“What are you doing?” He raised his voice a little.
Sunja looked away from him. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear what it was. It was as if her mind would no longer interpret his words with meaning. His talk was just sounds, beats of noise. Nothing made sense. He had a wife and three daughters in Japan? Since she had met him, he had been straightforward, she supposed. Every promise he’d ever made had been kept. He said there would be a surprise, and he had brought a watch for her, but the surprise she had for him, she no longer wanted him to know. Nothing about him had ever made her suspect that he was a jebi—a kind of man who could flit from one woman to another. Did he make love to his wife, too? What did she know about men, anyway?
What was the wife like? Sunja wanted to know. Was she beautiful? Was she kind? Sunja could not look at his face anymore. She glanced at her white muslin skirt, its tattered hem remaining gray no matter how much she tried to clean it.
“Sunja, when can I go to speak to your mother? Should we go speak to her now? Does she know about the baby?”
It felt like a slap when he mentioned her mother.
“My mother?”
“Yes, have you told her?”
“No. No, I have not told her.” Sunja tried not to think of her mother.
“I will buy that boardinghouse for you, and your mother and you won’t have to keep lodgers anymore. You could just take care of the child. We could have more children. You could get a much bigger house if you like.”
The bundle of laundry by her foot seemed to glow in the sun. There was work to do for the day. She was a foolish peasant girl who’d let a man take her on the grounds of a forest. When he had wanted her in the open air of the beach, she had let him have her body as much as he liked. But she had believed that he loved her as she loved him. If he did not marry her, she was a common slut who would be disgraced forever. The child would be another no-name bastard. Her mother’s boardinghouse would be contaminated by her shame. There was a baby inside her belly, and this child would not have a real father like the one she’d had.
“I will never see you again,” she said.
“What?” Hansu smiled in disbelief. He put his arms on her shoulders, and she shrugged him off.
“If you ever come near me again, I will kill myself. I may have behaved like a whore—” Sunja couldn’t speak anymore. She could see her father so clearly: his beautiful eyes, broken lip, his hunched and delayed gait. When he finished his long day’s work, he would carve her dolls out of dried corncobs and branches. If there was a brass coin left in his pocket, he’d buy her a piece of taffy. It was better that he was dead so he would not see what a filthy creature she had become. He had taught her to respect herself, and she had not. She had betrayed her mother and father, who had done nothing but work hard and take care of her like a jewel.
“Sunja, my dear child. What is upsetting you? Nothing has changed.” Hansu was confused. “I will take excellent care of you and the baby. There is money and time for another family. I will honor my obligations. My love for you is very strong; it is stronger than I had ever expected. I don’t say this lightly, but if I could, I would marry you. You are someone I would marry. You and I, we are alike. Our child will be deeply loved, but I cannot forget my wife and three girls—”
“You never told me about them. You made me think—”
Hansu shook his head. The girl had never opposed him before; he had never heard a contrary word from her lips.
“I will not see you again,” she said
He tried to hold her, and Sunja shouted, “Get away from me, you son of a bitch! I want to have nothing to do with you.”
Hansu stopped and looked at her, needing to reevaluate the girl standing in front of him. The fire in her body had never been expressed in words, and now he knew she could be different.
“You don’t care about me. Not really.” Sunja felt clear suddenly. She expected him to treat her the way her own parents had treated her. She felt certain her father and mother would have preferred her to have any honest job than to be a rich man’s mistress. “And what will you do if the child is a girl? Or what if she is born like my father? With a mangled foot and no upper lip?”
“Is that why you have not married?” Hansu furrowed his brow.