This Burns My Heart (10 page)

Soo-Ja followed Min into the compound, walking past a small garden and toward the back. There, Soo-Ja saw where the main house ended and Min’s own adjacent, one-story house began, as humble and unassuming as a distant cousin. Min and Soo-Ja had two rooms to themselves, one for him to receive visitors, another for them to sleep in. They would be sharing the kitchen in the main house, where she was expected to cook and eat with the rest of the family. The single outhouse, on the other side of the courtyard, would also be shared with the others.

They went into Min’s quarters, and Soo-Ja waited for him to turn on a light to illuminate her way, but he didn’t. Finally, she reached for the lamp herself and turned the knob. Min looked at her as if she had violated a rule.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” he said.

“What? Light the lamp?”

“My mother doesn’t like us to waste electricity,” he said, pointing to the lamp.

“But it’s dark.”

“I know. We should be asleep. Turn that off.”

“I can’t see anything. How am I supposed to find the blankets?”

“They’re in the back there, on top of the armoire. Now turn that off. My mother will see the light,” said Min, pointing at the lamp again.

“Is she still up?”

“She’s in the house, praying.”

“Praying for what?” asked Soo-Ja, confused.

“What do you think?” Min retorted dismissively.

A grandson, of course. Already. And every night, until Soo-Ja delivered the expected news, her mother-in-law would pray, sometimes loudly
outside, rocking her body back and forth with her eyes closed. During their honeymoon, which was to begin the next day—a trip to Cheju Island—Soo-Ja was expected to conceive. It was not unromantic; it was practical. Two days away from home, they could be noisy if they wished.

Soo-Ja reluctantly turned the light off, but only after she quickly memorized the position of everything in the room. There was not much furniture to speak of, only the armoire with mother-of-pearl for their clothes and blankets, and a small oak table resting against the back of the wall. As she began to make her preparations, Soo-Ja remembered something she had noticed a while back, during their wedding reception.

“Who were those three boys standing near your parents all the time at our wedding?” It was dark, and Soo-Ja could not see Min, just hear him breathing. She felt her way among the unfamiliar comforters, measuring through touch their thickness. The thinnest one went on the floor, and they’d sleep over it; then, they would place the thicker one over their own bodies. It would be unclean to sleep directly on the laminate and, no matter how hot it was, it would go against custom to sleep without something covering them. Soo-Ja began to spread the mats and comforters on the ground, waiting for Min’s answer.

“They’re my brothers,” he finally said.

“I thought you said you only had one brother and one sister.”

“You must’ve heard wrong.”

Suddenly, she heard the flick of a match, illuminating Min’s face for a second as he lit his cigarette.

“How old are they?” she asked.

“Chung-Ho is seventeen, Du-Ho is ten, and In-Ho is eight. And then there’s Na-yeong, my sister, and she’s fourteen.”

“So you have three brothers and a sister,” noted Soo-Ja, surprised.

“
T
w
o
sisters. Seon-ae left when she turned eighteen.”

“Where is she?”

“Who knows.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had such a big family?” she asked, without moving.

“Are you getting the blankets ready?”

“Almost. You should have told me, Min.”

“I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t want you to slip away from my hands.”

“Like a bird, you mean?” Soo-Ja asked, half joking. She was on the floor now, unfolding the blanket and spreading it out to four corners.

“I can’t believe it. It’s done. I got you here,” said Min to himself, as he lit another match and watched it burn. His voice sounded completely foreign, as if he’d been using an accent and had finally dropped it. His features, too, seemed to rearrange themselves, returning to some earlier, previously unseen mold.

“What’s done?”

“My parents didn’t think I could find a wife. Because of my… poor economic prospects. But they underestimated the power of looks. Parents do that. They never know when their kid’s handsome.”

“I didn’t marry you for your looks,” said Soo-Ja sternly.

“Did you see my friends’ faces? Did you see how envious they were? Nobody thought I could do it. Nobody believed in me.”

Soo-Ja was done arranging the mats and pillows on the floor. Though she could not see Min well, she could tell from his movements that he’d taken his shirt and pants off before he slipped under the comforter in his undershirt and long pajama bottoms. She did not join him.

Instead, she leaned her back against the wall and stayed there, listening to the hum of his inhaling and exhaling the cigarette smoke. Min did not call for her or demand that she join him, as if he were already spent, as if the important act had already taken place, and all he wanted to do was rest and revel in its aftermath.

“I did it. I got you.”

“And I got you,” said Soo-Ja, trying to sound casual.

Min laughed, as if she were a fool. “Yes. That’s what you got.”

Soo-Ja was still bothered by Min lying to her about how many siblings he had. “Was there anything else you lied to me about?” She realized this might sound harsh, but Min did not seem to notice. Strange talk for one’s wedding night.

“I couldn’t take the risk of you bolting. If you knew I had five siblings, you’d never have agreed to marry me.”

“I never thought about your family much. I always knew we’d leave them and go to Seoul, just the two of us,” said Soo-Ja, tasting the anticipation in her lips.

“I don’t know what gave you that idea,” said Min, his voice sounding like metal. “We belong here, with my parents. It is our job to serve them.”

Soo-Ja felt as if the air were being squeezed out of her lungs. “But you said you’re going with me to Seoul,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “To start my training as a diplomat. You said you’d let me—”

“I never said anything like that,” said Min, a little too quickly, almost snapping at her. “Why would I?”

“I thought… You told me…” said Soo-Ja, her heart sinking.

“Are you talking about that letter your father gave me?” asked Min.

“My father?” asked Soo-Ja, her jaw dropping. “He gave you that—”

“Yes, but I threw it away. Pieces of paper like that are dangerous. They give you paper cuts.”

Soo-Ja felt the room begin to whirl around her, and she had to reach against the wall to remain steady. Soo-Ja realized how badly she had misjudged Min. He would never let her go to diplomat school. He would never support her goals. She had imagined she could live outside her own time and place, free from the same gravity that bound everyone else. But she’d been wrong.

“What did my father tell you when he gave you that letter?” asked Soo-Ja.

“Your father is not like mine,” said Min, not answering her question. “Once my father makes a decision, he sticks with it. Is this how it’s always been for you? He says no to you, and then he feels sorry and says yes? I bet you don’t even know what it’s like. To not get what you want. You have been spoiled all your life, Soo-Ja. I could tell when I first met you.” Min let out another big cloud of smoke. Soo-Ja knew the unfairness of his words. “You also have a habit of not wanting to admit defeat. I’m not sure yet if it’s a good or a bad quality.”

“I didn’t realize I was defeated,” said Soo-Ja, feeling bruised. Her mind wandered to the night they had first made love. Lights flashed in her head, blinding her.

“Have you ever
not
come out on top?” asked Min.

“You didn’t get much in the bargain, Min,” said Soo-Ja, trying to recover some of her footing. “I’m not exactly a princess.”

“No, but you’re not a factory girl or a farmer’s daughter, and those were the kinds of girls I was courting before I met you.”

Soo-Ja closed her eyes. She could not bear to look at her husband. “I think we should try to go to sleep. We have a long trip ahead of us tomorrow. I would say good night and turn off the lamp, but it’s dead already.”

“All right, I’m sorry,” said Min, sounding disingenuous. “What I said, just strike it from the record.”

In the dark, Soo-Ja changed from her street clothes into her pajamas. She slipped under the blankets and lay next to Min. Tears began to fall. She could not fall asleep, and she sensed that neither could he. Then she heard a small voice say something. It barely registered, like a sound squeezed out of an animal’s throat. She turned to Min and heard him repeat it, louder this time.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” Soo-Ja whispered back.

Min turned his back to her. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Three Years Later
Daegu, South Korea
1963

S
oo-Ja thought of herself as a mother first, but for the rest of the world, she was a daughter-in-law. And as such, she was expected to take care of all the Lee children, especially her teenage sister-in-law Na-yeong. Her parents lavished upon Na-yeong all kinds of expensive sweets and treats, though Soo-Ja wasn’t sure why they had chosen her as the single object of their attention and love. Perhaps they favored Na-yeong because she was one of the youngest, thought Soo-Ja, and thus least damaged, or the one with the shortest list of grudges. Maybe the chosen one had originally been Min, until her in-laws finally realized they couldn’t rely on him—Min was too erratic and rebellious, quitting activism one day, then taking up boxing the next, only to quit it, too, and return to his father’s factory, though not as a manager but as a packer. Soo-Ja wondered if maybe her in-laws, in private discussions, had gone down the list of names of their children one by one and ran out of options—Min’s sister Seon-ae, the second oldest, had left home and never come back; Chung-Ho, the third eldest, resented being forced to leave school and work; Du-Ho was not very smart and therefore written off; and In-Ho, the youngest boy, was too prone to sickness.

So when Na-yeong turned eighteen, it was a momentous occasion, and her in-laws set up a meeting with a matchmaker to find her a husband. When Soo-Ja heard about this, she began to look at Na-yeong with
a suitor’s eyes. Tall, long-limbed Na-yeong wasn’t beautiful, but she also wasn’t homely. Na-yeong had fine, almost patrician features, her face not round like her parents’, but a long oval. Her eyes were also bigger, and sometimes luminous. Na-yeong did not look like Mother-in-law, who was tanned and robust, but when Soo-Ja looked through an old photo album of the family, she saw she looked just like her grandmother. Na-yeong’s features had skipped one generation, and she had been plucked straight from the past, maybe from a long line of women who looked just like she did.

But Na-yeong was clearly her parents’ daughter, in that she had almost all the same facial expressions and, like her father, hardly ever smiled. You could tell right away they were father and daughter. Soo-Ja imagined that what was inside Father-in-law had managed to manifest itself on the surface of Na-yeong’s body, as if what’s inside a parent could show up on the child’s appearance. Father-in-law had a general’s build and moved like a tree trunk, but in Na-yeong’s thin frame, Soo-Ja could see the emptiness inside Father-in-law; in Na-yeong’s bony arms and legs, his exquisite avarice.

If she were the matchmaker, what kind of man would she bring for Na-yeong? Soo-Ja wondered. For there must be someone for her, since everyone has a match. Only in books is marriage reserved exclusively for heroines. In real life, her cousin and her cousin’s cousin must get married, too. Soo-Ja pictured boy after boy for Na-yeong—slender, chubby, young, old, rich, poor—until Na-yeong caught Soo-Ja staring at her, and she looked away. But when Na-yeong focused her attention back on a magpie outside the window, Soo-Ja stared at her again, wondering what makes two people right for each other. Was it invisible, like gas, or open to the eye, like sparks in wiring?

Weeks went by without news from the matchmaker, until finally she said she’d bring a suitor for Na-yeong. Mother-in-law clapped her hands once, in excitement, as if catching a fly, and when Na-yeong shyly looked up from her romance novel, Soo-Ja could hear her young heart beating from across the room. So they were like her, Soo-Ja realized; unable to temper their emotions with caution, jumping at a new possibility like a
mad diver off a cliff. How is it that they were not exhausted and spent at the end of the day, when the mere promise of love, of a partner, could whip them all into a state of frenzy?

The day the suitor was to arrive, the entire house was in a whirl, for they rarely had guests, and never any of consequence. They all felt invested in this, as if they’d been movie extras previously forgotten in a greenroom, and had finally been asked to report to the soundstage for their scene. The boys all dressed up in their best, and Father-in-law and Mother-in-law put on their hanboks. Soo-Ja herself spent the morning making sweet rice cakes. She steamed the grain until it became sticky and pounded it on the mortar until it hardened. She then covered the white cake with mashed red beans, cutting it into square pieces.

Soo-Ja did not complain as she prepared the confection. In the years since her wedding, Soo-Ja had mastered what she called her outside Hahoe face—serious, though not serious enough to the point of being a frown. She put that mask on, preventing others from looking in and seeing her unhappiness. With it, she could hide her anger and frustration, and expertly play the part of the obedient daughter-in-law. For Soo-Ja, that was a job like any other, and if she couldn’t be a diplomat, then she would take all her energy and discipline and channel it to the household. While her sister-in-law frequently feigned being ill to avoid doing chores, Soo-Ja rose without complaint early every morning, and did the work that kept things running.

Around the time the suitor was supposed to arrive, Soo-Ja ran back toward her room to change. She wanted to make her daughter and herself look more presentable. She was about to go in when she saw Mother-in-law walking urgently in her direction.