Sunja nodded. Her baby, Mozasu, resembled Isak. He looked nothing like Noa, who was olive-skinned with thick, glossy hair. Noa’s bright eyes noticed everything. Except for his mouth, Noa looked almost identical to a young Hansu. At school, Noa sat still during lessons, waited for his turn, and he was praised as an excellent student. Noa had been an easy baby, and Mozasu was a happy baby, too, delighted to be put into a stranger’s arms. When she thought about how much she loved her boys, she recalled her parents. Sunja felt so far away from her mother and father. Now she was standing outside a rumbling train station, trying to sell kimchi. There was no shame in her work, but it couldn’t be what they’d wanted for her. Nevertheless, she felt her parents would have wanted her to make money, especially now.
When Sunja finished nursing, Kyunghee put down two sugared rolls and a bottle filled with reconstituted powdered milk on the cart.
“You have to eat, Sunja. You’re nursing, and that’s not easy, right? You have to drink lots of water and milk.”
Kyunghee turned around so Sunja could tuck Mozasu into the sling on Kyunghee’s back. Kyunghee secured the baby tightly around her torso.
“I’ll go home and wait for Noa and make dinner. You come home soon, okay? We’re a good team.”
Mozasu’s small head rested between Kyunghee’s thin shoulder blades, and Sunja watched them walk away. When they were out of earshot, Sunja cried out, “Kimchi! Delicious Kimchi! Kimchi! Delicious kimchi! Oishi desu! Oishi kimchi!”
This sound, the sound of her own voice, felt familiar, not because it was her own voice but because it reminded her of all the times she’d gone to the market as a girl—first with her father, later by herself as a young woman, then as a lover yearning for the gaze of her beloved. The chorus of women hawking had always been with her, and now she’d joined them. “Kimchi! Kimchi! Homemade kimchi! The most delicious kimchi in Ikaino! More tasty than your grandmother’s! Oishi desu, oishi!” She tried to sound cheerful, because back home, she had always frequented the nicest ajummas. When the passersby glanced in her direction, she bowed and smiled at them. “Oishi! Oishi!”
The pig butcher looked up from his counter and smiled at her proudly.
That evening, Sunja did not go home until she could see the bottom of the kimchi jar.
Sunja could sell whatever kimchi she and Kyunghee were able to make now, and this ability to sell had given her a kind of strength. If they could’ve made more kimchi, she felt sure that she could’ve sold that, too, but fermenting took time, and it wasn’t always possible to find the right ingredients. Even when they made a decent profit, the price of cabbages could spike the following week, or worse, they might not be available at all. When there were no cabbages at the market, the women pickled radishes, cucumbers, garlic, or chives, and sometimes Kyunghee pickled carrots or eggplant without garlic or chili paste, because the Japanese preferred those kinds of pickles. Sunja thought about land all the time. The little kitchen garden her mother had kept behind the house had nourished them even when the boardinghouse guests ate double what they paid. The price of fresh food kept rising, and working people couldn’t afford the most basic things. Recently, some customers would ask to buy a cup of kimchi because they couldn’t afford a jar of it.
If Sunja had no kimchi or pickles to sell, she sold other things. Sunja roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts; she boiled ears of corn. She had two carts now, and she hooked them together like the cars of a train—one cart with a makeshift coal stove and another just for pickles. The carts took up the better part of the kitchen because they had to keep them inside the house for fear of them getting stolen. She split the profits equally with Kyunghee, and Sunja put aside every sen she could for the boys’ schooling and for their passage back home in case they had to leave.
When Mozasu turned five months old, Sunja also started selling candy at the market. Produce had been getting increasingly scarce, and by chance, Kyunghee had obtained two wholesale bags of black sugar from a Korean grocer whose Japanese brother-in-law worked in the military.
At her usual spot by the pork butcher’s stall, Sunja stoked the fire beneath the metal bowl used to melt sugar. The steel box that functioned as a stove had been giving her trouble; as soon as she could afford it, Sunja planned on having a proper stove made up for her cart. She rolled up her sleeves and moved the live coals around to circulate the air and raise the heat.
“Agasshi, do you have kimchi today?”
It was a man’s voice, and Sunja looked up. About Isak’s age, he dressed like her brother-in-law—tidy without drawing much attention to himself. His face was cleanly shaven, and his fingernails were neat. The lenses of his eyeglasses were very thick and the heavy frames detracted from his good features.
“No, sir. No kimchi today. Just candy. It’s not ready, though.”
“Oh. When will you have kimchi again?”
“Hard to say. There isn’t much cabbage to buy, and the last batch of kimchi we put up isn’t ready yet,” Sunja said, and returned to the coals.
“A day or two? A week?”
Sunja looked up again, surprised by his insistence.
“The kimchi might be ready in three days or so. If the weather continues to get warmer, then it might be two, sir. But I don’t think that soon,” Sunja said flatly, hoping he would let her start with the candy making. Sometimes, she sold a few bags to the young women getting off the train at about this time.