The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (18 page)

“Why did you have to tell him such a thing?”

“Tell him what? That you didn’t even get your period yet?”

I just look at Cousin.

“Well, you didn’t, am I wrong?”

“Whether I did or not, why tell him such a thing?”

“It’s not like I gave it much thought. Just kind of blurted out.”

“I was so embarrassed.”

Looking as if she has already forgotten
all about Foreman Lee, Cousin dips her hands inside her pockets and is singing along to Lee Myeong-hun’s song, when she pokes my side and speaks in a surreptitious voice.

“I wonder why you’re not getting your period yet. I started when I was in my second year at middle school, you know.”

Cousin is twenty years old and I am seventeen. One day in March 1979, at five
P.M.
, Cousin and I, number two and number one on the A line at Dongnam Electronics, get on the bus outside the factory and continue beyond the entrance of the Industrial Complex to Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School in Singil-dong. As we step inside the school gate, we see a white statue in the flower bed at the end of the slope, facing the athletic field. I approach closer and gaze at the statue. It is of a girl in a summer uniform, her hair cropped straight right below the ears. I am assigned to Class 4 for first-year students, and Cousin to Class 3.

We stand in line on the athletic field in the sunset for a beginning-of-the-school-year ceremony. I get into a solemn mood for no reason as we sing the national anthem. I caress the tulip-shaped school badge on the collar of my winter uniform. For the past year, my dream has been to be a student in uniform once again. The principal stands on the podium, against the backdrop of the three-story main building and the lilac trees planted in the flower bed, and speaks about the president. This Special Education Program for Industrial Workers was established because of the president’s special affection for our industrial warriors.

In honor of his great spirit . . .
The old principal’s address continues on, long under the light of the setting sun. When we get to the classroom, our homeroom teacher writes his name, Choe Hong-i, on the blackboard in Chinese characters.
. His glasses glitter under the fluorescent lights. The attendance chart lists our names, student numbers,
and company names. As he calls out each of our names, student numbers, and company names, he looks up intently at each of our faces. After he is done with attendance, he gazes down at us, leaning on the lectern with his arms. Out of the blue, he says that everything the principal said is wrong.

“The person you need to be grateful to is not the president but your parents.”

I crane my neck from where I am sitting far at the back and watch him cautiously. Why is it that his words feel like a precariously thin layer of ice? Vivid eyes, nose, and ears. Medium height. Lean build. He adjusts his glasses sitting on his steep nose. A lean finger lands on the black rims of his glasses. His mouth speaks again.

“You have been working all day at the factory: That alone is sufficient qualification for you to attend this school.”

What woke me was the phone ringing from the room with my piles of books. H, who had fallen asleep at my side at dawn around the time that I had, opened and closed her eyes, her body curled up tight. She would not know that she always sleeps either curled up or completely flat. Her long, wavy hair seems to cry, “It’s cold, so cold,” even while she’s asleep. I suppose the caller will hang up if I don’t answer. I had unplugged the phone in the bedroom, so in order to answer, I would have to open the door and walk over to the study. I pulled up the covers for H and curled up in the same position. The ringing persisted.

“Who is it at this hour?”

Stretching out her tightly curled body, H pushed me away. As if to plead to me to please do something about that sound. As I struggled to lift myself up and pull the doorknob, I bumped my head against the face of Simone de Beauvoir, reading a book, in the photo that I had pinned
to the door. I was still not quite awake when I picked up the receiver in one hand, rubbing my cheek with the other.

“Are you still in bed?”

“. . . ?”

“Did I wake you?”

It was Oldest Brother. What was he calling about at this hour? I switched on the fluorescent light with my free hand and checked the clock. It was seven
A.M.
After asking if he had woken me up, Oldest Brother did not say anything. I felt a chill on the back of my neck as the cold November wind slipped in through the crevice of the door.

“
Oppa
?”

Silence.

“
Oppa
, what is it? Is anything the matter?”

There was something uncanny about Oldest Brother’s silence. What could it be? I felt something inside my chest sink all of a sudden. A call from your family in the very late or early hours always makes one’s chest sink. News that one family member has to deliver to another at such an hour is bound to be ominous. Perhaps Father has fallen ill?

“
Oppa
?”

Silence

“What is it? Where are you calling from?”

“From home. You’re in the paper.”

“. . . ”

“I called while I was reading the paper.”

So Father is okay. Once I regained my calm, it suddenly hit me. What had he read in the paper that made him call me at this hour? Not having read the paper yet, I could not say anything. He had called several times before to tell me he had read about me somewhere, but never at this hour. His voice was clearly not like those times, when he had sounded proud. When my second novel was published and I began to be talked about as a writer, Oldest Brother had been all smiles
. He said he had seen my book even in the tiny bookstore in the building where he worked and had even introduced himself to the storekeeper as the author’s brother, asking her to push the book. Saying his coworkers wanted to meet me, Oldest Brother took me hiking with them one Sunday, wearing a big smile all day long as he showed me off. I had felt perplexed as I watched Oldest Brother, nearing forty, snapping photographs, handing me slices of grilled meat, picking a leaf from my hair that had fallen from a tree.

Imagine, I could be someone that Oldest Brother wanted to show off to people.

I had smiled along with Oldest Brother. I posed for the camera standing next to him in a field of reeds, and when his coworkers asked me this and that, I did my best to answer this and that. But now Oldest Brother’s voice on the end of the line was not the same as when he had been all smiles.

“It sounds very realistic.”

As soon as he said this, these were the words that burst out of my mouth, without time to think.

“
Oppa
! I don’t know what it said in the paper, but that’s not how I wrote it.”

“It’s not like I said anything.”

After we finished talking, I couldn’t hang up and just stood there for a while, listening to the hang-up signal go
beep, beep, beep.
That wasn’t how I’d written
what
? The words that had burst out of me fell not on Oldest Brother but on me. What was it? What hadn’t I written that way?

I opened the front door, picked up the paper, and came back in the room. H had fallen back to sleep in a flat position. I opened the paper.
Books and Issues
. My face, looking swollen, was printed on the page, my name next to it in a large font.
Author Publishes Autobiographical Novel About Teenage Years.
While I read the article, I was nervous that H, asleep on the bed, might wake up. When I finished reading, I pulled out the page with my photo, folded it to make
sure H could not read it, and pushed it under the bed.

It is lunchtime. Coming down from the cafeteria with me, Cousin admires the sunshine and sits down on the bench outside the TV division. In the athletic field male workers are playing soccer. I, seventeen years old, walk to the assembly line to get the book I left on my workstation. The assembly line is dark, with all the workstation lights turned off. At the end of the C line is the inspection division. I am plodding along when the inspection division door opens and Foreman walks out. I walk in his direction and he walks toward me. I greet him with a nod and am about to walk past him when he calls, “Miss Shin?” Just as I turn around, he walks up to me and pushes me against the wall of the storeroom stacked with packaging styrofoam, lifting up my face with his hand under my chin.

“What is it? The fountain pen wasn’t enough? You’re writing something down all the time, so I thought a fountain pen ought to do it.”

I feel a fearful chill all over my body.

“What are you doing to her!”

Arriving at the scene, Cousin thrashes Foreman’s back with a block of styrofoam.

“Who do you think you are?” Foreman turns around and strikes Cousin on the cheek, just before she turns to flee.

Cousin, twenty years old, squats down in the fifth-floor locker room and cries after getting hit on the cheek and on her ear by Foreman, all because of me.

“I want to die.”

I, sitting right next to her, stare at
the floor. The work hour bell rings. I rise and start taking off my uniform.

Cousin, with swollen cheeks, stops crying and asks, “What are you doing?”