Comfort Woman (7 page)

I tried to protect my daughter from the doctors, from their dirty hands and eyes. I scissored my legs closed, wanting to keep my child cradled within me, safe. But they roped my legs, stretching them open into the Japanese character for “man.” One doctor pushed on my stomach, another widened me with a double-pronged stick, and this time my baby came into the world fully formed and alive.

We caught her, someone said—and when I heard that woman's voice in the roomful of men, I knew Induk was there. Slipping into the body of a doctor, she stood beside me, shadowed by mask, gown, and a halo of light. And though I could not see her face, though it had been some time since she last came to me, I knew it was her, just as I've always known. Even the first time.

She comes in singing, entering with full voice, filling me so that there is no me except for her, Induk.

That first time, she found me sprawled next to an unnamed stream above the Yalu, the place where I had discarded my empty body, and invited herself in.

I saw her with my eyes closed, though how I knew she was Induk I do not know, for she looked like my mother, standing there next to the river with her arms outstretched, long strips of hair coming undone from the married woman's bun at the back of her neck. It was as if without their earthly bodies, the boundaries between them melted, blending their features, merging their spirits. Now I cannot remember what either my mother or Induk looked like when she was alive and a separate person.

Here, baby, here, Induk said, her voice creaking like a hundred thousand frogs. She shuffled closer, hands cupping her breasts, which turned into an offering of freshly unearthed ginseng.

It is not myokkuk, Induk said as I gnawed on a raw root. She stroked my head, combing out the tangles with her fingers just as I did for her when she was alive, then she said: But the seaweed soup is mostly good for making milk anyway. You don't need that now.

My stomach cramped, and I threw up what I had eaten. I rinsed my mouth with water from the stream, and my stomach rebelled at even the taste of water. Yet I could not stop my mouth from sucking at the root.

Secretly, I think that is why I could not have a baby for so long after the Japanese recreation camp. Though the camp doctors said my insides were ruined from so many men, so many times, I think that the real reason I could not conceive for almost twenty years is because I ate so much ginseng. I became unbalanced with male energy. Finally the effects wore off enough to give me a baby girl.

I make seaweed soup for myself now, for milk for my living daughter. Induk says my body is weakest after birth, but also at its most flexible. Our bones are as soft and changeable as those of the fetus we carried for nine months. This is the time we are most female, she says. Myokkuk is for women, for life.

My breasts tingle at my daughter's cry. I pick her up before she fully wakes, so that even before she reaches consciousness, she knows that her mother is here for her.

Her father says, Leave her to cry for a while. You're spoiling her. She needs to learn independence. ‘

He tells me, parroting the doctor, Give her the bottle, better than breast.

But I cannot. I have heard what the doctor says, but I also remember my own mother shaking her small, limp breasts at each of her daughters, laughing as we bathed together. Look, girls! See what you did to me? she teased. See what will happen to you, too, one day when you give all of yourself to your own children?

All I know is that I do not want my baby to experience even a moment of insecurity, of want. I cannot take the time to prepare and heat a bottle while she screams with hunger. And if she drinks from the bottle, how will she know her mother's heart?

Beccah-chan latches onto me, her lips and tongue pulling my nipple, one hand kneading my breast as if to make the milk flow faster. The milk comes in too fast; she chokes. My baby breaks away from me, squalling. Her arms stiffen, and little fists strike out at me. She is noisy like her father, not afraid to yell and keep yelling. This must be a lingering effect of the ginseng. I do not know if it is a good thing.

There was no need for me to get up. I lay by the river, already feeling the running water erode the layers of my skin, washing me away, but Induk filled my belly and forced me to my hands and knees. She led me to the double rainbow where virgins climb to heaven and told me to climb. Below me, a river of human-faced flowers stretched so wide and bright I could not keep my eyes open.

She spoke for me: No one performed the proper rites of the dead. For me. For you. Who was there to cry for us in kok, announcing our death? Or to fulfill the duties of yom: bathing and dressing our bodies, combing our hair, trimming our nails, laying us out? Who was there to write our names, to even know our names and to remember us?

And now, said Induk, there is only the dead to guide us. Here, she said, giving me the image of a woman. I saw a fox spirit who haunted the cemeteries of deserted villages, sucking at the mouths of the newly dead in order to taste their otherworld knowledge.

This is Manshin Ahjima, Induk said. Old lady of ten thousand spirits. Go to her, and she will prepare you.

I wanted to say I didn't know where she lived, but then I saw the exact spot where Manshin Ahjima lived and how to get there. I'd have to cross over the Yalu, scale seven mountain peaks in the deep country, then follow the road to the outskirts of Sinuiju. Through a scattering of gray adobe houses, all identical, I would go to the house fronted with mulberry trees. There I would find the old lady and her ten thousand spirits.

I do not know how long I left my body by the river, stirring periodically with cramps and the need to vomit. It lay in its own filth, moving only to fill its mouth with ginseng and water, the instinct for survival in the blood and bones.

When I finally opened my eyes, I saw not heaven but partially chewed and digested bits of ginseng root in the dirt next to my face. I felt clear and empty, as translucent as the river beside me. Noticing the bleeding between my legs had stopped, I peeled the rags, stiff as scabs, away from my body and, carefully folding them, placed them on some rocks away from the running water. After taking off the rest of my clothes, I waded into the stream and rubbed at the dried blood caked on my legs from groin to calves. The mud-colored flecks turned liquid red in my hands, then dissolved under the patient licking of the river's tongue.

Rubbing handfuls of small pebbles against my head and skin, I washed my hair and body until I felt raw. I let the cooling air dry me. By the length of the day, I knew that soon it would be the season to replant the stalks of rice in the paddies. When my parents were still alive and I was still a child, everyone in our family worked to grow the rice. Where we lived, there was time only for one planting, one harvest, so everything had to be done quickly and well. As the youngest, I was responsible for feeding the workers their meals of rice and soup, carried to them on trays balanced on my head. When I delivered the food without spilling, I was allowed to play—a function also rooted in practicality; as I jumped through the rows of fragile plants, waving sticks into the air, I kept scavenging birds away from our future meals.

But as I grew and second and third sister were hired on neighboring farms, I took over more of the work. Mother, oldest sister, and I would spend hours bent over the knee-deep silt, our fingers cradling the baby rice, laying them into the oozing earth.

During one season of planting, my mother gave birth to a dead baby. Smaller than one of my mother's outstretched hands, the infant slipped between her fingers in a gush of blood and sour-smelling fluid. My mother wrapped it in a bundle, packing it neat as a field lunch, before I could see it, but oldest sister saw. It was deformed, Soon Ja whispered. Tail like a tadpole. Or maybe, she added as an afterthought, it was a boy.

We walked with our mother to the river, taking the clothes that needed to be washed. My mother divided up the clothes between my sister and me, and humming under her breath, she walked downriver. We listened to her voice, rising in waves above the rushing of the water, sing the song of the river: Pururun mul, su manun saramdul-i, jugugat-na? Blue waters, how many lives have you carried away? Moot saram-ui seulpumdo hulro hulro sa ganora. You should carry the sorrow of people far, far away.