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Bellfinch
- University of Hawai'i Press
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132 Bellfinch At the entrance to the park was a shelter for lost children. It looked like a glass cylinder; its round roof was painted green, and large windows wrapped around its sides. She paused quite unintentionally and, with her daughter Kyôngju, looked inside. Faces curious, Yunhûi and her son Sônggu, who had been following behind , stopped, too. Five or six small children looked out at the passersby; some were sucking on ice-cream bars, others were crying halfheartedly, noses running and faces stained with tears. It was still early, but these children had already lost their parents in the crowded park, and now they pressed their noses against the windows and whimpered at the outside world. People laughed as they passed. Some pointed and seemed to find the sight of the lost children amusing. Young children, still holding fast to their own parents’ hands, stood on tiptoe and peered inside as if they had discovered something truly remarkable. The lost children looked all the more pitiful because they were imprisoned under that green roof, away from their parents. A girl’s pretty dress, trimmed with lace, and the beret worn by a well-dressed little gentleman looked ragged and limp for the simple reason that their owners were separated from their families. The orphaned children were a source of entertainment for the people outside the glass. It was some distance from the lost children’s shelter by the main plaza to the entrance of the zoo. Yunhûi struggled to hold on to Sônggu’s hand, as if she had concluded from the four-year-old’s rambunctious behavior that he was a likely candidate for the shelter they had just passed. Sônggu and Kyôngju were the same age, but Bellfinch 133 Kyôngju was overly cautious and timid in crowded places like this. She looked back repeatedly to make sure she hadn’t strayed too far from her mother. Kyôngju’s mom felt a certain regret each time she saw Yunhûi and her son. If only Sônggu were a girl. But whenever she told Yunhûi that a daughter would be much easier for a divorcée to raise alone, Yunhûi tried to laugh it off. “So you should have a girl just in case you get divorced?” she asked. The two women had talked about coming to Seoul Grand Park for a long time. She and Yunhûi were from Inch’ôn. They had gone to the same middle school and high school, and now they both lived in Puch’ôn. Yunhûi, who ran a restaurant that closed its doors only one day a month, had been planning a special day with Sônggu for some time. When it came to her son’s education, her well-defined sense of duty was no different from any other mother’s. She had already decided that Sônggu was a problem child, simply because he was raised by a divorced mother and growing up in a noisy restaurant . Kyôngju’s mom was less enthusiastic about today’s outing, but she’d had no reason to refuse Yunhûi’s suggestion, which was meant, in part, to roust Kyôngju and her mother from their old tileroofed house. The two women were alike in that neither had a husband at home. Kyôngju’s mom’s thoughts turned to her absent spouse, not simply because she and Yunhûi were two women alone amidst a throng of families. Strictly speaking, she would have to say it was more the faint hint of fallen leaves on the distant mountains or perhaps the early autumn sunlight falling on the asphalt road. The sharp contrast of colors made her think of her husband. Most husbands were at the side of their wives and children, but hers had to spend an indeterminate period of time in an isolated world now. She thought of him as young fathers carrying picnic baskets and ground cloths brushed past with their families. Gazing up at the mountains shrouded in yellow-green shadows, she suddenly felt her right eyelid twitch. Soon it began to twitch every three or four seconds, and the mountains, trees, and brightly colored souvenir shops in her right sphere of vision looked as if they, too, had been seized by a momentary spasm. She lifted her hand and gently pressed down on the eyelid. Because the tic was a familiar symptom that had...