Drifting House (21 page)

They watch the tongue of the alley, waiting for the fans made
of peacock feathers and the ­wood-carved marvel carried in by the four assistants that Mina has promised. They wait, the tips of their toes and ears white with cold. They wait and wait, but no palanquin comes. Still, no one remembers this when with the wave of Mina’s wand, snowflakes fall into their hopeful palms.

When Mina wakes up in darkness, the smell of rice wine curls off her mother’s breath and surrounds her like a fuzzy blanket.

Tell me a story about my father, Mina says. And waits to be dazzled.

Don’t ask me about your father, Mrs. Lim says. She twists off her wedding ring that Mina insists she still wear, at least at home, and holds the gold band up to the ceiling light. Her smooth face sags as she tucks her chin in; it is the size of a raindrop in the band’s reflection.

She says, I’ve told you and told you again. He’s not your real father. And he’s dead.

But he is the only father that Mina remembers. The portrait of the man that she has grown up with has been turned over; she turns it upright so his wide ­almond-shaped eyes and his white teeth gleam back at her. Somewhere off the grid of the picture are his large brown hands and the glowing brown shoes that she likes to stand on top of. Her mother says he has gone from Nam to heaven, but Mina refuses to believe that he will not return to Seoul.

Don’t cry! Mina says, her face deep in the folds of her pillow. If you don’t cry, he’ll come back. Why are you crying?

I’m crying because I’m sad.

Mina is an unsympathetic ­nine-year-old. She bolts up, crosses her arms, and says, You shouldn’t bring strange men to Daddy’s house.

The shouting surges from the bedroom at sunrise and continues past noon. In the refrigerator Mina spies a tub of dried anchovies, puffed rice, a plate of dried cuttlefish, and leftover fish egg stew. No real food, no creamy chocolate milk or hot dogs, none of the foods that her father used to produce from brown paper bags. She lies flat on the floor and pushes around in a protective circle while listening to the enemy’s voice barrel through the door. Something is thrown, broken. A slap, a scream.
You think you’re the only woman in Seoul?
the man with ­sunflower-colored hair says
.
Then her mother’s voice:
I knew you were another American, too soft to fight his own wars alone so you make our people go.

You think anyone wants this war?

Mina chants her hand into a bamboo wand, commanding the cuttlefish to change into Hershey’s chocolate, for the shouts to become a song, but all that transforms is the door now gasping open and the man’s bare toe, a raw ginseng stump that reminds her of a goblin’s lump, boring into Mina’s rib cage.

He is Mina’s avowed enemy, the slouching American soldier with eyes as green as sea grass who has begun appearing whenever
her mother sings, I’m lonely, I’m so lonely, over breakfast. He calls her mother the shirt lady because he picks up his laundry from her every week. He says it unkindly. He has her father’s stubble of hair but not his kindness, and a laugh gloomy with the war living inside his organs. Nam this, Nam that, is how all his sentences begin. Mina wants to meet this Nam.

Her mother’s hand is over her jaw, swelling an apple red. On her neck, a cut the length of a razor blade.

Mina knows what to do. She bites the enemy on his hairy arm just over his shirt cuff, imagining beef marinated in soy sauce, crunchy chicken’s feet, as she sinks her teeth in as far as she can. So far, it will hurt for him to pull on a sweater. With one hand he twirls her up into a merry–go–round as her mother watches. Crazy as Mommy, he says.

My daddy will eat you for this, Mina shouts, though she was four years old when her father left home, and cannot remember what his voice sounds like anymore. She swerves out of the enemy’s grip. Her fists become a goblin’s club, but still he says, You’re old enough now, Little Miss Mina, you pretty little fool. You think your daddy’s coming back for you?

Since Mr. Kwon has returned from Vietnam at the war’s end, his son Junho has begun stealing coins from kids younger than him. He kicks and scatters jacks across the dirt road when the kids play, although he had revered the game a month ago. His legs below his shorts are laced with ­belt-strap marks.

What if your father had never returned? a friend asks him one day.

Junho’s face, as long and bleak as a Goguryeo warrior in comic books, brightens. Then he wouldn’t be here now, he says.

What shall we do about Junho’s family? As lotus lanterns are being strung across cables from street to street for the Day the Buddha Arrived, the neighborhood’s women ask themselves this. They admire the paper lanterns swinging above their heads, and share stories about the disturbances coming from his family’s house and how they have seen the oldest boy and his little brother out on the streets playing at midnight, at their age.
Did you know his mother’s having an affair with the local electrician? That’s ­centuries-old news. They’ve been seen in sheds, cargo trucks, when the lover can’t scrape up the money for an hour in a room somewhere.
Do you think the man pays her?
They know that Junho’s father drinks away the grocery money as he flounders from bar to bar, trying to erase the war images that no one wants to talk about. All have grown up in the ruins of the Korean War, all have suffered. But this is a new Korea. The city has risen from the rubble, there are jobs for anyone willing to work six days a week, so long as you ignore the sudden disappearances of outspoken citizens. There is even money for the revived ­citywide Buddha’s Birthday lantern parade! No one wants to talk about yet another war.

When the ­green-eyed man stops making his stealthy visits, Mrs. Lim takes Mina to wander through the corridors of the department store. It is Sunday afternoon, and some of the ­best-dressed women in Seoul have gathered at this church of fashion. Mina
dashes around, furtively touching the pyramid of Spam cans stacked in the center of the marbled foyer, their tinsel a towering symbol of modernity. Mrs. Lim watches the women trapped, moving inside the miraculous wooden boxes. They look so safe, she says as her voice breaks. They look so beautiful.

On the screens, remote women parade the perfect flips of their chignons, their bobs. Their ­black-and-white faces are more demure than the women Mina knows: the neighborhood’s ­broad-shouldered, loudmouthed
ajeummas
who rummage the market’s garbage for ­near-rotten stalks of spring onions and yellowing lettuce heads because they are free, and discard their dignity to work, feed, and clothe their families through the hunger years. When these women elbow their way down the aisle past the gloved ­bus-ticket girl, even the men are afraid of their forceful smiles.