The lady is silent. Then she sighs and says she was actually home, but she didn’t want to speak to them, so she was hiding in her bathroom.
“They are trying hard already with this one, since they messed up so much with me,” she says dryly.
I say that she looks like she turned out pretty good—doesn’t she have a real job, and isn’t she legally married and everything?—but she just smiles and asks me for some food delivery recommendations. “The baby always demands fried chicken at 1 A.M.” she says, her hand on her bump.
“You know, fried chicken sounds really good right now,” I say, and Ara claps her hands like a child.
“Would you like to come over to my place and we can order then?” the lady asks a bit nervously. “I have been meaning to ask you girls over for a while. You can have all my husband’s whiskey that he left here. He will not be needing it anymore.”
She says the last part with a small toss of her head. Ara nods and I say yes and Sujin says she will order and text Miho too.
“Oh,” the lady says suddenly with a sharp intake of breath, putting her hands on her bump.
“Are you all right?” Sujin asks in alarm.
She stays still as if she is listening for something, then breathes deeply. “I’m okay. I thought it was pain, but I think it’s gone.”
I look across at her from where I am sitting. She looks forlorn but not despairing, and it is astonishing how calm she can be.
Ara moves so that she is sitting behind her and takes the lady’s hair in her hands. She starts combing her fingers through it expertly. The lady lets out a sigh—a tremulous release of a long day—which makes me feel lighter too.
“Do you…do you want to see a photo of my baby?” she asks in a shy voice. Sujin clamors yes and even I nod. The lady reaches into her jacket pocket and takes out a thin printout of a 3D ultrasound that is curling around the edges. It shows a tiny, opalescent face with closed eyelids and a miniature fist clenched near its mouth.
“Wow,” breathes Sujin reverently, and we all gaze at the face.
“I haven’t shown it to anyone,” the lady says. “I haven’t talked about the baby to anyone, really. So I need to practice.” She tilts her head to consider this thought.
For a fleeting moment, as Sujin passes me the photograph and I hold this flimsy, curling image in my hands, I understand what it would be like to think only about tomorrow, instead of just today.
We sit in silence for a while, still staring at this photograph of new life, and then, in the distance, we see Miho walking up the street toward us. She is swaying a bit, wearing heels and a dress, for once, her new short hair resplendent under the light of the streetlamps, and I see men turning around as she passes them, although she does not register their gazes at all. Instead, she is looking abstractly toward us, probably thinking of floating frogs or a bed of snakes or something equally grotesque, I’m sure.
When she reaches our steps, she looks up and smiles ruefully. She does not express any surprise that we are out sitting on the steps like characters in some musical on Daehakro.
“Hey,” says Sujin. “I texted you. What have you been up to, dressed like that?” Sujin indicates Miho’s dress, a wispy cream dress with embroidered bell sleeves, which I recognize as the same one Shin Yeonhee wore to her film premiere last week.
“I’m a woman of mystery,” says Miho, smiling impishly, and I remember what Sujin said about not having to worry about her. Miho walks up slowly, gives a familiar nod to Wonna, and then sits on the other side of me. She exhales, and I put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m hungry,” she says, and I roll my eyes at her, the way I always do.
A fat drop of rain falls, and in alarm, I cup my hand over the photograph before handing it hastily back to the lady. Sujin’s phone starts ringing, and when she answers, it’s the delivery man who cannot find our office-tel and is asking for directions. The raindrops keep falling, more thickly now. So we all stand up to make our way upstairs together, as the sky starts crackling, taking aim at each of us and the drunk men stumbling by.
For my mother, who taught me how to hold on to a dream