If I Had Your Face(19)

“Just because you buy a bunch of expensive things doesn’t mean you have a collection,” she said contemptuously once while reading an article in the Times about the latest spending habits of the new rich in China.

I understood what she meant though. Her eye wasn’t exactly a gift, but more of an instinct, as natural to her as melancholia, or distrust.



* * *



—

I MET THEM all in New York—Ruby, Hanbin, their group of friends. It had been an unfathomable step for me, going to New York to start a program at SVA. It was my first time on a plane, my first time out of the country, my first time stepping out from under the umbrella of the Loring Center, my first time following a star. Among other shocks, I had been bewildered to find so many Koreans so at home in the streets and cafés and stores of New York—and in the hallways and classrooms of SVA—for whom studying abroad and traveling back and forth by themselves were commonplace occurrences. For some, it was something they had been doing since they were children.

I was there on a SeoLim visual arts scholarship, a fact that Ruby found amusing when she interviewed me for a job at her gallery. I didn’t understand why she laughed until another girl who was there on the same scholarship told me months later that Ruby’s father was Lim Jun Myeong, the CEO of SeoLim Group and one of the most famous men in Korea. Ruby and her brother Mu-cheon were younger than his other children by more than two decades, and so it was rumored that Lady Lim was not their mother and they were illegitimate by way of a receptionist in a SeoLim office building.

I’d responded to an ad on the bulletin board in our department building—a forlorn, empty square occasionally punctuated by ads for babysitting jobs posted by our cash-strapped professors. I’d needed a job desperately—the scholarship covered my tuition, my room and board, and the plane fare but not much else—and an ad in Korean looked like a lifeline. I plucked it off the board and retreated to my room to study it.

It was remarkable not only for its contents but for its appearance—gold-foil-pressed script on thick olive-colored paper—which looked more like a wedding invitation than a student flyer.

“Art Assistant Wanted for New Gallery Opening” was the header, and underneath, in smaller script, it said, “Thorough knowledge of contemporary art and fluency in Korean and English a plus.”

I imagine there wasn’t much competition for the job, but I was ecstatic when she hired me along with four other girls from various universities throughout the city. I was put in charge of designing the gallery’s catalogs, flyers, and postcards. The printing costs alone astounded me but she paid them without even glancing at the bills I would nervously hand over.

For nearly three weeks, our small group worked into the night, Ruby and I usually staying the latest as I would help her with anything she needed, even running out to bring back coffee and croissants, all bought on Ruby’s credit card, of course. The other girls tried to befriend her, but she would only respond coolly and monosyllabically to anything that wasn’t work-related, and this bred resentment. I didn’t realize until later that these girls all came from wealthy families and didn’t need the money like I did—they took the jobs so that they could meet Ruby.

Sometimes, I would just stare at her as she was working. She cut a striking figure, no matter what she was doing. She wore only lipstick and no other makeup, although I suspected she had had her eyeliner tattooed, and her clothes were always a marvel, consistently stunning in both style and cut in unusual color combinations. She had a low voice and a rare smile, which sometimes flashed across her face like a comet.

“The dean loves her because of all the donations her father made,” said one of the Parsons girls after Ruby asked us to work on Sunday morning. “And he only made them because she didn’t get into Stanford like everyone else in their family.”

“I heard it was the biggest disgrace—even all the cousins-in-laws’ neighbors get in if they’re connected to the SeoLim family,” said another girl, who went to Tisch. “Then apparently she wanted to go to Yale, but her boyfriend’s ex is going there so she threw a fit and decided to come here.”

“No, no, it was because of a huge drug bust at Ashby,” said the first girl, flipping her hair. “She was supposed to get kicked out, but they let her graduate because her dad donated a new gym. My cousin goes to Ashby and she said it cost twenty million dollars and it’s outfitted with all the latest SeoLim technology.”

Ruby came in and glanced around the room until she saw me. “Miho, can you come help with these flyers?” Without a word to anyone else she stalked back out immediately and I could see the other girls’ dissatisfaction printed on their faces. Which pleased me, because they had been ignoring me once they discovered I was on scholarship and hadn’t gone to a boarding school in America.

“I’ve never heard of it,” said another SVA girl when I told her the name of my public middle school in Korea. “Which neighborhood is it in again?” And when I told her it was in Cheongju, her eyebrows bounced sky high before she turned swiftly back to her phone.

But I didn’t care, and it wasn’t like I could have lied about my schools anyway. For all its millions of people, Korea is the size of a fishbowl and someone is always looking down on someone else. That’s just the way it is in this country, and the reason why people ask a series of rapid-fire questions the minute they meet you. Which neighborhood do you live in? Where did you go to school? Where do you work? Do you know so-and-so? They pinpoint where you are on the national scale of status, then spit you out in a heartbeat.