"I don't want to have it if it's going to be, like, you two practicing the missionary lifestyle," she said. She meant she didn't want to burden us. If she knew what kinds of gamey fantasies we occupied ourselves with, maybe she would have taken the bed.
"So it was like that for years and years and years."
"That's tremendous. I can't imagine what it would feel like to have my sister die in a motorcycle accident. It's like one of those things you would never expect to happen after you've fled communist dictatorship. It's like... I'm free! Then the curtains fall."
We often sat in silence mulling over the intensity of our own stories, delighting over the truth of the world, which we had correctly thought would be grim.
I began, "I wonder how many of our generation actually know of the stories. I didn't know at all; my dad had an older brother who died in the war. I had no idea."
"How did you find out?" she asked ever sensitively.
"My sister said... you know my dad tells her so much more than he ever told me. I hardly know that man, considering. My grandmother had just given birth to the brother; he was only two months old or something. She was separated from Harabuji, with the two oldest daughters and the newborn, and they were running for some reason... then they fell and the boy was dead."
I was aware of the holes in my story but that was all I knew. Better to tell the story incompletely than not to tell it at all. Who cares, why running, why fell, why dead. It just is what I know.
"And then... there was an instance, this time Halmuni was alone and the Japanese soldiers made a whole bunch of Koreans line up on a hill and they were shooting each down, one by one. Mysteriously, one of the Japanese guys paused next to Halmuni, only her, and whispered to her, 'When they start shooting the people closer to you, just roll backwards down the hill' and when they shot the ones on her left dead, she rolled backwards down the hill. Then she ran." I thought for a moment. "Maybe he thought she was pretty."
"You almost never were!" She announced at the end. I stare puzzled. "If that mysterious man didn't give her the secret advice, she would have been shot dead like the others, then your dad would have never been born, and you neither!"
"You're right!" Realization dawned on me and I beamed at her, impressed. "It's true!"
"See, you were looking for a reason to think that God likes you. I think he definitely likes you," she beamed back.
I knew I was smiling childishly, feeling an odd swell of satisfaction in my chest. So, that might be. That well might be, and though it's a child's path to presume one's plain existence connotes significance and favor from up high... I didn't care why running, why fell, why not dead. It was nice just to believe Halmuni's story has at least a little to do with me - why, even to do with God.
Why did we electrify ourselves silly with these war stories? I remember, it made me feel dizzy with adrenaline just visualizing them. Imagining the smell of the meadows, as only a peninsula can smell, with yellow dandelions populating hills that stretch as far as the eyes can see. I was that woman, yes. Wearing grimy mens' tanks and thin flannel pants that flap around the knees. Waiting to be shot dead but instead, upon the instructions of a mysteriously kind but stony officer, hurled myself down hoping chance won't bite me, chance will deem me lovely, and there I survived. I fell flat on my face at the bottom of the hill, scrambled to my feet, and started to run before pausing even to think, "Did I just live?"
No comments:
Post a Comment