The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [74]
He shrugged. “Who cares?”
I tweaked his ear. “Such talk! Are you studying for entrance exams?”
“Yes, it’s easy. See?” He held up his last teacher’s report showing high marks in all subjects. His round face gleamed, his chin puffed with pride.
“And Khang Chinsa-nim? Are you behaving with him?” Before I left for Seoul I’d unabashedly copied my mother’s childhood example and listened outside Ilsun’s study to hear Chinsa-nim’s lessons whenever I could.
He made a sour face. “Old fart.”
“Dongsaeng!” I rapped the back of his hand.
He slapped my hand from his, making me wonder where he’d picked up his sullen ways. “Never smiles! Never says anything good about me! I know Abbuh-nim thinks I’m smart. Why is Chinsa-nim so stingy?”
“It’s his job. He does things the old way. You know, too many compliments will ruin your character. See how you’re behaving now.” I said it mockingly, but he avoided my eyes, his lips turned down, and he rubbed ink on his stone.
“I’ll leave you to your homework.” I decided that if he was good, I’d buy him a fountain pen as a graduation gift.
I started to tell him this, but he pouted. “I thought you’d come home and we’d do something fun.”
“Mother needs help. It’s my duty, and yours is to study hard.”
“You’re just like all the other grownups.”
I smiled at his petulant acknowledgment of my new status and left for the stream to help Kira wash clothes.
Beyond the bamboo grove that bordered the backyard, a small mountain stream ran fast and deep after spring monsoons. By the time the sun rose hot with summer, the flow trickled more modestly but remained clear and cold. On the opposite bank of the narrow creekbed, bees and insects hummed, darting in and out of wild grasses and chickweed tangled in a rocky meadow that sloped up toward hilly woods. Balanced on her wide brown feet, Kira squatted over a flat stone half in and out of the stream, beating clothes with a laundry stick. I tied my skirts and rolled my sleeves to join in.
“You shouldn’t. Your hands will lose their softness.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s work to be done.”
“Aigu! Such a shame. From princess to washerwoman in two days.” Kira’s sandy voice rang with teasing.
I soaked some clothes and scrubbed them against the stone. “Not princess at all. Just a student in a different kind of classroom.”
“How scary to get swallowed by the iron demon and spat out. To think that you’ve done this twice! Very brave.”
“Oh Kira, not at all. It’s like a very fast cart ride, maybe not as bumpy. It is smelly, though. One day you’ll see.”
“Never! My own two feet or, when I’m old, on the back of my grandson. That’ll do for me.”
“And I hear news that certainly one day grandsons will be coming!” An uncharacteristic redness swept down Kira’s tanned neck. I touched her wet hand. “I’m happy for you. A wedding date?”
“After Harvest Moon,” mumbled Kira, blushing thoroughly.
“Blessings for the marriage. A good man. Works hard.”
“Hardly works!” We laughed and talked, singing silly laundry songs as we pounded and washed. I climbed off the rock to fill two water buckets upstream, wading in delicious coolness. A splash cast a shadow, or perhaps it was glare from the noontime sun, and I saw a sinewy gray fish dart past me to slip between Kira’s ankles. I remembered my mother’s pregnancy dreams and wondered what sort of omen had at that moment passed between us.
Kira hefted a heavy basket of wrung clothes onto her head, and we walked downstream along the bank, our skirts still tied above our knees, picking careful steps between clumps of weeds and sharp stones. Kira said that the past two winters had dealt them only minor illnesses and none-too-severe snowstorms. As we neared the bamboo grove, something made me look ahead. I saw the dust-blue of a soldier’s uniform disappear behind a rocky outcrop. I stopped. Kira bumped into me, and the buckets sloshed. I could see by Kira’s eyes