Il-sun’s hatred showed on her face. She knew that the miscarriage had been ordered by Mrs. Cha—Gi had been right to be suspicious. Now she was being forced to prostitute herself only a day afterward. She was still having light cramping and spotting, but it did not matter to Mrs. Cha.
“I asked you your name,” Mrs. Cha said, raising her voice.
There was a pause, and Il-sun stared back into Mrs. Cha’s eyes. “Daisy. My name is Daisy.”
“My name is Daisy,
ma’am,
” Mrs. Cha corrected.
“Ma’am,” Il-sun repeated.
“Better. Okay, this is how it works: You girls mingle with customers at the bar. I know you don’t speak English, but it doesn’t matter because those men aren’t here to talk. Just be pretty, smile a lot, and do whatever they want you to. When a man wants to go with you, he pays me or the bartender. You take him up to your room and fuck him. It’s that simple.
“Sometimes men will leave cash tips for you. You’re not allowed to have cash, and you will hand it over at the end of your shift. If I catch you hiding money, I will have your fingers cut off. I’ve done it before. I may be a bitch, but I’m not a crook. Those tips are yours and I’ll keep an accurate log of how much you’ve made. Just ask the other girls here, and they’ll tell you that I deal fairly that way. You can use your money to pay for things like cigarettes, or clothes, or whatever. We keep a shopping list and I have my boys go out a couple of times a week to buy things.”
“Why can’t we keep our own money, if it’s ours?” asked Jasmine.
“Girls started thinking they could buy things like bus fare and plane tickets. We can’t have that.” She began to pace. “You’re allowed two drinks while you’re working to help calm your nerves. I don’t want you getting sloppy drunk and making asses of yourselves. It’s unprofessional. If you keep the customers happy and behave yourselves, I think you’ll find it’s not such a bad life in here. If you don’t behave, I will make your life a living hell. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison.
“Now, get to work,” said Mrs. Cha.
Suddenly the room felt very large and Gi felt terribly small. Smoke was rising in thick plumes from cigars and cigarettes, and it lingered on the air as a dense haze. There was a collection of young Caucasian American men at the bar and another group sitting around one of the tables playing a game of cards, and Gi shuddered. Jasmine had tried to allay her concerns about Americans, telling her that men were men, no matter where they came from; but she could not overcome a lifetime of belief that Americans were evil monsters, that they were imbued with an inhuman propensity to violence and dishonesty. She knew that Cho had had to service Americans in Mr. Choy’s sex shop, but Gi had been spared—they did not frequent the club where she worked.
“Cho and I have done this before,” Jasmine said with a resigned sigh. “Just follow our lead. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.” She stepped toward the bar with more confidence than Gi knew she was feeling, and the others followed. As they approached, the other women at the bar gave them cold looks and condescending stares that seemed to say “This customer is mine, so hands off!” It was apparently a territorial business. They sat at the far end of the bar, Gi on the farthest stool.
Jasmine turned and leaned her back against the bar with a practiced look of boredom on her face. Soon a man with too many chins staggered over and stood next to her. His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of alcohol. He said something to her in English, more loudly than he needed to in order to be heard over the soft music that was playing in the background. She batted her eyes and looked him up and down. She leaned in close to him and whispered something into his ear, and he chuckled. The bartender drifted over, sensing a deal about to be made.
“Vodka and tonic, please. Heavy on the vodka,” Jasmine said to him in Korean. The bartender nodded and busied himself making the drink. Jasmine’s client was feeling talkative, and she nodded and smiled at him as if he were the most interesting man in the world. Truthfully, she probably only understood a small fraction of what he was saying, but he did not seem to notice, or even care. Jasmine downed her drink in two large gulps, shuddered, and then said something to the man in English, nodding toward the stairs. He nodded back to her, paid the bartender, and followed her up the stairs.
Gi felt a knot in the pit of her stomach, and she sat hunched at the bar trying to be invisible. Il-sun sat next to her, watching the women in action, fascinated and frightened. Cho went upstairs with a client soon after Jasmine, leaving Il-sun and Gi alone at the bar.
“Something to drink?” asked the bartender.
“Champagne,” replied Il-sun.
“Fancy girl, are you?” he said sarcastically. “Girls don’t get champagne, unless you pay for it.”
“Okay. Whiskey.”
“Neat, or on the rocks?”
“I don’t know, just whiskey.”
“Neat, then.” He poured a glass and handed it to her.
Gi watched two more men enter the room. Asshole frisked them both, and they made their way to the bar. One of them noticed Il-sun and came directly over to her. He was in his late twenties, tall, thin, and wearing a dirty T-shirt and baseball cap. He smelled sour and unwashed. Il-sun stared into her drink looking like she hoped he would disappear, but he did not. He said something to her that she did not understand. She looked over her shoulder and saw Mrs. Cha glaring at her—she had no choice but to be polite. She conjured a plastic smile and looked back into her drink. She took a sip, and then another. The man ordered a drink and leaned against the bar, staring at Il-sun’s breasts, which were still overplump from her pregnancy.
Mrs. Cha came and stood between them. She greeted the man as if he were familiar, and then turned to Il-sun.
“This is your first client, Daisy. Don’t disappoint me.” She said the words with a smile plastered on her face and a pleasant lilt in her voice, but her eyes were hard and threatening. Il-sun turned to the man and gave another forced smile. Mrs. Cha spoke to him again, saying something in English that caused them both to laugh. He handed her a small stack of green bills, which she counted with sharp movements. The bills sounded like a knife on a sharpening stone as they slid across each other in her hands. She nodded at the man and walked away.
The man threw back his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking expectantly at Il-sun. Il-sun glanced over her shoulder at Mrs. Cha, and then smiled at the man again. She took a long sip of her whiskey, held back a cough as it burned its way down her throat, then stood up. He followed her across the room and they disappeared up the stairs.
Gi had not felt this alone for a long time. She hoped that nobody would notice her sitting there and that Mrs. Cha would forget about her. The room filled up around her, and the sounds of talking, laughing, and drinking got louder and louder. Cigarette smoke burned her nostrils and the air was heavy with the smell of men. Jasmine returned, and then left again soon afterward with another client. Cho came and went similarly. Gi was not sure which was worse, being alone in anticipation of her first client or enduring the dizzying cacophony in the now crowded bar. She wondered if eventually the sounds would make sense to her the same way the sounds of the garment factory had become a kind of music. She listened for patterns in the chaos: the wavelike rise and lull in chatter, the random clinking of glassware, the nonsense music coming from across the room drowned out and absorbed into the thrum.
Mrs. Cha sat at the stool next to her. The expected chill that normally accompanied her was absent.
“What’s your name, dear?” Mrs. Cha asked. Gi was surprised by the lack of malice in her tone.
“Gi-Gi-Gyong-ho, ma’am”
“Gyong-ho?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Were your parents from the dark ages? Did they think by giving you a boy’s name that they would turn their daughter into a son? I would say it almost worked, by looking at you.”
“I don’t know, ma’am.” Gi was nervous talking with Mrs. Cha. She counted bottles behind the bar, then divided them by the number of steps up to her room.
“I’m not really here by choice either, you know. You’ll get used to it. You will either get used to it or it will kill you. It’s that simple. Most girls choose to get used to it. Have a drink.” She turned to the bartender and shouted, “Gin and tonic!”
The drink arrived, clear and bubbling. Gi counted the ice cubes, and then the bubbles, and then multiplied them by the previous number that was in her head. She took a small sip, and it lit up the back of her throat. She coughed. The drink was bitter. She took another sip.
“It will give you strength. I’ll be right back.” Mrs. Cha got up from the stool, not quite able to mask the pain she felt in an arthritic hip, and left Gi with her drink. She returned a moment later with a bleary-eyed young man in tow. She said something to him in English, which he acknowledged with a nod. He was having difficulty standing.
“Gyong-ho, this is Justin,” said Mrs. Cha. “He just paid for your services, so take good care of him.” Then she leaned into Gyong-ho and whispered in a frozen breath, “I told him your name was Toby. I gave you a boy’s name, too. I always wanted a son.” She then evaporated into the crowd.
Gyong-ho was frozen to the spot. She knew what was expected of her, but she could not will her legs to move. Her breathing became shallow and the room started to close in around her. She calculated the square root of the number of barstools. Mrs. Cha was watching her from across the room. She looked back at her client and multiplied the square root of barstools by the number of eyelashes on his upper lids. The lids of his eyes were sagging over dull red orbs. She felt something thick collecting at the back of her throat, and she wanted to spit. She looked again to Mrs. Cha, who was talking with Asshole and pointing over to her. Asshole walked over and grabbed Gi’s arm. He said something to her client in English and laughed. He pulled her by the arm across the room and to the stairs while the client followed. At the base of the stairs, Asshole made a sweeping gesture with his arm, as if to cordially invite Gi and her client to climb them. As he did so, he squeezed her arm very tightly. The pain of his grip brought her back into her body, and she found the strength to go through with the task. She put one foot in front of the other and ascended the stairs.
Gi passed Il-sun on the stairway, neither acknowledging the other. Il-sun was grimacing as if she had just tasted something foul. The sun was not with her: Gone were the woman and springtime. For Gyong-ho, this alone was the worst part of losing her virginity, seeing Il-sun in such a state. It was more horrible than being stripped by the drunken imperialist. More loathsome than feeling his weight pressing her into the mattress. More vile than inhaling his toxic breath as he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. Worse, even, than feeling her insides rip as he forced his way inside her. All that could be beautiful was now tarnished because Il-sun, herself, was tainted. Beauty itself had given up on beauty—what chance did she have of recovery?
She raised herself from the mattress, her client passed out in a sodden heap. “Il-sun, I think I’m a woman now,” she said to herself, half aloud. She had a kind of understanding now of when Il-sun had said those words to her. She put her clothes on and walked down to the bar.
69
T
HE
HUMILIATION
OF
I
L
-
SUN
’
S
life was now complete. She had given her virginity to Gianni, but she had not lost her innocence until she led the smelly American up the creaky stairs of the Blue Talon brothel. This was not the life promised to her by her mother: the one of a beautiful young woman with excellent
songbun,
courted by a good-looking man high in the Party. Something fundamental was now irreparably altered. It was suddenly clear to her that there would be no turning back, no reclaiming the life she believed was her birthright. All of that had changed. She snapped inside, all at once, and everything that used to be Il-sun drained out of her.
She would never forgive Mrs. Cha, who had sent the doctor with his killing pills to undo her one shred of happiness. She was sure she had done it out of spite. Mrs. Cha had it in for Il-sun from the moment she laid eyes on her—that much was clear by the way she slapped her, and by the condescending way she spoke.
She’s jealous of me,
she thought.
Of the way men look at me!
Mrs. Cha had been pretty once, and maybe even beautiful. The hard fall from beauty had been unkind to her. Il-sun was determined to exact revenge.
There was routine at the brothel: All roles were neatly defined, and the rules were simple and spelled out clearly. Each day there were chores and a precise schedule of when she was to be entertaining customers at the bar. It reminded Il-sun, in a way, of the orphanage and the orphanage mistress, and how, in spite of railing against the routine and responsibilities, they had given her a sense of order. Without that regularity there was nothing to guard against the press of chaos from the outside world, which threatened to swallow her whole. What she would give to be back at the orphanage . . . But that thought would only bring her down. She was Daisy now, and there was no going back. To Daisy, there never had been an orphanage, a factory job, a Gianni. As Daisy she could take control.