The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (57 page)

“Aigu, who’s gonna come live here when we’re gone?”

“So what if no one lives here? We’ll make a key for each of them. First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth . . .”

Father counted all our siblings, as if he were counting the stars.

“Six in all, so if they each take turns, it’s six visits a year, at least. And if there’s a house here, they’ll want to come. They’ll meet here, even if they can’t see each other often in Seoul.”

Again, I was leaning more and more toward Father.

It was not Mom that Father had won over but my thinking that he had transformed.

Sitting here in the night breeze listening to Father’s thoughts about our house, I began to get curious about what I played with when I was a baby, who was the first person I smiled at, which corner of this house I had held on to when I first started walking, which color shoes I had on the day I first set foot outside these gates.

I awoke deep in the night. I had to go to the bathroom. Perhaps it was all the watermelons. Only after I opened the bedroom door, then opened the door to the veranda, stepped into the yard and walked all the way to the outhouse, I remembered it had been closed up. A bathroom had since been built next to the sauce jar terrace, with a toilet installed. The renovation was done a long time ago, but I kept forgetting the new changes in this house, searching for old traces. I couldn’t wait so I squatted under the persimmon tree, and noticed the summer stars twinkling in the night sky. Who was it that said that things left unsaid inside one’s heart ascend to the sky and become stars? When tiny things are gathered in large numbers, there is a sadness to them. Pebbles, sand, rice grains, seashells. The same with the stars in the sky. The difference, though, from pebbles, sand, rice grains, and seashells is that there are myriad stars, yet each one of them gives off its own glimmering light.

I couldn’t bring myself to go back inside and was sitting on the veranda when I saw the well in the distance. No bucket next to the well. Now there was a motor that pulls up water from the well and sends it gushing out from the kitchen faucet. The well kept getting bigger until it filled up my field of vision. I walked quietly across the yard to the well. I lifted off the roofing slate covering the roof and slowly gazed inside. Nothing but darkness. The well had been covered up for a long time and the damp smell of moss stung my nose. When we used the bucket to fetch water, we never thought of putting a lid over the well. Back then, I could feel chilly air around the well even before I got near it. I sat and let my arms rest on the rim.

When I was little, the well seemed very deep. Whenever I cried, Mom would try and spook me and distract me with the story of a ghost inside the well, who’d come chase after me, wanting to be my friend. This didn’t scare me at all. I liked the well, so if there really was a ghost in there, I thought I could be friends with her. If she lived inside the well, hiding the sky deep inside it, she’d probably resemble the well. Memories came back to me, of fetching water, when I’d put away the bucket, dripping with water drops, to look for the sky hiding inside the well, when I’d sit like this and quietly gaze in. When I used to live in this house, my favorites places were the well and the shed, you see. I could hide or hide things in them. I would hide inside the well things I could not hide in my body. My brother’s harmonicas, Mom’s brooches, the golden carp that Father caught in the swamp or the azalea petals that he picked in the spring mountains.

I rested my face on my arms on the well rim and gazed inside for a long time.

Later, while strolling along the river, pebbles turned up everywhere, rolling and bouncing. As I gazed inside the well, thoughts turned up, here and there, just like those pebbles.

Yun Sun-im gives me perplexed look as I tell her that I am handing in my resignation. She tells me to wait until I get my wages and severance pay.

“I don’t have the time.”

“Time for what?”

“I have a chance to study.”

“Are you going to college?”

“If I get in.”

Yun Sun-im no longer dissuades me. I take down my purple winter uniform hanging in my locker and wash it. I have to hand it in along with my resignation and my blue summer uniform, too.

As I folded the uniform after washing it and drying it in the sun, I slipped my hand into one of the pockets. Who could it be, who first invented them? These pockets that have comforted me through my four years at Dongnam Electronics, whether I was punching in my work hours in blue or overtime hours in red. After handing in my union withdrawal statement, when I could not join the other working in refusing overtime, whenever I got a scolding from the foreman, whenever I headed to the cafeteria on the roof for lunch, I had slipped my hands inside these pockets.

I hand in my resignation and return my uniforms, and as I walk out the gates of Dongnam Electronics, I notice Yun Sun-im following me.

“How about doing your studying here? . . . It’s not like you have to study at home.”

“. . .”

“You’ll lose your wages and severance pay and that’s a shame. Your cousin didn’t get paid, either.”

“I hope you can help us get paid.”

“You know how things are here. Why do you think people who’ve already quit keep coming to work every day? They’re worried that if they don’t show up, the company will never pay up. The company’s in such a bad state, the bank or the government won’t be able to look the other way. If they take over, they’ll
process everyone’s severance pay. So why don’t you come and study here, just until then?”

“. . .”

“Hold on for just a while . . .”

She insists once again that it’s not like I have to study at home. I tell her I’ll do as she says.

The next day, out of habit, I try to punch in my card. I am embarrassed by my hand, reaching out to the slot and finding that my card is no longer there. The TV section is the only place that’s still in production. Even there, two lines have been stopped and only one is in operation. I, nineteen years old, sit where it’s quiet, on the roof or on the bench or the cafeterias, reading my language arts test book, then head back home. When I see resigned workers gathering or making noise, I pop in to see what is going on.

One evening, Oldest Brother asks why I keep going to work after resigning. When I tell him I’m trying to get my severance pay, he says with a sigh that I should stop going. That it’s more important that I focus on my studies without wasting time. When I still keep going to work, he throws a fit, asking if it’s worth it, my severance pay, which will only be a puny sum.

I go to work for one last day, without telling Oldest Brother, to let Yun Sun-im know that I can’t show up anymore.

“Your brother’s wrong. Getting our severance pay is very important to us, even if it’s a puny amount.”

I feel guilty and hang my head low without saying anything. “We’ll be able to see each other again.” Yun Sun-im smiles as she sees me off and I say good-bye. “Back in the days, we’d have thrown you a farewell party.” Her voice remains in my ears.

Yun Sun-im . . . I never saw her again.

She wouldn’t have stayed locked inside this genre painting of industrial labor that I have in my mind. She would have built herself a home somewhere in this world. Even when she sat in front of the conveyor belt, she carried the scent of home. Even when she gazed for hours into the circuit of wires, tangled like
a labyrinth, tying, fixing, soldering, planting new wires, I could picture her peeling garlic or cleaning water parsley. Somewhere, she would have made her home into a cozy cave. She would be picking up, rinsing, hanging, folding endless loads of laundry. She would have kept her first baby’s swaddling clothes wrapped in white muslin and taken them out for her second child. In the summer she’d head down to the basement, stacked with household appliances, to bring up the fan, squat down to finish her ironing, her neck covered in sweat. In the evening she’d finish setting the dinner table and step outside to get her child, wiping her hands that still carried the smells of sauce and seasoning. Sometimes she’d listen to the sounds of nature in circulation, her narrow eyes closed, and on some days she’d speed down the road on her bike, and she’d have used the serenity and fierceness kept inside of her to build a beautiful home for herself. She’d still be somewhere in this world trying to understand the people around her, battling the emptiness of fleeting relationships. The movements of women inside their homes . . . that was it. Even when she sat in front of the conveyor, contained inside her movements were a sense of peace and a nostalgia for a traditional home life.

It was my teacher Mr. Choe Hong-i who told me about the Seoul Arts College on Mount Namsan. He said the school has a creative writing department. My scholastic achievement scores were terribly low, and I don’t bother applying to first and second tier universities. My application number is 155. The entrance exam is a writing assignment. We are given the topic “Dream.” We can write prose or verse, whichever we choose. I, nineteen years old, write about my fourth-grade teacher whom I had admired. I write that she was a beautiful person, her science classes filled up with endless sad stories about the constellations, and that my dream is to become a deliverer of beautiful stories, just like her.

Later, during my interview, the professor who later would become my mentor looked up at me and commented, “Your scholastic achievement test scores are low.” As I walk out of the room, his words circle inside my head, round and round. It’s all over now; a tear escapes from my eye as I walk down Mount Namsan. To head back home, I had to get on the bus at Lotte Department Store. I am unable to find the crossing from Toegye Boulevard to Lotte, circling the Namdaemun Market area again and again like a hiker losing his sense of direction on a ring route. Each time I exit the underground walkway I end up in the same place, so I go back down, then end up at the same exit, over and over. When I finally get home, I get under the covers and weep. Third Brother asks how the interview went and I scream out, “Don’t talk to me,” which shocks him.

Third Brother goes to see the admission results. I’d get lost again in the unfamiliar part of the city, unable to return easily. Third Brother called and said, “You got in. Congratulations.”