Luna herself felt the loss but was not devastated by it. She had grown to love her younger sister as they both got older. But that had also coincided with the shaping of their individuality, and they had needed each other less with every passing year. She was simply glad that Lotus had blossomed and found what she wanted. Luna knew that her younger sister needed only two things to be happy: a man’s love and music.
As for what she herself needed to be happy, Luna was less certain. Rather, she never stopped to think about this, since for her even the very idea of happiness seemed alien and out of reach. It was no more sensible than being asked, “Would you like to live on the moon? How does that sound?” The closest thing to happiness was how she felt when her daughter curled up to her at night, begging to use her arm as a pillow. “What about your pillow?” Luna would ask, pointing at the soft silk cylinder filled with dried chrysanthemum petals and mung beans. “No, no. I want to sleep on Mama’s arm,” Hesook would protest, snuggling her head toward Luna. Luna would sigh, as though exasperated, making the child giggle. They would play silly games that only they understood; Hesook would call out, “Nose, forehead, chin, cheek, eyebrow” and so on, and Luna would kiss rapidly each part that was named. Messing up and kissing the wrong place caused both of them to break into utterly senseless and joyful laughter. Looking at the pure adoration in her daughter’s sweet little face, Luna welled up with the conviction that nothing and no one else mattered.
That, perhaps, was Luna’s happiness, although calling it so made her feel selfish and undeserving. Luna did not particularly wish for it, and only looked forward to saving enough money to secure her and her daughter’s future. She had the idea to raise Hesook as a normal, modern kind of girl. This was the reason Luna had been careful not to get into any affairs, so that Hesook might have the liberty to get educated and marry a proper man. Girls from upper-class families would often study abroad in Japan or even Europe, and Hesook would also get the best education money could buy. Luna carefully saved up almost everything she made from parties and modeling—less than either Jade or Lotus, but still substantial—so that Hesook would lack for nothing in terms of schooling or clothes. She was proud that Hesook was a good student, getting high marks in most subjects and praised by her teachers.
This was why Luna was all the more devastated when Hesook came home one afternoon and gave Luna a letter from the principal, asking her to visit the school the next day. She questioned her daughter and threatened to use the switch. Hesook, who had never been beaten in her life, broke into rivers of tears and ran away to her room. Luna immediately regretted her harshness, stroked her daughter’s hair, and promised her that she wouldn’t get angry again. Between sobs and hiccups, Hesook explained that she’d gotten into a fight at the school but wouldn’t say anything more.
The next morning, Luna got dressed especially carefully. She picked out her most elegant summer outfit: a cropped white silk blouse and a floor-length lavender skirt. Unlike Jade and Lotus, who increasingly preferred to wear Western dress, Luna almost always wore traditional clothes. She was the only one in the house who still dressed her hair in a braided chignon. On this day she chose a green jade binyuh to hold it in place.
Around noon, Luna got out of the cab in front of the Christian girls’ school that Dani had also attended. The relentless July sun was reflecting on the light pink sand of the courtyard. At the moment, it was filled with an eerie silence peculiar to an empty playground in the middle of classes, lying in wait for the cheerful children. A gray-haired porter stopped her at the gates and waved her in when she said she was Hesook’s mother, not knowing or caring that she was a famous courtesan. “Oh yes, you got a letter from the principal? You’ll want to go to her office on the second floor,” the porter said good-naturedly. She thanked him and started crossing the sun-drenched courtyard, trying to hide how she herself felt like a little girl in trouble.
*
UPSTAIRS IN HER OFFICE, the principal was having coffee with a visitor, Deputy Consul Curtice. She originally hailed from Rochester, and he grew up in Ithaca; and by virtue of their neighboring hometowns, they’d relied on each other more than on anyone else among the Americans in Seoul.
“I believe you will find our students are very well-educated, polite, and devout. I have a few in mind whom I will recommend,” she said, putting her cup down on the saucer with a crisp and cheerful clink. “Some very smart girls from poorer families, who would surely be forced to marry as soon as possible. This would give them a chance to use their education and earn their independence, perhaps.”
Deputy Consul Curtice nodded thoughtfully. He had come to ask her help in finding a new translator and secretary at the consulate. The old translator had passed away from tuberculosis the previous winter and it was imperative to find a replacement soon. There were young men who graduated from missionaries’ schools as well, but the new consul-general had the notion that women translators and typists were cheaper and more obedient than their male counterparts. The men were more likely to get involved in political activism, whether that meant communism, the independence movement, or both. His predecessor, the former consul-general, had been more sympathetic; he’d sent the AP reporter’s photographs to the secretary of state and urged the Wilson administration to take a stance against such atrocities. That integrity had a cost, and he was quickly removed from his post and reassigned to Canton.
The new consul-general stuck with the official program that the regime here was an American ally. Curtice found it difficult to agree with his supervisor on many issues; but insofar as the translator was concerned, he saw no harm in bringing a modern-educated Korean woman into the fold.