1.
When the plane landed, the dusty yellow haze over the landing strip looked so much like a scene I had seen in a dream that I was not even surprised to see it. It was convenient that I did not have to pretend to be calm. The light was so bright when I stepped off the plane I had to squeeze my eyes shut. The sharp sunlight beat mercilessly against my bare skin. I wore a long black dress, and as men hurried up the stairs they kept grabbing me by the waist. It made me uncomfortable, but I did not show it. I didn’t want to seem difficult, so I forced a smile at the man I had traveled with. He took my hand and hurried us away to the car.
We rode in a black Toyota that was sent to the airport to pick us up. Young boys knocked on the windows and begged for money. The marks of their fists against the heavily tinted windows disappeared with the sound of the engine starting. Unlike me, who did not know what to do, the man looked at his phone as if he were used to this. My gaze paused on his calf, which pressed against mine. His trousers clung tightly to his legs. I asked why, and he replied that they were the only good pants he had, bought several years ago. He wore a suit that matched the formality of my dress.
The Toyota pulled up at a fenced and gated house that had a marble floor. His parents had heard that my feet were small, so his mother brought out a pair of tiny rubber slippers for me. It looked a little funny, the way my toes stuck out, but I thanked her and crammed my feet inside.
“Welcome. You have come a long way. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
There was one other person in the living room with us. His name was Musa. I was told that he was a housekeeper who had worked for the family ever since the man, who was their second son, was still a child. When I greeted him, Musa answered by smiling rather than speaking. Then he picked up a broom, hurried past the dining table, and disappeared into the kitchen, closing the door behind him.
Every morning and evening, Musa carefully mopped the marble floor. Dressed in white linen from top to bottom, he wiped the floor carefully with both hands. Musa cleaned every part of the house, but he was not allowed into the master bedroom. During the day, the man’s father, the pastor, kept its door locked with a padlock. He said there were important documents inside. Next to the master bedroom was a bathroom, and beside that was the room where the man had lived before moving out. I stayed in that room alone. The man stayed in his parents’ bedroom on a small mattress they placed beside their king-size bed. That evening, I stayed in my room and sat on the bed to relax. After a few minutes, the man’s voice called from behind the closed door. I’d open the door, and we’d stand five arm-spans apart and talk. Every night the conversation grew longer and our legs grew tired.
I had never asked Musa to do my laundry, but anything I wore was always washed the next morning. One day, my white sneakers had turned gray. Musa looked embarrassed, and the pastor’s wife explained that he had tried to clean the sneakers that had become dirty with dust the night before, but he had used the wrong detergent. I told her it was all right, that I could buy a new pair. I wanted to tell Musa that it was all right too, but before I could, he disappeared into the kitchen. Maybe it continued to bother him, because that night, while I was asleep, he washed the sneakers again. The following day, my sneakers were an even cleaner shade of gray.
At around three in the afternoon, Musa would lie stretched out on the black leather sofa in the living room and take a nap. The pastor’s wife told me they still employed Musa because, unlike with other housekeepers, things did not disappear from the house when he was there. She added that when they had employed other housekeepers, she bought thirty small cotton handkerchiefs for the baby and folded them away, and by the end of the month not a single one would be left. Nothing like that happened with Musa. She said that when the man came home from school as a child, Musa treated his schoolbag as if it were something precious. When he arranged the textbooks and school supplies, he would line them up neatly on the desk with a proud expression on his face. He was not especially meticulous at housework, she said, but this was one of the reasons they had stayed with Musa for ten years. These days, she said, they were close enough that Musa would even nag her about the housework.
When I heard the words “ten years,” I looked at Musa for a while. His skin was smooth enough that I could have believed he was in his twenties, and he was thin and stood very straight. I could not guess his age. What still remains strange to me, though, is the way Musa looked at the grown man. I thought that if he had known him since the days when he went to school carrying a backpack, he would naturally look at him the way one looks at a nephew. But Musa’s gaze was difficult to read. There was neither affection nor hostility in it. It was neither the way one looked at a child nor the way one looked at an adult.
One day, the pastor’s wife took me to the most famous fabric shop in town. The flowers that bloomed under the scorching sun had an especially vivid brightness to their colors, and perhaps because of that, the patterns on the fabrics were also vivid and bold. Dressed in pale sky blue, I looked as if I had been tumbled several times inside a washing machine with bleach. After measuring my waist, the owner of the fabric shop had a wrap skirt made for me in a bright blue fabric with large floral patterns. From the next day on, I went out wearing the long wrap skirt covering my striped pajama pants. Musa smiled, showing his neat white teeth, pretending not to know my secret.
The pastor said that he hoped I would be modest. The pastor’s wife took my side.
“I looked inside her makeup bag. She is modest.”
I had left my makeup bag on a high bookshelf beside the bed in the room where I was staying. I wondered how she knew. I decided that thinking too much about it would only give me a headache, so I stopped myself.
We had been invited to dinner at a wealthy businessman’s house, and I was told to dress nicely in my new wrap skirt. The master bedroom, which had always been locked, was opened. The pastor’s wife called me over to the dressing table just inside the room. She spread honey over her face. She told me that expensive cosmetics were useless and that honey was all anyone needed for good skin. I nodded, pretending not to notice the large bottle of Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair sitting at one end of the dressing table. She told me to wear the largest earrings I owned. All my earrings were only about the size of my fingernails, so I chose the longest pair among them and put them on.
We arrived at the house. Every piece of furniture inside had a glossy finish. The woman who invited us was an elegant woman with light brown skin. When I greeted her, she smiled and stroked my chin. The tips of her fingers were rough. They passed over my skin so quickly that my chin hurt afterward. When she called the children, several of them came out in a line to greet us. Some of them, she said, were nieces and nephews. They did not eat with us. After carrying the food back and forth, they disappeared again, beyond the hallway. Dinner was a dough that looked like rice cake, torn by hand and eaten like rice, with steamed fish and stir-fried vegetables on the side. I was at a loss because I did not feel very comfortable having to knead the dough with my fingers several times. The woman noticed and shaped a piece with her own hand, then put it into my mouth. I gave the most polite smile I could manage and chewed and swallowed hard. I went home and vomited everything. As I held on to the toilet, Musa quietly came over and patted my back.
Musa spoke French, but he did not speak English. As my stay grew longer, I heard that he sometimes asked the pastor’s wife questions about me in French. They were not particularly private questions. He wondered why I was so thin, whether I was sick, or why I ate only mangosteens every day. When I appeared in the living room again, Musa would silently fold dishcloths. I never heard Musa’s voice directly.
At one end of the living room stood a square table for four. Beside the table was a small door that led into the kitchen. The food was cooked in the kitchen and carried out through that door. Whenever the pastor’s wife was cooking, the door remained closed. At a certain hour, I sometimes had the illusion that the food simply appeared through the little door by magic. While the kitchen door was closed, the pastor sat on the sofa by the window at the other end of the living room and looked at his phone, while the man clipped his fingernails.
“Shouldn’t you help her?”
“My nails need to be short so they’ll be clean when we eat lamb later.”
He continued filing his nails, unconcerned.
I was too timid to open the door myself. I fidgeted at the sound of a knife hitting the chopping board. I saw vividly what was happening beyond that door, but to the pastor and the man there seemed to be nothing except a closed door. When the door opened, a plate piled high with grilled lamb came through it. For some reason I kept having stomach trouble and could hardly eat, but grilled lamb was the one thing I ate well. The man counted the bones left on my plate and laughed, saying I had eaten a lot. Embarrassed, I laughed with him. The back door of the kitchen led onto a balcony. I was told there was a small grill there. Musa grilled the lamb I ate on that balcony. I ate grilled lamb often, but I never saw what the grill looked like.
When dinner was over, Musa disappeared. I think he left through the kitchen door rather than the main entrance in the living room. I carried the empty plates and bowls to the kitchen sink and tried to wash them, but the pastor’s wife stopped me. She said she washed the dinner dishes herself. She said it was her way of being considerate for Musa, who had finished work and gone home.
After dinner, while we ate dessert, the pastor’s wife told me all kinds of stories. Most of them were about the man’s older brother, their eldest son. According to her, the eldest son had been bright and strong-willed. One story about him that stayed with me was that he would often rebel against his father, asking, “If you are a pastor, why do you not allow Musa to eat at the table?” The pastor gave a long explanation in response, but even now, years later, I don’t find it convincing.
While staying there, I, too, was bothered by the fact that Musa ate bread for lunch and was given a small amount of money to buy dinner nearby. Musa made warm tofu for me, and when I said I liked lamb chops, he grilled lamb chops for me almost every other day. But he himself ate neither the tofu nor the lamb chops. Except when Musa was stretched out on the sofa taking his afternoon nap, I hardly ever seemed to encounter him anywhere in the house. When I happened to run into him in the living room, dressed in his white linen clothes, Musa would only smile that good-natured smile and pretend to be busy, disappearing down the hallway to clean the bathroom.
The pastor and his wife were kind to me throughout my stay. On my last night in his country, my mother called. She asked if I could live there. I answered that I thought I could.
The next day, the day I was leaving with the man to return home, I pulled my suitcase across the living room toward the front door. Musa stood in one corner of the living room, in the same place where he had stood when he welcomed me on the first day, and waved.
Musa only gave me a smile I could not quite read.
2.
Seoul. The man and I came out of the subway. Well dressed young people were walking in a landscaped park. I thought his grandparents must live in a neighborhood full of young, well-off people, then tugged the Tupperware filled with zucchini pancakes inside my coat. We walked along the park until a forest of luxury apartment buildings came into view. Suddenly, the food I brought from home didn’t seem like enough. The man said we could buy some fruit from a nearby supermarket. We picked up some apples and pears. Only then did I realize I had no idea what to carry them in. Without saying much, the man put the fruit inside a plastic bag. It was labeled “standard garbage bag,” an inadequate container for a gift.
The man’s grandparents welcomed us warmly. I was tense because of the fruit in the garbage bag, but his grandmother picked the apples and pears out and placed them in the fridge right away. Three low tables stood in a row in the center of the living room, covered with all kinds of food. I told Grandmother I had made zucchini pancakes for her. She tipped my pancakes onto a small plate and placed it on the corner of the table. Grandfather was good-looking. He said he had just turned ninety-one that year. He kissed the back of my hand, and told me that the secret to longevity was strong teeth. Grandma said the beef was almost cooked and told us to take a seat. On the balcony she grilled beef on the portable gas burner. The window was wide open, while the glass door to the living room stayed shut so the smell would not settle into the house.
The man and I sat at the middle of the table. His aunts sat to our right, and his grandparents to our left. Next to the man sat a taller man with a baseball cap pulled low over his closely cropped hair. He shook my hand and introduced himself as the eldest brother. It was a short sentence but I could hear his Seoul accent, familiar to me from the 80s, as if time had stood still ever since. Grandfather asked what my father did for a living and seemed satisfied with the answer. More questions followed, most of them about my father. He took great pride in his family’s long protestant history. From a tall wardrobe inlaid with mother-of-pearl, he took out the family genealogy book. He told me that he came from a distinguished family. He did not ask my family name. When he finished, Grandmother came back with a big plate piled up with beef. Grandfather began the blessing. Everyone closed their eyes, lowered their heads and clasped their hands. I opened my eyes slightly, relieved that the men and women were not at separate tables. My eyes met the eldest brother’s. He made the sign of the cross with his hand and looked away.
The aunts also brought their food from home. The zucchini pancakes that I had brought were too salty. Embarrassed, I hurried to finish it before anyone else noticed. Grandmother ate a small piece of the pancake and said nothing. They were cheerful. I enjoyed their food and they spent some time chatting about a new recipe. As the conversation warmed, they told me about marriages in the family, some of which ended badly. At that moment, I remembered something that the pastor’s wife had told me before. Even at thirty, she still couldn’t get married. Back then, women who were still unmarried at thirty were treated as old maids. But she wasn’t discouraged. “Just wait. I’ll be the one who marries the best.” She added, “In the end, I did marry the best.” Her last sentence was bitter, but her voice was so calm that I almost thought I had misheard her. The man used to describe his mother as a wise woman who was always patient and good-natured. Soon after, the pastor’s wife also said that she was the good daughter and acted as a mediator among the siblings. So I pushed the uncomfortable remark to the back of my mind and simply nodded along.
By the end of the meal, the eldest brother seemed to be in a good mood and was quite friendly to me. He did not ask me questions or speak to me much, but his small eyes were smiling softly. There was a trace of sadness at the corner of his mouth. I liked him. He spoke to Grandfather in Japanese. Grandfather replied in the Japanese he had been forced to learn under Japanese colonial rule. The eldest brother laughed loudly. Grandfather told us that the eldest brother could speak several languages. I could do the same, but didn’t bother to say so. The pastor and his wife talked about their eldest son often. They resented him, longed for him, and were proud of him. The eldest son loathed his parents.
When the meal ended, I rose quickly to help clean the table. I carried the empty plates one by one to the kitchen. The eldest brother stood up and helped me. His grandfather scolded him. “Why are you getting up to work when there is a new granddaughter-in-law in the family.” The eldest brother kept carrying the plates. I picked up the rubber gloves to do the dishes but Grandmother firmly stopped me. “Absolutely not. You should never do the dishes at my house. I don’t even make my own daughter wash the dishes.” I did not know what to do with myself at the thought of an old grandmother washing the dishes. Grandfather called me back to the living room. He said he had something to show me.
When it was about time to leave, the eldest brother handed me a thick envelope at the entrance. My ears burning, I waved it away. But he insisted. I jammed it into my coat pocket. The eldest brother’s eyes went round. He told me to put it in the bag. When I got home and opened the envelope, there was 500,000 won inside, about 400 U.S. dollars.
After that day, I never saw the eldest brother again. He never came anywhere the pastor and his wife were. Everywhere I went, the pastor and his wife were there. So I never saw him again.
3.
The notebook struck the wall and fell straight into a water jug beneath it. It was a notebook I had made to help the man prepare for his exam. For several days, I had cut up the textbook and pasted the materials onto the pages with my own hands. I began to cry. The man seemed angry.
I sank to the floor and picked up the notebook from the water jug. Then I carefully made my way toward the living room. Water dripped from my fingertips, leaving a trail behind me. I didn’t bother wiping it from the floor. I pulled a transparent plastic bag from a stack and slid the notebook inside. My fingers were surprisingly stable. I pushed the bag into the trash bin by the entrance.
I looked at the front door. But I couldn’t go outside.
So I went into the bedroom as if nothing had happened. I opened the window.
After that, I don’t remember anything.
In the hospital, the man said goodbye to me. I said nothing. He handed me a box of macarons.
I thought of Musa.
And the eldest brother.
