The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [41]
“Aigu! You won’t catch a husband running like that! That’s not a girl. That’s a wild animal, no doubt about it.” Her words were lost in my footfalls. She wouldn’t yell to a boy, I thought. She’d say something about such sturdy legs, what a perfect day for running, how clever to be in such a hurry! Up the hill, I reached the turn just in time to see my teacher’s skirt slip behind the school’s front door. I walked the remainder of the way, so I wouldn’t be out of breath when I arrived.
I’d decided that, not counting my mother, Yee Sunsaeng-nim was the most beautiful and smartest woman in the entire world. She became my hero on my very first day of school, when my name was called and all the girls tittered and whispered over its oddness. She rapped on the desk and made it clear that such meanness would not be tolerated, and that my name had a lovely and pure sound. Now in my second year with Yee Sunsaeng-nim, I still looked forward to the special smile like the one she’d given me that day, with which she continued to recognize me as I did well with my lessons. When she paced sedately between the students’ desks, nodding rhythmically to arithmetic recitations, I admired her graceful long torso, the way her slim hips made her skirt swish like a muffled bell about her ankles. When she passed my desk, she left a sweetness of spring air in the stuffy classroom.
However, after the summer monsoon break, two frown lines had made permanent inroads in her silken forehead. Teacher Yee’s perfect features usually exuded warmth and serenity, even when girls hadn’t finished their homework. My neighbor Hansu used to tell me how his teacher yelled and regularly beat their shins and forearms with a stick. Until this term, Yee Sunsaeng-nim had been a model of studied calm, but yesterday she’d snapped at one of the brighter students for a simple pronunciation error. All the girls whispered during lunch break about her strange irritability and wondered what hidden malady she suffered. “She’s not coughing up blood!” one girl said. I told them they were acting as stupid as headless chickens with their pointless gossip, and it was no wonder that Yee Sunsaeng-nim looked exhausted. Everyone snubbed me for the rest of the day, even my best friend, Jaeyun.
Below the sign CHUNGHEE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, I composed myself, straightening into the posture of an intelligent young lady. I listened for my teacher’s daily classroom preparations—maps snapping on rollers, papers riffling, chalk tapping and squeaking—but not a sound came from the classroom. I cracked the door, peeked in, then quickly shut it. Yee Sunsaeng-nim was sitting stiffly at her desk, her shoulders rigid, her face covered by both hands. The morning shadows made her appear as translucent and still as a block of salt.
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