As long as she could remember, Luna had heard dozens of stories like these about women who desperately longed for children. Such tales never told of women who didn’t want to become mothers, although there were plenty of these among courtesans, servants, unmarried girls, widows, and matrons who already had too many mouths to feed. These women also had to pray and eat bitter herbs to get their wish.
A while back, a fourteen-year-old girl who did their washing had become pregnant and begged Silver for help. She didn’t have any money to go to an herbalist, and at any rate she couldn’t be caught buying something that would ruin her chances of marriage forever. Courtesans, of course, had the “medicine” in stock at all times. Luna had watched carefully as the maid prepared the bitter-smelling brew. Thick curls of cloudy steam overflowed from the bowl that the girl gulped down—almost greedily, Luna had thought at the time. This was what she now had to re-create.
Once she made up her mind, she rose from her bed quietly so as to not wake Silver. Her legs were weak and spindly under her weight, but she made it to the kitchen somehow. The herbs were still tucked in a bronze pot in the corner. Luna boiled water in a clay pot and let the herbs simmer until the liquid turned dark brown and thick. It tasted like woodsy bile.
Luna lay back down in her cot and waited for the medicine to take hold. She had only missed one period, but she could already feel something sharp and pointy in her womb that was never there before. That this seed was like an evil nail didn’t surprise her in the least; it was to be expected from a man like Hayashi. The air was beginning to feel unbearably hot. And instead of flushing the nail out, the medicine seemed to make it grow larger, tearing her from the inside. Her mother was awake now, holding her hand and taking her temperature. She wanted to feel the blood rush out between her legs, but the nail was stuck inside her. If she could have spoken out loud, she would have asked someone to please scratch it out of her body, but she couldn’t utter a word, as if caught in a bad dream.
When Luna woke up, it was nighttime—she had been in a fever for a whole day. Silver was sitting up next to her, and the darkness under her eyes showed she hadn’t slept at all.
“You’re too young to remember this. I also didn’t want Lotus, and the brew didn’t work for me either,” Silver said.
“I was livid the entire time I was pregnant. Even after she was born I could hardly stand her. But before she was even two months old, she looked right into my eyes and smiled. Even though I was sure she knew in my womb how much I hated her.” She paused, and saw that Luna was too silent and tense to be asleep.
“And at that moment, I held her tightly to my chest and cried like I would flood the world. Such a little body, still red from being inside mine. I kept saying like a madwoman, ‘Please forgive me.’ I’d tried to get rid of her but her soul had clung to me by a thread. It’s an uncanny thing—inyeon. If it’s not meant to be, you can’t hold on to people no matter how hard you try. Some people you love deeply will turn into a stranger in an instant, if the inyeon has run its course. And sometimes people will be attached to you forever despite all likelihood. Lotus and I, our inyeon is deep and goes back further than this life.
“I will do anything for Lotus just as I’ll do anything for you. You’re both my daughters. So I promise you, you don’t know yet how you’ll feel later.”
DESPITE THE BLAZING SUN and resinous air, Silver went out all the way across town to send a telegram to Seoul. The reason for her errand became clear when a visitor appeared at their door—a courtesan as beautiful as Silver, but dressed in simpler and more expensive clothes. Her inky black hair was scalloped around her forehead and coiled on her nape in the Western style. Instead of silk-and-leather slippers embroidered with flowers, she had on heeled pumps with straps over dainty silk stockings that only white women wore. Silver’s first cousin was named YeDan, although friends and admirers called her Dani. She would take Luna to Seoul, ostensibly so she could have a fresh start. But everyone knew the real reason she was being sent away was to keep Hayashi from discovering her condition.
Lotus was being sent to Seoul as well, but she refused to leave unless she could take her closest friend with her. Silver had arranged to pay for the board of her two daughters so that they would be exempt from paying back the mistress of the establishment, as was customary. Jade, on the other hand, was an investment for which Silver had already paid a substantial sum, and her transfer was therefore a more delicate matter. Still, Dani agreed to take a look at the child, who was summoned after dinnertime.
“How old are you?” Dani asked, her sharp and beautiful eyes tracing the girl from the head to the hem of her skirt.
“I’m ten, Madame,” Jade answered softly, focusing her gaze on Dani’s freshly painted, scarlet lips. Silver and other courtesans wore rouge too, but Dani was the only woman she’d ever seen whose makeup was not just an ornament, but an effect; the color of her lips alone could make you feel as if she were tenderly caressing you, or—if she wanted—as if she were slapping your face. She pulled out a cigarette from an enameled case and rested it between gently parted lips while lighting it with one hand in a single fluid motion. Her manners and diction were impeccable, but an air of subversion trailed her like perfume. Dani defied simple categorization like no one else—and that was her most attractive quality.
“Let me see your eyes,” Dani said, removing the cigarette from her lips. A soft white smoke curled around her mouth before departing into the air. Jade lifted her gaze and met Dani’s irises, nearly black and foiled with flashes of golden brown.
“She is pretty, and quite bright, too,” Silver said. “She won’t be able to work for a while yet, but she’ll still be useful to have around.”
Dani turned toward her friend. Even the way she cocked her head to the side and opened up her elbow was languorously elegant, Jade thought.