The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (55 page)

I will not leave the desk, I tell myself . . . If I leave now I will not be able to come back.

Many days pass. Her door stays closed, the lock fastened. Each morning I, nineteen years old, make new rice to pack my lunch and walk past the subway station, leaving behind the locked door on the first floor. At Industrial Complex No. 3, I take the number 109 bus to school. At the library I memorize the home economics test sheets, my skirt hiked up to my knees, until I head back home. As Oldest Brother instructed, I don’t even think about studying English or math. On some days I change into our PE uniform and practice the hundred-meter dash alone in the empty athletic field. Practice hanging on the chin-up bar.

Exiting through the school gates around dusk, sitting inside the bus to return to the lone, remote room, I think about her. Wishing she’d come back now. Cousin has gone to Yongsan, Third Brother to the farm, Oldest Brother to Chungmu, so I wait for her, desperately. Since everyone has left, I am all alone.

Getting off the bus at Industrial Complex No. 3, walking past the subway station, past the vacant lot, and stepping inside the gate in the alley, I glance at her door, as if it were a habit. Locked. Still locked. Nothing else of note. How can she take such a long vacation, I’m wondering, when the man approaches. I greet him with a bow, and he asks after her awkwardly.

“She went on vacation.”

“Vacation? Where?”

“To the country, she said. Back home.”

“Home? But she has no home in the country.”

Only then I sense there’s something wrong. I realize that all this time she has never mentioned visiting her home in the country. Even during the holidays, she remained alone in her room. But now she’s gone to the country on vacation? The man sits outside the locked door for a while then leaves.

In the middle of the night, my doorbell rang, long and loud. The person, whoever it was, kept her finger on the bell. The bell ringing long, nonstop. “Who is it?” My irritated voice from inside the door was met by, “It’s me,” the voice of Younger Sister outside the door.

What’s she doing here so late at night? I opened the door, and Younger Sister, baby in her arms, throws a fit.

“Why aren’t you answering your phone if you’re sitting at home?”

Phone? But the phone never rang? Ah. When I told her that I unplugged the phone, she seemed even angrier, plugging it in as soon as she stepped in and tapping a number, then pushing the receiver into my face.

“Who is it?”

“You’ll find out when you take it!”

She was furious. The voice on the other end of the line was Mom’s.

“Why aren’t you answering for days on end? I got scared something must have happened and told her to go and see!”

I glanced at Younger Sister as I spoke with Mom and she was washing the stack of coffee mugs and bowls in the sink.

“Have you been eating anything decent at all?”

She was opening the rice cooker and the large soup pot on the gas range. Disappointed that they’re all empty. Her baby turned the sugar bowl upside down. Her husband slapped the baby’s bottom and the baby bursts into a sob, clear and transparent. I see off Younger Sister’s family and unplug the phone again.

Six years ago, I had written about the events that followed those next few days.

I recalled, out of the blue, like a legend, the events that followed. That I happened to be passing the subway station for some business and a pain . . . a pain, sharp and deft, sped past, faster than the subway train. That she never came back, and that the man tore down the door. Unable to bear the smell, unable to wait any longer.

And that . . . no one was able to step inside the room.

I, nineteen years old, run to Cousin, trembling. Inside my pocket, the fluorescent teddy bear from Chang rolls and bounces. Would it still glow inside the pocket? I stand outside the door, frozen pale, and Cousin brings me some water.

“What happened?”

No words would come out of me, only tears. At first Cousin tries to comfort me, but then my dear cousin, my other guardian, says my name, and I see her eyes about to break into tears. When I hear Cousin’s warm, teary voice, I bury my face on her lap and
start to sob. Cousin caresses my back, on and on, unaware what has happened.

That day I ran out of our lone room, out of the alley, and I never went back. When I refused to ever go back again, Cousin brought my belongings and school supplies to her room. She told me, it’s okay, that it’s nothing. But she was trembling herself.

Oldest Brother returned from Chungmu before the construction in the vacant lot was completed and we moved to Daerim-dong, leaving behind his wig on the attic door of that room.

How was the anonymous death handled? And the fact that the door was locked from the outside, inexplicable even if they had found a suicide note in her room.

This I had written.

For a long time I dreamed that the attic ceiling was collapsing . . . and remembered . . . then forgot, the man’s despair, mingled with fear and grief. I’d told her to get an abortion. I wasn’t breaking up with her, the timing was just too . . . too . . . But that I did not think that it was his words that turned her into food for maggots. Her faint smile . . . her tiny waist, the size of a fist . . . the bank account she left behind, with a million won in savings . . . The man had said, Get an abortion . . .

And I had fastened the lock, leaving her inside as she wore a faint smile, or perhaps cried faint tears, leaving inside on the shelf her school shoes, which she had worn for less than six months.

The place we move into after leaving the lone room is a unit in Wujin Apartments, in Daerim-dong. An old building with electric heating. It seems Oldest Brother used his severance pay and got a loan from his new job to pay for the place. The apartment has two rooms. We even get a telephone installed. Oldest Brother comes to get me at Cousin’s after moving all our belongings from
the lone room. Third Brother also returns from the farm and goes back to school. Since moving into this old apartment, I get scared of leaving home except for going to school in the evening. I don’t want people getting close to me, either. I don’t want to see anyone. I stay home alone all day long and when the sun sets, I make dinner for my brothers, cover the table with a cloth, then take the bus to school. Cousin is the only other person who knows that I am studying for college.

I am alone in the apartment all day long, sitting at the desk or lying down on the floor. The rain falls then lets up. A transparent autumn sun pours in through the window. It’s too bright in the room and I draw the curtains. Dazed, I doze off then awake with a start. I see her in my short dream. Her body, heavy and slack, swarming with maggots. I am covered in cold sweat. I feel like a snail inside a levee. I drag myself up, lift the curtains, and open the window. The sunlight, speckles after the rain, fills up the space between the ground and the sixth floor. I am gazing out at this transparent air when I feel a tight clamp in my bottom jaw. A chilling thought passes through me and before I know it, I see myself on the ground, fallen, sprawled out. Terrified, I rush to close the window.

I, nineteen years old, rapidly lose my words. There are days when I do not utter a single word. Left-handed An Hyang-suk and Mi-seo the Hegel reader try to make me talk but end up losing their tempers instead.

My cousin does not try to make me talk. She keeps quiet as well. She’d be curious but Cousin does not ask me anything about her. Neither does Oldest Brother. Since I was especially close to her, perhaps they believed that just the mention of her name would be painful for me.

Once we were at a family wedding where we were served noodles, and Cousin wanted to give me her boiled egg (back in our days in the lone room boiled egg halves served in noodle soups or spicy noodles or cold noodle soups were my favorites)
but it fell to the floor. At that moment, Cousin sighed, “Ah,” and gently called out my name, twice. Now a housewife married to an airline pilot, Cousin glanced at me with an expression that seemed to be remembering something, but quickly erased it and said we should hurry and eat. I gazed blankly into my bowl of noodles. The past had already washed up next to me. That time when the three of us sat waiting for our spicy noodles at the snack stall in the Garibong-dong market. When we were served our three bowls of noodles, she and Cousin picked up their egg halves with the wooden chopsticks to move them into my bowl. It wasn’t because they disliked eggs but because I liked eggs. While trying to move the egg halves into my bowl, as if it were a habit, their arms bumped into each other and an egg half fell to the floor.