Just hold it in until dinnertime. I called Aunt Monica. I don’t think you should keep meeting those death row—or whatever—inmates. Stop going there.”
“What are you talking about?”
He hung up without answering me. Despite thanking him, I didn’t actually remember what had happened the night before. As I poured myself some juice, I tried to call up all of my memory circuits. I had met my old friends from elementary school for drinks, and we went from one bar to another, and another. I remembered getting into my car and insisting that I could drive, even though someone tried to stop me. Then I remembered the police station, and yelling my head off. A detective, a short man who looked to be over fifty, had said to me,
What kind of woman goes out drinking in the middle of the night? Girls like you should all be rounded up and shot.
That was when I lost it. I think I must have screamed at him,
So what? Yeah, so I broke the law, but at least I have character. You want to shoot me? Is that what a police officer of the Republic of Korea’s “Civilian Government” is supposed to say? Take my blood! Take my blood!
I remembered screaming my head off in the police station. It all came back to me: I must have called my brother. Then he showed up and Iasked him how he knew I was there. The other people in the station clucked their tongues at me from behind my brother’s back and said I was crazy, so I got mad at them. When I thought about it, I couldn’t believe that was me. As much as I enjoyed complaining, I wasn’t the type to get drunk and make a scene in public, let alone a police station, of all places. I would never be able to show my face in Itaewon again. As the alcohol in my blood receded like the tide, standing in its place were memories, as stark as rocks on the seashore.
It must have been close to dawn when he picked me up. I think I cried… I say I
think
I cried because all I could remember was having heard a woman crying in the car. My brother and I were the only ones there, and since my brother isn’t a woman, the crying must have been coming from me. Did that fit into my uncle’s definition of the crying he wished I would do? I don’t know if the tears helped to sober me up, but I chose that moment to pick a fight with my brother. I think I started babbling, without any sort of preamble, about prisoners who had to survive on less than a thousand won for six months at a time, and how I was going crazy. I told him,
They’re driving me crazy, Yusik. Help me! I’m dying because of them!
My brother could not have felt good about having to pick up his little sister from the police station—his little sister who was nearly booked with drunk driving, who had broken off an engagement with his younger colleague, and who had attempted suicide not long ago. After my father, Yusik cared about me the most. We were so far apart in age that he doted on me as if I were his niece; when I was little, he used to carry me on his back. I could still remember his warm, strong, young back.
Whenever I see those guys in my line of work,
my brother had said,
guys who rape children and kill old
people, and don’t show even the slightest remorse in court, I hate the idea of having to breathe the same air as them! The death penalty is too good for them! I look at them and wonder whether they’re even human or whether they’re just animals. That may be a bad thought, but it seems like there really is a devil, and those people are marked from birth. They don’t deserve to live. They’re animals.
It was just an inference, but as I drank a glass of cold juice and stared out at the warm sunlit garden of my mother’s house, I figured my brother had said what he did because his little sister who never cried had suddenly fallen apart and bawled that she was losing her mind because of death row prisoners. He was probably worried that I would go into further shock while following Aunt Monica around and die for real. I told him
“What are you talking about?”
He hung up without answering me. Despite thanking him, I didn’t actually remember what had happened the night before. As I poured myself some juice, I tried to call up all of my memory circuits. I had met my old friends from elementary school for drinks, and we went from one bar to another, and another. I remembered getting into my car and insisting that I could drive, even though someone tried to stop me. Then I remembered the police station, and yelling my head off. A detective, a short man who looked to be over fifty, had said to me,
What kind of woman goes out drinking in the middle of the night? Girls like you should all be rounded up and shot.
That was when I lost it. I think I must have screamed at him,
So what? Yeah, so I broke the law, but at least I have character. You want to shoot me? Is that what a police officer of the Republic of Korea’s “Civilian Government” is supposed to say? Take my blood! Take my blood!
I remembered screaming my head off in the police station. It all came back to me: I must have called my brother. Then he showed up and Iasked him how he knew I was there. The other people in the station clucked their tongues at me from behind my brother’s back and said I was crazy, so I got mad at them. When I thought about it, I couldn’t believe that was me. As much as I enjoyed complaining, I wasn’t the type to get drunk and make a scene in public, let alone a police station, of all places. I would never be able to show my face in Itaewon again. As the alcohol in my blood receded like the tide, standing in its place were memories, as stark as rocks on the seashore.
It must have been close to dawn when he picked me up. I think I cried… I say I
think
I cried because all I could remember was having heard a woman crying in the car. My brother and I were the only ones there, and since my brother isn’t a woman, the crying must have been coming from me. Did that fit into my uncle’s definition of the crying he wished I would do? I don’t know if the tears helped to sober me up, but I chose that moment to pick a fight with my brother. I think I started babbling, without any sort of preamble, about prisoners who had to survive on less than a thousand won for six months at a time, and how I was going crazy. I told him,
They’re driving me crazy, Yusik. Help me! I’m dying because of them!
My brother could not have felt good about having to pick up his little sister from the police station—his little sister who was nearly booked with drunk driving, who had broken off an engagement with his younger colleague, and who had attempted suicide not long ago. After my father, Yusik cared about me the most. We were so far apart in age that he doted on me as if I were his niece; when I was little, he used to carry me on his back. I could still remember his warm, strong, young back.
Whenever I see those guys in my line of work,
my brother had said,
guys who rape children and kill old
people, and don’t show even the slightest remorse in court, I hate the idea of having to breathe the same air as them! The death penalty is too good for them! I look at them and wonder whether they’re even human or whether they’re just animals. That may be a bad thought, but it seems like there really is a devil, and those people are marked from birth. They don’t deserve to live. They’re animals.
It was just an inference, but as I drank a glass of cold juice and stared out at the warm sunlit garden of my mother’s house, I figured my brother had said what he did because his little sister who never cried had suddenly fallen apart and bawled that she was losing her mind because of death row prisoners. He was probably worried that I would go into further shock while following Aunt Monica around and die for real. I told him
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