Waxing Moon Page 10

  Applying a wet cotton pad to soothe Mistress Yee’s raw skin, Mirae announced that her job was done. Mistress Yee opened her eyes and said, “Mirae, please don’t pull your face long. Will you stay depressed forever? It’s funny. What would you have done differently that you can’t do now because of your skin? You were my maid, and you are my maid, and you will be my maid unless I dismiss you. It’s remarkably annoying to see you act as if you’d had a different life before the chicken pox, or whatever it was.”

  Mirae remembered very well how Mistress Yee had promised, or seemed to have promised, something grand, although intangible, when she was in need of help. Mirae had participated in the affairs of her mistress as if they had been scheming for a shared purpose. She sighed deeply as she was tidying up the room after her mistress had left for breakfast. She was not grieving over her disfigured skin. No, her heart sank because she had wasted her life for nothing and that she had been gravely mistaken when she thought she had a friend in Mistress Yee. “How foolish,” she said aloud to herself. She laughed and laughed until she sounded like a madwoman and tears trickled down her cheeks.

  16

  Every year, before Mistress Kim had passed away, on holidays, especially on Harvest Day, Mr. O’s servants were busy delivering packages of food to the peasants on his land as a token of gratitude and friendship. But this year, there was no such order from the master. A day after Harvest Day, Nani realized that there was an abundance of leftover food. She knew that some of the peasants expected to taste the food served on the altar in memory of Mistress Kim.

  Early in the morning, Nani decided to send some food to at least a few people, thinking that Mistress Kim would have liked her to do so. She was looking for Min to make the delivery, but he was nowhere to be found. She should have been more sensitive when he had brought in the baby in the basket. But then, who had the time and the means to mother an orphan even for a day?

  After a while, Nani gave up looking for Min. In the end, Bok, the errand boy for Mr. O, delivered food to a few homes, including Jaya’s.

  Grumbling, and feeling still a little guilty for having been heartless, Nani staggered with a mountainous load of laundry to the creek. She was the only one there doing laundry. Everyone else was probably sleeping in after the gluttonous holiday. She began to beat the sheets and clothes with a wooden bat on a flat rock. She saw Bok race by like a puppy. Nani stopped her work and shouted to him, “Have you seen Min?”

  “No! He didn’t sleep in the room last night,” the boy shouted back, still racing across the rice field.

  “Where on earth has he gone?” Nani said under her breath, beating the blanket cover harder. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. She would tell him that. But where was he?

  The tree branches on the surface of the water danced dizzily. Suddenly, Nani raised her head to look at the surrounding mountains and was amazed by the change in the colors. It was definitely fall now. Summer was the time she had to be patient with the scorching heat and the long, stubborn afternoons that didn’t want to surrender. But then the fall would ambush her, and just when she was savoring the best season of the year, it would flee without warning. Nani could feel the crispness in the air. Soon it would be too cold to do laundry in the creek.

  By the time she was done with the laundry, a couple of women showed up with their laundry on their heads. They exchanged greetings, but Nani didn’t feel like chatting. There were things to be done. Realistically speaking, she felt that she was the only functioning maid at the moment, and the workload was getting to her. She hurried back to the house, and as she entered the gate, Mirae was leaving, all dressed up, just as she had often done before the infamous chicken pox. Widening her eyes, she surveyed Mirae from head to toe and was impressed. Whatever had happened to her? She was back to herself. This was good, but immediately the familiar hostility she had always felt toward her churned her stomach. “A lady is born,” Nani said, clucking her tongue sarcastically.

  “I am going to the temple,” Mirae said coolly. “Mistress Yee wants you.” Mirae walked away briskly.

  Nani clucked her tongue again, lingering for a while to watch Mirae sashay. She was swaying her rear end just as lasciviously as before. “Good old Mirae,” Nani remarked resentfully.

  The first thing Nani did was to inquire after Min when she saw Soonyi. He had not been sighted since the day before, but no one seemed to think it strange. She hung the laundry behind the maids’ quarters. Then she sat down by the tool shed and pensively ate an unpeeled radish, long, white, and juicy. She was thinking about Mirae; she had seemed pretty in spite of her uneven skin. When her mother was alive, she had called Mirae a mountain fox. Legend told that a mountain fox had turned into a pretty woman at night to seduce a man so that she could eat him whole in the morning. Nani was only nine years old so the story went over her head. But now that she was older, she knew vaguely what her mother might have meant. Mirae was a different sort. There was no one to compare to her.

  All of a sudden, Nani sprang up, tossing the tail of the radish in the air. She ran to Mistress Yee’s quarters as fast as she could. Still panting as she was taking her shoes off, she announced her arrival. There was no reply from inside. Her heart pounded. She announced herself again, more quietly.

  “What’s the fuss?” said Mistress Yee irritably.

  “Mistress Yee, I was told that you wanted me to come,” Nani said feebly.

  “I am glad you are still alive,” she replied. “Come in.”

  Nani opened the door and said, “Mistress, I was doing the laundry. I am sorry I am late.”

  “Come close,” Mistress Yee said, smiling unexpectedly.

  Anticipating calamity, Nani approached. She was sure that Mistress Yee was about to fire her, considering what she had accused her of in the storage room.

  “My blood circulation is really bad, and it makes my legs fall asleep all the time. I need a good massage on my legs,” Mistress Yee said as she pulled her long skirt up. Then she pulled up her long, silky white underdress and then her long white underpants, baring her legs. Nani began to massage her legs carefully, rotating her thumbs with just the right amount of pressure.

  “Ah, that feels so good. You have the touch. Did you do this for the dead woman?” Mistress Yee asked, her face completely relaxed and her eyes closed.

  “No. I did it for my mother,” Nani replied. Her forehead was slightly sweating.

  “Well, you are doing a good job,” Mistress Yee said.

  A little while later, just as Nani thought that Mistress Yee was asleep, she suddenly spoke: “Nani, how old are you?”

  Startled, Nani quickly answered.

  “I hear you are engaged to the dumb boy. What’s his name? Min. Is that correct?” Mistress Yee said with a mysterious smile.

  Nani, speeding up with her massaging, was at a loss. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Now, that is not something to be embarrassed about. Did he ever give you an assurance he would marry you?”

  “We haven’t really talked about it, Mistress Yee,” Nani replied.

  Mistress Yee opened her eyes and burst out laughing. “You couldn’t have. He can’t speak!” She laughed some more. “Of course, I understand that there are other ways to communicate. And I am sure that you have mastered that language by now. But I want to know if he intends to marry you.”

  Nani turned apple red and focused her glance on the floor.

  “Do you know that he’s been disappearing at night regularly?” Mistress Yee asked in an all-knowing tone of voice. “Does he come to you?”

  “I beg your pardon, Mistress Yee?”

  “You heard me,” Mistress Yee said, her eyes closed.

  Nani was speechless.

  “Does your silence mean yes?” Mistress Yee asked, fixing her glance on Nani.

  “Mistress Yee, my m
other taught me to behave.” She stopped, unsure about what else to say.

  “I don’t really care what you do at night,” Mistress Yee said curtly, still smiling.

  Nani bit her lip and lowered her glance.

  “If what you say is true—if Min doesn’t come to you at night—then we need to find out where he does go every night,” Mistress Yee said. Her tone was uncharacteristically serious and quiet. She raised her eyebrows questioningly and stared at Nani.

  Mistress Yee seemed to expect Nani to come up with a scheme to find out where Min went at night. But she didn’t really believe what Mistress Yee was saying. Min had no place to go, she was convinced, except that he had disappeared the day before because they had a little argument over the abandoned baby. Should she confess the event from the day before? That would demystify his absence. But then she would need to explain why she hadn’t mentioned the incident earlier, so she sat there, listening to her own breathing.

  “Will you go look for him?” Mistress Yee asked.

  “Yes, Mistress Yee,” Nani quickly answered.

  “Where will you go to look for him?” Mistress Yee asked, her eyes sparkling.

  “Well, first I will go to the field and see if he is helping out the farmers with the hay or something because he’s always wanted to lend a hand. He is very strong, you see, Mistress Yee. Then I will go to Dubak’s house to ask if he has seen him. They are friends,” Nani rattled on until she realized that Mistress Yee was not listening to her.

  “No need to go look for him. We know where he is. We are going to marry him off. I just wanted to let you know that. It seems as though he hasn’t done anything to be obliged to take you as his bride. We would like to arrange a marriage between him and a village girl with a baby, out of wedlock,” Mistress Yee said casually.

  Nani opened her mouth. But her tongue was frozen, and her limbs were dissolving into nothingness.

  “Massage my feet.” Mistress Yee wriggled her toes impatiently.

  Nani grabbed her left foot and began to massage it. Mistress Yee giggled, pulling it away from Nani. Nani could no longer hear or feel anything. She wanted so desperately to see Min and ask him if he loved her. Mistress Yee, still giggling, stretched her legs toward Nani, suggesting that she should go on with the massage. But Nani got up slowly and walked toward the door, as if sleepwalking.

  “What are you doing?” Mistress Yee cawed to the back of Nani’s head. By the time she grabbed a teacup to throw at her, it was too late: Nani was out of sight.

  17

  Mirae arrived at noon, when the monks were having their lunch in solemn silence in a small, dark room adjacent to the kitchen.

  As she made her way down the freshly swept path toward the main hall, time frozen in the air, she could hear only her own uneven steps against gravel filled ground.

  In the main hall, she sat against the far end wall and beheld the Buddha. Failing to conjure up the enlightened state she had experienced the most recent time there, she sighed, wrinkling her forehead. Her heart was a hollow place. The Buddha had no smile, the air was acrid, and all the objects in the room appeared deplorably worn out and filthy. There was a huge spider in the corner of the ceiling, suspended like a lonely acrobat. She pondered what she would like to be in her next life. Maybe a lady with many maids. Or perhaps the queen of China. No, a spider in a temple. Actually, she didn’t believe in future lives. Or past lives. Only stupid people did, she thought, and smiled bitterly.

  Her legs felt wobbly from the long walk. Slowly, she slid down to the floor, making a Chinese character, “Big,” with her body, her arms stretched out horizontally, her legs slightly parted, and her eyes closed.

  The dull and sorrowful sound of the bronze gong seeped in, filling the room. Afternoon meditation. A group of monks in their heavy drapes took careful steps to the altar room, above the stairs behind the main hall. She could imagine thirty or so bald heads in their huge robes, silently mounting the stairs. In a few moments, silence was restored. Mirae opened her eyes. The spider plunged and miraculously landed on an invisible place in midair. It knew exactly where it was going. Mirae sat up and surveyed the Buddha, whose glance, last time, had fixated on her from wherever she looked at him. Now, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make eye contact with him. It didn’t matter. She no longer felt reverence for him.

  What comforted her, though, was that she was anonymous there. That no one would pay attention to her was small serendipity. She hoped to stay there as long as she could. She suddenly felt curious to see what else was there in the temple. She knew only the main hall and the kitchen. She could explore the place without attracting anyone’s attention. She got up and slipped out and walked away from the main hall. She passed the enormous stone water tub which collected water from the hill through a bamboo pipe. A child novice arrived to fetch a pot of water. He glanced at Mirae as he walked back to the kitchen. Mirae kept walking without knowing where she was going. Passing the overgrown bamboo, she stepped into a clearing where she could see the surrounding mountains and the valley. The earth seemed to be on fire with fall colors. Her heart throbbed. She lingered there for a while, soaking in the scenery, until she heard the rumbling of a nearby voice. She turned and looked about to locate the source of the voice. Involuntarily, she walked toward the original part of the temple which had not been renovated since its construction centuries before.

  Listening to the soft, soothing chanting from within, she sat on the stone steps and leaned her head against the wooden pillar. She had no doubt that it was the head monk inside. What was the question she had asked him? She couldn’t recall now. He had answered her with sincerity, as if she were a lady, an important person. He had treated her with respect. No one had ever treated her that way.

  Down below the dirt path there was a small vegetable garden in which a few pumpkins were hiding under their leaves. She stared at them placidly, counting them. She paused, struck by an idea. She wanted to live there, among the monks. She wasn’t sure what she would do, but she wanted to live there. She could make pumpkin soup for the monks. She could garden, although she had no experience with gardening. She could do the laundry. But then, why should she wash the stinking laundry of the bald heads?

  A drop of water hit her forehead. Immediately, large drops of rain began to fall, loudly, everywhere. Surprised, she looked about. The only place where she could stay dry was inside. She pulled off her shoes quickly and stood in front of the wood-frame door. She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling self-conscious about her skin. At least the scabs were gone. Slowly, she opened the door and went in. The head monk, undisturbed, sat there, as if dead.

  Closing the door, she stood, not knowing if she should sit. And if she did, where? She had expected the head monk to be surprised, or at least to acknowledge her, and to inquire after Mr. O’s health as a formality. But he didn’t even seem to have heard her come in. She wet her lips.

  The room was small. Her breathing was the only sound. The head monk seemed to have drifted into a different world, where there was no entrance on her side, only an exit on his side. He was there but he was not there. She relaxed and immediately felt bored.

  Inspecting his profile, she let the time pass. The best part of his face was his nose, and then she changed her mind. It was his lips. They were expressive even when they were still.

  All of a sudden, she hiccupped. Covering her mouth and clenching her teeth, she tried unsuccessfully to stop hiccupping.

  The head monk opened his eyes as if he had come alive from a dream. He said something, not to Mirae, but to the world he had just left.

  Clearing her throat, Mirae began to speak, only to end with a loud hiccup.

  The head monk rose, clasped his palms, and bowed obliquely to Mirae. She rose, too, and said, “I am sorry to have disturbed you.”

  His eyelids slowly peeled back
, baring his eyes. Mirae dropped her head because she didn’t want to surprise him with her disfigured skin. Heat suffused her cheeks. “I have been struck by chicken pox,” she confessed.

  The head monk acknowledged this by dropping his eyelids briefly, and then he made his way out.

  Mirae stepped in his path. She was not sure what she was doing. But she mumbled, “I need to talk to you, if that’s all right.”

  He stopped and she sat down in front of his feet.

  He sat, too, and looked at her, his eyes full of calm compassion.

  “I would like to live here. I will do anything. I will cook and clean,” she said rapidly.

  There was silence. The monk seemed not to have heard the urgency in her voice.

  Staring at his face, lean and smooth, she could feel the age of what was holding his body, the core of him, the unreachable realm. A thousand years. She thought of the house snake who was supposed to live in between a roof and a ceiling, generation after generation, looking down on the life cycles of the inhabitants. Finally, one day when it shed its skin for the millionth time, it would become human and take over the house.

  “What about your duties at Mr. O’s?” the head monk asked.

  Mirae’s eyebrows shot up. She almost laughed. She had expected him to say something different, something profound. But what he had said was mundane, boring, stupid.

  “I am not a slave. My post as a maid can be terminated. I am there because I have nowhere to go, but if you let me live and work here, I will be very happy,” Mirae said, imagining herself standing triumphantly in front of Mistress Yee, asking to be released forever.

  “How old is this idea?” the head monk asked gently.

  “I beg your pardon?” But as soon as she spoke, she understood his question. “I was sitting outside, listening to your chanting. It occurred to me that I would really like to come and live here,” she confessed, lowering her head.