Comfort Woman (4 page)

She is like the wild child raised by tigers, I heard them say to each other. Physically human but able to speak only in the language of animals. They were kind and praised me when I responded to the simple commands they issued in Japanese: sit, eat, sleep. Had they asked, I would also have responded to “close mouth” and “open legs.” At the camps where the Japanese called us
Jungun Ianfu,
military comfort women, we were taught only whatever was necessary to service the soldiers. Other than that, we were not expected to understand and were forbidden to speak, any language at all.

But we were fast learners and creative. Listening as we gathered the soldiers' clothes for washing or cooked their meals, we were able to surmise when troops were coming in and how many we were expected to serve. We taught ourselves to communicate through eye movements, body posture, tilts of the head, or—when we could not see each other—through rhythmic rustlings between our stalls; in this way we could speak, in this way we kept our sanity.

The Japanese say Koreans have an inherent gift for languages, proving that we are a natural colony, meant to be dominated. They delighted in their own ignorance, feeling they had nothing to fear or learn. I suppose that was lucky for us, actually. They never knew what we were saying. Or maybe they just didn't care.

I'm trying to remember exactly when I died. It must have been in stages, beginning with my birth as the fourth girl and last child in the Kim family, and ending in the recreation camps north of the Yalu. Perhaps if my parents had not died so early, I might have been able to live a full life. Perhaps not; we were a poor family. I might have been sold anyway.

My father was a cow trader. He traveled from village to village, herding the cows before him, from one farmer to the next, making a small profit as the middleman. When he was home, my older sisters' job was to collect the dung and, after we parceled out a small portion for our own garden, sell the rest to our neighbors. Sometimes we dried the dung for fuel, which burned longer and cleaner than wood. Most of the time, though, we used sticks that my sisters collected from the woods.

My job was to help my mother wash clothes. We each had a basket, according to our size, which we carried up the river we called Yalu Aniya, Older Sister to the Yalu. Going up was easy, the load light on our heads. Coming home was harder, since not only were the damp clothes heavier but we were tired from beating the clothes clean against the rocks. I remember that as we crouched over our wash, pounding out the dirt, I pretended that my mother and I sent secret signals to one another, the rocks singing out messages only we could understand.

My mother died shortly after my father. I didn't see my father die; he was almost thirty miles away. As with his life, I know about his death primarily through what others have told me. The villagers who took him in say he had a lung disease, coughing up blood as he died. They also said he called for my mother.

She was always a good wife; she went to him quickly in death, just as she did in life. One night after we had carried home the wash, she kept saying how tired she was, how tired. Come, Mother, I told her, lie down. I kept asking her, what could I do? Do you want soup, do you want massage? Till finally she put her hand over my mouth and guided my fingers to her forehead. I stroked her softly, loosening her hair from the bun she tied it in, rubbing her temples where I could feel the heat and the throb of her beating heart. Even when the erratic tempo slowed, then finally stopped, I continued to pet her. I wanted her to know that I loved her.

I touch my child in the same way now; this is the language she understands: the cool caresses of my fingers across her tiny eyelids, her smooth tummy, her fat toes. This, not the senseless murmurings of useless words, is what quiets her, tells her she is precious. She is like my mother in this way.

Because of this likeness, this link to the dead, my daughter is the only living thing I love. My husband, the missionaries who took me in after the camp, my sisters, if they are still alive, all are incidental. What are living people to ghosts, except ghosts themselves?

My oldest sister understood this. When my second and third sisters ran away together to look for work as secretaries or factory workers in Pyongyang, the oldest sister tried to keep our father's business going by marrying our closest neighbor. The neighbors didn't have much money, but they had more than us and wouldn't take her without a dowry. How could they buy cattle without any capital, they reasoned.

I was her dowry, sold like one of the cows before and after me. You are just going to follow second and third sisters, she told me. The Japanese say there is enough work for anyone in the cities. Girls, even, can learn factory work or serve in restaurants. You will make lots of money.

Still, I cried. She hugged me, then pinched me. Grow up now, she said. No mother, no father. We all have to make our lives. She didn't look at my face when the soldiers came, didn't watch as they herded me onto their truck. I heard them asking her if she wanted to come along; your sister is still so young, not good for much, they said. But you. You are grown and pretty. You could do well.

I am not sure, but I think my sister laughed. I hope that she had at least a momentary fear that they would take her too.

I am already married, she said.

I imagine she shrugged then, as if to say, What can I do? Then she added, My sister will be even prettier. She didn't ask why that should matter in a factory line.

I knew I would not see the city. We had heard the rumors: girls bought or stolen from villages outside the city, sent to Japanese recreation centers. But still, we did not know what the centers were like. At worst, I thought, I would do what I've done all my life: clean, cook, wash clothes, work hard. How could I imagine anything else?

At first that is what I did do. Still young, I was kept to serve the women in the camps. Around women all my life, I felt almost like I was coming home when I first realized there were women at the camps, maybe a dozen. I didn't see them right away; they were kept in their stalls, behind mat curtains, most of the days and throughout the night. Only slowly were they revealed to me as I delivered and took away their meals, as I emptied their night pots. Hanako 38, her name given because her face was once pretty as a flower. Miyoko 52, frail and unlucky as the Miyokos before her. Kimi-ko 3, with hair the color of egg yellow, which made the officers laugh when they realized the pun of her name: Kimi the sovereign, Kimi the yolk. Akiko 40. Tamayo 29, who told the men she loved them and received gifts and money that she, stubborn in her hopes for a future, would bury in the corner of her stall.

Unless they had to visit the camp doctor, their freedom outside their stalls consisted of weekly baths at the river and scheduled trips to the outhouse. If they needed to relieve themselves when it was not their turn to go outside, they could use their special pots. It became my job to empty the pots. I also kept their clothes and bedding clean, combed and braided their hair, served them their meals. When I could, I brought them each a dab of grease, which they would smooth over their wounds, easing the pain of so many men.

I liked caring for the women. As their girl, I was able to move from one stall to the next, even from one section of the camp to another, if I was asked. And because of this luxury, the women used me to pass messages. I would sing to the women as I braided their hair or walked by their compartments to check their pots. When I hummed certain sections, the women knew to take those unsung words for their message. In this way, we could keep up with each other, find out who was sick, who was new, who had the most men the night before, who was going to crack.

To this day, I do not think Induk—the woman who was the Akiko before me—cracked. Most of the other women thought she did because she would not shut up. One night she talked loud and nonstop. In Korean and in Japanese, she denounced the soldiers, yelling at them to stop their invasion of her country and her body. Even as they mounted her, she shouted: I am Korea, I am a woman, I am alive. I am seventeen, I had a family just like you do, I am a daughter, I am a sister.

Men left her stall quickly, some crying, most angrily joining the line for the woman next door. All through the night she talked, reclaiming her Korean name, reciting her family genealogy, even chanting the recipes her mother had passed on to her. Just before daybreak, they took her out of her stall and into the woods, where we couldn't hear her anymore. They brought her back skewered from her vagina to her mouth, like a pig ready for roasting. A lesson, they told the rest of us, warning us into silence.

That night, it was as if a thousand frogs encircled the camp. They opened their throats for us, swallowed our tears, and cried for us. All night, it seemed, they called, Induk, Induk, Induk, so we would never forget.

Although I might have imagined the frogs. That was my first night as the new Akiko. I was given her clothes, which were too big and made the soldiers laugh. The new P won't be wearing them much anyway, they jeered. Fresh poji.

Even though I had not yet had my first bleeding, I was auc tioned off to the highest bidder. After that it was a free-for-all, and I thought I would never stop bleeding.

That is how I know Induk didn't go crazy. She was going sane. She was planning her escape. The corpse the soldiers brought back from the woods wasn't Induk.

It was Akiko 41; it was me.

My husband speaks four languages: German, English, Korean, and Japanese. He is learning a fifth, Polish, from cassette tapes he borrows from the public library. He reads Chinese.

A scholar who spends his life with the Bible, he thinks he is safe, that the words he reads, the meaning he gathers, will remain the same. Concrete. He is wrong.

He shares all his languages with our daughter, though she is not even a year old. She will absorb the sounds, he tells me. But I worry that the different sounds for the same object will confuse her. To compensate, I try to balance her with language I know is true. I watch her with a mother's eye, trying to see what she needs—my breast, a new diaper, a kiss, her toy—before she cries, before she has to give voice to her pain.