Waxing Moon (19 page)

32

It was all her fault, Mistress Yee said regretfully, blowing her nose in her handkerchief. “As the saying goes, the darkest spot resides in the shadow right under the lamp. I didn’t know I was breeding an enemy in my own home,” she sobbed, referring to her negligence in overseeing her maid. After Mirae had been expelled with a restraining order, Mistress Yee promised Mr. O that she would be more careful in the future.

She had interviewed a few dozen applicants for the position in the past several months. But no one so far was good enough. Young ones were too young, old women were too old, some were too ugly, some were too fat, some were too skinny, some seemed too lazy, and so on. Mistress Yee didn’t realize it, but she was looking for someone like Mirae.

The rumors about Mirae varied. Some said she had died in the mountains. Some said she had married a merchant and left for the North.

Amid all the rumors about her, Mirae had gone home, if she could call it home. Her father had not been known, and her mother had died when she was little, but she had an aunt. They had lived together until the aunt placed Mirae with Mistress Yee and married a widower twice as old as she was. He was an oil presser and owned a shop in the capital city.

When Mirae found her aunt’s house behind the oil shop, she collapsed on the wooden sidewalk in front of it. A shopper with her baby on her back gasped. Another shopper asked, horrified, “Is she dead?” The oil presser immediately said, “No! She is alive.” And he carried Mirae inside his house behind the shop.

“Come on out!” he shouted.

Mirae’s aunt, Gomsun, came out of the sliding door, frowning. “Stop yelling. The twins are sleeping!” she squealed, pulling up and tying her skirt around her chest. “What on earth is that?” she asked, looking at her husband, who was carrying a young woman on his back.

“I have no idea. She just fell in front of our shop. Do something about it,” he said, unloading Mirae in the yard. Then he hurried back to the shop, where now more people gathered to hear about the woman who had collapsed and died right there, moments earlier.

Gomsun came close, unconcerned, and examined Mirae. She didn’t recognize her niece. They hadn’t seen each other for some years. Gomsun tapped on her and said, “Open your eyes and speak.”

Feebly, Mirae said, “Aunt Gomsun.” And she lost consciousness again.

“Oh, my little Mirae!” Gomsun shouted. “What has happened to you?” she wailed. She shook her niece and poured a gourd of cold water on her face. And Mirae twitched her lips, but she didn’t wake. Gomsun dragged her up to the entrance floor and cried, “My little Mirae! What’s happened to you?”

Her twin boys woke up and cried. Ignoring them, Gomsun rushed to the shop, turned around to come back to fetch her twins, and then ran to the local doctor.

“Oh, Dr. Chun, please. Please, you must come with me,” Gomsun said noisily.

“Calm down and explain what’s going on,” the old doctor said, twiddling with his long white beard.

“My niece, you see, I have a niece,” she said. “I haven’t seen her for so long. Anyhow, she is sick. She has just arrived in the heat. She collapsed and doesn’t seem to want to wake up,” Gomsun cried.

Dr. Chun got up slowly and said, “Go ahead and go. I will come soon. Make her drink water.”

“Please hurry,” Gomsun said, reluctantly stepping out of the house.

Gomsun walked, looking back every now and then to see if the doctor was following. When she spotted the ancient doctor with his errand boy as she turned around at the East Gate Marketplace, she felt relieved. So she cursed all the way home. Business hadn’t been good lately, and a funeral would mean no business for a few days. She and her husband couldn’t afford that.

When she arrived home, she found Mirae still lying on the floor, but she was now conscious.

“What happened? Is this my little Mirae?” Gomsun sat down and laid her twins on the floor. She rubbed Mirae’s cheeks and cried. “Why, you are a woman now!”

Mirae closed her eyes.

“Poor thing,” Gomsun said. “What happened?” Gomsun asked curiously. “How’s your mistress?”

Mirae opened her eyes and turned her head around to face the wall. Her eyes were burning at the mention of “your mistress.”

Dr. Chun arrived with his errand boy. He closed his eyes and felt Mirae’s pulse. He finally said, “She is exhausted. Her kidneys are very weak. Recently, she has experienced a stressful event. She needs rest and good food. Above all, though, she needs to feel better about things in general.”

“Whatever happened to her skin?” Gomsun asked. That was the first thing she had noticed.

“Recently I suffered from a skin disease. Some said it was chicken pox. But the herbalist who concocted brew for me said it wasn’t. His remedy didn’t work very well, though,” Mirae said.

“You had chicken pox when you were a baby!” her aunt said.

“Did I?” Mirae felt relieved. Then obviously it was nothing permanent. Her scars would go away. She closed her eyes and sighed.

“Too much heat in her system. Cold cucumber soup. Kelp soup, radish, black sesame seeds, watermelon, and berries. These are all good things for her. Apply black sesame oil to her skin. The scars will disappear gradually. I will send my boy back with some herbs. Brew them and let her take it three times a day for the next forty days,” Dr. Chun said.

Gomsun converted forty days of herbal brew into currency in her mind. And she said, “Forty days! She is just exhausted from the long trip in the heat. She is young. I am sure she will recover soon.”

“If she had been old like me, she would have died. Her kidneys are very weak. Her condition will affect her liver if it’s not taken care of immediately,” the doctor warned her. He left with his errand boy.

Gomsun ran after them to say something about the cost of the medicine. But she only ended up saying, “Thank you, Dr. Chun. Thank you for coming.”

That evening, Gomsun and her husband had a fight under their blanket. How in the world are we to feed another mouth? That was her husband’s point. And Gomsun was frustrated. She agreed with him, but still she felt offended. None of the visitors from his side of the family had ever caused a conflict so serious as this between them. So she turned around and stopped speaking to her husband altogether.

Mirae drank the brew and ate some rice with steamed radish. She couldn’t sleep that night; she listened to her aunt argue with her husband. There were seven children in the house, aged between zero and eight, and five of them were sleeping with Mirae in the same room. Some of them snored, some of them ground their teeth, one talked in her dreams, and another sleepwalked.

“How long are you staying, my darling Mirae?” Gomsun asked the next morning at breakfast. Her husband was roasting sesame seeds in a huge cylindrical container on the stove in the preparation room.

Mirae didn’t reply.

After the argument with her husband the previous night, Gomsun had thought that Mirae could work to pay for her room and board.

“It’s not that you are unwelcome here. I just thought you might want to keep busy. Energy begets energy, if you know what I’m saying. And we always need helping hands here,” Gomsun said, stuffing her mouth with rice.

Mirae didn’t speak for a few days, which baffled Gomsun and her husband. But she did work. She got up early in the morning to help roast the seeds and nuts. Taking a gigantic wooden spatula, she stirred them occasionally, staring at the fire burning tempestuously in the stove. She also helped with packaging the various oils. She cleaned the preparation room at the end of the day. In the evening when she cleaned, she applied leftover black sesame oil to her skin and thought about what to do with her life. Surely she wouldn’t be an apprentice at the oil shop for too long.

When she was finished with the herbal medicine, Mirae looked refreshed and healthy again. Gomsun sent her out to the shop to be the shop assistant, and sales doubled within a few days. Some customers came just to look at her. Gomsun was ecstatic. She and her husband counted their money under the blanket every night now, giggling and clapping instead of arguing about their unexpected long-term visitor. One day, Gomsun’s husband brought home a pair of new shoes and some blue fabric for Mirae. He said, “For all your work.” And he grinned self-consciously.

Stupefied, Gomsun stood there with her jawbone unfastened. She wanted to yell at someone, but she couldn’t decide whom she was angry with. Her husband was the kind who didn’t remember her birthday, let alone buy presents for her. But she just said, smiling, to her niece, “The blue suits you well, sweetheart.” But on the way to the seamstress’s, not far from the oil shop, Gomsun asked coldly what Mirae’s plan was for the future.

“There is someone waiting for me back in the country,” Mirae said.

Gomsun turned around and said, “Oh, really?”

“It was a joke, Auntie. Go in. I want you to get yourself measured for an outfit. Blue isn’t really my color. You have it,” Mirae said, smiling.

“Oh, how kind of you. But are you sure?” Gomsun said.

“I am dead sure. Your husband bought it for you, really. But then, to be polite, he offered it to me,” Mirae said.

Gomsun decided to believe that. She was measured for a skirt.

On the way back, Mirae confessed, “I am thinking about leaving.”

“Oh no! Why?”

“Would you like me to stay?” Mirae asked.

Gomsun didn’t quite know what to say. Did she want her pretty niece to stay or to leave?

“Why, of course! You are the only blood relative I’ve got. I want you to live with us the rest of my life,” Gomsun declared, surprising herself.

“How nice of you, Auntie. Then I need to go back and fetch my stuff at Mistress Yee’s house. But I need some money for the travel,” Mirae said. “I will pay you back later by working in the shop.”

“I will pay for your travel expenses, naturally,” Gomsun said, imagining herself in the blue outfit.

“But your husband would be angry,” Mirae said cautiously.

“I won’t tell him then,” she assured her niece.

Back in the shop, Mirae thanked Gomsun’s husband for his generosity.

“Whatever you need,” he said, smiling.

“I just told Auntie I was going back to my previous employer to collect what I left there. May I borrow some money for my travels? I will come back and work harder than before,” Mirae said.

“Of course I will. No need to pay it back. Just don’t tell your aunt. She is obsessed with money. She loves money more than she loves me,” he said and laughed.

“I won’t tell her anything,” Mirae said, smiling brightly.

33

Something interesting needed to happen or else Mistress Yee was going to die of the doldrums. Every day was the same. Her husband was preoccupied with the housekeeping business all of a sudden. Her maids were stupid. Mirae, she now realized, was irreplaceable. Many interviews with candidates from all over the province had convinced her of that. And the weather was gorgeous, making her extra fidgety.

She and her husband sat together, drinking tea and eating a red bean snack.

“I think I need to do a good deed so Buwon will recover speedily,” Mistress Yee said.

Mr. O reluctantly accepted her proposal.

So the next day Mistress Yee set off in a carriage to the largest harbor city on the west coast of the peninsula. She was accompanied by Nani and two male armed servants. Cherry trees blossomed as far as her eye could see. She couldn’t remember the last time she had traveled. It was good to be away from home and to see new places. Life at home had recently been dreadfully tedious, with one shaman ritual after another to make the trapped spirit leave for the place where it belonged, and the endless visits from renowned doctors for her disabled son.

Buwon was able to crawl now and responsive with a smile to every sound. The size of his head had shrunk, but his upper lip was still deformed, and one of his legs was now obviously shorter than the other. Mistress Yee could not bring herself to feel connected to her son. She had begun to dread the afternoon visits with him. Often she made excuses not to see him at all.

Spring was her favorite season, every living thing competing for life and showing off its colors. Against her husband’s warning of possible taunting or an attack by angry peasants, she took off her veil to let the pedestrians admire her beauty. People paid respect as they passed because she was dressed exquisitely and accompanied by a maid and servants.

After seeing what had happened to Mirae, Nani tensed up around Mistress Yee. She never knew when her mistress would erupt, accusing her of something she might or might not have done. But today Mistress Yee was in a good mood. She frequently asked Nani to pluck a certain flower and bring it to her. She would smell it and toss it away on the path.

When they finally arrived in the harbor city, where a large ship from China was docked, Mistress Yee waited at the pier while one of the male servants was making a deal with a fisherman.

“Nani, look at the men over there. Look at their hats.” Mistress Yee giggled. “Is it true that Chinese men don’t change their clothes until they wear out?” She looked at them with a curious expression.

“Go and smell them. Come back and tell me what they smell like,” she ordered Nani.

Flabbergasted, Nani blushed at her mistress’s ridiculous request.

“Go and smell them, I said!” Mistress Yee snapped, fanning herself vigorously.

“Yes, Mistress,” Nani said and slowly made her way toward the seamen buying their lunch at an open grill.

The vendor spoke fluent Chinese. Nani was mesmerized by the intonations of the language. One of the men asked her something, which she couldn’t comprehend, and she ran back to her mistress, a little frightened. Mistress Yee watched her maid, amused.

“So?” she asked.

“They smelled like fish,” Nani managed to say.

“
Everything
smells like fish here, you idiot!” Mistress Yee said. But she didn’t go on scolding her, for a bearded vendor, trying to sell a pearl, distracted her.

“Yes, three thousand fish,” the male servant said.

Shocked, the fisherman repeated, “Three thousand fish?”

“Yes, my lady wants three thousand fish to be freed,” he emphasized.

“I’ve got ten buckets of sardines here. Could be a thousand fish altogether. I will go and catch some more,” the copper-faced fisherman said. The most recent time this had happened to him it was a childless woman, but she wanted to buy only one hundred fish to free. People who believe in an afterlife should do this a little more often
,
he thought. Some people believed that the fish could have been people in past lives. That meant if they freed the fish, then they would receive blessing from saving lives and their own wishes would come true in return.

“Let me ask my lady if she agrees to that,” the servant said and returned to Mistress Yee.

“No, we don’t have time for him to go and catch more fish. Get another man with three thousand fish,” Mistress Yee snapped.

The male servant went back to the crowd of fishermen. The rumor had spread now, so everyone wanted to talk to the rich lady’s servant, offering his deal. Finally, three fishermen put their fish together, claiming that the total was three thousand. Mistress Yee demanded that they count them. They dutifully counted out three thousand fish.

One of the fishermen took Mistress Yee and Nani on his boat. He rowed some distance away from the pier and said, “This is a good spot, my lady.”

“Let them out,” Mistress Yee ordered.

The fisherman poured two buckets into the deep green water, saying, “Long live the sardines!”

The sun was brilliant and the fish were swimming around the boat in a frenzy.

“Save that one,” Mistress Yee said, pointing to one of the sardines in the third and last bucket.

“What for, my lady?” the fisherman asked, puzzled.

“So I can have it for lunch,” she said, grinning mischievously.

“But—” he said and stopped. Didn’t she want to save the lives of these fish for her own blessing?

Suddenly, Mistress Yee looked up and saw a figure intently looking down from the ship that was about to depart. It was Blane.

The sun blinded her. She looked down to balance herself. She looked up again, but now there was no one. She looked at the sardine that she planned to eat. It flipped helplessly in the slippery tin bucket. She looked up once again and thought for a moment. And then she freed the last sardine on a nameless impulse.

“That was good, my lady,” the fisherman said, pleased.

“Nani, do you see someone up there?” Mistress Yee asked.

“No, mistress,” Nani said, squinting her eyes. But she saw someone else on the pier as she spoke.

The fisherman poured out the contents of the third bucket. Then he rowed Mistress Yee and Nani back to shore. The small boat docked, and Mistress Yee got off the boat with the help of the fisherman. He smelled bad.

“Take me to a good place to eat. I am starving,” Mistress Yee said to her male servants, who were waiting for her at the pier. The Chinese men were boarding, and there was an announcement, accompanied by a drum, that the ship was departing in a short while.

Nani, meanwhile, had her eyes trained on Min. He was still standing on the deck, his head lowered.

The male servants took Mistress Yee and Nani to a small restaurant with a fine reputation. It was a part of a rather small but fancy inn. Mistress Yee was served poached bass, and Nani made an excuse to leave her for a moment. Outside, the male servants were having steamed mussels.

Nani knew that Min would be watching for her from someplace around there, so she walked rapidly to a less crowded area. Min caught up with her in no time. His clothes in tatters, he reeked of stale sweat and who knew what.

“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked.

Min groaned and explained briefly with hand gestures, but he had no way to describe Blane’s appearance. So he skipped that part, but Nani got the gist of his message.

“You are going around helping other people when
you
are in great need of help? Do you know what happened to Mirae?” Nani frowned. “She got eighty lashes of the whip. That was some time ago, right after you disappeared. She’s been kicked out of the house. All we know is that she might be dead,” Nani said, without telling him about the nature of Mirae’s punishment.

Tears welled up in Nani’s eyes. Min looked at her, concerned. He thought that she feared what might happen to her in the future. But Nani was remembering something that Mirae had said. After the beating, Mirae was locked in the storage room with her wrists and feet tied up. Nani brought her ointment for her bruises and something to drink. She dug a pebble out of Mirae’s mouth with her fingers. The smooth stone had been forced into it before the beating to prevent her from screaming or biting her tongue to commit suicide. She fed her the broth. Mirae drank it and then said, “I ate your boy.” At first, Nani thought that Mirae was delirious. But Mirae’s look of malicious glee quickly changed Nani’s mind. Humiliated and most notoriously abused, Mirae wanted to pass the pain on to someone else. “Dig your own grave,” Nani spat coldly. As she got up, Mirae began to laugh hysterically. She taunted Nani with details of her dalliance with Min. Even after Nani had left the storage room, Mirae went on telling the story, knowing that Nani was behind the door, listening with heart-piercing pain.

Nani wanted to say many things but couldn’t say a word. Min stood there, wiggling his big toe, which peeped out of his straw shoe. His state was no better than that of a beggar. He was looking over at the man who whetted knives and tools for the fishermen. The blade he was honing on the whetstone glinted in the sun.

“I am going,” Nani warned him.

Min didn’t turn to look at her.

She pulled his sleeve to get his attention. “I am leaving,” Nani said, placing a coin in his sleeve. But Min refused to take it. He had money left after he had paid the ship fare for Blane. He pulled out a pouch from inside his trousers and showed the money to her.

“Where did you get it?” she asked suspiciously. But she couldn’t linger any longer. Mistress Yee might be looking for her.

“What are you going to do now?” Nani asked, thinking that she didn’t care what he did with his life. But she choked on her words and tears rolled down her cheeks.

Min shook her shoulder and looked into her eyes. He wanted to live there with her.

“I can’t stay here with you,” Nani said. If only he had asked her the year before! She would have gladly gone with him to the ends of the earth. But now she felt differently.

“Don’t let Mistress Yee see you. Her servants can catch you instantly. You know how she is. She’s gotten worse. Go! And don’t follow me,” Nani said.

Min went over to a vendor who sold rice malt pumpkin candy, and bought a few candies. He offered them to Nani.

“Go,” Nani said again, taking only one. If they were meant to be together, they would meet again like two rivers at a confluence. She turned toward the restaurant. Min didn’t follow her.

Mistress Yee was taking a short nap in the private room where she had dined. The low table had been removed. Nani sat on the attached bench before the entrance to the private room, staring at her mistress’s shoes. Suddenly, she conjured up the sharp pain that she had felt when Mistress Yee whacked her head with a shoe on the night of the first shamanic ritual. Nani had become Mistress Yee’s favorite dartboard.

Thinking of Min in rags, filthy from head to toe, Nani felt a pang in the middle of her chest, but she didn’t feel like chasing after him. When Mirae had revealed their frivolous affair, Nani had cursed him to hell. She realized now, though, that she didn’t hate him. On the contrary, she thought that she would always love him. For the first time, she realized that she didn’t have to live in the same nest with a person in order to love him.

Mistress Yee woke up with a sharp pain in her abdomen. A doctor was summoned to the inn to check on her, and a messenger on a horse was sent to deliver a message to Mr. O that his wife was staying another day in the harbor city due to her illness.

After a treatment of acupuncture and herbal medicine, Mistress Yee fell asleep rather early that evening, and the male servants snuck out to an open pub by the water where squid catchers were getting ready for night fishing.

Nani went out to see if by chance Min was still around. And there he was, standing under the eave of a large store that sold souvenirs for foreign seamen and travelers. The store still had its lights on. When he spotted Nani, Min was so glad that his face turned tragic.

“Did you have dinner?” Nani asked him.

Rubbing his tummy, he nodded. Earlier he had grilled sardines and a bowl of rice.

They strolled on the pier, but there were too many drunkards, so they walked down to the shore where mussels covered the rocks and seaweed gathered thickly around their feet.

Min pulled something from his pouch. It was a jade necklace. Nani looked at it. She had never owned such finery.

“What good is a jade necklace to a maid!” she said sarcastically, her eyes still fixed on the pretty stone.

He put it around her neck, and Nani didn’t protest. They sat down on a dry spot among many empty shells.

Nani wanted to ask him whether what Mirae had said about a passionate fling was true.

Min wanted to hold Nani. When Min joined the subversive peasant group to fight against the aristocrats, he had given up his future with Nani. He had purposefully stayed away from her, but now that he had defected from the movement, he wanted her again. When he was ordered to set Mr. O’s house on fire, he couldn’t bring himself to do it because Nani was there. He didn’t want to be a hero. His dream turned out to be small: he wanted to be happy. And he couldn’t imagine happiness without Nani.

Mirae couldn’t have made up the story about Min. Nani mentally reviewed all the things that Mirae had said to her. Every word had pierced her heart, and all of those words were still there. They had taken up residence in her heart.

After he had put Blane on the ship, he had been planning to return to Mr. O’s house and elope with Nani. Meeting her in this harbor city had served to show him, once more, that Nani was his fate.

There was now no noise but the soothing waves, spreading their foamy blanket again and again. The air felt cool and calm. Nani was tired. Min stretched his arm around her shoulder. Nani allowed it, but she realized that she was no longer desperate for his touch.