The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (15 page)

One Sunday, Cousin and I go to a tailor shop near the school we’re going to attend and order our uniforms. Cousin has a very slender waist. I try to steal a glimpse of Cousin’s slender waist but she catches me looking. Cousin gives me a scowl and I panic, then we break into laughter. Being the older one, Cousin takes me to the market in Garibong-dong and treats me to a bowl to
ramyeon
noodles with a generous topping of rice cake slices to celebrate our new uniforms. I was the one who was so eager to go to school but now I am the cool one while Cousin, who had not cared much, has gotten all excited about ordering new uniforms, her cheeks flushed red as she slurps down the broth.

“After our welcome ceremony at school, let’s go home for a visit. Wearing our uniforms.”

When I don’t answer, Cousin asks again, “Okay?” She keeps pressing me, so I agree to do that. But I wonder if we will find the time.

I turn seventeen and Cousin turns twenty. It is now January 1979, and with the new year life gets busy. Oldest Brother graduates from university and Third Brother begins his first year. Third Brother takes the civil service exam, as Oldest Brother had asked him to, then makes his test results invalid by refusing to show up at the physical exam. Instead, he makes a promise to Oldest Brother. He is going to focus only on his studies so he can get a scholarship and pass the bar exam. Oldest Brother, who will soon be entering his military service, gazes with a tired look at Third Brother.

“I will now be serving the military as a commuting
soldier. I will no longer be able to contribute to our rent. All I ask is that you get by on your own until I am discharged.”

The union and the management seemed to be getting along well for a while, but with the arrival of the new year, the union is going one direction and the management in another. Miss Lee tells us, “You should check out our commercial on TV. It’s really something.”

We don’t even have a radio, let alone a TV. On Sunday, while the two of us are at the store to buy laundry detergent, Cousin, suddenly pulling my arms, screams, “There it is!”

On the TV screen in the room behind the store, a pretty woman with long hair, wearing a leather jacket and headphones, sings along to a foreign song. Then she smiles, saying, “Dongnam Stereo, Dongnam Stereo.” As the words “Dongnam Stereo” reverberate, creating an echo effect, the stereo system that we have soldered and assembled with screws fills the screen in its full splendor.

As she opens the detergent packet, Cousin says, “You know that song just now?”

“What song?”

“That song that the woman in the headphones was singing just now advertising our product.”

It’s now become a habit for us to say “our product” instead of “stereo.” “What about that song?”

“It’s by Smokie. ‘What Can I Do!’”

“Who’s Smokie?”

“This group that I like. They also have this other song, ‘Living Next Door to Alice,’ which is so sad. There was this girl named Alice who lived next door and the man loved her in secret for twenty-four years. He just watched her from afar, unable to tell her how he feels, but one day a fancy limousine came and took Alice away.”

Cousin puts the detergent
down on the floor and shouts out, like the woman in the commercial saying, “Dongnam Stereo. What can I do!”

Our payment keeps getting delayed. At first, payday is delayed by two days, then the following month by five days, then by ten days the next. The management blames sagging production. Miss Lee gets upset.

“Sagging production—do you agree?”

We don’t. Every morning, the chief of production lines up the workers in the production division to assign the day’s production target and every day the target amount has been going up. In order to reach the target, the speed of the conveyor belt has been increased and we have cut our morning and afternoon ten-minute breaks by half. I, a skilled worker now, am diligently pulling the air driver and attaching the screws, without a moment to look up. But they say production is sagging.

“It’s not because of sagging production, but because the management is launching a subsidiary. That’s what’s delaying our pay. Launching a subsidiary’s fine, but why do they have to put our pay on hold to do that?”

Nobody knows why. All we know is that if our pay is delayed, everyone’s life turns into a mess. Because our pay is our entire living allowance. If our pay is delayed, our rent is delayed and we are left with no money to send back home, no money left to scrape to put away in our savings.

The union starts discussing the possibility of a collective refusal of overtime.

Miss Myeong at Administration. The one Cousin envies the most in the whole company. Instead of soldering, instead of pulling down air drivers, Miss Myeong
is always going about the factory carrying documents under her arm, or checking our punch cards. Inside her desk drawers are keys to our supply room. She has curly hair that falls gently over her shoulders, clear eyes, and lustrous skin. When Miss Myeong stands in the sun and smiles, her vivid eyebrows raised, her teeth glitter white. When Miss Myeong walks past the flower bed, carrying her yellow document folder under her arm, her smooth calves move with vitality below her skirt. Cousin admires everything about Miss Myeong. Especially the fact that she is managerial, not production, staff.

This same Miss Myeong asks to see Cousin and me one day. I have no idea why this person whom we have never spoken to and only watched from afar wants to see us, but still my heart churns.

“It’s not like we’ve committed a crime or something.” Cousin tries hard to appear composed. “We’ve never been late in the morning. And we’ve never once left work early.”

Miss Myeong smiles sweetly and asks Cousin and me whether we handed in our union application. Only then I realize why my heart churned when Miss Myeong asked to see us.

“Are you union members as well?” Miss Myeong puts on that sweet smile again. Cousin and I have a hard time answering. “And you two still plan to attend school?” Miss Myeong asks next.

Cousin and I gaze back at her, thinking, What is she talking about? Are we planning to attend school? But isn’t that a done deal? We already had our uniforms made. Miss Myeong speaks again in a low voice as she flips through her documents.

“The president feels that the company cannot provide money for union members to attend school.”

We just stand there staring at Miss Myeong’s face. Quite some time passes until Miss Myeong speaks again.

“Which means, you should quit the union if you want to go to school.”

Cousin and I leave the Administration
Office and walk toward the production division, our heads low. As soon as we step into our division, the many people sitting at the production line all gaze up at us at once. All of a sudden Cousin and I are regarded with suspicion by the production line staff. Scurrying Miss Lee, who persuaded us to complete our union applications, scurries over and asks Cousin and seventeen-year-old me, “What did Miss Myeong have to say?”

Cousin and I hesitate to answer. As we hesitate, Cousin and I are both thinking about Union Chief, whom we had written to. There was nothing that Cousin and I have done after joining the union. Nothing but writing our names and address on sheets of paper. We had yet to learn what a union is and what it is trying to do, but we did know from a gut feeling that quitting the union would mean betraying Union Chief.

By calling for us out of the blue, Miss Myeong has made us feel guilty in front of scurrying Miss Lee and Union Chief.

It is terribly cold to walk home from work. Our factory is located in Industrial Complex No. 1, so many workers rent rooms near the No. 1 Complex, but our lone room is located near Industrial Complex No. 3 because that is where the subway station is. Because Oldest Brother and Third Brother have to take the subway, to get to the Community Service Center, to get to the university. On this day, the way back to our lone room seems longer and colder. Union members will begin refusing overtime the following day, so what are we supposed to do? Cousin and I shiver. Miss Myeong’s words, asking whether we still plan to attend school, strike our ears like the wind hitting against the power poles. If we join the union members in refusing overtime, does that mean we cannot go to school? We only have a month until school starts. My head feels all tangled and my heart distressed. Cousin pulls her hand out from deep inside her pocket and
holds mine. She lets it go, to pull off the scarf from around her neck and wrap it around mine, then takes my hand inside her pocket, big and roomy, and holds it tight.

“Where are your gloves?”

I do not answer. I am thinking, What do they matter in the middle of all this?

“You lost them?”

I barely nod.

“Is your head in the right place or what? You already lost your scarf and now the gloves, too?”

I gaze at Cousin in the icy wind, looking like I am about to cry.

“Always crying at every little thing.”

So are you, I want to say right back at her, but I hold it in. After walking for a while, tightly grabbing my hand inside her pocket, she takes me to the market and buys me a pair of gloves, and pulls them over my hands.

“Now don’t lose them. When we start school, we will feel cold into March. Because we’ll be walking home at night. We might need to wear gloves through April.”