Echoes of the White Giraffe by Sook Nyul Choi Page A

on the steps.
    â€œSookan, no!” Mother shouted as I was about to open the door. “Wait. It could cave in. Wait.”
    Suddenly a thin man appeared in one of the side windows. “Finally! You’re back!” a voice exclaimed. It was Jaechun! “Mother, don’t worry, we already secured the doors,” he shouted. I could hear him running to let us in.
    It was like a dream come true. Inchun and Mother rushed up, and Hanchun, Hyunchun, and Jaechun came running to greet us. I stared at them in awe. They looked so different from the last time I had seen them. They were so much older, taller, and thinner, and their skin was dark and leathery. Their T-shirts were covered with sawdust and ash, and they all had pencils stuck behind their ears, and tools in hand.
    Mother’s mouth hung open as she stared wide-eyed at her three older sons. “Can this be possible?” she gasped. “All three of you safe and sound and waiting for us here at the house!”
    All I could do was stand and watch as she hugged all three of them and cried with joy. Jaechun lifted Inchun way up in the air and spun him around. Hanchun patted me on the head and pinched my cheeks as if I were still a little girl. “Oh, how big you got!” he said.
    â€œAnd your father?” Mother asked, expecting him to appear any minute.
    â€œWe thought he was with you,” Hanchun blurted out.
    Dead silence fell over us all. Hyunchun cleared his throat and said, “It’s still too early. It’ll take a while for everyone to make it back home.”
    Mother’s face grew somber. She looked down at her hands and didn’t seem to have heard a word he said. “We must check all the hospitals. He must be sick somewhere. That’s the only thing that would keep him from us,” she said emphatically.
    â€œMother, there you go worrying again,” Jaechun said. “I bet you thought
we
were all lost, but here we are safe and sound. Father will come. Let’s wait a few days.”
    Mother smiled sheepishly at her sons.
    â€œThe three of us just met up here at the house over the past four days,” Hanchun said. He told us that when we had all run from the house, he, Hyunchun, and Jaechun had been following right behind us. But all too quickly, they had lost sight of us. Retreating army trucks were jamming the streets, and several officers were calling for men to join the army and help fight the enemy. Each of them had ended up jumping on a separate truck, and from that moment on, had been separated. Hanchun and Hyunchun spent most of their time near the battle fields. Jaechun, because of his poor health, worked as a translator for a war correspondent near the battle zone.
    Hanchun went on to say that over the past few days, they had been busy clearing the road, the steps, and the yard. When they first arrived, they could barely make their way up to the house. Now they had begun repairing the inside of the house.
    Hanchun carefully opened the front door. We stepped inside, and found ourselves standing in a large, empty space. All of the walls had crumbled, and there were mounds of debris gathered in the comers. In the piles of rubble, I saw pieces of our furniture, broken records, and clothes; everything was an ashen gray and was barely identifiable. The wide glass doors that led out to Mother’s garden had shattered, and the metal door frames were rusted and twisted like an odd sculpture. One whole corner of the house was missing, and I could see straight out to the backyard. Mother’s pretty greenhouse in the far corner of the garden was now just a pile of broken glass. The grapevine trellis, under which I had loved to read while eating the deep purple grapes, was now a heap of charred wood. The front doors had been terribly deceiving. After seeing all this destruction, I was amazed that the doors still stood.
    â€œIt’s going to take a long time,” Hanchun said, “but we can