Jessica Yun (Seoul): “Roots”
Jessica Y. Listen to Podcast
Seoul, Rep. of Korea
The tears stored in my eyes were destined to fall; all hopes of my father returning, just five years later, were falling too. The absence of my father brought endless difficulties. The first year he went missing, my life changed little.The second year, and the years following it, we lived with an overwhelming debt. His absence gave me the painful, stinging tears that I live with today; it gave me the heavy burdens I must live with on my shoulders.
“Where is he, Auntie Sumi?”, I’d ask in my younger years.
Her cold, bitter response was, “A smart girl would lose hope. Just forget about the man.”
Maybe, I should, I thought. For five years, he was missing. If he truly loved our family, he’d have came back to us. Why is he not returning? I’ve been waiting for five years, Dad! Gazing at a faded Polaroid photo of him, memories started to come alive. You would like to picture him as a perfect TV father, smiling and embracing his dear family–but, he was none of the sort. So, who was this father of mine? I don’t know his name, and when I ask, my mother doesn’t say. But I remember, he was a solitairy man who stayed outdoors, purposely away from us. He frequently drank, smoked, cursed–a man who had bad habits. The fact that he was a poor example of a father or a TV father, did not matter to me. The fact that I didn’t have a father anymore left me empty and void. I was walking around without one shoe. It felt uncomfortable to walk with this void. It seemed that he left my family for sure; my youth was incomplete.
During my youth, my name was Yejin, but many times had I tried to forget that childish name given to me by my parents. I lived this youth of mine in the coastal city of Sokcho in the province, Kangwon-do. Shabby and frail, our house stood. It was a ramshackle house amongst a hundred ramshackle others. All houses stood proudly unique, despite their condition. Each home faithfully hosted its owner, taking age alongside its resident. Even the families were the same families that had been living there for generations. This place, Sokcho, was home. A good home or a bad home? I don’t know.
Just as how we were the same families, everyday was the same day. You could say it got quite boring at times. Before the sun had reached its pinnacle, the arctic nipping air would make its way through town. We’d creep out of bed reluctantly and open up our family restaurant. Students rose to go to school. The books opened in the morning, then closed midday. After being dismissed, elementary school children could be heard talking in couples and three-somes, making their way back home. Later in the day, high school and middle school students in their neat uniforms would bicycle home, shouting and cursing at each other. Ahh, fun times. I used to be one of those teens, bicycling home with my best friend, Yaena. She was my sister at heart who was there from the beginning. Her adorable smile would always be there, until she moved last year, to the city. I bicycled alone from then on.
After all the students reached home, you’d hear a long, eerie silence. The fiery sun would start to set behind the dark horizon. Everything quieted to the point of extreme silence, where the rustle of a newspaper could be heard. The warm air would whirl its way through town in forms of spirits of the dead. Doors would mysteriously open and shut by themselves. The wooden planks would creak by on their own. Then all would quiet and then, high tide. The large, white moon would rise into its black theatre. It was time for the show. At night, drunk men would be heard rambling through the streets crashing their bottles of soju and yelling nonsense. This was the familiar cycle that my senses experienced everyday in the town of Sokcho. However, every year, this sound cycle became quieter.
It was obvious that people were disappearing from that small town. Each house lost someone to “the move”.They were all heading to the major cities in West Korea–”where all hopes lay”. My mother neither encouraged or discouraged me to move into the city. I desperately wanted to move into the urban parts and live like how they all did in all the Korean dramas and soap operas. Despite the temptation, I felt it was a burden to stay with my aging mother to help support her. I was in the last year of high school and my decisions were becoming heavier with these boulder burdens. I was angry, still. It was not my responsibility to take care of my ol’ mother. Everyone else has a father for this job. She was such a burden I want to let her go and just run freely with my own life. Sigh.
That morning in the 12th grade, I woke up at 5 in the morning to help my mother string out the kalguksu*. The room where we performed such tasks was called the ‘white room’. In fact, it was a dark room, where only a single low-wattage light bulb hung. I’d cough from all this flour being powdered upon me. However, my skin would always be whiter when I came out–which is, indeed, a “pretty” trait in Korean aesthetics. My mother, with her sinewy hands would beat, roll, squeeze, and shape all this dough into the noodles. I worked beside her imitating her work. My skin would be rough, but it would be white–that’s all that mattered. Whilst my mother toiled at this side-by-side, I never felt that mother and daughter bond. We were somewhat distant too, just like my father and I. I wasn’t always distant from her. We used to be extremely close. Was it because I had become old? We were so very close when I was a child. I remember, as a child, she’d hold me by her warm hand and take me to the beach while we laughed on the short journey there. I remember she piggy-backed me and sang me Korean lullabies, patting my back, and lulling me to sleep with her motherly ways. I remember she had used to hug me tight when we were climbing to high heights. I’ve always hated heights. I remembered she’d hug me before that “good night”. What happened, mother? You’re cold and distant;I don’t like it. As mother finished making the noodles, I’d go to school. When I came back, the restauraunt, more like a diner, opened and I took orders while I tried to finish homework and catch up on studying. I have hardly been a disobedient child in my life. I always did my chores, cleaned my room, and studied well. My friend, Yaena, my “sister at heart” in Seoul, called.
“Yejin! I got accepted to a univeristy in Seoul! I’m so excited. I never thought this would happen to me!”
“Are you serious?! That’s great!”, I said.
“Yeah! I saw an actress at an autograph signing”, she exclaimed.
“Really? Do you really just run into celebrities there?”, I asked.
“Sure! Yejin, c’mon and move. This is where the party’s at. We had absolutely no life where we lived. Move to the city!”
“Uhh, you know what? I have to go. The restaurant is really busy right now.”, I pretended to take orders and side-talked over our conversation.
Who was I kidding? There was no one in this restaurant. It only received up to five customers a day–my mother, Auntie Areum, perhaps two strangers, and I. This diner had no hope whatsoever. Why was I pretending it did? I just wanted to leave this wretched place. I packed up my entire bedroom into a couple suitcases, quietly called a taxi, and left, leaving a note saying that I’d be okay. It was rebellious–I know. But this is what I saw in all the American movies–people running away from their lives to better, more exciting places. If it works for them, it ought to work for me. For 3 or 4 hours I took a bus to Seoul. All this light–all this exhilarating city! As opposed to shabby houses, there were skyscrapers. Instead of tiny alleys, Seoul had major roads with traffic lights. Taxis and luxury vehicles zoomed past my slow, countryside eyes. Never had I experienced something like this. Several times, my sad mother called me on my cellphone. I didn’t pick her phone calls for six months, even after I had started attending my university. When I felt I was being too harsh on my mother, I finally picked up.
“Hello?“
“Yejin! Where have you gone? I’ve been calling you for sixth months! Everyday, I went bezerk, I asked neighbors–:”
“Mom…I know what I did was wrong. But you can’t do anything now. I’m not coming back. I can’t–I’d be missing my university classes.”
She fell silent for awhile.
“Not coming back? Fine, Yejin. You run away and you say you’re grown up? You’re a grown-up girl, eh? You’re a city girl that knows all? Hmmm…ok. If you’re all you say you are, why not find your missing father? I’m sure if you can handle that task, you could live on your own in Seoul.”
At the end of this phone conversation, I was fuming. I was nineteen, so very close to twenty. I was in college at this point. I did have some spare time on my hands. Perhaps, this is the time I should look for my father. I called the police and my father’s entire family tree. I called up the city and provincial offices outside of Gangwondo if they had a resident that had matched the picture of my father. They all shook their heads. Endless hours on the phone–I despised it. I decided it would be best to carry my investigation in Gangwondo–my old home. It felt distressful to have to come back to my memories. Eventually, I knew, I had to talk to my mother to find out. I went to the ol’ kalguksu-jeep, and to my surprise, it still stood. It stood just like how I left it, and I could see my mother standing inside. How was I to greet her? She’s going to be just another stranger, I thought.
I flattened out the creases in my dress suit and walked with the clickety-click of my freshly-bought Ferragamo high heels. I raised an eyebrow at her like I was some kind of private investigator. Of course it looked stupid, but I thought it would show how I’ve progressed since I last saw her. She did not smile, she did not show emotion in her face. Her face was stone. She just started to talk, “Yejin, you’ve came the right way. Your father is very near. Do you have your cellphone? Keep it on. Walk outside and I’ll tell you his whereabouts.” My heart was beating rapidly expressing my anxiety.
I stepped outside and she called me.
“Walk down the street.”
Down the street I walked. I could see the reddish sun about to set onto the dark horizon.
“Turn at the beach”
In the summer’s heat, I turned at the beach. Sand sifted into my Ferragamo’s as I trudged across the beach.
“Climb up the hill.”
This grassy, rocky hill I climbed. It was not an easy climb with these heels.
“Do you see something?”
“Uh, no, how long do I climb, mom? It’s a cliff.”
“Keep walking.”
“Uhh, mom, I’m walking toward the edge. You know I don’t like heights.”
“Keep walking…”
“Mom, I’m at the edge. Don’t think I’m going to be a fool and jump. What do you want me to do?!”
She hung up at this point. Run freely now? All my life, I had hated heights and I stood at the highest peak in the entire town. As I started to become dizzy, I took off my dressy high-heels, which added to this treacherous height, and kneeled on the ground. I held tightly to the weeds and roots in the dirt on the bluff, in fear of my fall. Then, I remembered this moment, five years ago. Was the last time I fell from this cliff in a dream or in life? Had I actually fallen from this cliff? Tears started rushing down and I screamed in horror. Do you see? I fell from this cliff five years ago. My dad had tried to rescue me, and died in the attempt. The sun was on the brink of setting, and the spirit of my father seemed to spot me in trouble. I felt like a child holding onto these weeds, while the wind was trying to blow me into the biting and monstrous ocean. I was crying for help, desperately holding onto these weeds and roots.
Eventually, my mother came to my rescue. As I was enveloped by her arms, my father’s spirit seemed to embrace me too. She held me tight in her arms, singing that ol’ lullaby of mine. She held me tighter, “It’s hard to let go of your roots, eh?”
komo*: in Korean, means aunt
kalguksu-jeeb*: flour noodle house, similar to a diner,
Gangwon-do*: a South Korean province East of Seoul
gyobokes*: school uniform
soju*: an alcoholic beverage composed mostly of rice, and also wheat, barley
