The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [170]
It took me a moment to understand what my mother was saying. “Scholar Chang’s brush?”
My mother nodded and we smiled at each other knowingly. “Korea’s Royal Treasure,” I said, and kissed the baby’s wiggling, agile fingers.
DURING THE NEXT several years our lives seemed to shrink in a tightening spiral focused on food, money and fuel. Thankfully, contrary to Sunok’s delicate appearance, she had Dongsaeng’s sturdy constitution, and while not robust she managed to avoid illness. My mother sold some of our garden yield at market, and over time, having gradually cut down three of our trees for fuel, my father sold his woodcarving tools. I had gained a reputation as a competent midwife, but no one had a gourd of grain to spare or even a yard of muslin for my services. Instead, I received vegetable seeds folded in a scrap of newspaper, a cool drink of water or words of gratitude and blessing. Even if I had wanted to teach, schools for Korean children—who could barely speak their native tongue—were closed. With my arrest record, I couldn’t work for a Japanese employer, and nearly all enterprise was Japanese-owned.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan heightened already-stringent controls on rationing and patriotic duty, which usually meant donating more things to the cause and showing up for endless rallies. Americans soon rimmed the Pacific with warships, and it seemed the entire world was at war. All forms of Korean and Chinese culture and expression were banned. Occasionally one of Dongsaeng’s former buyers would remember him, and he’d receive a referral to paint a sign or a banner in Japanese, but as the war escalated it became too dangerous for Dongsaeng to leave the house. We eventually sold all his art materials save a few brushes and sticks of ink.
I overheard Dongsaeng’s wife complain about his inability to feed his own daughter, with whom she’d grown attached—a relationship I mistrusted until I happened to see Meeja giving Sunok half of her porridge when she thought I wasn’t looking. Meeja, who had not yet conceived, proved to be a dreadful cook and a lazy housekeeper, but she sang all manner of songs to Sunok and found countless ways to amuse her, and anything that could distract the child from her hunger was a blessing.
Then came the worrisome realization that we had nothing left to sell. The false bottom of my mother’s linen chest had long been empty of the precious ceremonial clothes that two infants had worn to be named, and the chest itself had been sold. The neighborhood association had even collected Sunok’s rubber ball for the war.
Since I was truly the most able-bodied person in the household who could work a steady paying job, I finally found a position—thanks to Elder Kim—at a Methodist-built orphanage run by Korean nationals in rural Suwon, a day’s journey from Seoul. I hated to leave Sunok as well as my mother, who would have to rely on Meeja to help manage the household, but with hunger clawing at our doorstep, my responsibility to my family was clear.
Tending to the needs of more than one hundred children made my years at the orphanage pass quickly, and I was thankful that the money I sent home every month helped sustain my family and allowed Sunok to grow and thrive. I rarely thought about my husband, except in the summers when the children searched the streams for crayfish, an endeavor which mimicked how Calvin’s mudworms forestalled starvation. Then, the day after Sollal in 1944, in the middle of a bright snowy day, all the orphans over the age of twelve—about forty youngsters—were taken away by truck. It was the first time I’d seen a truck powered by coal-fire rigging, and because it hinted that Japan’s resources were nearing depletion, it was the first time I dared to imagine that the war might finally end. We were told the boys would become soldiers, and the girls, comfort nurses. The orphanage would receive no further government funding, and my job ended that afternoon.
On the journey home, the train nearly empty and the roadsides crowded with beggars, I thought that my