The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (42 page)

I know that you still feel pain, unable to brush away your memories of the weary and difficult years. But from where I stand, as a teacher, I think you have truly been “blessed.” Among the hundreds of students in the industrial worker program, I have yet to find a single one who had siblings that were able to provide such a rich spiritual and cultural soil for growth. Meeting a teacher like Choe Hong-i was also a blessing, one that was possible only at that specific place and time. Nowadays, it is unimaginable that a student spends class time copying a novel in her notebook, in any class at any school. The reality in education today calls for students to stage a perfectly orchestrated, massive performance, don’t you think?

This year, we accepted
no new students in the program. The number of applicants has fallen sharply in the past few years. This is because living standards have improved and most parents are able to send their children to high school. In two years, the Special Program for Industrial Workers
, which you have tried hard to leave behind and forget, will become history. We now have only 110 students, in all of the second- and third-year classes combined. As the number of classes decreases, I will leave the school as well next year.

Adapting to a new environment is never easy it seems, for adults or for children. On my first day here, due to the abrupt shift in routine, I felt awkward and anxious about being at school in the dark of the night, and the fatigue I felt was just as bad, despite the reduced hours, which made me think I should have just taken a leave. Heading home after classes ended at five past nine o’clock, I gazed out the window as I crossed Yanghwa Bridge. The lights along the river were emitting a beautiful glow, as if in a dream, and the river looked quiet, deep, cozy. At that moment, my heart also turned tranquil and I can clearly remember myself thinking, “What lies in front of me is also a new world waiting to be encountered. This job might delay my studies, but this new experience with the students here will bring new insight and spiritual nourishment to my life, won’t it?” Perhaps it is also a small gift of karma from my life here with my students that I am writing this letter to you today.

If ever you feel you have the time and the courage to reencounter those “high school girls in white summer uniforms” before the Special Program for Industrial Workers is closed down entirely, please let me know. But please do not feel pressured, either. You wouldn’t carry this letter around for a whole year now, would you?

I wish you good health. In both body and mind.

Yours sincerely,
Han Gyeong-sin

I read the letter again from the beginning.

Putting it back into the envelope, the way it first arrived, I placed it on my desk and gazed at it for a long time. I wanted to write her back. I pulled out a few sheets from the pile of printer paper, laid them out on the desk and filled my fountain pen with ink. I copied down the greeting from Ms. Han’s letter.
Hello.
An hour passed but the only thing written on the sheet of paper was
Hello.
I sat there staring into the dried tip of my pen, then put the cap back on. I inserted the letter between the pages of my photo album from back then, then got up from my chair.

This year, we accepted no new students in the program—The sentence flowed out from the letter and stepped into me as I rose from the desk. The program will probably be closed next year, I imagine. Just a trace, disappearing into the story.

I took out a songbook from the shelf and as I bent down to lie prone on the floor, lifted myself up and called J. I heard her twinkling laughter.

“So you’ve sent in your manuscript.”

“No.”

Silence.

“Let me sing you a song.”

“Let me hear it.”

“Ring-a-ding last summer we met by the sea . . . Ring-a-ding all the things we had to say . . . Ring-a-ding but the night was so short.”

Just as the current class has Teacher Han Gyeong-sin, we had Teacher Choe Hong-i. The one who had said to me, Why don’t you try writing a novel. He is no longer my homeroom teacher, but in class, while we copy his notes from the blackboard, he paces back and forth between the rows of desks, then leaves a book on my desk. It has a red cover. I stare at it for a long time. Printed at the top is the phrase
Voicing Our History.

Below is a solid black line, and the title in large black type:
Action and Literature.
Below, I read for the first time, the word “grassroots.”
Magazine-style Publication at the Forefront of Grassroots Literary Activism, Inaugural Issue.
Poetry. Fiction. Special Features. Criticism. Vol. 1. 1980. Jeonyewon Publishing. I, eighteen years old, flip through the pages but have no idea what the words mean. I find a work of fiction and start reading. “Mr. Gang from Our Village,” by Yi Mun-gu.

Before our factory shuts down, the cram school where Oldest Brother teaches, wearing his wig, is forced to close. A nationwide ban, abrupt and unexpected, on extracurricular private tutoring. Oldest Brother had been excited at the prospect of renting an additional room for us by extending his summer teaching hours, but with the tutoring ban, he is now an unemployed man.

“You guys will have to provide for me now.” He takes off his wig and hangs it on the other side of the attic door, putting on a weary smile.

Summer vacation. I, eighteen years old, am sleeping in our country home. Father has closed his shop and is now concentrating
on farming. No good with a scythe and no good at weaving straw baskets, Father tunes in to the agricultural report on the radio each morning. He marks the important facts on the Farmers’ Co-op calendar on the wall. There is the sound of Mother making breakfast in the kitchen. When I get up, Father calls my name in a low voice. I am about to head to the kitchen but turn around and sit next to Father. He takes down a box from the top of the wardrobe. To my surprise, my letters to Chang spill out of the box. My face flushes red.

“When your mom first said something’s going on with you and Chang, I didn’t really listen . . .” Father pushes the letters toward his eighteen-year-old daughter. “Now I’m not saying something’s really going on between you and Chang, but once you start sending letters and stuff, you’ll both get attached to each other and . . . Your mom, she’s terribly worried, you see.”

Father, who has never played the role of the ill-spirited parent, sounds all muffled.

“Your mom, you see!”

He keeps blaming Mom.

“When it’s time for the mailman to arrive, she walks out to the main street to wait, to take your letters to Chang. Now, the mailman brings your letters straight to your mom.”

I say nothing.

“To think that you’re waiting for his reply, not knowing any of this . . .” In my embarrassment and anger and distress, I break into tears. “There’re no parents in this world that wish their child unwell.”

I pick up the letters one by one without saying a word and go to the other room. Not knowing any of this, I had been waiting everyday for Chang’s reply. I had felt a bitter grudge as I waited. Thinking, “It’s because I’m a factory girl, isn’t it?” And when my grudge subsided somewhat, I would write another letter. All through spring, all through summer, that was what I had been doing, repeatedly. But this was what Mom had been up to?

Not knowing that Father has told me everything about the letters, all through my vacation Mom keeps asking, “Is anything the matter? What is it?” I do not speak a word. I do not answer when Mom calls. I do not even touch the chicken that Mom has boiled for me. Mom, feeling upset, takes it out on Father.

“This is why children need to grow up in their parents’ bosoms, no matter what. Just look at her! Already she thinks nothing of what I have to say. All bitter that she’s being put through a difficult life, I bet. Just wait until she’s older. She’s gonna look away when we run into her on the street. Wonder who she takes after? Prickly as a summer rash she is!”

She might talk like this, but since I’ll be heading back to the city the next day on the train, Mom keeps circling me all day, trying to get to eat something. When she serves up a plate of zucchini pancakes, I turn away. Unable to take it anymore, she hollers at me, demanding to know where I picked up such an attitude.

“Just what kind of a person would do that, who? What kind of a daughter glares at her mother like some ruffian?”

I turn around and face her as I shout. “You don’t know anything!”

This results in a misunderstanding, pushing things in an unexpected direction.

“You’re right, I’m a foolish know-nothing, that’s all I am.” Mom’s eyes fill up with tears.

“Is it so bad what I have done?” Teardrops fall from her dark eyes. “I knew when I took you to Seoul that I’m guilty for this wretched life of mine!”

Little Brother, who had been sitting by my side, pushes me away and goes over to Mom. “Mom, don’t cry, don’t.”

“Sending you, still only a girl, to stay with your fierce-tempered brothers . . . always wondering if the three of you are getting by or arguing or eating at each mealtime . . . if it weren’t so far away, I could look in more often but . . . Every time I cook, I think of you and I’m so tormented, I go weak in my knees. You’re
still young, got so much growing up to do, but I’ve turned you into a kitchen maid for your brothers, that’s what I tell myself, so how could my heart afford a single day of sun?”

I stand outside Chang’s front gate. Chang looks like he’s returning after a night bath in the brook, carrying a soapbox in his hand. We walk together toward the railroad. We sit down by the embankment. Summer night. Stars glitter. A train speeds through the dark. The long, brightly lit train reminds me of the embankment abloom with flowers. I have inside my pocket the letters that were never delivered. Each time a breeze blows past, the scent of soap floats from Chang to me. He tells me he’s taken up painting. That he’s planning to go to an art college.

Painting? I had never heard Chang mention anything about painting. Out of the blue, he insists that we should both go to college. College? I am unable to answer as I pick at the letters inside my pocket, the letters that were never delivered to him.

“What kind of paintings are you working on?”