This Burns My Heart Page 0,128

on the bed next to him. She felt the emotion rise in her throat, and soon her eyes welled up with tears. He had never hinted at knowing of her sorrows. This was only the tiniest of acknowledgments, and yet it burned deep like a welt.

“Don’t be foolish,” said Soo-Ja.

How could he possibly atone for the last thirteen years? How could she make him understand that her life so far had not been her inescapable destiny, but rather a choice she’d made? How could she tell him that all her frustration and disappointment in this marriage had not been set in stone, and did not have to happen? That she could so easily have been spared all of that, if only she had chosen Yul over him? It felt almost unbearable, to begin to explain to him the different life she could have had if she hadn’t married him. She could never convey the magnitude of that loss—the loss of the woman she’d never been allowed to be. It was better not to ask for any apology at all.

You will never understand what I have given up.

“If I feel bad about it now, imagine how I’ll feel forty years from now,” Min said ruefully, as if joking.

“This is no time to talk about this. Let’s go to bed. Your father said we’ll need to get up early.”

“All I’m saying is—I cannot change the past, but maybe I can do something about the future.”

“What are you going to do? Are you going to talk to your father?”

The Min she looked at now reminded her of the Min who’d once told her not to ask for her father’s money, the Min who had protected her from his own father’s schemes. He lay there, waiting, underneath those layers of self-preservation, and on rare occasions she’d caught a glimpse of the man he could have been, if he could have chosen his parents.

The sound of the running shower stopped. Min had gone upstairs for a glass of water, and Soo-Ja sat in the room by herself. She could hear only the occasional noise coming from the bathroom: a comb being placed on the sink, a faucet being turned on and off.

Soo-Ja wondered if her daughter knew she was waiting, and wanted to avoid her. Finally, a few minutes later, Hana emerged, a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, and another wrapped over her adolescent body, tucked in at her breasts.

“Come here,” said Soo-Ja, as she stood and reached for the towel on her daughter’s head. She began drying Hana’s hair, pressing her hands gently against Hana’s scalp. “How is the shower here?”

“It’s nice to have your own, and not have to go to a bathhouse,” said Hana.

“You used to like going to the bathhouse. You used to like soaking in the warm tubs, droplets of warmth on your forehead.”

“Tastes change.”

“You like it here, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you going to miss your friends?”

“I can make new ones,” said Hana.

“But they may not love you like your old friends did.”

Hana reached for the towel from her mother’s hands. She sat on the bed and began drying her own hair, pressing it deeply against her scalp in fast, jerky strokes, instead of her mother’s slow, gentle movements.

Soo-Ja sat down next to her.

“I don’t like it when you’re like that,” said Hana.

“Like how?”

“You’re staring at me.”

Hana stopped drying her hair, resting the towel on her lap. Her hair hung wet and wild above her face. The sliding closet door in front of them was mirrored, and they could see their reflections looking back at them.

“Do you know that I love you?” Soo-Ja asked.

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“I don’t mind not being rich, like our relatives here. Not living the good life they live. As long as I have you. Without you, what do I live for?”

“I’m not going back to Korea.”

“It doesn’t matter to you, my opinion?”

“The responsibility of a mother is to give her child a good life,” said Hana a little stiffly, almost aware of how precocious she sounded.

“And you think you’ll have a good life here?”

Hana looked at her mother as if she were crazy. Of course she’d be happy in America! Here, even people without limbs had smiles on their faces.

“You already told Grandpa that we’d stay, so we’ll stay. And even if you said no, I’d still stay here, with Dad.”

“Why do you listen to your father, but not to me?”

“Because he always spends time with me. You’re always busy with other things.”

Soo-Ja made