“I’m not tired! You’re going to leave again, are you? When things get difficult, it’s easy to leave. Fine. I’ll die now, then you won’t have to stay here, and you can rush back to your precious Mozasu! I never created a burden for you one single day of my life. Until I couldn’t move, every minute I have been here, I have worked to support myself. I never took a yen above what I needed to eat and to put a roof over our heads. I always held up my share, you know. I raised you when your kindhearted father died—” At the mention of her husband, Yangjin began to cry again, and Kyunghee rushed to her, unable to watch her being so miserable.
Sunja watched Kyunghee pat her mother gently until she quieted down. Her mother was unrecognizable to her; it would have been easy to say that the illness had changed her, but it wasn’t so simple, was it? Illness and dying had revealed her mother’s truer thoughts, the ones her mother had been protecting her from. Sunja had made a mistake; however, she didn’t believe that her son came from a bad seed. The Japanese said that Koreans had too much anger and heat in their blood. Seeds, blood. How could you fight such hopeless ideas? Noa had been a sensitive child who had believed that if he followed all the rules and was the best, then somehow the hostile world would change its mind. His death may have been her fault for having allowed him to believe in such cruel ideals.
Sunja knelt at her mother’s pallet.
“I’m sorry, umma. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was away. I’m sorry about everything.”
The old woman looked weakly at her only child, hating herself suddenly. Yangjin wanted to say she was sorry, too, but strength passed from her body, forcing her to close her eyes.
13
You’re not a Christian, are you?” Hana asked Solomon. She was sitting next to him in the pew. The minister had just finished eulogizing his great-grandmother, and the organist began to play “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” The funeral service would end after the song and a closing prayer.
Solomon tried to shush Hana politely, but as ever, she was persistent.
“It’s like a cult, nee? But you don’t do anything interesting like get naked outdoors in a group or sacrifice babies? I read that people in America do things like that if they are serious Christians. But you don’t seem like one of those. You probably have to give lots of your money away since you’re rich, right?”
Hana was whispering to him in Japanese with her lips close to his ear, and Solomon made a serious face like he was trying to concentrate. He could smell her strawberry lip gloss.
He didn’t know how to reply. Some Japanese did believe that Christianity was a cult. His friends at school who were foreigners didn’t see it this way, but he didn’t know many Japanese who were Christians.
Hana poked him in the ribs with her left pinkie finger while looking straight ahead at the choir.
The choir was singing his great-grandmother’s favorite hymn. She used to hum it often.
Like everyone in his family, Solomon was a Christian. His paternal grandfather, Baek Isak, had been one of the early Presbyterian ministers in Osaka. When Solomon was growing up, people at church referred to his grandfather as a martyr because he had been jailed for his faith and had died upon his release. Sunja, Mozasu, and Solomon went to service each Sunday.
“It’s almost over, nee? I need a beer, Solomon. Let’s go? I’ve been a good girl, and I sat through the whole thing.”
“Hana, she was my great-grandmother,” he said at last. Solomon remembered her as a gentle old woman who smelled like orange oil and biscuits. She didn’t speak much Japanese but always had treats and coins for him in her dark blue vest pockets.
“We should be more respectful.”
“Great-granny is now in heaven. Isn’t that what Christians say?” Hana mimicked a peaceful face.
“Still, she’s dead.”
“Well, you don’t seem very upset. Your grandmother Sunja doesn’t seem very sad,” she whispered. “Anyway, you’re a Christian, right?”
“Yeah, I am a Christian. Why do you care so much?”
“I want to know what happens after you die. What happens to babies that die?”
Solomon didn’t know what to say.
After her abortion, Hana had moved in with her mother. She’d refused to go back to Hokkaido and spent her days hanging out at Etsuko’s restaurant, bored and irritated by everything. She couldn’t handle the English at Solomon’s school, and she hated kids her own age and refused to go to the local high school. Etsuko was trying to figure out what Hana should do, but in the meantime, Hana had decided that Solomon was her project and followed him around at every opportunity.
Like everyone else, Solomon thought that Hana was exceptionally pretty, but Etsuko warned him that her daughter was a troublemaker and that he should befriend girls from his school.
“Finally! The prayer is over. Come on, we can get out now before the exits clog up.” Hana elbowed him gently, then pulled him out of his chair, and he let her lead him out of the building.