Tales of a Korean Grandmother (8 page)

A KOREAN
CINDERELLA

T
HUMPITY-THUMP
! Thumpity-thump! The song of the ironing sticks sounded throughout the Inner Court. On the narrow veranda outside her apartment, the mother of Ok Cha and Yong Tu and one of their aunts sat facing each other. Their white-stockinged feet were tucked comfortably under their full white skirts. Their hands flew deftly up and down, their ironing sticks pounding the strips of fine white grass linen folded upon the low oblong ironing stone between them.

Not far away two maidservants also were ironing. They were pounding smooth the red, green, and blue garments of the boys and girls of the household.

"The maids can be trusted to launder the clothing of the women and children," her mother said to Ok Cha who stood near by watching her, "but it is better that I myself iron the outer coat of the Master of this House. It would not be fitting that he should go forth from our gate with wrinkles in his garments."

Thumpity-thump! Thumpity-thump! On and on sang the ironing clubs, two in each pair of hands.

"We are never done ironing here, Halmoni," Ok Cha said to her grandmother, who had come to see that the women were doing their work well. "Why do grown-up people always wear white? It grows dirty so quickly."

"Why should it be, save that it is the custom?" the old woman replied. "Some say that in earlier days men and women, like children, wore bright-colored garments. Then it so happened that the Queen died, and all laid aside their reds, blues, and greens and put on the white of sadness. No sooner was their time of mourning for the Queen over than the King died. Then all must put on their white mourning garments again. There was one death after another in that royal family, and the people of our nation became so used to their white clothes that they never changed back to bright colors again.

"But I never believed that tale, blessed girl. White is the color we love best of all. It stands for goodness and wisdom. Our people have preferred it above all other colors for thousands of years. That is why we like to wear white."

The women of the Inner Court of the Kim family were seldom idle. Each garment had to be ripped apart before it was laundered. And it had to be sewed up again when it had been ironed. It was far easier, they thought, to give the proper shine to flat pieces of cloth than to coats, jackets, skirts, and full pantaloons.

"How would you like to do all our family ironing, Little Ok Cha?" the Korean grandmother asked, as she walked with the child around the corner of the women's houses and into the Garden of Green Gems.

"I could never do that, Halmoni. Nobody could." Ok Cha looked horrified at the very thought.

"But that is what the poor girl, Nan Yang, or Orchid Blossom, had to do for her cruel stepmother and her selfish stepsisters. The story was told to me by my grandmother, and I have no doubt she spoke truly. But then, of course. Nan Yang was bigger than you. She had seen fifteen New Years, and she was old enough to be married."

"Tell me the story about Nan Yang, Halmoni. Let's sit down under the pear tree, here in the shade."

All about the old woman and the little girl were the flowers of early summer. The soft air was filled with the perfume of the garden, and it was pleasantly cool under the pear tree.

"Nan Yang was the daughter of a village official, my precious," Halmoni began. "Her own mother had died, and her father had married again, a shrew of a woman with two vain, selfish daughters.

"Ai
-go,
those newcomers had no love nor pity for that poor motherless Nan Yang. They made her work from the first light of the dawn to the coming of dark, and even far, far into the night. She must clean the rice, and she must fetch the water. She must bring the fuel for the hungry mouth of the stove, and she must sweep clean the courtyard, all by herself.

"Instead of using her own name, Nan Yang, or Orchid Blossom, they nicknamed her 'Dirty Pig.' As everyone knows, that is even worse than to be called a dog. Oh, they found many ways to make the girl weep.

"When her other work was at last done, they gave her the ironing sticks. To the sound of her pounding, these three selfish creatures fell asleep night after night. Nan Yang's father could do nothing, for he feared the sharp tongue of his new wife, as much as did the poor girl.

"Now in their country village one day, there was to be a fine fair. All the people were going—to hear the bright music, to see the comic acrobats, and to listen to the good tales of the traveling storyteller. There would be candy and cakes and other strange foods to buy.

"'You may go to the fair, Dirty Pig,' the unkind stepmother said to Nan Yang, 'but only when you have husked this sack of rice, and only when you have filled this cracked jar with fresh water.'

"Nan Yang's father, clad in his new hat and his best long white coat, looked very sad. But he dared not oppose his shrewish wife. Poor Nan Yang wept as she watched them all depart for the fair, and she envied her stepsisters in their pretty new dresses of bright pink and green.

"With a sigh the sad girl began the tasks her stepmother had set her. But she had scarcely poured the sack of unhusked rice out on the ground when there was an odd swishing noise and a deafening twittering. These strange sounds came from the wings and the throats of ten thousand little birds, which lighted upon the great pile of rice. With their tiny sharp beaks the birds pecked off the husks. Almost before Nan Yang could dry her tears, the rice grains were white and clean. She had only to put them back into the sack again.

"Taking hope, the girl turned next to the broken water jar. But when she saw its great crack, she began to weep. 'However much water I pour into that jar, it will never be full,' she said aloud. But when she came back from the well with her first bucket, she found the crack mended with firm, hardened clay. No doubt it was a good
tokgabi
from the kitchen rafters who had taken pity upon her, like the ten thousand birds. No doubt it was that
tokgabi,
too, who bewitched this first bucket so that somehow there poured from it enough water to fill the great jar to the brim.

"Now Nan Yang could go to the fair to hear the music, to see the acrobats, and to listen to the storytellers' good tales. You can imagine, my pigeon, how surprised and displeased her stepmother and her stepsisters were to see her there so happy and enjoying herself.

"The next feast in that village was a picnic on the hillsides to view the summer scenery.

"'You may go to the picnic, Dirty Pig,' her unkind stepmother said to Nan Yang, 'but only when you have dug out all the weeds in our rice field.' The cruel woman nodded her head, satisfied that the girl could never finish that task in time. And she had good reason to think this, for the rice field was large and the weeds were many.

"Nan Yang took up her hoe but when she struck its point into the very first clump of weeds, a huge black ox appeared close to her side. With mighty bites the animal dug all the weeds out of that field. In a dozen mouthfuls every weed had disappeared down its great throat.

"'Come with me, Orchid Blossom,' the huge black ox commanded. And it led the girl off to the hillside and into the woods.

"When Nan Yang came at last to the picnic, her basket was filled with the ripest, the rarest, and the most delicious of fruits. All tne picnickers marveled at its excellent flavor. They made much of Nan Yang, to her stepsisters' dismay.

"At home that evening her stepmother demanded that Nan Yang tell them how she had managed to rid the rice field of weeds and where she found the fruit.

"'We shall stay at home next time ourselves,' the selfish stepsisters declared when she told them the story. Nan Yang shall go ahead to the picnic before the black ox comes again.'"

"Did the black ox come to the selfish stepsisters, Halmoni?" Ok Cha asked when her grandmother paused to take breath.

"Yé,
the ox came, Jade Child," the Korean woman replied. "And it led the selfish stepsisters also off into the woods. But it was not as it had been with the dutiful Nan Yang. To follow the black ox, the two selfish sisters had to crawl through tangled thickets. The twigs pulled out their hair, and the thorns tore their fine clothing. Their sullen faces were scratched. There was blood on their soft, idle hands. They made a sorry sight when they arrived at the picnic place. And there was no fruit at all in their battered baskets."

THE
RABBIT
THAT RODE
ON A
TORTOISE

T
ENDER
green leaves cloaked the willow tree in the Garden of Green Gems beyond the Inner Court. Bright blossoms, like the pink-and-white clouds of the sunset, covered the fruit trees there. The waters of the little brook that fed the lotus pond was "clear as a teardrop," so Halmoni put it. On the damp garden path the earthworms had come forth to take their first looks at the Spring. All day the girls played blindman's buff and the boys spun their tops in the garden.

Out beyond the city the hillsides were carpeted with red, white, and purple azaleas. On bright afternoons little processions of picnickers wound their way out to them to view the mountains and valleys in their Spring beauty. Yong Tu had already brought back many azalea petals for the women to dry and use in making sweet, spicy cakes.

"Ai,
this is the happy season," Halmoni said to the children one morning. The old woman was sitting on the steps of her little veranda, breathing in the soft scented air of late Spring.

"And this is a happy day, Halmoni. It's the Eighth Day of the Fourth Month. You know what day that is?" Ok Cha looked eagerly into her grandmother's calm face. The old woman seemed thoughtful. There was a twinkle in her dark eyes, but she also tried to look puzzled.

"What day is this?" she asked. "Oh yes, it's the birthday of the Wise Teacher, the Great Buddha." She smiled at the little girl, for she knew well that this old meaning of the day was not what Ok Cha had in mind. She enjoyed gently teasing her beloved small granddaughter.

"No, Halmoni, no. It's the Day of the Toys. What toys have you bought for our holiday this year?" The Korean girl's black eyes danced with delight at the thought of the pleasures of this holiday that was particularly for the children like her.

"Call Yong Tu and the others and you shall see, curious one," the grandmother replied. She rose from the steps and went into her room.

The children came running. In their red, green, and blue jackets, pantaloons, and full skirts, they looked even gayer than the bright blossoms in the stone pots beside the veranda steps.

Out of the drawers of a small brassbound chest Halmoni took one toy after another. She set them down in the center of the circle made by the children, squatting down on the floor.

"For me, the tiger with the Mountain God on his back." Yong Tu made his choice first because he was the oldest.

The girls were playing blindman's buff in the Garden of Green Gems.

One of his boy cousins reached for a little clay whistle made in the shape of a dove. The hollow gray bird had a hole in its back and a mouthpiece in its tail, so that when its new owner blew it, there was the sound of a dove's call, "Coo-roo! Coo-roo!"

Even fifteen-year-old Mai Hee was not above taking part in this giving of the toys. She chose a clay horse with a gaily dressed singing girl, a
gesang,
sitting upon it. The
gesang
held a bright-colored umbrella over her head. Only such singing girls and country girls who worked in the rice fields could go about freely. Girls such as Mai Hee always traveled shut up in a sedan chair. Perhaps Mai Hee secretly envied these less fortunate girls their greater freedom.

"I'd like the rabbit that rides on the tortoise." Ok Cha chose the same little toy every year. "And I'd like Halmoni to tell us the story about him."

"A rabbit is a clever animal, blessed girl," the old grandmother began, taking the little toy up in her hands. "He was far more clever than the tortoise he rode upon, who thought to get the best of him.

"It was on the seashore one day that this rabbit saw a strange tortoise crawling towards him. Now all rabbits are curious, as you well know. And, being so curious, this one stopped hopping and wiggled its nose. It waited to see what the strange tortoise would do.

"'Have you eaten your honorable food, sir?' the tortoise greeted the rabbit, just as politely as if he had been a man.

"'Yé,
I have eaten. Have you been in peace, good sir?' the rabbit replied with a bow. 'What brings the Great Man here?'

"'I came to explore these green hillsides,' the tortoise replied. 'I have heard that the view they give of the sea is very fine. I, too, wish to admire it.'

"Does it please your honorable eyes?' the rabbit asked.

"'I find it very dull,' was the impolite answer. 'It cannot compare with the views of the sea from under the water. Here on the land there are no waving plants of clear green, like the finest jade, such as there are in the undersea gardens. Here are no hills of coral, no valleys nor plains brightened by royal processions of fishes with rainbow scales. You should see for yourself the many beauties and treasures of the Dragon King's watery realm.'

"'I should like to witness such wonders,' said the rabbit, whose curiosity once again had got the better of his good judgment. 'But I cannot swim. How should I travel there?'

"'You could swim there on my back, honorable rabbit,' the tortoise said persuasively, i go so slowly that you would not fall off, and I could teach you to breathe under the water as well as upon the land.'

"Now that tortoise, my grandchildren, spoke with honey upon his lips, but he had a knife in his heart. He meant no good to that rabbit, as you shall hear.

"You should know that the best-beloved daughter of the Dragon King had been ill for many a day. No one had been able to cure her. Not the great whale, nor yet the little shrimp. Though the king had offered a rich reward, none had succeeded in finding a way to drive the evil spirts out of her body.

"Then the tortoise had come forward, and said, 'I have heard, exalted sir, that the best cure for any ailment is the liver of a young rabbit. I know where I can find such a one. I think I can bring him here so that his liver may work the cure for your daughter.'

"The Dragon King had then renewed his hope of saving his daughter. He had sent the tortoise off to the seashore to bring back the rabbit. Now the tortoise is not very clever. Everyone knows that. Or why should he creep about dragging his tail in the dirt? But he was clever enough not to let the rabbit know why he was so anxious to ferry him down to the undersea palace of that Dragon King.

"As the story tells it, the rabbit did indeed become used to breathing under the water. He did indeed see shining wonders such as the tortoise had promised. His round eyes grew rounder at the sight of the gems and the treasures in the Dragon King's palace. He enjoyed himself greatly. But then he overheard one of the fish guards at the entrance to the Dragon King's court, say to another, 'Now that this rabbit has come, the Dragon King's daughter will surely recover. Today they will cut his liver out of his body. She will eat up his liver and she will be cured.'

"The dismayed rabbit gathered his wits quickly together. When they came to take out his liver, he showed no sign of fear.

"'Why did the tortoise not tell me it was my liver you wanted?' he said to the Dragon King, bowing politely. 'Did he not know that when Hananim made us rabbits, he gave us the power to take our livers out of our bodies? When I eat too much and my liver grows hot, I remove it and cool it in the blue ocean waves. When I met the tortoise, I had just put my liver out on the beach to dry in the sun. You might have had it without so much bother, for I do not really need it myself. But now we shall have to go all the way back to get it.'

"The Dragon King and the tortoise believed the words of the rabbit. With his tail dragging even lower in shame the tortoise let the rabbit mount again upon his back. And he ferried him across the ten thousand flashing blue waves to the safe, sunny beach.

"'Where does your liver lie, honorable rabbit?' asked the tortoise, who was eager to repair his mistake.

"'Ai, it's safe inside my body. And now I am safe, too!' the rabbit cried gaily, bounding away across the sand like a young deer.

"If rabbits can laugh, my children, I am sure that rabbit laughed until his long ears shook like a rooster's tail in a high wind.''