Drifting House (26 page)

All men are dangerous, Mrs. Lim warns Mina as she paints her lips strawberry red, sets her hair into a quivering black beehive, and dons a geometric print skirt that flirts at her knees. But when she makes her entrance in the chapel, the young man about to leave looks at Mina first.

Her mother kneels and prays in the ghostly pews long emptied of people. Mina watches Jesus’ unmoving lips and waits for her mother’s routine to conclude. If I kiss Jesus, Mina wonders, maybe he would reject her tainted lips. Or maybe he would kiss her back as fondly as a father might. He was God’s son, so wasn’t he capable of anything?

Fourteen is far too old to believe in magic, but tonight she will do anything to appease her mother. She shuffles to the altar, a penitent’s walk, and kisses his wooden face. He merely stares, impervious. She tries prayer because her mother says she must pray for forgiveness, but instead her hands keep moving to free the doves trapped in the stained glass. A splinter enters her palm when she runs her hands across the bench smelling of vinegary sawdust.

A man taps her mother’s back: the pastor, a man with yellow fingernails and a tenuous mustache, a man who looks unable to help himself. His solemnity is touching, ridiculous.

Pastor Seo, Mrs. Lim says to the pastor of the Korean service she does not attend, which is conducted before the English one.

You’re here again, Mrs. Lim.

He must have meant to comfort them with that practiced smile and certainty that his God has all the answers. But this is what Mina will remember: the waxy candlestick holders. The pastor’s smug pity, the way his pin-striped trouser cuffs collect dust. The woman on her knees scrubbing the cold floors. Used to the endless troupe of sinners, she does not look up once.

Everything is the way it was before except that it is not. Over dinner Mina’s mother refuses to talk. Mina longs to hear her mother’s comforting songs: Man is the heavens, woman is the earth. Yin and yang. The effete
yangban
with white scholar’s hands who rescues the
­sijo
-writing
gisaeng
from her courtesan’s chambers and then together, live blissfully ever after. America, where rice grows on trees. The predictable lull of her mother’s fantasies that neither believes anymore.

Her mother stares into a glass of water and tries to wipe away her reflection with her thumb. Her smile grows shapeless as she says, You’re too grown up now, at the age of all loneliness.

Mina feels old and grave; she tries to erase the distress from her mother’s face with a kiss, and succeeds for a moment as her mother leans restfully against her.

I have you, Mina says. I know everyone in our neighborhood! I’m never lonely.

Suddenly her mother says, You’ve become beautiful.

She removes her diamond earrings, her only precious gems, and forces them into her daughter’s palms until the brittle edges cut into her skin.

Then Mina knows, something must be wrong. Her mother is gone.

She is the only kind of mother that Mina knows. She is a mother who used to nibble on raw silkworms to keep her skin as pale as pearls, who now prays out loud at night that God make her His wife.

She is a mother who leaves Mina a note the next day saying, You shouldn’t behave that way with men. It is twilight, autumn of 1976. Birds from China have migrated and settled on the naked trees surrounding their house. Her mother has not returned. Perhaps she has gone to a church retreat or stayed late at work, though she has not told Mina anything. In the refrigerator, there is a plastic tub of kimchi and fresh produce; a flank of pork has been left out. It will rot, Mina thinks, as she pieces together the evidence, imagining a pink flank and bony rump hooked up at the butcher’s, and squeezes herself until it hurts. She drops her schoolbag and withdraws like a hermit crab. If she flees to Hana’s home and forgets that her mother is right to punish her, she will be safe. But she has never run away.

When the soybean curd man outside keens his sales song, it is dark. She wraps her mother’s sheets around her shoulders like a shroud, and lies on the ground. She has washed and tried to cleanse herself, tried to wipe the memory of Junho’s hands and
lips from her lips, from her breasts, but there is still Junho on her skin, in her hair, under the crests of her fingernails. Mina will not let the story end this way. Tomorrow she will go to school and act as if she is somehow still the same person. She will look for her mother. But tonight she waits on the cold floor, certain that what is lost will return.

My deepest gratitude goes to my editors, Kathryn Court and Allison Lorentzen at Penguin Group (USA) and Sarah Savitt at Faber and Faber UK. Their creativity, collaborative instinct, and passion for books have made this journey a pleasure. I’m also indebted to the staffs at Viking and Faber and Faber, who have been tireless in their support. My love and thanks to my indefatigable agent, Susan Golomb, whose faith in my work, kindness, and ability to think like a writer have made all the difference.

I want to thank my early teachers and mentors, Stephen Yenser, Ross Shideler, Heather McHugh, Hugh Houghton, Hermione Lee, Tom Jenks, and Carol Edgarian. Without this early support, I would never have dared consider myself a writer. The learning and community in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College were invaluable. In particular, I’m grateful to Peter Turchi, Ellen Bryant Voight, Lan Samantha Chang, Jane Hamilton, Grace Mazur, David Haynes, Victor LaValle, Robin Black, Aneesha Kapur, Robert Rorke, Rachel Howard, Allison
Paige, Katie Bowler, Ross White, Ed Porter, Mark Prudowsky, Matthew Specktor, Bora Reed, and Larissa Amir, and to Abby Wender for her friendship, her incredible poems, and her way of being.

The organizations that support writers gave me resolve and a community. Thank you to the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and to
Narrative
magazine and
The Kenyon Review
for taking a chance on a new writer.

The manuscript readings by Sunil Rao, Kira Obolensky, Michael David Lukas, Kim Stoker, and early readers Charlie Kang, Chris Causey, Mark Lee, and Peter Kipp helped the writing experience be a little less lonely. Thanks to Heeyoung Kim for her fact checking; David Kim and Katherine Lee for their expertise; Christine Zilka for her friendship and her example; Jenny Whitney, Beth Lee, Colin Cavendish-Jones, Camilla Jorgensen, Margareta Wilhelmsson, and Tiziana Bertinotti for their love and support; Tanya Gibson, my AWP buddy and fellow dreamer; Steve Kim, who has seen me through the entire journey; Shirley Park and her family for their love and help; Heidi Snyder and family, wherever they are; girlfriends Linda Kwon, Suyoon Ko, Sora ­Kim-­Russell, and Tammy Chu, who keep me company in Seoul; Doualy Xaokaothao, who has pulled me through more than once; Jean Lee for sharing her creative energy; Steve Herman, supporter and friend; John Glionna for being unpredictable; and Kyemyeong Lee for keeping me hopeful and sane. My love and respect to my activist friends, and to all my North Korean defector friends who have given me a family.