Marilyn and Me. Ji-min Lee
Mrs. Chang meddles constantly in my affairs. It goes without saying that she has a litany of complaints. She looks at me with contempt. After all, I rinse my hair with beer, a tip I learned from an actual prostitute. That is certainly something to look down on, but I do have my reasons. My hair is completely gray. One autumn long ago, I grew old in the span of a single day. Afterward my hair never returned to its true color. My unsightly hair has the texture of rusted rope, but I’m satisfied with it for the time being. Mrs. Chang also despises my vulgar clothes, unbefitting, she says, of my status as an educated woman. But none of the things I’d learned academically helped me in the decisive moment of my life; my intelligence and talents, though not that deep or superior, were actually what entrapped me. Nor does Mrs. Chang think highly of my personality. She says I am haughty, which she thinks is why I don’t like people, but she’s not entirely correct. The truth is that I’m too broken. In any case, she cares for me in her heartless way and keeps me near. Even stranger is that I can’t seem to leave her, though I too look down on her. Our unusual connection yokes us together despite everything. She probably feels the sharp wind of Hungnam when she sees my bloodless cheeks. My pale forehead would remind her of the Koje Island refugee camp, where we were doused with anti-lice DDT powder as we sat on the dirt floor. Though we never meant to, we have somehow lived our lives together. We have a special bond, like all those who experienced war. We shared times of life and death. And she clearly remembers my triumphs and my defeats.
I triumphed by surviving but ended up surrendering; I tried to hang myself in the refugee camp, an act so shocking it cemented my reputation as a crazy woman. Mrs. Chang happened to walk by and pulled me down with her strong arms and brought me back to my senses with her vulgar cursing. Why did I want to plunge into death after I’d survived bombings and massacres? I still don’t understand my reasons, but Mrs. Chang is certain in her own conjectures and stays by my side to watch over me. Hers is not the gaze of an older woman looking compassionately at a younger one. It’s the sad ache of a woman who is well-versed in misfortune, feeling sympathy for a woman who is still uncomfortable with tragedy. If there’s a truth I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that a woman’s strength comes not from age but from misfortune. I want to be exempted from this truth. I have earned the right to be strong but now I do not want this strength. A woman becomes lonely the moment she realizes her strength. As loneliness is altogether too banal, for the moment I would like to politely decline.
I leave Chayu Market and head towards Myong-dong.
Wind enters through my parted lips, cold enough to form a layer of thin ice on my tongue. I swirl my tongue around and swallow it. Having passed through the desolate city, the wind has an odd candy sweetness to it. Not many people are out on the street and for that I am grateful.
A streetcar crammed with people pulls up as I stand at the traffic circle in front of Bank of Korea. Teeming with black heads, the car resembles a lunch box filled with black beans cooked in soy sauce. Everyone is expressionless, making me wonder why we even have eyes, noses, or mouths. I stare at those stone-faced people and gradually their features begin to disappear, leaving behind only their black hair. I can’t breathe. I feel dizzy. I close my eyes and turn away. The streetcar continues down the street and I let out a sigh, as though freed from a corset. I look around to see if anyone has seen my reaction. There is no cure for this. Even after all this time, I have a physical reaction in a mass of people. It harms my dignity; shuddering like a pissing dog every time I find myself in the middle of a crowd doesn’t fit the independent life I seek. People who’d witnessed my reaction spread the rumor that I had gone insane. They might expect that I would make profuse apologies but I refuse to do so.
I walk past the Central Post Office and spot a hunchback child sitting out front. Wrapped in a ragged blanket and wearing a newspaper-thin skirt, she is begging. She scratches a spoon on an empty brass bowl and emits a sound more desperate than the Lord’s Prayer. Could that child become a woman without being violated? That’s what I worry about. I turn away, unable to meet her gaze. I hear a baby’s cry. My head snaps around. The girl’s rounded spine straightens and a head pops up. She had her infant sibling on her back all along. The baby wails, arching its neck, and the girl looks up at the sky and mumbles, too weak to soothe it. Her dark eyes reflect nothing. She may never have even heard of such unrealistic concepts as hopes or dreams. I rummage through my bag and find a broken Hershey’s bar. I toss it at the girl and rush off. The chocolate won’t solve the child’s hunger; it’ll just introduce her to the easy temptation of sweetness. Unable to forget that chocolaty taste, she will continue on the streets. That is the purpose of a Hershey’s bar, which befriends both soldiers and children during war.
“Did you read Mrs. Freedom yesterday?” Yu-ja asks, heating steel chopsticks in the flame of the stove. “What do you think will happen next? Don’t you think Professor Chang’s wife will sleep with her next-door neighbor? I’m positive she will. Isn’t the very term ‘next-door neighbor’ so seductive? I’d say it straddles the line between melodrama and erotica.”
Yu-ja works as a receptionist at Myong-dong Clinic, which is set back from the bustling main thoroughfare. That may be why it’s never too busy when I stop by to see her. It’s a dull place for a vivacious girl like Yu-ja, who seems always to be moving to the music of a dance hall band.
“That’s all anyone talks about these days,” I say. “As if they don’t know how contradictory the two words are together—Mrs. and Freedom.”
Seoul Sinmun, which is publishing Mrs. Freedom as a serial, is open on Yu-ja’s desk. It’s the talk of the town. Yu-ja reads each installment passionately. In fact, she rereads it several times a day.
“That old-maid intellectual sarcasm of yours! You know men hate that, right?” Yu-ja counts slowly to twenty, twirling her bangs around the heated chopstick. When she takes the chopstick out, her hair emerges not as Jean Harlow’s Hollywood wave but as a sad, limp curl like a strand of partially rehydrated seaweed. To make up for her failed attempt at a wave, Yu-ja pats another layer of Coty powder on her face. She tugs on a new skirt, struggling on the examination table. She’s quite alluring. When I look at her round, peach-like face, I can’t believe she signed up to be a cadet nurse in the war.
In order to secure a place on an evacuation train during the Third Battle of Seoul, Yu-ja had run to the recruiting district headquarters inside the Tonhwamun Gate at Changdokgung Palace, having seen a recruitment ad for nurse officers in the paper. She was ordered to assemble at Yongdungpo Station that same day, and she dashed across the frozen Han River just as the last train evacuating the war wounded was about to leave. As soon as she boarded, Yu-ja was tasked with helping soldiers to go to the bathroom and spent the next few days working incessantly on that train, which traveled only at night. One early morning, as the train pulled into some countryside station, Yu-ja was using the dawn light coming through the window to search for and eat the bits of rice the patients had dropped, and in that moment she truly knew despair. Once in Pusan, Yu-ja put on a US Army work uniform and even went through basic training, but, worried about her family, gave up her dream of becoming a cadet nurse. Yu-ja experienced her own hardships during those years; not until fairly recently has she been able to powder her face so liberally. I understand why she’s rushing around with her womanhood in full bloom. A flower’s lifespan is ten days but a woman’s spring is even shorter. Many a spring died during the war. The mere fact that she survived has given Yu-ja the right to bloom fully.
“Are you going back to the officers’ club tonight? Your dance steps aren’t up to standard,” I tease.
Yu-ja smiles confidently. “You’re going to want to buy me a beer when you hear what I have to tell you. Ready for this? Remember I told you that one of our patients is married to the chairman of the Taegu School Foundation? Her family operates several orphanages and daycare centers. I mentioned Chong-nim and she said she would ask around. I think she has some news for us!”
Chong-nim. My mouth falls open and my breathing grows shallow.
“Go ahead and close your mouth,” Yu-ja says teasingly. “How do you earn a living when you act like this?” Yu-ja is hard on me and at the same time worries about me. I wouldn’t let anyone else do that but