The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [8]
“Yes, thank you—”
“Goodbye, goodbye, and I’ll be sure to tell you as soon as I hear anything more!” She sidled down the pew and hurried to the door, where the deacon and her two sons were showing impatient frowns.
“Goodbye,” Haejung said faintly. Then silently, “Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this possibility,” and her lips grew firm with concentration as she tried to sort through the battle of obedience versus desire being waged within her. Typically, obedience, weighted by fidelity and virtue, gained the upper hand. She walked home holding her daughter’s hand, following a few steps behind her husband. Absorbed in her thoughts, she wasn’t aware of her husband’s stiff back showing disapproval of Najin’s aimless singing and intermittent skips and hops. Haejung barely smelled the sweet green of pear blossoms in the breeze that breathed fragrance on her neck, but the scent stroked the surface of her buried passions. A gentle exhale confirmed her surrender to desire on her daughter’s behalf, and then she smelled the flowers fully and smiled. She considered how best to approach her husband. Certainly he’d have very pronounced ideas about the Japanese schools, but Mrs. Hwang’s chatter had awakened memories of her own girlhood longing and unbecoming jealousy when her brothers had begun their lessons.
The first tutor had come to the house in Nah-jin twenty years ago when Haejung was seven, and at this moment she felt as if she were seven still, sitting outside her brothers’ classroom window, fuming with envy. Her mother had already taught her to read, and she was versed in Korean vernacular with a respectable command of Chinese writing, which was used for Korean formal writings and official documents. Even though her books were then limited to tales of virtuous women and filial daughters, she’d been amazed to discover new vistas in internal worlds, vivid histories and a living past, and her excitement only grew over the endless possibilities that lay within books. And later, it stunned her to think that the Bible itself was a book—and oh! such a book! In addition to changing her family’s life, it had shown her a quiet yet rich way to live peacefully within the natural confines of womanhood. The Confucian morality tales were filled with selfless and irreproachable noble women, but the courageous and persevering biblical women provided a higher purpose and a model of living she had admired; a model that was, with faith, easily internalized. She had longed to study the history of the Bible, the history of its writing, to see how these mere words had come to mean so much to so many. Without question, her duty to her husband and family prevented such study, and besides, in her day there were only dreams of formal schooling for females. Unlike now.
Haejung couldn’t avoid supplanting her desire for learning in her daughter, though she knew her husband’s opposition to the Japanese schools and his staunch traditionalism made the probability slim. The intensity of her longing led to an irrational belief that the rapidly changing times might suggest to her husband the value of a daughter’s education. On the walk home from church, she laid a plan to make him receptive to the idea.
For the next several days she worked with Cook to prepare especially pleasing meals, choosing costly dishes that were less likely to cause another bout of his chronic indigestion. She made up the expense by forgoing a linen purchase to sew him a needed summer suit of clothes, knowing she had the skill to refashion last summer’s clothes so cleverly he wouldn’t notice. Her daughter had been learning how to serve meals, but such delicate service wasn’t natural to her. Broth spilled and peas rolled off the table, provoking irritable grunts and stern reprimands. Haejung decided to serve him herself.
She sent Joong, her husband’s manservant, to buy the superior grade of rice wine and tobacco that he preferred yet denied himself in consideration of