The Major's Wife (Jubilant Falls series Book 2) (24 page)

It was a strange, lonely Christmas. Paul's absence was made even more conspicuous by the deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia in Operation Desert Shield. We still were in the middle of the trials when the First Tactical Fighter Wing based at Langley had been the first unit to deploy to Saudi Arabia that August. I had been too wrapped up in the trial to think much about it.

No doubt, I thought at the time, all we needed to do was show some force, and everything would all end peacefully. An event that would have kept me on the edge of my seat for days passed by like so much background scenery.

My life as a military wife seemed so far away now, a part of my life I finished with, like high school or my first marriage. The places I’d seen, the sands of Florida, the beauty of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay, the mountains of Korea, were part of the past.

Now, as the Christmas tree twinkled in the corner, I couldn’t help thinking that, if Paul had lived, he would have given anything to be there in the sands of the Saudi desert.

He would have also given anything to see that P.J. was here in Jubilant Falls. I hadn’t forgotten about that little boy who was so unaware of all the changes he brought about. As I promised Paul, Conrad, and myself, I would still bring that little boy back to the States and make him a part of this family. It was the one thing left to be settled, one thing that would complete the circle.

A few trans-pacific phone calls to Sister Michael Mary at the orphanage in Songtan City, just outside Osan Air Base, sent me in the right direction. P.J.’s birth certificate had come through and listed Paul as the father, so he was already a U.S. citizen. There were still endless forms to fill out, phone interviews with Korean and American embassy functionaries, and plans to be made.

Finally, just a few days after New Years, twelve months to the day after the death of Paul Armstrong, I left the children in the care of Novella and got on a plane for Seoul.

* * *

“Shilla hamnida – Sonkkum kalkkayo?
Excuse me miss, tell your fortune?” The wizened Korean woman held out her hand to me, gesturing that she would read my palm. Her bottom teeth were missing, and wrinkles cascaded down her cheeks like so many dry yellow creek beds. But despite the man’s winter coat that enveloped her tiny frame, I could see her eyes were friendly.

It was two days later, and I was standing on the streets of Songtan City, just outside the Shinjang Mall. I arrived the day before and, after settling into my tiny room at the New Seoul Hotel, fell asleep and slept the sleep of the dead. The next morning, despite the misery of a Korean winter, I decided to walk through the city, just to see what I remembered. I stood outside the oriental-style gates of Osan Air Base, but decided I couldn’t go see the flight line where Paul had met his death. I could imagine plumes of black smoke rising from the twisted metal of his airplane into the Korean sky, and I shivered.

Turning away, I started walking through Songtan City until I found myself in one of Songtan’s shopping areas. Shinjang Mall wasn’t a mall like most Americans consider a mall, with its food courts and ample parking. Instead, the mall was a few city blocks closed to traffic and filled to the brim with small shops and street vendors, each hawking their wares to anyone who passed by, particularly American servicemen and their families who bought the cheap imitations of Rolex watches, Nike shoes, and Levi jeans. The goods, which ran the gamut from factory seconds to outright fakes, would only last a few weeks to a couple months, but it was difficult to turn those dubious bargains down.

While shopping was better in Seoul’s
I’taewon
market district, my favorite Songtan shop was Mr. Lee’s Leather shop, where you could get eel-skin wallets, custom-made shoes, briefcases, and purses for next to nothing. Tailors also made a killing. During our first tour to Korea, Paul managed to get a suit custom made, including the shirt and tie, for less than a hundred dollars.

The time difference was killing me; it was mid-morning, about ten in the morning, but my body said it was one in the morning back in Jubilant Falls and screamed for sleep. Exhausted, I forced myself to keep walking to acclimate myself, knowing if I laid down again, I’d be spending the next night staring wide-awake at the walls.

Sister Michael Mary offered to meet me at Kimpo Airport, the country’s only major airport. Instead, I chose to take a bus from Kimpo into Seoul and from Seoul to Songtan City.

As I fished through my purse for my Korean phrasebook, I mused that this old woman might give me a little confidence.

“
Shilla hamnida – Sonkkum kalkkayo?
Excuse me miss, tell your fortune?” she repeated.

Koreans love to have their fortune told. It’s not uncommon to see fortune tellers set up with a small chair and table in many of South Korea’s open-air markets. While they mostly plied their trade to young couples in love, telling them that marriage was or was not in their future, this old woman singled me out this morning when business was slow.

I flipped through the pages of my phrase book; amazing how much Hangul, the native Korean language, I’d forgotten in the four years since Paul and I had been stationed here. “
Mullonijo
! Sure!” I said, sat down at her little table, and wrapped my own winter coat more securely around my legs. I flipped through the phrasebook again. “
Yong-o haseyo?
Do you speak English?”

“Yes. Give hand. You listen.” The little old woman nodded and took my hand in hers. Her fingertips were calloused, and there was dirt under her nails as she silently poked and prodded the lines in my palm.

“What do you see?”

She stooped perusing my palm and looked at me. Silently, she held out her hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Here.” I pulled out a couple
won
, Korean dollars, and placed them across her palm.

“
Kamapsumnida
. Thank you. I see much struggle in past. Much hurt, but many blessings.”

“We all have that,
ajumoni
, aunt. You could say that about anyone.”

“Is true, but you. I see something else.” She bowed briefly. “I see
mirae
, rendezvous with the future, a completion of the life circle. You are not here for business, yes?”

“I am here to meet my new son.”

The old woman raised her arms in glee. “Old aunt not wrong often! I see in your hand!” She pounded her own palm with her dirty index finger. “You adopt baby boy? Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Many sons good. Boy have GI daddy?” The government had long kept a tight lid on foreign adoptions of children who were pure Korean; the concept of a multi-ethnic culture was anathema to most Koreans. A father who would not care for his child was also unheard of. That was why so many women who became pregnant by U.S. servicemen were often considered the lowest of the low; without a father to register a child in the family’s genealogical record, that child literally did not exist.

There were a number of Korean adoptions right after the Korean War when times were hard and they couldn’t feed their own children. Now that times were getting better, the government was considering phasing out all foreign adoptions in the future; that didn’t include the Amer-Asian children like P.J.

I nodded. “My husband. My late husband.” I whispered. Wordlessly, I pulled the photo of P.J. sitting on the old nun’s lap from my purse and pushed it across the small table.

The old woman examined the picture closely, and patted my arm. “You good wife, Palm say much happiness awaits after much sorrow. Remember
mirae
.”

I nodded and stood, taking the picture from her wrinkled, yellow hand. Suddenly, the jet lag seemed to disappear, and I felt stronger and more confident from those few words. I was doing the right thing. I was honoring Paul’s last wishes. For the first time in more than a year, I felt peace.

Later that afternoon, Sister Michael Mary came padding down the wide hall of the Catholic orphanage with her arms outstretched and her blue eyes twinkling. She was a waist-less, post-menopausal woman with a round face and rubber-soled shoes, wearing navy blue polyester pants and jacket along with her black veil.

The orphanage sat close to the underpass from the unimaginatively named National Road One between the Catholic Church and the police station, just a short cab ride from my hotel. Like most buildings constructed after the war, it was western in style.

I clutched my purse and the photo close to me during the cab ride, terrified of what was coming. What if he didn’t like me? What if I didn’t like him? What if I found I couldn’t bond with this baby? Would my resentment of all of his father’s affairs throughout our marriage poison this meeting, or would I be able to look at P.J. as what he really was, the little boy who, because of his mixed heritage, had been abandoned through social convention and whose father had died horribly?

“Mrs. Armstrong! So good to see you!” Her strong arms enveloped me in a bear hug. “How was your flight? Did you get rested? It’s so difficult to fly and get acclimated to the time zone changes. Can I get you some coffee? I’m sure you’re excited to meet P.J. He’s napping right now. We’ve all been so excited to know P.J. is going home with you that we’re all in a bit of a dither.”

“I’m a little nervous,” I said, smoothing my hair. “Scared to death, actually.”

Sister Michael Mary laid a strong arm across my shoulders and steered me down the hallway. “Perfectly understandable! Perfectly understandable! Come, let’s go to my office. You can get settled there. We’ve got a few forms yet to fill out, and then we’ll have Sister Agnes bring in P.J. to you.”

We stopped in front of a door marked with her nameplate and a gold cross. Inside, the office was sparsely furnished with a desk, a few battered easy chairs, and an end table. At one side of the room was a bookcase filled with theological works.

Sister Michael Mary gestured for me to sit down in one of the easy chairs and slipped behind her desk. “Young Paul is a very lucky baby boy,” she said, sorting through the files on her desk. “Ah, here is his file. There are very few people who would make this effort to bring him home.”

“It’s what Paul would have wanted,” I said.

There was a knock on the door, and a young nun poked her head in. “Sister, there is a young woman here to see you.”

“Please have her wait in the waiting room, Sister. This is Paul Pak’s – I mean Armstrong’s – adoptive mother, Kay Armstrong. She’s come to take him home today. Tell the young woman gently, but firmly, that I am with a client, and I will be with her as soon as possible.”

“She’s very insistent on seeing you now, Sister.” The young nun sounded flustered. Behind her, a woman’s voice pleaded tearfully in Hangul.

A small Korean woman, in a pink pullover sweater and black pants, pushed past the nun and into Sister Michael Mary’s office. Her hair was cut short just below her ears, and she wore tiny, gold earrings. Her eyes were red from crying.

“I must see woman who being new mother to my baby!” she cried in English, bowing and wiping tears from her eyes.

This was the woman who had slept with my husband, who had carried his child and tried to raise him on her own, and who had sent that handful of money to Paul, hoping against hope that he was going to buy her a house for the three of them to live together in America.

We stared at each other across the room, fascinated at finally seeing each other.

She wasn’t one of the Osan whores who worked the bars preying on lonely servicemen, as I had thought for so many years. She looked intelligent and well dressed. She looked
nice
.

“Kyung-Wha? What are you doing here?” Sister Michael Mary’s tone was suddenly soft and gentle.

The Korean woman bowed again, then pointed at me. “I need to see woman who being new mother to my baby.”

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

“Please forgive. You show fortuneteller in Shinjang Mall my baby’s picture. She live in my building. She know my story. She tell me.” Kyung-Wha said, simply. “I had to see you.”

I stepped forward and took her hands in mine. “I’m glad you did. I have wanted to meet you for several years.”

Sister Michael Mary nodded to the young nun who backed out the door, closing it behind her.

“Kyung-Wha, you have given up your rights to this baby,” Sister Michael Mary said gently. “You really shouldn’t be here.”

“Yes, yes. I know,” she replied. “I can not stay away. Please, Miss!” she clasped my hand tighter, her black almond-shaped eyes boring into mine. “Let me tell you why I have baby.”

We both sat down in the easy chairs and Sister Michael Mary returned to her desk.

“I want to ask you forgive,” Kyung-Wha said. “I want you know my story.”

She reached across to my chair and took my hands again. What Kyung-Wha was really reaching across was a divide bigger than an ocean or a continent; she was reaching across two hearts, hers and mine. As I met her gaze, I saw a sadness there that was oddly familiar. We had both loved the same man, she and I; we had given birth to his children, and we had learned of his seemingly congenital unfaithfulness in deeply painful ways. Then finally, we had both lost him.

“What can I say, as mother full of guilt?” she began. “I am mother, without right to be mother. Sending little Paul away is hard, harder than anything I do, ever. But I know you love him. I know he will have life full of love and care and he accepted. He not get that here, because his green eyes and yellow hair mark him outsider here. You know that.”

I nodded, still holding her tiny hands in mine.

“How did you meet Paul?” I asked.

Kyung-Wha smiled briefly. “My parents run small souvenir shop in Shinjang Market, and I worked there. Nice souvenirs, celadon pottery, carved mahogany. It almost four years ago.“

Mentally, I did the math. We had been stationed here then, when Andrew was just a baby. I had agreed to come to Korea for a two-year tour, thinking that if I went with Paul I could keep an eye on him. Stupid me. There had been another woman who worked in the wing, a young lieutenant who was enthralled that a senior pilot would pay attention to her.