If I Had Your Face(42)

It is true that she does seem to have more swelling in her jawline than the girls from the blogs, but the lower part of her face does not protrude like that of a fish anymore—instead her mouth has moved so far inward that she now, in my secret opinion, looks toothless. Although I assure her that she will look better than any of the bloggers in the end—her transformation will be all the more dramatic for being so prolonged—she pushes my notepad away whenever I write this.

It was of course Taein who gave me the idea and the courage to think it over. In his latest SwitchBox message, he said that he was going home to Gwangju before leaving for Crown’s world tour. It would be his first homecoming since his debut. He said our roots are what make us who we are and he wouldn’t change the hardships in his past for anything, because they are what inform his lyrics and music and even his dancing today. And if he can find it in his heart to go visit his estranged mother and four older brothers, who used to ignore him and then sued him for a share of his Crown earnings, I can go home too. I have to admit that it makes me feel warm all over, to embark on this parallel journey with Taein.

Sujin will protest at first. What about our tradition, she’ll say. Every major holiday, we patronize a new bathhouse and spend the entire day roving from themed room to themed room and stone bath to stone bath, and at night we fall asleep in the TV room with snail masks smeared on our faces and oil of Jeju flowers packed into our brittle hair.

Over the years, we’ve been surprised by the number of people we see at these baths. It is nice to know that we are not the only ones who don’t want to go home.

I love our made-up tradition as much as Sujin does, but I read somewhere that it’s best to avoid saunas for a month after surgery for risk of infection, and while hers was more than two months ago, I’d rather not have her go. Having strangers stare at her would also be quite catastrophic for her mental state.

So when my mother sends her usual tentative text about my plans for Lunar New Year and how she hopes I will come home because she has something important to discuss with me, I finally respond yes. And add that Sujin will be joining me. She is recovering from a big surgery and needs a change of scenery, I write. This is to let my mother know that she should not get her fragile hopes up about this becoming a regular thing. I imagine my mother gaping at my unexpected reply, and how she will rush to the Big House garage to find my father.

While we are home, Sujin will have to focus all her energies on distracting me from getting upset. To overcompensate for my wretched memories, she’ll work herself into a frenzy.

The things I do for her.



* * *



—

WE TRAVEL THE DAY of the actual Lunar New Year, as tickets for the other days were sold out long ago. Miho is also with us. She’d heard we were going back to Cheongju and she wanted to come along and visit her teacher’s grave at the Loring Center. I’d felt obligated to invite her to stay with us, and she accepted with alacrity despite my halfhearted offer. Kyuri had already left to visit her mother a few days ago, and I was glad I didn’t have to invite her too.

It will be extremely uncomfortable, I warned Miho, underlining extremely several times. You will be sleeping on the floor. On a thin blanket, not a sleeping mat. And our hot water runs out by early afternoon, or whenever there are too many hot showers in a row. And our toilet is the kind where you have to squat.

“That’s fine,” Miho said serenely, twisting her long, sinuous ponytail around a too-thin wrist. “I only wash my hair twice a week anyway, and plus I heard your parents’ house is a huge hanok that’s centuries old? I think I remember Sujin mentioning it when we were younger. I really want to see it.” Her vivid, piquant face brimmed with expectation.

I shook my head.

“Wait, you don’t live in a hanok complex?” she asked.

I sighed and wondered how I would explain it all to her, the antiquated unreality of my parents’ life. And besides, why would I be working my fingers to the bone in a hair salon if I was some heiress of a centuries-old hanok? It is a wonder that Miho has survived so long in this world with so little sense.

I went to find Sujin, who was staring at herself in the bathroom mirror again like a ghost with all her matted hair hanging down over her cheeks, and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Oh, just let me be,” she said in a huffy voice. I tapped her again, hard.

Can you go be useful please, I wrote and showed her. Miho thinks I am from a rich family and I need you to spell out what staying at my house will actually entail. Not that Sujin has ever stayed over before either, but she had been to my house several times in middle school, before the incident.

“Why on earth would she think that?” Sujin asked, but now with a gleam of mission in her eyes as she rushed past me to put Miho straight. I wanted to add that it was most certainly due to Sujin that Miho possessed this misinformation in the first place.

“Apparently you need to understand some things,” I heard her say to Miho in a bossy voice as I went into my room and banged the door shut.



* * *



—

SO HERE WE ARE, Sujin, Miho, and I, sitting together at the back of a rattling “express” bus with our bags piled high. Even downtown Cheongju—let alone the back hills, where my family is from—will not know what to make of the likes of us: a freshly upbeat Sujin, hiding behind supersize black sunglasses and a violently colorful scarf; ethereal Miho cocooned in an emerald-colored faux-fur coat; and apprehensive, mousy me. The only thing cheerful about me is my hair. I dyed it fuchsia ten days ago, in a fit of panic after buying the bus tickets home. The roots are already showing in an intentionally cool way (I hope). Manager Kwon loved the idea of my going pink and offered to do the initial bleach himself—he always pushes us to experiment with colors in our own hair, the more maniacal the better. He says customers are happier entrusting their hair to people with imagination. I know it will fade by next week, but for now it makes me happy, as if I have set off a signal to the world. Already, I have noticed how people react with great caution to someone with fuchsia hair, even if that person is mute.