The Calligrapher's Daughter (13 page)

I tiptoed outside and thought a moment. Then I banged against the two front doors, ran down the hall slapping my feet, dropped my book bundle and kicked the classroom door open. “Good morning, Sunsaengnim!”

She now stood at the blackboard, as if posting the day’s schedule, and said, “A sloth of bears! A gaggle of geese! Not one young girl.” She smiled, saying, “Have you come early to clap erasers?” and I was relieved to see her returned to normal.

Cleaning blackboard erasers was still my favorite classroom chore, although at my heady age of ten, I’d outgrown it. I’d knock them against the brick building, banging out new Chinese characters we’d learned. By the time the erasers were clean of chalk dust, my favorite words were also clapped away.
Imagination
.
Teacher
.
Independence
.
Goddess
. The wind ciphered my dust words and scattered them above the heads of the townspeople, through the tops of tallest pines, along craggy mountain ridges, high into rain clouds to drizzle on the vast waters of the Yellow Sea. I imagined the dark-tanned faces of fishermen turned up to greet the rain, unaware of my special baptism by words. Yesterday I’d tried to feminize the word
scholar.

“Sunsaeng-nim, I’m returning the books I’ve had at home.” I unwrapped my bundle and removed the books.

“Yes, and now the principal says that all the books, no matter what kind, must be reviewed. I’m afraid they’ll be destroyed.” She turned her head, but I saw tears.

“Please don’t worry. I’ve promised to hide it well.”

“What?”

“The Chinese-English phrasebook you gave me.”

“Yes, perhaps that’s right. Everything else is ruined.” Her shoulders slumped and she hid her face in her hands.

Something was terribly wrong. Fear and concern made me bold, and I touched her wrist. “Are you ill, Sunsaeng-nim?”

She grasped my hand, her face contorted in a way that reminded me of my mother giving birth. “Illness! If only it were that simple!” She twisted my fingers painfully.

“Excuse me, Sunsaeng-nim. Should I get help? Do you want the principal?”

“No! No—oh, I’m sorry, Najin.” She touched my shoulder. “Come sit for a moment before the others arrive.”

My fingertips thrummed with released blood, and I thought to offer her a hand massage, anything to help relieve her of her demons. “My mother taught me how to relax the hands. May I show you?” We sat on the front students’ bench and I opened my palms.

“No, thank you.” She held my hands gently in her lap. “Such a thoughtful young woman you are. Yes, you should hide the phrasebook. And should the Japanese ever come to your door, you should hide yourself as well as you can.” Her skin turned waxen and her eyes seemed to tunnel inward. “Even if it’s the police. Especially if it’s the police. Monsters! You must hide, do you hear me?” Her voice sounded trapped in her throat; her breath smelled of ash. She twisted our hands together. I was surprised at my own feelings of being more worried about her than afraid of her strangeness. My mother’s lessons had finally sunk in, I thought, but it was easy to think first of my beautiful teacher, whom I deeply loved. I examined her fingers as if they were wounded birds, and massaged the thickest part of her palms as my mother had taught me.

She turned her hands and held mine still. “Thank you. You have a healing touch for such a young girl. Perhaps you’ll be a nurse someday.”

Warmth from the compliment spread to my neck and ears, and I wanted to give her something back. “Is anything wrong?” I asked shyly.

“I’m going to tell you a secret. You mustn’t tell any of the other girls. You’re my best student and I have only the highest hopes for you.”

I flushed again and lowered my eyes.

“Times are only going to get worse and I may not always be your teacher.” I looked at her in alarm. “Not now, but one day, yes,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who your teacher is. You must never stop learning and asking questions. A woman’s life is hard. Without a husband it’s nearly impossible. But nowadays, with education, a single woman such as myself can at least be of some help to her family.” Her voice broke, her cheeks rivulets of ignored tears. I sat bound by the intensity of my teacher’s heightened emotion and inexplicable revelations.

“My brother and my betrothed—both—died this summer. The last
time I saw my fiancé was more than a year ago, the day before the demonstration. I learned only recently that he died, and for all that time I knew nothing about him. His father wrote to say he’d been badly beaten during the madness in Seoul, and he became like an idiot and lived on, unable to care for himself, more helpless than a deformed newborn, until mercifully he died. My brother also went to Seoul and was taken to Gyeongseong Prison. He died of pneumonia there. They came for my father two weeks ago, and no one can tell us where he is or even if he’s alive.”

I could think of nothing to say and almost wanted to cover my ears. I wondered about Hansu in prison. Had he been beaten? Was he still alive? I felt crowded on the bench with Yee Sunsaeng-nim, the sides of our skirts touching. What was I supposed to say? I couldn’t think of a single lesson from my mother that would apply. But oh! My poor teacher!

“If only that was the worst of it.” She slumped and turned away, a hand covering her eyes. “I’m glad my fiancé is dead! The shame!”

Not understanding what she was saying, I was both frightened and thrilled by her rawness. My heartbeats seemed to inch us closer together on the school bench. I wanted to say, How awful! How sad! but the words wouldn’t come out.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I can never marry now. One day you’ll understand. Once a woman’s virtue is stolen, everything is ended for her. If my mother didn’t need me, I would, I would—if only I could!” She gazed blindly toward the window, silent tears wetting her sleeves. She shuddered and pulled a handkerchief from her waistband, wiped her eyes and blew her nose loudly, oblivious of the crude sound. “So you must study hard, learn a good profession and at all costs avoid the police.” She stood and looked at me, appearing almost wholly Yee Sunsaeng-nim again. “Can you promise me you’ll do that?”

I nodded, though I was full of questions. Was having a dead fiancé shameful? What had she been looking for outside the window that might have helped her? My curiosity loosened my tongue at last. “I’m sorry for your brother and future husband, and … my neighbors’ only son is in prison too. They say he’ll be home soon. But when your father returns, won’t he find you another husband?”

“I—I’ve said too much. I haven’t talked to any— I only wanted to impress upon you the importance of your education. I was much like you
when I was a girl, always in trouble for talking back to grownups.” Our eyes met. I thought the wetness in her dark irises made them only purer. “Try to take advantage of your willful independence. I know your mother worries about these traits, but you can learn to manage them and advance yourself. You must remember not to deaden your natural instincts, but instead hold them living inside of you like a sword sheathed in your intelligence. Think of what Shakespeare says: ‘How noble in reason; how infinite in capacity!’ You’re smart and capable, very empathetic for a girl so young, and with our lives in turmoil, you’ll need all your talents developed to their fullest in order to sur—” Her word caught on a sob, and she stopped long enough to calm her breathing. “Yes, in order to succeed.”

I was among the advanced students and had just been introduced to Shakespeare, but her reference to him now made him seem like a scholar-god. “Yes, Sunsaeng-nim. You’re sounding like my mother,” I said, hoping she would smile.

“The first bell will ring soon.” She rose, pressed her hands against her temples and smoothed her hair. She seemed smaller, her skin drawn tightly across her cheekbones. “Why don’t you take the books down to the principal’s office? There’s a crate by his desk for them.”

I was reluctant to let go of the private adult moment we’d had, aware that it had made me more special than all of the other girls, and contrary to what I might have expected on any other day, this made me feel bad. I ambled slowly down the hall, shuffling the two books front and back. Confused and feeling helpless, I wondered why her personal tragedy sounded more like a warning than the terribly sad news it was.

WHEN SCHOOL LET out, my classmates gathered as usual to walk down the hill together. They yelled at me to hurry up, but I waved them on, pretending I’d forgotten something. It had been a long day. During class, Sungsaeng-nim had acted mostly normally, sometimes a little sterner than usual, but I was all jumbled inside and needed time to think. I leaned out of sight on the side of the building, the brick hard against my shoulder blades. The coarse surface caught hairs from my braid, which tugged at my scalp. The image of Sunsaeng-nim at her desk, head buried in hands, surfaced. I tried to separate my confusion into subsections—like tackling a complicated sentence, my desire to help my teacher foremost. With eyes
shut, a prayer came to my lips. “Father God, please bring Sunsaeng-nim’s father home and make everything the same as before.” But it was more than that. “Father God, please find Sunsaeng-nim a new fiancé and make her father safe. Her mother too.” I tried again, feeling increasingly lonely. “Father God, please help Sunsaeng-nim to be happy.” Too short, and my eyes had been open that time. “Father God,” I began, with hands clasped tightly to my chest, “I promise to be more ladylike and less willful and independent. I promise to study hard and learn all that I can, if you let Sunsaeng-nim marry again and bring her father home. Amen. And make her brother an angel. And let her know that somehow. Amen.”

As I walked home, the lengthening shadows seemed darker, their origins unknown. I wondered if it was cheating to make the same promise to God for Yee Sunsaeng-nim as I had for my father. Although Mother would say it wasn’t Christian to honor esteemed elders with prayer in the Confucian manner, I decided I’d also say a prayer on my teacher’s behalf to Shakespeare. It was all I had to offer.

The smoke of burned trash clung to the alleyways. I dragged my feet, the stones in my path no longer begging to be kicked, fallen brown leaves fluttering aimlessly about my ankles. I didn’t notice the vendors packing their goods and rolling up mats, nor did I smell the enticing steam of
jajang
sauce from the noodle man. But the sideways glance from a policeman patrolling with his partner quickened my step, and then I ran until my family’s gate came into view.

I heard a commotion behind the neighbors’ wall. Perhaps the Changs had returned! Was Hansu released? Maybe that meant Teacher Yee’s father would also be home soon. I remembered my prayers and straightened my shoulders, primly hurrying home. Byungjo opened the gate holding a hand hoe and wearing his beaten straw hat. The gardener was a mere head taller than me and looked much older than his thirty-six years. His wrinkled skin, darkly tanned from spending most of his working hours outdoors, hung from his narrow bones like forgotten rags. I asked if he’d seen the neighbors.

He shrugged. “I see nothing, but your mother had me open their shutters and untangle their courtyard this morning.” He walked away, muttering about stubborn overgrowth and the disgraceful state of the Changs’ garden.

I kicked off my shoes at the front door. “Umma-nim!” My feet slid on the shiny wood.

In my mother’s room, Kira was washing the floor. “Not here. The neighbors are back, and your mother went to bring them food.”

“Is Hansu home too?”

“I don’t know. She said you could go over there after you wash your face and hands.” Kira wrung her floor rag and brushed sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. She smiled at me, her gold-lined tooth glinting. “You look clean to me, but she’ll want you to do as she says.”

I splashed so much water on my sleeves that I had to change my blouse before letting myself in through the gate adjoining our properties, which had been left ajar. I was glad to hear laughter. I hadn’t been to the neighbors’ for a long time, and their house looked shrunken, the gardens raw from Byungjo’s work.

“Umma-nim?” Following sounds to the kitchen’s back door, I found my mother and Hansu’s mother mixing eggs with meal, chopped scallions and squash for pancakes. Dongsaeng sat on the porch just outside the opposite doorway, playing with gourds. From the steaming pot on the stove I smelled bone marrow soup. The Changs’ kitchen was half as small as ours with only one stove and no hearth. Most of its few shelves were dusty and bare.

“Yah, here’s the thoughtful neighbor girl!” Hansu’s mother wiped her palms on her apron and grasped my hands. A tiny woman with gray streaks in her hair, she had the same straight brows and scoop-shaped eyes as her son. “I told your mother about the mysterious gift we received before we left for Seoul, and just as we guessed, she said the comb was yours. You’ve made your mother proud.”

I blushed as she patted my shoulder. Mother smiled, saying, “You’ll spoil her.” Dongsaeng flapped his arms, and I lifted him and kissed his pudgy hands.

“How is Hansu’s father?” I asked politely.

“He’s very well; sitting with our son as if he were still a little baby. And yes,” she said, seeing the question on my lips, “he is well. Weakened, and grown in ways we prayed that God might have spared him …” She turned to the stove and wiped her eyes with her apron. “We’re making healthy soup. Go and see him! In the front room.”

Hansu’s father, a gaunt and lanky man, had a long face topped with thick hair that stood straight up, reminding me of carrot greens. He seemed to be dozing, sitting against pillows that obscured my view of a makeshift bed. I bowed and said softly, “It’s the neighbors’ daughter.”

“Najin!” said Hansu. His feet stirred beneath the quilt.

“Don’t get up, son,” said Hansu’s father. “Come in, young lady, and visit a while. I’ve things to do.” He patted my shoulder as he left.

Hansu, pale and shockingly thin, beckoned me to sit on his father’s vacated cushion. Something was wrong with his other hand, which rested outside the blanket. The last three fingers were crooked and bent, zigzagged at wrong angles. I looked at him in pity and gasped at a shiny red scar tracing his hairline down to his ear.