The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [159]
The Price of Jesus
END OF FEBRUARY 1940
STUBBORN ODORS OF GARLIC AND PEPPER CLUNG TO THE WALLS LONG after the dinner hour had passed. I closed the sliding door to the sickroom and removed my facemask. Mother neared in the darkening hallway, hands tucked into jacket sleeves, socks swishing on the floor. “Do you know where your brother is?” she asked.
I carefully phrased my answer to avoid lying. “He said Father told him that Elder Kim was interested in a scroll to commemorate his grandson’s naming ceremony. He said he would visit Elder Kim to ask what he might want.”
Mother’s eyes crinkled in approval and I turned quickly. Who could tell what Dongsaeng did on his evenings out? I knew he’d squandered the money from the topaz, but there were no new silk socks or factory-made shirts. I had my suspicions. I’d been doing his laundry ever since my sister-in-law had taken ill, and took precautions to protect Unsook and Mother from learning about his behavior. His clothes reeked with tobacco and drink, and I scrubbed face powder and lipstick stains with fury.
Mother raised an eyebrow toward the sickroom and I held my fingers to my lips. In the kitchen and out of earshot of the sickroom, I said, “She feels cold so I’ll stoke the fire. I’m making herb tea and soup.” We didn’t know when or where Unsook had contracted tuberculosis, but it flowered after she’d caught a cold that Mother said had all the children at the Gaeseong orphanage sniffling during the Christmas play. After that, Unsook’s little cough receded and we were preoccupied with moving. Almost three seasons later, two months after autumn equinox, Dongsaeng told us that Unsook was pregnant at last. But this jubilant news was quickly dashed when the doctor reported that she was also chronically ill. Our first doleful Christmas and New Year’s in Seoul were further shadowed by Unsook’s steady decline.
“Not much coughing today,” said Mother.
“Not much blood in her phlegm, either. The new medicine seems to be helping. A better day.”
“Thank God. I’ll wait up for your brother. He’ll be hungry when he gets home. Father’s annoyed he had to eat alone again.” Her phrasing made me smile. Both of us had eaten supper with Father, but we maintained the pretense of certain traditions. The women’s partition had been dispensed with after we moved. The house, a right angle, lined two sides of a large courtyard and a grassy yard, which we turned into a vegetable garden. The sole sitting room took the corner and part of the north-south wing. Then came a tiny anteroom studio followed by Ilsun’s room, Unsook’s sickroom and an indoor toilet that drained to a side alley sewer. The east-west wing started with the kitchen, then my room, Mother’s room, a storage room and Father’s rooms, followed by the entryway beside the sitting room. Some of the rooms, like Unsook’s, were only big enough for one pallet, while the sitting room could sleep three, and all were close with low, exposed roof beams, traditional ondol floors with built-in flues for heating, and paper walls.
Initially, it was difficult for everyone to eat together—Mother could barely part her lips for fear my father would glimpse the inside of her mouth—but it was both practical and economical, and after ensuring that the men had plenty and started before us, we were able to eat with them without too much embarrassment. However, it would be impolite to speak of it.
Mother took a pillowslip and went to join Father. She looked shrunken, but her back was still straight, narrow and graceful, and her silvery hair framed only the tiniest of wrinkles on her oval face. I pictured Father reading, the lines of his long face stern. He would be cross-legged on the mat and stroking his white goatee, his sharp angles still clothed in his old-fashioned vests.