Year of Impossible Goodbyes (10 page)

Kisa put on a crisp white outfit which must have belonged to Grandfather. Mother put on the white
hanbok,
and Aunt Tiger the green one. Mother had given Inchun a pair of American shorts and a button-down shirt. His little bony knees stuck out awkwardly. He looked down at his legs and asked, "Can I put my old pants back on?"

"Whatever pleases you," replied Mother. How strange. I had never heard that before. How wonderful it was to be free. We listened to our records, drew pictures, and read. We tended our garden, watering it several times a day, and lifting the seedlings out of the ground to look at the roots. Beside the garden we set up a playhouse made from Grandfathers canes and one of Mothers sheets.

As the days passed, the grown-ups became increasingly anxious. Mother waited expectantly for Father and my three brothers, and Aunt Tiger went out several times a day to see if anyone had any news about her husband. Kisa waited anxiously for any news of the sock girls. Cries of joy and sorrow filled the streets. Men began returning from the front and from the jails, but they too often brought with them news of those who had died.

One day, Aunt Tiger came back from one of her excursions and said, "I hear most of the Japanese soldiers and the police have left. It's safe for us to go anywhere we want now, I think. I want to go see the Naritas' house. I spent so many years cleaning that house. Now I'd like to take a walk there and enjoy myself." I wanted to go with her, and started to follow. Mother was concerned, but Aunt Tiger assured her that many Koreans had already moved back into their former homes that the Japanese had taken from them, and that it would be safe for me to come along.

Aunt Tiger took my hand, and we walked through the streets in out colorful silk
hanbok,
speaking freely in Korean. Many Koreans were out in their
hanbok,
talking, laughing, and crying. Korean flags were proudly flying in front of almost every home. Gone were the gray uniforms and the masses of silent people walking with their heads lowered in subservience and fear. How wonderful it was to know that no police would come and frighten us off. We walked through the bustling streets of Kirimni and turned toward the hills.

Aunt Tiger pointed to the houses that dotted the hills and said, "The rightful Korean owners should be coming back to all these homes now. This is where all the Japanese government officials and rich merchants lived." Up a smooth gravel-covered path, we finally came upon a beautiful house of greenish-gray brick with a big wooden gate that stood ajar. "This house used to be occupied by the Naritas," Aunt Tiger said.

I looked at this beautiful house where the Naritas had lived and asked Aunt, "Can we go in and see the inside?"

"I suppose we can if no one's living here already," Aunt Tiger said. "I'll give you the tour."

We walked into the yard and suddenly the sliding door to one of the rooms opened. To my great surprise, Unhi was stating straight at me. "Well, don't just stand there. If you came to see me, come inside quickly." She spoke abruptly, just as she had on my first day of school. Aunt and I looked at each other in disbelief and stepped inside.

"I was thinking of you," said Unhi. "I was going to look for you. How do you like our house? This house used to belong to my grandfather Some Japanese government officials threw him in jail because he refused to give up his house. And after that, my grandmother and aunts still refused to move out. So then, some Japanese soldiers came, and started to undress them and tried to attack them. My grandmother and aunts went running. They were lucky they got away."

"Unhi!" shouted her mother, who was coming out to greet us. "My Unhi talks too much. Please come and sit.
They took all the furniture and all our things with them, but we're back in the family house."

Aunt Tiger and Unhi's mother sat by the little fishpond in the yard. Unhi and I talked in Korean about all the things we had always wanted to tell each other at school. Hours went by. Suddenly I remembered Mother would be waiting for us. I was so excited to see Unhi that I had completely forgotten. I went and got Aunt Tiger, and we rushed home. Just as we had imagined, Mother was standing by the gate, looking down the road. She scolded us, but was happy to hear about our visit with Unhi and her mother. I went to sleep that night thinking of the many nice surprises in store for me.

The next morning, as Inchun and I were watering the garden, the gate swung open. In walked Unhi and her mother. I had told Unhi where we lived, but she hadn't said anything about coming by. Her mother asked to see my mother. While they visited, I showed Unhi my garden. Inchun followed us everywhere. Unhi kept staring at him. "Is he mute?" she finally asked. "How come he never says anything? What a strange one!"

Inchun just grinned, and I ruffled his hair. If Unhi only knew how clever and wise he was. Unhi looked at us and said, "Yeah, well, like I said that first day I saw you, you're a funny one, too." Then Unhi told us that after we left the night before, she and her mother went to check the secret storage compartment in the basement and found it full of sacks of rice. They came to us today to ask for our help in attributing the rice to the rest of the townspeople.

Kisa worked all day disttibuting the sacks of white rice. Mother and Aunt Tiger could not take their eyes off our bag. "It must be a good ten pounds," said Mother. "I haven't seen that much rice in my home since the Japanese arrived. We'll have to make a special dinner tonight."

"We must divide the rice into smaller bags and put them in a cool dry place," added Aunt Tiger. "That way, the bugs and mice won't get at it."

As Aunt Tiger rushed around to find small bags to store it in, Mother smiled to herself and whispered to me, "Your Aunt is pretending that we ate back in the old days when we had a roomful of rice to keep for the entire season. This sack won't he around long enough to go bad or get eaten by mice." But she just watched Aunt play with the dainty grains of white rice, putting them into small bags and tying them carefully.

Aunt Tiger learned from a neighbor that two of Unhi's brothers had come back from a Japanese labor camp and were very ill. Unhi's Mother came to talk to Mother a few days later and told how her boys had been forced to dig ditches sixteen hours a day under the hot sun and the pouting rain. They survived on potato roots and some mixed grains. The Japanese soldiers often amused themselves by forcing the boys to drink their own urine. She cried as she recounted these terrible stories.

The dreams of a happy future together in a free land were shattered. The whole town was transformed into a hospital. Many men and boys came home only to die. There were many funeral processions every day, and wailing and sobbing filled the air. It was as if all the sadness and misery that had to go unexpressed for the past thirty-six years had been unleashed. "I don't know which is better, not to see my boys and cling to the hope that they are alive and healthy, or to have them come home so sick that I have to watch them die," said Mother to Aunt Tiger.

The next day, we heard that both of Unhi's brothers had died. I saw Unhi's mother in the funeral procession, dressed in the traditional burlap funeral gown, and behind her, I saw Unhi. Unhi's mother was wailing, and pounding her chest as if she wanted to die and join her sons. But I couldn't take my eyes off Unhi as she walked behind the two coffins and rubbed the tears from her eyes. That dull burlap funeral outfit made her look like a dying old woman. I felt like a million years had gone by since that day when we had talked so happily at her big house. How quickly our world kept changing.

Kisa kept checking the train station hoping to see the sock girls, my brothers, Father, and Aunt Tiger's husband. One day he came running home and said, "We'd better lock the door. The Russians are in the next town over. For the past few days, they've been picking up all the young men who are reasonably healthy and are taking them to Siberia. Many Russian soldiers have been looting houses and attacking the village people, especially the women. They have special guns that can tire many shots in quick succession and can kill many people all at once."

Mother and Aunt Tiger were not as shocked as I was. It seemed they knew something about it. I thought the Americans would be coming back to see us, hut I had never thought about the Russians. I didn't know much about the Russians, but Grandfather had told me he didn't trust them. He said the Russians always wanted to own Korea just as the Japanese and the Chinese had. "Korea was a little shrimp caught in a struggle between giants," he had said.

Mother and Aunt Tiger took off their bright
hanbok
and put on their gray workers' outfits. At Kisa's insistence, Mother and Aunt tied scarves over their heads and smeared dirt and ash on their cheeks to make themselves look older than they were. Reluctantly, I took off my colorful
hanbok
and put on my old gray outfit. We stayed inside the house with the doors locked and thick blankets hanging from the rice-paper paneled doors to make the house appear dark and deserted.

"Where are the Americans? Why are the Russians here now?" Aunt sighed.

"The Russians live closet to us, they are practically out next-door neighbors," replied Mother. "It will take a while for the Americans to get here, but they will be here. They won't let the Russians stay. The Russians are probably here to make sure the Japanese leave safely."

"Who is going to hurt the Japanese?" Aunt Tiger retorted. "They have their guns and soldiers and we have none." Mother said nothing. We spent several days hiding in our dark house. At night, we sometimes heard pots and pans rattling. Aunt Tiger told me it was a signal to warn everyone that the Russian soldiers were around. Mother and Aunt Tiger had seen the Russian soldiers in the streets when they ventured outside during the day. But I had not yet seen any of them because I had stayed inside all the time.

Later we learned that the Russian soldiers had been in Korea for quite a while, some said since early August, before the Emperor officially surrendered. They had come to drive out the Japanese. Some of our neighbors said they liked the Russians for chasing out the Japanese, and hailed them as liberators. Many Koreans, who had been waiting for the Americans, were hurt and disappointed. "At least the Russians care enough to come," they said. "We should be good to them." Others feared that the Russians would soon treat us just as the Japanese had. Mother said the Russians would soon leave, but others said that they were here to stay. They said that Korea had been divided into two at the 38th parallel. The Russians were in the northern part for good.

I was curious about these Russians, and when I saw their trucks rumble by, I wished I could get a closer look at them. I heard that many Russian soldiers had no hair at all because they had come straight from jail. Some called them green-eyed barbarians. They ate everything in sight, chased girls, and stole whatever they could carry. They ate in the streets as they walked, kicking passersby with their big feet. They carried huge guns with round disks.

We still had no news of my father, my brothers, or the sock girls. We didn't know what to think. They could be anywhere. They might not even be alive. Hiding in our dark house, trapped with our fears and worries, had become oppressive. Did the Americans know how long we had been waiting for them? Did they know how Grandfather and Mother were counting on them, or how Unhi and I had rounded the edges of the little pieces of glass and rock at the Japanese school so that they would not be hurt? I decided to hum and try to forget.

While I was humming "Swannee River," Inchun got up and peered out the rice-paper paneled door. He beckoned to me. There were two Russians in our yard! One was young and tall, and had the most beautiful blue eyes, and a head of wavy yellow hair. He wore a big khaki wool coat and high boots. At his side was a huge gun. This gun was not long and thin like those of the Japanese; instead it had a huge round barrel. The other soldier had the same type of gun slung over his shoulder. He was a bit shorter and much older, and had no hair at all. Each of them had a long loaf of dark bread tucked under his left arm and each had a little pouch hanging from his neck. The older soldier reached into the pouch, took out a handful of sunflower seeds, and threw them into his mouth. Then he tore off a big bite of bread and chewed vigorously. All of a sudden, a trail of sunflower seed shells came shooting from his mouth. The younger soldier started eating, too. The two of them left a carpet of shells as they walked around the yard.

The Russians peeked into the sock factory and seemed rather disappointed to find it empty. Then they headed toward the house. As we saw them approach, we retreated to the far corner of the room. We didn't know what they would do to us. I felt stupid for having stood there watching them when we should have been trying to hide. They pushed the door open with their guns, ripped the rice-paper paneled doors, and stepped inside. I stood in front of Inchun, wedging him into the corner of the room. I was his
nuna.
I had to protect him. The men looked around and were surprised to see us. We stood in the corner gripped with fear.

As the young soldier walked past us, he chewed busily, and spewed a trail of sunflower seed shells onto our clean
ondol
floor. He spit them out in such quick succession that they seemed to form a rainbow. They both ate so ravenously that I thought if they gave us a hard time, I could offer them some of the rice cakes that Aunt Tiger had made. They poked around the house, touching and examining everything—our books and records, Mother's Bible, our clothes. Seeing the alarm clock that Aunt Tiger managed to get her hands on after the Japanese had left, the older soldier put it to his ear, listened to it tick, and happily put it in his coat pocket.

In Mother's chest, they found Father's wristwatch that Mother had managed to hide for so long. The young one picked it up. He lifted his left coat sleeve. Watches covered his entire forearm, so he checked his other arm, already adorned with several watches. He added Fathers to his collection. We stood there and watched in silence. Alarm clocks and trinkets hung from their thick leather belts, which clanked and jingled as they walked. We could see brightly colored Korean silk draped around their necks. They looked proud of their collection.