The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [154]
Clutching my frayed coat, I tightened the shawl around my head and shoulders and walked slowly, my legs weak from inactivity. The snow slowed to a dusting about an hour later when I thought I might be close to town, and I saw ahead on the road the silhouette of my mother, her recognizable steady gait, her beloved form. I found myself running and when I reached her, I fell to her feet and embraced her ankles. We sat together on the road in the snow for some time, sobbing, searching each other’s face to prove it was true, wiping each other’s tears, my mother ensuring I was whole and unharmed, praising God. I was certain that in all the dampened snowy earth there was no sweeter sound than her voice, no sweeter vision than her eyes upon mine.
Mother held my arm and we turned toward home. We walked cautiously and slowly, my feet unsure and legs unsteady. With long stretches of silence in between, she talked about the goings-on at home. “Father and Dongsaeng still argue about the value of classical education. Father considered agreeing to let him teach, but decided he’s too young to impart any learning. Imo writes that her nephew received top marks at university. Unsook still goes every Monday to the orphanage. The director said the children had a wonderful Christmas because of her. Unsook is a little short of breath these days and I’m praying that she’ll miss this month’s bleeding.”
I recognized by the foreignness of what I heard that my mind had been altered, and this was her attempt to nudge it back to the life I’d known before. I tried hard to focus on the words, but it was her voice that helped normalcy seep back in.
The snow stopped fully by the time we passed the guardhouse that marked one li before entrance into the city. “We should rest. You should eat to have strength for the remainder of the walk home.”
I shook my head.
“Then let’s go on.”
The mention of food brought the memory of the rice bowl scriptures, and I told her about the interrogations and Major Yoshida’s odd study of Christianity.
“Truly you were Jesus’s messenger, protected by his watchful angels,” said Mother. When she delivered fervent thanks to heaven for my safekeeping, the relief in her tone made me see that I’d forgotten others would’ve been concerned about my safety and chastity, and because this idea felt strange, I understood that I was changed even if my body was unharmed. I said nothing to my mother about the nights, which I knew would stay with me like the itch of prison filth, pervasive and unreachable.
As we walked in the cold, I gazed a long time at a small crack in the clouds that exposed a pale strip of sky. I thought then that her steps seemed heavy beside me and felt a terrible remorse. “Umma-nim, you came so far every day.”
“You are my daughter.”
I held on to these words and let them sink slowly into the fog of my heart. I knew instinctively if I heard them wholly, they would pierce with the incomprehensible truth of too much love, too quickly received, and the gratitude given could never be enough.
We passed the snowcapped walls of other family estates on the narrow walkway next to gutters blanketed with clean whiteness, under which I knew was rank trash and frozen sewage. I listened steadily to the freedom of our cold footsteps shuffling in the snow.
We walked up the hill together in silence. The familiar columns of our home gate and the pleasing curve of the tile-roofed archway I’d passed beneath so many times gave me stabs of joy. Dongsaeng, Unsook and all the servants cried out to see me. I heard something splinter in Father’s study. Joong rushed in and out to say that Father, hearing