The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (35 page)

New first year students begin the Special Program for Industrial Workers, which used to be only us. We move up to a classroom on the second floor. Classes are rearranged, so we part with several of the familiar faces and encounter new ones. Mi-seo, who reads Hegel, left-handed An Hyang-suk, and Ha Gye-suk, who always opened the classroom door apologetically, arriving an hour late, are once again in my class. Cousin is once again in a different class. Hui-jae
eonni
no longer comes to school. Ever since the new year started, I have rarely seem Hui-jae. In the bus on our way home from school, or on the overpass as we head back to our lone room after stopping by the market, it is actually Cousin who often brings up her absence.

“Have you seen Hui-jae?”

I shake my head.

“I wonder if she’s quitting school.” Cousin’s voice sticks in my ears. Many students have given up moving on to their second year in the program. There had already been quite a few students who did not return to school after summer break during our first year. At night, as we head up to our lone room, we find the lock still attached on Hui-jae door.

My teacher, Mr. Choe Hong-i. With the start of the new school year, he is appointed to another class. With this shift in
teachers, I lose interest in school right away, as if I had been attending school only for the purpose of seeing him.

I receive a box of candies from left-handed An Hyang-suk. What are these for, so out of the blue? I glance at An Hyang-suk with a curious expression. She whispers to me apologetically.

“Let’s be desk partners again this year.”

Left-handed An Hyang-suk is four years older than eighteen-year-old me. I do not answer, since I wanted to sit with Mi-seo, who was only a year older than me, rather than with An Hyang-suk.

“It’s that I feel bad, you know. You’re used to it now but if I have to share the desk with someone else, I’ll have to go through it all over again, like my elbow bumping into hers each time we write, and being stared at.”

Our new homeroom teacher teaches physics. He does not assign seats to us. He tells us to sit where we would like as we come, the short students in the front and the tall ones in the back. Ha Gye-suk takes the seat at the very back, next to the door. This makes her feel a little less apologetic in the second year. Even when she arrives to class late, the seat is left untaken. There are even times when someone leaves the door ajar so that she can sneak in more easily. When I take the seat at the last row at the other end of the classroom, with a view of the flower bed, An Hyang-suk hesitantly comes to sit next to me.

From my new seat, I have a distant view of the music teacher’s room and the bench and the statue of a student in summer uniform. I think of Teacher Choe. Now I get to see him only during language arts. Sometimes during break I go to the teachers’ office and take a peek inside. I catch a glimpse of Teacher Choe, sitting in a far corner with his back turned, then I walk back.

One day, Hui-jae
eonni
’s homeroom teacher asks to see me. According to other students from Hui-jae’s factory, every day
at five in the afternoons she says she’s going to school and after changing into her uniform, she leaves work with everyone else, but she never shows up at school, he says, then asks me what is going on.

“It’s been a long time since I last saw her.” I am curious to know what is going on as well.

“I heard you live in the same house?”

It is difficult to understand. I don’t know how it is, either, that we live in the same house but do not see each other. I live in the same house with many others, but I barely recall making eye contact with other tenants. The only memories that I have are of people walking out of their doors or fastening their locks. Of the sound of the radio heard from time to time, or of people chatting in a group; of the smell of cooking instant
ramyeon
noodles late at night; of people lined up outside the bathroom each morning, their heads hanging low in silence; of lamplight flowing outside from their rooms, or of unlit windows.

Among the numerous kitchen doors in that house that opened up to the street, Hui-jae’s door was the only one that I, eighteen years old, walked in and out of, out of intimacy. But ever since then, this door was locked. It was locked when I checked as I arrived home at night, or when left for work in the morning.

“Does she seem to come home at night?”

I am not sure of this, either. All I have seen is the lock on her door. The teacher says that if she keeps missing school without notice, he has to report it to her factory. According to regulations for the Special Program for Industrial Workers, students cannot quit their jobs while they are at school. In other words, one can attend school only when one is working. If a student attended school after leaving her job, the factory retaliated by submitting to the school a petition seeking the student’s expulsion.

When she hears about my meeting with Hui-jae’s teacher, Cousin’s looks worried.

“Hui-jae’s homeroom teacher is the type
to stick to principle, I heard. They say he actually expels students when the factories petition for it.”

For three days after this, past midnight, I head down to the first floor to check. Hoping she’d be back at this hour. But Hui-jae
eonni
’s door is still locked.

Unexpectedly, it is Oldest Brother who brings word of spotting Hui-jae. He grimaces as he tells me he saw her return at dawn, dressed in her uniform. Saying she didn’t seem that way, but perhaps she’s prone to bad behavior.

“That’s not true.” Right away, I wave him off. “She’s not like that.”

Cousin gives me a sideways glance as I adamantly defend Hui-jae. One night I try to stay awake and listen for the gate. Could it be around four
A.M.
? I hear someone gently push the gate open. I get up quietly and go downstairs. Hui-jae is inserting the key to her lock and I expect her to be surprised, but she merely gives me a faint smile. Her braids, oily from going too long without washing, cling heavily under her ears. Looking at her under the light, I notice that her face is bloated like dough raised with baking soda. Bits of loose thread stick to her braids. If the school reports to her factory that she hasn’t been coming to school, will she be fired? Not knowing what to say to her now that I’ve seen her, I just stand there gazing at her back as she washes her face.

The next morning, she is standing in the early morning air. Her hair braided and wearing her uniform, her schoolbag in hand, she stands there waiting for Cousin and me. For the first time in a while, we set out into the alley together. Only when we reach the overpass I deliver her homeroom teacher’s message.

“Things like school don’t matter anymore.”

She breathes in the morning air and takes her first steps up the overpass.

“You’re not coming to school anymore?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I need to make money.”

Cousin repeats, “Money?” Cousin asks why Hui-jae is still in uniform then.

“Because I have to leave work at that hour.”

“Where do you go to make money?”

“I found this job.”

I come to a stop on the steps up the overpass. The sky is somber and soaked with water. Job? But she already has a job at the factory. What other job?

“Are you saying . . . ?”

Cousin tries to ask, but Hui-jae cuts in. I only now catch what Cousin is trying to say and poke her on the side. There are people like that at work sometimes. People who leave their assembly line workstation chairs for a new job. They leave their workstations for teahouses or bars. When Cousin asked, “Are you saying . . . ,” that was what her words implied. Cousin tries to add to her question, but Hui-jae cuts in.

“It’s at a place called Jinhui Tailoring by the entrance of Industrial Complex Number Two. I signed on to work from six to eleven o’clock at night, but there’s too much work recently and many times we had to pull all-nighters. Even when we wrapped around two in the morning, I couldn’t get off because of the curfew.” Her voice was like she was drifting in shallow sleep.

I don’t remember what measures the school took regarding Hui-jae. Or the reason why she had to give up school and work two jobs. I think she mentioned she wanted to bring her younger brother to live with her, who was currently in the care of her stepfather, that she planned to find a room for the two of them, but I don’t recall the details. I do think I heard her say something like, “Phone operator” or something like that. It is laughable that all I remember of her dark, difficult days was her faint voice. All that remains is her voice, feeble like a flower petal left between the pages of a book I read long ago, dried so crisp that it brittles away the moment you find it.

I decide to get up an hour early out of the blue, around the time when Oldest Brother opens the attic door to get his wig, to make time for a trip to the bathhouse. It is either a Tuesday or a Wednesday morning, following a weekend when I had to miss my bath because of an extra shift. I am rubbing myself with soap under the shower when I feel her reach for my shoulder. A smile. That smile of hers, the faint smile in my faint, faint memory.

“I dozed off and ran the needle into my hand . . . at the break of dawn.”

She soaks her red, swollen hand in a basin and again gives me a faint smile. I feel a dizziness erupting. When I catch sight of her swollen hand, it is as if I can hear, amidst the sound of the sprinkling water, the rattle and rumble of the sewing machine that drove the needle into her hand. The water drops that fall on my body feel like drops of water bursting out. I rub soap on her back and see a spot in faint blue spread wide in the small of her back toward her hips. Like a nameless, deserted island on a map, the spot, resembling an ink stain, extends into a faint trail, all the way to her belly.

“You know what my childhood nickname was?”

She turns around and asks, as if she felt my stare.

“What was it?”

“. . . Miss Spots.”

It’s nothing very funny, but she and I giggle aloud, spilling the water in the wash basin. Miss Spots . . . Miss Spots . . . Together we burst into laughter, then I laugh, latching on to the tail end of her laughter, then she laughs, latching on to the tail end of my laughter. We giggle until our jaws feel stiff, as if there were nothing funnier in this world. Has she come straight to the bathhouse from Jinhui Tailoring? She is wearing her uniform when we’re walking back home. While I cook breakfast, she lies down in her uniform and sleeps.

When I wake her up to go to work, her eyes are as red as her hand that the needle drove into.

The Seoul Spring. The union leader wears a bright expression. So does Miss Lee, who often eats lunch with him. Union members wear ribbons that read, “Stop destroying the union,” and participate in protests. In the mirrors by the tap or in the bathroom, when Cousin sees them adjust their ribbons, as if they’ve just remembered, after washing their hands or combing their hair, she turns glum. The Seoul Spring pushes the union leader once again to stage a fight with those who ride in black sedans, on the freedom to refuse overtime and extra hours, on paid vacation, eight-hour shifts, severance pay, pay raises. Miss Lee’s face turns dark when she sees us. She says there’s so much we don’t know. That our ignorance is a fortunate thing for those who ride in black sedans. Miss Lee’s voice is gloomy but clear. Her voice carries faith, and despair as well.