“I don’t have much to sell,” he repeated.
“I want only enough for the bride and groom’s dinner—for them to taste white rice again before they leave home.” Yangjin’s eyes welled up in tears, and the rice seller looked away. Cho hated seeing women cry. His grandmother, mother, wife, and daughters—all of them cried endlessly. Women cried too much, he thought.
His older daughter lived on the other side of town with a man who worked as a printer, and his younger one and her three children lived at home with him and his wife. As much as the rice seller complained about the expense of upkeep of his daughter and grandchildren, he worked hard and did the bidding of any Japanese customer who’d pay the top price because he could not imagine not providing for his family; he could not imagine having his girls live far away—in a nation where Koreans were treated no better than barn animals. He couldn’t imagine losing his flesh and blood to the sons of bitches.
Yangjin counted out the yen notes and placed them on the wooden tray on the counter beside the abacus.
“A small bag if you have it. I want them to eat their fill. Whatever’s left over, I’ll make them some sweet cake.”
Yangjin pushed the tray of money toward him. If he still said no, then she would march into every rice shop in Busan so her daughter could have white rice for her wedding dinner.
“Cakes?” Cho crossed his arms and laughed out loud; how long had it been since he heard women talking of cakes made of white rice? Such days felt so distant. “I suppose you’ll bring me a piece.”
She wiped her eyes as the rice seller went to the storeroom to find the bit he’d squirreled away for occasions such as these.
11
At last, the lodgers had relented and allowed their work clothes to be washed. The smell was no longer bearable even to themselves. Carrying four enormous bundles, Bokhee, Dokhee, and Sunja went to the cove. Their long skirts gathered up and tied, the women crouched by the stream and set up their washboards. The icy water froze their small hands, the skin on them thickened and rough from years of work. With all her might, Bokhee scrubbed the wet shirts on the ridged wooden board while her younger sister, Dokhee, sorted the remainder of the filthy clothing beside her. Sunja was tackling a pair of dark trousers belonging to one of the Chung brothers, stained with fish blood and guts.
“Do you feel different being married?” Dokhee asked. The girls had been the first to be told the news immediately after the marriage was registered. They’d been even more astonished than the lodgers. “Has he called you yobo?”
Bokhee looked up from her work for Sunja’s reaction. She would’ve chided her sister’s impertinence, but she was curious herself.
“Not yet,” Sunja said. The marriage had taken place three days ago, but for lack of space, Sunja still slept in the same room with her mother and the servant girls.
“I’d like to be married,” Dokhee said.
Bokhee laughed. “Who’d marry girls like us?”
“I would like to marry a man like Pastor Isak,” Dokhee said without blinking. “He’s so handsome and nice. He looks at you with such kindness when he talks to you. Even the lodgers respect him, even though he doesn’t know anything about the sea. Have you noticed that?”
This was true. Routinely, the lodgers made fun of upper-class people who went to schools, but they liked Isak. It was still difficult for Sunja to think of him as her husband.
Bokhee slapped her sister’s forearm. “You’re crazy. A man like that would never marry you. Get these stupid ideas out of your head.”
“But he married Sunja—”
“She’s different. You and I are servants,” Bokhee said.
Dokhee rolled her eyes.
“What does he call you, then?”
“He calls me Sunja,” she said, feeling freer to talk. Before Hansu, Sunja had chatted more often with the sisters.
“Are you excited about going to Japan?” Bokhee asked. She was more interested in living in a city than being married, which seemed like a horrible thing. Her grandmother and mother had been more or less worked to death. She had never once heard her mother laugh.
“The men said that Osaka is a busier place than Busan or Seoul. Where will you live?” Bokhee asked.
“I don’t know. At Pastor Isak’s brother’s house, I guess.” Sunja was still thinking about Hansu and how he might be nearby. More than anything, she was afraid of running into him. Yet it would be worse, she thought, never to see him at all.