Isak, Sunja, and Yangjin sat quietly, not knowing what else to do.
“You must swear that you’ll be faithful to this man. If you’re not, you’ll bring far greater shame on your mother and your dead father than what you’ve already done. You must ask the Lord for forgiveness, child, and ask Him for faith and courage as you make your new home in Japan. Be perfect, child. Every Korean must be on his best behavior over there. They think so little of us already. You cannot give them any room to think worse of us. One bad Korean ruins it for thousands of others. And one bad Christian hurts tens of thousands of Christians everywhere, especially in a nation of unbelievers. Do you understand my meaning?”
“I want to,” she said. “And I want to be forgiven, sir.”
Pastor Shin got on bended knees and placed his right hand on her shoulder. He prayed at length for her and Isak. When he finished, he got up and made the couple rise and married them. The ceremony was over in minutes.
While Pastor Shin went with Isak and Sunja to the municipal offices and the local police station to register their marriage, Yangjin made her way to the shopping street, her steps rapid and deliberate. She felt like running. At the wedding ceremony, there were many words she had not understood. It was preposterous and ungrateful for her to have wished for a better outcome under the circumstances, but Yangjin, no matter how practical her nature, had hoped for something nicer for her only child. Although it made sense to marry at once, she hadn’t known that the wedding would take place today. Her own perfunctory wedding had taken minutes, also. Perhaps it didn’t matter, she told herself.
When Yangjin reached the sliding door of the rice shop, she knocked on the wide frame of the entrance prior to entering. The store was empty of customers. A striped cat was slinking about the rice seller’s straw shoes and purring happily.
“Ajumoni, it’s been a long time,” Cho greeted her. The rice seller smiled at Hoonie’s widow. There was more gray in her bun than he remembered.
“Ajeossi, hello. I hope your wife and girls are well.”
He nodded.
“Could you sell me some white rice?”
“Waaaaah, you must have an important guest staying with you. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any to sell. You know where it all goes,” he said.
“I have money to pay,” she said, putting down the drawstring purse on the counter between them. It was Sunja who had embroidered the yellow butterflies on the blue canvas fabric of the purse—a birthday present from two years back. The blue purse was half full, and Yangjin hoped it was enough.
Cho grimaced. He didn’t want to sell her the rice, because he had no choice but to charge her the same price he would charge a Japanese.
“I have so little stock, and when the Japanese customers come in and there isn’t any, I get into very hot water. You understand. Believe me, it’s not that I don’t want to sell it to you.”
“Ajeossi, my daughter married today,” Yangjin said, trying not to cry.
“Sunja? Who? Who did she marry?” He could picture the little girl holding her crippled father’s hand. “I didn’t know she was betrothed! Today?”
“The guest from the North.”
“The one with tuberculosis? That’s crazy! Why would you let your daughter marry a man who has such a thing. He’s going to drop dead any minute.”
“He’ll take her to Osaka. Her life will be less difficult for her than living at a boardinghouse with so many men,” she said, hoping this would be the end of it.
She wasn’t telling him the truth, and Cho knew it. The girl must have been sixteen or seventeen. Sunja was a few years younger than his second daughter; it was a good time for a girl to marry, but why would he marry her? Jun, the coal man, had said he was a fancy sort from a rich family. She also had diseases in her blood. Who wanted that? Though there weren’t as many girls in Osaka, he supposed.
“Did he make a good offer?” Cho asked, frowning at the little purse. Kim Yangjin couldn’t have given a man like that any kind of decent dowry; the boardinghouse woman would barely have a few brass coins left after she fed those hungry fishermen and the two poor sisters she shouldn’t have taken in.
His own daughters had married years ago. Last year, the younger one’s husband had run away to Manchuria because the police were after him for organizing demonstrations, so now Cho fed this great patriot’s children by selling his finest inventory to rich Japanese customers whom his son-in-law had been so passionate about expelling from the nation. If his Japanese customers refused to patronize him, Cho’s shop would shut down tomorrow and his family would starve.
“Do you need enough rice for a wedding party?” he asked, unable to fathom how the woman would pay for such a thing.
“No. Just enough for the two of them.”
Cho nodded at the small, tired woman standing in front of him who wouldn’t meet his eyes.