Waxing Moon (17 page)

28

Right around dinnertime, a voice shrilled like a crow’s caw. Several people stopped working and listened from their yards. A woman screamed and then a man shouted, “I’m going to kill you!”

Neighbors came out with wide eyes to see what was going on. For sure, the noise came from Dubak’s household.

A few people hurried to his house. Dubak’s wife came out in the yard and shrieked for help. With her large belly, she could not run. When she saw the group of people approaching, she shrieked, “My husband is killing me!”

Dubak was following his wife with a raised rake in his hand, about to strike her.

A neighbor man hugged Dubak from behind to prevent him from attacking his wife. Another man grabbed Dubak’s arm, saying, “Give that to me.”

“This woman, I am killing her today! I am killing her!” Dubak foamed around his mouth.

“Please help me! Take that rake away from him,” Jaya wailed wildly. Her hair was tousled, and her face was so swollen from the pregnancy that it was hard to see her eyes.

“Shame on you,” said the neighbor, shaking Dubak.

“She killed my mother!” Dubak shouted, his voice breaking. He collapsed on the ground, sobbing.

People gasped and looked at one another and then looked at Jaya.

“Jaya, what happened?” asked a neighbor woman.

“Mother!” Dubak cried.

“Where is she?” asked another voice.

A baby cried from inside.

“My son! My little boy!” Jaya got up and rushed to their one-bedroom mud house.

The crowd followed. And Dubak shouted, “Murderer!”

The elderly mother was lying on the floor in their bedroom, and Sungnam was crying and Mansong whimpering.

Jaya picked up her son and comforted him. Several women came in and examined the elderly lady, and when they realized she was really dead, they all turned to Jaya again.

“I didn’t kill her!” she howled, holding her son tightly to her bosom.

“How did she die?” a neighbor man asked.

“She was eating rice cake. She was eating too fast, too much at a time. She choked on it. What could I have done? I was in the kitchen when all this was happening. She cackled, or so I thought, and I came in to find out what was going on. She fell and died before I could do anything,” Jaya said, trembling.

“No! That’s not true,” yelled Dubak. “Jaya sent me out to get firewood. We hadn’t run out of it yet, but she said I should get some more. So I went up the hill without suspecting anything. She was roasting petrified rice cake to make it soft to feed my mother.”

Jaya cried, “She only has a few teeth. Of
course
I had to roast it to make it soft!”

“Why would my mother want to eat rice cake right before dinner? In recent years, she’s been eating food in broth or water because she couldn’t chew well. Jaya stuffed rice cake into my mother’s mouth. When I left, my mother was sleeping. When I came back, the whole plate of rice cake was gone and my mother dead!” he shouted deliriously.

The neighbors stood in the room, murmuring among themselves and not knowing whom to believe. Jaya had always complained about her mother-in-law being a nuisance because, having lost her mind, the old woman wandered off to unlikely places at least once a day. Someone always brought her back home by the evening, but never once had Jaya gone out to look for her mother-in-law. Everyone suddenly remembered that. How could a daughter-in-law stay home when her elderly mother-in-law, senile and frail, had disappeared for half a day? What if she had never returned? Was that what she secretly hoped for? On the other hand, wasn’t Dubak the one who said, annoyed, “Mother, if you want to get lost, get lost someplace where we can’t find you!” But a son could say that because he wouldn’t have really meant it. He was her own blood.

Mansong looked up with interest at the seething crowd. She had a runny nose and chapped lips and unkempt hair. But she was smiling. The pitiful sight of Mr. O’s daughter, which hadn’t aroused compassion in the past, provoked outrage in people’s minds now.

Suddenly, Dubak came over and snatched his wife’s hair. Surprised, she fell, dropping her son on the floor. Another woman picked him up and comforted him. Dubak dragged Jaya out of the room. People followed. The men tried to untangle the couple, but not forcefully enough. The women followed, telling Dubak to stop, but not so condemningly.

Jaya shouted defiantly, “Kill me, then.
Kill me
!
”

“I will! You deserve to die,” her husband said, glaring and spitting on her. There was a small ax nearby which he had used to split logs to make kindling.

Holding their collective breath, the villagers watched.

Suddenly, Mrs. Wang appeared in the yard and said, “Do you have something to eat?” She looked about awkwardly and said, “Oh, I thought there was a party. Everyone was rushing to this house, so I just followed to have a bite.” She laughed wholeheartedly.

“Well, Mrs. Wang, Dubak’s mother passed away,” a man announced in a loud voice from the crowd.

“My condolences,” Mrs. Wang said, looking for Dubak.

“Well, that’s hardly the end of the story!” a woman screeched.

“Death is never the end of the story.”

“Mrs. Wang, this woman of mine has murdered my mother,” Dubak declared, his chest heaving, his saliva splattering. Some observers were sobbing already. “And I am going to kill this one to bring justice to my mother!” He picked up the ax vindictively, and the crowd gasped.

“Well, well,” Mrs. Wang spoke quickly with faked cheerfulness. “Let’s have a seat. Let us witness the justice done to your mother. In fact, bring your son out to the yard so that he can see how a son brings justice to his mother so someday he will bring justice to his own mother. Ah, don’t strike your wife in her belly. Your other child lives there.” Mrs. Wang raised her eyebrows and stared at Dubak unflinchingly.

The crowd was hushed. Mrs. Wang stood still, without blinking. Dubak clenched his teeth. Mrs. Wang said under her breath, “You fool!”

Dubak dropped the ax and wailed pitifully, kneeling on the ground. A man took the ax away. Jaya took her baby and cried. The crowd murmured, avoiding Mrs. Wang, who got up and went into the room and picked up Mansong. She carried her out and said to Jaya, “From now on, I will take care of her.”

It was dark outside and Mrs. Wang really didn’t have enough energy to climb the hill carrying a child.

After a while, near the old pine tree, she stopped, breathing hard. Something glinted under the tree. It was a man’s embroidered blue silk coat under the radiant moonlight.

“Ah, Mrs. Wang!” the man shouted, surprised.

“What brings you here, Mr. O?” Mrs. Wang approached. In the dark she couldn’t see the details of his face but only his shapely lips and his angular jaw line. She was thinking he must have been exceptionally handsome in his youth.

“I am on my way home,” he said. He didn’t want to admit that he was coming from the temple.

“All alone?” Mrs. Wang asked.

“Yes, yes. My business came to a close earlier than I had expected. My servant was supposed to fetch me the day after tomorrow, but I decided to return home today. I have been away for too long,” he explained, still sitting. Mrs. Wang sat, too, to take a little break.

“Whose baby is that?” Mr. O asked.

“She is hardly a baby now,” she replied.

“I played around here when I was little. I climbed this tree like a monkey,” he reminisced.

“I need to go,” Mrs. Wang said, getting up. She had no time to hear about Mr. O’s childhood. She was starving.

“Yes, I need to be going too,” he said and got up. But he felt strangely hesitant to get on the path to go back to his house.

Mrs. Wang abruptly asked, “Mr. O, would you mind carrying this child for me? My old body is going to collapse before I arrive at my door.”

Mr. O was taken aback at this odd request. No one had ever asked him to do anything like that. And he wasn’t even sure if he could do it. He had never held a baby in his life. And yet, he couldn’t refuse. Mrs. Wang’s arms were already extended to him, and the child was looking at him intently. He took her in his arms awkwardly and followed Mrs. Wang.

“Oh, that feels so much better. Your kindness will not be forgotten,” Mrs. Wang said.

Along the way, a large doe appeared behind the shrubs. It followed them.

Near her house, Mrs. Wang suddenly said, “I adopted her today.”

“Is she an orphan?” Mr. O asked.

“No. Her father lives but isn’t ready to take her at the moment.”

“How villainous!” he exclaimed. He honestly couldn’t believe that a parent would refuse to take care of his own child, especially when the child was healthy and perfectly normal.

“Blessings are for those who embrace them,” Mrs. Wang remarked meaningfully. “And I thank you a thousand times,” she said, taking Mansong back from Mr. O’s numbed arms. He descended and she ascended. The doe made her way hesitantly into Mrs. Wang’s front yard and lingered there. When Mrs. Wang turned around to say something to her, she jumped back into the shrubs and disappeared into the night.

29

All morning, Nani and Mirae pulled the loose threads out of the winter blanket covers and sewed up the lighter covers for spring. Now they were ironing the pillow covers. Nani sipped water, squirted it through her teeth onto the fabric, and pressed it with a hot iron.

Mirae, her skin almost recovered, blossomed again. With her naturally crimson lips and her shiny pitch-black hair, she stood out from everyone around her.

“What’s your favorite work?” Nani asked.

Mirae replied, “None. Ask me what’s my least favorite work.”

“What’s your least favorite work?”

“Emptying Mistress Yee’s pisspot,” Mirae said, frowning.

“What’s the next?” Nani asked.

“Giving her a massage,” Mirae said.

“What’s the next?” Nani pestered her.

“Everything else,” she replied.

“Is there really nothing you like doing here?” Nani asked.

“Nope,” Mirae said with a blank expression.

Steam escaped from the cloth as the hot iron pressed on it. Nani looked at Mirae and saw how pretty she was. And she thought, not for the first time, that Mirae wasn’t cut out to be a maid. “In your next life, don’t be born a maid,” Nani said with a tinge of sarcasm.

“So what is it that you like so much about being a maid?” Mirae asked, snickering.

“Oh, shut up,” Nani said, feeling ashamed of her nonexistent ambition to rise above her lowly state. She must have been a maid for eons, one life after another. She knew no other life. She liked ironing. When the wrinkles on a pillowcase were smoothed out, she felt happy. She liked cooking, especially sweets. Sweets arranged on a plate, such as walnut-stuffed dried persimmons or pressed honeyed puffed rice dotted with black sesame seeds, simply delighted her. Oh, and the smell of freshly dried stiff laundry just off the clothesline: such a simple thing but so precious and familiar.

“Watch out!” screamed Mirae, smelling the burn from the iron that the daydreaming Nani held.

Nani jerked and rescued the pillowcase under her iron. She examined it and found just a bit of yellow. “Oh, gods of the mountain, help me,” Nani sighed as she pressed the last pillowcase.

“So tell me,” Mirae urged her. “What’s
your
favorite work?”

“I am not going to tell you,” Nani said, sulking.

“Whatever you say,” Mirae said, folding up the pressed pillowcases.

From outside, Soonyi called, “Big Sister!”

“Big
Sister!
” imitated Mirae, drawling.

“Hello?” Soonyi said, opening the door.

“Can you not shout?” Nani scolded her, venting her frustration.

“Sorry, Big Sister. The group of women has arrived,” Soonyi said.

“Oh . . . them,” said Nani.

“Who?” asked Mirae.

“The shamans from Yellow Horn Mountain,” Nani replied, getting up. “Finish folding the pillowcases and put them aside, will you?” she asked, leaving the room. A group of shamans, five of them, were carrying their paraphernalia into the yard.

“Weren’t you instructed to enter from the back door?” Nani asked.

“We were. But we had to come through the front gate. From a distance, we saw the dark spirit hovering over the rooftop. We had to announce our arrival to the spirit defiantly. If we had snuck in from the back door, the spirit would think we were cowards. We wouldn’t be able to cast out the spirit then,” said the oldest of the five shamans. They wore hats in the shape of cockscombs, made of brilliant orange-and-yellow paper. They brought gongs, cymbals, bow chimes, and a drum that looked like an hourglass painted blood red.

“Please follow me,” Nani said. She led them to Mistress Yee’s quarters.

As she stepped into Mistress Yee’s courtyard with the shamans, Chunshim was leaving with Buwon in her arms.

“Is Mistress Yee in?” asked Nani, knowing very well that she was.

Chunshim nodded, looking distressed from her short visit with Mistress Yee.

Nani cleared her throat and announced the arrival of the shamans. Mistress Yee told her to come in with them. They walked in, their bulky outfits swishing and their articles clanging. The room, filled with seven women, changed its scent. Mistress Yee told Nani to go out and fetch Mirae.

When Mirae arrived, Mistress Yee told her to have Chunshim bring in Buwon. If they were to perform Kut, the shamanic ritual, Buwon had to be present so that they could unearth the source of the curse that had possessed his body. There was some discussion about where Kut should be performed. In the end, it was decided to hold it in Mistress Yee’s courtyard because she was the one who wanted it.

The shamans were setting up their altar on a straw carpet in Mistress Yee’s courtyard, tuning their musical instruments and trying out their voices.

Nani quietly took her shoes off and stood, holding a stack of blankets, huge against her small body, at Mistress Yee’s entrance. She heard nothing from inside although she figured that Mirae must be inside with Mistress Yee.

“I brought some spring blankets,” Nani announced, trying to peep around the heap of blankets.

Mirae came out and closed the door behind her. “Mistress Yee is resting at the moment. Give them to me,” Mirae said.

“In the middle of Kut?” Nani whispered doubtfully.

“It hasn’t even started yet,” she said, taking the blankets from Nani.

“They are starting any minute,” Nani said, pointing to the courtyard with her chin.

Mirae paused for a brief moment and then whispered into Nani’s ear, “She’s doing it again.”

“It? Oh, that,” she said.

“Can you open the door for me?” Mirae asked, turning around with the blankets in her arms. Nani opened the door to Mistress Yee’s room. The lady was lying on her silk mat with her upper garment loosened and her eyes closed.

Mirae picked up the red lacquered box and put it aside. She came out quietly and said, “She will wake up in an hour or so. You have to see how she looks when she wakes up.”

Out in the courtyard, Chunshim brought Buwon bundled up in a silk blanket. He was dressed in a blue-green jacket and a black headdress.

One of the shamans said that Buwon should be propped up to watch Kut. But he was too young to sit still for a long time, so Chunshim would either have to sit holding him up or put him in a harnessed basket and tie it on one of the pillars of the house. “Whichever,” said the shaman, straightening her hat and looking at the thin air as if she were looking at a mirror and seeing her reflection.

Chunshim sat on the straw carpet and held Buwon on her lap. Four of the shamans began to play their instruments. One of them sang too. There was no prelude. From the beginning, it was climactic, loud, and harrowing. They howled and whined and hissed. And suddenly the fifth shaman jumped high and landed in the middle of the straw carpet and began to dance, whirling forcefully.

The music played like torrential waves, unrestrained and raging. The dance went on relentlessly all afternoon and all evening until the waxing moon shot up in the middle of the ominous sky. After dinner, Mistress Yee was fed up with the noise. She was getting a headache. She asked Mirae if there was any way to have Kut come to an end. “Do they know it’s a fixed price? They don’t get paid more just because they prolong it,” she said, scowling. Mirae tried to interrupt Kut, but the shamans were in ecstasy.

The errand boy, Bok, ran into the kitchen where Nani was cooking red beans for the next day. “Don’t run,” Nani scolded Bok when he came in breathlessly.

“Big Sister, Master has arrived. He just stepped in the gate,” he said.

“Oh no! Oh, heavens. Oh no!” Nani jumped up and ran to Mistress Yee’s quarters. Mr. O hadn’t been expected to arrive at that time. Or was she mistaken? But Mistress Yee wouldn’t have invited the shamans to perform Kut had she known he was arriving now.

Nani grabbed Mirae. “Look, Master has arrived,” she informed her.

Mirae didn’t look alarmed.

“He just stepped in the house! Do you hear me? He is approaching. What are we to do?” Nani had to shout to be heard in the midst of the gongs and cymbals.

“What can
we
do? I’ve already tried to stop them because Mistress Yee is having a headache from the noise,” she said.

Nani was confused
.
She saw poor Chunshim still sitting on the straw carpet, yawning from ear to ear, and Buwon was fast asleep despite the deafening noise.

At that moment, Mr. O appeared. Nani’s heart sank. He neared and froze for a moment. Chunshim got up reflexively. Nani stepped down from the ante-floor outside Mistress Yee’s room and ran to Mr. O without putting her shoes on to welcome him. But her voice blended in with the noise, and Mirae just bowed from where she was.

Mr. O was tired. He hadn’t sent for his horse. Instead, he had walked the whole day alone, on an empty stomach, getting lost a couple of times in the forest, and then he had to climb up the path to Mrs. Wang’s house, carrying the child. It had been a long day. When he approached his own house, he only thought of going straight to bed. But the noise from behind the gate alerted him. He asked Bok what the noise was. The boy reluctantly released the information.

All of a sudden, Kut came to a halt, and silence fell heavily. Mirae announced that the master had arrived. But the shamans were oblivious to their surroundings. One of them began to speak with a spirit. Finally, it seemed they had managed to invoke the right spirit, the one that had been trapped in the household. Mistress Yee emerged, covering her forehead with her hand. Mirae stood behind her.

“Who are you?” the shaman asked the spirit.

“I live here,” the dancing shaman replied in a trembling, ethereal voice.

Nani stared at her, noticing that her voice had completely changed.

“Are you dead?” the shaman asked.

“I am in between the dead and the living,” the voice said.

“What makes you linger among the living?” the shaman asked.

“My body is pierced and staked to the earth. I can’t move freely,” the voice said, gnawing at Nani’s heart.

“Is that why you are borrowing the body of the little boy here?” the shaman asked.

“Sometimes,” the voice said.

Mistress Yee stepped down on a stone next to her shoes and shouted, “Who is this spirit?”

Ignoring her, the shaman asked, “What do you want?”

“Pull the needle out of my body. Bury me properly,” the voice said.

Nani pronounced her late mistress’s name as if sighing and collapsed near Mr. O. She recognized her mistress. It wasn’t her voice, but the way she spoke; it was her.

Bok tried to pull her upright but he couldn’t.

Mr. O didn’t know why the maid had mentioned his first wife’s name, but his hair stood on end.

“Where can we find you?” the shaman asked.

“Behind my quarters,” the voice said.

“Leave the baby at once, and I will bury you properly,” the shaman said.

The spirit groaned in a way that was at once terrifying and heartrending. Nani jerked, stifling her cry. Mistress Yee grabbed one of her shoes and came toward Nani. She lifted her shoe, aiming it at Nani’s head. Bok let out a piercing cry, vicariously expecting the pain. Mistress Yee struck Nani’s head with her shoe, and the beads from the shoe scattered on the ground, glittering under the torchlight. Mr. O turned around and went to his quarters. Bok followed him.

At that moment, Buwon began to jerk with a seizure, and Chunshim screamed. Mistress Yee watched her son with terror, and Mirae stood still, feeling the chill in her spine.

The shamans packed up their belongings and waited for Mistress Yee to produce the payment. But she said that she would send them the money when the baby’s condition improved.

“That wasn’t what we were promised, Mistress,” the eldest shaman said calmly.

“That was what I asked for,” Mistress Yee snarled.

“We unearthed the source of the calamity that has befallen your son. Mistress’s job is to hear the spirit out and do what needs to be done to undo the curse, according to your judgment. Beyond that, we have no say in Mistress’s business,” the shaman said.

“According to my judgment? You don’t think I believe the dancer’s gibberish, do you? What spirit? Her body is pierced? Generations of people have died in this household. How should I know whose body was pierced with a needle? What nee—” Mistress Yee stopped abruptly. Needle. She suddenly remembered the needle. The needle. She looked at Nani, who was obviously quite affected by the ritual. Was it really Mistress Kim? She ascended the stone step and retreated to her room. A moment later, from inside, she called for Mirae who, upon hearing her name, jerked and rushed to her mistress. Then Mirae brought out an envelope for the shamans. They cleaned the courtyard and left without saying goodbye.