This Burns My Heart Page 0,47

worst kind of solitude, but she could see how it might become comfortable after a while. She had a vague feeling that less than an hour after their arrival, Min already wanted her and Hana to go—even though he had waited two months for this visit; even though this was the first time since getting there that he got to speak to a human being other than his uncle; even though as soon as they left, he would no doubt start missing them again. Soo-Ja felt like the two of them were bothering him, reminding him of all the things he couldn’t do. Whatever his little routines were now—counting cans by the window, doing push-ups against the floor, reading the same books over and over—they had probably become his reality, and maybe more reliable to him than this mirage of wife and daughter appearing just so it could grow fainter and disappear again.

Soo-Ja watched Min play with Hana, as she sat on his lap, her little back resting against his belly as she played with a pair of dice she’d found on the floor. Hana had a habit of biting her lower lip in intense concentration, and when she’d notice him staring at her, she’d look up and smile briefly, as if thankful for the attention, before going back to busying her hands.

The two of them did this for a while, until Hana noticed Min’s plate of food, filled with the fruits and fried meats that Soo-Ja had brought him. Hana reached for a sweet potato; it was, Soo-Ja knew, one of her daughter’s favorite things to eat. Hana dug her fingers into it clumsily, mashing it when she tried to peel the skin off. Soo-Ja thought of helping her, but she liked watching her daughter do things on her own. Hana loved to mimic. She’d pretend, for instance, to do laundry, and when her mother sat Indian-style by the water pump, Hana would do the same, rolling up her shirt to her upper arms, and wiping the imaginary sweat off her forehead.

When Hana finished peeling the sweet potato, Soo-Ja thought her daughter would eat it, but instead Hana split it into three parts. She held one piece toward her mother, one toward her father, and a small chunk for herself.

“Thank you, Hana,” said Soo-Ja, touched by her daughter’s gesture.

“Thank you, Hana,” said Min, taking his portion. He did not put the potato in his mouth; instead, he stared at it, as if staring at his daughter’s love.

Soo-Ja held back a tear, as she realized how much father and daughter missed each other. All three of them ate in silence, Soo-Ja and Min watching Hana. They appreciated the illusion of normalcy, eager to forget that they were miles and miles away from their home, in a tiny room scarcely bigger than an outhouse. Soo-Ja realized at that moment that the biggest luxury in life was the ability to make plans, to count on the future as if it were something pinned down on a map. She wanted to speak in terms of years, not days; know exactly when Min would return, when they could resume their lives. How strange, she thought, that she longed, desperately, for old routines that once drove her to tears—tiresome and dull as her days had been, their certainty had made them bearable. This was like holding your breath in a bad dream, and when you woke up, you found out you still could not breathe out.

During their days in Pusan, Min’s family stayed at Min’s uncle’s house, about a good hour away from the hiding place. Because they were cherished guests, they were given the best and largest room in the house. Soo-Ja had no idea where the uncle and his family—a wife and a five-year-old boy—slept, since she saw only two other small rooms in the house, both of which were cluttered with old furniture, worn-out bicycles, dusty boxes of rice and noodles, and a surprisingly large collection of vinyl records, along with an old Victrola.

This meant all of them—Father-in-law, Mother-in-law, Na-yeong, Chung-Ho, Du-Ho, In-Ho, Hana, and Soo-Ja—slept on the floor in one room, one next to the other, in a row of horizontal lines. This wasn’t something to argue over, or to be discussed. It was simply accepted, and many families, who could not afford to rent houses with more than one room, did this routinely, with couples and their relatives cooking and living and sleeping in the same room.

While everyone else seemed