The School for Wives

The child never responded, and his mom's orders sounded like a monologue.

All the women there, except for the child, could hear her and were starting to get annoyed. Even when the boy didn't budge, she wouldn't give up. Since most of the women there, including Sŏlhye, were moms themselves, they felt worse for her inability to handle the child—who was sitting on the latex matrix like a doll—than for the child himself. The boy, glued to his seat the whole time, reading, didn't seem to understand speech. He flipped the pages of his book quickly. He would finish a book, toss it aside, and grab a new one. Now he was reading a storybook filled with text—a paperback with a few illustrations. There was no way a child who knew how to read couldn't understand what was being said, as speech comes before reading.

"He must've been forced to read too much, even before he could speak. I'm sure that's how he got autism."

_______

The boy seemed no older than five. Finally, his mom snatched the book away from him. He didn't know what to do with his empty hands. All he did was chase after his mom's movements with his eyes. Sŏlhye thought it looked like a newborn following a mobile.

When Sŏlhye first saw the nursery shelf crammed with children's books, some door-to-door saleswomen carrying a bunch of sample books came to mind. But then she realized that she had never actually seen them. Yet, somehow, the image of one specific woman stuck in her head: a pudgy body that had given birth to two or three kids, wrapped under a girdle and squeezed into a two-piece suit with storybooks, biographies, and English nursery rhyme cassette tapes spilling out of her cheap leather bag, like Mary Poppins' magic bag. This woman kept knocking at the door even after there was no answer to the doorbell. Even when she was told that Mother wasn't home, she asked to open the door for just a few seconds, saying all she wanted was a glass of water, emphasizing that there was no need to buy any books.

But that wasn't how the Danmi Cooperative books had gotten there. They said all those brand-new-looking books, toys, and dolls came from the members themselves. Those women liked to use the word "giveaway." One of the moms who said she was giving away all the children's books at home because her child was now in middle school clicked her tongue: "I never forced my child to read all these. That's just what some stupid women who don't even read themselves do to torture their kids." She must have been referring to the mom whose child showed signs of autism—the mom who never missed showing up with her child, even when the women who liked to gossip constantly whispered behind her back. Recalling the clear signs of autism in her own son, Sŏlhye wondered if the child was happy there at the nursery. She thought she could somewhat understand those children, who chose to stage solitary protests as members at the bottom of their families, as descendants and dependents of their fervent parents.

Just when she started to feel like she was "one of those moms" herself, Sŏlhye looked straight into the woman's face. How could she have not recognized her before? "Ŏnni," Sŏlhye found herself calling the woman, picturing the ŏnni entering the sorority club room, a large silver kettle in one hand. What did I tell you about keeping it filled with water, huh? she used to shout gruffly before placing it on the stove. It was her—the sorority president Sŏlhye had sworn to slap in the face with all her might if she ever came across her again.

_______

Fast forward to today—away from those college years and from the "moment we first met."

There...