A MOMENT OF PEACE

It was yesterday that I saw him, when I was walking to the bus stop to go to work. I was almost to the stop when his bent figure resolved out of the crowd and I halted, sucking in a surprised breath. Though it had been many years, I knew it was him. He was standing by the side of the road, glancing unsteadily about, watching the traffic as it roared through the morning haze of downtown Pusan, and seeing him I remembered the cold day and the well water and the beautiful silent girl named Min-jee.

He wore a black coat like an old bag. He had no tie and his gray pants were wrinkled. His head—many years ago balding—now looked like a splotchy brown egg in the drab sunlight. He was waiting for a bus, going somewhere with a TV. It looked as old as him. It was tucked under his arm and the rabbit ears were broken off.

A bus came. His impatient eyes darted towards me as I approached the stop, looked through me, unseeing. Then he stepped on board. Except for his eyes, his mouse-like features remained still as a mask; they betrayed no recognition. But I was not surprised. I was short back then and now I am tall. My hair too had been short, like every other Korean schoolgirl’s. People used to say I was ugly. Now boys stare at me and ask me to go with them for coffee, so I guess I am pretty.

I hated him then, that second year in middle school. I remember walking out of the school and cursing him after it was all over. Even before starting that year I had feared him. His name was Mr. Huh and he was a science teacher. Among my seniors he was known as "The Viper." He often checked our uniforms and hair length at the school gates in the morning and punished the girls who did not meet standards. Many girls I knew got beaten by him.

I was unlucky in that I had Mr. Huh for homeroom and science. In those days in Korea the homeroom teacher was like a king. He disciplined us and reprimanded even a sneeze. In the morning we sat in silence under his guard for the study hour. After our last class in the afternoon we could not leave until he was satisfied with our cleaning. A scrap of tissue left in a toilet stall wastebasket could mean an hour more of cleaning or an additional assignment. Mr. Huh enjoyed keeping girls after school. He would leer at them with his rheumy eyes and lecture on the importance of cleanliness. Some girls had breasts by second year and it was not hard to tell where his gaze went.

But the rich girls always got along fine in his classes. Even the dull ones did all right. Some brought him pineapples and pears in the morning and set them on his desk. I had never even tasted a pineapple; they were too expensive. If a rich girl misbehaved or couldn’t answer a question, he would command her to kneel on her chair. He would then lecture to her like a little soldier and half-heartedly paddle the bottoms of her feet. It was considered a respectable punishment. It was not like this for the poor girls though, and now that I am older I know why he treated the rich girls so well. Parents sometimes bribed teachers to improve their children’s marks and insure their fair treatment. Only rich parents could do this of course.

Maybe a third of the girls in my class were from Amee District, where I lived. It was a poor neighborhood on a hill overlooking the center of Pusan. The Amee District girls always got beaten. But not like soldiers. He beat us like animals. I remember one poor girl who had not brought in her homework on three consecutive days. He hit her with his stick all over like she was a dog, poking her and shaking his stick in her face and telling her how worthless she was.

I didn’t know where she came from, but Min-jee was poor. I sat beside her and though she was new in our school, she never spoke to me or tried to make friends. She was beautiful in an aloof sort of way, beautiful but malnourished. I could see the splotches on her pale skin, and her long limbs were like sticks. She made me think of a flower in need of watering. Her cheekbones were high—the kind I always wanted to have—and though her eyes were often downcast they were confident. She did not seem troubled being alone and silent.

Two days after the first term final exam we received our grades. Whether or not our class had improved over the midterm was very important because classes competed to have the highest scores and teachers received promotions depending on how well their class did. The girls lined up from one end of the room to the other. We talked quietly among ourselves as Mr. Huh reviewed our scores. To those who had improved he handed a paper flower and said Well done; those who had not received a crack on the hands from Mr. Huh’s stick. Those who did very poorly were beaten on the backs of their legs.

As we stood waiting in the long line in the room that day, I looked about. Some of the girls were my friends and we had often talked about Mr. Huh. About what it was like to be next in line when you could already see the grade on your paper and knew it wasn’t good enough, about how you could already feel the slap of the stick on your hands and hear the bark of Mr. Huh’s voice. Now as I looked about some of those same girls had their feet crossed nervously. They pinched themselves and squeezed their fingers and stepped on their own toes and stared at the floor, but when I looked at Min-jee I never saw her do that. I was just behind her and I decided I would watch Mr. Huh’s eyes when he spoke to Min-jee, to see if he looked down for some reason other than to check the grades.

The line shuffled forward. As we neared Mr. Huh we became quieter until we couldn't talk at all. Soon Min-jee stood before him. Mr. Huh glanced at her exam paper and compared it to her previous exam score written in the record book. A look of gloating flickered around the corners of his mouth and I guessed Min-jee had not done as well as he expected. When he reached out a veiny hand to clutch her wrist, I knew it was so.

She did not lower her chin, even when he glared at her and said she was lazy. I was not breathing as he raised the rod. My eyes followed it. Then, with a loud snap, it fell onto her hands.

I flinched, but Min-jee did not. Twice, three times and a fourth he struck her, then dropped the stick on his table. I felt the wood rattle on the glass, and in place of his gloating look I saw his features twist, as if a rage that had not been there before had suddenly flared up in him. He shoved Min-jee’s exam paper into her hands and she turned.

Our eyes met as she passed me. They were warm, yet impassive. I stepped back and felt a thrill pour through me because she was not defeated. I too was punished, so much that afterwards I could hardly lift my books. But though I shook I did not cry as I had so many times before. Min-jee had let me share something of her victory.

From then on my gaze hardly left Min-jee. She was not a friend as other girls in the class were, but in the occasional glance of eyes I saw she possessed something the others did not. Even in her sickliness she seemed radiant. I could not fathom her silence and what kept her back was a mystery to me. There were other girls who did not speak, but they were silent out of fear and friendlessness. I could tell it was not that way with Min-jee.

Thinking about that time now I know Min-jee became something of an unrequited love for me, perhaps the first person I ever loved tenderly, only for the sake of what she was. I know we often love what we do not have, whether we understand it or not, and every one of us wanted to be accepted, to be popular—that hunger was our weakness. Yet as frail as she was in body, she was not frail in her eyes or in her bearing, and perhaps that is what drew me to her.

Then came a day for which I never forgave myself. That is, not until Min-jee herself forgave me. In our science class Mr. Huh administered an unannounced quiz. I remember gripping my pen in sweaty hands—there were too many questions I could not answer. One asked What is the phenomenon in which water becomes a gas? I could not remember the word. My gaze darted around the room. I saw Min-jee’s paper, what she had written, and I scrawled the same word on my answer sheet. I struggled with several more questions but by now I felt ashamed and I left several blank. I knew I had failed the quiz.

The next day we were told the results. Many students had failed and I was relieved to hear that. Mr. Huh lectured us sternly about the importance of science and the necessity of diligent study habits. He asked us each how much we slept. Only lazy students, he said, slept more than six hours a night.

Then he called out two names: Ee Min-jee. Pak Soo-jung. Come to the front. My sense of relief fled, and a burning sensation rose into my face as I slowly stood.

The class fell silent. We had all learned to judge Mr. Huh by his tone of voice and it was easy to tell something bad had happened. I suddenly could think only of the moment I stole the word from Min-jee’s paper. I looked about helplessly, saw the faces of the other girls. They looked aghast as their eyes followed me to the front of the room.

Min-jee got to the desk before I did. Mr. Huh was sitting back in his chair, waiting, clutching his stick, and when I finally stood in front of him I couldn’t stop my hands from squeezing each other.

One or both of you cheated, he said. Which one?

Min-jee was motionless. My face was hot and my head hurt.

Neither of us spoke, and the silence of that moment ached inside of me. I felt ashamed because Min-jee was suffering for me.

Mr. Huh looked back and forth between us. I turned my head away so I could not see him and then I felt the first sting of tears in my eyes. My lips trembled. I wanted to say it, say that I had cheated, that I was sorry and that Min-jee shouldn’t be hurt for any of this, but nothing came out of my mouth.

Suddenly Mr. Huh shot up out of his seat, brandishing his stick. Insolent students! he yelled, and ordered us to turn around and bend over. It had been two years since any teacher had done this to me. I bent over.

The rod’s strike on my skin felt like when I accidentally touched my mother’s hot rice cooker, only worse, because I could not draw myself away. First it hit me, then Min-jee. Then me, then Min-jee. Again and again. I pressed my eyes shut so hard I saw spots. Then it stopped and a bark from Mr. Huh sent us back to our desks.

My thoughts flew about like windblown leaves. My stomach was queasy and I felt like tiny red crabs eating me up inside. All I wanted to do was shrink away from Min-jee, to run from her, and from that time on my eyes avoided her. Whenever possible I talked to other girls so that I would not have to feel that silent presence beside me. I took a failing grade for the quiz, and my marks for the rest of the year were low—too low if I was to get into anything besides a commercial high school. Only the dullest students went to those. I had never been a bad student until then and I did not know what to think. I could not concentrate. My mother and father sometimes scolded me but it did no good.

That winter was very cold. It snowed often and temperatures were frequently below zero Celsius. In the classrooms we had no heat, not even the gas heaters that are so common nowadays. Many students got lice in the winter. The cold drove the bugs indoors I guess, and poor girls like me could not keep clean. During the winter no one in my family ever even took a full bath. It was too expensive to heat great quantities of water in our house and we could not afford the entrance fee to the public baths, so lice and fleas were inevitable. I can remember sometimes lying on the heated floor of our house and seeing their tiny black bodies dropping from my hair to the floor. My mother would comb through my hair and kill whatever she found, but there were always a few left over to lay eggs and breed more.

The lice disgusted Mr. Huh. He would poke with his stick at the girls who were infested and order them out of the classroom. We had to go to a well behind the school to bathe our heads with the medicated soap he passed out. In the winter and early spring this was very unpleasant because the water was so cold. Sometimes we had to drop stones into the well to break thick ice.

Mr. Huh checked us one day in mid January. When he came to me he tapped me with his stick and I bent my head over. I stared at the floor while his stick sifted through my hair. He did not touch me with his hands, only searched with his watery eyes. Then he issued the inevitable pronouncement: Go wash yourself!

I stood up to go, not looking at Min-jee, though I knew she would follow me shortly. I did not put on my coat before going outside since I would have to take it off anyway when I washed my hair. I left the classroom, then walked down the hall and out the back door of the school. The morning’s wind was still blowing. A dusting of snow lay in the sandy yard. I made for the well, passing the girl who had gone out before me.

When I came to the well I picked up the bucket. The cold metal surface seemed to claw at my skin. I dropped it down into the water, letting it sink, then hauled it back up. It was heavy, and freezing water dripped onto my hands from the rope.

My hands hurt from the cold as I lowered the bucket to the ground. I stared at the water sloshing about inside it, then remembered the disinfectant soap. The girl before me was supposed to have left it by the bucket but I did not see it. Perhaps it was used up. I didn’t want to go back to the classroom to ask Mr. Huh for soap, so I poured the water into the metal tub by the well. Squatting, I leaned forward, supported by my left arm, and dipped my head into the water.

My scalp burned with the cold. The sensation poured through my head down into my body. My teeth began to chatter as I ran the numb fingers of my right hand through my hair and scratched my head. My left arm grew tired, so I tried switching to my right but pitched forward into the tub. Water gushed up my nose and stung my eyes. I spluttered and fell back on the pavement, coughing, dripping water down the front of my dress. All around me the wind was blowing.

Then I heard the bucket. Someone was lifting it. I blinked and drew the hair away from eyes and saw Min-jee standing beside me, lowering the bucket into the well. She was not looking at me. At her feet I saw a bar of disinfectant soap.

She lifted the bucket out of the well, flinching slightly as the cold water splashed onto her arms. Then she knelt by me and spoke. I could not even understand her for a moment, though all she said was my name.

I blinked, staring into her face, and then she took my head into her hands and gently tilted it forward. I thought of my mother and the times when she had held my head in her hands to comfort me. Min-jee lathered the soap, then began rubbing it into my hair. My eyes were clenched tight but inside my heart a space of clear light was cracking open. I heaved in a breath then let it out slowly and evenly.

She lifted the bucket of water and poured it slowly over my head. I no longer felt the cold so badly. I did not try to help her. Gently she brushed my hair side to side washing out the soap along with the lice. She did this a second time and then began drying me with a towel.

As if from far away I heard her voice, a voice I realized I hardly knew. Soo-jung. Do not worry my dear, we are almost finished. This year is almost over and there will not be another like it.

That was all. I stood up and finished drying my hair by myself. She began cleaning her own. I watched her briefly as she squatted, leaning over the tub. I felt awkward. I could not say anything to her and I guess she did not expect me to say anything. She was attending fully to herself now.

I draped the towel over the edge of the well. I felt foolish and at the same time immensely happy. For a moment longer I watched her, but before I turned to walk back to the school I whispered aloud, too quietly for her to hear, Thank you, Min-jee.

* * * * * *

Seeing Mr. Huh brought Min-jee back to me. It had been so long since I had even thought of her. But the quiet, beautiful girl from my past whom I had loved became real again to me if only for a moment, real as the old man I saw stepping on board the bus.

She sat by my side the remainder of that year. But in my thoughts I no longer begged her to speak to me; my eyes did not ask her to say anything. I had accepted her silence.

My last memory of Min-jee was from a day in mid February, when the snow still lay on the ground. I had finished cleaning in the classroom and walked out to the set of swings behind the school. I sat there alone in the sun’s warm light, rocking slowly back and forth, dragging my feet in the dirt. When I looked up I saw Min-jee coming across the yard toward me. I watched as she approached and our gazes met. The silence was not awkward, and I felt happy as she took a seat on the swing beside me.

For several minutes neither of us said anything. We did not even look at each other, only swung slightly back and forth together, enjoying the still, sun-lit air. Then I heard her voice, just as I had on that cold, wet day by the well.

Where do you live? she asked.

It figures, she said, and started laughing. Not knowing what else to do, I, too, began to laugh.

Finally I asked her, Why are you laughing?

That’s where I live, she said, and slowly our words, our questions and answers, gathered into conversation and we talked—we talked as friends. I do not remember what we said, I only remember we talked and I was happy for that.

A week later the school year finished and spring break began. By then, Mr. Huh had ceased to frighten me. When his eyes caught mine, I did not look away. Even his punishments somehow felt less painful.

When my third year at the middle school began in March, I looked for Min-jee in all the classes, but could not find her. I asked about her in the school office and was told she had been transferred to a different school. I assumed her family had moved, and inside I felt an indefinable sorrow. That year however, was my best ever academically. I placed in the top ten percent and the year after entered a high school with a very good reputation.

As I watched Mr. Huh step in to the bus, my love and my hurt from the past were right there with me, and inside I understood how time can heal even such a hurt as Mr. Huh had caused me. Looking at him, ragged and clutching a broken machine, I could sense the emptiness in him and I no longer hated him. I pitied him, for he had nothing.

I watched as he put the TV down to place the coins into the money box. The crowd behind him pressed forward impatiently. Through the windshield I saw as he lifted his television again, then turned and disappeared into the crowded bus. Others pushed their way on board, until at last no more could get on and the doors closed, the engine roared, and the bus pulled away from the curb. My gaze followed it as it maneuvered into the traffic and for a moment I thought I could see, beleaguered and crushed amid the numberless passengers, the haggard face of Mr. Huh. Then the bus faded into the traffic, and I turned away, to wait for my own bus.

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