The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (38 page)

Hui-jae
eonni
. Just once, I saw her get angry.

Her anger was aimed at the landlady, wearing bejeweled rings on three of her fingers, including the amethyst one. Hui-jae, venting her anger at the landlady’s car parked in the alley, saying she should let out all the air from her tires.

“Listen to this. She tells me my electricity bill comes to two thousand and twenty won. So I hand her two thousand won and she asks me ‘where’s the twenty won.’ So I hand her a hundred. But she doesn’t give me back eighty won.”

I let out a little laugh. Hui-jae’s cheeks are flushed with anger.

“That’s what happened last month, and the month before that as well.”

Cousin, solid as a rock, never lets this happen. She makes sure she has enough change and counts up the exact sum to hand to the landlady.

Union Leader. I remember the things he said. “I wanted to make you realize that while you are working your night shifts, somewhere in this world, there are people soaking inside tubs full of warm water, in the bathroom attached to their rooms. I wanted you to at least realize that you are being sacrificed and that you seek out your rights, to learn to cherish yourself.”

Union Leader. He is tantalized by our inability to assert our rights, by our fear, which keeps us from fighting against low wages and low allowances. Rather, we worry we might lose our extra shifts and overtime work and have to do without the extra allowance. We do not know how to cherish ourselves. As he said, we are incapable of thinking that we are being sacrificed.

Miss Lee’s face is a pale yellow. “It’s all over.”

Seo-seon, who rejected the body search during the Seoul Spring, hands in her resignation.

“These people will grind up worms into our soured kimchi if they have to.”

Cousin whispers to me, “People say the world has gotten scary. They take you away for just opening your mouth. Send you off somewhere to be re-educated. They are the ones who took away Union Leader as well.”

On the factory bulletin board, the layoff list is announced. Most are union members from the stereo section. The hardworking Miss Lee’s name is on the first row of the list. Neither the production supervisor nor the chief production manager is ever seen again. The foreman is promoted to production supervisor. The foreman holds an assembly, taking over as supervisor. He explains that because exports have been cut, the three assembly lines will be reduced to one, which makes the layoffs and transfers
inevitable. The number one from Line B and the number two from Line C are assigned in to mine and Cousin’s place. Due to the transfers, the students and union members lose their positions. We come to work in the morning, but have no workstations to go sit at. The foreman, now supervisor, assembles those of us pacing between the lines and once again explains that we will be assigned positions each morning according to how work is progressing. Cousin and I, twenty and eighteen years old, respectively, who used to occupy the number one and number two positions respectively, on Line A, can no longer stay together. One day Cousin is sitting at the preparation line and I’m sitting next to an inspection division staff member waxing stereo cabinets with a flannel cloth. Another day Cousin is soldering, her movements clumsy. Smoke from the lead rises over Cousin’s head. On another day we are both sent to the TV section in another building to provide backup. Or so they say. There’s nothing to do once we get there. We stand around aimlessly, trying not to get in the way.

My heart hurts each time I pass the conveyor belt at Line A. Even when I hang my head low each time I pass it on my way to the restroom, the chair I used to sit in enters my vision. My workstation as well. The seat where I used to write letters to Chang each time the conveyor belt came to a stop. The spot where I used to place my copy of
The Dwarf Launches His Tiny Ball
, with a cover made from drawing paper. Ever since we lost our places, Cousin and I have been feeling glum. We keep circling the industrial complex on our way to work. Naturally we are often late. Our lame gestures, reminiscent of old day laborers standing around by the fire at a completed construction site. Things were better when we were complaining that the conveyor belt was moving so fast, protesting that we’re no machines. Back then, if our biceps turned hard and sore, all we needed to do was massage them.

As we pace around, our workstations lost, an awareness grows inside of me of the ignobility of human existence. When I had to
sit at the workstation and insert screws all the day, pulling down the air driver, I had no room for distraction. Now there is just one thing on my mind: that I be given a place to sit at work.

My heart was wounded by the sense of lameness, of not knowing where to go. Even after many years, when I am obliged to be somewhere crowded with people, the first thing I think about is this. Will there be a place for me there? If I feel things will not work, that I will once again be made lame, I would end up not going, thanks to my unconscious that has stopped growing.

My cousin, ice stuck between her toes, her hands red. My cousin, quick to turn sulky, or cheery, who would bawl out in fury at anyone, then hang her head low, gazing at the hole at the bottom of the power pole, hollowed out yellow by someone’s piss, pulls out the camera that was engraved in her heart, as if she has suddenly lost her sense of direction, throws it into the piss hole, and whispers to me. “I’m going to be a phone operator.”

“Phone operator? That’s Hui-jae
eonni
’s dream, not yours. Remember the night we left home? The night we said good-bye at the station to Auntie, who smelled of fish, you told me that you’re going to take pictures of the white birds sleeping in the forest.”

“Fat chance. You have to be born for that kind of thing.”

“That’s not true. You will get to do it one day if you never let yourself forget. If you forget your dream then it’s over. If you keep holding on to that longing, to get closer to your dream, you can do it. Keep getting closer and closer and some day you will be able to get to that forest. Even if you don’t get there, you will be near it.”

Furious, Cousin shouts at me. “Stop patronizing me. You think you’re so well read and smart? I can’t stand the sight of you. How dare you!”

This girl, my cousin. Even in the summer heat that called for sleeveless shirts, her arms would be covered with goose bumps.
Her twenty-one-year-old arms always appeared cold. Now those arms seem to rise up high, then fall with a slap on my cheek.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

I shout back. “If you stop going to school, I’ll tell Oldest Brother!”

“Go on, tell him! He’s
your
brother, not mine.”

“Oldest Brother is going to break your legs.”

Cousin is gasping hard as she glares at me. “He’s going to pack up your stuff and send you back to the country!”

My cousin leans back on the wall and starts to cry. “He doesn’t want me because I’m a factory girl.”

I, who had just been bawling and screaming, stand there with a blank expression.

“He says Yun Sun-im is a factory girl with a pretty face but I’m a factory girl and one with a homely face at that.”

A jerk, this student intern.

“And
he’s
not a factory guy?”

“He says he’s only interning. He’s going to college. So I’m going to be a phone operator. And I’m going to take the entrance qualification exam and attend college like him.” Cousin wipes her tears and bites her lips. “You won’t tell Oldest Brother, will you?”

I shake my head. Cousin has already signed up for courses at the Jongno Phone Operator Training School.

“When you take the exam and earn a certificate, you can get a job at the bank. At places like post offices, too.”

. . . Ah, places like banks or post offices.

Miss Lee and other laid-off workers continue coming in to work. They have submitted a petition to be reinstated on the grounds of wrongful dismissal, and stage protests. Each morning a scuffle takes place between the laid-off workers trying to get
in through the main entrance and the security guards trying to keep them out.

“What makes you think you can come to work when you don’t even have time cards!”

Those who sympathize with the petitioners for reinstatement on the grounds of wrongful dismissal are fired as well. From inside the main entrance of the factory, Miss Myeong gazes out at Miss Lee with her armed crossed. Arriving at work, Cousin looks away from the petitioners for reinstatement on the grounds of wrongful dismissal by glaring sideways at Miss Myeong.

I am now on my own. Hui-jae and Cousin have both grown distant from school. We leave work at five o’clock but I head for school and Cousin heads for the phone operator training school. I return alone to our lone room on the night roads, stopping by the market on my way.

Oldest Brother has no idea that Cousin is attending the training school to earn a phone operator certificate instead of going to school. Just as before, he heads out to the tutoring center each morning, donning his wig, but he is growing increasingly gaunt. Inside his desk drawer sits the gold necklace that the woman left behind, twinkling and unmoved.

“This necklace belongs to Mi-yeong
eonni
, doesn’t it?” One day Cousin finds the necklace in the drawer and swings it in her hand. Even in our lone room, the gold necklace shines with a twinkle. “Why is it here?” Cousin puts on the necklace and looks into the mirror.

“Put it back!”

Recalling the night that the woman came and gave my brother the necklace back, I start feeling cross. I keep thinking that I hate her. Her white face. That pretty face. Twinkling eyes. I cannot stop thinking that her prettiness has brought misery to Oldest Brother. I feel sorry for him as I imagine the future commitments that would have glimmered inside his heart when he presented her with the necklace. He was not the kind of person who would give
a necklace to anyone. He was not the kind of person to commit his heart to anyone.

Cousin puts on a smile as bright as the twinkling necklace.

“Can I wear this when I go out, just once?”

I throw a fierce glance toward Cousin, wearing her twinkling smile. Cousin seems like she really wants to wear the necklace and keeps asking me to look the other way, saying, “Just once. Why did she have to give back the necklace? Mean of her. She should’ve just kept it or thrown it in the river or something, what does she expect
Oppa
to do with it. And what’s
Oppa
doing, keeping it here. Right where we can find it with the pull of the drawer.”

I am overcome with anger for no reason, and snatch the necklace from Cousin and put it back where it was, closing the drawer with a bang.

Ever since the necklace has been in the drawer, Oldest Brother is unable to sleep deeply. He tosses and turns, again and again. Sometimes he sneaks out the door in the middle of the night. His footsteps heading up to the roof. One night I follow him. He pushes his way through the laundry on the clothesline that someone left hanging overnight and sits by the railing, simply sits there.

Oldest Brother, who had not even taken up smoking. What is he thinking, sitting there then? What is he looking at, sitting there? I fear that the chimney at the Design and Packaging Center factory, soaring high into the night sky, might collapse toward him. If only I could, I wanted to go see the woman and tell her about Oldest Brother’s suffering.