“How much is this lawyer going to cost? Is he the best one?” my father asked. He zipped up his bag and set it by the door.
I shrugged. “Mr. Yun recommended him, and he got her out for now.”
“We’re going to pay for it, it’s fine, if she didn’t do anything wrong, Channing will be fine,” my mother said.
“What do you mean ‘if’? Kent framed her. She didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“It’s a serious charge. Mr. Yun said the watch is worth fifty thousand dollars, making her crime a felony,” my father said. “We’ve had to presscharges for shoplifters in our store. Not this much—only misdemeanors.” He looked at my mother. “We’ll have to come back for the trial. Once we know the dates.”
They seemed so matter-of-fact; I didn’t know how to respond.
“Isn’t there something else we can do before then? We can’t let Kent ruin Channing’s life,” I said.
My mother breathed in and then let out a big sigh. “If we have to appeal, it’ll cost more money.” She turned to my father. “Maybe we should sell the second store. This new rehab is more than we were told, and now Channing’s lawyer’s fees.”
As I walked them to their rental car for the drive to the airport, they promised to check their phones more often. It was the best they could do. I couldn’t ask them for more. My father trudged along, and my mother kept patting him on the shoulder and brushing lint I couldn’t see off the back of his plaid shirt. I’d never seen my father look so lost.
The Korean custom is to cry at funerals. Harabeoji had told me this. Mourners wail and express their grief, their regrets. They comfort each other. Some pounded their hearts with a fist and shouted my grandfather’s praises. There were tears at Harabeoji’s service. Mrs. Ku and both Yuns showed them. My father however kept his sorrow to himself. So did his brother, Channing, me, and my mother. Paul and Ames, Alice and her husband looked uncomfortable. So many marriages but not that many funerals yet in this seaside town. I knew my father was waiting to return home with my mother to share his grief with her, and she seemed to know it, too.
“We’re your eomma and appa. We’ll check our phones every day. We’ll make enough money for the lawyer or lawyers; sometimes you need more than one. Tell Channing we will pay for whatever she needs,” they said to me before they drove away in their rental car, as if money would keep us safe.
When I returned to the apartment, Channing was curled up on the couch, with her laptop open to an episode of the Chunhyang K-drama. I grabbed a pillow and blanket and settled on the floor. She got up and arranged her blankets and pillow on the floor beside me and brought the laptop over.
“From the beginning?” she said.
I agreed. We watched all sixteen episodes, sixteen hours. Paul had left almond butter and raspberry jam and a new loaf of bread in the kitchen. We ate the whole thing, took a break at episode ten, and slept until dawn the next day before watching six more before noon. Not the complete episode. We fast-forwarded the parts where Chunhyang was in prison, with a horrible cangue around her neck, behind thick wooden bars in the evil magistrate’s prison that looked like a shed for animals. Straw was at her feet, and they never showed her being fed. The prison scenes filled many episodes, but neither of us could watch her suffer. In the past, Channing had been able, but now it was clear she couldn’t. The beginning and the end, that was what we played over and over again. The beginning especially held our attention with Chunhyang’s mother wishing for a child and dreaming a blue crane appeared before her as a sign that she would have a baby. I told Channing how her mother had explained that it was likely a Himalayan monal, and we looked it up on the internet. “Even if blue cranes aren’t in Korea, this one was fantastical, so it might have been a crane that was magical with blue feathers instead of an actual bird that exists,” Channing said. “It’s a dream, and things are not real in dreams.”
I wished in that moment that my aunt was in that room with us to discuss these birds. She would have loved her daughter’s interpretation. Turns out it wasn’t books necessarily but stories that brought us together. And if the story was experienced in a K-drama, then that was just as good. I toldChanning I agreed with her. I could picture it: this beautiful blue crane, brighter than the real ones with that name, in defiance of reality.
It rained and sleeted and rained again outside of Paul’s tiny apartment. We heard it more than saw it because we kept the curtains closed. There was no news from our lawyer. At random moments, Channing said, “I miss Harabeoji.”
“Me too,” I told her. “I’m pretending he’s right over there in the Yuns’ house. It’s the only way I can keep going.”
“He always hated Labor Day weekend, the end of summer,” she said. “Maybe he knew somehow it would be when he left us.”
I would have argued with her in the past about ideas like that, but this time I didn’t. Maybe she was right. When my aunt had died, I’d felt the loss of all the days ahead when she could have talked to me about books. But for Channing, losing her mother had radically changed her at the core. She was on her own. I’d imagined that the financial loss and the outward signs, all the comfort and privileges that had been ripped away, had been the change in her life. Now with Harabeoji’s death, I understood her loss better. The future seemed unfathomable. We were on our own. No one was going to help us. It was as if the years ahead had vanished. Time had collapsed.
Chapter 34
The next day, officially Labor Day, Paul called and brought over a tray with a pot, two bowls of rice, and a plastic container with separate compartments of banchan. Mrs. Yun had made kalbigim. Those tender braised short ribs brought memories too painful to examine. I breathed in the aroma and tried for Paul’s sake, but couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I didn’t want him to think we didn’t appreciate his efforts, so I moved bits of spinach, the pickled white turnip side dishes around one plate to another. He looked at the laptop and blankets on the floor.
“You know we could cast the show on the big screen,” he said, pointing to the video monitor on the wall. Our first response was to decline, but he kept saying it would make our viewing experience better, so we relented. As he set up the account, I asked about his assistant coaching job. “I got it,” he answered. “Not sure there were a lot of candidates to choose from.”
“I’m sure you were the best in the group. The kids will love you. Congrats,” I said, and just because it was something to celebrate, I reached over and embraced him. It was becoming a pleasant habit. Paul’s arms were comforting. Channing hugged me while I hugged him. It was a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy series of days.
He stayed and watched a few episodes of the Chunhyang series with us. He’d never heard of it or the original tale. I was shocked and told him so. We were skipping the prison part when Paul told us to stop. “I’m soconfused, what happens here?” he asked. So we had to rewind to the beginning before the evil magistrate threw Chunhyang in prison.
“Looks like a terrible story,” he said, watching the magistrate’s soldiers flog Chunhyang for refusing to obey.
“You sound like Dahee,” Channing said.
Paul asked about the servants’ scenes, and we had to see if Bangja would make it to the capital city to tell Mongryong that Chunhyang was held captive. His exploits along the way were the comic relief, while Chunhyang suffered. Chunhyang’s mother and her servant implored the evil magistrate every day to have mercy, to no avail. Her mother begged Chunhyang to accept her role in life, to be the evil magistrate’s kisaeng and forget Mongryong, her love. This version showed the townspeople admiring Chunhyang’s determination to stand up to the magistrate. The more she suffered, the more they cheered her on.
“Do we live just to survive? I mean, is that what this show is saying we should do?” Paul said.
“I’d fold. I couldn’t wear one of those around my neck,” I said, and pointed to the cangue.
Paul asked Channing the same question. “Never,” she replied. “Just surviving isn’t a life.” She was quieter in her reply, and I knew she was remembering her days alone in the cold jail. She insisted on sleeping with the door to Paul’s bedroom open when I’d made her take the twin bed while I crashed on the couch. And I’d seen her go outside to the landing of the apartment several times during the day and take gulping big breaths of air.
