Everything Belongs to Us Page 5

  “I came as soon as I could,” she said. “Yesterday was—”

  “Didn’t think I’d see you here,” he cut in briskly. He laid an old notebook over the pages he’d been working on, as if she could not be trusted to glimpse what might be written there.

  “I can’t stay long,” she stammered. “I only came to tell you I won’t be able to come back for a while. I’m so sorry. You’ll have to find another translator.” There was so much more she wanted to say—not just that she was sorry to have inconvenienced the work or that she would dearly miss coming to this office every day. She needed to tell him how devastated she was at the thought of not seeing him. That the idea of another translator taking her place filled her with such childish jealousy and despair, she could not imagine overcoming it. Before coming here, Jisun had hoped that Peter would at least acknowledge the work they’d accomplished together, the connection they’d shared as partners and colleagues. But much more than that, she had hoped Peter would finally reveal his affection for her. Jisun needed to know that losing her hurt him, too.

  She took a step toward him, but there was nothing in his eyes to say that he felt anything other than resentment. Again he turned his back. “After what you did yesterday, I don’t know why you bothered coming at all,” he said.

  She had never known Peter to be cruel, even to people he disliked, yet he was treating her as if they were enemies. She might have been prepared for disappointment or even indignation, but she did not deserve this scorn. “After what I did?” She could not control the higher octave of her voice. “Do you actually believe I had any control over what happened yesterday? I didn’t ask to be released, Peter. You of all people should know that. It would have been the same for you as a foreigner. And what would you have done differently?”

  “I would have stayed.”

  “You wouldn’t have had a choice,” she said.

  “There are always choices.” His eyes flashed with conviction. “That’s the difference between you and me, Jisun. You’re still stuck on your family, blaming them for everything that happens. But that’s ancient history for me. I’m out here on my own. I’m not looking for an almighty hand to save me if I get in trouble.”

  It was a stunning accusation, drawing a line as thick as the world between them. Jisun fought back as if for her life. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You know as well as I do what would have happened.” Peter might be far from home, but his American passport and white skin meant he would always have the privilege of representing his powerful government. No amount of pious denial would change that. “You, Peter—you wouldn’t even have made it into the police van. You think they’d touch you out there and risk the press? ‘American Aid Worker Arrested for Peaceful Protest.’ That doesn’t sound like ancient history, Peter. This is current history. This is now.

  “And you want to know the real difference between you and me?” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you for that, because you didn’t make this history. You’re here trying to change it, just like I was. Do you truly think I wanted to be released, do you think that was my plan? And if we’re pointing fingers, at least I got involved,” she said. “I was out there, Peter, while you were here, hiding behind a stack of papers.”

  To say he was hiding was just as unfair as his implying she had run away, but Jisun was past caring. His self-righteousness felt like hands closing around her throat. Later she would regret the words, remembering the way he hunched into himself as if shuttering his heart against her. But now it was all she could do to fight for breath.

  “If it’s a contest, then you win,” Peter said bitterly. “You’re the real saint. Topless and all. Congratulations, Jisun. Now excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Dumbfounded, Jisun repeated the word. “Did you say topless?”

  “You didn’t think I’d hear about that? I heard it was quite a spectacle.”

  “Is that what you think it was, a spectacle? Do you think that’s why we did it?”

  “Then why?” he said furiously. The question seemed to explode from his body, as if it had been compressed under enormous pressure. Jisun had never heard Peter raise his voice. She could not believe what he was saying, but it was a relief—at last—to know that the mask had dropped. Finally, this was Peter without calculation and control. Jisun felt as if she were seeing him for the first time, stripped of all the attributes—American, aid worker, Christian—that had made him seem so different from everyone else. In that moment, she felt surprising tenderness toward him. He had always seemed so stoic and strong, but now she saw that he was as fragile as a little boy, confused and frightened by events he could not understand. If she were not careful, he would shatter like a vase thrown against the wall.

  “The riot police were there and they were threatening us,” Jisun explained in a quiet, steady voice. “They were coming and it was a spontaneous response. I don’t know how it happened, but I know for sure—it was never meant to be a spectacle. Never. They were trying to protect themselves. We,” she corrected herself quickly. “We were trying to protect ourselves.”

  Peter took a long inhale and let it out slowly. “But you should have known better, Jisun,” he said. “I expected more from you.”

  “But we did nothing wrong,” she said. “What should I have known? How could I have been better?”

  “I thought we had a future together,” he said. “But I see now that I was wrong. I misjudged the situation. Forgive me.”

  “Because I tried to protect myself, you misjudged the situation?” Jisun said. “I don’t follow, Peter. Explain this to me.”

  “My work is everything, Jisun,” he said. “And you and I—I thought we would continue as we have, working together. We had—at least I thought so—a unique connection.”

  Despite everything, her heart leapt at the words. She wanted to hold on to this last sentiment and discard the rest, which didn’t make any sense at all. “But I agree,” she said. “We do—”

  “Please, Jisun. Let me finish.” Peter refused to meet her eyes. “But you see, going forward I need a partner who shares my values. Who understands the expectations of—of a missionary’s wife.”

  And now Jisun understood.

  Peter had let her believe she had betrayed the cause by allowing herself to be released while others still remained in jeopardy. But now she saw the real reason for his rejection. Peter was offended—no, scandalized—because she had bared her breasts in solidarity with a workers’ protest. And what did a missionary’s wife do in such a situation? she wondered. Did a proper woman, in Peter’s imagination, run around a police raid imploring battered women to remember their chastity? Did she fall to her knees and pray for police clemency?

  “You pretended it was my father that was the problem. You acted like I was some kind of traitor.” She was so angry that it was an effort to speak at all, to find the proper words to contain her fury. “But it was this all along, wasn’t it? Is your God so squeamish that he hasn’t seen uncovered breasts? Does he begrudge women the right to protect themselves?”

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke. She thought it was possible he would apologize. He would apologize and she would forgive him, she knew she would. If only he would say the words, they would make it right between them.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Peter said finally. But it was not the apology she expected. He was not sorry for what he had implied, only that she did not agree with him. And he was not sorry she would not return. It was an apology that was more a goodbye, a gesture to end an awkward conversation.

  She started to answer, but Peter was not finished.

  “And I never pretended about your father,” he said. “I can’t take back what I said because it’s what I believe, but I should have spoken differently. I was angry. Forgive me.”

  With this, he eliminated every shred of friendship, any shadow of affection, between them.

  Jisun wished she had the conviction to walk out and never look back. But even now, a
fter everything he’d said, she could not bear to destroy it all as if there were nothing worth saving.

  “How can you leave it like this?” she said. “Is this truly how you want to end it?”

  “How I’m ending it?” Peter said. “It was your choice, Jisun. You did this.”

  He sounded genuinely sad, as if she were the one who had broken his heart, not the other way around. He gave her a final glance and picked up his pen, clearly dismissing her.

  —

  ALL THE WAY back to the bathhouse, Jisun’s ears pounded with his words, which heaped every blame, every possible failing, on her. She felt as disoriented as if she’d been flung into a new body, a new country where she did not understand the language or know a soul. And in a way, she realized it was not far from the truth. In one day, everything had changed. All her work, all her passion, had amounted to nothing. To less than nothing. She had lost not only her job and her freedom, she had lost her respect for the person she’d most admired.

  The city flashed by in grays and browns outside the window. Inside the cab, the driver was listening to the new song by Shim Soo-Bong, which was playing endlessly on all the stations since her debut. The driver tapped the wheel in time with the mellow beat. “Great song,” he said. “Talent like that, bet she’ll have a long career. You know she won the College Talent Search with this song? Wrote it herself.” He kept looking in the rearview mirror at Jisun as he talked. She nodded and cranked open the window, pretending she needed some air. Of course she knew about the contest. Everyone knew everything that was public in Korea. The media let them know only what the government allowed, the same few things that kept the country in a tight loop of sanctioned influence and safe, useless information. It was why she and her fellow activists were so desperate to know and experience what was not normally permitted. Now all that would be cut off for her.

  The driver, failing to catch the hint, kept up his casual chatter. “You a college student too, eh?” he said. “You don’t sing, do you? Maybe next year we’ll be hearing you on the radio.”

  “Why do you think I’m a college student?” Jisun asked.

  He shrugged, and even that was in time with the beat. “Just a hunch,” he said. “You get a sense for these things when you meet as many people as I do.”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” she said. “I work.”

  “Oh yeah? What kind of office?”

  To be contrary, Jisun considered telling him that she worked at a factory, that she had nothing to do with an office at all. It was not completely untrue—she had lived in factory housing for three months, and she often met with the workers during their meal breaks on the factory floor. But Jisun knew better. Sharing living conditions and having periodic meetings was not nearly the same as being a true worker, and she would never forgive herself for claiming it just to satisfy a fleeting antagonistic impulse.

  “Never mind,” she said instead. “You can drop me here.”

  —

  KO WAS PARKED exactly where she had left him. She was a block away when the car sprang to life, taillights flashing, exhaust pumping the curl of smoke that signaled he had seen her. Jisun went into the bathhouse anyway, and came straight back out through the same double doors she’d just entered. Not that her story would prevail, but it would be his word against hers.

  “You forgetting something?” Ko asked when she slumped into the backseat.

  “What? I don’t know.”

  “You had a bag,” Ko said.

  She had stashed her bag of toiletries in the alley behind the bathhouse and forgotten to go back for it. “I’ll get it next time.”

  “If there’s a next time, I’d be surprised.”

  If she were a stronger person, someone who valued her own dignity, then she would have let him take her home, locked the door to her bedroom, and wept in the privacy of her own lavish misery. Perhaps she would have done so many things differently if she were that person.

  Instead Jisun told Ko to turn the car around. “Take me to Miari.”

  The car inched through the narrow alleys of Miari, crowded on both sides by street vendors selling vegetables and underwear, flyswatters, pots of every size and shape, live chickens, and fish stacked on graying Styrofoam beds laid thinly with ice. It was like being squeezed through a tunnel of human curiosity, a wall of eyes following the slow movement of the car. Jisun knew they couldn’t see her through the darkened windows, but it was something she would never get used to, being simultaneously conspicuous and invisible. Whether they considered the intrusion merely interesting or ominous, the neighborhood would keep its collective mind on the black car until it moved on. Every detail was monitored and saved for future retelling. When it arrived, when it left. Where it had stopped and who had gotten out. Nothing was left unexamined in Miari. Everyone had time, and gossip was its primary trade.

  Ko stopped the car at Namin’s house.

  “Do you have to stay?” Jisun asked.

  “We can leave right now, anytime you’re ready. Well?”

  Jisun let herself out, slammed the door. Ko turned off the engine and cranked the window, a slit barely wide enough for a ribbon of smoke to escape. It made the car look like a steaming animal, a mechanical projection of the driver inside. Before she had even approached the gate, Jisun heard Namin’s next-door neighbor, whom everyone called “Busan Mother,” call over the wall, “Namin—your fancy friend is here!”

  Jisun rapped on the gate, swinging the tiny, anvil-shaped knocker. Nearby, a little boy clutched a rubber ball in his fist. The ball was dull pink, no larger than a peach pit. Together they waited for Namin to come to the door. When no one came, he threw the ball at Jisun’s feet, letting it bounce off her shoe. He watched expectantly for her reaction, and when Jisun hopped on the foot, pretending to be hurt, he cracked a smile and went chasing after his ball.

  She knocked again, louder this time. Namin was in there and they both knew it. But the door stayed shut.

  The Kang family lived in three rooms facing an open courtyard. The courtyard was a bare rectangular patch of concrete and thin dirt that housed the family’s single cold-water faucet used for washing and cooking, outsize jars of food that could not be stored in the tiny kitchen refrigerator, and all manner of half-useful junk that did not fit indoors. During the warm summer months, the courtyard could be made to look almost attractive, with clay pots overflowing with bright red and green peppers, purple pole beans, eggplants, and cucumber vines, all of which created a lush cover for the less appealing odds and ends. It was too early in the season for all that now, but Namin noticed there were a few pots of lettuce her mother had recently put out. The tiny green frills were barely taller than her pinky finger, but they still added a bit of cheer.

  Namin’s parents slept in the first room, nearest the main door and the kitchen. The second room, what they called the “parlor,” featured cast-off furniture that Namin’s mother had rescued from neighbors or the trash. There was a gray tweed love seat, the back of which had been slashed and peeled open as if someone were expecting it to contain hidden treasures, an enormous octagonal glass-topped table, a radio with one of the speakers blown out, and a record player that had once been smashed and reconstructed with translucent brown packing tape. The sofa was put up against a wall and looked fine as long as you didn’t pull it out to look at its backside, and the radio and record player were more or less functional except during periods of heavy rain. But the giant geometric table—which pinned people to the room’s perimeter and made moving around a puzzle of knees and ankles—was an ongoing joke, humiliating to Namin and amusing to Kyungmin, Namin’s older sister, who had long ago detached herself from their mother’s schemes to appear better off than they were. Because it was too grotesquely conspicuous not to mention in some way, guests fell to praising the table. It was “unique,” “majestic,” “structurally interesting,” “European.” Its size and scale seemed to imply that the Kang family was accustomed to grander circumstances and that this cramped
, humid abode was just a temporary downsizing, soon to be redressed. At least this was what Namin’s mother hoped they might think.

  Namin and her sister shared the third room. This was the room nearest the toilet, an indoor latrine that required periodic emptying by a sanitation worker. Twice a month, they had to search the neighborhood for the latrine man, Mr. Hong, and beg him to come service their house. Somehow he was always working in a different part of town when they needed him, besieged by others willing to exaggerate their situation, claiming their latrine would overflow outright if he would not agree to come immediately. Everyone always seemed to wait until the last minute to call Mr. Hong, as if living in perpetual denial of their shit.

  Normally it was Kyungmin’s job to find him, as it was her responsibility to do many of the physical chores around the house. In the Kang household, everyone’s roles were strictly defined according to greatest utility. It was Namin’s job to study, which was something only she could do. Laundry, cooking the rice, fetching the latrine man—all of this was general work that anyone could do, and therefore Kyungmin would be tasked to do it on her time off from working at the factory. If she complained, it was pointed out that Namin spent as many hours studying as Kyungmin put in at the factory and at home—perhaps even more. Namin secretly agreed with her sister—it was unfair that she was always stuck with the grunt work, whereas studying was something Namin actually enjoyed, most of the time. But since Kyungmin’s sharp tongue never let her forget how hard she worked at her miserable job so Namin could go to college, there was no use saying anything nice. And in the end, they both knew their parents were right. Namin needed to be left alone to study, since a college degree—and the salary she could earn as the physician she hoped to become after graduation—could lift them out of their situation for good. No amount of time at the factory could do that.