The Calligrapher's Daughter (4 page)

Before she could say “How enterprising!” or something equally positive about the neighbor’s decision, her husband said, “I can’t understand how any educated man could send his son to those teachers. Think of the lies they’ll learn!” His volume and intensity grew, and the more he said, the more she knew her cause was lost. “Think of the propaganda those saber-wearing quacks will spew. The pirate teachers—peasants and shopkeepers—coming here for free land and opportunities stolen from our countrymen. Think of their maps—colonist geography! Their books—
imperial revisionist history! And surely nothing classic will be taught. They mean to raise a nation of ignorant collaborator sheep. And what do we do? We turn our eyes aside, we forget our responsibility to the nation and send our sons to learn what to think—like sheep to this usurping shepherd, the emperor—pfah!”

She hid disappointment beneath her practiced composure and sewed. Disturbed by his analogy of the emperor as shepherd, she prayed to Jesus, the shepherd of men, to forgive his angry words. Keeping her body serene, she sighed internally. Of course it had been foolish to think he’d consider it. After his arrest he had even less tolerance of anything Japanese. She worried every time he went outside the gate that his bitterness and anger would be visible to the police. They had beaten and questioned him, but he hadn’t been tortured—twisting things they did to limbs with ropes and boards, slow drownings—acts still shockingly practiced that she had read about in court narratives of olden days. To further submerge her disappointment, Haejung deliberately brought to mind all she could be grateful for: her smart and spirited daughter, a secure and smoothly run household, her husband’s restored health, and also, that the day of his arrest had exposed the traitorous and thieving nanny who had stolen two gold brooches, a fistful of silver chopsticks and a bolt of cotton cloth before she ran off to inform on an innocuous afternoon party. God’s ways were not always easy to understand. However, that day had taught them caution, and her husband’s life and others’ had been spared. Mr. Suh’s wound healed cleanly and he claimed only minor stiffness in the shoulder—nothing that would impede his journey to the insurgent army rumored to be forming in the north.

With these thoughts, she could be respectfully deferential to her husband’s reaction to the public school idea, and said goodnight calmly. When she put away her needle and threads in their proper places in her sewing room, she tucked her hopes aside—their proper place for now—and prayed, knowing with the patient and open trust of the faithful that another opportunity would arise.

THAT OPPORTUNITY CAME a year and a half later, and when she considered how it had once again surfaced in God’s house, she felt renewed in her conviction about the power of prayer. While other women talked to
each other in the aisles, Haejung in her front pew relished her usual semi-private moment. The musty wet-plaster smell of the church, its expansive interior space, the shiny rows of organ pipes and the biblical scenes portrayed in colorful windows filled her with peace. The Methodists had built a single-story sanctuary, complete with a squat bell tower, wide front stairs leading to arched and carved double doors, a high peaked ceiling from which hung six Gothic electric fixtures above modest pine pews, and at front a pulpit, altar and crucifix of polished oak. On this particular day, her body just beginning to round, solid with the security of three healthy months of pregnancy, she thanked Jesus for the comforting certainty that he embraced in heaven the tender souls of the four older siblings Najin never knew: one boy stillborn, another dead within hours of birth, a premature girl who died during delivery and another boy dead with fever before his hundredth day. She renewed her thanks for Najin’s sturdiness, her husband’s steady health and safety, and for those who risked everything to reclaim their country.

A glorious autumn day, she had allowed Najin to play outside with the few girls who attended the brief Sunday-school session preceding the service, reminding her not to run, shout, play in the dirt or get in anyone’s way. Haejung believed that spending time with other children could help make her daughter less self-centered and willful. This problem had frequently been addressed in her after-worship time, and she now gave thanks to God, who had answered her with this most unexpected blessing of another child. She would soon believe that he had provided more than one answer, for Missionary Gordon approached from the vestry, an eager smile on her strangely pink face.

Miss Gordon, tall, with jarring blue eyes magnified in round gold-framed glasses, had pillowy cheeks, a sharp nose that ended in a small flat plateau, a halo of busy pale reddish brown curls which refused to be contained in a knotted hair bun, and freckles. Until Haejung had seen more Westerners with freckles, she thought the missionary suffered an unfortunate skin ailment. She stood and bowed and Miss Gordon bowed in return. The missionary’s bows had become more natural since the last time she’d seen her.

“How do you do?” Miss Gordon indicated they should sit. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you and I’m sorry it’s taken this long.”

Haejung noticed that the missionary’s Korean had improved too. “Yes, how do you do? The pleasure of seeing you has been missed for some time.” Her gracious formality hid her curiosity, having never had a conversation of any length with Miss Gordon.

“I think the men are having an impromptu meeting. If I’m not interrupting and you have a moment …”

“Not at all. I’m at your service.”

“You’ve seen the new building in the back?”

“The new mission offices? Or is it— Pardon me for asking, someone mentioned it might be living quarters for new missionaries.”

Miss Gordon removed her gloves. “It was meant to be both, but we’ve decided to make it a school. You’ve heard about the new policies?”

Haejung’s stomach leaped. She deliberately relaxed her shoulders and shook her head, no.

With an urgency that Haejung began to see was the missionary’s characteristic manner, Miss Gordon explained how they’d decided to take advantage of education reforms instituted by the new, more liberal Governor-General Hasegawa, and were transforming the finished building into a private school—a Christian school just for girls! Unlike his more militant predecessor, Hasegawa didn’t believe that churches were hotbeds of subversion and that all Christians were seditionists. He advocated a milder colonial policy, and nationals were now permitted to teach elementary grades one through four for children ages eight through eleven.

While she talked, Miss Gordon crossed and uncrossed her legs, rested her arm over the back of the pew and fussed with the gloves in her lap. She described the curriculum and the schedule of a typical school day. Hearing all this and influenced by the missionary’s fidgeting, Haejung thought that her own ears might be wiggling, or that she might lean forward so much as to fall off the seat. She straightened her back and remained outwardly composed.

“—and a young woman who was in one of the first graduating classes at Ewha College has just been hired. She’ll teach the first grade. That’s where I’ve been, in Seoul, interviewing and helping our new teacher and her family move to Gaeseong. Her surname is Yee,” Miss Gordon hurried on. “She’s lovely, from a yangban family and a devout Christian. I’m told
she was a wonderful student, highly ranked. And she plays piano beautifully”. The missionary’s eyeglasses twinkled in the church’s electric lights, and rainbow reflections from the windows flashed across the lenses. “May I ask your daughter’s age?”

That morning, anticipating her daughter’s birthday, Haejung had calculated the ninth lunar month and seventeenth day to her Western calendar, an annual Christmas gift from the church that she’d hung in her sitting room. “Her birthday’s next week. She’s nine.”

“That’d be second—well, that should work. The first class is only half full and the second doesn’t have a teacher yet. We’ve combined the classes for the time being. I hope you won’t think it’s beneath her to attend the first grade even though she should be in second. In any case, the few times I’ve led Sunday school have clearly shown me how bright she is, and her inquisitive nature is obvious. I’m sure she’d take to it regardless.”

Somewhat puzzled by this speech, Haejung thought Miss Gordon’s preoccupation with age peculiar. What did a child’s age matter as long as she could learn? Then she remembered that Americans didn’t count a child’s gestational year, and said worriedly, “I’m sorry for the confusion, but in Western years she’ll be eight. Might that be too young?”

“Certainly not! It’s precisely the age we’re allowed to begin enrollment.”

Haejung bowed to acknowledge this, but mostly to hide the renewed hope she felt must surely be emanating from her eyes.

Miss Gordon glanced toward the doorway where the scholar Han was saying goodbye to Reverend Ahn and Harlan Gordon, the mission director and her brother. “Will you think about it?” she said.

Haejung corrected her gently. “Thank you very much. It’s kind of you to consider my worthless daughter. I’ll mention it to her father and he’ll decide.”

“Your daughter is very charming. Such terrific energy she brings to our little Sunday school,” said the missionary. “Good! School begins a week from Monday. Let us know in advance if possible. I do hope she’ll join us.” Miss Gordon shifted her gloves to free her right hand, and moved to shake Haejung’s hand, an embarrassing thing the missionary had done before, but she then seemed to remember her manners and bowed nicely instead.

That evening, without fanfare, Haejung brought her husband his wine and lit his pipe. No need for fancy cooking and expensive tobacco. At that moment she definitively had an advantage. Her husband settled on his cushion with an open newspaper—a moderate paper that Governor-General Hasegawa had allowed to be reinstated—and smoke floated around his shoulders. His pointed features, sternly framed by a black goatee, squared jaw and a severe headband, nevertheless held a mild expression, and his stiff, angular posture was eased by fluid drapes of flowing clothes. He wore his hair in a topknot, a revered symbol of Korean manhood that he refused to cut, though the Japanese had technically outlawed such cultural distinctions.

Haejung had pointedly brought a tiny dark-blue cap to embroider. Made of fine sheer silk, such caps were part of a baby boy’s One Hundredth Day ceremonial garb. She kept her voice gentle and her eyes down, for without such softening traits, Haejung’s mother had often said, a woman’s presence would be like a thorn and not a flower. She spoke slowly with long silences between every sentence.
“Yuhbo
, husband, Missionary Gordon approached me today. They’ve built a Christian girls’ school behind the church. Korean teachers only. Your daughter has been given the courtesy of an invitation to attend. The teacher is one of the first graduates of Ewha Women’s College. What an honor for your daughter!”

He turned a page and continued to read his paper.

She patiently embroidered a geometric pattern with gold thread around the cap’s edge. “She mentioned that the girls’ class is only half full. They need more students.”

Pause, puffs of pipe, another page turned, sips of wine. “Nothing comes from nothing,” he growled, quoting a proverb.

She waited, sewed and said, “Yuhbo, so much changes every day. Think of what we’ve seen in our short lives. They say from Pyeongyang to Busan all kinds of children attend the missionary schools, many from yangban families. The new teacher is yangban herself.” She let this fact sit for a moment and added, “Yee family, originally from Seoul,” so he would know the teacher was of noble lineage and not the offspring of a commoner claiming higher status, which was often the case after Japanese-influenced reform laws had equalized the classes.

Han puffed the dying ember in his pipe, laid it aside and turned the
last page of the newspaper. Haejung could sense his irritation at her persistence, though politeness dictated refrain in his showing it. She pressed on. “They teach the requirements—Japanese grammar, geography and arithmetic—but also Chinese and some English. And the missionary says they’ll teach our language, our history and the Bible!”

He continued to read, and she noticed his lips tightly pressed. She let a long silence fill the room until she saw his chin and then his neck relax. As if musing to herself, she said, “Who can say if her schooling will be valuable? At least it can’t be harmful.” The embroidered edging finished, she gently flipped the cap right side out, pressed it flat on the floor between them and brought the lamp near, making the light catch on the stepped geometric pattern she had embroidered. She fussed with the cap, pressing its corners, and said boldly, “All that I learned from my brothers has been useful to me, wouldn’t you agree?”

He folded his paper and took up his tobacco box. She approached to fill and light his pipe and poured more wine, positioning her two hands attractively and letting the liquid slap into his cup appetizingly. He raised his eyes to her, showing a mixed expression of annoyance and acquiescence, and gave an almost-snort. “It won’t do if she’s unprepared for marriage.”

Haejung, shouting triumphantly inside, bowed her head slightly and folded one leg gracefully over the other, waiting until she knew her tone would be calm. “She’ll be as prepared as I was, if not more so.”

He snorted fully but couldn’t quite hide the smile that sweetened the corners of his mouth. “If it makes her coarse ways any rougher, it must cease,” he said. Pause. “I’ll speak to the magistrate.”

His eyes met hers when she gathered her sewing things and rose. She was pleased, so pleased, and saw that this pleased him. He stroked his beard, and she knew he did so to mask his emotion. “How many days?” he asked.

“One hundred and twelve.”

“You’re well?”

He was, of course, remembering the four before their robust daughter had come—this month eight years ago—wailing and flailing into a world they’d just learned was no longer theirs and would likely never again be the same. She thought this had to be the reason he hadn’t named his
daughter, even after a hundred days, and now, almost a hundred months. Perhaps with so much loss behind and ahead—and the disappointment he’d tried to hide when he saw she’d borne a girl—he could find no meaningful name to mark her place on this earth. Still, Haejung couldn’t fully understand his unwillingness to name their daughter and felt in every part of her body that it would be different this time. “Yes, praise God, very well.”