“You will find that Mi-ja has not lost her city ways,” Grandmother went on smoothly. “In fact, she has lived and worked abroad. She has much experience—”
“I knew the girl’s father and even her mother,” Lee Han-bong interrupted. “I’m guessing the girl doesn’t remember me, but I remember her very well.” Even at these words, Mi-ja didn’t glance in his direction. “She always wore a big white bow in her hair.” He smiled. “She looked pretty in her little boots and petticoats. Most people prefer to bring in a daughter-in-law who has grown up in a large family, because it shows that she has the skills to get along with everyone.”
“And work hard—”
“But my son is an only child as well. Sang-mun and Mi-ja have this in common.” He went on to discuss other benefits of the match, which had less to do with the idea of sharing provisions than it did with Mi-ja’s and Sang-mun’s physical characteristics. “Neither of these children has skin too dark,” he commented. “I’m sure you’re aware how surprising this is for a sea woman. But once Mi-ja is married to my son, her days of working in the sun will be over. Her face will return to that of the girl I once knew.”
I listened to all this with a breaking heart. I watched the formal exchange of gifts. I knew Mi-ja had bought her future husband a camera, but I couldn’t tell from the shape of Sang-mun’s family’s gift what it might be, except that it wasn’t a traditional roll of cloth for her to make wedding clothes. (But why would Japanese collaborators give her such a Korean gift?) As soon as the negotiation ended and small glasses of rice wine had been poured for the men to cement the deal, I slowly rose, backed out of the yard, and ran through the olle toward home. Tears poured down my cheeks until I couldn’t see. I stopped, covered my face, and wept into the rock wall. How could I have had such ridiculous dreams? Sang-mun never could have been interested in me, and I shouldn’t for one instant have wanted to marry the son of a collaborator.
“Young-sook.”
I cringed at the sound of Mi-ja’s voice.
“I understand why you’re sad,” she said. “I couldn’t even look at you back there for fear I would begin to weep. We wanted to marry boys in Hado, so we would always be together. And now this . . .”
In my jealousy and hurt, I hadn’t absorbed that Mi-ja would be leaving Hado for good. How could I have let one short encounter with a man with a handsome face and an enchanting laugh so sway me away from my friend that I hadn’t thought about what the consequences of a marriage to him—whether hers or mine—would mean to our friendship? Mi-ja and I would be separated. I might see her if I was going through the port for leaving-home water-work, but otherwise no responsible wife would spend money frivolously on a boat ride around the island or a truck carrying produce to a five-day market just to see a friend. I had been disconsolate before, but now I was devastated.
“I don’t want this marriage,” she confessed. “Auntie and Uncle would sell the hairs off my head to profit from me, but what about your grandmother? I begged her not to do this.”
I found my emotions shifting yet again. “You had to know how I felt about him,” I said reproachfully.
“I’d guessed,” she conceded. “But even though I knew your feelings doesn’t mean I had a say in what happened. I told your grandmother everything. I begged her . . .” She faltered. Finally, she resumed. “You’re lucky you don’t have to marry him. Anyone can see he is not a good man. You can tell by the strength of his arms and the curve of his jaw.”
Her observations shocked me. Just as I felt heat creeping up my spine, Mi-ja burst into tears.
“What am I going to do? I don’t want to marry him, and I don’t want to be away from you.”
And then we were both crying and making promises neither of us could possibly keep.
Later, back home, I sobbed into Grandmother’s lap. With her, I could speak more freely about my confused emotions. I’d hoped to marry Sang-mun, I told her. I was disappointed, but I was also angry at Mi-ja. Maybe she hadn’t stolen him, but she’d won him nevertheless, and it stung. She would be a city wife—enjoying paved roads, electricity, and indoor plumbing. “Sang-mun might even hire a tutor for her!” I wept, outraged, jealous, and still so very hurt.
But Grandmother wasn’t interested in comforting me. Instead, she poured out her disgust with Lee Han-bong, Sang-mun’s father. “That man! He comes here with his oily words, talking about a one-day marriage, and acting like he’s trying to save Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle from having to travel. He was saying they’re too poor to hold a proper wedding, and he didn’t want his friends to see it. He pretended he wants a pretty wife for his son—a girl that he and his friends remember from better circumstances—but he was trying to save face among his friends. He didn’t care at all for what this might do to Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle.”
“But you’ve never liked them—”
“Liked them? What does that have to do with anything? When he insults them, he insults everyone in Hado! He’s a collaborator, and he has too much Japanese thinking in him.”
This was about the worst thing she could say about anyone, since she so hated the Japanese and those who helped them. I rubbed my eyes with my palms. I was thinking too much about myself.
Next to me, Grandmother still stewed. “Mi-ja said his hands are smooth.”
“Lee Han-bong’s?”
“Of course not.” She snorted. “The son’s hands.”
I asked the obvious questions. “How do you know? Who told you?”
“Mi-ja said he grabbed her when they were walking from the port.”
“He grabbed her? She would have told me—”
“That poor girl was doomed to tragedy from the moment she sucked in her first breath,” Grandmother went on. “You must pity her when you have such good fortune. Don’t forget I’ve been working on an arrangement for you too.”
I was such a girl—swept up in a swirl of feelings I was too young to understand—and I struggled to make my heart and mind change course. I had wanted Sang-mun. Mi-ja had told me she didn’t want to marry him, and maybe the reason Grandmother gave was true. But if it were true, Mi-ja would have told me. I was sure of it. Maybe everything Grandmother said was to make me feel better that I wasn’t as pretty, as pale, or as precious—with white bows in my hair—as Mi-ja. Every twist made me doubt my friend when we’d always been so close.
“I can’t tell you who he is, but I know you’ll be happy,” Grandmother declared. “I would never arrange a marriage for you with someone you wouldn’t like. Mi-ja is a different story. Her choices were always limited, and she deserves what she gets.” Then a mischievous look passed over her face. “Your husband is arriving by ferry tomorrow.”
“Is he a mainland man?” I asked, knowing that this was what Mi-ja had wanted for herself.
Grandmother smoothed the hair from my face. She stared into my eyes. Could she see the pettiness in them? Or maybe she saw deeper, to my feelings of sorrow and betrayal. I blinked and shifted my gaze. Grandmother sighed. “If you are on the dock tomorrow . . .” She slipped a few coins in my hand. “Here’s enough to pay a fisherman to take you by boat to the city. I’m giving you this gift—a modern gift of a glimpse of the man you will marry before the engagement meeting. I caution you, though, to stay out of sight. You don’t want him to see you! There’s modern, and then there’s tradition.”
My insides swirled with emotions. Again, I sensed Grandmother assessing me.
“When you’re a wife,” she went on, “you’ll learn how to deprive your husband of a little of his allowance—‘My harvest wasn’t plentiful this week,’ or ‘I had to pay extra dues to the collective for more firewood’—so that you’ll have money to spend on yourself. You and Mi-ja will be separated, but a free day and a little cash will always bring the two of you together.”
On the Sleeping Mat