Min Lee - Pachinko

“Should I get the midwife?” Isak asked.

“Sister Okja — three houses down on our side of the street,” Kyunghee said, and Isak ran out of the house.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Kyunghee cooed, holding Sunja’s hand. “You’re doing mother’s work. Women suffer, don’t they? Oh, my dear Sunja. I’m so sorry you’re in pain.” Kyunghee prayed over her, “Lord, dear Lord, please have mercy—”

Sunja took a fistful of her skirt material and put it in her mouth to keep from screaming. It felt as if she was being stabbed repeatedly. She bit down hard on the coarse fabric. “ Umma, umma ,” she cried out.

Sister Okja, the midwife, was a fifty-year-old Korean from Jeju who’d delivered most of the children in the ghetto. Well trained by her aunt, Okja had kept her own children housed and fed through midwifery, nursing, and babysitting. Her husband, the father of their six children, was as good as dead to her, though he was alive and living in her house several days a week in a drunken stupor. When she wasn’t delivering babies, Okja minded the children of the neighborhood women who worked in the factories and markets.

This delivery was no trouble at all. The boy was long and well shaped, and the labor, as terrifying as it might have been for the new mother, was brief, and thankfully for the midwife, the baby didn’t arrive in the middle of the night but only in time to interrupt her making dinner. Sister Okja hoped her daughter-in-law, who lived with them, hadn’t burned the barley rice again.

“Hush, hush. You did well,” Okja said to the girl who was still crying for her mother. “The boy’s very strong and nice looking. Look at all that black hair! You should rest a little now. The child will need to feed soon,” she said, before getting up to leave.

“Damn these knees.” Okja rubbed her kneecaps and shins and got up leisurely, making sure that the family had enough time to find her some money.

Kyunghee got her purse and gave Sister Okja three yen.

Okja was unimpressed. “If you have any questions, just get me.”

Kyunghee thanked her; she felt like a mother herself. The child was beautiful. Her heart ached at the sight of his small face — the shock of jet hair and his blue-black eyes. She was reminded of the Bible character Samson.

After Kyunghee bathed the child in the dinged-up basin normally used to salt cabbage, she handed the baby, wrapped in a clean towel, to Isak.

“You’re a father,” Kyunghee said, smiling. “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

Isak nodded, feeling more pleased than he’d imagined he’d be.

“ Uh-muh , I have to make soup for Sunja. She has to have soup right away.” Kyunghee went to check on Sunja, who was already fast asleep, leaving Isak with the child in the front room. In the kitchen, as Kyunghee soaked the dried seaweed in cold water, she prayed that her husband would come home soon.

In the morning, the house felt different. Kyunghee hadn’t slept. Yoseb hadn’t come home the night before. Isak had tried to stay awake, too, but she’d made him go to sleep, because he had to give a sermon the next morning and work at church the whole Sunday. Sunja slept so soundly that she snored and had only gotten up to feed; the child latched on her breast well and fussed very little. Kyunghee had cleaned the kitchen, prepared breakfast, and sewed shirts for the baby while waiting for Yoseb. Every few minutes, she glanced at the window.

While Isak was finishing his breakfast, Yoseb came in the house smelling of cigarettes. His eyeglasses were smudged and his face stubbly. As soon as Kyunghee saw him, she went to the kitchen to get his breakfast.

“Brother.” Isak got up. “Are you all right?”

Yoseb nodded.

“The baby was born. It’s a boy,” Isak said, smiling.

Yoseb sat down on the floor by the low acacia dining table — one of the few things he’d brought from home. He touched the wood and thought of his parents.

Kyunghee placed his food tray in front of him.

“I know you’re upset with me, but you should eat something and rest,” she said, patting his back.

Isak said, “Brother, I’m sorry about what happened. Sunja’s very young, and she was worried for us. The debt’s really mine, and—”

“I can take care of this family,” Yoseb said.

“That’s true, but I put a burden on you that you hadn’t anticipated. I put you in that position. The fault is mine. Sunja thought she was helping.”

Yoseb folded his hands. He couldn’t disagree with Isak or be upset with him. It was hard to see his brother’s sad face. Isak needed to be protected like a fine piece of porcelain. All night, Yoseb had nursed a bottle of doburoku at a bar that Koreans frequented not far from the train station, wondering all the while if he should’ve brought the frail Isak to Osaka. How long would Isak live? What would happen to Isak if Sunja was not a good woman after all? Kyunghee was already so attached to the girl, and once the baby came, Yoseb was responsible for one more. His parents and in-laws were counting on him. At the crowded bar, men were drinking and making jokes, but there hadn’t been a soul in that squalid room — smelling of burnt dried squid and alcohol — who wasn’t worried about money and facing the terror of how he was supposed to take care of his family in this strange and difficult land.

Yoseb covered his face with his hands.

“Brother, you’re a very good man,” Isak said. “I know how hard you work.”

Yoseb wept.

“Will you forgive Sunja? For not going to you first? Will you forgive me for making you take on a debt? Can you forgive us?”

Yoseb said nothing. The moneylender would see him like all the other men who sponged off their wives toiling in factories or working as domestics. His wife and pregnant sister-in-law had paid his debt with what was likely a stolen watch. What could he do?

“You have to go to work, don’t you?” Yoseb asked. “It’s Sunday.”

“Yes, Sister said she’d stay here with Sunja and the baby.”

“Let’s go,” Yoseb said.

He would forgive. It was too late for anything else.

When the men stepped outside the house, Yoseb held his brother’s hand.

“So you’re a father now.”

“Yes.” Isak smiled.

“Good,” Yoseb said.

“I want you to name him,” Isak said. “It takes a lot of time for us to write to Father and to wait. You’re the head of our house here—”

“It shouldn’t be me.”

“It must be you.”

Yoseb took a breath and faced the empty street, and it came to him.

“Noa.”

“Noa,” Isak repeated, smiling. “Yes. That’s wonderful.”

“Noa — because he obeyed and did what the Lord asked. Noa — because he believed when it was impossible to do so.”

“Maybe you should give the sermon today,” Isak said, patting his brother on the back.

The brothers walked briskly toward the church, their bodies close, one tall, frail, and purposeful, and the other short, powerful, and quick.

Osaka, 1939

Yoseb inhaled deeply and planted his feet squarely on the threshold — ready to be tackled by a six-year-old boy who had been waiting all week for his bag of taffy. He slid open the front door, steeling himself for what would come.

But nothing.

There was no one in the front room. Yoseb smiled. Noa must be hiding.

“ Yobo . I’ve arrived,” he shouted in the direction of the kitchen.