Sunja opened the door slowly. Isak was on the floor, sleeping. She knelt by his head. Dark, mottled skin stretched across his eye sockets and high cheekbones. His hair and beard were nearly white; he looked years older than his brother, Yoseb. He was no longer the beautiful young man who had rescued her from disgrace. Sunja removed his shoes and peeled off his holey socks. Dried crusts of blood covered his cracked, raw soles. The last toe on his left foot had turned black.
“Umma,” Noa said.
“Yes.” She turned to him.
“Should I get Uncle?”
“Yes.” She nodded, trying not to cry. “Shimamura-san may not let him leave early, Noa. If Uncle can’t leave, tell him that I’m with him. We don’t want Uncle to get in trouble at work. Okay?”
Noa ran out of the house, not bothering to slide the door fully shut, and the incoming breeze woke Isak; he opened his eyes to see his wife sitting next to him.
“Yobo,” he said.
Sunja nodded. “You’re home. We’re so glad you’re home.”
He smiled. The once-straight white teeth were either black or missing—the lower set cracked off entirely.
“You’ve suffered so much.”
“The sexton and the pastor died yesterday. I should’ve died a long time ago.”
Sunja shook her head, unable to speak.
“I’m home. Every day, I imagined this. Every minute. Maybe that’s why I am here. How hard it must have been for you,” he said, looking at her kindly.
Sunja shook her head no, wiping her face with her sleeve.
The Korean and Chinese girls who worked at the factory smiled at the sight of Noa. The delicious scent of freshly baked wheat biscuits greeted him. A girl packing biscuit boxes near the door whispered in Korean how tall he was getting. She pointed to his uncle’s back. He was crouched over the motor of the biscuit machine. The factory floor was long and narrow, designed like a wide tunnel for the easy inspection of workers; the owner had set up the imposing biscuit machine by his office with the conveyor belts moving toward the workers, who stood in parallel rows. Yoseb wore safety goggles and was poking about inside the service panel with a pair of pliers. He was the foreman and the factory mechanic.
The din of the heavy machine blocked out normal speaking voices. The girls weren’t supposed to talk on the factory floor, but it was nearly impossible to catch them if they whispered and made minimal facial gestures. Forty unmarried girls, hired for their nimble fingers and general tidiness, packed twenty thin wheat biscuits into wooden boxes that would be shipped to army officers stationed in China. For every two broken biscuits, a girl was fined a sen from her wages, forcing her to work carefully as well as swiftly. If she ate even a broken corner of a biscuit, she’d be terminated immediately. At the end of the day, the youngest girl gathered the broken biscuits into a fabric-lined basket, packed them into small bags, and was sent out to the market to sell them at a discount. If they didn’t sell, Shimamura sold the biscuits for a nominal amount to the girls who packed the most boxes without error. Yoseb never took broken biscuits home, because the girls made so little money, and even the biscuit crumbs meant so much to them.