The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [96]
Hansu and Mr. Cho stayed until midafternoon, which Mother said was a wonderful sign. “Of what?” I said, loudly pounding peas for Father’s porridge. She merely smiled and talked to Cook about supper.
THREE DAYS LATER, after Mr. Cho’s third visit with Father, Mother found me in the garden where I was picking lettuce leaves for supper. “Aigu!” she said, hurrying in and out again with a wide straw hat. “You mustn’t get any darker.”
“You wear it. I’ll get another.”
“No, no! Take it. I’ll stand in the shade here and tell you.” Beneath the eaves, Mother, incapable of being idle, searched the cucumber vines for fruit.
“Tell me what?”
“What your father said to the visitor today!”
“Oh.” I tied the cord of the straw cone hat beneath my chin and bent to my task, glad my hands were busy since I didn’t know what to do with my feelings.
“Those men! Always talking politics and philosophy. I go in and out, listening with one ear. Today, I hear your father say, ‘I’m not a man to dilly-dally, talking from the side of my mouth.’ I didn’t want to disturb them with my footsteps, and I stopped and listened to everything—like you as a child behind the screen!” She laughed girlishly, and I jokingly scolded her.
“Then your father says, ‘You should know the state of her dowry.’”
“Umma-nim, you already said …”I moved farther down the rows of lettuce.
She caught up. “Nonsense. It’s very wise of your father to consider everything on your behalf. Even if Mr. Cho is lower class, it’s only right as your future groom—well, if you insist, your maybe-future groom—that he be treated as a gentleman. Your father said, ‘The girl’s mother finds you acceptable, your father’s letter says he’s in agreement, depending on whether you and I are in agreement.’ Then not another breath and he says, ‘I am in agreement.’”
I wished to be anywhere other than where I was, having to experience this humiliation. A chicken in a cage being bartered!
“Also,” said Mother, “he told Mr. Cho that you must be in agreement as well, so you have nothing to fear.”
This concession was the result of Mother’s work. I looked at her gratefully. “Did he—did the gentleman say anything?”
She smiled—smugly, I thought—and I turned my hot cheeks to the lettuce. “Well, if you mean did he speak his intention, the answer is no. Father was too busy telling him about the farm and Manchuria. Yah, Najin-ah—” Her soft tone made me look at her with concern. “His voice was very heavy, poor man. Then he became angry, thinking about it, I suppose, and he was actually quite brusque to poor Mr. Cho. What must he think of us?”
I shrugged and put Mother’s cucumber crop in my lettuce basket.
“Your father said that your dowry consisted only of your personal possessions, your modern thinking and your education.”
“I have to admit feeling pride in the ‘modern thinking and education,’” I said, smiling.
Mother tilted my straw hat to peer at me. “I’m proud of you too.” Our eyes met in a small rich instant. “You’ll be pleased with the visitor’s response,” said Mother.
“Hm.”
“‘Mine is a simple family’ he said. ‘We rely less on material goods than on God’s goodness.’ A fine answer, don’t you agree?”
Any other bride would have been consumed with anxiety about how her future in-laws lived and what kind of mother-in-law she’d have, but I wanted to hear no more. Drawing water to wash the vegetables, I changed the subject. “Speaking of family, when will Dongsaeng be home again?”
“Soon. I remember when he was home last spring how he complained about the smell of boiling cocoons.” Earlier, I’d admired Mother’s modest silkworm farm: the healthy mulberry bushes, mesh-covered frames that protected the larvae as they ate and wove their silken shells, the paddles, reels, spools, and the outdoor cauldron used every two months to boil the cocoons, an