The yard had numerous trees, small fruit trees like a mini orchard. Harabeoji seemed pleased to identify them as apple trees. “Something to look forward to in the fall.”
My mother had said to call Channing in from the yard, but there was no sign of my cousin. The vastness of the lawn made it hard to gauge the distance we’d walked. There were woods ahead of us that seemed to take a long time to reach. Harabeoji seemed intent on walking straight into them.
“Could she be out in front of the house instead of back there?” I asked.
“Possibly,” he said, but he kept on his path.
“Do you want me to run to the front and see?” I offered.
“I think she’s waiting for us in there,” he said, and pointed ahead of him.
“How do you know?” I asked.
He halted just then and said, “Have you ever just known something to be true, Dahee?” He’d crouched down and looked right into my face. I saw parts of my father’s face in his. The space between the eyes and nose were the same. I saw Channing’s father’s face in Harabeoji’s, too. The shape of his mouth in his wide jaw.
I shrugged. “I guess so.” I didn’t know what to say. I thought he should stand up again. My mother sat like that with her feet under her and got back to her feet easily, but it took my father longer. I didn’t know if I’d be able to help this man if he stayed that way.
Harabeoji waited with his hands on his knees. I admitted I didn’t understand what he was talking about. He laughed at that and thanked me for being honest, and then he said, “Your grandmother was from a long line of women in Jeonju who had very good—” He looked up at the sky. “What’s the word in English when you know something but there’s no reason you should?”
“Kun-eomma called it ‘intuition,’” I offered.
“That’s close, but I think it’s stronger than that,” he said. “But let’s call it that for now. What does your ‘intuition’ say?”
I suddenly saw a clearing in the woods with logs lying in the dirt, but Channing wasn’t sitting on them. Instead, she was huddled the way she’d been in the pantry with her knees raised and her head down at the base of a tall pine tree nearby. The atmosphere around her seemed ominous.
“Straight ahead, yes?” He pointed toward the woods, and I nodded. Then he stood up and we started walking again. It was as if I’d described it to him without speaking aloud. He knew about the clearing somehow. He led the way in my memory, but later I’d learn from him that I had shown him. At the time, I thought Channing must have mentioned it to him. There was no other explanation.
Sure enough, after another ten minutes on a path that forked left, there was Channing, huddled at the base of a tree, near a clearing with logs just as I’d seen it. There were shadows cast along the ground. I was glad to have Harabeoji beside me.
She turned her head as we approached as if she had been expecting us.
“My mom died. Did you know?” She directed her question at me and didn’t say anything to our grandfather, which made me feel sorry for him. He had an air of calm curiosity.
“Yeah, she was nice,” I said.
“Not all the time. She was never around; she read books all the time. I hate them because they took her away from me. I think she got sick because of them.”
“She knew a lot about books,” I said.
“More than anything else. I don’t know if I’m even going to miss her. She was never around, you know. She was always in her room working,” she replied.
“But that was because she was sick.”
She looked at me with anger in her eyes. How dare I correct her? She was still the girl from the pantry who had shouted at me.
“She’smymom, I know her better than you. She reads all the time, she loves books, more than people, more than me or my dad or anyone.”
I backed away. “You’re right, she’s your mom, you know her.”
Our grandfather took that moment to say, “Sometimes we feel the opposite of what we think we should feel.”
Channing seemed to take that in, and I saw her shoulders slump.
“She didn’t get to tell me all of the Chunhyang story. I’ll never know it since she’s gone,” she said.
I think she was crying. I looked away.
Harabeoji said he knew that story. It was from his hometown in Korea. He’d tell her the ending, not to worry. And also, he would tell us about Jeonju, where our grandmother was from, which was near Namwon, Harabeoji’s hometown, and how all plants and vegetables and flowers grew better there because the soil was rich and plentiful. Channing quieted down.
