Blood Sisters Read online

  “Why is that so funny?” I pointedly ask him and his laughter fades. My face feels hot. Did I look funny being naked and unconscious? I hadn’t bathed for a few days. How embarrassing. I want to ask about the monster, but I can’t bring myself to talk about him, so instead I try moving my leg, and notice that my toenails are dirty. Ugh, so embarrassing. The hospital staff lady comes in with a tray of food, and Jihyun gets up to leave. He blows me a kiss, promising to stop by again that night. He’s so annoying.

  * * *

  “What’s your parents’ phone number?” Eunyong insists on telling my father what happened. She looks worried.

  The café owner interjects. “Why should we tell them though? Elders have weaker hearts, I don’t want to surprise them. Let them assume no news is good news. Just visit them after you are discharged. I’m going to cover the hospital fee, so no need to worry your parents.” This is the first time I’ve seen the café owner take a grave tone of voice. It disgusts me. She always acts like a child, only doing things that please her, but now she’s taken on a serious tone, trying to perform the role of reasonable elder, but I see right through her. She’s trying to control the situation to protect Sungyun, her nephew. I’ve been an idiot. Or was I pretending not to know? I shouldn’t have thought she was a good person. Eunyong was right. She would’ve taken me to work at the sketchy bar in Guangan if she’d had her way.

  “It was just a split-second bad decision,” she sputters, “he must’ve been possessed or something. Must’ve been too drunk! Why else would he do such thing? I’m sorry. I apologize for him. I’ll kneel before you if it’d please you.”

  “Do you know what Sungyun did to me? I wasn’t the only one he did that kind of shit to either!” I bark back.

  “Are you crazy? Do you want to ruin his life? He has been trying to be better. A man does that kind of stuff when he’s drunk. Okay, let’s be real. It’s not like he got to do it. And he told me you invited yourself into his room!”

  “What? Jesus Christ!”

  “Sungyun called me and told me all about how it went down. You’ve been acting coy and distant, but I heard you went over to his place late that night and cried, asking for money? I told you I could pay you in advance if you were broke! You are so ungrateful to drag things out like this!” The irate café owner was screaming at me, before Eunyong finally intervened.

  “Stop, stop! You didn’t come here to fight with Yeoul! Yeoul, you should stop too.”

  The café owner turns to Eunyong. “Eunyong, you told me you want to marry Sungyun. So, let’s set the date. But for now, just focus on taking care of the café, okay?”

  “Umm, I thought I wanted that, but now, I’m not sure anymore. I want to think about it.”

  “You want to think about it? You slept with Sungyun. You slept with him so often your vagina must be all stretched out! I know you’ve been incessantly visiting him at night. So now what? Are you gonna pretend to be a virgin? Are you gonna try marrying someone else?”

  The café owner huffed and puffed and demanded answers from us. It seemed like she wanted to waterboard us like secret service interrogators do to student protestors, until we gave her the answer she wanted. I’m more surprised that Eunyong kept this from me. I thought Eunyong just had a crush on Sungyun. I was going to let her know about what Hyunmi and I saw at the café that night when we caught him having sex. I didn’t want to break her heart, so I put it off, but here we are. My stepmother used to yell at me—You are so oblivious! Perhaps she was right.

  The café owner pulls Eunyong’s arm to lead her out the door. “You are a mess, Sungyun won’t be around for a while, so Eunyong will be busy taking care of the café. We won’t be coming back. I guess I need to find another part-time girl. What a mess.” Eunyong briefly turns to look at me, and her eyes are filled with tears.

  I want to chuck the fruit basket the café owner brought right into the garbage can, but I can’t move. I feel as stiff as a preserved frog floating in formaldehyde. And this smell. Can my own nose shrivel from the stench of my own body? That bastard. I hope my fury, my humiliation, my enmity against him won’t deteriorate. I need them. The diaper someone put on me is soaked in urine. I might have shit a little too. I can’t even clean myself. If that monster showed up with a knife right now, I wouldn’t be able to fight back at all. He would be able to destroy me, to stab me. Considering what he’s like, I could see him stabbing me hundreds of times. Would that be for the better? Which hole did he crawl into, where is he hiding?

  Übermensch

  The sun is setting between the birch trees. It’s beautiful, I mumble without thinking. I wonder if I am inadvertently following the path of destiny set by some karmic fate. With a crutch under my arm I pace by the window. Considering the view of the birch forest, I guess I’m at the hospital that’s on the top of the hill? I’m learning how to use the wheelchair, and the bandages are off, but for the last five days I haven’t been able to move at all. I must have been drugged because I slept most of the time. But even when I was unconscious the voices were pestering me.

  I asked the nurse to look out for me whenever unidentified men enter the hospital. I specified Jihyun to be the only man allowed into the room. I hope I won’t have to use the crutch for self-defense.

  Sol is here. She somehow heard about the whole thing. She keeps sighing, unlike her usual cheerful self. Her arms are crossed, and she doesn’t say anything, just listens, which annoys me.

  “I’m just worried you’ll end up limping like me.”

  “That’d be fine with me. We can limp together.” We laugh. Briefly the depression and agony disappear. I’ll try to believe that it will stay that way.

  Sol opens the book she brought and reads out loud. “‘Up!’ said he to himself, ‘thou sleeper! Thou noontide sleeper! Well then, up, ye old legs! It’s time and more than time; many a good stretch of road is still awaiting you. Now have ye slept your fill; for how long a time? A half-eternity! Well then, up now, mine old heart! For how long after such a sleep mayest thou remain awake?’”

  “I know where that’s from. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, right? You are like a mini-Jimin. Don’t take it the wrong way though, it’s supposed to be a compliment.”

  “I know. I hope you can shake off your demons, and rise up too.” Sol presents her pinky finger, asking for a pinky promise. Without really knowing what I’m promising, I lift my right hand to hook my pinky to hers. I’m glad I still have fingers. Mini-Jimin pulls out a marker from the book. She came prepared for everything. Do you have a magic wand hidden somewhere in there too? She writes on the cast on my arm. My handwriting is terrible, but hers is even worse. Her scribble looks like a henna tattoo. It’s nice. Übermensch.

  “Do you know what this means?” Sol asks.

  “Übermensch. A person who overcomes oneself. Superman.” I answer, and she looks at me approvingly. “Hey, I majored in German. You’re a Pharmaceutical major. Of course I know.”

  “Did you learn that kinda stuff from German professors? I don’t think so. You learned it from Jimin didn’t you?”

  My heart darkens. Sol leaves and the room darkens too. I turn on the light but the corner of the room stays dark. She brought me a pen and a notebook, and I feel an urge to write something. What should I write? I’ve never had a day in my life when this many people came to see me. What if I just live here? What if I can stay unwell? They feed you, and friends visit you. Not bad.

  Regardless, I am ailing in the hospital called the world. I write this line on the first page of the notebook. Not too bad for my own writing. Next, I’m going to write the list of people who visited me:

  Kim Inja (Doctor/Jihyun’s mom), Kim Sojung (nurse 1, skinny), Jeong Yunmi (nurse 2, wears a lot of makeup), Han Jihyun (visted twice), the lady who brings me meals (didn’t catch her name, as old as my grandmother), Park Sol—

  As I build this list, I am reminded of the list in that bastard’s notebook and his belligerent response when I saw it. I’m pretty sure all
the names on the list were women. What do those dates and names mean? I feel like I could make sense of it if I saw it one more time. Rapes? Murders? My imagination expands into the dark corners. I feel like if I don’t stop myself I’m going to go crazy, kill myself, or kill someone. I desperately wait for slumber to arrive. I briefly fall asleep, and like a shadow, someone slips in through the door. I keep my eyes shut tight, feeling the gaze of a man by the bed. He runs his hand along my arm, bruised from needle marks. He pulls the blanket up to cover me and leaves something on the shelf by the bedside. I hear him walk to the window and picture him looking out. He returns to me, barely grazes my forehead with his fingertips, sighs, and slips back out of the room.

  •

  In my head, I heard a crow flying, caw caw.

  I was about seven years old, crying, and as the sun was going down, I looked up at the sky above my grandma’s fence. An unfamiliar lady gave me a small carton of milk, gently brushed my forehead with her hand, and left.

  After he’d gone, I struggle to get up and look at what he left behind. A bottle of cherry juice, a carton of strawberry milk, straws, two tangerines, and a poetry book by Baudelaire. I didn’t know a dentist could be this nice. It’s so late at night too. It’s almost creepy that he made a point to come by.

  I pull the spout of the milk carton open, put the straw in, and suck the milk through the straw. Is a mother’s milk supposed to be as tasty as this? Was I ever breastfed? In the silent stillness of the night, I fall asleep with the milk carton in my hand.

  Metamorphosis

  A detective stops by.

  “So what happened was …” I stumble over my words as I try to explain what happened, what Sungyun did to me. The detective chuckles as he takes his hat off. Shit, I realize it’s the bastard. He pulls a gun out of his belt and presses the barrel against my temple. The gunshot rings in the air.

  “Are you there?” The door opens and Jihyun wakes me up from the dream.

  “You scared me.”

  Jihyun commutes here nearly every day. There were a few days he couldn’t make it, but as if he wanted to make up for those days, he visited several times on other days. “You’ll be discharged tomorrow. It’s a good thing, but I almost feel sad that I won’t be able to find you here anymore.” He trails off, and pulls out a CD from the inner pocket of his jacket. He opens the CD player—he got it for me for my stay in this room—and gently places the CD into the slot. Last night, he shared that he actually wanted to major in music, but his mother was fiercely against the idea, so he went to study dentistry. He said he’s sick of looking into the mouths of strangers every day. He said he’d like to play his electric guitar for me and added that since the hospital room wasn’t a good place for that, I would have to come over to his place—I couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious. The music he put on feels dark. Sounds like … progressive rock?

  “They’re a Sicilian art-rock band. They were active in the Italian underground scene. After releasing albums in 1972 and 1973, they disappeared like a ghost. This is their second album. Pretty good, huh?”

  “It’s a little depressing and monotonic, but mesmerizing. What’s the band’s name?”

  “Their band name means Byeontae, it means …”

  I interrupt. “Eek, what?”

  “Haha, no, not the perverted byeontae. Byeontae—transformation. Their name is Metamorfosi.”

  At the end of the sentence, we both get noticeably sadder. The cover image of the album looks like the hell from Dante’s Inferno.

  “I did a background check on Sungyun … He has several criminal charges of attempted rape. He’s paid a million won in fines. There were a bunch of other cases he tried to settle with the women … His reputation among the vendors in the neighborhood is not good. What do you plan to do after you’re discharged?”

  “I feel conflicted. A few days ago, my friends stopped by, including Sol, and we were discussing what we should do after I’m discharged. My Sunbe’s suicide also seems to be linked to him, and I feel like I shouldn’t just sit around and do nothing. I’m a little scared. I’m not sure what to do. Do you know where he is?”

  “The rumor is that he ran off to the countryside, or that he’s lying low somewhere nearby. Is hanging out with your friends from the Blue Stockings a good idea? Isn’t that dangerous? It’s not just Sungyun you’d be dealing with. He’s a part of Onchun-2-dong, that group of gangsters. It’s going to be tough, but …”

  “But?”

  “I might be being nosy. I admit I have no idea what’s going on in your family, but what do you think about moving back with your parents? Just make up with them? After staying there for a while, you can move out once we get married … If we hurry, we can make it happen fast.”

  “Wait, doctor. I’m really grateful you brought me here and that you’ve been helping me. But what are you talking about? Where is this coming from? I think you have some unexamined assumptions, no, fantasies about women, marriage, and starting a family.”

  “Why are you suddenly addressing me as doctor? I’m just trying to figure out how to protect you, how to make you happy. I haven’t dated much, so I don’t really know women. I don’t have siblings, nor many friends or cousins, so I don’t know much about women. I admit it. I just want to be with someone I can talk to and listen to music with, someone I can be true friends with. Please don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you Jihyun. Jihyun, you’re nine years older than me. Why do you use the honorific with me? Why haven’t you even touched my hand if you’re interested in me? A lot of things you say don’t make sense to me. Is this marriage talk coming from some sort of weird sense of ethical obligation after carrying me while I was naked?”

  “One question at a time, please. What am I supposed to do if you carpet-bomb me like that?” He forces a laugh before responding. “Okay, let me answer … What was your first question? Okay. So you are saying I can talk to you casually, right? Well, I’d like that.” He switches the phrasing with me and continues. “Secondly, why don’t I even touch your hand? Well…”He looks at my fingers. My nails are a mess from my nail-biting habit. I curl my fingers to hide them. He gently places his hand over mine. I can feel the lines of his palms. They feel like they will leave marks on the back of my hand. He has a warm, soft hand. Unlike mine, there are no hard calluses. Jihyun takes his dress shoes off, crawls onto the bed, and lies down by my side. I no longer wait for a kiss with my eyes closed like the time before. I lean in to kiss him. I want more. More. More.

  Is what I’m doing some sort of stubborn protest, a demand for love? Does this have anything to do with the fact that he looks like my father? Ugh, I don’t know. Why are his lips so much sweeter and softer than Hyunmi’s? After our lips part, he smiles shyly. He strokes my cheek, and then kisses my forehead. He reaches his arm around me and pats me on the back.

  “Yeoul, I want to fall asleep with you in my arms. I feel like we will rise up and float in the air. This feels like a dream. Once you are discharged, let’s go on a gondola ride. No, not the one in the amusement park, but the real gondola in Venice …”

  Knock knock knock. The doctor walks in with her hands full of shopping bags. She looks like some rich lady who loves shopping just getting back from her favorite department store. The hands of the clock on the wall are pointing eleven o’clock. “Yeoul, what are you doing staying up with the lights on this late?” Her wide eyes gleam. “And you!” she says to Jihyun, “Weren’t you here earlier today? What are you still doing here? Do you plan on going to work tomorrow? Go home. She needs to rest too! Lying in bed with the patient, how professional. Some doctor you are!”

  “Speaking of professionalism, Mom, what are you doing visiting here in the middle of the night?”

  “What? I was going to stop by tomorrow, and I saw the lights. Yeoul, I thought you wouldn’t have clothes to wear when you are discharged tomorrow, so I brought you some things. They’ll probably fit you.” She opens
the shopping bag, inside is a pair of Jordache jeans, a cool T-shirt with skull patterns, a pair of sneakers. Everything looks super trendy. They must be expensive, the kind even rich kids have a hard time affording.

  After she’s shown me everything, she goes back to her fake scolding tone. “Yeoul, go to sleep. Jihyun, get down from the bed. It’s cramped! Come on. Go home and sleep in your own bed.” It’s hard to tell if Jihyun and his mom care for each other given the way they are at each other like cats and dogs. The doctor nags him a little more, and then whispers to me, “Before you leave the hospital tomorrow, stop by at my office. I have something I have to tell you.” She says it with such gravity, I wonder what it could be.

  After she’s left the room, Jihyun awkwardly climbs down from the bed. “Is there something going on between you and my mom?” he asks.

  I think to myself, What a strange question, and reply, biting into a crispy apple: “What kind of question is that? And what’s up with your mom? It’s nice of her that she got me all these things, but it’s a bit much.”

  “It’s hard to explain, or maybe it’s not so hard. Oh shoot, I said I wouldn’t use the honorific, but here I am again. Okay,” he switches back to casual. “My parents are separated. My dad lives in Italy. He’s a tour guide for the Korean tourists, and also a professor of music. Voice, to be specific. He rides his boats everywhere. Mom says he’s stricken with wanderlust.”