Marilyn and Me. Ji-min Lee
have to know anything about her. She is what you see.” He’s having a ball but then sobers when he catches my eye. That sharp gaze behind his good-natured laughter confirms the open secret that he probably is an intelligence officer. “Why don’t you draw anymore, anyway? You were a serious artist.”
I’m flustered and trapped, and my fingers slip. Letters scatter across the white paper like broken branches. He might be the only one who remembers the person I was during more illustrious times. Among the living, that is. “No, no. If I were a true artist I would have died in the war,” I murmur, and pretend to take a sip of coffee. My words leap into my coffee like a girl committing suicide. The resulting black ripples reverberate deep into my heart.
I leave work earlier than usual and take the streetcar to Namdaemun Gate.
A few months before the war broke out, a thoughtful someone had hung a Korean flag, an American flag, and a sign that exclaimed, “WELCOME US NAVY!” from the top of the centuries-old fortress gate. Perhaps thanks to its unceasing support of the US military, Namdaemun survived, though it suffered grievous wounds. I look at the landmark, the nation’s most famous disabled veteran, unable to offer any reassuring words. As if confused about how it survived, Namdaemun sits abjectly and seems to convey it would rather part ways with Seoul. I express my keen agreement as I pass it by.
The entrance to Chayu Market near Namdaemun teems with pedestrians, merchants, and American soldiers. All manner of dialects mingle with the pleasant Seoul accent and American slang. I fold my shoulders inward and try not to bump into anyone. The vitality and noise pumping out of the market are as intense and frightening as those on a battlefield. I am unable to keep up with the hunger for survival the people around me exude, so I make sure to stay out of their way. I duck around a fedora-wearing gentleman holding documents under his arm, a woman with a child on her back with an even larger bundle balanced on her head, and a man performing the acrobatic trick of napping on his feet, leaning against his A-frame. I head further into the market.
At Mode Western Boutique, I find a group of women from the market who are part of an informal credit association. Mrs. Chang, who owns the boarding house I live in, also owns the boutique and oversees the group. The women are trading gossip over bolts of shiny Chinese silk and velour, but when I walk in they poke at each other, clamming up instantly. I’m used to their curious but scornful glances. I pretend not to notice and shoot Mrs. Chang a look in lieu of a greeting. Mrs. Chang swiftly collects the bills spread out on her purple brocade skirt and stands up.
“Ladies, you know Miss Kim, one of my boarders? She’s a typist at the base. Don’t you embarrass yourselves by saying anything in English.”
The women begin exchanging smutty jokes and laughing. With the women otherwise occupied, Mrs. Chang ushers me into the small room at the back of the shop. She turns on the light, revealing the English labels on dizzying stacks of cans, cigarettes, and makeup smuggled out of the base.
“Here you go.” I take out the dirty magazine I wrapped in pages torn out of a calendar. I asked an accommodating houseboy to get me a copy.
Mrs. Chang glances outside and gestures at me to lower my voice. She flips through the magazine rapidly and frowns upon seeing a white girl’s breasts, as large as big bowls. “Even these rags are better when they’re American-made,” she says, smiling awkwardly. “A good customer has been looking for this. I’ve been searching and searching, but the ones I come across are already fairly used, you know?”
I turn away from Mrs. Chang’s feeble excuse.
Mrs. Chang shows these magazines to her impotent husband. She lost all three of her children during the war. That is sad enough, but it’s unbearable that she’s trying for another child with her husband, who stinks of the herbal medicine he takes for his ailments. It’s obscene to picture this middle-aged woman, whose lower belly is now shrunken, opening Playboy for her husband who can barely sit up as she pines for her dead children. It’s too much to handle for even me.
“I’m sorry I had to ask an innocent girl like you to do an errand like this for me,” she says.
“That’s all right. Who says I’m innocent?”
Mrs. Chang studies me disapprovingly. “Don’t stay out too late. I’ll leave your dinner by your door.” Although her words are brusque, Mrs. Chang is the one person who worries about whether I’m eating enough.
Having fled the North during the war, Mrs. Chang is famously determined, as is evident in her success. She is known throughout the market for her miserly cold-heartedness. That’s how pathetic I am—even someone like her is worried about me.
We met at the Koje Island refugee camp. In her eyes, I’m still hungry and traumatized. I was untrustworthy and strange back then, shunned even by the refugees. I babbled incoherently, in clear, sophisticated Seoul diction, sometimes even using English. I fainted any time I had to stand in line and shredded my blanket as I wept in the middle of the night. I was known as the crazy rich girl who had studied abroad. I cemented my reputation with a shocking incident and after that Mrs. Chang took it upon herself to monitor me. When she looks at me I feel the urge to show her what people expect from me, though I doubt she wants me to. People seem to think I have lost my will to stand on my own two feet and that I will fall apart dramatically. I’m not being paranoid. I haven’t even exited the boutique and the women are already sizing up my bony rump and unleashing negative observations about how hard it would be for me to bear a child. They wouldn’t believe it even if I were to lie down in front of them right now and give birth. Somehow I have become a punchline.
Alice J. Kim. People do not like her.
Women approach me with suspicion and men walk away, having misunderstood me. Occasionally someone is intrigued, but they are a precious few; foreigners or those whose kindness is detrimental to their own well-being. People don’t approve of me, beginning with my name. “Alice? Are you being snooty because you happen to know a little English?”
Very few know my real name, or why I discarded Kim Ae-sun to become Alice. I’m the one person in the world who knows what my middle initial stands for. Only whores or spies take on an easy-to-pronounce foreign name—I am either disappointing my parents or betraying my country. People think I am a prostitute who services high-level American military officers; at one point I was known as the UN whore, which is certainly more explicit than UN madam. But I was just grateful to be linked to an entity that is working for world peace. Or else they say I’m insane. Now, to be a whore and insane at the same time—if I were a natural phenomenon, I would be that rare unlucky day that brings both lightning and hail. People will occasionally summon their courage to ask me point-blank. Once, an American officer took out his wallet, saying, “I’d like to see for myself. Do an Oriental girl’s privates go horizontal or vertical?” I told him, “Every woman’s privates look the same as your mother’s.” The officer cleared his throat in embarrassment before fleeing. Anyway, in my experience, a life shrouded in suspicion isn’t always bad. No matter how awful, keeping secrets is more protective than revealing the truth. Secrets tend to draw out the other person’s fear. Without secrets, I would be completely destitute.
Once, I heard Mrs. Chang attempt to defend me. “Listen. It wasn’t just one or two women who went insane during the war. We all saw mothers trying to breastfeed their dead babies and maimed little girls crawling around looking for their younger siblings. I remember an old woman in Hungnam who embraced her disabled son while they leaped off the wharf to their deaths.” She implied that I was just one of countless women who had gone crazy during the war, and that I should be accepted as such. But even Mrs. Chang, who considers herself my guardian, most certainly doesn’t like me. I’ve been brought into her care because the intended recipients of her maternal instinct have died. Maternal instinct—I’ve never had it, but I wonder if it’s similar to opium. You can try to stay away from it your entire life, but it would be incredibly hard to quit if you’ve tasted it. That is what maternal instinct is—grand and powerful and far-reaching. During the war the most heartbreaking scenes were of mothers standing next to their dead children. Maybe not. The most heartbreaking scenes during the war can’t