If You Leave Me Page 3

  I slid out the newspaper I’d hidden in my notes. Whoever we blamed, the war was happening all around us, and here we sat doing nothing, huddled inside our makeshift school, a long stretch of tarpaulin hoisted over a wooden frame, as if we were supposed to ignore the world and continue our education.

  But my friends were already fighting. I knew them. They would have enlisted from the beginning. As soon as the Korean People’s Army invaded Seoul. I imagined what they would say to me. Your family is missing. You haven’t heard from your mother, father, or sister in months, and you, Yun Jisoo, what are you doing? Almost eighteen years old and chasing a girl. Come fight, they would say.

  Soon. Soon I would have a wife and I’d join them.

  “Yun Jisoo.” Sung knocked his cane into the back of my head. “Share your thoughts with us. What requires so much of your attention?”

  Sung had a limp. He tried to disguise it, but his right leg stiffened as the day wore on. It was said that he’d done it to himself so he wouldn’t have to fight in the war. Not only dickless, he was unimaginative, too.

  I held up my newspaper for the other students to see. “I’m thinking about how I should be filling ditches with Northerner KPA bodies. I’m thinking I should be out there instead of listening to you go on about what I already know.”

  He struck me across the left temple. His cane was thick, hard, and wooden. It made my eyes water. Classmates snickered. I tried to sneak a look at Kyunghwan, who sat a few rows behind me. Sung turned my head to face him. “The smarter one can’t help you now. You’re done.”

  “You asked me what I was thinking, sir.”

  “You think you’re clever?” He came so close I could see where his chinless face met his wide neck. “Typical. A smart-ass that isn’t so smart.”

  “I never said I was smart.” I nodded at his leg. “Just able.”

  One more blow across the face, and he kicked me out.

  Outside the school tent, I massaged my temples and waited for Kyunghwan. We were on the highest hill of our village, and I sat along the ledge with the best view. Leaning against a thrash of trees, I stared down at the mass of shelters, their rusted steel and moldy cardboard outlines. Villages like ours spread west to the Nakdong River, north to the mountains, and east to the sea. Tucked inside Busan’s borders, we remained safe.

  I watched the pin dots below, a handful of the millions who’d fled. Their smudged outlines hustled between markets, shacks, and streets. I imagined my parents and Hyesoo in another makeshift village, only a few kilometers away, safe and worrying about me. When Kyunghwan, Uncle, and I had first arrived, we searched for them, sifting through conflicting reports of aunts and uncles and cousins who’d survived, been arrested, killed. The news—of Communists massacring civilians, of the government masquerading as Communists massacring civilians, of bombings, rapes—eventually quieted us, and we stopped asking altogether. News from the mouths of strangers was never reliable.

  “You’re still here,” Kyunghwan yelled as he emerged from the tent with his usual saunter and wide grin. “Sung asked when you were leaving for good. He was foul to us all morning because of you.”

  “Tell him I’m leaving as soon as I can.” I moved aside as Kyunghwan sat down with his lunch. “Here come the others.” We watched the boys exit in a huddle. They whooped as they saw us and ran over.

  “Nice ragging,” Youngshik said.

  “‘You asked me what I was thinking, sir,’” Ilsung mimicked.

  Youngshik grabbed him by the neck and wrestled him to the ground. “Yun Jisoo, I will beat that pride out of you.”

  “We were laughing in the back,” Kyunghwan said.

  “Yeah, but it was costly. You can’t make fun of Sung’s leg and get away with it.” Ilsung picked himself up. “To the radio man?”

  “Go without me,” I said. “Call if anything’s changed on the stalemate line.”

  “Kyunghwan?” Ilsung asked.

  “I’ll stay here.” He tossed my lunch at me. “If I leave Jisoo alone, he might try to kill Sung.”

  The boys headed to the almost-blind man who lived on the other side of the hill. He owned a radio and listened to it every day. We mostly heard static, but sometimes news of battles and casualties came through in bursts. There were never any updates about civilians, though. The announcer wondered aloud about how many were alive, how many had been slaughtered. All useless conjectures.

  “You don’t want to listen today?” Kyunghwan asked.

  “I have things to do. A favor to ask,” I said.

  “More for us then.” Kyunghwan held out a handful of roasted ginkgo nuts. “I got these from Sung’s bag.”

  “Little thief. If you close your eyes, someone will steal your nose—that saying’s about you.”

  Kyunghwan split one open. “Do you want some or not?”

  “Sung’s going to find out it’s you and stop loving your goody ass.”

  “I’m too slick.” He dropped a few nuts in my hand. “He’ll blame you before suspecting me.”

  “True,” I said, laughing.

  We cracked the green nuts from their white shells. As we ate, Kyunghwan rewrote his morning notes on a new sheet of paper. “Why do you do that every day?” I asked.

  “Helps me study.” Kyunghwan nodded. “You could do it, too. Stop pretending you’re stupid.”

  “I don’t care what Sung thinks.”

  Kyunghwan shrugged.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “Let me finish.”

  He drew little images along the margins to match his notes. A waste of time. What was he studying for? The exams that would transition us from one year to the next at a school for refugees? I took a bite out of his boiled potato as punishment for making me wait. I walked around the yard, almost abandoned him for the radio man. “You ready over there?”

  “Done.” He slipped the pencil behind his ear.

  “I need you to help me find some food after school,” I said.

  “You’re the rich one.” Kyunghwan gave a seated bow. “‘Oh, thank you, sir, for spending all this money today. Please come back anytime.’”

  I flung my empty shells at him. “Hasn’t anyone told you we’re in a war?”

  Kyunghwan waved his papers at me. I didn’t understand how he could care so much about schoolwork and so little about the real world. He hadn’t once complained as we fled south, not even when there were only five beans to eat between thirty men, but he hadn’t asked any questions, either. Not—why don’t we cross the hills instead of the rivers and paddies? Or why don’t we wait for Hyesoo and my parents? Instead, he stared at the sky and studied for a high school exam he’d never take. Even when we listened to the radio during lunch, he sat silent as reports came through of the North, China, and the Soviets’ aggression.

  He reminded me of my mother. How she’d groan when there was any political talk in the house. After we were freed from Japan, Father and I were forced to sit in the courtyard when we wanted to talk about what might happen to our country. As we stared at Mother’s garden—the twisted limbs of the pine tree and the bright peonies—Father had argued that this was the beginning of the end. With the general election and a new president in South Korea, he was certain our halves would remain permanently divided. I’d picked up slices of sashimi, white squid and fresh salmon, and eaten them whole, laughing at his fear, naive enough to disagree. But what I remembered most was Mother’s humming as she sat in the large sitting room across from us with Hyesoo in her lap. Kyunghwan, with his studying, was just like her.

  I looked at him, how complacent he was with his orderly notes and common stealing. It didn’t occur to him to venture beyond his own preoccupations. Maybe that was the consequence of growing up an only child—he was the kind of man who cared only about himself.

  He arced a pebble into the air. “So why do you need this food?”

  “I’m bringing dinner to Lee Haemi’s family tonight. I want something special.”

  �
�You’re putting a lot of work into courting her.” Another pebble. “Have you done this before?”

  I shook my head. “They’re having a hard time finding food. They’re a good family.” I slung my arm around his shoulder. Haemi was the only aspect of my life that seemed to follow any semblance of order these days. Thinking about her calmed me—her long, thick hair and slow smiles. The low duck of her bent head when her mother poured us tea, and how she made faces at Hyunki when she thought no one was looking. “I want to do something nice for them. Help me. What would impress her?”

  Kyunghwan shrugged. “You know her better than I do now.” He ate the last remnants of barley rice and dried potato vines in his lunch tin. “I haven’t talked to her in years.”

  “What did she like to eat when she was young?”

  He laughed. “Whatever was around. Anything will do.” He ran his finger along the corners of his container until the tin gleamed. Then he peered into mine, which was also empty. “Everyone was hungry then and everyone’s hungry now. I’m starving.”

  I showed him a few won. “Help me today and I’ll give you some bills.”

  “You’ll give it to me anyway. I’m the only cousin you have left.”

  “That we know of, you dog.”

  He nodded at the school tent. The others were returning for the afternoon session. They yelled Kyunghwan’s name, and he stood.

  “Already?” I asked.

  “Shortened lunch for all of us because of you,” Kyunghwan said. “I’ll help you after class.”

  “I’ll wait here,” I called after him.

  He saluted as he walked to the tent. “I didn’t mean what I said about the cousins!”

  “You’re still a dog,” I yelled back.

  I watched the skies as I waited for class to end. Shaded from the summer heat, I pictured my parents and Hyesoo again. They could have fled before Seoul’s fall. They could be somewhere in Busan waiting for the end. It was possible.

  After class, Kyunghwan and I walked through a small knot of trees. I broke a branch and held it like a rifle. “You’ll come with,” I said. “We’ll shoot Reds and force them to surrender. We’ll be victors.”

  He cocked his fingers into a pistol, shot back at me. “Glory whore.”

  I laughed. “Don’t you want to reunite?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, I do.”

  “We have to beat the Reds first. Join the ROK with me.”

  “What about the killings in Sancheong and Hamyang?” Kyunghwan snipped a leaf off my branch. “They say the ROK killed those civilians for no reason.”

  I stopped him. “We don’t know anything.” I looked past the trees, but we were alone. “Even if people are saying that, you shouldn’t. And if that happened, then the civilians were probably Reds.”

  Kyunghwan kept walking. “The fighting will be over before I’m of age, anyway.”

  I was surprised that he cared. That he was listening at all. He was still an idiot, though, repeating rumors aloud. I caught up with him. “We can fake your age, easy. Don’t you want to get out of here?” I gestured at the trees, at this place I hated. The stench of the shit pits behind overflowing outhouses, the thatch-roofed buildings with no electricity, the vendors hawking buckets of water for heartless prices. The pity I felt watching Uncle wade through seawater searching for driftwood to bundle and sell.

  “I like this place,” Kyunghwan said.

  “No one likes being a refugee but you.”

  “Coming here saved you, also, didn’t it?”

  It was true. I had missed the KPA’s invasion of Seoul by less than a month, but it had split me from the world I knew. “I’m enlisting,” I said.

  “Then why are we hiding from the recruiting convoys? Why don’t you let them cart you off now?” Kyunghwan pushed aside the tree’s branches and gestured at the streets beyond.

  “I want to do it right,” I said, ducking until he let go.

  “What does that mean?”

  A legal marriage, money set aside for Uncle. Only then did I want a proper enlistment. I wanted a wife and a family that would wait for me through the war. How did Kyunghwan, so smart in his studies, not understand this?

  “Soon,” I said.

  Kyunghwan sighed, pointed to the open-air market beyond the last group of trees. Haggling voices rang through to us. He stooped to pluck some flowers and signaled that I should do the same. “Come on then.”

  We bowed deep and low at the first stall. The local vendors were wary of me, as if my laced shoes and neater clothes meant I was a swindler, and those passing through tried to flip me for more than an item’s worth. But Kyunghwan was beloved. The few women from his hometown clung to him, eager to see a face from their past. They carried his childhood stories like stones in their pockets, passed between hands and mouths. Little Kyunghwan would cry for hours, they recalled to their new neighbors. He would sit in front of whoever was responsible for him that day and weep until his father returned. The chopped wood left behind as payment would soak with his tears until they turned into bloated and useless logs. Kyunghwan had won their loyalty by being a weepy, motherless kid, and he culled their memories to suit him.

  “Auntie,” Kyunghwan said, holding out a flower, “this is my cousin, Yun Jisoo.”

  “I know who he is.” The woman kneaded a small ball of dough. “What do you boys want?”

  “He has a request.” Kyunghwan nodded to me.

  I nodded back. He was supposed to ask, to sweeten them with his familiarity and pretty face.

  She rested her elbows against the high wooden table. “Well?”

  “It’s your request, Jisoo.” Kyunghwan bent a flower stem. “Ask her.”

  “I’m looking to buy a meal for four. No trading—I’ll pay money.” I showed her my bills.

  She clucked her tongue and whispered something to Kyunghwan. Knuckling her dough again, she said, “Money doesn’t create food, you know.”

  “He doesn’t know any better. They aren’t taught modesty where he comes from,” Kyunghwan said.

  The woman laughed, looked me up and down. “The only thing I have is relief aid flour. I can make you some noodles, but that’s all I can offer.” She signaled to the vendor one stall over, a man with a thick scar across his face. “He’s selling dried fish. You could have a decent dinner with that.”

  “I’m only here for today. If you want anything, I’d take it now,” the man said, slicing tentacles off a dried squid.

  “That sounds perfect.” Kyunghwan pinched the dough and tasted it.

  “I don’t think Haemi would be impressed with that,” I said.

  “What are you talking about? It’s food,” Kyunghwan responded.

  “Lee Haemi? This is for the Lees?” The woman peered at me. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d get matched with her.”

  The suspicion on Auntie’s face annoyed me, even if she was right. A year ago, considering a girl like Haemi wouldn’t have occurred to me. But here, Haemi spoke like someone with an education. And while others carried their desperation around like an extra limb, she seemed to float above it. She had a wide, pale face that was somehow both graceful and sharp—and when her eyes met mine behind her mother’s back, it unnerved me. “That’s why I need something delicious, Auntie. To represent my Yun family.”

  “Haemi’s a sassy girl.” Auntie wiped her face with a rag tucked into the band of her pants and turned to Kyunghwan. “I remember you two kids begging for peaches in the summertime.”

  He played with the tacky dough between his fingers and laughed. “You used to give us the sweetest ones. We’ll take the noodles, Auntie.”

  “Not yet.” I knocked his elbow. “I want to keep looking.”

  “You interested in this?” The dried fish vendor held up a squid head. “Also have these here.” A small pile of anchovies covered in salt lay on the wooden board behind him.

  “We’ll come back if we need to,” I said.

  “I’m leaving in an hour.” He bit into a
squid leg and beckoned at Kyunghwan with his knife. “I’ve seen you before.”

  “In the market, Uncle?”

  “You live in the next village over? You wander around at night with the drunks?”

  Kyunghwan shook his head. “I live here, Uncle.”

  “You’d remember a face like this,” the man said, pointing.

  Kyunghwan bugged his eyes at me with a smirk. He slid a flower to the man, another to Auntie. “Thank you. I’m sorry my cousin’s so picky.”

  I shoved him once we were far enough away. “You’re being a jerk.”

  “I’m helping you like I said. That man was crazy, wasn’t he? Where do you think he got that scar?” Kyunghwan walked ahead, gifting flowers to the aunties as we passed. They cooed his name in sentimental tones. It was disgusting.

  I shoved him again. “Try harder. Pick a good stall this time.”

  He looked at me, annoyance on his face, his nostrils flaring. “If I knew it’d be this much work, I wouldn’t have said yes.”

  I counted out three bills and slapped them into his hand. “You have a test tomorrow I don’t know about? You on your period?”

  A small smile. “I’ve been bleeding all week.” He folded the bills and slid them into his pocket. “All right, I’m a jerk. Let’s try this one. She knew my mother.”

  We went to all the aunties he recognized, from wooden stalls to mats on the ground displaying meager piles of vegetables. The market was emptier than usual. Most of the vendors had gone to the water supply station, and those who remained had barely anything to sell. Straw shoes, limp carrots and squashes, a palm-sized square of rice cake. But we became better at asking until finally, miraculously, we found a young chicken for sale. Auntie Bae had caught it in a dead man’s yard that morning. She offered to cook the bird into a soup that’d be ready in a few hours.

  Kyunghwan and I walked home chewing on strips of cornhusk. We stopped in the kitchen between our rooms and squatted against the stove. Constipated groans came from the outhouse behind us. We laughed.