You’re not here on vacation. You’re here to work,” said Father-in-law. “Work starts tomorrow. Early. Six o’clock. It’ll be a long day, twelve hours. You can have a little break for lunch, twenty minutes, but if a customer comes in while you’re eating, you leave your food aside and go wait on her. The work is not easy. We sell in bulk, which means carrying ten, twenty pounds’ worth of clothing at a time. All day. But I don’t want to hear complaints. You understand?”
“Yes, Father,” said Soo-Ja. She saw from the corner of her eye that Min and Hana’s heads were bent down. She was speaking for all of them.
“If you don’t like it, tough luck. Try showing up at an American store and asking for a job. You don’t speak English and you smell of kimchee. You have nothing to offer, remember that. You’re lucky that I even let you work for me. There are a lot of hungry people out there. At least here your stomach will always be full.”
“Yes, Father. Thank you, Father,” said Soo-Ja.
“We didn’t become successful and rich by being idle. We made sacrifices. We worked very hard.”
“I know, abeonim,” said Soo-Ja, thinking of the money he had taken from her father.
“Remember, too,” and this is when he changed his tone, to become the benevolent patriarch, “I’m not going to live forever. When I die, this house will be yours, and my business, too. So you see, even though I’m not paying you, you’re not working for me, you’re working for yourself.”
“Thank you, Father.” Soo-Ja knew already that when he died, Father-in-law would leave everything to his daughter, Na-yeong, and nothing to Min and her. She knew Father-in-law so well by now, she could tell when he lied—it was the only time he ever smiled.
“You’ve said a lot of harsh words to me in the past, but I forgive you. I forgive you because I live in a beautiful house and I have a lot of money, and that is so because I am a good person. You, on the other hand, you still have much to learn, but I can teach you how to be a humble, obedient daughter-in-law.”
Soo-Ja turned to Min then, as she was about to respond. She expected to see triumph in his eyes, but she found only sorrow. And that’s what made her voice quiver, when she finally said, one more time, “Yes, Father.”
Father-in-law then dismissed her with a nod of his head.
When Hana went into the bathroom of the suite to take a shower, Soo-Ja and Min found themselves alone again. They looked at each other with apprehension in their eyes, sensing this might be the prologue to another stage of their lives. It would be easy to follow this road, and live in America, and work for Min’s parents, and go on with things as they always had. Still, something in the air did not feel right, and it emanated from Min. Soo-Ja thought of the look of grief on his face during her conversation with his father. She saw how it hurt him, to see her abased like that.
“Why did you do that?” Min finally asked, sitting on the bed.
The only sound, other than his voice, came from the shower in the next room.
“Do what?” Soo-Ja asked, busying herself with pulling blankets and pillows out of the closet.
“Lower yourself like that.”
“I had no choice, Min.”
“What happened to you? You used to fight them. You used to stand up to them.”
“Maybe I’m tired.”
“I made a mistake, didn’t I? Bringing you two here?”
“What’s the use of knowing that, if you’re not going to do anything about it?” asked Soo-Ja. “Let’s go to bed.”
Soo-Ja glanced at her bags. She did not have the energy to unpack them, and decided to sleep in some old clothes she found in the closet. She did not know who else had slept in this guest room before, but whoever they were, over time they had left marks of themselves behind: a book of maps, a broken eight-track player, worn-out shirts and pants. The room belonged to no one, quietly absorbing what others had cast away.
“Soo-Ja?”
“What?”
She heard him swallow a few times before he finally spoke. “If I had found someone else—if I had talked some other girl into marrying me, you would have had a very different life, wouldn’t you?”
Min had broached the topic again, and this time she could not hide her feelings. Soo-Ja dropped the blankets for a moment and sat