This Burns My Heart Page 0,45
this for her. Father-in-law had lied; it wasn’t a small loan he wanted. As Min explained the details of the bankruptcy, she realized that Father-in-law wanted Soo-Ja’s own father to take up the burden of all the costs of his operations, paying a sum of money so big she was taken aback at first when Min told her.
That night as they lay on their own mats to sleep (though sleep would not come till much later), she felt for the first time that they were husband and wife. More so than the day of their wedding, or the night of their honeymoon, this was when it felt like they were truly spouses: they were on the same side; they shared a decision; they were in this as one. They had decided together not to speak to her father—not as a compromise but as an agreement—and the meaning of that weighed upon them both. In that moment, Min may have lost his freedom, but he earned her gratitude, and perhaps even her love; she could see the equation being one he could live with. Besides, he wasn’t in jail yet. All was not lost. They had watched enough movies to know rescue could come; it would be delayed just long enough for the hero and heroine to learn something about each other.
“So where were you tonight? What happened?” There was no recrimination in Min’s voice as he lay next to her.
Soo-Ja stared straight ahead, at the ceiling. If the roof blew away, she could see stars. “I went to help a friend. I tried to help her get out of a bad marriage.”
“What makes it a bad marriage?”
“Her husband isn’t nice to her. But she’s afraid to leave, so I tried to help her.”
“Do you think the husband knows she wants to leave?”
“I think husbands always know, don’t they? They know everything that is taking place,” said Soo-Ja.
“And wives, too? Do wives know what their husbands are thinking?”
“Yes, they do. They both know. But sometimes they choose not to say anything. Because they think things can change.”
“But they’re wrong?” asked Min. “Things can’t change?”
“I think if both people try…”
Min was silent for a moment, and she could hear his chest heaving. Finally, when he spoke, his words landed as quietly as a single drop of dew on a leaf. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he did not need to say anything more.
She realized, much to her surprise, that she had already forgiven him.
chapter seven
By December of that year, Soo-Ja had a new president, a new constitution, and a missing husband. The police had come by several times by then, and each time they told them Min had fled to Japan, and they had no contact with him. The officers, of course, did not believe them, and searched the house every time. Flashlights made circles in the kitchen furnace, and turned visible the excrement in the outhouse. Gloved hands dug through the armoires in every room, clothes flying in the air like grasshoppers. Standing behind them with her hands locked, Soo-Ja imagined Min as an invisible man, rushing from room to room, only steps ahead of the investigators, in narrow misses. She rooted for him, though she knew, of course, exactly where he was: hiding with a relative in the port town of Pusan, in case he had to hop into a boat and flee, in fact, to Japan. Soo-Ja had offered to go with him, but Min insisted that he hide alone—it would be easier, he said, though she suspected he simply did not want to inconvenience his parents by depriving them of their daughter-in-law.
Over time, Soo-Ja grew tired of the police’s constant visits, as if they were mad guests who liked to play at scavenger hunts, undoing the stone paths she had so painstakingly arranged, or stepping on floors wearing shoes, much to her horror. Her fear of them quickly became annoyance, especially one time when the lead officer (a new one, when the case was reassigned) dared to reach for Hana, and asked her if she had seen her daddy. She thought it was cruel to ask a three-year-old that, though later she wondered if she’d been simply covering up for her own guilt at seeing Hana deprived of her father.
Soo-Ja didn’t know exactly where Min was, though one of his letters mentioned a house with a thatched roof, slightly belowground, in a remote village, and that to get there one had to cross a potato field, some rice