This Burns My Heart Page 0,44
to pace.
“If the factory goes down, you can find a job somewhere else. I can go work in a store, or a restaurant, and ask my mother to watch Hana during the day,” Soo-Ja said matter-of-factly, brushing some stray fibers off a comforter.
“No, Soo-Ja. If we have to shut down the factory, things will be much more serious than my needing money or another job. Do you know what happens to men who default on their loans?” He paused, waiting to catch her gaze. “They go to jail.”
Soo-Ja took this in. “Your father’s been essentially stealing from others, to keep the factory operating. I know he never intended in good faith to pay anyone back.”
It was then that she saw a shadow fall over Min’s face, and she realized something was truly wrong. When he spoke, she could hear the fear in his voice. “Soo-Ja, last month, when the troubles got serious, my father changed the ownership of the factory… to me. If someone has to go to jail, it’s going to be me.”
Soo-Ja looked at Min, shocked. She thought she didn’t love him, but maybe she was wrong. How else to explain the punch in the gut she felt, the sudden overload of emotions grabbing at her? How could he do this to his own son? And why wasn’t Min fighting him, yelling at him? “Your father is a disgusting man.”
“I’d go to jail for him anyway,” said Min, full of bravado.
Soo-Ja dropped the comforters on the ground. “No, no, you can’t be defending him!”
“What he did makes perfect sense. I’m the oldest; so whatever is his, is mine, too. The good things and the bad.”
“But that’s not what he’s done,” Soo-Ja said, shaking her head. “Can’t you see what he’s done?”
“Yes, but I’m trying very hard not to see. He’s my father. I’d rather think what I think and be a fool, than be a man—”
“With a bastard for a father,” she said, cutting in.
They were standing face to face, Min fidgeting and Soo-Ja frozen, staring at him. Min did not jump to his father’s defense, and she could see how even he—the most devout of sons—would have trouble explaining this away to his own heart. Min’s father treated Min as if his life belonged to him, to be used or discarded as necessary. And Min never disputed this. She wondered if he, too, believed, deep down, that he was a mere appendage to his father, and his life worth only as much as was of service to the elder.
“Do you want me to ask my father for money?” asked Soo-Ja.
Min looked at her and she saw the hope dance across his eyes. But then only a few seconds later, she saw his pupils darken, and his jaw tighten a little. To her surprise, he shook his head, and in that moment, she saw the most extraordinary event in nature—that of a human being changing. She wondered if a few seconds was all it took to shake up one’s habits and impulses, unearth them like hardened soil, and replace them with the trickling drops of choice and whim, and all those things that made life unbearably complicated. She could see the strain in her husband, leaving behind one thought and reaching for a new one. She could see him become a different person—or try, at least, as he unstitched his father’s shadow from his back, and checked to see if his own could grow.
“I don’t want you to talk to your father,” said Min. “Before, I wanted you to. I waited for you all night to ask you if you had. But now I don’t want you to anymore. I can’t put you in that position. I can’t use you like that.”
Soo-Ja nodded, feeling waves of tenderness rush at her. “Maybe if you explained to a judge…”
“I can’t challenge my father’s decision. I don’t know how to explain, but… It would be disrespectful.” He looked at her to see if she understood, and she nodded. “See, he can’t know that I know what he’s doing. Because he would lose face. I would be making him look bad, and that would be worse than any jail time. I can’t do that to him.”
Soo-Ja wondered if Min secretly wanted her to speak to her father, but do so out of her own volition, and not at his request. She searched his face for signs of this, but found none, much to her relief. She couldn’t ask her father to do