The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [16]
Whenever she talked about her family, her changed voice made me want to take her hand.
“Now that I think about it, I was older than you are now, but that first walk to church must have been like today is for you, except we veiled our faces with our coats. Thankfully it wasn’t a hot summer day. In fact,” she said, looking skyward at the treetops’ changing colors, “it might have been this time of year. I can’t remember. What I do remember is keeping an eye out for my mother’s feet in front of me, and the dust from the road on our skirts and coats when we came home.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Don’t be afraid of new things, Najin-ah.”
“I’m not!” I said before remembering my mantra. “Excuse me. I’m excited, Umma-nim, not afraid. It must be strange to walk with your coat over your head.”
“That was for modesty. Something you should try to have a bit more of.”
I knew to bow my head and close my lips. Straightening my shoulders, I focused on my mother’s footsteps, imagining a veil of modesty covering me from head to toe.
We neared the market where the cool air held odors of decomposing scraps and trash. Anticipation had heightened my senses, making colors and smells more intense, shapes sharper, details bright and bold. A few star maple leaves, deeply red and yellow, scuttled along the ruts eroded in the dirt roadside. Passing narrow alleyways, I glimpsed heaps of rubbish, a dog rooting, a cluster of empty chicken cages, a man spitting tobacco between brown-stained teeth. The sounds of the market distracted me— cries of bartering, a rooster crowing, an underwhir of chatter and clamor.
“I was excited, like you,” said Mother. “And yes, with excitement there’s often fear. But I had little to fear since my brothers watched me as closely as a tiger her cubs. Also, I knew by then that I would be married soon.” She smiled, her eyes crescents. “So I had many other fears to consider for the future.”
In the market square she pointed out a bakery and a small restaurant. “If you do well with your lessons, I’ll give you a few jeon. The owners of those two shops are church members. You could buy treats there occasionally.”
My mouth watered at the prospect of taffy, or kelp chips dusted with sugar. We wove through the crowded market. Vendors shouted out the merits of their wares, or “Best price! Best price!” while customers haggled. Farmers and peddlers spread their goods on a swept parcel of ground: piles of straw sandals and rubber shoes in muted hues, open bags of rice and grains, stacked heads of cabbage, strings of pepper and ropes of garlic, green-flowering bunches of beets, radishes and carrots. One of my favorite chores was to accompany my mother to the fish market and produce sellers to help carry tofu, cucumbers, salted cod, and to other shops for cotton to spin, needles, medicinal herbs, dishes and pots.
“Umma-nim, who will help make all that gimchi?” I was stricken with the realization that for the first time in my life I’d be apart from her nearly all day, and it was gimchi-making season.
“Don’t worry. After your studies, you can help me as always, especially with your sewing. You’re doing well with embroidery and you mustn’t get behind. Perhaps you’ll learn new stitches at school.” She slowed to inspect a display of fresh-picked greens of many varieties, and I smelled apples before I saw the bent-over peddler trudge past, his A-frame basket loaded with the crisp fruit. When my mother sliced apples, they looked like lotuses in bloom, each piece cupped in a starburst of peel, and even though Cook said my skill in wielding the bamboo parer was impressive for my age, my apple petals were still uneven.
“Like peeling apples into flowers,” I said. “I have lots to practice.”
“That way of thinking will help you become a good wife and mother someday.”
I warmed with this praise.
“A turtle can’t move if he doesn’t stick his neck out,” quoted Mother. We walked through