiness, she merely smiled and said smoothly,

―Indeed?‖

―Yes, yes, yes,‖ said Sora, her eyes scrunching up and her broad neck quivering with laughter. She

was powerless to stop her laughter, and she hastened to find a reason for it in Jiung‘s calm, mildly

surprised eyes.

―What a funny gift!‖ she cried, feeling that she was choking with laughter. ―What a funny, silly

gift!‖

And even Jiung smiled. It had almost become a tradition for the cousins to exchange gifts every

year. The previous year Changmin had brought Sora a plastic fairy doll with stiff, wavy blond hair,curvy arms and a filmy, glittery pink dress. The doll had become something of a joke between them,




42

as Sora had used the fairy as a wicked witch whenever she played with her dolls, and her father had

thrown it away later because he complained that the glitter gave him allergies.

―Sora,‖ said Jiung, rustling her music sheets as she spoke, ―let‘s play a song.‖ It was called Summer

Rain, she said; it was an easy piece that they could both play, but she needed Sora to help her, as itwas a duet.

―All right,‖ said Sora. ―Together.‖

Sora vividly remembered how last year, she and Changmin had both run out into the rain and

danced in mud puddles, holding hands, shrieking and laughing. The drops of light rain trickling into

her curls and eyelashes as she had jumped into pools of mud remained one of the sweetest memories

in her life, and she smiled at the memory; she missed Changmin, his bright, eager smile, his bold

laugh. She whispered to herself, ―I can‘t wait. I can‘t.‖ She sang to the tune of the song,

―The scent of rain is hon-ey, fun-ny, sun-ny, the scent of rain is tick-ly, stick-ly and sweet.‖

At five o‘ clock the first guests arrived. Great -Uncle Jo Suhun came first, neatly strangled in his

costly silk tie. He was an old man who owned a company in Busan. He used to be very interesting

when Sora knew him first, always talking about how he would give her a great fortune when she grew

up; but these assurances were repeated so often, and proved so totally unfruitful, that Sora grew tired

at last. She now thought him tedious and insincere. Then came Uncle Rhee with his discolored,

crooked teeth and heavily spotted lower lip. He was so ugly he had frightened Sora when she was

younger, and she had written poems mocking him. Now she felt sorry for him, and remembering her

poems with shame, she made a point of smiling especially pleasantly at him. He stroked her head and

slipped a hazelnut candy into her hand, and she began thinking he might not be so ugly after all.

Grandmother greeted everyone sweetly in her light soft voice. She was a gentle, deaf lady with

shining white hair and the same mild, large brown eyes as Sora, at once trusting and innocent, though

dimmed slightly in her passage through eight-and-sixty years. Old Kwun Myung-hee, Grandmother‘s

best friend, made her entrance; they embraced, and complimented each other on how young they

looked. Sora liked Kwun Myung-hee, but she avoided long conversations with her, as she would often

get so carried away that she would show her all the pictures in her purse, read them letters from her

son-in-laws, and ramble into never-ending stories about how she could not afford to eat bananas as achild.

At last the bell rang, and the door swung open to admit the people in whom Sora‘s chief interest left

– Aunt Lee, her husband, and her cousins, Changmin and Changsu.

―Annyong—hi!‖ she blurted out joyfully, her eyes shining and smiling, her face absolutely radiant.

Changmin was eleven, one year older than her, and Changsu was four. Changmin waggled his

eyebrows and said, ―An Sora. We meet again.‖

―Come in, Changmin!‖ she said, beaming rapturously. ―We‘re having bibimbap for dinner.‖

Soon there were over a dozen people, men and ladies, girls and boys, sitting down to eat dinner,




43

though her mother had prudently kept the adults' and children‘s tables separate. The tinkle of glasses

and dishes rose above the unceasing murmur of the people, and like illumined pearls the lamps threw

a soft light over everyone.

Jiung, Sora, and their cousins all sat around a round table on the floor, and Sora was only too happyto take Changsu onto her lap and help him eat. Changmin immediately began shoveling the bibimbap

into his mouth, but paused at his third mouthful to say, "This is the worst bibimbap I have ever eaten

in my life.‖

Sora was shocked. She loved her mother‘s bibimbap.

―My dad makes the best bibimbap ever,‖ he boasted. ―Lots of people come to my dad‘s house just

to eat his bibimbap. They say, ‗Oh, Mr. Kim, we came to eat your famous bibimbap!‘‖

―They were just being polite,‖ said Jiung, her eyelashes flickering slightly, brown and transparent

like the wings of a moth.

Changmin looked quickly and resentfully at her. Then he brightened and said, ―Have any of you

girls seen real gold before?‖

―Yes!‖ Sora beamed with her mouth and showed him her ring. ―I got this from a cereal box for free.

Isn‘t it pretty?‖

―That isn‘t real gold, dummy,‖ he said. ―My grandmother found real gold in the playground, though.

She was digging and digging, and at first there was just sand, and then dirt, and then hard cat poop,

and then there was gold.‖

―That‘s just not true,‖ said Jiung.

―Oh, that‘s just not true,‖ he mimicked her careless tone. ―You can believe it or not if ya wanna. I

don‘t care.‖

―Why, I‘ll ask her,‖ said Sora brightly, and jumping up, she ran to her grandmother and whispered

something in her ear. Grandmother whispered something back, and Sora ran back, laughing. ―She says,

she never did.‖

Changmin‘s face flushed crimson. "I forgot - I found the gold. In fact," his chest expanded and he

was regaining his confidence, "I'm lucky. Once we were eating at a Chinese fish shop and I opened a

clam and found a pearl inside, this big," he gathered his thumb and index finger together. "I sold it and bought a bike. Did ya know how my mum taught me to ride a bike? She just put me on a top of a

mountain, and then pushed me, and I was like going ‗AAAAH!‘ and smash, smash, it bounced – and

then I never fell off a bike since. Mum says I‘m a natural.‖

Jiung smiled contemptuously, but she didn‘t say anything. Sora, who believed him, said in a hushed

voice, ―Your mother seems very scary.‖

He frowned and said, ―Your mum isn‘t so great either. Scowling and snapping at me to wash my

hands…I‘ll tell you a secret.‖ He leaned over and whispered in her ear, ―She has a pimple on the back

of her neck.‖

Sora‘s cheeks flushed crimson. ―She‘s still pretty. Who cares?‖




44

―I do.‖ His fat legs swung up and down. ―Any of you have a SO?‖

Sora glanced at Jiung, who shrugged, puzzled.

―Significant other,‖ said Changmin in exasperation. ―Boyfriend. Guy-you-mush-your-lips-with.

Whatever. Boy, you guys are dumb.‖

―Oh,‖ said Jiung, frowning. ―No. And I‘m not looking for one, either.‖

―‘I‘m not lookin‘ for one, neither‘,‖ he mimicked again, snickering. ―Look at me! I‘m An Jiung!

I‘m so pretty and cool that I don‘t wanna date nobody, I just wanna date myself! Ha, ha!‖ He laughed

loudly, his nostrils flaring in, out, in out, exactly like a fish, and Sora began to feel almost revolted by

him. He stopped laughing abruptly and said, ―Hey, there‘s this cool video I wanted to show you.

Music stuff.‖

Jiung‘s eyes lit up. ―Music? Is it good?‖

―Real good," he promised, and without asking Sora's permission, he turned on the computer and

went into the Internet. Jiung rose to her feet and walked slowly to the computer. "Sora, Jiung," her

mother was calling. "We're putting the candles on your grandmother's cake…‖

―Hurry up," whispered Sora urgently. Blowing out the candles on the cake was her favor ite part,

and Grandmother Kang always let her blow out the candles with her. Changmin ignored her, clicking

rapidly. "Yeah, baby. It's here...Youtube...yup. Here it is. God, why is your computer so frackin' slow?‖

―Don't use the Lord's name in vain," said Sora in a sterner voice than usual. "And don't you dare put

viruses in my computer. It's supposed to be absolutely pure. What are you doing?‖

―Happy birthday to you...happy birthday to you...happy birthday, dear Grandmother...‖

―Listen." Changmin turned the volume to the maximum, then pressed play. Rock music blasted out,

and bald men in black suits jumped frantically on the screen, screaming swearwords as neon lights

flashed in the background. Jiung sat up, paralyzed. Sora froze with horror as every adult in the room

snapped their heads around in the middle of the song and stared at her.

―An Sora, what in the world are you doing?" asked her mother in a shrill voice above the blaring

beat. A man smashed his face into the screen and made an extremely rude hand gesture at the guests.

Sora's hand clapped over her mouth.

―M-Mother!" she stammered, leaping up, tripping, and knocking things over as she whirled the

volume down to the minimum. "Changmin wanted t-t-to show me..." Her hands were shaking and she

was blushing to tears.

―Music," supplied Jiung, her face as cold as marble. "He said it was music.‖

Grandmother Kang puckered up her dry lips and breathed a puff of hot air with all her might. The

candles whooshed out, and the stinging smell of smoke gave exactly what was needed; that is, it gave

an opportunity for everyone to laugh nervously, make a fuss, open windows, and Sora‘s mother to

hurry to Sora and stealthily give her a painful pinch on the arm.

―A n Sora, you will not ruin your grandmother's birthday or disgrace me!" hissed her mother in her




45

ear. "If you embarrass me like that one more time I am going to lock you in the room and not let you

participate in anything, do you understand me?‖

―But I—―

―Not another word. Oh, coming, Lee!‖

Her mother jumped up and hurried forward. Fuming, Sora turned around to see Changmin flipping

through her books and coolly perusing the leaves of her journal.

―Changmin, those are my poems, and I never let anyone read them!" she exclaimed, starting up.

―They‘re hilarious," he laughed, wheeling around. She grabbed his arm and struggled to wrestle the

book away from his grip, but as if to spite her, he drawled out her precious poems aloud.

―Softly dripping jade-green trees,

Nature nestling at her ease,

Fragrant flowers and humming bees

Mingle together

In locked release.

―This is boring,‖ he concluded as suddenly as he had begun, and with a derisive snort, threw the

journal back onto her table. Sora jammed it into the bookshelf, her face burning, and snapped out,

"Why did you read it, then?‖

―I had hoped you wrote a little better from the bunch of fail you used to write." A grin spread across

his face, revealing his sharp white teeth. "Remember last time I came and we exchanged gifts and I

gave you a fairy that cost me all my allowance and you gave me a dumb poem?‖

Sora flushed hotly all over as he took out a crumpled piece of purple paper from his backpack. She

recognized her handwriting and the cursive "To my favorite cousin" flourishing eloquently at the top,

and remembered how earnestly she had spent hours struggling to think of a poem worthy of its subject.He read it out loud, and Sora‘s cheeks burned with shame at every word she had written.

Changmin, a year shall pass away without

Your cheering presence; like a drought

Without sweet rain, the summer rain

That soaked into the dark terrain.

I hope this gift can keep me near




46

To you, as your gift will to me.

Your fairy ‗s lovely magic spell

Will bind together our family.

P.S. Next time, buy a better gift – like maybe a quill.

It‘s twice the beauty and half the bill.

―I didn‘t buy you a gift this year,‖ he added, rolling up the poem with a laugh. ―It‘s so lame. It‘s not

like it‘s even your birthday, anyway. I already spent everything I could spare on my dumb granny‘s

present.‖ He jerked his head at Grandmother.

―Don‘t call Grandmother dumb!‖ cried Sora.

―She‘s dumb and deaf, my…ah…favorite cousin.‖ The phrase rang with cruel irony in his throat,

and Sora lowered her lashes in shame.

―You‘re not my favorite cousin anymore,‖ she whispered.

―Fine with me. Your new boyfriend Changsu can have the poem." He thrust it at his little brother,

who smiled and crumpled it thoughtlessly to his chest, saying, "I like Sora.‖

―I like you, too,‖ said Sora, hugging him. Changmin‘s eyes narrowed and he said, ―Changsu, comehere.‖

―I don‘t wanna.‖ Changsu snuggled into Sora‘s arms.

―Come here in ten seconds or I‘m going to kill you,‖ he snarled.

Changsu glanced at Sora, and Sora half hoped he would stay in spite of the threat; but evidently

having experienced the force of it too many times, Changsu sighed and obediently walked up to his

brother. Sora felt a fierce ball of anger rush up in her chest. She jumped up suddenly and ran out of the

room. She didn‘t stop running until she went to the bathroom, locked herself in, and took a neatly

folded poem out of her pocket – words written lovingly on crisp new paper, and a ribbon tied aroundthe edge: this year‘s gift to Changmin. She ripped off the ribbon, and in a sudden wild impulse, she

snatched up the poem and tore it to shreds. She watched it being flushed down the toilet in silence,

then walked wearily out of the bathroom.

―Had fun?‖ Changmin greeted her. ―You took a long time.‖ He sniffed critically. ―You smell.‖

―You‘re not a bed of roses yourself,‖ she snapped.

―Ouch, I‘m wounded.‖ He staggered back dramatically, and she stared at him with a set face. He

righted himself with a grin and said, ―How many friends do you have anyway?‖

―A lot.‖ Her answer was terse.




47

―Bet ya don‘t have any since you don‘t go to school.‖

Bright spots of color came into Sora‘s cheeks, but she did not answer.

He spread out his hands. "I have eighty - no, one hundred friends. Everyone at school is my friend.

I'm the most popular kid in school.‖

Sora could be mute no longer. ―Nobody can have one hundred friends!‖

―Yes they can, stupid. Don‘t you know what Facebook is?‖

She stared at him.

―What? You actually don‘t,‖ he said, laughing. ―Loser. I‘m ashamed to have you as my cousin.‖

Sora covered her eyes with her fingers, partly because he was becoming utterly displeasing to her,

and partly because she could not trust her voice to reply calmly.

―Come on, my dear Sora,‖ he said, leaning forward and speaking in shrill sing-song. ―I am your

favorite cousin, you know.‖ And he began humming the song he had shown her on Youtube, running

his tongue over his teeth at each swearword and watching her with special relish.

Gazing into his blank eyes and thick lips Sora understood that the friendly boy whom she had

played with, who had danced with her in the rain, was gone forever, and that he had, perhaps, never

existed but as a figment of her imagination. And turning his eyes from his changed face and looking

down at the floor, she remembered again her happy dreams and fancies, and she felt extraordinarily

foolish, unhappy, and lonely.

―Sora, what‘s wrong?‖ He asked. ―You look sick. That is, you always look sick, but…‖ He began

laughing, exactly like a donkey braying. That laugh, that look of his stirred every nerve in Sora to top

pitch. Her face lit up with rage, and suddenly bounding forward, she screamed, ―I hate you!‖

His eyes snapped open and his mouth dropped a little in alarm.

―I hate you, I hate you!‖ she cried breathlessly, almost shrieking, and rushing forward, she seized

his shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled. ―I‘m ashamed to be your cousin! You make me

sick! You‘re…disgusting! And I don‘t care if you didn‘t buy me a gift, because I‘ve already ripped up

the poem I made for you this year anyway. So there!‖

He writhed a little and tried to push her off. ―Sora, Sora, stop it! Ouch!‖ His voice became squeaky.

She pushed him away from her so hard he fell back, knocking over a chair with a bang. Jiung helped

him up and hissed to Sora, ―Sora, stop it. Mother‘s watching. And you‘re not supposed to push your

guests like that.‖

―I don‘t care, I don‘t care!‖ Sora cried out excitedly. ―And…I…don‘t…care…about…him!‖

Changmin jumped up and caught at her arm. ―Sora,‖ he said.

Sora turned her head sharply away from him, shaking with anger.

―Sora,‖ he said, more urgently.




48

A rapid trembling passed over Sora‘s lips. ―Go away,‖ she begged. ―Please go away.‖ Her voice

broke, her head sunk into her hands. She began to cry. She felt him pause uncertainly for a few

minutes, then mumble, ―I‘m sorry,‖ and move slowly away.

It was eight o‘ clock. Most of the guests had already left, but Sora did not bow to them or bid themfarewell. She did not move when she heard Jiung saying, ―Is it time for you to go already, Aunt Lee?‖

She did not move when she heard Changsu saying, ―Good- bye, Aunt An!‖ to her mother. She did not

move even when she felt Changmin touch her shoulder and mutter in a scarcely audible voice,

―Goodbye…‖

But when the door slammed, she got up and put her hands to her head. ―Oh, my goodness,‖ the

thought flashed through her head, ―what have I done in my petty anger? I won‘t be able to see him for

over a year!‖

Dashing to the front door in her bare feet, she hastily slammed open the door and cried,

―Changmin!‖

The elevator had already left. Her voice echoed hollowly in the apartment hallway. With a heavy

heart, Sora turned and walked slowly back into the house, reluctant to re-enter the rooms in which she

had screamed out words of such malicious fury, bursting with poison, with hurtfulness, with

intentional spite…

At the front door she saw a small box wrapped neatly up and left on the bookshelf. A small white

card was pinned to the top: ―A quill to my favorite cousin,‖ she read, and the tears welled up and

streamed down her cheeks as she pressed the box to her chest and walked slowly to her room. It was

the end of the family reunion.




49

The Library Chewing Gum

Ever since I was six, I stopped chewing gum. Before, I had always cried loudly at supermarkets,

when my mom would quietly proffer coupons she had folded up and creased one, two, a hundred

times, and count out her coins slowly and painfully with a slow sigh. I begged her, sobbing, for just

one pack of the sweet-and-salty, rainbow-colored chewing gum. It was a trend that year, like fuzzy

headbands or bean-paste-bun-shaped hot packs; all the kids I knew were casually smacking a stick of

sweet-smelling gum in their jaws, the snapping, popping sound of the elastic chewable ringing like the

sound of relishing freedom and sophistication in my young ears. My mom, lowering her eyes and

blushing, would say, ―Joyong-hi-hae, Yoobin. Be quiet.‖ But ever since that day at the library,

whenever she went to the supermarket she would finger a little pack of chewing gum, turn to me with

large sad eyes and say, ―Yoobin? Do you want some gum?‖ And I always shook my head no.

We lived in Pasadena, near Koreatown. My brothers and sisters learned very quickly that we were poor. When we didn‘t have anything to eat, my mother would go to the church nearby, where they put

out a basket of old baked bread that had been left over; my mother would take these cracked, hard

pieces of bread home, and we would munch, chew, and swallow the dry, unappetizing slices, quietly

getting up to crumble off pieces of mold if we found any, and sipping our milk in silence. My mother

did all her shopping at the Salvation Army, and our apartment was all carpeted in gloomy, smoke-

stained blue, smelling of cigarette butts and old paint. My brother, a genius who liked pulling apart

broken computers and putting it together again to work when he was bored, worked part-time at

school while struggling to keep up his all-As record. While he was my mother‘s pride, the son that

lifted up her head even while mopping floors and scrubbing bathroom sinks, I was her little pet and

nuisance, the youngest and the only girl of the house, always tumbling down stairs and getting intoscrapes.

―Ai-goh, gang-a- ji!‖ she would say with a smile, stroking my stiff black hair with mingled

impatience and tenderness. ―Little puppy! How you do get your paws muddy every day!‖ And

laughing, I would sniff her hand, stick out my pink tongue, and pretend to chase my tail just for the

fun of it.

Well, because my mother had to work all day, and she couldn‘t afford to send me to a costly

preschool, she dropped me off at the library every morning with a little lunchbox, and I would most

happily run to my favorite corner with the squashy colorful poufs and crisp, glossy picture books, and

be content to flip through bright photographs of birds and rainforests, transported to worlds so muchmore beautiful and exciting than the one I was currently inhabiting.

One evening, just before my mother came back to pick me up, I had gone to the bathroom and was

skipping out when something caught my eye.

Squished flat on a pillar in the corridor was a bright, jewel-pink blob of chewing gum, still slick

and wet from use, and quite fresh. I looked around hastily; my grubby hand shot out, popped the gum

into my mouth, and I began chewing furiously.

The initial experience was quite disappointing. Most of the tartness and sugary juiciness of the

gum‘s flavor had already been chewed away, and I tasted nothing but flat, pasty white stickiness. But Ikept chewing away anyway with hard determination, trying to find out the secrets of this little rubbery




50

blob that had caused such frenzy among my friends. In the middle of when my teeth and tongue were

exploring this piece of gum, out my mother popped from behind another pillar and advanced towards

me, smiling and saying, ―You little gang-a- ji, how long it took me to find you! Why weren‘t you at

your usual corner?‖

I was suddenly very frightened. My mother had always refused to buy me gum, so I had a vague

sense that there was something very wrong in chewing it. Quickly I spat the gum out in my hand and

slapped it back on the pillar, then stood hastily in front of it to hide it from my mother‘s view.

―Sorry, Mommy! I went to the bathroom,‖ I chirped brightly.

My mother narrowed her eyes. ―What did you just spit out?‖

―What? I didn‘t do anything.‖

―Yes. You had something in your mouth and now it‘s not there.‖

―I was just swallowing some spit.‖

―Well…‖ My mother shrugged and looked at me. ―Gaja. Let‘s go. Hurry up.‖

My mouth beamed, and I took a step forward, then was jerked rudely to a stop. My stomach sank.

My hair had stuck to the gum I had been hiding, and I was frozen to the same place.

My mother turned around instantly. ―What‘s wrong?‖ she asked.

I began to quiver a little. ―I…I‘m stuck,‖ I stammered.

―Stuck!‖ She crossed hastily over to me and felt my head. Her eyes widened as she realized what

had happened. Then a sudden thought seemed to flash across her mind which made her mouth drop

open. She was left speechless, and she managed to choke out, ―Oh, my goodness…Yoobin…you were

chewing this gum?‖

I was not used to lying to my mother. I bit my lip, then nodded. ―Yeah.‖

―Where in the world did you get this gum?‖

Things had gone from bad to worse. I hung my head as far as the gum would allow. ―It was just

sticking on the wall. I peeled it off and chewed it. I didn‘t steal it or anything.‖

My mother‘s eyes grew wider and wider in her pale, pinched face until I thought they would

swallow her up. Suddenly I was terribly afraid and pained, and I whispered, ―Oh, Mommy…! I‘m so

sorry! I just wanted to see what gum tasted like, that‘s all!‖

She took out a pair of scissors from her purse. ―Hold still,‖ she said, calmly and grimly.

―No, Mommy!‖ I shrieked, holding out my hands. ―Don‘t cut my hair!‖

Without a word, she reached up with the pair of gleaming scissors and pulled back tightly on my

hair with her fist – taut and quivering, a firmness that must know how to give.

Snip, snip.




51

The scissors chewed their way through my hair one clean bite, their teething jaws clamping over

my tangled curls and wrenching away with unprecedented strength. Suddenly free, and shorn like a

lamb, I stood bare and unhappy in front of my trembling mother. Standing small in the midst of a pile

of quivering, glossy dead tresses that lay in shreds at our feet, I whispered, ―Mommy…? I‘m sorry.‖

She shook her head gently, and holding my hand, we walked quietly back home in mutual silence.

We were very quiet until my brother stomped upstairs and pulled up to the dinner table.

Unfortunately, Juman was in his very worst mood. After putting a little piece of damp anchovy and

rice in his mouth, he slammed his chopsticks down on the table and said with his mouth full, ―It‘s not

fair!‖

―What‘s wrong?‖ asked Mother in a very tiny voice.

―It‘s not fair! Why do rich kids get to have it all, all the money and books and clothes they want,

while everything I have is secondhand and cheap? My friend got his own bicycle for his birthday. Hewent to Harvard MUN yesterday. And all the kids are going to the Philippines and Hawaii for summer

vacation. And all I do for vacation is work and work and work to study and keep up grades that

nobody ever cares about!‖

―I do, Juman,‖ my mother said, softly. ―I am very proud of you.‖

―You know what they call me at school? Chinese fisherman, because they say I‘m good at fishing

for good scores and my lunchbox is always the same recipe — anchovy and rice and kimchi, anchovy

and rice and kimchi!‖

―Anchovies are very cheap and good for your health,‖ said Mother, meekly.

―They push me into the water fountain and tell me to do their homework. When I get a hundred on

my math test they say, The Asian‘s been sucking up to his teachers again, and say, We‘mma gonna

beat you up again, you little Japanese sucker.‖ He slammed his hands against the table, jerking

himself away. ―I try to fight them, but then the principal comes and blames me for starting it, talking

loudly in condescending broken English like I can‘t understand him! No fight, Juman, he says, you no

fight the boys. I mean, what the heck ?‖

―How very annoying,‖ I supplied helpfully, listening with interest.

He turned to me, seething, and his jaw dropped open. ―What the heck did you do to your head?‖

I immediately clamped my lips together and blushed hotly, embarrassed.

―Don‘t mention it, Juman,‖ hissed my mother through clenched teeth.

―Haha!‖ He laughed loudly and meanly in my face. ―You look horrible, like a porcupine that‘s

gotten half its quills r ipped out! Gosh! This is great! I‘ve never seen an uglier haircut in my life.‖

―Juman!‖ my mother said sharply.

―Hahahaha!‖ He banged his fist down on the table and laughed even louder. ―I‘ll bet you‘d be a real

star if you went to school. Hahaha! What hap pened?‖

My mother was silent. My throat constricted, and I tried to put another spoonful of rice in my




52

mouth but suddenly broke down sobbing. Once it burst out of me, it rose to a high-pitched wail and I

couldn‘t stop. My brother‘s good-humor was immediately vanquished.

―What are you sniveling for, you noisy little brat?‖ he shouted, furious. ―Shut up! Stop it! Do you

want me to beat you up? Shut up! Shut up!‖

―Now why did you go and make the child start crying?‖ Mother said angrily in Korean. ―And stop

shouting! All the neighbors are listening.‖

―And why shouldn‘t they hear?‖ Juman shouted even louder, in English. ―Why do we always have

to hide everything and pretend to smile, be happy, and get on with our life like this? Why do we have

to take from charity? I want to eat from clean new bowls, eat something other than anchovy and rice,

Mom! I want a bicycle, too! Is this what it means to be Korean? Poor, creeping, and always one step

below on the ladder? I want…stop howling!‖ he roared at me. ―Shut up! Aren‘t you even listening to

your older brother now? Shut up or I‘ll tear your mouth open!‖

―AAAAAAAUUUUGHHHHH!‖ I opened my red mouth and began screaming at the top of my

voice. He grabbed my hair and slammed me forward, and still screaming, I hurled my head back and

spat everything I had in my mouth — anchovy, rice, kimchi, and all — into his face. In a flash, he

reached back and slapped my cheek.

My mother had been sitting very gloomily during the whole evening — she had evidently been

provoked to the full extent of her patience several times; but my hysterical screaming, and his slap,

hurried her beyond all her usual gentleness, and she suddenly jumped to her feet, screaming in violent

agitation, ―You wicked, rude boy, how dare you speak to your mother in that way? How dare you hit

your little sister like that in front of me? What have I done to be treated like this by my own son?

Oh…I cannot bear this any longer!‖

And clapping her hands over her face, she rushed out of the room.

We had never seen our mother so angry before, and we were paralyzed with amazement. I looked at

my brother, my eyes still red from crying, and he looked at me, his eyes full of shame and fear.

Several minutes of silence followed. Then my brother eyed my cheek and said, frowning,

―Does it…hurt?‖

I sniffled. ―No,‖ I said.

He got to his feet, put his hands in his pockets, and muttered, ―I‘d better…go say sorry to Mom…‖

A few hours later, when I was lying in bed still sniffling from the impact of the blow, and from

seeing my mother so angry, I heard a quiet shuffle of blankets from beside me. I looked around to see

my mother in the moonlight, sitting up, and cradling my hot flushed face with her cracked hands.

―Darling…‖ she said softly, then was silent.

―Mommy?‖ I asked tenderly. In this half -light she looked very young and soft and quiet, the

mommy I loved so well, and I felt very affectionate towards her that moment.

―Yoobin,‖ she said slowly, as if deep in thought. ―Did you really want to chew gum so much? Whydidn‘t you tell me? Why did you…pick up…another person‘s leftovers…like that?‖




53

I buried my head in the blankets. ―I didn‘t know it was wrong,‖ I bawled out, ―I‘m sorry, Mommy.‖

―No, darling,‖ she said, still in that slow, patient voice, but her voice quivered and broke suddenly.

―I‘m…sorry. I wish I could buy you and Juman everything you wanted. I wish I was a better mother.

I‘m sorry.‖

Startled, I looked up into her voice and I was shocked to see two silvery tears threading down her

face. And for the first time in my six-year-old life, I suddenly realized that my mother was old, that

there were deep lines in her soft lovely face, that the blankets we were lying on were patched, and that

the room smelled of smoke…

I kissed her silently, and she hugged me. It was our way of saying that we had forgiven each other.

I grew up peacefully after that. My tangled, jaggedly cut hair flowed down evenly in luxuriant

cascades of warmth with the years, and I was able to come back to my quietly suffering mother with

open arms and say, eventually, ―Thank you. Thank you for what you‘ve done for me for so long.‖ ButI never forgot that evening, the evening I cut my hair; and I was never able to bear chewing gum again.




54

An Evening at the Old Dentist’s

I‘ve never had what they call odontophobia – dental fear – ever since that evening at the old

dentist‘s. About 75% of adults suffer from differing degrees of dental anxiety, and statistics show that

as kids grow older they get cheeky enough to start canceling dentist appointments. Some adults are so

scared of going to the dentist they never go to the dentist at all. Once I saw a man with the brightest,

flashiest million-dollar smile ever — seriously, his teeth were as white as the belly of a beluga whale —

but when I asked him which dentist he went to, his eyes goggled out and he whimpered, ―Oh, no way,

I never go to the dentist. I have odontophobia.‖

I‘ve always kinda liked that old dentist. His glass-encased plaque on the wall claims that he‘s

graduated from Seoul National University and Seoul National Graduate School, and that he‘s the head

of the National Toothbrush Committee and all that cool stuff, but he definitely doesn‘t act like it. He

was very thin, and straight as a ramrod, but he never gave me the feeling of rigidity or stressfulnessthat dentists usually carry: his large, soft eyes, which moved slowly and almost grandly round in their

orbits, radiated relaxation and repose. Not that I was always a fan of dentists. Dentists usually freak

me out, especially when they put that awful green mask over your face and you can‘t see anything

except darkness and then they put sharp drilling tools that go WHEEEEEE! in your mouth and you

scream STOP IT MAN STOP IT but they just scream OPEN YOUR MOUTH WIDER AND STOP

YELLING OR I‘LL BREAK YOUR ARM and then your dad has to come and spank you in front of

all the pretty nurses who pretend to look away politely and pay a whole lot of money and the dentist

tells you to never come back again.

Just saying.

But this dentist was different. On my very first day, I had gone to take out a baby tooth, and asked

him, ―Will it hurt?‖

He tilted his head at me and made laughing half-moons with his currant-dark eyes. ―Do you want

me to make it hurt?‖

―No way!‖

―It‘s quite difficult making things hurt, little sir,‖ he said cheerfully. ―Lie down. This won‘t take

much time.‖

Once I asked him, ―Have you ever heard of odontophobia?‖

―Odontophobia?‖ He chuckled. ―It‘s never been in my dictionary, little sir.‖

And really he radiated an aura of comfort and cheerful ease which made it hard to start making a

big fuss about the tooth-pulling. There are several main factors of odontophobia, and he was an

exception to every single one:

A) Feelings of helplessness and loss of control: People naturally get afraid of stuff they can‘t

control, like flying in an airplane, and those green masks dentists flip onto your face really scare theheck out of me. You‘re just never sure which knife they‘re gonna force you to French kiss next. Plus




55

even when I thrash and bellow in obvious pain, they just DON‘T STOP. But this old dentist, he

always turned his next tool over in his fine, long fingers and showed it to me with a smile, telling me

exactly what he was going to do and how much it might hurt and promising me that he would take a

quick pause if it hurt too much. ―Now that we‘ve chipped away at your tooth, I‘ll just pull the

remaining little fella wiggling in there, which might sting a teeny bit but not too much, about as muchas getting a little pinch on your arm, and then you‘re all clean.‖

B) Cold, impersonal dentists: Studies showed that people who thought their dentists were

―uncaring‖, ―cold‖, or ―impersonal‖ felt more fear in their treatments, even when they were painless,

than people who went through painful treatments but thought their dentists were kind or warm. This

dentist definitely wasn‘t cold. In fact, he was a little too warm and jolly for my taste. He joked and

chatted fluently while digging around in my mouth, which made me worried that he might be too

preoccupied with trying to crack jokes to crack my teeth properly. But he was obviously skilled, and

always ended up doing his job well.

C) Stimulus Generation: People who‘ve had traumatic experiences at hospitals or other

dentists find anti-septic odors and white coats scary, but all the nurses were plump, kindly-faced

ajummas with faces wrinkled with too much smiling and regular, polka-dotted, baggy clothes, and the

dentist himself always wore a sky-blue shirt with a Moomin Valley necktie that made me burst out

laughing every time I saw him. Plus there was also soft piano music in the background, and plump,

frilly flowers all over the windows. It was more like a café than the site of physical operations. If it

wasn‘t a major operation, he‘d scrub his hands thoroughly with peach-smelling soap before

microwaving an egg pastry for me to eat on the way home: ―but don‘t forget, little sir, to brush your

teeth afterwards!‖ I‘m sorry to say I rarely did.

Okay. Enough advertising for that old dentist. Point is, I liked getting treated by him better than by

anyone else.

That still doesn‘t mean I enjoyed it, though.

―Ho, ho! It‘s my VIP customer again. I can tell you haven‘t been brushing your teeth, little sir!‖

cried the dentist in his slow, merry voice, shaking his finger at me.

―How do you know?‖ I demanded rudely, reddening. ―I…I did brush my teeth!‖

―Ah! Guilty consciences paint themselves on one‘s face, little sir. Now, please be so kind as torecline on your special chair, right next to the window, and we‘ll have a pleasant chat…‖

Because I went to the dentist so often — not only because of my cavities, but later because of my

braces —he began calling me his ―VIP customer‖ in a teasing, playful way which really got on my

nerves sometimes. I mean, shouldn‘t he be grateful to me? The worse my teeth are, the mor e money

he rips off, doesn‘t he? But at least I didn‘t get nervous with him.

I guess I just called him ―old dentist‖. He didn‘t mind. He was always cool about stuff like that.

Well, just once in my whole life I suddenly decided to go to the dentist all by myself. Without my

dad or anything. Normally on a sunshiny day like this, with nothing in my mouth to torture myconscience, I‘d be rushing out into the field to kick around a ball with my friends and have fun. But




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here I was, standing in the middle of the dentist‘s office, spreading out my hands.

―Yo, old dentist,‖ I said. ―Your VIP customer‘s here.‖

―Ho, ho, little sir!‖ The dentist waggled his finger at me, and his bushy pepper -gray eyebrows

danced up. ―What is it this time?‖

―My braces hurt. I got two cavities. And I think I might have to cut a wisdom tooth, this side of my

jaw is totally aching. Plus I can feel my top tooth wiggling. I haven‘t brushed my teeth in weeks. The

whole procedure will be very complicated, and it‘ll probably take over an hour,‖ I said authoritatively,

but my voice trembled.

Maybe I overdid it a bit. The dentist jerked his head up and squinted at me until his wrinkles made

a squiggly V line in his juicy mulberry face. ―Tut, tut! Is that so? It seems to be quite a serious case,

little sir!‖ he said, laughing. ―But why so enthusiastic? Any other day you‘d be running down the

street before I could even poke my scissors into your mouth!‖

I must admit, the thought of scissors in a healthy mouth made me turn quite cold. But I pulled

myself together and said firmly, ―I am a mature man now, and I can quite understand that health is

before anything, even psychological distress.‖

The dentist lifted his eyebrows again. ―Is that so, little sir?‖

―Stop calling me ‗little sir‘,‖ I said sulkily. ―I‘m in middle school now. I‘ll be a grown -up with my

own car in no time.‖

―Be it so, little sir,‖ said the dentist placidly, ―please take your special seat and I‘ll take a look to see

what is the problem.‖

My heart quailed a little when I climbed into the plastic seat, but the dentist, humming Edelweiss to

himself, snuggled into his chair — that was another funny thing about him, he had this inordinate

fondness for tropical-colored poufs — and asked me to open my mouth.

―Wait,‖ I said hastily, ―can‘t you work on the other people first?‖

―Oh, no, little sir. That old lady is all done, and the nurse can just wash her mouth out before she

can leave. I think you are the fundamental problem here.‖ He chuckled to himself, and peered into my

mouth. ―Well…‖ he said, after a long while. ―I‘m stumped! There doesn‘t seem to be anything wrong

with your teeth, for a change. If it really hurts, perhaps you‘d like to take an X-ray?‖

The game was up. I stretched out on my chair and admitted weakly, ―I don‘t have anything wrong

with my teeth.‖

The dentist stared at me, puzzled. ―Hey? Then why are you here, little sir? Surely you don‘t want to

have me pull out your teeth for nothing?‖

―In fact, that‘s exactly what I want you to do,‖ I said firmly, crossing my arms. ―You see, I got my

report card today.‖

―Ah!‖

―And I thought, getting my teeth pulled must hurt less than getting beaten up at home.‖




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―Ah-ah!‖

―And maybe if you pull enough teeth out and my mouth gets all bloody, I can tell my mom I got

mugged on the way home, and she‘ll feel so sorry she‘ll forget about my report card and start hugging

me and being nice to me.‖

He gave the longest ―Ahhhh!‖ of yet and nodded wisely. For a long time he just sat staring quietly

at me from behind his murky glasses. Then he cleared his throat, and his eyes grew cloudy.

―My dear little sir,‖ he said, ―I am sorry to say it is now five o‘ clock, and it is time for me to close

down my office and go home. But since my home is just across the street, would little sir like to join

me there for a cup of tea and an egg pastry before you go home?‖

Anything to prolong my stay away from home. I jumped up from my seat and said, eagerly, ―Yes,

old dentist. That‘d be great.‖

So he closed up the dentist‘s office, telling the old lady in his kind, wheezy voice t hat her teeth

were just as fine as fine could be, and taking off half the price of her treatment after watching her

count the coins slowly and painfully. Then he took my hand with a cheerful smile and walked me

down the street into his house. I must admit, I was beginning to think wildly about kidnappers and

lung sellers when the two of us were alone, but he really did put a kettle on for tea and sit down with

two hot egg pastries, adjusting his Moomin Valley tie as neatly as ever, and I finally relaxed.

―Why don‘t you want to show your parents your report card, little sir?‖ he asked at length,

mournfully. ―Don‘t you like studying?‖

―No! I hate it above all things. The current Korean education system is such a fraud!‖

―Really, now…! You‘re a bit young to go tearing down the education system, aren‘t you?‖ The old

dentist gave me a gentle smile.

―But one can‘t help seeing those things. Take art class for example. The teacher gets a bit of chalk

and draws a line on the board. Then thirty-six students all pick up their pencils and copy the line down

on their paper. Straight from the board to the paper, bit by bit. And so on until we all have the exact

same identical cat. And they call it art class!‖

―Why, then don‘t you think art is useful at all?‖

―No, no, don‘t misunderstand me — I have nothing against art. I know, of course, that art is all a lieand makes people think they‘ve found truth and beauty and encourage ped…ped…pedanticism…but

then, a picture is worth a thousand words, as Napoleon said, and so on…to have something to imitate,

life must imitate art, not the other way around, or…well, yes. And anyway, we need a little art to

criticize every day or we‘d start thinking about how to criticize each other.‖

I rounded off this rather splendid, self-made adage with a flourish, but the old dentist was still

smiling his irritatingly calm, quiet smile, not at all impressed.

―School is a blessing, little sir, whether you like it or no,‖ he said. ―I would have given anything at

your age to enjoy what you are enjoying right now.‖

―What! Stupid lessons and getting beaten when I don‘t get over ninety percent right on my tests!




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You‘re dotty.‖

―There are worse things than getting beaten for not getting over ninety.‖

―Well, yes, like nuclear bombs in North Korea or global warm ing. All those people who insist on

blasting out more air conditioner all the time and those silly girls who wear fox-fur coats in this

blazing weather should be strangled. But don‘t get the idea that I‘m a vegan who cares more about

whales than humans or anything. In fact I‘m more for adaptation than mitigation, you know. It‘s too

late to save anything and we‘d better just find the best way to survive as comfortably as long as we

can.‖

I felt flushed and proud with the extent of my knowledge at the end of this little speech.

―I don‘t think that‘s what mitigation is really about, little sir! But now, you‘ve told me about your

school, and it really does sound bad that you should have to draw cats like that or be forced to get

over ninety. But now I shall tell you about my school, where I never once got over fifty percent righton my test, and my parents never beat me up for anything, and I could draw all sorts of airplanes and

tigers instead of cats if I wanted to, and the teacher wouldn‘t be able to stop me – and let‘s see which

school was happier.‖

He crumbled the egg pastry and chewed it slowly, reflectively. After a long moment he began.

―I thought more about death while in middle school than I had for all the rest of the years in my life

put together. Wondering if we‘d just blink out like a light – poof! Or become a spider in a dark, cold

cellar. Or become reincarnated as a healthy horse, pounding across the plains in my mighty hoofs.‖

I began snorting with laughter. ―That‘s nonsense, old man.‖

―There are some who believe it is true, so don‘t laugh,‖ he said gravely. ―After I went to university

I started going to church, and so now I believe that there is heaven, where we can rule over the stars

and live in beautiful mansions, or hell, where my old bones would get cooked as quickly as the bones

of boiled fish in my old pot – snap, crackle, snap!‖

I began laughing again, but he looked pretty serious, so I pulled myself together and said, ―Go on.‖

―I lived in a slum town on the edge of an alley that winded around a huge trash dump. When we

walked around the dump on our way to school, the stench of slowly rotting food, curls of decaying

fruit peels and waste rose up in transparent, malodorous wisps and enveloped the whole town,

flooding its every broken alley and dust-fogged window in thick, heavy waves. Oh, in winter it was

particularly horrible. I held my nose every time I passed the dump, but the stink soon became a part of

me. Sometimes I turn my head too quickly and fancy that I catch a whiff of that stink even now: the

odor of memories, little sir, is so long-lasting!

―Well, when I was young I was very shy and short, which made me a perfect victim for bullies all

around. Every time I met a boy even a year older than I was, I quickly learned to slap my hands to my

sides and bow ninety degrees in reverent silence. I soon got used to having my face ground into the

dirt every recess time. I still remember the drip-drip-drip of an unclosed grey faucet in the bathroom

where they used to force me to smoke cigarettes and beat me: I used to focus my whole brain on that

dripping of water, so I wouldn‘t feel the pain. That‘s what I sometimes tell my patients to do: focus on just one thing, like the music or my crooked nose, to help them forget the pain.




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―I became a ‗carrier‘ for another boy named Nam-sin. All of the little boys, unless they were

extraordinarily strong or sturdy, became ‗carriers‘. My chief job was to buy butane gas for Nam -sin,

who inhaled it like air.

―I only had three friends. They were the smallest, scrawniest boys in our class, and we becamefriends because we were always beaten up together. One of them was never able to eat his own lunch

for the whole three years of middle school: all the older boys called him over to eat the meager

portions he had brought, then threw the empty container at his head. ‗Bring tastier meals next time!‘

they‘d shout.

―Whenever school was over, the three of us would run to a nearby brick factory, where the

employees would pay us one thousand and five hundred won – the price of a slice of bread – to move

one brick. Each brick was so heavy it required two men to lift it, but if all three of us strained our

muscles all at once we could stagger to the designated place and fumble the brick into its place. Of the

one thousand and five hundred won, of course, we had to save five hundred won to pay to the older

boys tomorrow. With the rest of our money, we ran straight to the PC Room, rented a computer, and

spent every spare hour playing games. We weren‘t so different from you boys, little sir.‖ He gave me a

wink and polished his glasses.

―One day, while smashing my hands against the keyboard, a little elementary school boy came up,

smacking a stick of gum too large for his mouth, and said, ‗Hey, brat. Got any money on you?‘ I go t

so enraged that now I had to get talked down to by an elementary school kid that I slapped the boy

squarely across the face and spat, ‗Let that be a lesson to how you talk to your elders next time.‘ That

was what the older boys always said when they beat me up. Ah! Man is a primitive animal, who

copies every evil he sees…I am ashamed to think of it. Whenever I see a little boy chewing gum, I

feel so guilty.

―Then I went back to my computer game, feeling a little uncomfortable, and was absorbed in

playing when a sudden black shadow loomed over my screen. My back prickled. Then a voice, strong

and harsh and most definitely not elementary, said, ‗Are you the bastard who slapped my younger

brother?‘

―I realized then that this wasn‘t any ordinary rude little boy. He was just being used as a ploy by the

many slum gangs that were popular around that time. I knew I was as good as dead.

―Whew! I‘ve gotten a fair amount of beatings in my lifetime, but that was the worst. The first swift

kick of a dirty sneaker caught me in the belly, made everything I had ever eaten rise in hot bile to his

throat, and left me sprawled on the floor. Then another slap, across the face, over the head, four or five

cold, violent kicks in my ribs and the tough piece of bone at the base of my spine. Then a battering of

my skull, my neck, my back, fists tearing at my hair until he felt they would be pulled out by the roots

like new wheat, my belly punched over and over again…now I shouldn‘t be saying all this to you,‖ he

said with a cheerful laugh, seeing my sick expression.

―Did it hurt very much?‖ I asked helplessly.

―Of course it did. But the very worst part when they had just dusted their hands, it was over, they

had spat in my face and were going to leave — when suddenly I heard my three friends screaming my

name. Each armed with a slab of wooden stick in hand, screaming at the top of their lungs like Indianwarriors, the three tiny, skinny boys flew at the high school thugs. In the next moment all three of




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them were getting the beating of their lives. And for me, it was starting all over again. This time,

much worse. The oldest boy grabbed me by the neck, dragged me to a brick wall, and scraped my face

over it like clay over a carving block, over and over again. I felt patches of my skin tearing off and

blood flying into my eyes. That‘s where I got my scar, right here,‖ he lifted his hair and showed me a

thin white scar running down his forehead, like Harry Potter. I felt horrified.

―That‘s how I realized I had three real friends in the world.

―Years passed. My family moved eventually, and my father was transferred to a better job, and I

was transferred to a better school. My new high school was clean, quiet, and studious; much more like

yours, I think. We, too, had teachers who taught like your art teacher; my mother, now that she didn‘t

have to worry about eating three square meals a day, could afford to worry about my scores. I began

working to get a ninety in my tests as well. And I worked very, very hard. I stayed in the library every

day, from the hour it opened to the hour it closed, so that at last even the janitor ajummas knew me

and would wave goodbye to me when I left, calling after me, ‗Don‘t study too hard or your brain will

explode, little sir!‘ and laugh…they were kind people…‖

―Is that where you got that ‗little sir‘ business?‖

―What? Oh, yes. Perhaps you‘re right. I am very old womanish deep down.‖ He chuckled and

poured some more tea. ―What would Korea be without our mighty, buffalo-like ajummas to scrub our

bathrooms clean, hustle our children off to school, shout sense into their weak husbands‘ ears, and

shove their way onto a subway? Your generation would be nothing without ajummas. Oh! You know,

a new mejum opened down the street a few weeks ago; the ajumma there is very nice. Well, to

continue with my story; it nears an end.

―Those years at school, struggling with getting over ninety and getting beaten by teachers, weresome of the best years in my life. It was paradise. It was heaven. After middle school, any school

would have been heaven.‖ He smiled and stirred his tea quietly. ―And at the end of my high school

life, I was accepted into Seoul National University. My mother was so proud, she held a big party.

And do you know who showed up there?‖

―Who?‖

―My three friends!‖

I coughed on my pastry. ―Oh! How did they grow up?‖

The old dentist looked down and sighed. ―That was a very sad moment. I remember being

extremely shocked. They were all very kind boys, very sweet and innocent deep down beneath all the

swearing and rough living which we all went through at middle school…but the same awful routine in

high school had changed them completely. They were already headed down a different pathway from

mine. The swearwords they freely used, the language, the way they thought…! It was all so different.

They burst into the party with motorcycles, screaming, ‗Long time no see, and congratulations!‘ They

had tattoos and scars all over their faces and arms. I was quite unable to recognize them at first. And

the only thing they could talk about was to ask me to set them up for some blind dates with Seoul

girls.‖ The old dentist laughed, half -fondly, half-sadly, and finished off his delicate pastry and patted

his lips. ―They were good boys,‖ he said quietly, ―but they‘d changed. We sat down and talked, but

they ordered crates of soju and I ordered water. They began swearing and slamming down their fists

and talking about…such things. I realized, as I watched them, that this would be the last time I would




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ever be able to meet them like this. And it was true. Soon after, one of my friends went to jail; another

became addicted to drinking; and another died in a motorcycle accident.‖ His fingers tightened on his

teacup, and he looked off into the distance, remembering. ―They were good boys,‖ he repeated.

―What happened after that?‖ I asked, eagerly.

―Nothing really,‖ the dentist said with a faint smile. ―We went our separate ways. I never saw any

of them again…oh, but I did see Nam-sin, the older boy who had beaten me up so many times!‖

―Really! When?‖ I asked.

―He came to my office once,‖ said the dentist, with a sad smile. ―He had to take out almost all of

his teeth, and he was groaning and crying from the moment he came into the office…and he didn‘t

have any money. When the operation was over, he rattled out the last coins in his purse and began

crying again, saying with the bloody cotton swabs still in his mouth, ‗I‘ll pay you next time, I promise

you, sir…‘ I felt very sorry for him. Things had changed greatly in this life for both him and me. So Itold him he didn‘t need to pay me, the insurance would give me money anyway, and bid him goodbye.

I‘ve never seen him again since.‖

There was a slight pause, as the soft ticking of the clock sounded loudly in my head. I put down my

cup with a tinkle and threw myself back into the soft chair, and the old dentist hummed his favorite

old Edelweiss tune again.

―Don‘t you ever get lonely here, old man?‖ I demanded. ―Wasn‘t it hard becoming a dentist? Isn‘t it

boring? Don‘t you have any wife? Or kids?‖

―No, no. Seoul National University was very generous to me, because of my financial situation, and

I went on to grad school and became a dentist, and I am sure, little sir, that I am very happy indeed. I

never married, but I have kind, good patients who sometimes drop in to see me – like you!‖

I felt a little jealous. I had always kinda thought I was his only VIP customer, and fancied myself

quite a light in his dull life. ―Like who?‖

―Sora, a little girl at my church, writes poetry for me sometimes. My nieces, Ginju and Goosie, are

always such fun when they come over — all the flowers I have at my office are from Ginju, who tells

me over and over again when I should water them, but I always forget. I have fun trying to train Ki-

cheol in my spare time, one of the most talented young students at Seoul National University. He

doesn‘t want to be a dentist, he looks for higher things like the invention of vaccination or a cure tothe common cold, but a little knowledge of teeth never hurts! Oh, it‘s quite enlightening trying to

argue with a fresh young genius like him: he‘s one of the boys ajummas would scold as ‗studying too

hard‘. And sometimes when I want a chat, I go down the street and buy some yogurt from the mejum,

and the mejum ajumma is very chatty; she always tells me about the latest dramas. Yesterday she told

me how she had just rescued a drowning kitty from the river and how she‘s trying to train it to catch

the bugs in her apartment. What an interesting woman! So you see, I am never bored. Yes, I am very

ha ppy, little sir.‖

He drained his cup and put it in the sink. I looked after him and felt a sudden stab of great pity and

respect for this frail old man who had suffered, and yet conquered, so much with a smile and a wink

and a little whistle of Edelweiss. I mean, look at him, washing teacups all by himself, and he‘s beaming as if he‘s the happiest man in the world. I wished I had studied harder, struggled harder,




looked higher, and been more grateful, just like him. And suddenly my own woes seemed very small

and selfish in perspective.

―Hey, old dentist,‖ I said in a small voice, ―thanks for the tea and pastries. Looks like I‘d better be

going on home now.‖

The old dentist smiled at me and began rinsing out the teacups. ―Very well, little sir. For your sake,

I hope I do not see you again in a very, very long time. Keep healthy and don‘t forget to brush your

teeth! Tea can be very bad to your teeth, too, you know.‖

―Yeah.‖ I got to my feet, opened the door and listened to the cold wind howling d own the street. I

hesitated and looked around. ―I‘m sorry for complaining about my education,‖ I said slowly. ―Seems

like I should be more grateful for a lot of things in my life. Especially for having a nice dentist like

you.‖

―No, no, little sir! I am the one who should be grateful for such an amusing patient to listen to mylong-winded tales.‖ The old doctor continued to hum as he took off his necktie and put on an apron

instead. ―Thank the Lord, I certainly do have all the luck in my patients. You‘re the funniest I‘ve seen

in a long time.‖

―You‘re not so normal yourself,‖ I retorted with a grin. ―Goodnight, old man.‖

―Goodnight, little sir! Let us both never forget to pray for gratitude. After all, life is beautiful, and

there is so much for us to be hap py for!‖

stories by streetlight

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