And then there you are. I can’t believe my eyes, and I also can’t believe I ever doubted I’d see you again. You’re helping a man in a business suit who has a gash on his forehead get to his feet. He looks dazed. I run to you, zigzagging my way, ducking, and you ask the man if he can make it, and in reply the man nods and stumbles away. I pull on your arm, and you follow me, still looking in the direction of the man you helped, who is fine—I tell you he’s fine, we’ve got to go. I don’t know where, and then a door opens, and a man urges us inside what looks to be a pharmacy of sorts. We follow him down an aisle as a woman shuts the door behind us. There are other people in the store, nursing cuts and other injuries. The woman who shut the door offers us bandages. You thank her, and then the man who had originally let us in motions for us to follow and opens another door for us toward the back. “Straight and out, through the second door, in the alley. A storeroom. Wait there until it’s quiet. Go well,” he says to us in Korean.
The sounds of gunfire outside are muffled, and we keep going, following the man’s instructions. Across into an alley and then through another and into another building—and you stop and yank me back and tell me it’s okay to stop, that it really is okay. We’re safe. It’s okay. “Let’s wait here,” you say.
I tell you I thought we were going to die, and the sobs come up from my throat, and we huddle on the floor of a room, a storage room, between crates of vegetables. You say that could never happen.
“Making love” is a strange euphemism. It’s more like showing love. It’s like words can say only so much. For the rest, there are no words. I’ve recently finished my period, so thoughts of condoms don’t enter my mind, though I know there are other hazards besides pregnancy. We sit up against the door, half-dressed. I trace the scar on your lowest rib, the semicircle, the edge of half a quarter.
“A burn when I was a kid,” you explain.
“You were a reckless kid. In the womb with half a pinkie finger, out of the womb with burns.” I sigh.
“Enough about me.” You raise my face to yours. “Thought that would be more awkward.”
“Thanks a lot.” I pull back.
“No, for me. It’s new to me.”
“Haven’t you done this before?” I lean toward you.
“It’s the truth, Yoona.”
“Me too,” I confess. “You’re the first for me for everything.”
You look at me for a long moment, and it is as if I’m seeing a much younger version of you, trusting and eager. And then you say, “Let’s do it again.” And the enthusiasm makes me believe you really never had sex before.
There is a kind of drunkenness to love. Or illness, as some people have described it. We push and prod, cling and wrestle each other among radishes and onions.
There’s an odd quality in that room. We could be in any past century. It reminds me of the first time I saw you at the airport. There was something about you that wasn’t of this time and yet was. Nothing pinned you to it. Your close-cropped hair wasn’t ancient or futuristic. It had more to do with your face. Or the look in your eyes that seemed to be contemplating something eternal.
We fall asleep. And when we wake, it is dark outside. We dress in a hurry and go outside as if we can fool everyone into believing we were simply walking through that storage room. You pick thin outer layers of onions off my back, and I swipe at dirt on your sleeve. It’s astonishing how evidence of the political demonstration has vanished. The street is like every street we saw hours before the protest. Maybe a little dirtier, with newspapers and upturned crates along the curb. I flinch only once when a car horn sounds. Everyone is going about their business around us. We kiss as we walk and run into people on the sidewalk, and some girls giggle at us, and other people tell us to look where we are going, and I don’t want it to be night but the sun has gone down. You hail a taxi and put me in it. “I’ll find you,” you tell me. “As soon as I’m back, I’ll call you at Weston.”
“I’m jealous you get to stay here,” I say.
“Sophomores don’t need orientation week,” you say. “Freshmen have to suffer.” And then you kiss me one more time through the open window, and I push the door open, but you close it firmly again. (Talking about college when we’d just been through a violent street protest seemed out of place, and yet being American students in Seoul during this politically turbulent time did also. I believed our lives would continue, much as they had for other Americans our age.)
45
“You’re pregnant, Yoona?” Daiyu asks. I can’t meet her eyes.
“Have his baby, for god’s sake,” Faye says to me. And then to Lloyd, she says, “She said it. She’ll have your baby. Let us out of here.” She starts sobbing.
Lloyd grabs Faye’s arm and shakes it. IT’S NOT MY BABY, YOU DUMB FUCKING BITCH. IT’S JAESUNG’S. I’M SAVING IT FOR JAESUNG, AND WHEN HE’S FREED, HE’S GOING TO THANK ME FOR SAVING HIM, UNDERSTAND? YOUR LIFE IS WORTH NOTHING COMPARED TO HIS AND THIS BABY’S.
I met him when I met you, and if I could not have met him, I could not have met you, so I don’t know if I would take it back. He’s going to make me take it back. All this is not worth having met you, been with you. How could this have happened to us? Yes, there’s a baby. That room after the violent street protest, in that room, when you and I made love among radishes and onions, I got pregnant. And I couldn’t do what people do in romance novels or movies. I’m sorry.
“You’re mad at me, not her, Lloyd,” I tell him. “You’re right. I don’t want to have this baby, but I will do whatever you want. Let my friends go. I’m the one who shut you out. I was wrong. I’ll listen. I’ll help. Whatever you want.” I put myself between him and Faye. “I’ll do whatever you say, just let them go. Please, Lloyd.”
46
One night in my dorm room, two weeks after I’d seen you in Seoul, I called you at your parents’ house. It was the fourth time in the last two days I’d called and there had been no answer. I figured you’d be back in the States by now and were busy getting ready for college. It was late when I called this time, nearly eleven thirty, but your family lived in North Dakota, so I thought the time difference would make it early enough. Still, I was nervous. Why was I nervous? Part of me remembered the girl named Aecha. Had you left me for her?
“Yes? Hello?” someone said.
I told him I was looking for you, that I was a friend from the Korean tour, and my voice hesitated at the word “friend.” Inwardly I was fuming that you were making me embarrass myself this way. You should have called me by now. You should have. But I remembered my promise—no more breaking it off unless I meant it, really meant it, and I couldn’t. You knew I couldn’t.
I had to ask him to repeat himself because his words didn’t make sense. The man on the other end of the telephone line said, “We appreciate your call. My wife and I, it’s difficult. We know Jaesung had many, many good friends.”
“Is he there? Can I talk to him, please?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I thought he was already back. School started, didn’t it? Was there a delay?” I thought how I’d tell you how your father’s voice didn’t sound anything like yours, and I wondered if you’d sound like him when you were old. I couldn’t imagine you old.
“You’ve caught us at a bad time. We just walked in from the airport. You’re asking about my son, Jaesung?”
“Yes, is he there?”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand. There was an accident.”
“You mean he’s in the hospital?” I could picture you now. Of course, you had been in a minor accident and couldn’t reach me. “Is there a phone number at the hospital? Could you tell him I called?”
There was a pause. I thought maybe we’d been disconnected. “Hello?” I said. “Hello? Hello?”