We neared the market where the cool air held odors of decomposing scraps and trash. Anticipation had heightened my senses, making colors and smells more intense, shapes sharper, details bright and bold. A few star maple leaves, deeply red and yellow, scuttled along the ruts eroded in the dirt roadside. Passing narrow alleyways, I glimpsed heaps of rubbish, a dog rooting, a cluster of empty chicken cages, a man spitting tobacco between brown-stained teeth. The sounds of the market distracted me- cries of bartering, a rooster crowing, an underwhir of chatter and clamor.
"I was excited, like you," said Mother. "And yes, with excitement there's often fear. But I had little to fear since my brothers watched me as closely as a tiger her cubs. Also, I knew by then that I would be married soon." She smiled, her eyes crescents. "So I had many other fears to consider for the future."
In the market square she pointed out a bakery and a small restaurant. "If you do well with your lessons, I'll give you a few jeon. jeon. The owners of those two shops are church members. You could buy treats there occasionally." The owners of those two shops are church members. You could buy treats there occasionally."
My mouth watered at the prospect of taffy, or kelp chips dusted with sugar. We wove through the crowded market. Vendors shouted out the merits of their wares, or "Best price! Best price!" while customers haggled. Farmers and peddlers spread their goods on a swept parcel of ground: piles of straw sandals and rubber shoes in muted hues, open bags of rice and grains, stacked heads of cabbage, strings of pepper and ropes of garlic, green-flowering bunches of beets, radishes and carrots. One of my favorite chores was to accompany my mother to the fish market and produce sellers to help carry tofu, cucumbers, salted cod, and to other shops for cotton to spin, needles, medicinal herbs, dishes and pots.
"Umma-nim, who will help make all that gimchi?" I was stricken with the realization that for the first time in my life I'd be apart from her nearly all day, and it was gimchi-making season.
"Don't worry. After your studies, you can help me as always, especially with your sewing. You're doing well with embroidery and you mustn't get behind. Perhaps you'll learn new stitches at school." She slowed to inspect a display of fresh-picked greens of many varieties, and I smelled apples before I saw the bent-over peddler trudge past, his A-frame basket loaded with the crisp fruit. When my mother sliced apples, they looked like lotuses in bloom, each piece cupped in a starburst of peel, and even though Cook said my skill in wielding the bamboo parer was impressive for my age, my apple petals were still uneven.
"Like peeling apples into flowers," I said. "I have lots to practice."
"That way of thinking will help you become a good wife and mother someday."
I warmed with this praise.
"A turtle can't move if he doesn't stick his neck out," quoted Mother. We walked through the west end of the market, past a shimmering curve of violet-hued silk in a dry-goods stall hung between bolts of golden brocades. A breeze from the public garden ballooned our skirts and swirled dirt around our ankles. I pressed my hands on the indigo silk of my skirt. "Be patient," said Mother, continuing her lesson, "not prideful, and think of others first. Najin-ah, remember that your weaknesses are willfulness and self-centeredness."
I couldn't avoid the petulant swell to my lips.
"It's simply a fact. Understanding your weaknesses will improve your character. It's nothing to be ashamed of-merely something that needs improvement. You must always put others before yourself. Remember: think ahead about others first." She led me to a bench beside an enormous bush of second-blooming yellow roses. "Let's rest a moment."
Anxious that we'd stopped walking, I kicked my free-hanging legs rhythmically until she touched my knees. The rising sun deepened the morning's long shadows and dew evaporated from the roses, emitting sweet perfume. My mother breathed in, her eyes closed, a faint smile spreading peace through her features. "Najin-ah, you're going to be a nuna." nuna."
A boy would call his elder sister Nuna. I smiled wide at this unexpected news, exposing many teeth, then quickly covered my mouth and said through my fingers, "You're having a baby? A boy!"
"Yes, in the second month next year. Our prayers for a son have been answered. Born in the year of the sheep in the earth phase-a good match for you. Soon you'll see my stomach growing and you'll be able to feel him kick, like you kicked before you were born."
A perfectly curled rose petal, vivid yellow in the sun, floated onto the wooden bench within inches of my wrist. Although bursting with delight and questions-what would Father name him, and how did Mother know it was a boy?-I heeded my manners and kept quiet.
"I'm healthy and strong-a good omen. I thank God for this baby, and that on this day, your birthday, you begin your education." We all celebrated our birthdays on Sollal Sollal, the first of each year, so her acknowledgment of today, the actual day, felt like a special blessing. She bowed her head, and the bun at the back of her neck reflected blue highlights in the sun. "We receive the bounty of your blessings, merciful Father, and are grateful. Amen."
I touched the rose petal lightly and it rocked like a miniature cradle. My feet began kicking again, flashes of white toes back and forth.
She stood. "Let's go, it's almost time."
To show something of my happiness, I held her hand tightly all the way through the neighborhoods and up the hill.
We approached the school, a long building of orange-brown brick with evenly spaced metal-framed glass windows. "I won't go farther," said Mother. "See if you can walk at least part of the way home with someone. Be well-mannered and respect your teacher."
I turned, panic rising, my braids lashing my shoulders.
She stooped to look calmly into my eyes. "Perhaps I'll send someone to get you later." Her fingers lingered on my shoulder. "The neighbor's boy, Hansu. He won't mind."
I gripped my lunch tied in the square of cloth I'd sewn and decorated with my own ivy pattern. "Thank you, Umma-nim, but I will walk home myself." I turned to enter the school's varnished double doors and felt the departure of warmth when my mother's hand dropped from my shoulder.
Secret Flags
WINTER, EARLY 1919.
I WOKE TO AN UNFAMILIAR RASP-THE FRONT DOOR SLIDING OPEN and shut. Since my room was next to the vestibule, I sleepily wondered why I'd never really heard the door before. How easily something so common could go unnoticed! In other seasons, humming insects, nocturnal creatures crying, breezes swishing through trees, or leaves scratching the courtyard masked the sound of the door. But heavy new snow had wrapped the night in deep stillness. I heard my father giving instructions to someone outside and opened my eyes.
Easing out of bed, I saw that no lamp burned in my mother's room down the hall, meaning it was unusually late. Moonrise marked the beginning of a woman's private time, and long after I went to bed, she stayed up to sew, read, or write letters. I cracked my shutter open. Two silhouettes, outlined crisply against the snow like shadow puppets, headed toward the gate. I dimly heard a rattle of iron and wood when the bar was lifted and the latch released, then the sounds in reverse when Byungjo closed the gate. He went into the cold gatehouse where he'd await Father's return. My face chilled, I crept into my quilts, sleepless with curiosity. What seemed like hours later, I woke to sounds of my father's snow-crunching footsteps, then his shoes shuffling off in the entryway as he quietly, and surprisingly, hummed the Doxology.
Once alerted, I heard my father over the next several weeks go out in darkness with increasing frequency. It was especially peculiar because in winter, except for church, he rarely left the estate. And since my mother hadn't attended church lately-too noticeably pregnant to be seen in public-he hardly went out at all. I longed for answers, but I'd learned well how to suppress my inquisitiveness, particularly on matters related to him. With my father, I was like that raspy sliding door-always around but noticed only when something was awry, such as when I dropped a cup, spoke before thinking or skipped on the flagstones.
LATER THAT WINTER in February, the moon a strand of blue in a cold starlit sky, I sprawled on the bedroom floor with my favorite activity: filling thick pads of cheap paper with vocabulary in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and an occasional English word in crooked letters. The courtyard rang with dripping thaw, loudly punctuated by sheets of ice crashing from rooftops onto the flagstones-a noisy harbinger of an early spring. My mother stopped at my door and I immediately sat in a more ladylike position, but she only said to come quietly to help with something.
In her sitting room, ghostly twin trails rose from two lamps and disappeared in the smoke-stained ceiling beams. Fabric and blankets tumbled from a linen chest, its woven grass lining lifted sideways to expose a false bottom. In this hiding place, bright scraps of cloth in familiar shapes lay in neat piles. I picked up red and blue half circles with yin and yang curves and fitted them together. "Taegeukgi "Taegeukgi, the flag."
"So you haven't forgotten. And you know it's forbidden. A secret, agreed? You hem. We have fifteen more to finish in less than a week."
"So many!" I whispered. "What for?" Sitting on the floor, I inspected her invisible stitches on the corner trigrams-heaven, earth, fire and water-and bent to her instructions to join the completed flag rectangles back-to-back.
"You're old enough to know about certain things," she said. "You're not to speak of it at school or even at home, to anyone. It's impossible to tell who's friendly to whom." She clipped a thread between her teeth and deftly tucked the edge of a cut form onto the background.
I thought of the Japanese merchants I saw at the market on my way to school, and the shouting men performing calisthenics every morning in the police station yard, but I'd rarely said more than a few words to a Japanese person and couldn't imagine anyone I knew being friends with the people my father called "heathens."
"What about my teacher?" I asked.
"Not even her, though I'm certain she's a patriot. We prevent trouble by keeping this secret in this room." She sighed. "Why must you always ask questions? Obedience."
"Yes, Umma-nim." I disliked the fussy exactness of sewing, but the warm floor and my mother's humming made the task almost pleasant. I assumed she withheld an explanation about the flags because of my questioning and tried to be patient, but my curiosity about their number and secrecy only grew. I worked to match the precision and speed of my mother's handiwork with little success. "So slow! How can we make that many? Abbuh-nim's right. I'm too clumsy"-one of my father's standard criticisms.
"Your work is beautiful when you attend to it. Don't worry, I've already made forty. It's been months."
"I've never seen you-"
"When you're asleep."
"Oh." A surging inquisitiveness, which I often felt at school, made me both circumspect and eager. What did did she do in those hours that burned her oil lamp dry? What else didn't I know about the world of my mother? I knew I'd get in trouble, but out it came like water from a broken gourd. "Where does Abbuh-nim go at night?" she do in those hours that burned her oil lamp dry? What else didn't I know about the world of my mother? I knew I'd get in trouble, but out it came like water from a broken gourd. "Where does Abbuh-nim go at night?"
"It's not for you to question your elders!"
Questions burst through the limp walls of my propriety. "Why is everyone whispering so much? Why do we need so many flags? I hear him go out, but where?"
"Hush! Even the stones in the road can hear you. A child of mine would never talk back to her mother!"
I poked at my flag through frustrated tears. In the long quiet that followed, I managed to placate the spirits of curiosity by concentrating on evenly spaced, barely visible stitches.
Mother said, "Here's another one. You're working quickly." Our eyes met briefly, mine grateful and apologetic, hers forgiving and kind. "He goes to church at night."
A dozen more questions struggled to break through the newly installed guard at my voicebox, and one slipped through. "Is the minister a patriot-friend?"
Mother abruptly shouted for Kira, then louder for Joong, and I jumped. When no one answered, she gestured me closer. Lifting her sewing close to her face, like a cowl, she spoke very softly. "If I explain, perhaps you'll understand the danger and respect it properly. You're smart enough, and your curiosity and recklessness could jeopardize us all. I tell you this because I have faith you'll understand how everyone's safety depends on your ability to keep it secret."
Relieved I wouldn't be punished and subdued by her solemnity, I faced her directly and sat tall. "Thank you, Umma-nim."
"Did they tell you at school about His Imperial Majesty Gojong Gwangmuje Gwangmuje?"
I rarely heard my mother use high court language, and it took a moment to understand whom she meant. Then I nodded, for Teacher Yee had told us last week that Emperor Gojong had died in the middle of January. Dethroned and prohibited from returning to the main palace, he still commanded respect because, though he ultimately failed, at least he had tried to fight Japan's political assault, and his consort, the beautiful and outspoken Queen Min, had been murdered long ago. After her murder, he and his ministers had changed his status from king to emperor in a futile attempt to match the level of his sovereignty with that of Japan, but they lost the kingdom anyway. Japanese officials had entered the palace with troops, and Emperor Gojong was forced to abdicate to his second son, Sunjong, the only surviving offspring of the martyred queen. From the blackboard, I'd copied the new word abdicate abdicate, along with others Teacher Yee explained but didn't write on the board: sovereignty, protectorate, coerce, annexation, propaganda. sovereignty, protectorate, coerce, annexation, propaganda. Teacher Yee said that the Japanese had responded to public pressure by designating March 4 as the national day of mourning for Emperor Gojong. Teacher Yee said that the Japanese had responded to public pressure by designating March 4 as the national day of mourning for Emperor Gojong.
Then she told us the noble and thrilling story she'd heard: that the emperor had committed suicide to protest the forced marriage of his son to Japanese royalty, Princess Masako of Nashimoto, which was Japan's way of saying we were the same country, the same peoples, when obviously it was their attempt to dilute the sovereignty-that new word-of the Korean royal line. Much later, I heard the other more plausible story of Emperor Gojong's death. Japan wanted him to sign a document asserting his satisfaction with Japan's union with Korea, which Japanese envoys would present at the Paris Peace Conference. But Emperor Gojong decided to send his own secret emissary to Paris to protest Japan's annexation, and when the emissary was discovered and killed, the emperor was also killed. Even if I had known this, for a young girl with a colorful imagination, Teacher Yee's story of honorable, romantic sacrifice was far more captivating.
To keep this dramatic story swirling in my head and not out of my mouth, I tucked a hem edge with a needle, pressed it tightly between my fingers and said distractedly, "Sunsaeng-nim said there'd be a big parade in Keizo for his national day of mourning."
"In Seoul," said Mother, to remind me that Japanese language was not allowed at home.
I wanted to ask not only if the emperor had committed honor suicide, but also if his son, the new emperor, was really a simpleton. Girls at school said he was an idiot, but I knew that term was mean. Mother had a relative still at court, a cousin who had married the last prime minister loyal to Emperor Gojong. When this prime minister refused to affix his seal to the Protectorate Treaty of 1905-which proclaimed Japan to be the protector of Korea and thus opened wide the gates for official Japanese takeover-he was removed bodily from the palace. Not long afterward, he and their only son, a four-year-old child, were killed. His widow, whom I called Imo Imo, Maternal Aunt, still attended royal functions and would certainly know something about the young emperor. Because of Mother's warnings about my responsibility as a child of yangban, I'd known not to talk about Imo to my schoolmates. And I followed the same inner counsel and said nothing now.
Mother spoke as softly as the susurrus of thread being pulled through fabric. "Yes, there's a big funeral planned, and they're freely giving travel papers to anyone going to Seoul. What I'm going to tell you must remain between your ears." She looked at me meaningfully and I nodded. "Your father is helping to coordinate a nationwide protest. Instead of a parade of mourning, there'll be an enormous demonstration for independence. Every patriot knows about it. A wondrous event! At the same hour in every city and village across the country, a declaration of independence will be read." Her voice held an intensity, an excitement I had never heard before. "All the churches are involved. Ministers lead the movement in towns and villages throughout Korea. Think of what it means!"
I didn't really grasp what it meant, but her passion and the fact of everybody doing the same thing in a single moment intrigued me. Remembering my teacher's advice to go to the root of a problem to solve it, I said, "I think I understand, but how did it happen?"
"What a good question," she said. At that proud moment, I doubly appreciated my wise teacher and generous mother. "Our leaders were inspired by a speech given by America's President Wilson, called Fourteen Points. Your father says that President Wilson wants to help small nations who are dominated by stronger nations. And also, America supports self-determination, our right as a people to choose to be an independent and free country."
I kept to my sewing, questions bubbling in my throat. I didn't clearly understand what Mother meant by self-determination, but was pleased that she spoke to me almost as if I were grown. Was the American president stronger than the Taisho Emperor? How would he help?
Mother smoothed a finished flag in her lap. "Think of it! If all the ministers are involved, many countrymen will participate. We have much to be grateful for in our patriot leaders. Some are in Europe right now trying to make other nations see how unjust the treaties were. Did you also learn about this?"
I tried to merge Teacher Yee's lessons with this information. I recalled that my mother had once taught me about a European trip taken by Emperor Gojong's men, who, having failed in their mission to garner support for Korea, had all committed suicide. She'd spelled the strange-sounding place, The Hague The Hague, and I remembered how she quickly scratched the letterforms with a needle on a starched sleeve, and as quickly rubbed them away. But that Hague business had occurred long before I was born. I frowned.
"I suppose not." She sighed.
"Do you mean the foreign treaties that gave Korea to the Japanese without asking the emperor?" At least I could prove that I'd indeed paid attention to the lessons spoken over needlework in the evening hours with my mother.
"Yes," she said with a rewarding smile. "And not just the emperor but all the Korean people, who should determine for themselves what nation they are."
So that's what self-determination self-determination meant. Thinking about how hard it was to always behave properly, I wondered if people could also have personal self-determination-if they could decide for themselves what kind of person they were. In my quest to be demure, hadn't I finally learned to cover my mouth when I laughed? I supposed if one was determined enough, it could happen. I liked the word and decided I would strive to become self-determined. meant. Thinking about how hard it was to always behave properly, I wondered if people could also have personal self-determination-if they could decide for themselves what kind of person they were. In my quest to be demure, hadn't I finally learned to cover my mouth when I laughed? I supposed if one was determined enough, it could happen. I liked the word and decided I would strive to become self-determined.
"Let's see what you've done."
I pinched the corners and displayed the three flags I'd hemmed.
"When I give these to your father to hide, I'll point out your fine work. You've listened well and worked well. Remember that to speak of this and of your father's comings and goings is to put your family in the greatest of danger. Your father could be arrested again, or worse." She took my hand and pressed it on her pregnant stomach. "I'm counting on you to be secretive for the sake of your sibling."
"My brother," I said firmly. I'd informally measured the growth of my mother's middle when we bathed together, imagining I could see the baby swimming beneath the skin. "See how he lies?" she'd say as she poured gourdfuls of heated rinse water and the soapsuds trailed in rivulets around her mounded belly. "That means he's a boy." But my mother had known about the baby's sex much earlier, as early as when she first told me 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 shoes before 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 fiancee!"
"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 your own brother soon enough."
"Even Abbuh-nim says it's a boy," I whispered back. The previous evening, when Mother had false contractions, Father visited her to ensure all was well. I glimpsed their profiles outlined in lamplight, their heads bent with noses nearly touching. He spoke as if in prayer, and I leaned closer to hear. "This child shall surely be my heir, for none other than a son could be born on the eve of our independence." I had never before heard him speak so emotionally and with such tenderness. It made me think of him in a new way, a way I couldn't quite describe that seemed to relieve a degree of my general state of fear around him.
"I have to see your father now," said Hansu. "Will you tell him I'm here?"
Going down the dim hallway to the front of the house, I privately admired Hansu's prominent cheekbones and the wiry peaks and valleys of his Western-shorn hair. "You'll remember everything about your adventure and tell me all about Seoul?"
"Shh! Not a word-you know it's a secret." He pinched my ear and smiled. "Of course. You're the only sister I'll ever have. Now show me in, will you?"
I held his hand until we neared Father's sitting room, then cleared my throat to announce us and bowed in the doorway. "Abbuh-nim, the son of our neighbor is here."
My mother sat across from my father, sewing a clean collar onto a laundered shirt. The room felt snug and overly warm, the air tinged with smoke and lamp oil. Mother indicated that I should fill and light Father's pipe and sit beside her.
Hansu bowed from the waist. "Good evening, sir. I received the gifts of your kitchen, and now if you'll allow me a great honor, may I receive your blessing?"
"Enter, my boy. Sit for a moment." Father's long sleeve brushed his lap as he gestured Hansu to the pillows beside his reading table. He asked about Hansu's family's health and reviewed the logistics for the journey. He noted that places to sleep would be plentiful; the travelers merely had to ask at any village church to be referred to a welcoming household or a dry shed. In a growing silence, I noticed in Hansu's bunched trousers that his calves contracted at regular intervals, as if he were already marching on what I imagined were the wide paved avenues of the capital city. The punk-punk sound of Mother's needle into the starched collar was like a steady drumbeat of victory.
"Yah," said Father with a regretful sigh. "If only it was a different day ..."
Mother shifted her legs, and I wondered if her brows were knit with discomfort from the baby or the knowledge that her pregnancy was the reason that Father would not participate in the demonstration in Seoul. Or perhaps he remained in Gaeseong because of his arrest record. I wished I could ask.
Hansu cleared his throat. "Sir, since I probably won't be here when the baby comes, please excuse my early congratulations. My family offers their blessings and prayers for a healthy baby boy."
Father made his face stern, but his pursed lips held visible satisfaction. Mother's eyes twinkled at Hansu and I smiled outright.
"Well then," said Father, and everyone bowed heads for his prayer and blessing. My mother and I stood to escort our guest out. Surprisingly, Father also stood and bowed. Hansu's eyes opened wide at this honor from an elder, and he bowed low, backing out the door.
I heard the next day from Kira that Hansu had distributed the packages throughout the night, then left with two other men at first light.