Everything Belongs to Us Page 20

  Campus five days a week. A movie every Tuesday. Saturday, shopping. Late nights at the library each Wednesday and Thursday. She added the extracurricular outings, even though she had no desire to watch films or shop. A rhythm was important. Since actually going to the library and sitting among her gossipy classmates was not an option—a snake pit was preferable to that—she locked herself into an empty classroom and sat with the lights off for the appropriate length of time. Those nights, she took to packing her satchel with a blanket and alarm clock in order to sleep more comfortably on the cold floor.

  Jisun rarely saw her father. But whether or not he was personally watching, she knew she was being observed by Ko and ajumma, who reported every detail according to his instructions.

  “Sure you’re not going overboard with the outfits?” ajumma asked archly. They were having breakfast at the enormous rosewood table in the kitchen. It had seating for eight, as if they were one of those large, active families who ate together each morning. Jisun thought how it must have been for ajumma, eating alone here day after day. The table was polished to such a high sheen, it would throw her solitary reflection back at her.

  “Just dressing the part,” Jisun said.

  It was six in the morning, early enough that the food seemed to stick in her throat. She had eaten at a similar time at the factory cafeteria, but it had seemed less early then and the food hardly a burden with so many hours of work ahead.

  “No need to dress for me,” ajumma said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  “Why, don’t I look comfortable to you?”

  Jisun sipped her tea. Ajumma knew better than anyone how much she hated fussy clothing. Even as a girl, Jisun used to cut the embellishments off her skirts and blouses—any unnecessary bows and ribbons, buttons that didn’t hold anything together, ruffles that added bulk and made her feel like a cushioned crystal goblet. To appease the boss, ajumma would try to sew them back on, but most were beyond rescue. He always noticed the mangled garments. Just like her mother.

  As much as she despised the clothes, there was a small, satisfying buzz in being ostentatious, in throwing the rules in his face by following them to the point of theater. Jisun was working on a bigger plan than just ruffles and cardigans, but it would help in the long run if they were distracted by her compliance, if they believed this was her rebellion. In the meantime, she would follow the rules impeccably and win the ultimate prize.

  Freedom.

  —

  ONE MONTH.

  At first, Jisun thought she would hear from Peter. At the very least, she expected an apology. She considered the ways in which he might frame such a note. Having had time to consider my behavior, I realize…Or maybe he would be more direct, in his fashion. Jisun, I was wrong. Please forgive me. But as the weeks passed and she heard nothing, she realized there would be no apology. No communication at all. It bitterly humiliated her now to think she had expected even more than that. Not just an apology but a declaration of love. A blossoming of their relationship. She had been so certain.

  Everything he’d said had been devastating, unfair—she would remember each of his accusations as if they were branded on her skin.

  You’re the real saint. Topless and all. Congratulations, Jisun.

  But you see, going forward I need a partner who shares my values.

  Who understands the expectations of a missionary’s wife.

  When they were working as equals, side by side, Jisun had considered him a man for whom it would never be important to control a woman, body or mind. She had thought him a man who wanted the people he loved to be free.

  So how had she been so wrong?

  She could console herself that she had not been mistaken about his feelings. In his own way, Peter had loved her, too. But there was no joy in the information, which had come at such a price. For all his self-righteous talk, Peter was as parochial and possessive as any man who wanted to tame the woman he loved.

  —

  CAMPUS FIVE DAYS a week. A movie every Tuesday. Saturday, shopping. Late nights at the library each Wednesday and Thursday.

  Jisun waited. She planned. And when she was ready, she made an appointment to see her father. To make it official, she had called the office and spoken to his secretary the week before. “A meeting with your father?” Having met the secretary once, she could picture him in her mind. He had striking eyes, eyelashes that seemed to poke straight out at whomever he addressed, and a voice that demanded exact details. Although young, he used the power of his office to behave as if each request presented the most irritating burden of his life. “Surely you can speak to him at home.”

  “This is a business matter,” she said. “We don’t conduct business at home.”

  There was a conspicuous pause clocking his displeasure, but he was smart enough to leave it at that. “Fine. Thursday. Two o’clock. Don’t be late.” He hung up as crisply as he dared.

  Thursday, Jisun had to insist three times before Ko consented to believe she actually had an appointment with her father. Ko hated Jisun’s dependence on him almost as much as she did. She would have been happy to tell him it would be over soon, but knowing him, she was sure he would have rolled his eyes in disbelief. Ko treated her as the greatest simpleton who couldn’t negotiate her way out of a bus fare, much less handle the boss. But he hadn’t been drilled as she had. Never underestimate those you despise. They have caught your attention for a reason.

  Ko would see. Jisun knew what was most valuable to her father, the one thing he dearly wanted that he could not buy or compel into being. She had been trained by the master, and she knew how to strike a deal.

  When they arrived at the office, she told Ko, “No need to wait. I’ll see myself home.”

  Ko killed the engine with a decisive click. “How long will you be? Do I have time for a nap?” His hand was already on the lighter, preparing his usual cigarette.

  “Sleep at home,” she said. “If I’m wrong, I’ll handle the consequences. You know the rules. Then you won’t have to drive me anywhere.”

  Ko considered her words, rolling the lighter’s spark mechanism with his thumb, scraping his fingernail along the grooved wheel.

  “It’s up to you,” she said. “Wait if you want. It’s your time you’re wasting, not mine.”

  She knew he would not give her the satisfaction of an answer. She got out and slammed the door. Instantly the engine roared to life. She smiled.

  Jisun stood at the curb and watched him drive away.

  —

  THE SECRETARY’S NAMEPLATE on his desk read KIM TAEYOO. He showed her into her father’s office without asking what she would like to drink, as he should have. She would have declined, but since he didn’t offer, Jisun requested a hot tea. “And some fruit.” He’d tell everyone about the boss’s daughter who’d come around ordering him about like a serf—but he might have done that anyway.

  “Did you know I was coming?” Jisun asked her father.

  “I did.”

  “I won’t waste your time. I don’t know how long you plan to continue with our current arrangement, but it is not sustainable for me. I’m willing to negotiate a new deal.”

  “I’m very happy with the current circumstances,” her father said. “I have no wish to change them.”

  “The offer I had in mind concerns the future, which I believe you are interested in.” Although he gave no outward indication, Jisun knew she had his full attention. He had raised his company from a bicycle shed on a dirt yard to a national conglomerate personally praised by the president. He was the envy of his peers. A miracle. Every year, his company grew exponentially larger and more valuable. And—here was Jisun’s opportunity—the greater his success, the more pressing it became for him to secure its future. Assuming his good health continued, he could run the company for a long time still. But even if he could work for another century, he needed an eventual successor. He could have his choice among a nation of eager men and women, but Jisun knew he wanted bloo
d. His son. His daughter. Otherwise he could never close his eyes in peace. Many times he had spoken those words exactly. Everything I’ve made with my hands must stay in the family. I will never close my eyes in peace.

  Although Min was the firstborn and the son, Jisun knew in her heart that her father preferred her to be his successor over her brother. She, more than him, had inherited his drive and single-mindedness. Though their interests and political inclinations ran in opposite directions, Jisun was her father’s natural heir, their fiery temperaments cast from the same mold.

  “I will trade you four years for four years,” she said. “Give me my freedom now. If you don’t interfere for the next four years, the four years after that are yours.”

  “Four years is hardly the future,” he said. “What use do I have for four years?”

  “But you have nothing now. You have a prisoner. I can walk away anytime, disappear, and that’s the future. In that case you can gamble on Min. Perhaps he won’t disappoint you.”

  “I repeat my question. What use do I have for four years?”

  “You have my full cooperation for four years. I will train in what you want here or study anywhere in the world, the discipline of your choice. After four years I will be free to do again as I choose. Perhaps you will have succeeded in changing my mind, in which case you will have gotten what you want. It’s a risk for me and a risk for you.”

  “It’s a unique proposition,” her father said. Jisun heard the faint glow of praise in his voice. She had impressed him, and now she knew he would agree. “If I agree, how do I know you will keep your side of the bargain? I notice you receive your prize first.”

  “You know because I’m your daughter.”

  —

  ON THE BUS, Jisun took off her constricting jacket and loosened the bow at her throat.

  “Must feel better,” said the woman next to her. She was carrying a net sack full of vegetables, and her lap was littered with scraps of onion skin, pearly white against her dark green pants. “Too nice a day for so many layers.”

  “Yes,” Jisun said. Her father had bet on the future, but she had chosen the present. She could have disappeared. She could have taken herself anywhere in the world and started a different life. Perhaps that would have been the smarter choice. But this was her home and she was not ready to leave it, not yet.

  “How will I know you will keep your end of the bargain?” she’d asked him. Jisun knew there were ways he could act without her knowledge. Arranging and obstructing her life without lifting a finger himself. In fact, she expected it.

  “I agree you’re getting the better end of the bargain.”

  “That isn’t what I said.” In truth, Jisun felt he had gotten the advantage since she was giving him what he didn’t have, while he was only returning what was rightfully hers.

  “In business you must sometimes trust people you don’t like,” he said. “Otherwise no one would prosper, only shaking hands with friends and neighbors who are in the same condition.”

  “Well, we are family.”

  He stood up and offered his hand. “But there’s a reason you came to my office.”

  She took his hand and shook it.

  Jisun stood outside churches listening to the voices joined in song. She imagined the Christ dangling on a fluorescent cross, his pierced drooping head pelted with the congregation’s four-part harmony, the pianist’s good shoes heavy on the damper pedal. She imagined herself opening the door and walking up the red-carpeted aisle, flinging off her clothing, lying naked on the silk-laid altar.

  You’re the real saint. Topless and all.

  At home, she shivered under the summer quilt. She had won her freedom, but it did not change what she had lost with Peter. No one told her that heartbreak would feel so much like an endless flu, which only got worse as time passed. Or was she actually sick? Jisun was so rarely ill that she never recognized the symptoms, mistaking them for depression or some kind of existential crisis. As a child, she had been so wretchedly healthy that she had held the embarrassing distinction of winning her school’s perfect attendance award for twelve straight years. Her father gloated over the strength of her immune system, which perfectly mirrored his. He had never been sick a day in Jisun’s memory. She could not recall ever seeing her father lie down.

  Nowadays, all she did was lie around, listless and heavy with rage. Weird, half-formed thoughts swirled in her head. Her body was simultaneously overly present and disconnected from her mind.

  God was a cloud in the shape of a fox. A fox formed of cypress branches, gnarled and heavy as iron. God was an ox yoked to the sea. A white dog in a stream bloated with maggots. A cliff.

  God was a man she loved who said, But you should have known better. I expected more.

  But how should she have known better? How could she have done or given more?

  She became fixated on the idea of disproving Peter. She hung around churches, hoping to capture some insight, some argument she could use against him. She wished God were a senator or president she could write a letter to, complaining of her ill-treatment by one of his emissaries. Jisun had a mental map of the local churches in alliance with the labor movement—the ones that worked with UIM or with union leaders and student activists willing to tutor workers at night. She avoided the churches where Peter had organized classes and lectures, as well as the ones they had planned to approach next, not knowing if he had already succeeded. She had a good idea of which churches stuck to teaching the “safe” classes on religion, literacy, and current events and which others became radicalized and went underground with their meetings, moving from church basements into unlit attics and abandoned warehouses after curfew.

  Like a moth hovering at the edge of a window, she tracked this latter group, searching for a way into the secret meetings. She was as uncertain of her motives as she was drawn to push forward. She went from church to church in remote areas of Seoul, on the eastern and western peripheries where she hoped no one would know or recognize her. Out there, the churches all had a makeshift appearance. They were former restaurant spaces, bathhouses, automobile repair shops converted into rooms of worship, and all seemed to have the same frosted-glass door painted with a cheap black logo—usually a cross with a flame wrapping around it, or a dove alighting on a glowing hand.

  But inside, the atmosphere of hushed reverence reminded her of Peter. There was a visceral sense of him, as if he might walk in any minute. She could conjure his voice, his smile, in her mind as easily as she could smell the musty carpet under her feet or hear the sound of pigeons scuttling against the cracked cement windowsills. In this strange half trance, Jisun found herself sitting in the back pew of half a dozen tiny sanctuaries, watching the light travel across the rows. Killing time because time was all she had.

  Sometimes a church secretary or deacon spoke to her. “Can I help you? Are you waiting for someone?”

  Most of the time she said no and hoped they would assume she was just praying or meditating or whatever people did when they came to churches alone. But sometimes she asked for the schedule of evening classes.

  “Bible study?” the deacon might ask, as if they were rehearsing for a play.

  “Yes, of course, but also the other classes,” Jisun would say. “Perhaps something more…practical. For working people?”

  And they would name a time and day when Jisun could come and inquire further. Wednesday at nine o’clock, newspaper literacy. Thursday at eight thirty, personal finance. It was a matter of reading between the lines, choosing the right class and, once there, the right person who might lead to more information.

  The meetings took place in a burned-out yarn factory, now serving as a warehouse for rubber slippers and cheap athletic shoes. The smell of acrylic and new rubber made the space feel tight and claustrophobic. But soon close to forty men and women would form a loose circle on the floor, and the room would seem to expand around the warm fellowship of kindred people. The candles would be lit, the dim light fl
attening the usual hierarchies of age and gender, encouraging a mood of whispering. Claiming a spot by the door, Jisun felt suffused with expectancy and ease, as if she’d come to witness a performance she knew by heart.

  Sometimes the arguments rose and fell around her like the crackle of a large bonfire, jagged and lulling. People spoke with hushed urgency, knowing the concrete walls would echo and amplify sound. Without the aid of volume for emphasis, they used their bodies. Pointing, jabbing. Crawling into the circle on hands and knees to get closer to an argument, an opponent. At certain angles, the light caught and illuminated an eye like a polished onyx. Sometimes Jisun fought an inexplicable upwelling of tears. This must be how it is in a family.

  Content to just listen and observe, she never spoke during these meetings. Sitting with her legs pulled under her like a proper student, she absorbed the familiar rhythms of debate and discussion, the rough accents and idioms of the factory floor, which she had not known she could miss so much. Merely being part of the scene soothed her, giving her back the part of her identity she had been separated from and craved all these months.

  She was careful not to attract too much attention to herself but also not to appear overly withdrawn or aloof, which might mark her as a suspicious figure. She answered any questions posed to her as honestly as she could, explaining how she had found out about this meeting location and that she had formerly worked with women in a textile factory. She purposely kept the details of her work history vague and dropped hints to indicate that she was a student activist whose identity must not be pressed. The story passed easily. As it was, people seemed to know she was a student even before she hinted at it. There was no hiding her urbane Seoul accent and aura of education. Jisun would have never passed for a true worker, and it seemed they did not require her to be. Because she had inquired at four churches before finding someone willing to disclose the location, they assumed she was a Methodist. Peter was a Methodist. A particular irony, which both comforted and stung.