Everything Belongs to Us Read online

  But lately Kyungmin had been letting the level in the latrine rise dangerously high before finding the latrine man. The chain of begging now started with Namin imploring her sister to find Mr. Hong. The longer Kyungmin put her off, the more unreasonable Namin’s panic became. She knew it was absurd not to be able to perform this simple chore that any child in their neighborhood could do. She was nineteen years old and studying to be a doctor; she could hardly afford to be so squeamish about the most basic by-product of human existence. But everything about it—the smell of the full latrine, the humiliating wooing of Mr. Hong, the thought of him slopping what must be oceans of shit in a month, not to mention in a year, a lifetime—overwhelmed Namin with misery. As much as she might berate herself for this embarrassing streak of prissiness, she could not make herself overcome it.

  This morning, she had tried again. “Please, Kyungmin. Couldn’t you do it on the way to work? It’ll take you no time at all. You won’t even be late.”

  “Would it kill you to get him yourself for once?” Kyungmin had said. Her face had been pale and bloated from having worked three consecutive overtime shifts at the factory. The butterfly embroidery of her pillow had been imprinted on her cheek as if she had collapsed on it and not moved all night. Namin had felt guilty for nagging, for not owning the courage to do it herself, but the situation in her mind was dire. It looked as though it might rain, which would significantly compound the problem. Humidity never helped. At least in the winter a good hard freeze acted as a kind of antiseptic against the odor, but it was April now and showing signs of spring. With each rising degree, the smell seemed to fester inside the house.

  “Next time I’ll do it. I promise.” Even this false promise had made Namin’s palms clammy, but she’d pressed on, desperate. Maybe next time Kyungmin would be in a better mood, more generous. Maybe in a couple of weeks, things would be different. It was important that she make herself believe this, even though the opposite was likely true. In a few weeks it would be warmer. Her sister would be more exhausted, made testier by the sweaty commute and growing airlessness on the factory floor. And lately Kyungmin rarely made it home before curfew even when she wasn’t working.

  There was always some flat, dubious reason why she was out so late. A new friend in a distant neighborhood. A blown tire on the bus. A long movie. Excuses that might have seemed credible once, but not night after night.

  No one—not her mother, not her father, certainly not Namin—was prepared to discuss where Kyungmin might be, if not the places she claimed. But it was on their minds all the time, a snaking fear that made them even more terse with one another than usual. Like everyone else, they were familiar with the rumors of girls who slipped from factory life into the Itaewon nightlife, working at bars and brothels frequented by the American soldiers stationed in Seoul. Girls who were tempted by the promise of money—more money in one night than in a week at the factory—or, more naively, lured by the prospect of romance. An American boyfriend might become an American husband, a ticket out to a new life. Never mind that any Korean girl seen with a GI in Seoul would be viewed as a prostitute. Even if they were a legitimate couple, married or in love, their children would be shunned. It was one thing to be politically grateful to the United States for coming to their aid during the war and continuing to protect their northern border these past two decades. But friend or not, it was humiliating to be so firmly indebted to a foreign army and a seemingly omnipotent government against which they had no balancing power. And no one was willing to see their daughters and sisters become an American soldier’s plaything, easily exploited and left behind, the rest of their lives ruined in the aftermath.

  Perhaps these were girls who had no reputation to lose, no families to disown them. Perhaps for women like that, the slim chance of gaining an American visa was worth the risk. But Kyungmin had a family who worried about her. Namin hoped that she had met someone else, a secret boyfriend—a respectable Korean man, not a GI—who was keeping her out late at night. In the past her sister had nurtured a romantic streak, favoring scarlet lipsticks in winter to make her pale skin stand out against the snow. She liked to save her money to purchase lush fabrics that she fashioned into skirts that hugged her hips and tapered at the calves like the couture of a 1940s Hollywood star. Three years ago, Kyungmin had almost married a furniture salesman who took college classes at night, inching his way toward a degree. But he had ended up throwing her over for another girl who was a few years older, a university student majoring in home economics.

  If there were any other boyfriends since then, Kyungmin had kept quiet about it. And try as Namin might to imagine it, her sister did not seem like a girl in love. Her face was dark and shuttered, her moods as brittle as February ice. Kyungmin no longer sewed the beautiful garments that made her walk taller, her back straight to show off her figure. Instead she dressed recklessly in increasingly revealing, unflattering clothing that cut into her slender frame and showed the seams of her undergarments. Namin had the sense that her sister would no longer settle for any night degree or pockmarked salesman; she had waited long enough and would not make the same mistake again. But looking like that—if Kyungmin had been any other girl on the street, Namin and her parents would have a word for what she was.

  “Please, Kyungmin. Just this once,” Namin had begged again.

  “What are you, the royal princess around here? If it bothers you so much, take care of it.”

  It would kill her. But she’d realized her sister was serious this time. If she wanted it done, she’d have to do it herself. And the longer she put it off, the worse it got.

  There was a knock at the gate and Busan Mother called over the barrier separating their courtyards: “Namin—your fancy friend is here!”

  Jisun always used the knocker, sending that hollow, formal sound through their narrow courtyard. Everyone else just yelled over the gate or simply let themselves in, since the door was locked only if no one was home. Namin closed her eyes, fighting an irrational instinct to hide. Of course, she was already hidden behind her bedroom door and the walls of the house, but Jisun had a way of making her feel exposed.

  Since Jisun had gotten involved with the activist groups, they barely knew anything about each other’s lives. Namin accepted the distance they had drifted apart, but Jisun seemed to take for granted the fact that her life was always in flux while other people stayed put—preferably in the spot where she’d left them. When she’d found out that Namin planned to go for the Circle, her brother Min’s pet project that had become SNU’s foremost status symbol, Jisun had thrown a fit. That was months ago, and they hadn’t spoken since.

  “You can’t,” she’d said. As if Namin had asked her permission. “Namin, have you thought this through? This can’t really be what you want.”

  “It’s exactly what I want.”

  “But it’s so elitist. You know the Circle is just a bunch of phony social climbers. You’ll get in and become just like them. Another stupid bourgeois sheep. Namin, no! You’re better than that.”

  Namin had laughed. “ ‘Bourgeois sheep’? They must be brainwashing you in those demo groups of yours. Just because I don’t think like you doesn’t make me a dumb animal. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Anyway, I could use a little elitism in my life.”

  “How can you joke about this?”

  “Jisun, obviously you don’t need things like the Circle. You can afford not to be such a ‘sheep.’ So go ahead, spend your life marching and shouting slogans,” Namin had said. “But I can’t. I need this. People rely on me, you know.”

  “And you think no one relies on me?”

  “Who, Jisun?” she’d said. “Who relies on you? You have no responsibilities! Everything’s always been given to you.”

  Jisun had actually stamped her foot like a child throwing a tantrum, raising a low cloud of dust over the courtyard. “No responsibilities?” she’d shouted. “Who do you think I’m doing this for? Why should I work so hard when people
like you don’t even appreciate it?”

  “ ‘People like me’?” Namin had shouted, too, forgetting to keep her voice down. The neighbors could repeat this argument word for word in the market for all she cared. “ ‘People like me,’ you mean, who are helpless, who need big, powerful champions like you to fight their battles? Is that what you think you’re doing? Let me get this straight. Do you actually expect me to be grateful?” She’d been so angry, she’d wanted to smash Jisun across her smug, patronizing face. She’d wanted to knock her down and pummel her until they were both senseless. But tears were already quivering in Jisun’s eyes.

  It had made her furious that Jisun was crying. As if this were about her sad feelings, her disappointment in the shortcomings of their friendship.

  “I thought we relied on each other, Namin.”

  “People like me can’t rely on people like you,” Namin had spit out. “We just call that charity.”

  She’d left Jisun standing in the yard. She couldn’t bear to hear or say another word, not even Get out, which she knew Jisun wouldn’t obey anyway. That’s what happened when you let someone get too comfortable in your life. You couldn’t even kick them out of your house when you needed to.

  That day, Namin had stayed away for hours in case Jisun decided to wait her out. Coming back, she’d expected some melodramatic communication taped to her desk, impassioned pages purporting to explain or apologize that would just yank the knots of their conflict tighter. When she found nothing, Namin saw for the first time how they could begin to let each other go. Slowly nudging closed, not slamming, the door to their childhood.

  It was just the quiet she needed.

  Namin could not remember the first time she and Jisun noticed each other. All the girls were new to one another at the time, nervous to be starting at Kyungki Girls Middle School and anxious to prove they belonged there. They had all passed difficult exams in order to be admitted, but most of the girls were daughters of government officials and top businessmen. Girls who were used to enjoying elite privileges, unlike Namin, whose parents had barely been able to afford the black-and-white sailor uniform and matching coat that Kyungki required.

  Far from scrambling to make friends like the other girls, Namin had kept to herself, unwilling to expose her poverty by getting close to anyone. She knew she could outperform the other girls academically, but no amount of hard work would make the things she needed to fit in materialize. Everyone else had new leather satchels and a wardrobe of expensive-looking shoes, compared with her dingy canvas bag and the scuffed black loafers she wore every day. Many of the girls were dropped off by their family’s chauffeurs each morning, while she had to take a bus that snaked through north and central Seoul, across the Han River, before it finally let her out in Gangnam. It was a ride that took more than fifty minutes and sometimes felt like a battle even before the day had begun. In bad weather, Namin wore triple layers of socks and stockings and arrived at school drenched while other girls barely had a drop on their heads from being ferried under umbrellas to the building’s threshold. During the warmer months, her desk mate made nasty comments about washing once in a while. Namin bit her tongue because she washed every day, twice a day; but not everyone on her bus did, and they were packed in like sardines by the bus attendants whose job it was to forcefully shove as many bodies as they could into the bus at every stop.

  There were things the other girls at Kyungki seemed to know intuitively about one another’s families—what it meant to live in a certain neighborhood or own a particular make of car—that Namin could not grasp. But even she knew about Jisun, whose father was one of the most powerful chaebol leaders in the country. For that reason alone, Namin kept a wide berth, wanting nothing to do with her. But Jisun had pursued her friendship, drawn to her for reasons that were entirely unclear.

  Namin remembered one day, a few weeks into the new school year. It was after lunch and she found herself standing alone with Jisun. A short distance away, the other girls were crowded around a classmate who was showing off a box of Swiss chocolates, a gift from her diplomat father. Namin had pretended not to care but mentally recorded every detail of the tiny chocolates, dark little bites drizzled with a slightly lighter shade of chocolate. They were shaped like hearts, each nestled in its own perfect compartment. The other girls, chattering and cooing in appreciation, reminded her of a well-groomed flock of birds.

  “Don’t be fooled by all that,” Jisun said in a low voice. “You aren’t, are you?”

  “Of course not. What’s there to be fooled by?” Namin said, pretending she understood what Jisun was talking about. In reality, she had no idea.

  “That girl’s making a big deal out of those candies when they’re just cheap little things. You know, they sell them at the airport next to the aspirin and the chewing gum. No real Swiss person would think to make such a fuss. It would be like us singing hymns to a common steam bun. Actually I love steam buns, so forget that. It would be like us going crazy over any old plate of kimchi.”

  “Well, maybe in Switzerland they would go crazy over kimchi,” Namin said doubtfully. The chocolates looked pretty special to her. She wouldn’t mind trying one, even if it turned out to be as commonplace as kimchi—or airport chewing gum. Considering she’d never been on an airplane or even seen the airport in her own country, airport chewing gum sounded like a fantastic concept, like buying Juicy Fruit on the moon.

  “The point is, she’s showing off like it’s a big deal,” Jisun said. “She just wants everyone to envy her. That’s why I can’t stand those girls, all they want is for people to follow them.” She looked at Namin. “And that’s why I like you. You don’t care what anyone thinks, do you?”

  Namin thought about how ashamed she felt of her shoes and how she often wished some mysterious rich relative would show up with expensive gifts so she could be like the other girls at school. Despite what Jisun said, she envied those girls and wondered what it would be like to own something they would admire for once. But she would never admit such feelings to Jisun.

  “But aren’t you just as bad,” Namin said, “bragging about how you know all about those chocolates? I suppose you have even better ones at home.”

  Jisun glared at her. “The only reason I know about those stupid chocolates at all is because my father shoved us away to Switzerland so he could kick my mother out of the house while we were gone. She died last year, you know. Probably just to spite him. I would try the same if I thought he was worth the trouble.”

  The revelation shocked Namin. Immediately she felt the need to lock down her own secrets, as if somehow Jisun could read her mind and discover what she was hiding.

  “I don’t believe you,” Namin said.

  “Well, it’s true,” Jisun said. “And I don’t care if you don’t believe me.”

  They were eleven years old. Together, Jisun and Namin practiced the art of being unfazed. Each pretended not to be shocked by the other’s household, by the huge gap in their social and financial realities, which was so obvious that they could neither deny nor discuss them beyond the most superficial levels. Already, they knew much more about life than most girls their age, but they pretended to know even more than they did—about money, about families and death, friendship and betrayal. About love and lies.

  Or perhaps only Namin was pretending and Jisun truly was as detached as she appeared.

  The following year, when Jisun started receiving love notes from an older boy named Juno, a friend of her brother’s, Namin was stupefied. But Jisun barely glanced at the carefully folded stationery before tossing the sheets in the trash.

  “Don’t you even want to know what it says?” Namin asked, fighting the impulse to fish them out. Jisun’s garbage was so clean that it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but her pride kept her in check. “At least see who it’s from.”

  Receiving a love note seemed as marvelous and exotic as finding an uncut diamond in the gutter. Namin was appalled by Jisun’s carelessness. Boys
and girls rarely mingled in middle or high school. They attended separate single-sex schools and socialized strictly within their gender. The only time they could even catch a glimpse of any boys was on the street or on Sunday afternoons. Under such circumstances, when would anyone even have the opportunity to develop any kind of serious crush or love interest? Of course, people still made eyes at each other, but it rarely went beyond that first nameless stage.

  If anyone ever wrote her a love letter, she would certainly read it. Even if she decided she didn’t like the boy, she would save his letters as a memento, as evidence of having been admired.

  “I know who it’s from,” Jisun said grimly. “This kid Juno. Family friend. He’s been sucking up to us since we were babies. He already follows my brother around like an orphan duck, and now I guess he’s using me as insurance.”

  “How are you insurance?”

  “He probably has this stupid idea that if we get married one day, then he can get a part of my father’s company.” Jisun looked askance at her. “My father says people don’t get rich by accident. He says it takes ‘long-term planning.’ ”

  It was a stunning piece of information, and Namin packed it away to think about later. In the following years, she would return to this bit of inadvertent counsel again and again—it would become a kind of touchstone—but for now she had other questions and more pressing concerns. At their age, the idea of marriage seemed as impossible as it did inevitable, but she had never heard any girl discuss it so matter-of-factly. As if her future were already engraved in granite.

  “Isn’t it possible that he actually just likes you?” Namin asked.

  “Isn’t it more possible that I’m just right?” Jisun said. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Yours, I guess,” said Namin. But sometimes it seemed Jisun went out of her way to make it hard to be on her side.