If You Leave Me Read online

  I touched her elbow. “I’ll sew these once the cotton’s dried. Mother, should I leave you?”

  “Yes,” she said, her hands still covering her eyes.

  I walked past the outdoor kitchen and through the rear entrance. In the back of the house, I found Hyunki sitting on the floor of our shared room. I couldn’t remember Father’s face anymore, but I liked to pretend my brother was him in miniature. Hyunki’s curved forehead met large, creased eyes and a nose that bridged and jutted where Mother’s and mine flattened. The strangeness of his features made him look too serious for a seven-year-old boy.

  He opened his fist to show me the mash of bark and herbs knotted into his kerchief. “This smells bad.”

  “I know, but you have to breathe it in. Remember what the herbalist said?” As I retied the kerchief around his neck, I heard a rattle in his lungs. “Were you running around?”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t!”

  “Let me see,” I said. “Breathe for me.”

  He exhaled slowly, and his throat scudded at the end.

  I touched his chest. “Hyunki.”

  “I went to the market really quick. Don’t tattle.” He pushed the kerchief to his nose. “I’ll breathe it in, no complaining.”

  I opened his mouth. No blood, only mucus.

  “I’ll tell you a secret if you don’t say anything.” He scooted closer until his lips brushed my ear. “I saw Jisoo-hyung at the market. He gave me stone candies. I saved some for you.” Hyunki rooted around in his pocket and pulled out three white spheres. “He asked if he could come to dinner next week.”

  “Dinner?” I smoothed Hyunki’s sleeping mat with my palm. Jisoo had come for tea before, as if we were Westerners who didn’t need matchmakers, but he’d never mentioned what would happen afterward. “He wants to meet with Mother?”

  “He said dinner with all of us. Me and you, too.”

  “Here? What’d you say?”

  “I said I don’t know. Then he said he’d bring something delicious for us to eat, so I said yes.” Hyunki grinned, threw a candy into the air, and caught it.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t.” I gestured to the treats. “You can keep these, but tell him not yet.”

  “Why?”

  I pushed my thumbnail into one of the candies. Hard as stone, pure sugar. “I don’t know what it means.” Before the war, Mother wouldn’t have allowed a boy to enter our home without a matchmaker. All my life, I had watched girls wed without meeting their husbands before the marriage day. Now, our customs seemed to have changed. Kim Hasun, who sold sesame oil in the market, said she wanted to marry a white soldier. There were rumors of wives shedding their clothes with strangers for extra bags of rice. Men and women who had met fleeing south now lived together for warmth, a room, shared comfort. “You wouldn’t understand,” I said.

  “It’s free food.” Hyunki jabbed my cheek with a candy, rolled it down my shoulder. “Who says no to free food?”

  He was right. Only a reckless person would refuse. And I knew Jisoo would come one way or another. He was willful, different from his cousin. “Fine,” I said. “He can come.”

  Hyunki dropped the sweet into my mouth and popped another into his own. “I wonder what he’ll bring.”

  “Next time, don’t say yes until you ask me first, all right? A boy asking to eat dinner with us is more serious than you think.”

  Hyunki cocked his head. “Hyung said we could go to Seoul with him one day.”

  “You’ll say yes to anyone with candy, won’t you?” I asked.

  He smiled, careful not to laugh himself into a cough.

  “Mother’s talking to Father again. Go tell her the news and convince her to come inside.” I swatted his back and he scampered away.

  Hyunki had tried to copy Mother’s prayer-talking once. But when Father didn’t respond, he cried. I tried to explain that Mother was only pretending. That there was nothing to believe in except for the ground and sky we lived between. He didn’t understand.

  I watched my family through the open back door. Hyunki placed his palm on Mother’s hip until she looked down. He mimicked eating and rubbed his belly. She smiled, shielded her eyes against the sun, and called my name. I pretended I couldn’t hear, that some greater sound was filling my ears.

  Mother and I shook a sheet of fabric between us that evening. The laundry had dried, stiff and warm with the summer’s heat. We lined up the edges and came together. I released my side to her fingers and picked up the dangling corners to fold it again. Once we had a small, neat square, we reached for another sheet.

  “Yun Jisoo asked to come to dinner next week,” Mother said.

  I nodded.

  “We should formally accept. I can send word to his elder.”

  “Kyunghwan’s father?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Jisoo’s from Seoul, and the fighting could end soon. I don’t want this dinner to mean anything.”

  Mother lifted her chin to the withered barley, the holes in our roof. Her fingers touched mine as we folded the ends together. “You need to help.”

  “I’ll work at the market.”

  “Selling what?” She swung around, gesturing again to what little we had, then she came close. “Pull.”

  “I could ask if any of the aunties need help.”

  We held the sheet tight between us and shook out the ripples and creases, even though we would have to smooth it again with sticks tomorrow. “I scrape bark off trees to get sap for you two,” Mother said. “I harvest from barley stalks that don’t want to give. Hyunki hoards tree roots as if they were precious meats. You know what I’m saying, Haemi. The dinner is a good sign.”

  I dropped the sheet and turned away, hating that she spoke the truth. The skies looked yellow and powdery on the days I gave my meager portions to Hyunki. When I lay down, the walls around me changed shape, like melting layers of clay. But we were hungry before the fighting, too. “Jisoo could go back to Seoul in a month if the war ends.”

  “And if that happens, maybe he’ll take you with him as his wife.”

  “I’m only sixteen.” I picked up a shirt. The thought of marriage seemed far off, a part of the world we had left behind. “We don’t know him. We’ve only had tea with him four times.”

  Mother laid the laundry across a nearby sedge basket and turned me to face her. She touched my hair, the slight waves that swelled with the heat. “I know he’s kind from the way he treats Hyunki.”

  “There are a lot of kind men in the world. Why do you care for this stranger?”

  She closed her eyes. I knew she was asking Father for guidance. When she looked at me again, she spoke slowly, as if she could lull me into understanding. “We don’t know what’s happening with this fighting. If it’s true that we’ll be able to leave or if we’ll be taken over. Yun Jisoo from Seoul? In any other circumstance, someone of his standing wouldn’t look at us. We are lucky, Haemi. You’re lucky you look like me.” Her grimace gave way to a smile. The rare, openmouthed kind that buckled my resistance. “Even with Father’s curls,” she added, with a laugh.

  “I’m prettier,” I teased.

  She tucked a loose strand into my braid and returned to the laundry. “Then use it for something good. Go inside. I can do the rest.”

  I left the yard but watched her from beneath the straw eaves. I knew she was right. We were lucky. I imagined the pride and elevation and security that would come from such a fortuitous match. Without turning to me, Mother called out, “Be kind to him. There’s no harm in that.”

  Four nights later, Kyunghwan and I rode homebound, high and soaring. I wanted to touch him, not merely his sharp cheek against my back or his hands gripping the metal handlebars but all the little spaces in between. It was almost midnight, and we cycled through the mist. He’d stolen three bowls of makgeolli, and the alcohol had fuzzed the world around us.

  I pulled off my cap and unraveled the bandage that held my braid coiled. I rocked from side to side and felt Kyunghwan tr
y to steady me. “I’m drunk!” I yelled. “I’m drunkest! I don’t want to go back to my little house!”

  He pulled on my unleashed braid and hissed. “Want them to find us?”

  I stared down the road. There were no soldiers, no policemen. “What can they do, anyway?” I asked.

  “Force us to enlist, throw us into a prisoner camp, kill us right here.” Kyunghwan spoke fast. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

  I lifted the long pouch that hung around my neck. “We have identification.”

  “You think they care after curfew? When you’re dressed as a boy?” He was right. I already knew. There were rumors of girls snatched from roadsides for the pleasures of men and killed without mercy, without the decency of clothes to cover their bodies.

  “Ahn Dongwook got roped by the hands and dragged off to fight while he was walking to the outhouse,” Kyunghwan said.

  “He was a mean little boy, anyway.”

  “Haemi.”

  “Kyunghwan.” These horrors occurred in the middle of the day as other refugees watched in hordes. Night offered us no magical protection, and I didn’t want fear to control our world. I leaned back on the handlebars. “Don’t be cross. Be happy with me.”

  “Don’t be so careless, then. You’re not the one who could go to war.”

  We hadn’t seen each other in four nights, and I wanted Kyunghwan here with me, easing into the salty, thick breeze. He wasn’t drunk enough. As he spoke, I surveyed the field hospital along the southern shore, where they treated prisoners from the North. The tents jutted up like rows of slippery gray teeth. We were on a hill. We were safe. We were better off than those prisoners—and I wanted to be kind to the boy I’d known all my life. “Do you remember that Pushkin poem, the one Teacher Kim taught us when we were eight? Even if life deceives you . . .”

  “Are you listening to me, Haemi? Did you hear what I said?”

  The fear in his voice whistled clean through the alcohol.

  “What?” I asked. “What were you saying?”

  Kyunghwan spoke too fast and held my back so I couldn’t turn around. The word enlisted stuck.

  “You’re enlisting?” I turned and pushed against his hands, trying to catch what I had missed. Trying to touch his face, his forehead, where sweat clotted his hair together in spiky clumps.

  “Haemi, watch—”

  “Are you leaving?”

  The bike swerved wide, yanking us apart. My body unlatched from the handlebars and flew through the open air, through the night, into nothingness.

  Kyunghwan yelled my name. My voice was silent, nowhere in my throat.

  I grasped for the wind.

  And then, I hit the ground too soon. A hard thud jolted through me.

  “Haemi?”

  I opened my eyes to slopes of rolling grass looming above, the sky packed in between. I laughed. “Kyunghwan? You were right. You said we’d fall into a ditch someday and look at us.” I tried to sit. “Where are you?”

  “Are you hurt?” His voice came from underneath me. I realized I was sprawled on top of him, his knee jerking into my backbone. Our bodies pressed together like planks. I felt the warmth of him, the muscles of his legs touching mine. I tried to clamber off as heat rose in my chest and my palms grew slick with a sudden sweat.

  “You’re jabbing me. What are you—? Hold still.” He rolled me by the shoulders until we lay side by side. In my father’s pants, instead of my usual billowy skirt, my legs felt exposed. We rode together in the night, sat across from each other in fields, and yet, lying down, the small space that separated us felt different. We were too close. I wanted to be closer.

  Dirt smeared his forehead. I smelled the smoke trapped in his clothes, whiffs rising in the cramped, heated distance between our bodies. I reached out a hand to wipe his face. He shrugged me off. “I told you not to swing around. Look.” He raised his knee until it brushed my hip, and he parted a tear in his pants to show stringy bits of skin curled around a gash. With his knuckle, he smudged a blot of blood into a wave.

  “Does it hurt?” I licked my thumb, ready to help.

  “It’s not too bad.” He laid his head on his arm, settling into the ground as if we were always this close to each other. His face was calm, almost distant. I wondered what I looked like, if my eagerness was obvious. I stared up at the stars, hating his easy indifference.

  “The curfew siren will go off any second now,” I said.

  “Do you remember what I was saying about the enlistment?”

  “You enlisted?” Fear spread through me, sweeping away any budding resentment. Kyunghwan tried to speak. My voice carried over his. “We shouldn’t have joked so much. It snuck into your head.”

  I could feel it—the unhappiness ruining our night. I followed the hairs of his eyebrows to steady myself. Thick, black, running away to his slender ears. “What if I told you to stay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Should I stay for you?” The night was brighter than I wanted, the moon casting its glassy, curious light all over us. I could see Kyunghwan clearly. His wide, pleased grin. “What do I get if I stay here for you?”

  “I hate you,” I said. “You’re awful.”

  “I don’t hate you.” He pulled at a clump of grass. “But if I go, maybe I’ll find myself a pretty nurse.”

  I shoved his shoulder. He fell onto his back and pointed to all the stars crowding the sky above. “Look how clear it is.”

  “Kyunghwan?”

  His fingers didn’t clasp mine when I placed my fist in his palm. He didn’t move when I crept toward him. I bridged the space between us until my pant leg touched his. His motionless face drank in the sky. I wanted to pull him close. Instead, I pretended he was in an open field alone. That this was the reason he lay so still, as if I were no longer beside him.

  I woke to Kyunghwan clutching my hip, his fingers curled into the fold of my pants. The smeary heat of him surprised me, how comforting it felt. I wanted to push my back against him. Then I noticed the sky. It was nearly sunrise, and we were still in the ditch, in a field where anyone could pass by. The smell of dust and dew rose as I quickly straightened.

  I pinched his arm and whispered, “Wake up,” until he opened his eyes. “We need to get home.”

  He stood, scanned the ground and sky. “Shit. How did we fall asleep?”

  I stood, too. The ditch only came to our knees. It had seemed higher in the night when we were drunk. I crouched down. “What if someone sees us?”

  “No one’s out yet. We’re close.” He pointed, and I saw the outline of my house. “We can go through the fields. If your mother finds you here—or the soldiers—”

  “Meet me tomorrow night,” I said, turning to him. “I don’t want you to go without saying goodbye.”

  Even in the dark, I saw Kyunghwan’s face color. “You didn’t hear me right. I’m not leaving.”

  “What do you mean? You were lying?”

  He dragged his knuckles across his eyes. “I never said I was going to enlist. You were talking about—you heard me wrong.”

  I touched his collar where the dirt had rubbed in. “You’re going to stay?”

  “Haemi.” Kyunghwan cupped my shoulders. “You pretend like you don’t know what’s happening. You pretend we’ll all be fine, like sneaking around couldn’t get us killed. It’s Jisoo who’s enlisting. Not me.”

  I shook my head. “He would have told me.”

  “Why? Because you’re letting him court you?”

  I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know how to explain Jisoo to him or even to myself. “Don’t talk to me about him.”

  Kyunghwan weighed my braid in his hand, smoothed the strands that had unraveled as we slept. “Is that why I haven’t seen you lately?”

  I whipped my braid away. He was so stupid. “Hyunki’s sick. He’s the only reason.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  “No.” I pushed against him until his back hit the grassy slope.
His knees pressed against my thighs, and his closeness thrilled me. His lips were as red and shriveled as a dried goji berry. I raised my face to his. “Kiss me.”

  He grabbed my waist and hoisted me out of the ditch. He pulled himself out, too. “Jisoo talks to me about you,” he said, already striding toward his bike.

  I followed him. “Why won’t you do it?”

  He stood the bike upright and shined the handlebars with the cuff of his sleeve. “Jisoo’s an ass, but he’s my elder. He’s here because of me, and if it weren’t for him, Father and I would be living in a C rations box. Besides, you decided to let him court you.”

  “If you don’t want to kiss me, say so. Don’t be such a coward.” I knocked over his precious bicycle and searched for something to throw at him. “He’s coming for dinner in a few days. Did he tell you that?”

  Kyunghwan grabbed my hands. “His parents care about money, class. He’s having fun with you.”

  A fresh gust of anger. “I’m a girl to play with and discard, then?” I tried to push at his chest, but he held on to my wrists.

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.” His fingers loosened, climbed up my arms. Warm and careful, his rough palms slid along my skin. The raised burn on his lower right heel, the callus in the shape of an acorn’s hat. His mouth so close. The tang of his breath against the damp of the morning. I arched closer. When he reached my shoulders, he stopped.

  “Get on,” he said, and gestured to the bicycle.

  I stared at him, then turned and ran toward the fields, as fast and fierce as I could.

  He wouldn’t follow me.

  He was a coward.

  He was an idiot.

  He was always afraid.

  Jisoo

  1951

  Teacher Sung scrawled our country’s history onto sheets of scrap paper ripped out of used books. Every day, he went on about the 6-2-5 and blamed other countries for cutting us to our knees. “The United States and Soviets in Seoul, 1945.” He pointed to a student in the last row. “What came next?” When the student hesitated, Sung picked up his ruling cane and strode toward him.