Min Lee - Pachinko

Etsuko stepped forward. “But you don’t make your children get fingerprinted on their birthday, do you?”

The clerk’s neck reddened.

“My son is dead.”

Etsuko bit her lip. She didn’t want to feel anything for the woman, but she knew what it was like to lose your children — it was like you were cursed and nothing would ever restore the desolation of your life.

“Koreans do lots of good for this country,” Etsuko said. “They do the difficult jobs Japanese don’t want to do; they pay taxes, obey laws, raise good families, and create jobs—”

The clerk nodded sympathetically.

“You Koreans always tell me that.”

Solomon blurted out, “She’s not Korean.”

Etsuko touched his arm, and the three of them walked out of the airless room. She wanted to crawl out of the gray box and see the light of outdoors again. She longed for the white mountains of Hokkaido. And though she had never done so in her childhood, she wanted to walk in the cold, snowy forests beneath the flanks of dark, leafless trees. In life, there was so much insult and injury, and she had no choice but to collect what was hers. But now she wished to take Solomon’s shame, too, and add it to her pile, though she was already overwhelmed.

One of her mother’s waitresses had brought her a Coke, and Hana was sitting at a table near the bar, playing with the straw. No longer permed, her hair was straight and its natural color, a reddish black. It was cut in one even length and splayed across her small shoulders. She wore a neatly ironed, white cotton blouse and a dark pleated skirt coming to her knees, with gray wool stockings and flat schoolgirl shoes. She hadn’t dressed like this since she was in primary school. Her stomach was flat, but her bud-like breasts looked fuller; otherwise, there was no way of knowing that she was pregnant.

Closed for a private event, the restaurant dining room was set up for the party. White linen cloths covered a dozen round tables, and in the middle of each sat an elegant floral arrangement and candlesticks. A busboy stood at the edge of the room, blowing up one red balloon after another with a helium tank. He let them all float up to the ceiling.

Etsuko and Solomon entered the restaurant quietly. He had insisted on coming by the restaurant to say hello to her daughter before heading home to change. At first, his mouth opened in surprise at the decorations and the dramatic transformation of the room. Then, seeing the girl at the empty table, he asked, “Is that her?”

“Yes.”

Hana smiled shyly at them.

Solomon and Hana greeted each other formally. Their mutual curiosity was obvious. Hana pointed to the balloons hiding the ceiling, and before Etsuko had a chance, Solomon replied quickly in Japanese, “It’s my birthday. Why don’t you come to the party? There’s going be an American dinner here tonight, and then we’re going to a real disco.”

Hana answered, “If you wish. I might.”

Etsuko frowned. She had to speak to the chef about the menu, but she was reluctant to leave them alone. A few minutes later, when she returned from the kitchen, they were whispering like a pair of young lovers. Etsuko checked her watch and urged Solomon to get home. At the door, he shouted, “Hey, I’ll see you at the party,” and Hana smiled like a courtesan as she waved good-bye.

“Why did you make him go? I was having fun.”

“Because he has to get dressed.”

“I looked in them.” Hana glanced at the bags near the entrance. There were a hundred party bags in four long rows that had to be transported to the disco — each bag filled with tapes, a Sony Walkman cassette player, imported teen magazines, and boxed chocolates.

“I wish my dad was a yakuza.”

“Hana, he’s not—” Etsuko looked around to see if anyone could hear them.

“Your boyfriend’s son doesn’t seem like a brat.”

“He doesn’t have it easy.”

“Not easy? American private schools, millions in the bank, and a chauffeur. Get some perspective, Mother.”

“Today, he had to go to the ward office to request permission to stay in Japan for another three years. If he was denied, he could have been deported. He has to carry around an alien registration card and—”

“Oh, really? But he wasn’t deported, right? Now he gets a fancy party that’s nicer than most weddings.”

“He was born in this country, and he had to be fingerprinted today on his birthday like he was a criminal. He’s just a child. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“We’re all criminals. Liars, thieves, whores — that’s who we are.” The girl’s carbon-colored eyes looked hard and ancient. “No one is innocent here.”

“Why must you be so hard-hearted?”

“I’m the only one who still talks to you.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry enough times.” Etsuko tried to control her voice, but the waitresses heard everything, and suddenly it didn’t matter anymore.

“I made the appointment.”

Hana looked up.

“The day after tomorrow, we’ll take care of your problem.” Etsuko looked straight at her daughter’s pale, angry face. “You shouldn’t be a mother. You have no idea how hard it is to have children.”

The steady line of Hana’s lips crumpled, and she covered her manga-pretty face with her hands and began to cry.

Etsuko didn’t know if she should say something. Instead, she put her hand on her daughter’s head. Hana winced, but Etsuko didn’t immediately pull her hand back. It had been so long since she had touched her daughter’s satiny hair.

When Etsuko lived in the cramped, three-bedroom house in Hokkaido with its leaky roof and tiny kitchen, certain labors had sustained her. At this moment, with a kind of pinprick pain, Etsuko recalled watching her sons devour the shrimp that she had fried for dinner, piled high on paper-lined plates. Even in the middle of July, it had been worth it to stand in front of a hot tempura pan, dropping battered shrimp into bubbling peanut oil, because to her sons, Mama’s shrimp was better than candy, they’d said. And it came to her like a tall and dark wave how much she’d loved combing Hana’s freshly washed hair when her cheeks were still pink from the steamy bathwater.

“I know you didn’t want us. My brothers told me, and I told them they were wrong even though I knew they weren’t. I clung to you because I wasn’t going to let you just leave what you started. How can you tell me how hard it is to have children? You haven’t even tried to be a mother. What right do you have? What makes you a mother?”

Etsuko grew silent, utterly transfixed by the realization that how she saw herself was actually how her children saw her, too. They thought she was a monster.

“How can you think that I didn’t want the three of you?” She recalled all the letters, gifts, and money she’d sent, which the boys had returned. And worse, the phone calls to the house to check on them when her husband wouldn’t say anything beyond moshi-moshi , then would hand the phone to Hana because she was the only one who would take the receiver. Etsuko wanted to justify herself — her numerous and repeated attempts — to offer proof. Being a mother was what defined her more than any other thing — more than being a daughter, wife, divorced woman, girlfriend, or restaurant owner. She hadn’t done it well, but it was who she was, and it was what had changed her inside forever. From the moment Tatsuo was born, she had been filled with grief and self-doubt because she was never good enough. Even though she had failed, being a mother was eternal; a part of her life wouldn’t end with her death.

“But, but, I didn’t marry Mozasu. I don’t even live with him. So I wouldn’t make things worse for you and your brothers.”