The Calligrapher's Daughter (38 page)

She smiled warmly. “Well then, Daughter, what is a Christian family for but to welcome their son’s bride? I consider the unexpectedness of it a special blessing!” She fingered the books again. “Before he left for college, Second Son used to read to me from the Bible and some of these others. Perhaps you’ll humor me by reading to me occasionally? Your father-in-law has no time for a foolish old wife with no education.”

“I’d be honored to.” I hadn’t known Calvin’s mother was illiterate. Once again anger flashed through me at the careless thoughtlessness of men. With a houseful of intellectuals and men doing women’s work, why had no one taught her? I was doomed if I continued to nurse such emotions. I bowed again and spoke as politely as I could, praying the formalities would even out my tone. “I apologize for coming empty-handed, but my gifts are in my luggage.” How easily my manners brought this lie to my lips.

“Don’t worry about that. All the gifts we need come straight from God.” She leaned closer to examine my features. “Clearly you’ve had quite a sophisticated upbringing. I worry— Perhaps you— Well, I hope you’ll find comfort here.”

“Your consideration is most kind, Ssi-umma-nim.”

We sat awkwardly as the rain blew against the shutters and dripped
into the gourd and pots. Presently she said, “I’ll show you where everything is and you can help me prepare supper. I used to feed all the students, but I’m afraid that was too much for me and the church took that over.”

“Students?”

“Oh yes. Next door.” She opened a window and pointed to the two-story brick building between the church and the house. “We lived there for a time. All those rooms to clean! So many visitors staying for months. Too much! Especially when my eyesight worsened. Your father-in-law grew weary of hearing me complain, and we moved back here. The church houses seminarians there now, a much better use of the place. Besides, I worried all the time that those bricks would cave in on me as I slept. All that worry made me old and wrinkled before my time.” She laughed and I forced a smile.

She showed me how the stove extended through to the back of the house where the roof overhung an outdoor cooking and working area sided with floppy walls of woven matting. A path through a tangled vegetable garden beyond the outdoor kitchen led to the outhouse. We prepared a plain lunch of clear soup, millet, gimchi, steamed beansprouts and dried fish in pepper sauce. When Reverend Cho returned, we ate together around the one small table. They conversed throughout the meal, which took me aback. I couldn’t help but cover my mouth, though neither of my in-laws did, to answer questions about my parents and education. I knew I hadn’t eaten much that day but had no appetite, and with my mouth too full of talking, I ate very little.

After the minister went out again, Mrs. Cho said, “You’re a very lucky newlywed. Your father-in-law won’t often be home. His duties call him at all hours and he regularly eats at the mission.”
Lucky indeed
, I thought bitterly. And then I remembered Imo telling me her tragic story after I’d asked about Queen Min. Imo had married in 1900, considered an auspiciously lucky year. The terrible losses and personal dangers she had weathered in her loyal decades devoted to the royal family made the intensity of my disappointment and dismay seem petulant and deplorable.

When my footlocker and suitcase arrived, I paid the porter and thought about my money and possessions, all of which had been packed with an opposite destination in mind. I knew what my duty was, but couldn’t yet part with my hard-earned steamer fare. I decided to do
nothing for the time being. My unopened trunk dominated the small room like a misplaced palanquin until I shoved it on its end into the bookshelf corner and leaned the suitcase against it.

Rain fell steadily. I asked about the ways of their house. I was to draw water at one of the mission compound’s pumps on the other side of the dormitory, and every morning visit the market just outside the compound walls. Laundry was done with pans and buckets in the outside kitchen, and the garden tended as needed. I readily accepted these duties, causing Mrs. Cho to deliver a prayer of thanks. She would now have time to visit church members at the hospital and mend the seminarian’s clothes. I was too polite, too anxious and too dazed to ask about sleeping arrangements.

That evening after the dinner dishes were cleared and washed, in the pungent smoke of a fish-oil lamp, I presented my in-laws with prized Gaeseong ginseng, sacks of rice and beans, lengths of silk, decorative fans and several embroidered towels. I remembered the original intention of each item I gave—the ginseng for Calvin’s elder brother, the rice and beans to cook on the overseas journey, the silk, fans and towels for my American patrons and teachers—and I felt that a part of me disappeared as each item left my fingers. Mrs. Cho delighted in all the gifts, commenting on their richness and the fine quality of my handiwork, and Reverend Cho suggested the ginseng and rice be given to certain church members who had greater need, the fans and silk be sold for food. I nodded and said nothing more, feeling guilty about the numerous possessions still hoarded in my trunk.

Reverend Cho handed me a folded yellow paper, the copy of my telegram. “I forgot to give you this.”

I absently tucked it in my skirtband. “Thank you. I should tell my parents about—that I— May I write a letter tomorrow?” I felt I should ask to use the one table to write on.

“Of course. Give them our blessings and best regards. You may tell them, despite the unfortunate turn of the day, how pleased we are to have you here,” said Reverend Cho. My mother-in-law reiterated the sentiment by clasping my hand, a gesture that only added to my deepening sense of dread. The minister said an evening prayer and announced it was bedtime.

I followed Mrs. Cho’s instructions to empty the linen closet and spread the heavy quilts—my bedding next to the bookshelf, and beside mine, theirs. With the blankets spread, there was no space left on the wooden part of the floor. Even when she indicated she’d sleep beside me, it remained a layout of considerable discomfort. She brought her husband a basin of warm water. Without further ado, Reverend Cho undressed and, completely naked, wiped himself all over with a washrag. Thoroughly shocked, I turned to the wall and buried my eyes in my hands, too appalled to be polite, and mortified that I’d seen more of him than I had my own husband. Mrs. Cho added water to the basin and I heard her splashing. “There’s hot water on the stove still for you too, Daughter.” She snuffed the lamp, crawled into bed and settled on her side facing away from me. “Goodnight.”

I waited until they breathed evenly with sleep, and still I couldn’t move. It was impossible to remove my clothes in this setting. Impossible to bathe, to sleep! I huddled in the corner with my face to the wall, tugged Calvin’s stained blanket around my legs and agonized. After a few hours of uncomfortable dozing, I tiptoed out of bed and filled the basin with now-cold water. Holding the blanket around my shoulders, I stepped into the linen closet and gingerly undressed. I washed quickly and silently, donned a nightdress and added a jacket for extra coverage. I rearranged the blanket on the rough floor as far away from them as possible—a few centimeters’ gap. Although exhausted, I slept hardly at all and woke at the first hint of dawn to dress, scrub my face and use the outhouse before my in-laws stirred. I folded my bedding quietly and packed it in the closet. The yellow telegram fell from its folds. I went to the back porch to catch the sun’s first rays to read what I’d written—a lifetime ago!

The words blurred as the wall around my emotions burst. I ran through the garden and beyond the outhouse until I tripped in my socks and fell in the wet brush, sobbing. I wept with grief and fury, and railed
against God for teasing me so cruelly—giving me a summer filled with boundless hope, only to erase it in an instant with a single word delivered in hated Japanese. Even though I’d told Calvin to continue on, I cried out in my heart to call him home. I knew that he must go on, and that he would, but I wanted him to not leave me, to not abandon me to this deprivation and hopelessness. I felt shame for my jealousy, knowing his foot might at that moment be leaving this land to board the steamer, and failure for not being beside him. I grieved not only for the missed journey and loss of my dream but because I longed to be near him, to see his slow smile, hear his thoughtful questions, feel his warm and dry hands again on my neck. At least that much was true, that I did love him, although it now meant less than nothing, only yearning and pain.

When my tears were done, I remembered my father-in-law’s prayer and knew I was undeserving of Calvin, of America, of anything good. The demeaning peasant’s life I faced was punishment for pride, willfulness and Christian doubt. I refused to aspire to martyrdom, to accept suffering as the way to salvation. Still, I tried to pray for forgiveness for my arrogance and selfish wanting, for relief from the hurt I felt, but my bitterness was too acute to receive any sense of grace. I had seen the crude life that lay ahead and knew I had to accept it. My rage would not make the days pass any easier. I sat up at last, feeling empty and resigned. For that, I gave grim thanks.

I wiped my nose with leaves and returned to the house, resolved because of my love for my husband and my pious sense of duty to do right as his wife, to be my mother’s daughter, to do right by God; subdued because I had no choice. In the outside kitchen, Mrs. Cho stuffed kindling in the stove. “Let me do that, Umma-nim,” I said.

I didn’t care that my mother-in-law knew I’d been crying. She ran her fingers through my blunt hair, handed me a pair of dry socks and held my hand. “Sad face, daughter-in-law. Jesus will see you through.”

I thought,
If only it were that easy
, but I said, “Thank you. I’m grateful, Ssi-umma-nim.” I lightly disengaged my mother-in-law’s hand and added what I knew she’d want to hear. “I’ll pray for guidance.”

Mrs. Cho’s face curled in all its wrinkles. We fixed breakfast. Before setting the table, I dug through my suitcase and brought out my brass rice
bowl, which I filled with porridge along with my in-laws’ bowls. I greeted Reverend Cho, who was dressed and jotting notes at the table as dawn’s light filtered through the shutters, and I announced the meal. I wanted to erect invisible walls of discretion and form in this household. After I served them both, I bowed and gave him all of my money.

He handled it, gave one of his sympathetic grunts and returned a few bills. “You keep this until you decide how you’ll occupy your days.”

I thought for a moment. “Am I to decide?”

“There’s little work for you in this house. Your mother-in-law has time on her hands even with her duties here. You could offer your services to the church. You could work at the mission or teach. Watch what goes on around you the next few days and see what work you might do. I’ll introduce you to the mission director’s wife on Sunday. I understand you play the organ. We do need an organist.”

I spoke directly. “You’re very kind. I’ll do that, thank you.”

His smile was friendly and inviting, and I felt even more ashamed about my earlier suspicion of his ministerial sincerity and revulsion at their home life.

“Come,” said my father-in-law, “let’s eat.”

Watching them eat this time, I discovered they both devoured their food as quickly as Calvin had. I’d have to increase my pace or go starving, for I couldn’t continue eating when they were done.

I FOUND AN excellent herbalist in the market and began to treat my mother-in-law’s eyes. After learning that Mrs. Cho was slightly diabetic, I regulated her diet based on my own knowledge, enhanced by the advice of the pharmacist and what I could glean from copies of the ancient
Compendia of Korean Pharmacopeia
in the mission library.

I washed and relined Calvin’s tattered quilt with a deconstructed night-colored skirt and meters of cotton I had in my trunk. Every evening after I arranged my in-laws’ blankets and their washbasin, I went outdoors to dampen the stove until they were in bed. I undressed in the linen closet wrapped in my quilt, and laid as close to the wall as I could, but still heard every sound their bodies made. I was relieved that I never heard them being man and wife at night.

I chose to teach kindergarten in the mission compound partly because
the innocent, earnest children made me forget my unhappiness, and it gave me a private physical space. It also left adequate hours to clean house and repair the thatch, tote water, visit the market, cook, wash clothes, tend the garden and keep the fuel stores filled. I couldn’t refuse Reverend Cho’s urging to play the organ, though it meant half a day at church every Sunday, and on Wednesday evenings hurrying to cook and leave without eating to rehearse with the chorus until the moon rose. Fortunately the choral director was a funny and energetic man who made rehearsals enjoyable.

One morning several weeks after my arrival, Reverend Cho opened his jacket and delivered a letter from Calvin. My heart leapt, and I thought I’d wait to read it during the half hour of quiet in my classroom before kindergarten began. I noticed the torn envelope at the same time that Reverend Cho said, “I was hoping he’d write more about the progress of his elder brother’s church in Los Angeles, but he only talks about how charitable he’s been. Well, you’ll see what he says.”

I stared at my father-in-law as I tucked the letter into my classroom notebook, incredulous at this invasion of privacy. He and Mrs. Cho ate speedily as usual, which meant that reading my mail would be routine. Then Reverend Cho met my eyes, smiled in that practiced ministerial way and said he’d forgotten to mention something about the house. One of the incoming seminarians, a rising star of a student, had a wife and an infant child. Since the dormitory was men-only, it had been promised that the new mother would live at the manse. “It’ll be a little crowded, but you’ve been managing the house well and I’m sure you’ll find a way to accommodate her and the baby. There’s really no other place for her. Originally, I thought she might be helpful to Mother, but that was before you came. He’s considered a prize for our seminary. His wife is yangban like you, and it’s likely you’ll become friends. Your mother-in-law is certainly experienced with babies, and it will bring her some joy to have an infant around.”