“That’s what I’m saying,” Channing returned.
She made no sense sometimes and confused me completely.
“Let’s get back to the story,” Harabeoji said.
A whole year passed with Chunhyang and Mongryong falling more and more in love each day. They read books together and sang and danced. They were very happy. But that happiness didn’t last. There came a time when Mongryong’s father got a better job. His parents celebrated this good fortune, but Mongryong was very sad because he and his whole family now had to move far away from Namwon to the central city to serve the king.
To stay together, Chunhyang and Mongryong tried to figure out how to hide her on the journey to the capital. And then once in the new city, they’d have to find a place for her to live without anyone knowing. It was very risky. She couldn’t live with him in his parents’ house and Chunhyang’s mother couldn’t move to this new city.
Chunhyang decided she’d wait for him in Namwon. Mongryong promised to come back as soon as he could. He hoped to study hard and get a powerful job in the government someday and return to Namwon for her. They cried a lot and said their farewells.
Time passed and Chunhyang got older and was very sad. Everyone said she had a beautiful singing voice, but she would only sing for her true love, Mongryong. By now, a new magistrate had arrived in Namwon. A magistrate is like the mayor of a town. This man’s name was Magistrate Byeon, and he was a mean man. He had heard of how beautiful Chunhyang was and how good she was at singing and dancing. He wanted her to sing and dance for him.
She refused. She said she only did those things for Mongryong.Magistrate Byeon became very angry. He offered her all kinds of gifts. When that didn’t work, he threatened her with all kinds of punishment unless she obeyed him. But Chunhyang still said no. So Magistrate Byeon locked her away in prison to make her change her mind.
Channing and I gasped. “Prison?” we said together.
“Don’t worry,” Harabeoji said. “Magistrate Byeon can’t force Chunhyang to do things she doesn’t want to do.”
“But why doesn’t she sing for him, so she doesn’t have to be in jail?” I asked. “Singing isn’t hard.”
Harabeoji didn’t go into details. Channing was just as confused as I was until our grandfather said, “Chunhyang’s song and dance were only for those she loved, and she loved Mongryong. Magistrate Byeon wanted Chunhyang to love him instead of Mongryong.”
Channing and I both said, “Oh!” Even at nine years old we knew what love was, in our limited way. You liked who you liked, you couldn’t help it.
So Chunhyang was held in jail for a long time. Meanwhile, Mongryong was studying really hard and didn’t know what had happened to her. Chunhyang tried to get a message to him through servants, but the messages never reached him.
More time passed and people told Chunhyang to give up her love for Mongryong. But Chunhyang never wavered. She stayed in prison, true to her feelings. People were in awe of her unbreakable will. She became famous throughout Korea. Soon even Mongryong heard about her and the terrible Magistrate Byeon. The whole kingdom now knew. It was just in time, too, because Mongryong had done wellon the national exams and had received a very powerful job from the king to find people in the country who were greedy.
His first job brought him back to Namwon in disguise. No one knew he was a high-level government official who worked directly for the king himself. He rewarded those who treated him with kindness and made plans to tell the king of their good deeds.
The day came when he reached the prison where Chunhyang was confined, and she didn’t recognize him because of his disguise. When he asked her if she still loved Mongryong, she said she did without hesitation. And of course, Mongryong still loved Chunhyang.
“Just get her out already,” I said. “Why is he giving her a test?”
“Good point. But it’s part of the story,” Harabeoji replied.
With the full force of the king’s army, Mongryong revealed his true identity to Magistrate Byeon, and Byeon never got to hurt anyone the way he had hurt Chunhyang again. At long last, Mongryong freed Chunhyang from prison and they were reunited. Chunhyang was overjoyed. So was her mother! Everyone in all of Korea agreed Chunhyang and Mongryong should be married because no two people loved each other more. There was a great big wedding celebration and Chunhyang and Mongryong were together for all the years to come. The end.
Channing let out a sigh. “Chunhyang and Mongryong made their own rules and lived happily ever after,” she said. “That’s the story my mother wanted to tell me. Love wins out over everything. I want a love like Chunhyang’s and Mongryong’s.”
“I don’t,” I said, and got to my feet. I turned away from my cousin and my grandfather and ran to an ancient maple that offered long low branches. I climbed up the shoulders of the tree to the very top. The blue-green ocean glittered on the horizon. Channing called to me from below.
This story of Chunhyang will not be ours, I thought. I told the ocean I refused it.
“We’llbothhave a better story,” I shouted.
Chapter 1
I was never sure where danger might lie, but I was on the lookout for it. I had just bought a small pouch of compostable dental floss at Duane Reade pharmacy on Sixth Avenue and Thirty-Third Street in New York City at five o’clock and walked outside to discover a white child in a green sweatshirt and jeans, with black-rimmed square glasses on his face. His hand gripped the side bar of an umbrella stroller that had a toddler kicking her legs up, dressed in daisy-print overalls. The boy was no more than four years old. I knew this because I had worked as a teacher’s aide in a preschool once. He and the toddler were directly beside the automatic glass doors. I looked around for an adult. Surely one was nearby. Maybe they had gone to the corner to throw out an item in the trash receptacle; maybe they had dashed up the street to pay for parking.
I couldn’t walk away from those children. People passed us. Some looked at me because I looked at them. The palms of my hands tingled when I got nervous. I wiped my hands on my skirt. To get rid of that feeling, I had to do something, take some sort of action. What should I do? I couldn’t just leave them there.
I asked the little boy about his parents’ whereabouts, but he didn’t answer. He’d probably been told not to speak to strangers. Inside the store, an Asian security guard stood with his back to the window. I wanted to askhim to keep an eye on the children. Anyone could walk off with them at any time. But something stopped me. What if he arrested their parent? Did I want to cause that kind of harm to someone who had stepped away for a second?
Questioning what’s usual was familiar to me. I didn’t know if I could trust my first reaction. I’d emigrated from Seoul with my parents when I was five years old, and we’d moved frequently in the United States so that I’d never been able to establish a solid sense of home. My understanding of what was commonplace and “normal” felt in constant flux. Even my sense of danger was sometimes murky, like right there on the street in the city. What to pay attention to? What to dismiss? Follow the majority of the crowd and leave those children like that or be in the minority and help them?
While I hesitated, out of the groups of people walking by me on the sidewalk that day, a white man in a business suit emerged. For a second, I thought he was the children’s father, but he walked straight toward me. He said, “They’re alone?” As if it was obvious to him that they needed help. He confirmed these children were at risk. I was relieved on the one hand, though now more anxious. I wondered if he had some designs on the children, but he seemed perfectly kind. He offered to go inside and ask the security guard, which I told him might jeopardize the parents.
