Min Lee - Pachinko

“I thought she wanted to stay with her mother and Aunt Kyunghee.”

“Yes, but she wants to help us. She will come by herself. It will not be permanent. Grandmother will stay with Aunt Kyunghee to help with the store. I’ll hire some girls for them to replace my mother while she’s here.”

After two weeks of bed rest, Yumi felt like she was going out of her mind. Mozasu had bought her a television, but she had no interest in watching it, and heartburn kept her from reading. Her wrists and ankles were so swollen that if she pushed her thumb lightly onto her wrist, she could make a deep impression in her flesh. Only the baby’s movements and occasional hiccups kept Yumi glued to her futon and from fleeing out of doors. Since her arrival, her mother-in-law remained by herself in the small room beside the kitchen — no matter how many times Mozasu insisted that she stay in the larger, unused room by the master bedroom. Sunja did all the cooking and cleaning. At whatever hour of the night Mozasu came home, she had his dinner ready.

It was morning when Sunja knocked on Yumi’s door to bring her breakfast.

“Come in, omoni ,” Yumi said. Her own mother could not make a pot of rice or a cup of tea, in contrast to Mozasu’s mother, who had supported her family on her cooking.

As usual, Sunja carried in a tray with an assortment of tempting dishes, all covered with a clean white cloth. She smiled at her daughter-in-law.

Yumi, who would normally have relished such good meals, felt bad, because all she could manage to keep down lately was rice porridge.

“I feel terrible that I’m lying in bed all day while you work so much,” Yumi said, hoping that Sunja would stay and talk with her. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

“Yes, I ate. You work hard all the time. But now, you’re supposed to be resting. A pregnancy is not an easy thing. My mother had six miscarriages before having me,” she said. “She wanted to come and take care of you, but I told her to stay at home.”

“Six miscarriages. I’ve only had two.”

“Two is not easy, either,” Sunja said. “You should have your breakfast. You and the baby need nourishment.”

Yumi sat up a bit. “Mozasu left early today for Yokohama.”

Sunja nodded. She’d fixed his breakfast before he got on the morning train.

“You saw him then.” Yumi admired the tray. “This looks delicious.”

Sunja hoped her daughter-in-law would eat. She was terrified that she would miscarry again, but didn’t want to appear worried. She regretted having mentioned the number of her mother’s miscarriages. The minister at the church had warned against the sins of the careless tongue; it was always better to speak less, Sunja thought.

“Thank you for taking such good care of us.”

Sunja shook her head.

“This is nothing. You’ll do this for your children,” Sunja said.

Unlike the ajumma s in the open market with their tight, black, permanent-wave curls, Sunja hadn’t colored her graying hair and wore it cut short like a man’s. Her mature figure was solid, neither small nor large. She had worked out of doors for so many years that the sun had carved thin grooves into her round, dark face. Like a Buddhist nun, Sunja wore no makeup, not even moisturizer. It was as if she had decided some time ago that she would not care what she looked like beyond being clean, as if to pay penance for having once cared about such things, when in fact she had not.

“Did Mozasu tell you about my mother?” Yumi picked up the spoon.

“That she worked in a bar,” Sunja said.

“She was a prostitute. My father was her pimp. They weren’t married.”

Sunja nodded and stared at the tray of uneaten food. When Mozasu had told her about Yumi’s family, Sunja had imagined as much. The occupation and the war had been difficult for everyone.

“I’m sure she was a good person. I’m sure she cared for you very much.”

Sunja believed this. She had loved Hansu, and then she had loved Isak. However, what she felt for her boys, Noa and Mozasu, was more than the love she’d felt for the men; this love for her children felt like life and death. After Noa had gone, she felt half-dead. She could not imagine any mother feeling differently.

“My mother isn’t a good person. She beat us. She cared more about drinking and getting money than anything else. After my brother died, if my sister and I hadn’t run away, she would have put us to work. Doing what she did. Not once did she ever say a kind thing to me,” Yumi said. She’d never told anyone this.

“Mozasu told me your sister passed away.”

Yumi nodded. After she and her sister had left home, they’d found shelter in an abandoned clothing factory. In the winter, they both got sick with a high fever, but her sister had died in her sleep. Yumi had slept beside her sister’s dead body for nearly a day, waiting to die herself.

Sunja shifted her seat and moved toward her.

“My child, you have suffered too much.”

Yumi did not deliver a girl. Her baby Solomon was an enormous boy, over nine pounds, even larger than the famous doctor had expected. The birth took over thirty hours, and the doctor had to call in a colleague to help him through the night. The baby was strong and well. In a month’s time, Yumi recovered fully and returned to work, bringing Solomon with her to the workshop. On his first birthday ceremony, Solomon clutched the crisp yen note over the ink brush, string, or cakes — signifying that he would have a rich life.

Yokohama, November 1968

When the floor manager came by to tell Mozasu that the police were waiting in his office to see him, he assumed that it was about the pachinko machine permits. It was that time of the year. Once he reached his office, he recognized the young men from the precinct and invited them to sit down, but they remained standing and bowed, not saying a word at first. The floor manager, who remained by the door, was unable to meet his glance; preoccupied earlier, Mozasu hadn’t noticed that the floor manager’s face was so solemn.

“Sir,” the shorter of the two officers said, “your family is in the hospital at the moment, and we’ve come to take you there. The captain would have come himself, but—”

“What?” Mozasu left his side of the desk and went to the door.

“Your wife and son were hit by a taxi this morning. A block from your son’s school. The driver was inebriated from the night before and had fallen asleep while driving.”

“Are they all right?”

“Your son broke his ankle. Otherwise, he is well.”

“And my wife?”

“She died in the ambulance before reaching the hospital.”

Mozasu ran out of the office without his coat.

The funeral was held in Osaka, and Mozasu would always be able to recall some parts of it vividly and some not at all. During the service, he had held on to Solomon’s small hand, fearing that if he let go, the boy might disappear. The three-and-a-half-year-old boy stood, leaning on his crutches, insisting on greeting each person who’d come to pay his respects to his mama. After an hour, he agreed to sit down but did not leave his father’s side. Several witnesses had recounted that Yumi had pushed her son onto the sidewalk when the taxi lost control. At the funeral, Mozasu’s childhood friend Haruki Totoyama had observed that Yumi must have had incredible hand-eye control in a moment of such intense pressure.

Several hundred guests came. They were people Mozasu knew from his business and many more from his father’s church, where his grandmother and Aunt Kyunghee still worshipped. Mozasu did his best to greet them, but he could hardly speak; it was as if he had forgotten both Korean and Japanese. He didn’t want to go on anymore without Yumi, but this was something he could not say. She was his lover, but more than anything, she was his wise friend. He could never replace her. And he felt he had done her a great injustice by not having told her this. He had expected to have a long life with her, not a few years. Who would he tell when a customer did something funny? Who would he tell that their son had made him so proud, standing on crutches and shaking the hands of grown-ups and being braver than any other person in the room? When the mourners wept at the sight of the little boy in the black suit, Solomon would say, “Don’t cry.” He calmed one hysterical woman by telling her, “Mama is in California.” When the mourner looked puzzled, neither Solomon nor Mozasu explained what this meant.