MODERNITY                                                

                                short story

                set in Hansan, rural South Korea,1994

                         (encountering others)

     Hansan is a hamlet in South Korea on the west coast, halfway between Seoul and

the southern end of the Korean peninsula. It has a main street that is also the

through highway, and five streets, paved, that intersect that main road. The cross

streets go both ways a short distance, have interspersed homes and shophouses---

laundries, groceries, restaurants-- until the streets just terminate into weeds and

bramble. The main street has the same kind of enterprises, except the businesses

are continuous, beside each other. No building is taller than two stories, and the

highway defines where Hansan ends and where it begins, depending on your

traveling direction. The newest building, where Kirby lived, was the Teachers’ House

on one of the side streets, an apartments fourplex of red brick, fronted with a brick

tile parking lot

      Every place is specific to itself, and Hansan is famous for weaving ramie, the

fabric used in traditional Korean garments that are only worn for special occasions.

Surrounding Hansan are ride paddies, and one day a week is market day when the

farmer women bring their produce into town and squat by the curbs of the main

street with tubs of melons, peppers, radishes, celery, what have you, selling to the

few town locals and to people who drive from Sochon, a real sized town to the south

several kilometers away, who know there are green bargains to be had in Hansan. In

summer, the farmers are in the fields under relentless blazing sun from first dawn and until well after dark, their bent silhouettes still

visible under moonlight at ten in the evening. On summer Saturday nights, the farmer men come into town, standing in the street

drinking beer and soju, and naturally the later it gets the louder they become.

     So Kirby was there in Hansan, a “mentor teacher” for Korean English teachers, an American living alone in one of the teacher’s 

apartments. It was an adequate one bedroom, living room, kitchen affair. Kirby. He thought as a teacher he should be Mister

Mayfield, but considering pronunciation problems with ‘r’s and ‘l’s that sounded like mistelmayfreed, some sort of rubdown lotion for

horses, maybe, or a medicinal herb. They could say Kirby, though on the lips of some it sounded like kalbi, the highest grade of meat

used to cook traditional Korean barbeque.      

     And so he was in Chungchong Nam Province, in Hansan, in Sochon County, the capital of which was the nearby town Sochon. He

was also on crutches, with a broken ankle that happened shortly after his arrival. It was a slippery country when it came to wet

restrooms and linoleum floors outside them. Navigating helped if you were a Korean. He had made an abrupt left pivot on wet

leather soled shoes from a toilet into a narrow linoleum floored corridor, and was one moment standing and the next sitting, looking

with disbelief at a dislocated ankle that had been perfectly fine until only a second before.

     With the ankle broken, the teachers had consented to have the classes at his

Hansan apartment, rather than at where they had previously been, at the middle

school in Sochon, which required walking and a bus ride to get to. Because they

became regular house guests, it seemed he got to know them a little better than he

had in the formal setting of a classroom.

     These Korean teachers of English knew English, could read it, write it, and speak it if only an English speaker could understand

them. They only had each other to talk to. Upon arrival in Hansan, in the car of Sochon Education Ministry guys who had driven him

from the provincial capitol Tejun, Kirby had inquired how many other Americans lived in Sochon County. The answer was---none. 

How many non-Koreans? None. You are the only foreigner here. Only you, and you alone. It didn’t take him long, like until the first time he

ventured past his brick driveway, where people giggled and little kids followed him, to understand that he was E.T.

     What the teachers  needed, despite their mastery of the English language among

each other, was practice speaking, and help with pronunciation. The classes were

designated as Conversation, and that meant topics. An inevitable and frequent (and,

he thought, often unfortunate) item was cultural  differences. To fill three hours with

that, he soon found they were discussing  anything and everything about Korea, then

asking him what happens in America in similar situations.

     When the classes weren’t there, Kirby was alone and lonely, yet one night about

8:00 PM he heard a soft tap at his door. When he answered, standing there were an

ajima, and as he soon learned, her 22 year old daughter, the young adult with a 

paperback Korean-English dictionary in her hand. The older woman wore the uncaring lack- of- fashion attire of the farmers, which is

to say it was western but could have come from a Salvation Army store. The daughter, was in vogue

in a country way, in jeans and a purple  T-shirt, though she would not yet fit on the trendy streets of Seoul--- which he had begun to

explore a bit lately on weekends, crutches or not.

     The daughter spoke, and. not unexpectedly, the mother spoke

English not a word. Daughter said, “I want to practice English conversation.” And her

pronunciation was not bad. They learned English from primary school age,

but…pronunciation. He remarked on her skill with that, and she said she listened to AFKN radio, the American Armed Forces Korean

Network, the radio station from Kunsan Air Base that Kirby himself used also for news, music and sanity. She also watched American

movies and ignored the subtitles, listened to songs. Her parents had been farmers, but now owned the town’s “Mexican Chicken”

restaurant (that’s fried chicken KFC style, and no one can explain why it’s called Mexican)  

     Kirby thought this: I’m sitting here alone on crutches, and this kid just said she

wants conversation, which sounded like she wants to talk to me. With Momma

present, of course.

     He invited them to come in and take pillows. (There was only one chair, his, a stuffed armchair.)  The younger woman stated her adopted American name for English classes as Maisey, but spelled May Zee. He told her she could spell it any way she wanted, but in his mind he would see Maisey. She said, “You should see May Zee.”

    He said “I can’t.”

    She said, “Why not?”

    He said “I see what I see. It will sound the same.”

 Her mother, who as declared, understood nothing of the conversation,

comprehended some conflict, because she got up and pointed to the bathroom. He

nodded assent, and she went in but didn’t close the door, just turned on the water in

the bathtub, left it running, then went into his bedroom.

     He asked May-i-Zee, “What is your mother doing?”

    Maisey didn’t seem to hear that question, though it didn’t need immediate

answering because Momma came back with several of his T-shirts and brought them

into the bathroom, and soon he heard splashing and knew it was getting very wet in

there. Korean bathrooms have a drain in the middle of a tiled floor. If there is a shower there’s no need of a shower curtain, and wet floors were how he got hurt in the first place. The door slammed, and the water ran from the tub in torrents now. His crutches had rubber tips at the bottom that slipped on wet surfaces, and he wouldn’t be able to use the toilet until the floor dried. 

     He got up, got the crutches under his arms, went to the bathroom door, and tried

to turn the door knob. Locked. He pounded on the door and shouted, “Ajima.”

     She ignored him. He returned to his chair, and said to Maisey, “Tell her get out of

the bathroom”

     Maisey looked at him with pleading eyes that said, “I don’t tell my mother anything.”    

     “Say something that will get her out of there”.

      Maisey brightened with inspiration. “I’ll tell her you want money.”

      “No…Okay…Anything.”

      “How much?”

     “I don’t want anything. I want her out of there.”

     Maisey screamed in Korean so her mother could hear her.

    The door opened. The water continued running. The bathtub was overflown, the

water beside the toilet two inches deep. There’s a ceramic step in doorways of

bathrooms for situations such as this, but Mamma’s swamping had reached halfway

to that barrier.

     Mother and daughter had a loud animated conversation in Korean, interspersed

with Kirby’s plea, “Turn off the water!”

     Maisey said, “She wants to know, How about 15,000 won an hour?”

     “I don’t want any money. Turn off the water.”

    Okay, Maisey couldn’t tell her mother to do anything, and he didn’t understand

what they were saying, but if he was understanding these two women by cause and

effect, Maisey had informed Momma (actually she called her “’uma”, “Mom” in

Korean, short he thought for ajima, which is a middle aged woman) that Kirby didn’t

care about any money, he made enough and he was lonely, he’d teach Maisey English if ‘uma would turn off the water. Well, maybe that WAS what he meant. He’d  postulated this communication based on an action-reaction sequence, because ‘uma did go into the bathroom, shut the faucet, and began ringing out his T-shirts .She had  hangers she’d previously brought from the bedroom, and hung the shirts from the bare curtain shower frame. The flood quickly receded down the drain, but he gauged two hours before he’d be able to go in on crutches without slipping. Well, he was mastering hopping on occasion.

     It was time to wrap, call it a night, to employ a couple of American idioms.

Maisey wrote those down in a notebook he hadn’t noticed before, a little one about

the size if her dictionary, carried under it.

     Kirby said, “You know, probably in Korea like America, the first class is always just an introduction, then you start the second class. No, I don’t need any money for this, but if I have a conversation class with you and she’s here, I want her to just sit there. She can bring a book to read, a puzzle to do, or even try to participate.”

     Again that plea on Maisey’s face about telling ‘uma anything.

     “Then get creative again. I just don’t want her moving around the apartment.”

     There was a small window in the bathroom, and the next day, when the T-shirts

had more of less dried, he realized she’d washed them in an enormous amount of laundry soap which she had neglected to rinse out before hanging. The detergent odor was so strong he couldn’t wear them. He had to fill the tub again, leave them rinse, and eventually ring them out and hang them up once more.

     Mother and daughter were back promptly at 8:00 PM on the night they had designated  for a one hour class. ’Uma sat for a while, restlessly. Kirby began to understand that she felt left out. The English language, and this American suddenly in their midst, were as jarring to her as the highway that bullied its way through Hansan, and  the aged farmers who never came to terms with the reality of automobiles speeding on what had once been a dirt road where they’d always casually walked. There was a progression, he’d been told, from dirt road to paved two lane to through highway. Mrs Kim-- as Maisey had asked him to address her--- would be no older than 50s with Maisey her daughter, but she looked older, had the creased weather worn brown skin of the farmers, who could be taken for another ethnic group, a caste. But as pale skinned Maisey testified to, they were brown not by pigment but from exposure to the sun. In Hansan, he saw elderly women who walked bent at the waist, he thought from the constant burden of being in that position all their lives. Bending to plant, cultivate, harvest rice? Carrying rice on their backs? The future was Maisey’s. Mrs Kim had the past, and a present where she was at least out of the fields and cooking “Mexican fried chicken.”

     She couldn’t sit, and headed for the bathroom again. Kirby said, “No!” 

    She understood that much, replied in Korean. Maisey translated. “She left the

soap in your shirts last time.”

      “I noticed that.” 

     “She want to rinse them…wants”

     Water was running again. Kirby didn’t know he could get the crutches under his armpits and stand so quickly. The shirts were back in the bathtub, in more soapy water

     “Go!” he said to Mrs. Kim. “Get out”

     He said to Maisey, “If you want a class and have to have a chaperone, bring

somebody else.”    

      “What’s that word?”

      She had the dictionary open.

      “The word is Go. G-O. Opposite of Stay."

     "Under 'sh'?"

     "Under G. GO. GO now.”

    Maisey closed her dictionary and headed toward the door. Mrs Kim didn’t seem to

need interpretation. Everybody understands screaming. She came out of the bathroom and followed Maisy, and the two left.

     In the bathroom, his shirts were soaked in soap again, and the tub was filling with water, but hadn’t yet overflowed, so he could get in and turn the water off.

     Yeah, I love my parents, but they’re my PARENTS. I’m kind of ashamed of them, embarrassed by their old ways, and yet who they are has such authority over me. I don’t want to be like my mother, I don’t want to marry a man like my father. They’ve never questioned. I wish so much there was more here in Hansan, or in Sochon. The nearest movie theaters are in Kunsan. That’s only half an hour away, it’s a small city, and its in another province. Even there they think we’re country people over here, even in Kunsan that itself is surrounded by farm land.

     Having said I don’t want to imitate them, I admire my mother’s earthy humor. She was hilarious at Kalbi’s apartment, flooding the bathroom the first time. It was worth it even if he did throw us out. We laughed all the way home

     Thing is, he’s an American man, sort of old but not so bad looking, and he could be a way out of here. Marrying an English teacher wouldn’t be as disgraceful as marrying an American soldier. My cousin married an Air Force GI  from the Kunsan base, but the family never speaks of it as it is. It’s acknowledged that she’s in Chicago, married to a lawyer. She told me he’s a clerk in the courthouse at a little town a hundred kilometers from Chicago. Would an English teacher be any better? He says he had his own business before he came here. HAD. What good is that?

     I want to go back. Uma says she won’t go with me again, as much as she likes getting his goat, so I might not get any more classes unless I find someone to go with me. I’d like to flirt with him. Meet him innocently for coffee or dinner like we’re courting. The rumor would be I’m using him for free English lessons, but they’d wonder... I’m a virgin and he won’t get anywhere there. I can hold that up by telling him marriage is the price of a Korean miss, pretend there’s no attraction at all. That would be pretending alright, but we Koreans are taught to have self control. I won’t allow myself to get seduced…by myself, and...ahem…there are ways alone…

     This American is such fun. He gets so angry. They say they all do quickly. He doesn’t know that getting angry about what seems like nothing is losing face. That he doesn’t know he’s funny is even funnier. I want the best for my daughter, but things have changed too fast. They say we need English. Who are we going to speak English to in Hansan when Missile Mayfill leaves? My uncle, my mother’s brother, was killed by a car on this new highway. He wasn’t walking. He was in his tractor on the road he had used all his life that became a highway .I don’t blame the Americans for the road, and yet I do.

     The Americans? We need them maybe. We do. I was a child during the Korean War. to be sure they weren’t always kind, yet they often were too. Yes, they saved us twice, first from the Japanese, then North Korea, but their behavior is so bad, their young ones now, and they’ve been here so long. The younger Korean generation thinks if the Americans were gone, the country would be united. I’m afraid that’s true and I don’t want THAT unity, but we’re not who we are anymore We’re called  the hermit kingdom, and we  had good reason. Our encounters with outsiders have not been good. First it was the Chinese, then the Japanese, who were terrible. Our association with the U.S has brought prosperity---for the young at least---and we’re determined to keep our identity, but its American mish mosh: Their music, their movies, their clothes. We’re like them with Korean faces. Bananas. Yellow outside, white inside. Kirby told Su Kee the first time he was on the Seoul expressway, the day he arrived in Korea, going to Tejun, he thought he was still in L.A. on the Hollywood freeway. Half our signs are in English, but most of us can’t speak it. New arrivals think, with the cars and the clothes and the signs, Oh, the Koreans, they’re just like us. And then they get mad at us because we’re not like they expect people who look like them to be. When I was young, everybody wore white garments and rode bicycles. No foreign visitors, GI or other, expected us to act like them, any more than they would in Saudi Arabia. What we have now they call progress, but I have melancholy. Rice farming is hard, hard work, I don’t miss that labor, but we knew who we were.

     A few nights after their last visit, Maisey called him.

     “Are you over your rage?”

     “I’m dealing with it.”

       “Dealing?”

      “I’m over it until I’m reminded.”

      “I still want a class.”

     “If your mother comes, she’ll have to sit on her hands”

     “Okay if I bring someone else?”    

     “That would be wonderful, but they have to behave too.”

     “They?”

     “ Just one. By they I meant he or she. Which?

     “’They” is plural.”

     “That’s grammar. I’m using speech. One person.”

     “Okay.”

    “Who?”

    “I don’t know yet...  How about tomorrow, eight o’clock?”

    “You don’t leave things to the last minute or anything, do you? You still don’t have an escort.”

     “I’ll find one.”

     “If you can’t , call me.”

     There’s a boy I know likes me, and I asked him to go. A free English class. That

made his suspicious. Why does he teach you for free? Why does he? I guess I’m poor,

he’s lonely. Since the guy seemed so all bent from the right shape, I asked my

girlfriend Son Hi. She said yes, but then I experienced something unexpected. I felt

insecure. Son Hi is very pretty. I thought if I brought her, Kirby would notice her more than me. I felt….jealous.

     I settled for the guy coming with me, thought I’d talked him into it, reminded him if he was there he know what I was doing.

      He was supposed to meet me at the chicken restaurant, which is five minutes from Kirby’s building. I waited. 8: 00 o’clock arrived and he wasn’t there. I called his home and his mother said he was studying. At school, she thought. I thought, supposed to be with me.

     8:15  Nothing. I asked Uma if I could go alone. She forbade it. I asked if she’d come with me. She was too busy. 8:30 I should have called Kirby, but by now he knew I wasn’t coming. I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I did nothing, just watched television and felt guilty.

     Kirby sat and waited. 8:05. Where are they? 8:15. Probably not coming. No number to call her at. This is what you get for not charging. People get something for free, they think it must not be worth anything .8:30. Definitely not coming. No matter he had nothing else to do. She doesn’t know that. He might have planned something else. 

     He didn’t see or hear from her again, pretty much wrote the stand up off, but one afternoon, after his last class had left, about 4:00 PM, he had a craving for some of that Mexican fried chicken. He took a stroll up Hansan’s main street. He often got the chicken to go, but he didn’t see Maisey or her mother, only another ajima who might be Maisey’s aunt, and he ate in the restaurant just to postpone the inevitable night alone ahead of him. After eating, he left the shop, which was halfway through Hansan in the direction of Sochon. He was using a cane now, and it could often get the street dogs agitated, those usually well behaved critters who ordinarily seemed to sense their possible fate as an entre were they to got the two legged ones riled. One yapped at him, and he swiped at it with the stick, shouting “Hey!” Hey is not Korean, but the order seemed to stop it more than the stick. He was still in front of the chicken shop, and Maisey herself suddenly came into the street. She berated the dog in firm and commanding Korean, and the animal cringed. By her control over it, he judged it to be her dog. The dog skulked off, and indeed into the restaurant.

     Maisey said, “Hi Kalbi.”

     “Hi. I didn’t see you when I was eating.”

     “Washing the pans. I’m through now. Do you want some coffee?”

     “Here?”

     “Don’t have any . How about Drake?”

      In Korea, Drake, if he/she existed---well IT did---didn’t need the possesive apostrophe with  s after the name of the establishment, (as in “Drake’s”), was simply “Drake”, by sign and verbal reference. Drake was the only coffee shop in Hansan. Not to be confused with an American style coffee shop which is a restaurant, Drake sold coffee, donuts and various sweet rolls, was more like  a donut shop, but being coffee was their main attraction, they did make a good strong drip-brew.
     “That sounds like what I need.”

     It was in the other direction from his house, almost out of Hansan. As they began walking that way, she asked, “What was that word?”

      “What word?”

      “That you used last time. Did you call my mother a plant?”

      “What?”

      “I was trying to remember the word you used, couldn’t find it under “sh”, tried “ch”. Did you call her a chaparral?”

      “I do admire your persistence. I said I couldn’t teach you if she had to be the chaperone. C-H-A-PA-R-O-N-E.”

     “Which is?”

     She already had the dictionary open. Dangerously. A closely passing motorist tooted.

     “Go ahead. Look it up. I’ll direct traffic so you don’t get hit by a car.”

     She found it quickly. He knew she had because she laughed.

     “Well? She is.”    

     “I can’t be in your apartment alone.”

     “I know that, but she’s a saboteur.”

      Book still open in her hand, she was again flipping.

     “S-A-B-O…”

     "I FOUND IT. That’s funny too. The way American use language. Everything has  another meaning.”

      “You might have something there.”

     “I might have something where?” 

      But she was grinning, putting on. He wondered how she’d do with put-on, but

the closer they got to the end of Hansan, the more traffic increased in preparation to join highway, and he really didn’t want her getting run over attempting to improve vocabulary.

     Drake was upstairs. While on crutches, he’d noticed everything in Korea had a step up or a step down, and most eateries were up a flight of two. In Hansan, that only meant one flight, but in Seoul it often meant five, without an elevator.

    Even with a cane, he needed the banister, itself a bit loose, on the uneven stairs. He did make it, and they sat in a comfortable booth at a window looking down on the street below as it gave up Hansan for highway and traffic speed increased.

     The teenaged waitress had a case of the giggles. He wondered how long it would take them to get used to the idea he was there. When he ordered, she said “Okay,” and seemed to think she’d made the cleverest remark uttered anywhere as she left to bring the order.

     Maisey explained for her. “She never saw anybody like you before.”

    “I’d be curious too the first time too, but I’ve been here a while. Why didn’t you call me when you didn’t come to that class you scheduled?.”

     “Sorry.”

     “Sorry isn’t an answer.”

     “No chaparral.”

     “But you could have called.”

     “Sorry.”

     They had the most infuriating way of using an absolutely insincere spouting of “sorry” to excuse any offense, and he was sure they got that from stupid exercises in texts designed to teach English, which by inference taught that whatever you do, just say “Sorry”, and they’ll say, “Oh, that’s okay.”

     “I waited for you. You didn’t call. Don’t tell me again you’re sorry. Why didn’t you

call?”

     “I just didn’t.”

     “I should have charged you. In advance, like all the other English teachers do. People don’t respect free, they think it has no value. When they’ve paid, they go to class.”

     “You’re kind.”

     “No, I’m a sucker. Don’t look. You’d need a slang dictionary.”

     Their coffee and donuts arrived. From no apparent context, she suddenly declared, “I never want to get married.”

     “You don’t like men?”

     “Yes….no…yes…I like men. I don’t want to serve.”

      “Some young Korean guys are sensitive.”

      “I’m not hopeful.”   

     "I have one in a class."

     "Is he handsome? Can I meet him?"

     "He's married."

     "See. And he's the only one in Sochon County."

     "Well, maybe in Seoul then. They're rumored to be progressive."

     “Seoul is in Korea too. It’s the capital.”

     “You’re too young to give up.”

     “I didn’t say anything about giving up.”  

      Yet another night he was sitting alone in Chez Kirby, reading for entertainment, when there was another knock at his door. His classes were meeting again in Sochon now that he had almost recovered, and visitors at any time were a strange occurrence. The only previous, besides his students, had been Maisey and her mother.

         It was Maisey, alone. She asked, “May I come in?” 

        He clearly heard a refrain of ‘I can’t be alone in your apartment.’

         He stepped aside to let her go in past him, then followed behind her leaving the door open. As he sat on a pillow, she returned to the door and closed it, then came back and sat on another pillow across the low coffee table from him. Then she presented him with an envelope in which he could feel bills. Korean style---trust that the payment was correct. He didn’t count it, just set the envelope on the coffee table.

     She spoke English well enough that they didn’t need a book, but conversation requires a subject.

     “Anything in particular you’d like as a topic?”

     “You’re the teacher.”

     “Let’s see. Last time I saw you, you said you didn’t want to get married. Want to talk about that?”

     “You’re a teacher or a srink?”

     “I’m supposed to motivate you to talk. Like a shrink.”

     “Or a police officer. I told you. In Korea the man serves the woman.”

    They'd had that conversation and he didn’t have to look far for an example--- Mr. Lee in the downstairs apartment with his opinions on domesticity and the value of female primary teachers---but she could have another reason.

     “You’re not a lesbian?”

     “Yes.”

      In Korean grammar, “Yes” in reply to a question structured as a negative means

“Yes, I’m not.” It means “No” No matter how much he emphasized that English

speakers reply “NO” to affirm the negative, they persisted with that.

     “You mean, Yes you’re not?”

     “Yes.”

      Did she get it? Was he getting it?

     “So, do you like men or women?”

     “Yes.”

     “Yes what?”

     “Yes, I like men or women””

      She was being the imp she could be.

     “Do you like women”.

     “Some of my best friends are. I am. Like myself. Can we talk about the environment.?”

     “I offered you choice of a subject. Okay, the environment. Where would you like to start with that?”   

     “In America.”

     “Why not Korea?”

     ‘Everything’s clean and pure here. You live alone. Do you like men or women?”

     ‘Yes”

     “Kalbi. You’re not Korean. Which?”

     “I like women.”

      “Then why don’t you have a wife?”

     “I had. I’m divorced.”

     “I wasn’t sure you weren’t a lesbian.”

      “I am. I’m in the Korean countryside. Can’t be alone in my apartment with a

woman I’m not married to.”

     “Your reputation!”

      He had wondered what would happen if he met a woman in Seoul and brought her to Hansan. Would they just gossip? Probably that would be all if she wasn’t local, but he didn’t want to find out either. They weren’t known for lynchings, but there could always be a first time. One is not only the loneliest number, it’s the most defenseless.

     “Maybe we should discuss the environment.”

     “I want to put it out of sight. Like the ostrich.”

     "He finds out when he pulls his head out."

    There was the old stand-by, Cultural Differences. She agreed to that. Knives and forks and chopsticks. Low Korean tables with pillows, tables and chairs. Bowing and handshakes. Koreans didn't bow much anymore---maybe the first time meeting someone, or to the head of a company. Only the old folks were still in the fields. The young wanted to be professionals. Who would farm in the future? Imported labor? Yes, she said, that was an issue. Koreans always wanted to know your age. They sometimes asked that before they asked your name. She had never asked him. She still didn’t, even addressing the subject. He wasn’t quite old enough realistically to be her father, but he could be a young uncle. Father’s kid brother. Maybe she could think of him as like her older brother. A lot older. He knew he couldn’t lie, and she spared him by not asking.

     Entry to the apartment was from the front door that opened into the living room from the outside corridor, and that had an echo. From out there came a sudden sharp cough. It seemed voluntary, and, amplified by the ceramic chamber, it sounded like a bark. Maisey’s demeanor changed immediately. She closed her dictionary, stood, and said “I have to go.”

     As he opened the door to let her out, he sensed, then heard, the rustling of someone in the stairwell on the first floor. His neighbor below, across from Mr Lee, was a principal who often had school administrator visitors, but when Kirby glanced down he saw a white haired, rough lived Hansan man. He watched Maisy descend. He’d wave or say goodbye, but he was no longer in her mind. She was focused on the bottom of the stairs, where, before she was halfway to him, the man began forcefully screaming.

     She had disobeyed, came to his apartment alone for a lesson. He realized her father had probably been there the entire time, listening to speech he didn’t understand, to the small child he had known engaged in an enterprise he couldn’t comprehend and had never imagined coming to Hansan. Kirby had no doubt that if the conversation had stopped, or some other sounds replaced it, he would have been up pounding on the door.

     There was no way he could intervene. He went from his front door to the big sliding glass door that opened on the balcony. Maisey and her father were below, crossing the red brick paved parking lot. Her father continued to loudly berate her, pointing at her in accusation as he did. Maisey walked before him, the obeisant daughter, head bowed, eyes directed in shame at the ground. From what she’d told Kirby, he knew her repentance wasn’t genuine, but that was irrelevant. What mattered was that she complied. If Kirby might disapprove, who cared? He was an American, a foreigner, whose opinion about local matters was only uninformed, not to be considered or even expressed.

     Her humiliation walk continued from the parking lot to the street, and was still in play as they left his sight line when they turned at the corner. Her punishment in front of all of Hansan would be on display until they reached the shop house far through town, and, he thought, her scalding degradation would become legend in this small farming community.     

     I didn’t like to shame Su Kee like that. I know she is a good girl, she did nothing improper with that man, nor would she, but we have our propriety. The rules of the culture must be upheld or we are nothing. She will survive her chastisement and be stronger for it because her father demonstrated that our roles cannot be abrogated. Another agassee might have been coerced or tricked to do something wrong alone with a foreigner. Girls are shy, can easily be manipulated by aggressive men. I love my daughter very much, I feel her pain, and humiliating her in front of the whole town hurts me even more than it does her. In my father’s time, Mr Kirby would be leaving town tonight and quickly, but in my father’s time this would not have happened at all because no foreigner would be squatting in our midst. I know the Education Ministry brought him here, but, like my wife, I don’t get it. I can see the benefits of knowing English perhaps in Seoul for international commerce, but in Hansan we only have other Korean to speak to, and there’s nothing wrong with our own language. We compensate by parodying American culture all over the country, our kids harass English teachers with taunts of “Hello, hello” “Okay, okay” and while for sure it annoys them its also silly. We think they look down on us, like they did in that TVs Show MASH we used to see on cable, where I know the stories were about them, but when they had Korean characters they thought they were portraying us sympathetically, but were really condescending, stereotyping us. For attitudes like that, and for the American dominance, we allow the kids to give it back by being amused, granting implicit approval. We just don’t discourage it. We’re a culture where children obey elders, and of course if we ordered them to stop, they would. We don’t.

    As people go, I think Kirby is alright, however he landed himself among us. I feel for his isolation, and I know he didn’t intend any wrong, but he has to understand and accept who we are. 

     I’d rather have been dragged naked on a rope, because at least I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be subjected to it, though of course I couldn’t resist. Do I still love my father? I can’t answer that question. I no longer know what the word means, if it means anything. We all live, and in living we have connections to others. That’s part of survival, that’s all. And I feel guilty. When you are punished, you feel you must have done something to deserve it. My father believes as he does on convictions no one could ever convince him against. I can’t hate him for them, that would be hating myself. We have our conventions, they are powerful, but I am stifling in Hansan.

     I want to go to Seoul. Another cousin is living there, and I can stay with her. She has a business, can give me a job. She has a coffee gallery restaurant in I Tae Won, the international section, selling burgers and American breakfast, and I can learn to cook American food. I finished high school--- yes, something my parents never had n opportunity to do, and wanted for me--- so I can also take classes at Seoul Open University. I’d like to take film and drama, I have artistic inclination, but I’ll know I’ll be practical and take business. I don’t have any fantasy any more of going to America with Kirby. I want a guy my age, and he’s right, some young Korean guys are sensitive now. Kirby goes to Seoul, so why not keep in touch?. He’s fun and we can hang around together sometimes. The more English I know, the better my opportunities are. That’s reality.

      Astoundingly, she came alone again late one afternoon about a month later. He answered the knock, but--- for her, for himself--- when he saw who was there he didn’t step aside or invite her in, nor did she seem to want to enter. She stayed in the hall and said,

     “I just want to tell you I’m moving to Seoul.”

     “Why….?” No, not WHY…”How are you moving to Seoul?”

     “My cousin lives there .She’ll give me work, I can go to school. You said you go there too.”

     “Some weekends.”

     “I’ll give you my cousin’s number. Maybe we could take a weekend class with you.”

     She handed him an index card with her name and a phone number on it. She was also glancing at the bottom of the stairs, no doubt recalling her last journey along them. “Call me at my cousin’s”

     She danced down the stairs, waved from the bottom, and was gone. He looked at the number on the card, folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. She’d left so fast he hadn’t had a chance to ask when she was going. Easy enough to find out. He could call her cousin’s number.

     He closed the door, crossed the living room, and through the glass balcony door, caught what he thought would be the last glance he’d have of her in Hansan, as she reached the same corner where he’d seen her turn accompanied by her father. She began running, her hair tied back in a subtly tinted red streaked pony tail that bounced on the back of her shoulders.

     Yeah, they could have an English class in Seoul, he and she and her cousin. Why not?