This Burns My Heart (17 page)

Na-yeong looked back toward the house. “I should tell appa. They don’t really know what happened. Appa!” Na-yeong called out, hoping to alert her father. But Soo-Ja pulled her forward as she bent her body back like a rag doll. “Appa!”

Soo-Ja kept dragging Na-yeong with her, until the others were too far away to hear them. They passed block after block, on their way to the central marketplace. The streets were empty, some unpaved, and they could feel the dried-up mud on the ground softening the blow of their heavy steps. The sky grew darker by the minute, and they saw people in the distance scurry home, to their warm floors and family dinners. It was only she, it seemed, who stalked forth in the night, like the sole woman awake in a town of sleeping souls. Soo-Ja had never moved with such sense of purpose before. For she knew, as long as she kept walking, kept moving, kept looking, Hana would be closer to safety. It was only if she gave up, and stopped trying, that she knew Hana would be in danger. A few minutes later, Soo-Ja imagined, Mother-in-law would come out looking for them, but all she’d find would be the memory of their bodies, their shapes left behind like the outline of a ghost.

When Soo-Ja and Na-yeong arrived at the marketplace, Soo-Ja experienced not déjà vu but the strange feeling that she had never been there before, as if the town were simply a diorama, and it had been rearranged only a minute before by its restless owner. The streets were still vibrantly alive, now filled with food stands on every corner, their little red plastic curtains cordoning off the sizzling kimchee pancakes and vegetable-filled sausages being served with glasses of soju. You could barely see the hardy stand owners buried inside their heavy jackets and hats, cheeks glowing red from the alternating cold and heat, working the three-burner stoves only inches away from their customers—tired-looking fishermen who ate heartily by the counters.

Though night had fallen, the streets were not dark. Some of the closed businesses kept their windows lit for another few hours, along with the small revolving sausage-shaped signs above their doors, with their rotating strips of colors. Soo-Ja felt as if she’d left the countryside and was now in the big city, full of faces that seemed familiar but belonged to strangers. She could not imagine Hana here on her own, although she did see some children standing behind boxes of apples, trying to sell them, jumping back and forth and blowing into their own bare hands to keep warm.

“It was here,” Na-yeong said, pointing to a small patch of grass below a maple tree, two or three steps away from a closed tobacco shop.

“Are you sure?” Soo-Ja asked her, still holding her arm.

Na-yeong looked as if on the verge of tears. Soo-Ja was not bothered by the fact that she had, in essence, kidnapped her sister-in-law. She squinted her eyes, looking at the area Na-yeong pointed at, as if she could see not just the people in front of her right then, but everyone who had walked by or stood there earlier in the day, including Hana.

After Na-yeong nodded again and pointed to the spot, Soo-Ja let go of her. She began to canvass the area, looking absurd, she knew, with her long hair falling over her face. Her brown scarf, initially wrapped around her shoulders, now almost swept the ground, and her white blouse, once impeccably ironed, was now wrinkled and spotted. The day’s mishaps, it seemed, had chosen to leave marks all over her. She was not dressed for this cold weather, and she froze a little bit each time the bitter wind blew in her direction.

Soo-Ja felt as if the way to find her daughter was to provide the right answer to a riddle.
I know you are here somewhere. You couldn’t have gone very far. I can find you. If I look in the right place, I can find you. I will look the way a mother does. I will bring purity of heart to this search.

Soo-Ja started to call out her daughter’s name again. “Hana!” She looked all around her, at all the little girls, one of whom might turn and reward her with a look of recognition. Soo-Ja waved at the adults, one of whom maybe had found her Hana earlier and was waiting for her mother to come claim her. It was that simple, Soo-Ja imagined. Any minute now, she would hear her daughter’s voice call out to her and this would end. “Hana!”

Soo-Ja’s cries became more and more panicked. She started to walk around the marketplace, circling it a few times, stopping people and asking if they had seen a lost child. Strangers sitting by the food stands started to look in her direction and point, and soon she realized it was not sympathy in their eyes, but irritation and disgust. As she approached them, they would immediately shake their heads and bury their noses in their steaming bowls of soup. Some of the women, mistaking Soo-Ja for a beggar, grabbed on to their own children, wanting to protect them from her. She was made to feel like a woman sick with some terrible malady, one that could be easily contracted. One misguided look and her fate could become theirs. But she could not stop; she had to ask every single person in that square if they’d seen her daughter.

Soo-Ja could not stand the growing panic she felt as she gathered more and more nos, each shake of their heads getting her farther and farther away from Hana. As she approached men walking toward her, they would avoid eye contact and sidestep, quickly striding past her. Some of the women listened, especially the older grandmas, their eyes full of kindness. A couple of them offered her a glass of water and warm wheat dumplings, which she refused.

Na-yeong reached for her, looking spent and worn out. “I’m going home,” she said, her voice cracking a little.

“Good.” Soo-Ja nodded. “You go home and tell your father to let Min know what happened. Min can come help me look for our daughter. They will take it more seriously, at the police station, if it’s the father who’s there to talk to them.”

“Now you’ve really gone insane,” said Na-yeong, her voice rising. She sounded so much like Mother-in-law, thought Soo-Ja. That was a favorite word of hers—insane.
Michyeoss-eo
. “You want my brother to go to the police? They’ll arrest him right then and there. He can’t leave his hiding place!”

“Then am I supposed to look for Hana alone? And why aren’t your mother and father here to help me? She’s not just my daughter, she’s also their
sonjattal
!” Soo-Ja knew the only people who’d help her were her own parents and her brothers, but they were three hours away by train, and it was night already.

“I want to go home! I don’t think you’re going to find her!”

Soo-Ja grabbed Na-yeong by the arms again and shook her. “I
am
going to find Hana. What you just said, I’m going to forget it ever came out of your mouth. Because if I don’t watch myself, I might just kill you with my bare hands.”

Na-yeong cowered, averting her gaze. Two or three people stopped to watch their argument. Upon seeing them, Soo-Ja let go of Na-yeong and asked them if they had seen a little girl on her own. They shook their heads. Soo-Ja did not notice Na-yeong running away. She felt as if her sight had narrowed into a circle, and everything outside it had turned into a blur.

All night, Soo-Ja kept wandering through the streets, reaching for strangers who were like buoys in the cold sea, only to be tossed back by them every time, her body growing more and more unsteady as the imaginary waves beat against her. She was in such agony she could hardly stand. And the more desperate she became, the more cruel and cold the people around her grew, until boys began laughing at her and the food stand keepers started to shoo her away from customers. She was like the lowliest of beggars, pleading with no dignity or self-respect, but with tears streaming down her face and questions that were not questions but cries. She needed to tell everyone that her daughter was missing; the pain inside her was so big, the only way to bear it was to give a slice of it to every single person in the world.

Piercing cold air, cold enough to break.

An hour or so after midnight, the town square started to become more and more deserted—noodle stand owners packing red tents, fruit peddlers putting away bruised pears, drunks staggering elsewhere—until not a soul walked the streets other than Soo-Ja, shivering in the wind. Snow began to fall little by little, dancing in front of her. Initially, it acted like a friend, glad to see her. Then, more like a spurned lover, quickly covering the ground, and turning it thick and slippery. She had nowhere to go, not a
won
in her pockets. Soo-Ja could not go back to her in-laws’. She could not add to the distance between her daughter and herself. But
she also could not stay in a single spot for very long, as the lashing cold made every drawn breath feel like swallowing ice. So Soo-Ja kept walking in circles, going nowhere, helpless. Eventually, she felt her hands and feet freeze up, and had the distinct feeling she might topple over, stiff, like a statue.

When Soo-Ja had only five more steps left in her, she took those halting steps to the front of the medical office at the end of the street. She had felt such guilt earlier that now she did not think she’d dare come back to the place where this nightmare had begun. But, hoping that there might be a night nurse on call, Soo-Ja made her way there and knocked on the door, tasting the bitter ice in her mouth. She waited a few seconds, but no one came. The nurses, too, must have gone home. She banged on the door until her knuckles were almost stripped raw. Whatever hope she had left in her vanished instantly. Soo-Ja had been saving that door as a last alternative, but it had never been an alternative to begin with. With not an ounce of energy left in her body, Soo-Ja collapsed and fell to the ground. She pushed against the cold glass of the window, trying to pull herself up, but to no avail. She opened her mouth wide, having trouble breathing. She sucked in the air hungrily, but nothing happened. She closed her eyes, unconscious, as the snow began to bury her.

S
oo-Ja opened her eyes, waking to find a tall, plump, upside-down nurse looking at her. The woman reached for her and lifted her up, as strong as a rhino. Putting Soo-Ja’s arm over her shoulder, she led her into the unbelievably warm office. Soo-Ja could still barely breathe, but she knew she would not die of frostbite and that certainty thawed her lungs. To see kindness—someone looking down and helping you—may be the world’s best placebo. Over the course of the next few minutes, as the nurse sat her down on a chair, placed her feet in a basin of hot water, and rubbed her cold hands with her warm ones, Soo-Ja felt her temperature start to return to normal. She didn’t know what did it—the warm water or simply the look on that woman’s face, smiling at her as if she were her long-lost sister.

“I’m sorry I didn’t answer the door sooner! I was practically falling asleep, and didn’t know if the knocking was real or only a dream,” said the nurse. Soo-Ja smiled at her, to say it didn’t matter and she was just grateful she was there. “I’m here all alone at night and usually there’s a patient or two, but with the bad snowstorm, it seems even the medical emergencies have decided to wait.”

Soo-Ja drank green tea from the cup the nurse poured for her. She could feel her fingers again. The pain in her chest began to dissipate.

“Looks like our new President is making a lot of promises,” said the
nurse, settling into a chair, with the newspaper before her face. “He says he’s going to start plans for reunification, give us a self-supporting economy, and turn horse dung into paper money! Imagine that. Personally, I voted for the other fella. I think Chung Hee Park is just a greedy powermonger, like the rest of them. He’s an autocrat, another Syngman Rhee, just minus the stupid Austrian wife. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a puppet of the North Koreans. Did you hear he went to the funeral of the American president? Now, that man didn’t like Park alive, and I can’t imagine he likes him any better dead.”

“Nurse…”

“What is it?” asked the nurse, lowering the newspaper and glancing over at Soo-Ja.

“I need to leave
before
the doctor comes,” said Soo-Ja, still in too much pain to move from her chair.

The nurse misunderstood her. “Dr. Yul-Bok Kim will be here early in the morning, in just a few hours, in fact, and he’ll be able to examine you. He went on a trip, but is back now. What you have, you think it can wait?”

“No, no. What I mean is, I need to be gone
before
he arrives. I have to go. I have to leave. Even if it’s still snowing. Please warn me if he’s on his way.”

The nurse seemed confused, and Soo-Ja could tell she was looking at her for signs of dementia. She could see the question forming on the nurse’s lips:
What were you doing walking around the snow-covered streets at one in the morning?
But the nurse simply nodded and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re gone before he gets here.”

“Soo-Ja…”

Soo-Ja woke with a start, stunned to hear Yul’s voice. He switched the light on, and the ceiling turned into white dotted mazes. Soo-Ja looked down and spotted her green hospital gown peeking from under a blanket. She was lying on one of three small beds, each facing a different wall.

“Yul…” Soo-Ja mumbled.

He wore his civilian clothes, but with a doctor’s robe over them. He didn’t look much different from the last time she’d seen him. Except now he wore his hair longer, and his clothes looked almost European in their cut. He still had the same serious eyes, the dimples on his cheeks, and the tall, muscular frame of a fighter.

“Your clothes are drying by the boiler,” said Yul. “I had the nurse wash them. I’ll have her bring them back to you.”

“I need to go,” said Soo-Ja.

“Listen… I heard what happened,” said Yul.

“How?”

“There’s a waiting room outside. People talk.”

Soo-Ja looked around her. “Please. Tell the nurse to bring back my clothes. I need to go look for my daughter.”

“Have you gone to the village police yet?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“That’s the first thing we’ll do then.”

Soo-Ja looked at him, surprised. “
We?
Are you going to help me?”

“Yes, I am,” said Yul forcefully.

“My husband will be here at any moment now… And my in-laws, too.”