Eui-joo Is Dead

Until I Become an Orchid

Author | Digitalis

Publisher | Black N

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Eui-joo was dead. Kang Eui-joo, the outcast of Chowa-ri, was dead. Chowa-ri, Maewa-ri, and Dongwa-ri—the three villages that together formed the mountain settlement people called the Wari neighborhood—had been my home ground. According to the village chief, until the Korean War it had simply been known as Wari Village.

Aside from my father, who died when I was still a newborn, I had never experienced the death of anyone close to me. So I casually asked Mother about proper funeral etiquette and made sure I knew what to do. I slipped a ten-thousand-won bill into a white envelope, caught the last bus, and hesitantly made my way to the funeral home where black-suited men stood smoking out front. Like an uninvited guest, I lingered a long while at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement mourning hall.

I was nineteen, that flower-like age, a high school senior. I had been born in a Seoul hillside slum where they say you can get your nose cut off if you blink, and I had grown up in Chowa-ri. Mother, who always claimed her own fate was cruel, had lost her father, then three brothers in freak accidents, until only her eldest sister remained. That sister was my aunt. Born the youngest and having attended far too many funerals already, Mother had walked a hard, single path ever since she handled her husband’s funeral with her own hands. Even while people looked down on her as a widow, she wrapped me in a baby sling and went out to learn hairdressing. Around the time she finished her meager-paid apprenticeship, word reached her of her eldest sister who had married down south.

The sister who married the son of a brewery family—my aunt—had one day suddenly appeared at her parents’ home and left only the words, “I’m sick of being beaten; I want a divorce.” In those days when an older divorced woman could barely make a living alone, my stubborn grandmother told her to endure it and sent her back empty-handed. After that my aunt cut off all contact with her family, and the next news came half by chance. Word of her remarriage filtered back to the hometown house.

It was around the time I had just turned seven that Mother packed our bags and went looking for her. Having become a master of moving—through temporary workers’ housing, knife-cut noodle shops, ox-bone soup restaurants, beauty salons—Mother got boxes from the supermarket and called the regular delivery-truck driver.

She even quit the beauty parlor that had given her her official license. And when she should have been busy scouting for a house, she impulsively bought a brand-new refrigerator. To young me that double-door fridge felt like nothing but an omen of misfortune. The hair dryer, the house phone, the wardrobe she bought on stressful days had always brought bad events in their wake.

“How is it?”

“It’s spacious and nice.”

“This is our home.”

We rode the moving truck for three or four hours and arrived in front of a detached house. A white gate like winter snow, grape vines wrapped around the shade over the outdoor faucet, six earthen jars left by the previous owner, a yard turned into a chili-pepper field, a modest house with a red roof—all of it contracted under Mother’s name. Hugging the shoulders of me with my rabbit backpack, Mother’s eyes welled with tears. It was a house she owned, knowing full well the sorrow of renting rooms.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

A woman with a glamorous air, red lipstick, pointed heels, came to watch on moving day. She glanced at the delivery man shifting the luggage and asked in an indifferent tone,

“Are you Ji-eon?”

“Yes.”

I later learned that a considerable amount of my aunt’s money had gone into the house we moved into. Like a landlord checking on a rental, she wandered once around the place and told me not to let on outside that she was my aunt. Think of her as a neighborhood lady or Mom’s friend, she strictly instructed.

That my divorced aunt had married a rich man of Wari and lived carefully under his watch, that her husband believed she had cut ties with her family, that she had actually lived that way for quite a long time, and that even so she could not ignore Mother who came looking for her and lent the money for the beauty salon and the house—I learned all of that around the time I graduated elementary school.

My mother and I started a new life sitting on the cushion of such complicated adult circumstances. In this Chowa-ri, where you had to walk thirty minutes just to reach the bus stop for a ride into town, I had to wake at five every morning if I wanted to arrive at high school without being late. The difficulty of life was high, but that much did not matter. My goal was Mother’s happiness, my happiness, and therefore everyone’s happiness.

Entering a city high school where girls’ and boys’ schools were strictly separated, I began to dream of university—a dream that did not match our circumstances. I wanted to go to university in Seoul, get a job I would not be ashamed of, and after retirement open a flower shop that smelled of roses. Spending my old age holding a watering can became my ultimate goal.

This new goal of university was born because my third-year middle-school homeroom teacher filled Mother’s lungs with wind. A fierce empty wind blew into my dream of learning hairdressing and following in Mother’s footsteps. The Seoul university, the job, the flower shop I mentioned earlier—that was it.

With support from the aunt who was not quite an aunt, with Mother’s encouragement that had grown bold enough to grab the hair of quarrelsome customers and fight, I who grew up receiving the resentment and tears of two women sang flower songs until I was seventeen. Until seventeen-year-old Kang Eui-joo moved into the abandoned house in Chowa-ri, that was certainly true.

Kang Eui-joo.

After confirming the name on the funeral-home lobby screen, I slowly stepped forward. From some rooms came wails of injustice, from others the sound of stamping feet, from others a silence that wrung the heart dry. I stood in front of room 101, the darkest, the most cornered, the only one without a single chrysanthemum wreath.

I could not tell whether a funeral was even being held, or whether there was a chief mourner. As expected, at the funeral of Chowa-ri’s outcast Eui-joo only flies were buzzing. In the shoe rack there was only one pair of worn gentleman’s shoes. Looking at the empty spaces in that desolate rack, I thought of Eui-joo’s sneakers with their completely worn-out heels.

“Idiot.”

Not wanting to cry, I pressed my tingling nose with a finger. I should have shown it to Eui-joo. I think of you as a friend. I’m not ashamed of you at all. I’m not pitying you—I should have said that.

Thinking of how lonely Eui-joo’s end must have been, I could not dare stand in this place.

“Here to pay respects?”

Then a voice like someone just waking up came from the unlit funeral hall. Not knowing there was anyone there, I startled and raised my gaze. Inside the cold funeral hall, among the rows of white tables, one person was sitting.

“I actually have an older brother.”

The neighborhood people gossiping that Eui-joo’s origins were suspicious. Even I, who only verbally protested that it was not so, had not fully believed Eui-joo’s words. Mother ran away when he was ten, Father ran away three years ago, older brother left for work last year. But the only one who found him a house, sent money, and sometimes called was the older brother, he said.

The abandoned house of a swindler who pulled a large-scale village scam and fled overnight—and Kang Eui-joo who happened to move in next. Naturally he could not have made a good impression on the people of Chowa-ri.

That Eui-joo’s funeral was being held was told to me by my sociable aunt. Coming here, it seemed none of Eui-joo’s words had been lies. Unless the heart that claimed to cherish Eui-joo was the lie.

Eleven-forty at night. Having sneaked out of the study room to come this far, I made a sniffling sound in front of Eui-joo’s older brother. The brother who came out to greet the mourner had broad shoulders, was tall, and looked healthy. Completely different from the frail Eui-joo who lived with a constant cough. That dry face with no trace of Eui-joo was simply sorrowful.

“You’re Eui-joo’s brother, right? Actually, Eui-joo kept waiting for you.”

Eui-joo, who had always been weak, completely took to bed after the school thugs dunked him in water. I had vaguely heard his lungs or stomach were weak. Not wanting to burden his brother, he only went to the village quack doctors, and eventually died on the street.

The first to find him was the old woman known as Jeju-daek, and at that time I was taking winter-vacation classes and knew nothing of Eui-joo. I learned late that he was dead because Mother shushed and Aunt shushed. He was taken by ambulance to the city hospital but was already dead, and the funeral was being held at a suburban funeral home. That kid who skipped school as often as he ate because of illness had only me as a friend or acquaintance.

I poured out my resentment only on Eui-joo’s brother and cried and cried so hard that people from the next room peeked in. Wearing my school uniform, holding the white envelope, crying like a tantrum, Eui-joo’s brother simply watched and did nothing.

It would be shocking for a complete stranger of a girl to suddenly appear and pour out tears of resentment. It would be hateful for me to get angry at the person who had lost his only younger brother. Whether he resembled the foolishly kind Eui-joo, his brother kept his place with an indifferent gaze.

“I’m sorry.”

My tears, which had dwindled because no one received them, instantly turned to shame. Without many words I held out the white envelope with both hands.

“Where should I put this?”

I hoped Eui-joo in heaven would not think me shameful. It would be fortunate if he did not hold his belly laughing and say what kind of disgrace this was.

But even after a long time the white envelope was not taken. My gaze, which could not lift my head from shame, finally reached beyond the tips of my shoes. His gaze, stuck to the white envelope, also moved. Having come to pay respects, only now did we meet eyes for the first time. Calm-toned pupils, exotic features, yet the impression felt Korean.

It seemed he was a person with only one expression. Unmoving corners of the mouth, cloudy eyes. As if saying he did not care whether this side cried or not.

“You’re Yang Ji-eon, right.”

Moreover, that he knew my name was another shock.

“Want to eat before you go?”

That was probably why I, who had to return soon, stepped into the funeral hall. I was as shocked by the first meeting with that kid’s brother as by Eui-joo’s death.