I'll Be Right There (16 page)

As soon as I saw the public bath, Miru’s skirt caught my eye. She stood out everywhere she went because of that skirt. Even more so when the seasons changed. She stood out in the summer because the pattern clashed with everything around her, and the rest of the year, she stood out because the fabric was meant for warm weather. Miru was holding the tickets for the public bath—she had already paid for us to get in. When
I walked up to her, she handed me a locker key. We went in and stood in front of locker numbers sixty-one and sixty-two. I took my clothes off and started folding them. I glanced over at Miru, who was unhooking her skirt.

“Why do you always wear that?” I asked.

Miru hesitated. Then she folded the skirt and put it in the locker without answering. She took off her shirt as well, folded it, and put it inside. Even when we were alone together, Miru was often so lost in thought that I felt compelled to ask what she was thinking. She slipped off her underwear and placed it on top of her clothes. Everything—her bra, her underwear, and even the shirt she wore with the skirt—was white.

Though it was a Saturday, there weren’t many other women. In one corner, a young mother was shampooing her daughter’s hair. The girl looked like she was around four years old. There were two women in the tub: one who looked old enough to be a grandmother and a middle-aged woman who looked like her daughter-in-law. Miru and I rinsed off first under the standing showers.

“We had a public bath like this close to where we grew up. My sister and I went there all the time. Our mother would buy us a month’s worth of bath tickets at a time. We would get up in the morning and head straight there to wash our faces, shampoo our hair, and play in the water …” With her face covered in water droplets, Miru smiled as if she had just remembered something. Her cheeks were red from the heat.

“The owner of the bath had four sons. He used to get drunk and line them up out front and recite their business motto. Passersby would stop and watch. All four of the boys
were very handsome, not to mention good students, good athletes, and well behaved. The other boys were constantly being compared with them. ‘They get good grades, so why can’t you?’ ‘They’re tall, so why are you so short?’ I think the owner did that so he could show them off. He had a big smile on his face each time. My sister and I used to go there just to hear him. After a while, everyone in the neighborhood had all but memorized the bathhouse’s business motto.”

I asked her what it was and, with a solemn look on her face, she recited it for me line by line: “You all have to clean up sometime. It’s just a matter of time. And if we do our job right, we’ll clean up, too.”

We laughed at the pun. The woman washing her daughter’s hair must have been listening because she also started giggling. Even the grandmother soaking in the tub had a smile on her face.

“One of those boys was Myungsuh!” Miru said.

“What?”

I plopped down on the floor under the shower and burst out laughing. The more I tried to stop, the harder I laughed until I was almost in tears. I could see Miru’s body clearly, even through the cloud of steam. Her legs, which were always covered up by the skirt, were long and her back was straight. Her hair was pinned up with a gold barrette, baring the line of her neck where it curved gently into her shoulders. While we were showering, the tub emptied. I climbed in first, and Miru followed. We leaned against the tiled wall side by side, stretched our legs out, and sank into the water. My cousin used to invite me to the public bath with her, but I always
avoided it, saying, “Who goes bathing together?” She would counter by saying, “We can scrub each other’s backs.” But I would retreat into my room. What would she have said if she saw Miru and me in the public bath together? The only person I had ever gone to a public bath with was my mother. I pictured the way my mother used to bathe me at home when I was little: boiling water on the stove, pouring it into a big tub, adding cold water, and testing the temperature with her elbow. She was so young back then. I remembered copying her and dipping my little elbow into the water. She used to pluck peach blossoms when they were in bloom and float them in the bathwater. “To whiten our little Yoon’s skin,” she would say. She also used to clip the irises that bloomed all along the alley outside our gate and boil them in a large pot of water to add to my bath. I remembered dozing off in the water as she scrubbed my back and washed my face, the soft, delicate scent of blossoms tickling my nose.

I felt sad suddenly, so I poked Miru’s foot with my own under the water. She tapped mine back in response. I kicked her again, a little harder than before. She followed suit. Our little game started off quietly but soon turned to splashing. The middle-aged woman, who was washing the grandmother’s hair, looked over at us. Embarrassed, I rolled over onto my stomach and rested my arms against the edge of the tub; Miru copied me. The scars on her hands shimmered in the water.

“She used to sit in the water and wonder what the weather was like outside,” Miru said.

“Who?”

“My sister,” she said. “Do you wonder what the weather’s like outside, too?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “When you’re in here, it feels like another world. Sometimes I do wonder, is it raining out there? Or maybe snowing?”

“My sister used to say that, too.”

“What’s she like?”

Miru dipped her face in the water. Drops of water hung from her eyelashes.

“She wore the same clothes every summer for four years. But the next summer, she took them out to discover that they were threadbare and unwearable. The sleeves were frayed. She took them to a seamstress and asked her to make her a new set in the exact same style from the exact same fabric. The tailor examined the frayed clothes and said she could make the same style but the fabric was no longer available. So my sister left. I told her the tailor could make her something better, but she said there was no point if it wasn’t the same fabric … That’s what she was like.”

I began to wonder about Miru’s older sister.

“She also had a sweater our mother knitted for her in elementary school that she wore until middle school. She grew and grew, but she kept putting it on even when it rode up in the back. The year she started middle school, she grew fourteen centimeters. The sweater didn’t fit anymore. She asked our mother to knit her the exact same sweater as a birthday present. Our mother had stopped knitting by then, but my sister badgered her until she started re-knitting it with new yarn in the same color. She even learned a new knitting
technique and added a pocket, which the first sweater did not have. When she gave my sister the sweater, my sister said it was different from the old one and refused to wear it. That’s what she was like.”

Miru’s face suddenly darkened. “To tell the truth, I don’t really know. What kind of person she was, I mean. We were only a year apart in age, but she was born twelve years after our parents got married. They said they thought they couldn’t have a baby and had given up when my sister suddenly came along. Our mother became pregnant with me just two months after my sister was born. I guess that’s why I felt like I had been keeping an eye on her ever since I was in our mother’s belly. I must have been really attached to her. When we were little, I did everything she did. If she bobbed her hair, I got mine bobbed, and when she started learning piano, I started learning piano. When we played hide-and-go-seek with the other kids, they only had to look for my sister to find me. I was always right there beside her. It wasn’t because she was older than me. I just didn’t feel like myself unless I was with her. Do you know what I mean?”

I was an only child, so it was hard for me to understand.

“When she was nine, my sister announced that she wanted to become a ballerina. I still remember the look on her face when she said it. She was enrolled in elementary school first, of course, but I went to school right along with her. When she moved up to the second grade, I stayed behind in the first grade. So I was in second grade and she was in third grade when she said she was going to be a ballerina when she grew up. Up until then, I had assumed she had no secrets from me,
but I had no idea what ballet was. I felt like ballet was pushing us apart for the first time. Maybe it would have been better if we had grown apart then …”

Water dripped from the ceiling onto Miru’s shoulder.

“I decided that I had to do whatever it took to become a ballerina like my sister. We started taking lessons every day after school. One of the girls in our class had been studying ballet since she was six. My sister burst into tears when she heard that. She thought she couldn’t compete with the girl and complained that she would “never get that time back.” She wept hysterically. She was only nine, but she already knew what it felt like to have her heart broken. Because she came along so late, my sister was very special to our parents. To console her, they not only had her take lessons at the academy but they even installed a barre in the house so she could practice. They invited the ballet teacher over to give her private lessons. I followed along beside her. I heard the ballet teacher whisper to her that she had the right body type for ballet, but the teacher just looked at me apologetically. I didn’t care. She was right. I wasn’t as flexible as my sister, and I didn’t enjoy it the way she did. I just followed along because she was doing it.”

The water dripping from the ceiling must have tickled because she wiped the drops off with her palm and laughed.

“Flexible, ha! I was as stiff as a board. I definitely did not take after her in that respect.”

I smiled.

“I couldn’t even do something as basic as the splits. The classes centered on my sister. By the time she was doing arabesques, I was still figuring out how to stand in first position.

But it didn’t matter. I was happy to watch her grow more beautiful and more talented by the day. Since I had no interest in comparing myself to her or surpassing her, I had no complaints. Those were our happiest times. Our parents looked happy, too. They expected great things from my sister.”

The other women in the bathhouse slowly trickled out until we were the only ones left.

“You have to have an ear for music to do ballet. I was less interested in doing ballet myself than in watching my sister’s movements grow deeper, subtler, and more sophisticated with each day. But most of all, I liked listening to music with her. My sister understood ballet intuitively. She mastered complicated movements quickly and would lose herself in them. It was like she was born to be a ballerina. When she wasn’t practicing, she read books on ballet. She sounded like a teacher when she talked about the history of ballet, the costumes, the ballerinas and ballerinos. Her cheeks would turn red with excitement whenever she told me something new she had learned. I learned the names of legendary ballet dancers from her—Ulanova, Pavlova, Nijinsky, Nureyev. If the moon was out on a night when she was telling me about ballet, she would go outside and dance under the moonlight. Her dream was to dance the role of the Dying Swan. She really did look like a swan in the moonlight.”

“I’ve never heard anyone talk about their older sister the way you do.”

“What kinds of things do other people say?”

“Most just talk about the fights they have.”

“Fights?”

“I think most sisters push and shove each other and argue about which one should get the better room, or wear an outfit they like first, or read a book first, or get to use the hairdryer first. But you put your sister before yourself.”

“That’s because she was better than me.” She sounded pained. “Do you think we’re unusual?”

I didn’t answer.

“Well?” she asked again.

“You don’t seem like normal sisters.”

“We don’t?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

Miru sighed. The water had cooled. I reached over and turned on the faucet to add more hot water. Miru dipped her face. She seemed to be holding her breath. She stayed under so long that I was about to yell her name when she lifted her face and exhaled deeply.

“Yoon,” she said, “will you go with me to my old house?”

“When?”

“After we’re done bathing.”

She looked sad, so I agreed. After hearing my answer, she stuck her face back underwater.

T
he house was up a very steep hill. Miru lifted a rock beside the green front gate to retrieve a hidden key. Inside the gate was a small yard overgrown with weeds. A sunflower, heavy with seeds, hung its head. It was apparent that no one had been by in a long time. A small deck, the wood faded, sat in the middle of the yard as if someone had discarded it there, and a rusted drying rack lay flat beside it. The thick weeds
looked as if they would barge in through the front door at any moment.

“The house is vacant?” I asked.

“For now,” Miru said, her voice trailing off.

I saw something poking up from among the weeds like stalks of green onions. Small white flowers hung from the tips. As I was looking at them, Miru told me they were called white rain lilies. I crouched down in front of them and stared at the white blossoms. The petals looked even paler in contrast to the dismal surroundings. Miru walked up the steps to the front door, the keys in her hand, but then she hesitated and turned back.

“I can’t do it,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Let’s just go.”

Miru’s face was pale.

“I thought I could go inside if you were with me,” she said. “But I can’t.”

Her voice was trembling. She was already at the front gate, so I grabbed my basket and joined her. She locked it and put the key back under the rock. Carrying our shower baskets, we made our way down the hill. The sun was still out when we left the public bath, but now dusk was falling. Halfway down the hill, I glanced back. The lights had already gone on in the other houses; Miru’s old house seemed to be watching us from between them. Was that really where the three of them had lived together? Miru was once again walking with her head down like she was staring at her own heart.

As if reading my mind, she suddenly said, “It is.”