Read Online The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim - Free Book Online
Authors: Eugenia Kim
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mother had known about the baby’s sex much earlier, as early as when she first toldme about her pregnancy, and I wondered again how she could have known.
I helped put away the fabric scraps in the false bottom of the linen chest, repacked the spilled towels and bowed goodnight. In bed I listened for the click and latch of the outer gate, thinking so intently about all I’d learned that I fell hard into sleep and missed hearing my father tiredly climb the porch stairs to head toward his side of the house.
PATCHES OF ICE-CRUSTED snow melted quickly in the increased hours of sunlight during those promising days, and hardy crocus poked striped shafts through frozen clods of earth. Early shoots, leaf buds and eager insects thrived in a current of warm afternoons, before returning to dormancy on the last waves of wintry nights. Several days before the funeral parade in Seoul, we fixed dozens of meals for the men’s foot journey. Father had unearthed the finished flags from a secret pantry beneath the floor of his study. Some smelled of tobacco, some of chilies and others of dried persimmons, according to where they’d been stored. Still in my school skirt but with a “home clothes” muslin blouse, I rolled the flags tightly, amazed at their number and proud to see that only close inspection revealed which hems I’d sewn.
In the outside kitchen—a porchlike extension of the main kitchen— my mother walked to and fro awkwardly, her billowing skirt barely masking her pregnancy, her hands agile as she added the flags to tidy muslin packages of rice balls and strips of dried fish. Standing beside me at a narrow worktable, Cook and Kira formed rice into balls and rolled them in crushed sesame or red bean powder. They chided each other good-naturedly on the finer points of their work. Cook explained in exasperating detail how to guarantee the perfect consistency of rice for molding into balls, while Kira insisted that the source of the water was the most important factor. My mother diplomatically praised and admired their combined results. Immersed in this activity with busy hands all around, I thought there couldn’t be a happier moment.
After sunset, our neighbor’s son, Hansu, called greetings outside the kitchen door and appeared with two empty sacks slung over a shoulder, looking very grown up framed in the small doorway.
“Oppa , Elder Brother!” I could barely wait for him to remove his shoesbefore grabbing his hand to show off the fifty packets neatly piled on the worktable. The men from church who were going to Seoul planned to stagger their departures in small groups beginning at dawn.
Hansu, sixteen and recently betrothed, had been acting stuffy in recent years—too mature to pay me any mind—but my enthusiasm in packing his sacks brought out his boyish laughter. He tugged a pigtail. “Will you miss me, little one?”
“You haven’t been around one bit this entire winter, so there’s no one for me to miss!” I tossed my head and my long braids slapped his forearm.
“What! Such disrespect! Here I am, on the verge of a great adventure and not even one sad tear to see me off?” Hansu tied the ends of a filled burlap sack and hefted it to test its weight.
“I’ll be sad only if you promise that when you come back, you’ll help me again.” I missed the afternoons our paths converged when we both walked home—he from Japanese upper school and me from the mission school. I practiced Chinese characters and Japanese language with him, and he learned the English alphabet from me. He had graduated months ago, and I had rarely seen him since then.
“Haven’t you heard? I’ve got a fiancée!”
“I did hear.” I fingered the rough knot of the bag. “You’ll still be my honorary brother, won’t you?”
Hansu carried the sacks to the back porch. “From what I’ve observed,” he said, lowering his voice as if it were bad luck to talk about a baby before being born, “you’re going to have
I helped put away the fabric scraps in the false bottom of the linen chest, repacked the spilled towels and bowed goodnight. In bed I listened for the click and latch of the outer gate, thinking so intently about all I’d learned that I fell hard into sleep and missed hearing my father tiredly climb the porch stairs to head toward his side of the house.
PATCHES OF ICE-CRUSTED snow melted quickly in the increased hours of sunlight during those promising days, and hardy crocus poked striped shafts through frozen clods of earth. Early shoots, leaf buds and eager insects thrived in a current of warm afternoons, before returning to dormancy on the last waves of wintry nights. Several days before the funeral parade in Seoul, we fixed dozens of meals for the men’s foot journey. Father had unearthed the finished flags from a secret pantry beneath the floor of his study. Some smelled of tobacco, some of chilies and others of dried persimmons, according to where they’d been stored. Still in my school skirt but with a “home clothes” muslin blouse, I rolled the flags tightly, amazed at their number and proud to see that only close inspection revealed which hems I’d sewn.
In the outside kitchen—a porchlike extension of the main kitchen— my mother walked to and fro awkwardly, her billowing skirt barely masking her pregnancy, her hands agile as she added the flags to tidy muslin packages of rice balls and strips of dried fish. Standing beside me at a narrow worktable, Cook and Kira formed rice into balls and rolled them in crushed sesame or red bean powder. They chided each other good-naturedly on the finer points of their work. Cook explained in exasperating detail how to guarantee the perfect consistency of rice for molding into balls, while Kira insisted that the source of the water was the most important factor. My mother diplomatically praised and admired their combined results. Immersed in this activity with busy hands all around, I thought there couldn’t be a happier moment.
After sunset, our neighbor’s son, Hansu, called greetings outside the kitchen door and appeared with two empty sacks slung over a shoulder, looking very grown up framed in the small doorway.
“Oppa , Elder Brother!” I could barely wait for him to remove his shoesbefore grabbing his hand to show off the fifty packets neatly piled on the worktable. The men from church who were going to Seoul planned to stagger their departures in small groups beginning at dawn.
Hansu, sixteen and recently betrothed, had been acting stuffy in recent years—too mature to pay me any mind—but my enthusiasm in packing his sacks brought out his boyish laughter. He tugged a pigtail. “Will you miss me, little one?”
“You haven’t been around one bit this entire winter, so there’s no one for me to miss!” I tossed my head and my long braids slapped his forearm.
“What! Such disrespect! Here I am, on the verge of a great adventure and not even one sad tear to see me off?” Hansu tied the ends of a filled burlap sack and hefted it to test its weight.
“I’ll be sad only if you promise that when you come back, you’ll help me again.” I missed the afternoons our paths converged when we both walked home—he from Japanese upper school and me from the mission school. I practiced Chinese characters and Japanese language with him, and he learned the English alphabet from me. He had graduated months ago, and I had rarely seen him since then.
“Haven’t you heard? I’ve got a fiancée!”
“I did hear.” I fingered the rough knot of the bag. “You’ll still be my honorary brother, won’t you?”
Hansu carried the sacks to the back porch. “From what I’ve observed,” he said, lowering his voice as if it were bad luck to talk about a baby before being born, “you’re going to have
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