Our Happy Time (13 page)

“He killed someone?” I asked. “That little boy killed someone?”

“Yes, he killed a four-year-old girl who lived next door to him. So he could steal a thousand won. The law can’t do anything to kids under fourteen years of age. But they don’t provide any treatment or custody either. In a word, it’s negligence. So your Aunt Monica has been looking after kids like him.”

We were both quiet for a moment. An eleven-year-old boy beat a four-year-old girl to death. So he could steal a thousand won to buy a pastry. And he said it tasted good—the end!
Just how far down can this society go?
I wondered.
And how deep are we now?
I didn’t understand why these problems that I had never noticed or paid any attention to before were all coming up at once. The
cynicism
and meanness that I performed so well, but that Aunt Monica hated, was not working for me here. I felt like I was the one caught in the spider’s web, not that little boy.

Aunt Monica came back in. She and my uncle looked at each other for a moment as if they were old friends, and then they both laughed at the same time. They sounded dumbfounded. They were like two powerless people looking at each other and thinking,
What the hell are we going to do?

My uncle sighed and changed the topic to my aunt’s head injury.

“That cut looks deep. At the very least, you should let us bandage you up before you go.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll have it looked at later. There's a hospital near the convent. But what are you going to do about that boy? God’s looking after my head, so I think I can still use it even if it’s bleeding. But the one who really needs to have his head fixed is that little boy.”

“He does need treatment. His whole family does. He needs to go to a child psychiatrist and get medication, not just counseling. Otherwise, I really don’t know what will happen. What are the cops in this country thinking? Or rather, what are the lawmakers thinking? How can they just send kids like that back home? The kids are like that because their families are like that, so how can they say the kids are too young for treatment and send them back to their parents? When that happens in the United States, the parents and the child have to show proof that they received psychiatric care. It’s really dangerous. The boy needs treatment, first of all. That’s a given. But also, if the state can treat that child right away, the rest of us won’t have to pay so dearly for it later.”

Aunt Monica took a look at my uncle’s scrawled chart.

“Do you mean it’s pretty likely that he’ll become a criminal?”

“Not just pretty likely. More like a ninety-nine percent chance.”

My uncle stood up and went to the window. Then he started talking, but it wasn’t to either of us in particular.

“They’re the same. They’re all the same. All over the world.”

He sounded angry, as if even he didn’t know whom exactly he was addressing.

“Behind every person who’s committed an unimaginable crime is an adult who committed unimaginable violence against them as a child. All of them, as if it was plotted that way. Violence begets violence, and that violence begets more violence. No one ever says, ‘Sure, I could use a good beating,’ when their parents threaten to ‘smack some sense into them.’ I mean it when I say that violence has never stopped violence. I swear! Not once in human history.”

A look of despair passed over my uncle’s face, and I realized it was the first time I had ever seen him so angry and discouraged.

“Uncle, do you think some kids are just born bad? Like an evil gene, as some people say.”

I was not yet over the shock of hearing that an
eleven-year
-old had killed someone, and then hearing that child say the pastry they bought afterward was delicious.

“No, absolutely not!” my uncle said testily. I had never seen him that tense before.

“Here’s the thing about people. We’re not born fully made. Colts and calves are fully made while in their mothers’ bellies, so they can already run by the time they come out. But humans are born and then made. It usually takes three years. Lately, there is even a theory that says it takes eighteen years. So, to put it in simple terms, God makes seventy percent of the person, and the parents fill in the remaining thirty percent—the rest has to be completed. But that thirty percent, it leads the other seventy percent. If we compare it to computers, that thirty percent is the
operating system. But when the brains of people who were abused as children are scanned, five to ten percent of the brain is damaged. It’s as if, from the time they were
children
, they’ve been driving cars with damaged engines. They cannot control their impulses with that kind of damage. But it doesn’t affect the intelligent parts, their intellect. That’s why serial killers can have high IQs and be very logical. Ultimately, they are mentally ill people who have not yet been proven to be mentally ill.”

“But not being able to control their impulses doesn’t mean they always hurt other people, right?” Aunt Monica asked.

“Right. In these cases, the most typical symptom is insensitivity to others’ pain. In other words, their ability to empathize is noticeably diminished.”

“Ability to empathize?” Aunt Monica asked.

“Yes, when we see someone fall in the street or get injured, we think,
That must have hurt.
But they’re not able to do that. In other words, they lack the ability to feel what other people are feeling. They become insensitive to other people’s pain.”

“So beating a child can lead to such terrible
consequences
?” Aunt Monica asked. My uncle paused.

“There are several types of abuse. Physical abuse—in other words, violence—is the main type. Then there’s sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. To give you an example, neglect means not feeding the child when he or she is hungry, not changing the diaper when it needs to be changed, withholding physical contact when the child needs to be held, and so on. As for emotional abuse, that can mean acting coldly, not being loving… It’s
all
abuse. This is quite painful to talk about…”

My uncle sighed again.

“There was a seventeen-year-old boy who used to come
see me not long ago. He had stabbed a middle-school girl who walked by him one day. Do you remember him? He said the girl looked happy. He thought,
Why do you get to be happy when I am so unhappy?
and he stabbed her with a knife. His mother and father showered him with love. But his father beat his mother every day. Seeing that was worse than being tortured. That, too, is a form of abuse. They don’t have the ability that we have to control their impulses with reason. And they can’t just overcome it using willpower. How can you have
willpower
when your brain has been damaged? So, as a result, they’re impulsive. They become addicted to alcohol, gambling, sex… They resort to violence or murder, or commit suicide.”

My face must have turned pale. My uncle looked at me as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have. I didn’t say anything.

“Of course, I don’t mean that they all become
criminals
. Sometimes it has no effect on their social lives. It has nothing to do with their educational level, either. The people we went to school with all came out of top-tier high schools and universities, but when you see them, there are a lot of broken people. They get by just fine only to go home and beat their wives and kids. Those people are—”

My uncle jokingly circled his index finger next to his head.

“Even if they’re lucky and don’t commit any crimes, their kids can wind up with problems.”

He rubbed his face with both hands.

“But Dr. Choi,” interrupted Aunt Monica. She had been listening intently. “Some people are beaten as children and grow up in brothels, and they still turn out to be great people. You’re not saying that they’re all impulsive and prone to crime, are you?”

“No, of course not. It’s like a virus. The same illness can be going around, but only some people catch it while others are fine. Human behavior cannot be explained through a single cause.”

“Then, can’t a brain that is damaged like that ever recover? Medically speaking, I mean.” She sounded as if she was pleading with a doctor who had just diagnosed her own child with cancer.

“That depends on the extent of the damage.” He pointed to an orchid on the windowsill. “When I went on vacation, that little guy withered. As soon as I gave him water, he sprang back to life. But if I went away for three years, it wouldn’t matter how much water I gave him when I got back. Sister, you have religion. If I were ten years younger, I would have adamantly said that recovery was impossible. Back then, I would have cited hundreds of reasons. But now that I’m old, my thoughts have changed. In a word, I am no longer certain. Things I cannot explain are always happening around us. Sometimes, I think that there are more things that cannot be explained through so-called science or so-called medicine. Human beings are truly mysterious, and only the universe knows the answer. I think that for humans, there are more times when love alone can cure them. But that leaves us with the problem of what love is… It seems this conversation has taken a
philosophical
turn. Or perhaps a religious one. Sister, be strong. You are showing them great kindness.”

Aunt Monica looked dizzy. I asked if she was okay, but she seemed lost in thought and did not answer me.

We went back to the lobby. That strange mother and her son were waiting for us. When she saw us, she started babbling again.

“Sister, there aren’t any buses around here. I have to get back to the restaurant right away. You know, the owner’s
father-in-law collapsed of a stroke. It’s the third time. But all he ever does is collapse. He refuses to die…”

“Okay, let’s go,” Aunt Monica said, cutting the woman off. Then she said to me, “I need your help one last time. Let’s give her a ride home.”

Aunt Monica turned to look at the boy. I followed suit. He was still climbing up and down on the chairs and kicking them. In the past, I would have thought the child wasn’t even human. In the past, I would not have deigned to meet or even look at a child who had already committed murder at the age of eleven, a child who said the pastry he bought afterward was delicious. But now, I couldn’t help but think that maybe he and I were suffering from the same disease. Maybe we shared the same handicap, with different causes but identical damage. For once, I did not think of myself as a woman who was a painter and a college professor, who thought she was good enough for a snobby lawyer to want her, but rather as a brain-damaged patient who was
gruesome
and unfocused and talked too much, like that scarred child. I thought,
Maybe I really am a worthless person,
and I got goose bumps. Like Yunsu, I was terrified of what I was feeling.

Eunsu and I returned to Yeongdeungpo. Blackie was still managing the kids. We went back to the subway stations and open-air markets to panhandle. Every time I passed the corner shop, I stood outside and glared at the owner who had accused us of stealing. I thought,
I’ll get him one of these days.
When I was strong enough, I would make him beg and plead for mercy, just as I had, and when that happened, I would look at him coldly and give him hell, just as he had done to me. If I had one reason to stay alive, it was to get revenge.

Then one day, Eunsu got sick. He had a high fever and couldn’t eat anything. I even bought him the cup ramen that he loved so much, but he couldn’t eat it. I had no choice but to stay off the streets for several days so I could take care of him, and we did not bring in any money. The day his fever broke, Eunsu opened his eyes and called out to me. ‘Yunsu! The person who’s singing right now. I bet she’s pretty. Isn’t she?’ I looked at the television playing in
that tiny room. Blackie had put us in his own room for fear the other kids would catch Yunsu’s cold. It was the opening ceremony for baseball, and a woman in a miniskirt and a baseball cap was singing the national anthem. I said, ‘Yeah, I guess she’s pretty.’ Eunsu asked, ‘As pretty as our mom?’ Feeling annoyed, I said yes without thinking about it. But then Eunsu started to cry. I knew why he was crying, but I cussed him out anyway and kicked him and punched him even though he was sick. He cried even louder and said, ‘I won’t cry anymore, Yunsu! I won’t cry!’

I stopped hitting him and left the house. I joined up with some street kids I’d met once and passed the time drinking with them and avoiding going back to Eunsu and Blackie. I felt like punching and smashing everything. It was as if I had to knock out everyone I saw on the street—a mom holding hands with her kid, lovers walking side by side, students dressed in school uniforms. I wanted to beat the hell out of anyone and everyone who looked happy. Then I decided to pick a fight with a man who was walking down the street with a woman. I started it by saying, ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I was arrested again, and they let me out after several days. Blackie was furious. When he saw me, he told me to take Eunsu and get lost. ‘Damn it,’ I said, ‘if you want us gone, then we’ll leave.’

I went to find Eunsu. While I was gone, he had wasted away to skin and bones, and his face had shrunk to half its size. My heart sank. Blackie acted like he was mad at me, but the truth was that he had sensed something about Eunsu and was trying to get rid of us. I picked up Eunsu and carried him on my back.

It was a spring night. The smell of flowers had spread all over the city, even to our sewer of a neighborhood. The weather felt warm enough for us to be able to sleep in an underground passageway with only a few sheets of
newspaper and not freeze to death. Eunsu grabbed my hand just like he used to when we were little, when we used to spread our blankets out on the floor and lie down side by side. ‘I’m so glad you came back,’ he said. Then he asked me to sing the national anthem for him again. I won’t feel as cold if you sing it for me. I told him to go to sleep. He said okay. I was unable to sleep at first and tossed and turned for a while. Finally, I wrapped my arm around him so he wouldn’t get cold. But when I awoke at dawn, Eunsu was dead.