The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (8 page)

“Wouldn’t people look down on your father if they heard he was in the kitchen cooking?” she would say.

I head down the very narrow trail of our family life in the village, a life typical to rural villages anywhere around the country. On this trail, I encounter an odd sense of calm. At no time do I think that my family is poor. I have never felt we were affluent, but we are not poor, either. The farther down this narrow trail I go, the less poor I am. On holidays, Mom always took out new clothes that she had prepared for us
(there were many children who did not get new clothes for the holidays); always bought us new sneakers to wear (many children went around in rubber flats); kept me out of the fields (many children worked in the fields, their faces tanned dark); did whatever she could to let us continue with school (many children attended only elementary school). Because of this, other mothers in the village sometimes called Mom absurdly lavish in her ways, saying she had no grasp of her lot in this world. Nevertheless, making an effort to provide these things to us was Mom’s own terms of happiness and it took a lot for her to give up trying.

It was always me who brought her despair. But this was neither Mom’s fault nor mine. It was just that when I graduated from elementary school and wanted to go on to middle school, Second Brother happened to be entering high school, which placed me in a situation where we had only enough money to cover tuition for one child. Even then, Mom put me through school. By selling the only ring she had on her fingers. When it was time for me to enter high school, this time Third Brother was preparing for his college entrance exam and Younger Sister was about to start middle school.

Oldest Brother, after much deliberation, announces that he will take me to Seoul. That since other younger siblings will soon be coming to Seoul for college, it will be good to get settled early, so he shall start out by living with me . . . At the mere age of twenty-three, Oldest Brother has discovered how to prevent Mom from giving up her happiness too soon.

All through my vacation, whenever I get the chance, I linger around the well. Resting my arms on the edge of the well, I gaze inside. The well is deep, so deep, I cannot see the pitchfork that has sunk under the water. I cannot shake off what Cousin said, about the water becoming tainted
, but I cannot bring myself to tell Father that I threw the rake in the well, that the water needs to be pumped out.

Little Brother instinctively notices signs of my imminent return to the city. He trails behind each step that his sixteen-year-old sister takes. Looking for Mom, who is out in the vegetable fields, I take Little Brother and head out to the mountain. Fresh from a rain, the mountain is overflowing with the smell of trees. Hazel trees, pine trees, oak trees, chestnut trees. Yellow soil sticks to the soles of my shoes.

I grew up at the foot of this mountain. Facing those plains. I grew tall amidst the torrential rains of summer and the heavy snows of winter. Even now, I cannot fully comprehend it when someone speaks about how facing nature makes one’s heart free and peaceful. To me, nature is, to an extent, exhausting, and, to another extent, frightening. Nature was right under my skin. When I dug for potatoes, worms crawled out and when I climbed a chestnut tree, caterpillars stung. Scrub trees poked my arm and the stream in the valley made my feet slip. I liked caves or tomb mounds but when I entered the caves bats opened their wings with a sinister look and if I lay on a tomb mound for too long, the sun scorched my face, making it sore.

Nevertheless, I preferred to be amidst nature rather than out on the streets or at home. This was because there was more that made my heart pound in nature than at home. There was more that was forbidden in nature than at home. In a forbidden place, wounds, along with a sense of allure, always lurked. An elbow or a knee might grow accustomed to wounds but never to nature. Typhoons and torrential rain would wash away in a matter of minutes the paddies and fields that Mom and Father planted, and heavy snows would easily crack and break the imposing trees in the mountains. Human capacity instantly turned powerless. The vicious rotting smell flowing through nature’s triumphant spirit. The fear that remains within me, unable to completely free my heart in the face of nature’s solemn scenery, pulls me down as I strive to soar only
upward. Nature reminds me that I am human. Nature reminds me that I am a weak being, standing with my feet, upon this perilous Earth.

Nevertheless, I love to walk through the paths toward the cornfields and valleys, through the slivers between rocks. I’ll never know when I might run into a venomous snake, but my arm remembers the refreshing sensation on my skin when the wind passes through the sesame fields.

I offer my back to Little Brother, whose feet are still small, but he shakes his head. He refuses, however, to let go of my hand. He seems to think that if only he follows me everywhere, he will never part with his sister again.

There stands Mom, beyond the wind. Mom is planting pepper seedlings in the fields at the foot of the steep mountain. Nature must be afraid of Mom. Even when a storm leaves the roots of young rice plants exposed overnight, once the rain clears, Mom pulls and lifts and ties them up one by one to get them upright and balanced again. No matter what awful rotting stench they might emit, Mom hacks and breaks them up with a pitchfork, then dries them in the sun to use as fertilizer. No matter how strong the sun might pour down on her, Mom endures the glare, picking the peppers that have ripened red.

The day I set out to go back to the city, Mom takes Little Brother, adamant not to part with me, to Aunt’s house.

“Stay here a bit. Mommy will go bring Sister.” Mom leaves Little Brother behind at Aunt’s and comes to see me off. “Hurry and go on now.” And I head back to the city, carrying the luggage that Mom has packed for me. I glance once toward where Chang lives, the air now awkward between us.

Perhaps the reason for this awkwardness
was not because I had suddenly moved out to the city but because of my status in the city. In the country, our household had so many memorial rites to host and thus had plenty of food around, more than any other. Our house was in the center of the village and had the largest yard in the neighborhood, the largest number of chickens, bikes, ducks, and sauce jars out on the terrace. But out here in the city, I am the lower class. Placed within this contradiction is Oldest Brother, and now I will step inside this contradiction as well.

The company is vast. There seems to be more than a thousand employees. Viewed from the main gate of the grounds, the buildings stand in the shape of the vowel
. The three-story structure that resembles a school houses the TV Division and the single-story structure houses the Stereo Division. The new workers from the Job Training Center are grouped into the two divisions as well. Cousin and I are lined up one behind the other to prevent being separated. Before our positions are designated, the operations chief announces that the head of the administration department will offer an official greeting. The administration head, a man with a large build, adds at the end of his greeting that we must not join the union. He also says that we should report it to him if one of our colleagues joins a union.

Union? I have never heard this word before but, perhaps because of his tone, this word brings me fear. What is it that they do there that makes him say we must not join and that we should report it if someone joins?

As we hoped, Cousin and I stay together, both of us sent to the Stereo Division. There are three production lines at the Stereo Division: A line, B line, C line. And there is also the prep line. Cousin and I, determined not to be separated to different lines, again stand hand in hand. We are assigned
to A line. Even as we stand holding hands, the conveyor belt keeps turning endlessly. I am given the number one spot on the A line. Cousin is number two. The foreman sits next to my chair and teaches me what I need to do as number one. My job is to bring the plates for the core parts of the stereo system from the prep line and use the air driver to insert the seven screws that will hold the PVC cover in place. Because each hole requires a screw of a different size, I have to memorize where this screw and that screw goes. Each time the screw is inserted, I am startled by the gush of wind bursting from the air driver, which further slows down my already slow work speed. Only when I finish my job at number one can the number two down the conveyor belt do her job. There is about a two-meter distance between me and Cousin at number two. I have to adjust my pace so that the plates with all the screws in place will keep flowing through that distance without stopping, Foreman tells me. On my first day, I try so hard to maintain the pace and to get the right screw in the right place that I do not even hear the bell at the end of the day.