“You lucky girl,” you say as you approach. “You always get the prettiest things.”
“Unni,” she says, calling you Older Sister because you’re two months older than she is. “Look at these beauties. How can I pick just one?”
You wonder if this is the peddler’s son who’s rumored to be the author of Suyon’s pregnancy. He’s younger than you imagined, certainly younger than Suyon, with cheeks still pink from youth and a cowlick that sticks out like a crooked chimney. He’s putting bracelets on Suyon’s arm as if she can afford any of it.
You grow aware that people are watching Suyon, but she doesn’t seem to care. Even as a child she was this way. Confident, unconcerned about being seen. But the looks don’t feel friendly and you pull her gently away by asking her for advice on some powders for your face.
She immediately lights up. Making herself pretty is what she is good at. When you both lived in the mountains and had no money, she knew just which berries and flowers to crush into powders that evened the face, highlighted the bones, and brightened the lips. She showed how even rice husks could be rubbed on the face to remove all traces of shine and produce a white glow. Suyon was the only girl in a family of boys, so herparents favored her, indulged her flights of vanity, even spending scarce money when the fabric peddler arrived twice a year with his dyed cottons and silks. Your mother looked at that foolishness and clucked her tongue, saying, “That will end badly for everyone.”
Now Suyon is examining your face, turning it this way and that. “You have beautiful skin,” she says, giving you a kind smile. You know you are an ogre compared to her, your skin too dark from working in the fields, a prominent mole just outside your left eyebrow, another one on your neck that grows hairs you pull out painfully. At least your face is still round, your eyes bright. Suyon holds various tins of powders against your face, picking one that is closest to your skin color. It has come all the way from Seoul and before that from Japan. It smells expensive, unnatural. She shows you how to apply the pink colors to your cheeks and above your eyes to make them stand out. She suggests colors for your lips. When you look at yourself in the mirror, Suyon and the woman seller exclaim how changed you are, how fresh and youthful, but you see just the opposite: a young woman looking prematurely old. Mother-in-law will never approve. You can’t afford it anyway. On the way home, you stop by the village well and wash your face roughly, wiping it dry on the skirt of your dress. Sister-in-law says you are much prettier like that.
One night when you know you’re ready, when the discharge in your underwear is thick and creamy white, when you ache for your husband to take you roughly and make you pregnant, you accuse him of having an affair. You whisper furiously about the new girl at the tavern.
“Hwasun?” your husband asks, chuckling. “She’s dumber than a dog. I’d never be attracted to her.”
“Then who?”
“Nobody, that’s who.”
“Not even me, I take it. You used to like me. Now you flinchif I touch you accidentally. It shames me to even bring this up. A wife shouldn’t have to ask a husband to do what is most natural in the world.”
“Ach!” your husband says, turning his back to you. “I’m tired. Leave me alone.”
“You think you’re out there alone planting seeds and weeding? I’m right there beside you. And then I’ve got dinner to make and the dishes to wash. Who should be more tired? You or me?”
“Let me sleep,” your husband groans. And then he pretends a light snoring as if you are too stupid to tell the difference.
You lie awake, your insides eating itself up, blaming your mother-in-law. She has spoiled your husband, made him sensitive, protected him from his father and brother, who were loud and ignorant. They’re grotesque when they eat, shoveling food as quickly as possible into their wide-open mouths, making a nasty sound when they chew, and spilling soup and water everywhere in their haste. After dinner, they have bits of food in their beards and stuck to the sides of their faces, which they pick off and eat. It makes you lose your appetite.
By contrast, your husband eats neatly, chews thoughtfully with his mouth closed, and reaches for another spoonful only when the previous mouthful has been swallowed. He is also careful about his dress, washing his own clothes because he does not like the haphazard way you do it, and he once gave you a lecture about the importance of folding your hanbok correctly.
When you are feeling more sympathetic, you remember that your husband was a sickly child, snot perpetually sliding down from his spigot of a nose. Your mother-in-law told you that once in a moment of weakness, soon after Brother-in-law passed. She said your husband almost died when he was nine from a mysterious illness that took all strength from him, leaving him blinking and mute as he lay in bed day after day. Recently, Sister-in-law told you it coincided with a visit fromGreat-Uncle, a loud, unscrupulous man who drank and ate at others’ tables. “He drank up most of the savings from that year’s crops,” Sister-in-law said with a dark look on her face, “and your poor husband had to share a bed with him.” She shuddered. “He died soon after from the death of his liver,” she said. “But before that his face turned as black as his heart.”
All through the spring, you don’t see Suyon. Now that the land is waking up there is too much farm work to be done. Your husband has stopped touching you altogether, leading you almost to despair that
