This Burns My Heart

Chapter nineteen

The party ended late, long past sundown, after the small caravan of Fiats and Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles noisily left the driveway, one after the other, like a procession. Soo-Ja retreated to the downstairs area next to the garage, a kind of fancy chauffeur’s suite, with its own bathroom, separate from the rest of the house. Hana and Min had been staying there, Min sleeping on the floor, and Hana by herself in the large queen-sized bed. Now that Soo-Ja was there, she and Hana would sleep on the bed, and Min on the floor. There was also a small TV in the corner, on top of an old chest made of paulownia wood. Soo-Ja stared at its dark grain, made all the more noticeable by the lighter shades surrounding it.

“Grandpa wants to see you.” Soo-Ja heard Hana’s voice behind her. Soo-Ja rose, only to be struck by the incredible silence in the house. She realized that this was where she’d live, not the bustling house of a few hours ago, filled with sunlight and life; but this—this eerie home where unhappiness seemed to linger like dust on top of the furniture.

Soo-Ja walked up the stairs and found herself in the dining room, which had been turned into a kind of multipurpose area, with a second refrigerator, an old leather couch, a color TV, and a round white Formica table pushed against the wall. Father-in-law sat at his chair, waiting for her, holding a backscratcher that he tapped on his knees lightly, repeatedly, as if counting time. Mother-in-law sat on the floor, a few feet away, her back against the couch; she had a quilted blanket on her lap, and she was stitching the silk cover. Min and Hana sat on the couch, supposedly watching the TV, but the sound was turned too low for them to actually hear. As Soo-Ja sat down across from Father-in-law, she knew the others were just pretending to be busy, and they were there for this conversation as much as she was, like human props placed there for an important scene.

“I want to make something clear to you. You’re not here on vacation. You’re here to work,” said Father-in-law. “Work starts tomorrow. Early. Six o’clock. It’ll be a long day, twelve hours. You can have a little break for lunch, twenty minutes, but if a customer comes in while you’re eating, you leave your food aside and go wait on her. The work is not easy. We sell in bulk, which means carrying ten, twenty pounds’ worth of clothing at a time. All day. But I don’t want to hear complaints. You understand?”

“Yes, Father,” said Soo-Ja. She saw from the corner of her eye that Min and Hana’s heads were bent down. She was speaking for all of them.

“If you don’t like it, tough luck. Try showing up at an American store and asking for a job. You don’t speak English and you smell of kimchee. You have nothing to offer, remember that. You’re lucky that I even let you work for me. There are a lot of hungry people out there. At least here your stomach will always be full.”

“Yes, Father. Thank you, Father,” said Soo-Ja.

“We didn’t become successful and rich by being idle. We made sacrifices. We worked very hard.”

“I know, abeonim,” said Soo-Ja, thinking of the money he had taken from her father.

“Remember, too,” and this is when he changed his tone, to become the benevolent patriarch, “I’m not going to live forever. When I die, this house will be yours, and my business, too. So you see, even though I’m not paying you, you’re not working for me, you’re working for yourself.”

“Thank you, Father.” Soo-Ja knew already that when he died, Father-in-law would leave everything to his daughter, Na-yeong, and nothing to Min and her. She knew Father-in-law so well by now, she could tell when he lied—it was the only time he ever smiled.

“You’ve said a lot of harsh words to me in the past, but I forgive you. I forgive you because I live in a beautiful house and I have a lot of money, and that is so because I am a good person. You, on the other hand, you still have much to learn, but I can teach you how to be a humble, obedient daughter-in-law.”

Soo-Ja turned to Min then, as she was about to respond. She expected to see triumph in his eyes, but she found only sorrow. And that’s what made her voice quiver, when she finally said, one more time, “Yes, Father.”

Father-in-law then dismissed her with a nod of his head.

When Hana went into the bathroom of the suite to take a shower, Soo-Ja and Min found themselves alone again. They looked at each other with apprehension in their eyes, sensing this might be the prologue to another stage of their lives. It would be easy to follow this road, and live in America, and work for Min’s parents, and go on with things as they always had. Still, something in the air did not feel right, and it emanated from Min. Soo-Ja thought of the look of grief on his face during her conversation with his father. She saw how it hurt him, to see her abased like that.

“Why did you do that?” Min finally asked, sitting on the bed.

The only sound, other than his voice, came from the shower in the next room.

“Do what?” Soo-Ja asked, busying herself with pulling blankets and pillows out of the closet.

“Lower yourself like that.”

“I had no choice, Min.”

“What happened to you? You used to fight them. You used to stand up to them.”

“Maybe I’m tired.”

“I made a mistake, didn’t I? Bringing you two here?”

“What’s the use of knowing that, if you’re not going to do anything about it?” asked Soo-Ja. “Let’s go to bed.”

Soo-Ja glanced at her bags. She did not have the energy to unpack them, and decided to sleep in some old clothes she found in the closet. She did not know who else had slept in this guest room before, but whoever they were, over time they had left marks of themselves behind: a book of maps, a broken eight-track player, worn-out shirts and pants. The room belonged to no one, quietly absorbing what others had cast away.

“Soo-Ja?”

“What?”

She heard him swallow a few times before he finally spoke. “If I had found someone else—if I had talked some other girl into marrying me, you would have had a very different life, wouldn’t you?”

Min had broached the topic again, and this time she could not hide her feelings. Soo-Ja dropped the blankets for a moment and sat on the bed next to him. She felt the emotion rise in her throat, and soon her eyes welled up with tears. He had never hinted at knowing of her sorrows. This was only the tiniest of acknowledgments, and yet it burned deep like a welt.

“Don’t be foolish,” said Soo-Ja.

How could he possibly atone for the last thirteen years? How could she make him understand that her life so far had not been her inescapable destiny, but rather a choice she’d made? How could she tell him that all her frustration and disappointment in this marriage had not been set in stone, and did not have to happen? That she could so easily have been spared all of that, if only she had chosen Yul over him? It felt almost unbearable, to begin to explain to him the different life she could have had if she hadn’t married him. She could never convey the magnitude of that loss—the loss of the woman she’d never been allowed to be. It was better not to ask for any apology at all.

You will never understand what I have given up.

“If I feel bad about it now, imagine how I’ll feel forty years from now,” Min said ruefully, as if joking.

“This is no time to talk about this. Let’s go to bed. Your father said we’ll need to get up early.”

“All I’m saying is—I cannot change the past, but maybe I can do something about the future.”

“What are you going to do? Are you going to talk to your father?”

The Min she looked at now reminded her of the Min who’d once told her not to ask for her father’s money, the Min who had protected her from his own father’s schemes. He lay there, waiting, underneath those layers of self-preservation, and on rare occasions she’d caught a glimpse of the man he could have been, if he could have chosen his parents.

The sound of the running shower stopped. Min had gone upstairs for a glass of water, and Soo-Ja sat in the room by herself. She could hear only the occasional noise coming from the bathroom: a comb being placed on the sink, a faucet being turned on and off.

Soo-Ja wondered if her daughter knew she was waiting, and wanted to avoid her. Finally, a few minutes later, Hana emerged, a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, and another wrapped over her adolescent body, tucked in at her breasts.

“Come here,” said Soo-Ja, as she stood and reached for the towel on her daughter’s head. She began drying Hana’s hair, pressing her hands gently against Hana’s scalp. “How is the shower here?”

“It’s nice to have your own, and not have to go to a bathhouse,” said Hana.

“You used to like going to the bathhouse. You used to like soaking in the warm tubs, droplets of warmth on your forehead.”

“Tastes change.”

“You like it here, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you going to miss your friends?”

“I can make new ones,” said Hana.

“But they may not love you like your old friends did.”

Hana reached for the towel from her mother’s hands. She sat on the bed and began drying her own hair, pressing it deeply against her scalp in fast, jerky strokes, instead of her mother’s slow, gentle movements.

Soo-Ja sat down next to her.

“I don’t like it when you’re like that,” said Hana.

“Like how?”

“You’re staring at me.”

Hana stopped drying her hair, resting the towel on her lap. Her hair hung wet and wild above her face. The sliding closet door in front of them was mirrored, and they could see their reflections looking back at them.

“Do you know that I love you?” Soo-Ja asked.

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“I don’t mind not being rich, like our relatives here. Not living the good life they live. As long as I have you. Without you, what do I live for?”

“I’m not going back to Korea.”

“It doesn’t matter to you, my opinion?”

“The responsibility of a mother is to give her child a good life,” said Hana a little stiffly, almost aware of how precocious she sounded.

“And you think you’ll have a good life here?”

Hana looked at her mother as if she were crazy. Of course she’d be happy in America! Here, even people without limbs had smiles on their faces.

“You already told Grandpa that we’d stay, so we’ll stay. And even if you said no, I’d still stay here, with Dad.”

“Why do you listen to your father, but not to me?”

“Because he always spends time with me. You’re always busy with other things.”

Soo-Ja made her hands into fists, her arms shaking. She struggled for breath, and fought back a wave of emotion rising in her chest.

“I have to work!” said Soo-Ja loudly, her voice piercing through the air. “I work so that you can play! I work for you. For you.”

“Mom, please stop. Somebody might come in,” said Hana.

“Am I—Am I embarrassing you right now?” asked Soo-Ja, desperate for the love of the girl in front of her.

Soo-Ja stared at her own reflection in the mirror. She had never lived for herself, and in that, she found her greatest mistake and her greatest glory. Her selflessness had not been entirely chosen, but rather forced out of her, by her family. She had not been allowed to pursue happiness; only to try to find some meaning in her sufferings, and look for a way, however small, to make sense of her disappointments. How could she explain this to her daughter? she wondered. Hana already seemed to belong to another world.

Soo-Ja stopped looking into the mirror and stared, instead, at the carpet below her feet. It was light brown, and it reached between her toes. Her voice suddenly became very quiet, like a whisper. “All right, then. It’s all decided.”

“I know what you’re thinking. But your life is your life, and my life is my life,” said Hana. “You made your mistakes, but they’re your own.”

“Yes, I know,” said Soo-Ja, forcing herself to smile. “You’re right. Forget what I said.”

“If you’re not happy about being here, you can go back and just visit us later,” said Hana. For Soo-Ja, each word felt like a lash against her bare skin.

“No, Hana. I’ll always be where you are. No matter how much you try to run away from me, I’ll always be where you are.”

Soo-Ja thought of her father’s letter. You keep running away from me, but I will always find you, he had written. She didn’t think she’d be repeating his words to her own daughter, and so soon. She was so struck by this, she did not notice that Min had been standing outside the door, in the hallway between the room and the garage, listening in, making no sounds of his own. He was like a prowler, already inside the house, just trying to figure out how to get out.

It took her a while to fall asleep. Soo-Ja was used to random noises at night—guests lumbering to the bathroom, couples tossing harsh words like tennis balls—and the silence felt otherworldly to her, the prelude to some shaman evoking mountain spirits.

When she was twenty-two, Soo-Ja dreamed of donning a diplomat’s suit jacket and flying through the atlas to dole out goodwill like peppermint candy from a bag. This was the diorama version of her life, the one you put in a magic snow globe and sell in souvenir shops. At the time, she was sad that she didn’t get to leave Korea. But now she wanted to tell her twenty-two-year-old self that she was lucky, that she got to spend a little more time with her father (if she’d left Daegu then, she would have missed the last ten years of his life), that she got to know her own country and came to cherish it like a loyal friend. There was not enough time later to say good-bye to your parents and your youth; the old familiar rooms fall away before you know it. She wanted so much to escape, and marry, and leave. She didn’t know back then that she had already found happiness, and that in going after it, she’d simply been walking farther and farther away from it.

Soo-Ja didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when she felt someone nudge her. She opened her eyes only a slit and saw it was not morning, but not night either—the light outside, shy and bleached out, announced only the promise of sun, not its presence. Min stood over her with an anguished look on his face, and when he saw she was awake, he began to nudge Hana, too. Min had an amped-up energy about him, and Soo-Ja realized he had not slept at all. Next to the bed, she saw that he had placed two bags—the one she’d arrived with, and the other, a smaller one, which she recognized as Hana’s.

“What time is it? What’s wrong?” Soo-Ja whispered.

“I called a taxicab. It’s going to be here in twenty minutes. It’ll take you and Hana to the airport.”

“What do you mean?” Soo-Ja asked, sitting up on the bed, struck by the urgency in Min’s voice. Min reached for her and gently wiped the sleep off her eyes.

“I want you to get out of here,” he said, pressing a note against her hand. “This is the account number, and the name of the bank. The money’s still there. It’s in a bank in Seoul.”

“Min, what’s happening?”

He looked at her as if he were taking a picture, as if this was how he wanted to remember her: in the dawn, with her hair falling softly over her face, her lips half opened, and her eyes, too, taking him in the way the sand takes the sun.

“What I did was wrong—bringing Hana here. I can see that now. And I hope that one day you’ll be able to forgive me,” said Min.

Soo-Ja swallowed and closed her eyes. The moment felt strange, unreal.

“Why are you up already?” Soo-Ja heard Hana’s sleepy voice, her body turning in the direction of their voices.

“You’re going back to Korea with your mother,” said Min.

“What? No, I don’t want to go back there,” said Hana, rubbing her eyes.

“You’re going to do what I tell you,” said Min, firmly but kindly. “For once you will listen to me. You’re free to disobey every other order I ever give you, but this one you have to listen to. You’re going home with your mother.”

“No. If she wants to go back, she can go back on her own. I’ll stay here with Grandpa and Grandma.”

“You think it’s so great to be here, don’t you? You don’t know what it’s like to live with them. I’m not going to let you go through what I did,” said Min. His voice shook a little, and Soo-Ja was struck by the intensity of his words. Soo-Ja thought he might continue, but he was overcome by emotion. “Being with them again reminds me of so many things. No one knows what I had to go through as a child—”

“I know what you went through,” said Soo-Ja quietly. She reached for him and held his head with her hands. Min had never spoken about his childhood, but over the years, Soo-Ja guessed the kind of torments he had suffered. “I know.”

Min finally regained his composure. “Go,” he said.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Soo-Ja.

“How much more can I take away from you, Soo-Ja? At what point do I stop?” Min’s voice cracked a bit, and he took a long breath. “I deceived you, Soo-Ja. I tricked you into marrying me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I deceived you. And I can never give back what you lost, but I can stop making you lose.”

Soo-Ja and Min sat in silence, and they could hear the birds chirping outside. It had become day while they were looking away.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’m going to stay here.”

“Why?” asked Soo-Ja, though she already knew the answer. “Why? What about Hana?”

“I want to be with my parents when they die. I want to take care of my father and my mother. It is my responsibility as the oldest. In spite of everything, I still want to be a good son.”

“You are,” she said. “I’ve always known that.” He’d never change, thought Soo-Ja. “But you’re making a big sacrifice.”

Min took the back of her hand and placed it against his lips. He kissed it once, then left it there, so that she could feel his soft breath on her skin.

“Dad, no!” cried out Hana, who’d been watching her parents, weeping. “I’m going to stay with you. I don’t want to go with Mom.” Hana got out of the bed and jumped into her father’s arms.

Min held her for a second, then he made her let go, made her look at him while he spoke. “If you ask yourself, deep down, Can I really live without her, the answer you hear is No, I can’t live without her. Your mother did so much for you, and she loves you so much. Where would you be, if it weren’t for her? Where would I be?”

Soo-Ja heard the sound of a car engine running outside. The taxicab had arrived. Seeing it outside the window made the moment feel more real, and Soo-Ja suddenly felt the urgency of it. She glanced at Min and saw the pain in his eyes.

“Maybe… maybe we can send Hana here for her summer vacation?” she asked, hoping to make this moment a little easier for him.

Min sighed with joy. “Of course. Yes. Hana, I’m going to call you every day, and write you every hour.”

Hana finally let go of her father. Her face was wet with tears. She put on her clothes slowly, as if putting on an old self, once discarded, and now recalled to life.

Soo-Ja wondered if her daughter would hate her for the rest of her life. Of course she would. She was a teenage girl. She’d find reasons to hate her mother, and to love her, every day of her life.

And Min, who was this Min in front of her? Had he been there all along, and she had simply neglected to see it? Or did she make him day by day, inch by inch, build him lovingly and patiently, sparing him cross words, offering him a kind look here and there, so that one day, one day at last, he’d do exactly this and finally let her go? Soo-Ja did not love the man she married, but she loved the man she divorced. It just so happened that as she found her heart swell with joy for him, it was also time for her to leave him. She wanted to speak to this man, to get to know him, this man leaning over the window of the taxi, looking at her in the passenger seat, looking at her as if for the last time, but the words never got out of her mouth, as the taxi drove away, and she saw Min growing smaller in the distance, disappearing already into some nostalgic past.