This Burns My Heart (15 page)

That night as they lay on their own mats to sleep (though sleep would not come till much later), she felt for the first time that they were husband and wife. More so than the day of their wedding, or the night of their honeymoon, this was when it felt like they were truly spouses: they were on the same side; they shared a decision; they were in this as one. They had decided together not to speak to her father—not as a compromise but as an agreement—and the meaning of that weighed upon them both. In that moment, Min may have lost his freedom, but he earned her gratitude, and perhaps even her love; she could see the equation being one he could live with. Besides, he wasn’t in jail yet. All was not lost. They had watched enough movies to know rescue could come; it would
be delayed just long enough for the hero and heroine to learn something about each other.

“So where were you tonight? What happened?” There was no recrimination in Min’s voice as he lay next to her.

Soo-Ja stared straight ahead, at the ceiling. If the roof blew away, she could see stars. “I went to help a friend. I tried to help her get out of a bad marriage.”

“What makes it a bad marriage?”

“Her husband isn’t nice to her. But she’s afraid to leave, so I tried to help her.”

“Do you think the husband knows she wants to leave?”

“I think husbands always know, don’t they? They know everything that is taking place,” said Soo-Ja.

“And wives, too? Do wives know what their husbands are thinking?”

“Yes, they do. They both know. But sometimes they choose not to say anything. Because they think things can change.”

“But they’re wrong?” asked Min. “Things
can’t
change?”

“I think if both people try…”

Min was silent for a moment, and she could hear his chest heaving. Finally, when he spoke, his words landed as quietly as a single drop of dew on a leaf. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he did not need to say anything more.

She realized, much to her surprise, that she had already forgiven him.

B
y December of that year, Soo-Ja had a new president, a new constitution, and a missing husband. The police had come by several times by then, and each time they told them Min had fled to Japan, and they had no contact with him. The officers, of course, did not believe them, and searched the house every time. Flashlights made circles in the kitchen furnace, and turned visible the excrement in the outhouse. Gloved hands dug through the armoires in every room, clothes flying in the air like grasshoppers. Standing behind them with her hands locked, Soo-Ja imagined Min as an invisible man, rushing from room to room, only steps ahead of the investigators, in narrow misses. She rooted for him, though she knew, of course, exactly where he was: hiding with a relative in the port town of Pusan, in case he had to hop into a boat and flee, in fact, to Japan. Soo-Ja had offered to go with him, but Min insisted that he hide alone—it would be easier, he said, though she suspected he simply did not want to inconvenience his parents by depriving them of their daughter-in-law.

Over time, Soo-Ja grew tired of the police’s constant visits, as if they were mad guests who liked to play at scavenger hunts, undoing the stone paths she had so painstakingly arranged, or stepping on floors wearing shoes, much to her horror. Her fear of them quickly became annoyance, especially one time when the lead officer (a new one, when the case was
reassigned) dared to reach for Hana, and asked her if she had seen her daddy. She thought it was cruel to ask a three-year-old that, though later she wondered if she’d been simply covering up for her own guilt at seeing Hana deprived of her father.

Soo-Ja didn’t know exactly where Min was, though one of his letters mentioned a house with a thatched roof, slightly belowground, in a remote village, and that to get there one had to cross a potato field, some rice paddies, and a river. He was terribly bored, he said, unable to work or leave the house. There was no radio there, and the only time he saw someone was once or twice a week when his old uncle would come by with pots full of watery rice and a little banchan: cubed turnips laced with grains of sand, and pickled cabbage more sour than spicy. She felt like writing back,
Can’t they boil an egg for you? Or kill a chicken?
Soo-Ja wondered if this was any better than jail, but as she lay in bed alone at night, thinking about it, she figured it was. At least he could breathe in some fresh air, and watch the sun rise and fall. And she knew Min was safe. Her only worry for the moment was that Min would alienate his uncle. She could see the uncle start out feeling sorry or protective of Min, but then growing tired of him. Maybe the uncle would not come by as often, or not be as nice to Min, frustrating and frustrated as he was, living the life of a dog tied to a post.

Around Christmas, Soo-Ja decided she should visit Min. It had been almost two months, and Soo-Ja felt that it would be safe. She wanted to check on his state, and to have him see Hana, as she knew the separation was tough on both of them. How do you explain to a three-year-old that the police are after her father, and he has to hide for the time being? Soo-Ja knew how much Hana wanted to sit on her father’s familiar lap, and how much Min wanted to kiss his daughter’s cheeks, turning her upside down and making her giggle.

When Soo-Ja told Father-in-law of her plans, he nodded and said that he would come, too, along with Mother-in-law and the others, as if this were someone’s strange idea of a family vacation. Soo-Ja told him she should go on her own, and this was just so Hana could see her father. But Father-in-law looked terribly hurt, and said he missed Min much more than Hana missed her daddy. Soo-Ja at first couldn’t believe he
was comparing his feelings to those of a toddler, but finally she relented, amazed that he’d already forgotten the very reason Min had to hide in the first place. Father-in-law felt no guilt for sacrificing his son, nor—her second hope—any gratitude toward him. She wondered if he wrestled with those demons on his own, in the dark, until she figured that was wishful thinking on her part. Regret and pangs of conscience are feelings we assign to others to make the world seem a little more fair, to even things out a little and provide consolation. In reality, those who do wrong to us never think about us as much as we think about them, and that is the ultimate irony: their deeds live inside us, festering, while they live out in the world, plucking peaches off trees, biting juicily into them, their minds on things lovely and sweet.

Min looked much changed—his almost adolescent gait gone, his old swagger replaced by an older man’s contemplative stillness. He’d started smoking more often, he informed her within minutes of her arrival, and each drag of his cigarette seemed like a reproach to her. Min had lost weight, and his clothes—a light brown pullover sweater with crew neck and dark brown pleated gabardine pants—hung over him like an older brother’s hand-me-downs. He seemed to her like someone who had come to life only upon her wish, but in doing so made her aware of her initial impulse—to long for him, endlessly, rather than actually have this awkward, foreign body inches away from her.

Father-in-law and the others had stayed behind in his brother’s house near the harbor; Soo-Ja and Hana alone had made the crossing in the middle of the night, knees deep into freezing lakes, past wet marshes and muddy banks, before arriving at the secluded one-room house by an abandoned potato field. The house was miles away from the main roads, in a mostly unpopulated area, and the few people who did live nearby—farmers and rice paddy workers—did not think to bother Min. Although, he told Soo-Ja in a paranoid manner, those who did pass by him acted as if they knew he was there hiding, and were careful not to get too close, keeping the river and the night between them.

Soo-Ja figured this was the worst kind of solitude, but she could see
how it might become comfortable after a while. She had a vague feeling that less than an hour after their arrival, Min already wanted her and Hana to go—even though he had waited two months for this visit; even though this was the first time since getting there that he got to speak to a human being other than his uncle; even though as soon as they left, he would no doubt start missing them again. Soo-Ja felt like the two of them were bothering him, reminding him of all the things he couldn’t do. Whatever his little routines were now—counting cans by the window, doing push-ups against the floor, reading the same books over and over—they had probably become his reality, and maybe more reliable to him than this mirage of wife and daughter appearing just so it could grow fainter and disappear again.

Soo-Ja watched Min play with Hana, as she sat on his lap, her little back resting against his belly as she played with a pair of dice she’d found on the floor. Hana had a habit of biting her lower lip in intense concentration, and when she’d notice him staring at her, she’d look up and smile briefly, as if thankful for the attention, before going back to busying her hands.

The two of them did this for a while, until Hana noticed Min’s plate of food, filled with the fruits and fried meats that Soo-Ja had brought him. Hana reached for a sweet potato; it was, Soo-Ja knew, one of her daughter’s favorite things to eat. Hana dug her fingers into it clumsily, mashing it when she tried to peel the skin off. Soo-Ja thought of helping her, but she liked watching her daughter do things on her own. Hana loved to mimic. She’d pretend, for instance, to do laundry, and when her mother sat Indian-style by the water pump, Hana would do the same, rolling up her shirt to her upper arms, and wiping the imaginary sweat off her forehead.

When Hana finished peeling the sweet potato, Soo-Ja thought her daughter would eat it, but instead Hana split it into three parts. She held one piece toward her mother, one toward her father, and a small chunk for herself.

“Thank you, Hana,” said Soo-Ja, touched by her daughter’s gesture.

“Thank you, Hana,” said Min, taking his portion. He did not put the
potato in his mouth; instead, he stared at it, as if staring at his daughter’s love.

Soo-Ja held back a tear, as she realized how much father and daughter missed each other. All three of them ate in silence, Soo-Ja and Min watching Hana. They appreciated the illusion of normalcy, eager to forget that they were miles and miles away from their home, in a tiny room scarcely bigger than an outhouse. Soo-Ja realized at that moment that the biggest luxury in life was the ability to make plans, to count on the future as if it were something pinned down on a map. She wanted to speak in terms of years, not days; know exactly when Min would return, when they could resume their lives. How strange, she thought, that she longed, desperately, for old routines that once drove her to tears—tiresome and dull as her days had been, their certainty had made them bearable. This was like holding your breath in a bad dream, and when you woke up, you found out you still could not breathe out.

During their days in Pusan, Min’s family stayed at Min’s uncle’s house, about a good hour away from the hiding place. Because they were cherished guests, they were given the best and largest room in the house. Soo-Ja had no idea where the uncle and his family—a wife and a five-year-old boy—slept, since she saw only two other small rooms in the house, both of which were cluttered with old furniture, worn-out bicycles, dusty boxes of rice and noodles, and a surprisingly large collection of vinyl records, along with an old Victrola.

This meant all of them—Father-in-law, Mother-in-law, Na-yeong, Chung-Ho, Du-Ho, In-Ho, Hana, and Soo-Ja—slept on the floor in one room, one next to the other, in a row of horizontal lines. This wasn’t something to argue over, or to be discussed. It was simply accepted, and many families, who could not afford to rent houses with more than one room, did this routinely, with couples and their relatives cooking and living and sleeping in the same room.

While everyone else seemed to thrive in this arrangement, Soo-Ja found the lack of privacy and solitude unbearable. It was too cold to stay
outside for very long, and in other rooms, Soo-Ja felt like she got in her uncle’s way. So she had to be in the same space with Father-in-law and Mother-in-law for hours on end, and she found herself unable to hide her irritation at them. This tableau would be her life if something,
God forbid
, she thought, happened to Min.

As Soo-Ja played with Hana on her lap, she watched her family. In one corner, the boys played a game of
baduk.
In another, Mother-in-law clipped Na-yeong’s fingernails. Across from them, Father-in-law sat by himself under a window. Soo-Ja noticed that he had a strange ability to be doing nothing but making himself look busy, in the same way emperors and kings—who were just sitting most of the time—managed to as well.

“It would be a waste to come all the way here and not do some sightseeing. Tomorrow we’ll go to the Haundae Tourist Hotel. We’ll pretend to be guests, and bathe in some of their medicinal hot spring water,” said Father-in-law.

Soo-Ja looked at him in disbelief. “What about your son? You should go visit him while you’re here.”

Father-in-law waved his backscratcher at her. “Don’t tell me what I should do.”

“What you should do is go to the police and tell them what you did,” said Soo-Ja. “Tell them how you let him take the blame for you.”

“Min’s lucky he never got arrested for something or other before,” said Father-in-law. “He’s been getting in trouble since he was seven years old. I had to grease a lot of palms to keep him out of jail.”

Soo-Ja could see how much he wanted to yell at her, but something held him back. She realized then that he still had hopes that she would get her father’s money for him.

“He’s your son. You can’t put him through this,” Soo-Ja said, directing this to the others, hoping to elicit their rebellion.

“You’re trying to undo something that already happened. I go to the police and turn myself in, things would turn out ugly very quick. Why do you think the police have been so lackadaisical looking for Min? Why do you think Min is still free? They
know
, Soo-Ja. They know because sons have sacrificed themselves for their fathers for centuries. If anyone’s at
fault here, it isn’t me, for exercising my parental privileges, but Min, for not offering himself first.”