If You Leave Me Read online

  “The mess hall?” I asked.

  “Extra money. Extra food. A job here.”

  “A girl-san?”

  “It’s a term of endearment. The Americans don’t mean to offend.”

  “I want to be a nurse.” I straightened. “I’ve been watching them.”

  He laughed again, flashing his glossy pink gums. “You’re not qualified for that.”

  “A secretary, then.”

  “No.” He wandered to his desk, perhaps losing interest in me. He picked up two slim cardboard boxes that fit in his palm.

  “I can be an assistant to the nurses. I don’t scare easily.”

  He smiled, and I knew. “All right, an assistant to the Korean nurses.”

  “Can my mother keep her washing job?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I approached him and thumbed the edge of his desk. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You made me laugh today. You saved a man’s life without fearing for your own. You remind me of my wife with your face and smart mouth.” Behind his desk, he looked like a man who belonged. “Here. Some cookies for your brother. Come back tomorrow.”

  I imagined Mother’s reaction when I returned home with the news. She would sing and dance with Hyunki. She’d say, Because of you, we’ll be all right. I found her in front of our house and told her about the position as she rummaged through the new load of laundry. She looked up, her round chin shadowed against the sun. “Why would this man help us? What did you do?”

  I’d hidden Major Kim’s sweets to avoid this—her flaring suspicions, her fear that I involved myself with men. I knew how Mother thought. She hadn’t forgiven me for that night last year, for drinking with Kyunghwan and fueling gossip, for almost ruining my prospects at a respectable marriage.

  “I saved a prisoner’s life. He was coughing and choking. I thought of Hyunki and I saved him.”

  Mother dropped the bag. “A Red?”

  “We wash their laundry,” I said.

  “Saving a Red’s life is different.”

  “What about your family up in Ongjin? What if they’re Reds?”

  “You don’t talk about them with anyone down there, do you?”

  “I’m not stupid.” I gathered the straw scattered at our feet. We were supposed to erase Mother’s family in the North from our public memory, as if the war had suddenly made us two countries with no shared history. She was cold, heartless. “If you don’t want the extra food, that’s fine with me. I’ll tell the major we don’t need his help.”

  “I want to know that it’s honest food.”

  I found a rusty crate and balanced it in front of the house we’d lived in these past two years. I stood on the crate and tried to fling the straw back onto the roof, but the pieces fluttered down again, useless.

  “I hate it here,” I said.

  I strode past the open entrance, tossed the blanket door aside, and went to change out of my bloodied hanbok. I heard Mother move to the backyard, where she thrust grains into the metal cauldron we’d dug into the ground. I wanted to go home. On days like this, the stalemate felt worse than the fleeing. I felt as if I were suspended on a bridge, waiting for someone to let me cross.

  Hyunki entered our room with mugwort leaves gathered in his shirt. “I found these by the river. We can burn them tonight.” He dropped the mugwort on the floor beside me. “Stink away the mosquitoes.”

  “We aren’t supposed to build fires at night. You know that.”

  Hyunki buried his face in my skirt. “If we start a little fire in the back and put the big jar and the rock and crate around us, no one will see the light from far away.” He looked up at me and cupped his hands. “A baby fire. We could roast chestnuts.”

  “And where would we get chestnuts?” I asked.

  “I forgot about that part.” He threw a leaf into the air. “We’ll roast something else then.”

  I stroked the back of his neck. This was my favorite part of him, where the hairs grew soft and tender. “I have some treats for you, but you can’t tell Mother. All right?”

  He patted my skirt, searching. “What is it?”

  I sat down. “Turn around.”

  He pushed his face against mine until our noses touched. “Why?”

  “Fine.” I stuck a hand underneath my chest binding.

  Hyunki laughed and pretended to mold breasts on his shirt. When he saw the treats wrapped in paper, he squealed. “Can I have them all?”

  “You better share.”

  “Give over!” Hyunki quickly unwrapped one and bit into the golden cookie sandwich inside. He rolled on the floor, kicking his feet. “The Americans make the best sweets!”

  I grabbed his toes. “Let me try.”

  We split the cookie in two and licked the sugary middle layer until it crumbled. The sweetness coated our teeth and tongues until my head hurt.

  “Should we save some for Mother?” Hyunki asked.

  The smell of her barley rice and boiled radishes heated the air. I shook my head. “Let’s eat them all now.”

  We burned the mugwort, too. A baby fire, like Hyunki had said. While Mother slept, we breathed in the medicinal, sooty scent and imagined all the mosquitoes dying from the smoke. We didn’t have chestnuts, but we had runty potatoes. We roasted them on sticks and pretended we were eating better things.

  “When we go home,” Hyunki said, “I’m going to make songpyeon rice cakes.”

  I jabbed my stick at him. “You mean you’ll beg me to make them for you.”

  “Maybe.” He stuck out his tongue. “Will you tell me how you got the cookies now?”

  “Only if you won’t repeat it to anyone.”

  Hyunki kissed his palm and I did the same. “Sealed tight,” we said, with our hands, warm from the fire’s heat, pressed together.

  I told him about the sick man from the morning, how I’d helped a Red regain his breath. I told him about Major Kim and the map stuck to the tent’s post. Hyunki gasped at the right moments. He was only eight and I don’t know if he understood, but I loved him for the effort.

  When he fell asleep, I carried him to our room. For a moment, I pretended he was my husband and hugged his small body to mine. I would miss him, my little man, when Jisoo came to take me away. I gripped him tighter and tried to avoid the course of my thoughts. I wanted the stalemate to continue so I could remain my own person. I didn’t want the men hurt, only far away from me. That way, no affection would grow between me and my husband. I could remain a daughter and sister.

  I sat by the burning mugwort until Mother appeared to use the outhouse. She stared at me. “You’ll get us shot.”

  When she finished and returned, she said only this: “It’ll be hard for you, but if you want, go work for them. Bring back as much as you can. Food, money, whatever they give you. If you see dying men and can’t bear it, there’s no shame in that.”

  I brought home pears, hard biscuits that left a sweet tang in our mouths, rations chocolate and real chocolate, a plastic spinning top, tins of jam, and coins slipped into my hands by both the injured and the dying. I was closer to the violence of our war now, and I loathed the screams and blood and sheathed bodies of the dead. Even so, I went every day. The chattering nurses, the heavy-footed steps of men, the chaos of stitching prisoners back together—these things made my days feel useful, defined. I no longer had time to linger over Jisoo and Kyunghwan and their unknown state.

  Mother nodded her approval when I returned home each evening, and Hyunki greeted me, perched on his knees, ready to hear my heroic stories. They gave my weariness worth.

  Every morning, I returned to Major Kim for my day’s assignment. He was generous and sent me to work on the gentlest cases.

  I entered his tent and bowed. “Good morning, Major. Which nurse should I follow today?”

  He waved me over to his desk, where he had a plate of boiled eggs and thick, shiny slabs of pink meat. “Who were you with yesterday?” he asked between bites.

 
; I stared. “Is that pork?”

  He laughed, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “You look like you’ll steal this from me even if I say no.” He pulled out another plate. “Come eat with me.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “You’re drooling.”

  I sat and ate quickly, before he could change his mind. Fat and salt and saliva lingered on my tongue, and I closed my eyes, pretending to eat it all over again. I hadn’t seen pork in more than two years. Major Kim ate with measured bites, as if there were no such thing as time.

  “It’s called Spam. Almost like the real thing, isn’t it?” he said.

  “If this isn’t real, it’s better.”

  He smiled. “You’ve forgotten how good samgyeopsal can be.”

  “You’re from a different, richer world, Major.”

  “Haemi,” he warned.

  I paused with my chopsticks in the air. “It’s the truth. I’ve never had samgyeopsal.” I let my braid fall down my shoulder to my chest the way he liked.

  He glanced at me, amused, uneasy, and cleared his throat. “One day your husband will buy a pig for you, and you’ll understand what I mean.”

  “Until then, I’ll keep thinking about this pretend pork.” I bit into a boiled egg, nodded at the new papers on his desk. “Are there any updates?”

  He unrolled a map, and I looked for the stalemate line. It was north of Seoul and south of Ongjin, where Mother had lived before her marriage. I never told her what I’d learned about her village, how it was battled over from the very beginning. She hadn’t returned since marrying Father, and Ongjin was no longer her home.

  “The war continues, but we’re holding our own.” Major Kim skimmed his finger down to Busan, then to Geoje Island. “Tomorrow, I’ll return to Geoje for a few days. Today, I’m preparing.”

  I studied the island’s jagged borders. “Can I go with you?”

  “What I do there isn’t for girls.”

  “I’m a woman.” I straightened in my seat. “I know about the prisoner riots. I heard someone was killed.”

  He ran a finger across his jawline. This tic reminded me of Kyunghwan. I liked the major even more for his slips into nervousness.

  “I’ll rephrase.” He sliced his remaining Spam with the length of his chopsticks and offered me half. “What I do there is for men.”

  “If I were your daughter, would you take me?”

  He shook his head, a frown aging his face. “You shouldn’t wonder at our fighting so lightly. Hundreds of thousands have died. You’re smart enough to know that.”

  I couldn’t even hold a number that large in my head. I stared at my tin plate, its surface slick with grease. “I’m sorry. I was disrespectful.”

  “Be mindful of the dead.” He plucked his egg and set it in front of me. “Minhee needs help in the recovery wards. Finish eating and go.”

  I found Nurse Minhee in Tent Thirteen, where the postsurgery prisoners were held. She sat beside a patient, coaxing him to eat. Some days, I still hated her despite myself, but she was the best nurse to work with because she treated me like a partner.

  “Haemi,” she said, smiling. “Nurse Ahn isn’t here yet, and Kwak Chul says he’s in pain. Could you massage his right arm?” She pointed to a patient with a stump that ended below his right shoulder. He tried to wave. She lowered her voice. “He’s been irritable and delusional all week. Pretend until I can get to him.”

  I strode over to the patient and began squeezing his shoulder and the air below. Chul wriggled. “You don’t look qualified.”

  “My name is Lee Haemi. I’m an assistant.” I tried to mimic Minhee’s slow, even cadence. “The upper arm looks like it’s healing well.”

  He eyed me. “You probably think I’m disgusting, don’t you? Is it because I’m a KPA? They picked me off the street! I’m not a Red any more than you are.”

  “Please, I think you’re fine.” I pretended to squeeze and avoided his gaze.

  He turned away, stared at the other prisoners, and then rolled back to me. “You have breasts like my sister. You must have tiny little nipples. How are you going to nurse with those things?”

  I looked at Minhee, but she hadn’t heard. Kwak Chul was only nineteen and already a filthy dog. “It’s better if you close your eyes and sleep,” I said.

  “I don’t know where she is. My sister. My brothers and parents, either. I heard your side shot everyone in my town.”

  I looked beyond Chul to the man who lay beside him. He hummed with a towel over his face and raised his arms, swaying to the music inside his head.

  “Are you still massaging? I don’t feel anything,” Chul said.

  “Yes, be quiet, please. Just shut up.”

  He jerked away. “You’re angry.” The indistinct look slipped from his face, and he sat up. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with me?” He wailed, loud and garbled, as I tried to clamp him down.

  Minhee walked over with her ease and confidence. She petted Chul’s cheek as if he were a child. “Everything’s going to be fine.” She handed me a cool compress. “I think our friend has a fever. This should help.”

  I laid the compress over Chul’s forehead and eyes. “Your arm will feel better once your fever breaks.” I used a calm voice and stroked his hair. As Minhee returned to her patient, I spoke to Chul about rebuilding the strength in his arm, about returning home one day.

  The dancing man pulled the towel from his face. “Can you help me next?” Fat water blisters covered his eyelids and cheeks. Swollen and disfigured, he didn’t look human. I concentrated on his lips, on how they hummed.

  I couldn’t blame these men, whether they were liars or Reds or innocents. They were sick. I bent close to Chul, so my chest pressed against his half-limbed body. So he could feel a woman against him, at least this once. “I don’t know where my husband is, either,” I said.

  The Korean nurses and I took our lunches to a spray of beach beyond the tents. I didn’t like the waves, how they loomed and crashed, but the others didn’t seem to mind the ocean’s vastness. Minhee dumped the ash from her pipe into the water. “So long, tobacco. No more until tomorrow.” She stretched out on the sand beside me.

  “I had a dream about him last night,” Jeongja said. When food wasn’t enough, we filled ourselves with Jeongja’s tales of how it felt to be loved, and how a baby could form. Full of Seoul haughtiness as she told these stories, she collected our attention like pebbles in her hand.

  “I want to go home,” Kyungah sighed. Like me, she was a wife without any news of her husband. With no postal system, we were left with only our imaginations.

  “At least we’re working,” Minhee said, fierce in the mouth as she reached for my pipe. “I’m almost glad the war came.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Kyungah chided.

  I hadn’t told them about marrying Jisoo, about the quick ceremony or how he was marched to a truck full of soldiers that same evening. It happened so swiftly. Some days, even the memory felt flimsy and unreal. Mother had borrowed a simple wedding hanbok from Auntie Chyu, and as I’d walked around our house wearing it, the short green jacket and full red skirt seemed far too saturated for our daily lives. Contrasted against our home’s bare wooden beams and Mother’s determined air, the colors had revealed our truth—the life we’d once known had been taken from us. We were pitiful now, mere husks of ourselves bundled into a presentable form.

  Jisoo had entered in his black suit and gaped. “I didn’t think you would wear a hanbok.” He’d touched the white buttons on his shirt. “I don’t know what I was expecting, I guess.”

  I’d laughed. The oddness of our union evident in our dress. “What you wear today doesn’t matter to me.”

  There was no matchmaker, proposal letter, or official date setting. Instead, we’d exchanged scraps of blue and red cloth as a promise of future gifts. Jisoo had offered me the wooden ducks he’d carved with a shyness I’d never seen in him before.

  “We’ll hav
e a proper wedding with my parents when I return,” he’d said. “We’ll find them and hold a feast. Long noodles to ensure our long lives together.” In that moment, as he careened between happiness and hesitation, I felt protective of him, my new husband.

  The doubt set in only after he left. When I realized what it meant to be married during a time of war, when news would never reach a nameless, inconsequential citizen like me. Jisoo, his parents, his sister. Mother, Hyunki, Kyunghwan. Me. Who among us would survive this war?

  “What’re you thinking about, Haemi?” Kyungah tossed sand in my direction.

  “A patient told me my breasts looked like his sister’s.” I balanced a seashell on my finger. “Isn’t that strange?”

  “That’s disgusting,” Minhee said. “Was it Chul? Don’t let him talk to you like that again. We’re too nice to them already.”

  “Next time, tell the guards,” Jeongja said.

  “But the guards are just as dirty sometimes,” Kyungah replied.

  When it was time to walk back, we dipped our chopsticks in the ocean and tied up our lunch tins. On the way, we smelled him before we saw him—the shit-shoveling man. He balanced buckets on a plank and carried a shovel on his back. He bowed hello.

  “He’s friendly and all,” Jeongja whispered as we returned his bow, “but who would want to marry a man who carries away your shit?”

  “He profits off something we all make. It’s smart,” I said.

  They laughed. “Selling our shit for fertilizer is smart?”

  “You’re too good, Haemi.” Jeongja flicked my braid.

  I resented their misunderstanding. I knew I was bad and unkind and selfish. I felt it in the absence of my actions, in how I always wanted the opposite of what was expected. Sometimes I found myself wanting Major Kim to touch my hip. He reminded me of Kyunghwan and our easy pleasure, of drinking under the night sky. I forgot that Jisoo was generous, assured, right. My husband. I confused myself.

  That evening, Minhee and I walked home along a path lined with trees. “Do you want to come over?” she asked. “We’re making pajeon for dinner.”