Min Lee - Pachinko

For Sunja, Isak’s arrest had forced her to consider what would happen if the unthinkable occurred. Would Yoseb ask her and her children to leave? Where would she go, and how would she get there? How would she take care of her children? Kyunghee would not ask her to leave, but even so — she was only a wife. Sunja had to have a plan and money in case she had to return home to her mother with her sons.

So Sunja had to find work. She would become a peddler. It was one thing for a woman like her mother to take in boarders and to work alongside her husband to earn money, but something altogether different for a young woman to stand in an open market and sell food to strangers, shouting until she was hoarse. Yoseb tried to forbid her from getting a job, but she could not listen to him. With tears streaming down her face, she told her brother-in-law that Isak would want her to earn money for the boys’ schooling. To this, Yoseb yielded. Nevertheless, he prohibited Kyunghee from working outdoors, and his wife obeyed. Kyunghee was allowed to put up the pickles with Sunja, but she couldn’t sell them. Yoseb couldn’t protest too much, because the household was desperate for cash. In a way, the two women tried to obey Yoseb in their disobedience — they did not want to hurt Yoseb by defying him, but the financial burdens had become impossible for one man to bear alone.

Her first day of selling took place one week after Isak was jailed. After Sunja dropped off Isak’s food at the jail, she wheeled a wooden cart holding a large clay jar of kimchi to the market. The open-air market in Ikaino was a patchwork of modest retail shops selling housewares, cloth, tatami mats, and electric goods, and it hosted a collection of hawkers like her who peddled homemade scallion pancakes, rolled sushi, and soybean paste.

Kyunghee watched Mozasu at home. Nearby the peddlers selling gochujang and doenjang , Sunja noticed two young Korean women selling fried wheat crackers. Sunja pushed her cart toward them, hoping to wedge herself between the cracker stall and the soybean-paste lady.

“You can’t stink up our area,” the older of the two cracker sellers said. “Go to the other side.” She pointed to the fish section.

When Sunja moved closer to the women selling dried anchovies and seaweed, the older Korean women there were even less welcoming.

“If you don’t move your shitty-looking cart, I’ll have my sons piss in your pot. Do you understand, country girl?” said a tall woman wearing a white kerchief on her head.

Sunja couldn’t come up with a reply, because she was so surprised. None of them were even selling kimchi, and doenjang could smell just as pungently.

She kept walking until she couldn’t see any more ajumma s and ended up near the train station entrance where the live chickens were sold. The intense funk of animal carcasses overwhelmed her. There was a space big enough for her cart between the pig butcher and the chickens.

Wielding an enormous knife, a Japanese butcher was cutting up a hog the size of a child. A large bucket filled with its blood rested by his feet. Two hogs’ heads lay on the front table. The butcher was an older gentleman with ropy, muscular arms and thick veins. He was sweating profusely, and he smiled at her.

Sunja parked her cart in the empty lot by his stall. Whenever a train stopped, she could feel its deceleration beneath her sandals. Passengers would disembark, and many of them came into the market from the entrance nearby, but none stopped in front of her cart. Sunja tried not to cry. Her breasts were heavy with milk, and she missed being at home with Kyunghee and Mozasu. She wiped her face with her sleeves, trying to remember what the best market ajumma s would do back home.

“Kimchi! Delicious kimchi! Try this delicious kimchi, and never make it at home again!” she shouted. Passersby turned to look at her, and Sunja, mortified, looked away from them. No one bought anything. After the butcher finished with his hog, he washed his hands and gave her twenty-five sen, and Sunja filled a container for him. He didn’t seem to mind that she didn’t speak Japanese. He put down the kimchi container by the hogs’ heads, then reached behind his stall to take out his bento. The butcher placed a piece of kimchi neatly on top of his white rice with his chopsticks and ate a bite of rice and kimchi in front of her.

“ Oishi! Oishi nee! Honto oishi ,” he said, smiling.

She bowed to him.

At lunchtime, Kyunghee brought Mozasu for her to nurse, and Sunja remembered that she had no choice but to recoup the cost of the cabbage, radish, and spices. At the end of the day, she had to show more money than they had spent.

Kyunghee watched the cart while Sunja nursed the baby with her body turned toward the wall.

“I’d be afraid,” Kyunghee said. “You know how I’d said that I wanted to be a kimchi ajumma ? I don’t think I realized what it would feel like to stand here. You’re so brave.”

“What choice do we have?” Sunja said, looking down at her beautiful baby.

“Do you want me to stay here? And wait with you?”

“You’ll get in trouble,” Sunja said. “You should be home when Noa gets back from school, and you have to make dinner. I’m sorry I can’t help you, Sister.”

“What I have to do is easy,” Kyunghee said.

It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon, and the air felt cooler as the sun turned away from them.

“I’m not going to come home until I sell the whole jar.”

“Really?”

Sunja nodded. Her baby, Mozasu, resembled Isak. He looked nothing like Noa, who was olive-skinned with thick, glossy hair. Noa’s bright eyes noticed everything. Except for his mouth, Noa looked almost identical to a young Hansu. At school, Noa sat still during lessons, waited for his turn, and he was praised as an excellent student. Noa had been an easy baby, and Mozasu was a happy baby, too, delighted to be put into a stranger’s arms. When she thought about how much she loved her boys, she recalled her parents. Sunja felt so far away from her mother and father. Now she was standing outside a rumbling train station, trying to sell kimchi. There was no shame in her work, but it couldn’t be what they’d wanted for her. Nevertheless, she felt her parents would have wanted her to make money, especially now.

When Sunja finished nursing, Kyunghee put down two sugared rolls and a bottle filled with reconstituted powdered milk on the cart.

“You have to eat, Sunja. You’re nursing, and that’s not easy, right? You have to drink lots of water and milk.”

Kyunghee turned around so Sunja could tuck Mozasu into the sling on Kyunghee’s back. Kyunghee secured the baby tightly around her torso.

“I’ll go home and wait for Noa and make dinner. You come home soon, okay? We’re a good team.”

Mozasu’s small head rested between Kyunghee’s thin shoulder blades, and Sunja watched them walk away. When they were out of earshot, Sunja cried out, “Kimchi! Delicious Kimchi! Kimchi! Delicious kimchi! Oishi desu! Oishi kimchi!”

This sound, the sound of her own voice, felt familiar, not because it was her own voice but because it reminded her of all the times she’d gone to the market as a girl — first with her father, later by herself as a young woman, then as a lover yearning for the gaze of her beloved. The chorus of women hawking had always been with her, and now she’d joined them. “Kimchi! Kimchi! Homemade kimchi! The most delicious kimchi in Ikaino! More tasty than your grandmother’s! Oishi desu, oishi !” She tried to sound cheerful, because back home, she had always frequented the nicest ajumma s. When the passersby glanced in her direction, she bowed and smiled at them. “ Oishi! Oishi !”