This Burns My Heart Page 0,52

“Appa!”

Soo-Ja kept dragging Na-yeong with her, until the others were too far away to hear them. They passed block after block, on their way to the central marketplace. The streets were empty, some unpaved, and they could feel the dried-up mud on the ground softening the blow of their heavy steps. The sky grew darker by the minute, and they saw people in the distance scurry home, to their warm floors and family dinners. It was only she, it seemed, who stalked forth in the night, like the sole woman awake in a town of sleeping souls. Soo-Ja had never moved with such sense of purpose before. For she knew, as long as she kept walking, kept moving, kept looking, Hana would be closer to safety. It was only if she gave up, and stopped trying, that she knew Hana would be in danger. A few minutes later, Soo-Ja imagined, Mother-in-law would come out looking for them, but all she’d find would be the memory of their bodies, their shapes left behind like the outline of a ghost.

When Soo-Ja and Na-yeong arrived at the marketplace, Soo-Ja experienced not déjà vu but the strange feeling that she had never been there before, as if the town were simply a diorama, and it had been rearranged only a minute before by its restless owner. The streets were still vibrantly alive, now filled with food stands on every corner, their little red plastic curtains cordoning off the sizzling kimchee pancakes and vegetable-filled sausages being served with glasses of soju. You could barely see the hardy stand owners buried inside their heavy jackets and hats, cheeks glowing red from the alternating cold and heat, working the three-burner stoves only inches away from their customers—tired-looking fishermen who ate heartily by the counters.

Though night had fallen, the streets were not dark. Some of the closed businesses kept their windows lit for another few hours, along with the small revolving sausage-shaped signs above their doors, with their rotating strips of colors. Soo-Ja felt as if she’d left the countryside and was now in the big city, full of faces that seemed familiar but belonged to strangers. She could not imagine Hana here on her own, although she did see some children standing behind boxes of apples, trying to sell them, jumping back and forth and blowing into their own bare hands to keep warm.

“It was here,” Na-yeong said, pointing to a small patch of grass below a maple tree, two or three steps away from a closed tobacco shop.

“Are you sure?” Soo-Ja asked her, still holding her arm.

Na-yeong looked as if on the verge of tears. Soo-Ja was not bothered by the fact that she had, in essence, kidnapped her sister-in-law. She squinted her eyes, looking at the area Na-yeong pointed at, as if she could see not just the people in front of her right then, but everyone who had walked by or stood there earlier in the day, including Hana.

After Na-yeong nodded again and pointed to the spot, Soo-Ja let go of her. She began to canvass the area, looking absurd, she knew, with her long hair falling over her face. Her brown scarf, initially wrapped around her shoulders, now almost swept the ground, and her white blouse, once impeccably ironed, was now wrinkled and spotted. The day’s mishaps, it seemed, had chosen to leave marks all over her. She was not dressed for this cold weather, and she froze a little bit each time the bitter wind blew in her direction.

Soo-Ja felt as if the way to find her daughter was to provide the right answer to a riddle. I know you are here somewhere. You couldn’t have gone very far. I can find you. If I look in the right place, I can find you. I will look the way a mother does. I will bring purity of heart to this search.

Soo-Ja started to call out her daughter’s name again. “Hana!” She looked all around her, at all the little girls, one of whom might turn and reward her with a look of recognition. Soo-Ja waved at the adults, one of whom maybe had found her Hana earlier and was waiting for her mother to come claim her. It was that simple, Soo-Ja imagined. Any minute now, she would hear her daughter’s voice call out to her and this would end. “Hana!”

Soo-Ja’s cries became more and more panicked. She started to walk around the marketplace, circling it a few times, stopping people and