If I Had Your Face(43)
Mercifully, the bus is half empty—most of the filial legions transited days ago to the provinces—and the driver estimates the travel time to be just under three hours.
Sujin and Miho are bickering about whether Sujin should visit the Loring Center and Miss Loring’s grave with Miho or not. Sujin has not been back since she left.
“I don’t understand, I thought you liked Miss Loring,” says Miho, looking hurt.
“You are so delusional,” says Sujin, looking at me wildly. “You can ask Ara. Did I like anyone at the Loring Center? Especially the white woman? I can’t believe you thought that for a single minute!”
I pat her back and write She hated everyone on my notepad. Sujin passes it to Miho.
“But Miss Loring was so nice! She left all of her money to all of us, remember? All of our school supplies, art supplies, our clothes—that was all her. You have to appreciate that?” Miho looks aghast at Sujin, who sticks out her lip, aggrieved.
“She liked you because you were talented and pretty,” says Sujin. “I never used the art room. She only liked kids who were special in some way because it made her feel good about looking after us. Like Yunmi in the grade below us. Miss Loring liked her because she was so beautiful and she could sing. She got her some music scholarship.” Sujin shrugged and amended, “It’s not that she disliked the rest of us, she just…Oh, whatever, you wouldn’t understand. And besides, I totally admit that I caused a lot of trouble, so it’s just natural she didn’t like me.”
“You just said it’s not that she didn’t like you,” says Miho.
“Oh shut up,” says Sujin.
Miho frowns and shifts savagely in her seat, jostling the pile of bags next to her. The topmost bag, which is hers, falls to the floor with a thud.
“Shit,” hisses Miho, staring at it with a stricken face.
We look at her.
“It was my present for your parents,” she says wretchedly, hopping down and pulling it up onto her lap. Unzipping it, she pulls out a large black box, which has the Joye department store logo etched in spidery, designer font.
“What was it?” whispers Sujin.
I had told both of them in vain that they shouldn’t buy gifts for my parents—they would be utterly wasted. But they had both ignored me—Sujin had brought a large green tea fresh cream cake from the new bakery in Shinyoung Plaza, where people lined up around the block. “At least you’ll like it even if your parents don’t,” Sujin had said when I wrote in exasperation that my parents didn’t eat Western desserts and they would have no earthly way of knowing that it had cost her almost 100,000 won. And if they were to ever find out how much it cost, their heads would explode and they would think that she was not only criminally wasteful but obscene.
Miho pries open the lid and sighs with happiness—the deep square box is packed with neat rows of absurdly perfect-looking blush roses. The fragrance that arises from them is startling and lovely in the stale bus air. Sujin and I look at each other—I’ve never seen an arrangement like this before, but it’s obvious they are monstrously expensive. And flowers are the worst possible gift to get people like us! Miho should know this and not waste her money! I start sighing again, and Sujin jabs me with her elbow.
“They are beautiful,” Sujin says. “That tumble didn’t hurt them one bit.”
“They’re supposed to be able to last a year, can you believe it?” says Miho. “Hanbin’s mother had the chemical technology patented in Korea last year.”
I sigh and smile at her and hope that she got a discount from her boyfriend at least although I highly doubt it. There is really nothing else to do but turn to the window. We are on the highway now and it is unbelievable how much construction is going on even as we speed further and further away from Gangnam. Each building is topped with a gargantuan orange crane reeling large beams and planks through the air. The scale of these new apartment complexes takes my breath away—I cannot imagine them all filling with people and furniture and light. Hundreds, no, thousands of apartments, so far away from the heart of the capital, and yet I will never be able to afford a single one, no matter how much I save all my life. In a way, I will be glad when we are almost home and the scenery will turn into rice fields and farm plots, and I will be reminded of how far I have come, instead of what I cannot reach.
* * *
—
AT THE TAXI line at Cheongju station, we have to wait half an hour for a car because no one likes to work on New Year’s Day. I read somewhere that many of the drivers who work on holidays are ex-convicts who cannot go home to their families because of shame. Fortunately there is a bench by the taxi stand and we huddle together for warmth, Sujin and Miho giggling at the hostile looks we are getting from the occasional passersby. “Home sweet home,” says Sujin, theatrically. It’s true, no one in Gangnam would give us a second glance—green coats and pink hair and all. Just the fact that we are waiting at the stand marks us as “other”—the rest of the disembarking passengers had cars and family members waiting on the curb with eager smiles.
After three years of being away, it’s hard to believe that this dinky two-story building the size of a chain grocery store back in Seoul is one of the main transit hubs here. When I was young, it had seemed to me that the rest of the world was compressed into this bus station, the people with the quicker steps and large travel bags heading for darkly glamorous lives.