Her observations shocked me. Just as I felt heat creeping up my spine, Mi-ja burst into tears.
“What am I going to do? I don’t want to marry him, and I don’t want to be away from you.”
And then we were both crying and making promises neither of us could possibly keep.
Later, back home, I sobbed into Grandmother’s lap. With her, I could speak more freely about my confused emotions. I’d hoped to marry Sang-mun, I told her. I was disappointed, but I was also angry at Mi-ja. Maybe she hadn’t stolen him, but she’d won him nevertheless, and it stung. She would be a city wife—enjoying paved roads, electricity, and indoor plumbing. “Sang-mun might even hire a tutor for her!” I wept, outraged, jealous, and still so very hurt.
But Grandmother wasn’t interested in comforting me. Instead, she poured out her disgust with Lee Han-bong, Sang-mun’s father. “That man! He comes here with his oily words, talking about a one-day marriage, and acting like he’s trying to save Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle from having to travel. He was saying they’re too poor to hold a proper wedding, and he didn’t want his friends to see it. He pretended he wants a pretty wife for his son—a girl that he and his friends remember from better circumstances—but he was trying to save face among his friends. He didn’t care at all for what this might do to Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle.”
“But you’ve never liked them—”
“Liked them? What does that have to do with anything? When he insults them, he insults everyone in Hado! He’s a collaborator, and he has too much Japanese thinking in him.”
This was about the worst thing she could say about anyone, since she so hated the Japanese and those who helped them. I rubbed my eyes with my palms. I was thinking too much about myself.
Next to me, Grandmother still stewed. “Mi-ja said his hands are smooth.”
“Lee Han-bong’s?”
“Of course not.” She snorted. “The son’s hands.”
I asked the obvious questions. “How do you know? Who told you?”
“Mi-ja said he grabbed her when they were walking from the port.”
“He grabbed her? She would have told me—”
“That poor girl was doomed to tragedy from the moment she sucked in her first breath,” Grandmother went on. “You must pity her when you have such good fortune. Don’t forget I’ve been working on an arrangement for you too.”
I was such a girl—swept up in a swirl of feelings I was too young to understand—and I struggled to make my heart and mind change course. I had wanted Sang-mun. Mi-ja had told me she didn’t want to marry him, and maybe the reason Grandmother gave was true. But if it were true, Mi-ja would have told me. I was sure of it. Maybe everything Grandmother said was to make me feel better that I wasn’t as pretty, as pale, or as precious—with white bows in my hair—as Mi-ja. Every twist made me doubt my friend when we’d always been so close.
“I can’t tell you who he is, but I know you’ll be happy,” Grandmother declared. “I would never arrange a marriage for you with someone you wouldn’t like. Mi-ja is a different story. Her choices were always limited, and she deserves what she gets.” Then a mischievous look passed over her face. “Your husband is arriving by ferry tomorrow.”
“Is he a mainland man?” I asked, knowing that this was what Mi-ja had wanted for herself.
Grandmother smoothed the hair from my face. She stared into my eyes. Could she see the pettiness in them? Or maybe she saw deeper, to my feelings of sorrow and betrayal. I blinked and shifted my gaze. Grandmother sighed. “If you are on the dock tomorrow…” She slipped a few coins in my hand. “Here’s enough to pay a fisherman to take you by boat to the city. I’m giving you this gift—a modern gift of a glimpse of the man you will marry before the engagement meeting. I caution you, though, to stay out of sight. You don’t want him to see you! There’s modern, and then there’s tradition.”
My insides swirled with emotions. Again, I sensed Grandmother assessing me.
“When you’re a wife,” she went on, “you’ll learn how to deprive your husband of a little of his allowance—‘My harvest wasn’t plentiful this week,’ or ‘I had to pay extra dues to the collective for more firewood’—so that you’ll have money to spend on yourself. You and Mi-ja will be separated, but a free day and a little cash will always bring the two of you together.”
On the Sleeping Mat
The next morning, Mi-ja and I rode on a wind-driven raft to the harbor. We sat on the seawall and waited. We’d always been so close, but there was tension between us now. I didn’t ask what Sang-mun did or didn’t do to her, and she didn’t volunteer the story. We were looking for my husband now. Grandmother hadn’t told me which ferry he’d be coming in on or given any clues about what he looked like. He could be tall or short, with thick or thinning hair, with a prominent nose or one that was wide and flat. If he were from the mainland, he might be a farmer, fisherman, or businessman. But really, how did Grandmother expect me to pick him out of a crowd?
Mi-ja peered through the eddies of Japanese soldiers looking for her husband-to-be. I tried to reconcile this in my mind. Did she want to see him or was she afraid to see him? If she saw him, would she speak to him? Would she let him hold her hand? Or would he grab her, as Grandmother said had happened? If Sang-mun and Mi-ja were found talking now that their wedding had been settled, it would soil her reputation, not his.
The ferry from Busan arrived. As crewmen secured the vessel, Mi-ja and I scanned the deck. Was my future husband the one with the bushy eyebrows? He was handsome! We watched another young man come down the gangplank. He was so bowlegged, I looked away for fear of laughing. I had to hope Grandmother wouldn’t match me with a man who would stir even more mockery than the typical lazy husband. (Besides, she’d told me I’d be happy.) In the end, there were few passengers, and none of them looked like a potential husband. Maybe he wasn’t a mainland man, after all. A disappointment. But Grandmother had also told me my match was better than the one she’d made for Mi-ja. I vowed to stay optimistic.
Mi-ja and I ate a simple lunch of cooked sweet potatoes that I’d brought from home. We ignored the looks and comments from the soldiers and dockworkers. After a couple of hours, the ferry from Osaka arrived. Important male passengers disembarked first. We saw Japanese soldiers, of course, and a few Japanese businessmen in fine suits, with bowler hats and walking sticks. These men were followed by women wearing kimonos, taking tiny steps as they balanced on their wooden platform sandals. Those women could never trot over prickly rocks to the sea or haul in a catch. They were put on earth, it seemed, to look beautiful, as were the other Japanese women, who were dressed in the Western style, their hems brushing their calves, and small hats pinned to their heads. Then the men from Jeju, who’d been working in Osaka, began to trail down the gangplank, carrying bags and boxes of things they’d purchased for their families—or maybe their brides—in the same way Mi-ja and I had done when we returned from Vladivostok. Most of them looked thin and dirty.
I spotted a familiar face. It was Jun-bu, Yu-ri’s brother. He hesitated at the top of the gangplank. His gaze arced across the wharf. He wore a Western-style suit. His eyes were as dark as charcoal. His hair, cropped short, was the color of chestnut bark. Wire-rimmed glasses rested on his nose, a reflection of all the reading and studying he’d been doing since we were kids. I lifted my arm to wave, but Mi-ja grabbed it and pulled it down by her side.