The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness

THE GIRL

WHO WROTE

LONELINESS

KYUNG-SOOK SHIN

TRANSLATED FROM THE KOREAN BY HA-YUN JUNG

PEGASUS BOOKS

NEW YORK LONDON

For my oldest brother; my cousin; all those who attended the Special Program for Industrial Workers at Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School from 1979 to 1981; my language arts teacher, Choe Hong-i; and for Hui-jae eonni, who, for as long as I remain in this world, will never become a part of the past.

THE GIRL

WHO WROTE

LONELINESS

ONE

There exists in every life and particularly at its dawn an instant that determines everything.

—Jean Grenier

This book, I believe, will turn out to be not quite fact and not quite fiction, but something in between. I wonder if it can be called literature. I ponder the act of writing. What does writing mean to me?

Here I am on an island.

It is night and light from the fishing boats, afloat on the night sea, pours in through the open window. Out of the blue, I find myself here, in this place where I have never been before, contemplating myself at sixteen. There I am, sixteen years old. A girl with a plump face, as indistinct as any other anywhere in Korea. It is 1978, toward the end of the Yusin regime, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who had been in office only a year, has announced plans for a gradual withdrawal of ground troops from Korea, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher has publicly acknowledged America’s keen interest in establishing diplomatic ties with North Korea and other nations, all creating quite a bit of distress for President Park Chung-hee.

And I, sixteen years old, sit on the wooden veranda of a farmhouse, as indistinct as any other around the country, and listen to the radio, waiting for the mail. What can I do, if you leave, just like that . . . The radio is playing the grand prize–winning song from the National College Song Contest, the lead singer’s voice desolate as wasteland. This cannot be, no, no, don’t go.

While a new wind is sweeping across the city in hope to change the world, somewhere out there, in our countryside home, a sixteen-year-old girl, unable to afford high school, is listening to What Can I Do. The ripe spring has passed and summer is approaching.

Nowadays, compared to something like Seo Taiji’s rap number I Know, the song feels almost classical, but when I first hear What Can I Do on the radio, I almost shrink with shock and turn the radio off. It is completely different from the songs I have been listening to. But I, who am sixteen years old and positioned in a place utterly different from that of the voices in the outside world calling to put an end to the Yusin regime and Park’s emergency rule, I, who have nothing else to do but listen to the radio all day, turn the radio back on. What Can I Do comes on again. Perhaps What Can I Do has conquered the entire city. On every station that plays music, they are playing What Can I Do. After hearing the song a few times, I am singing along. How could you, you were once so loving, once so tender.

The girl sings along, her expression rather blank. The mailman comes at about eleven o’clock.

At the time, the girl’s dream goes something like this: to leave this dull place and go live with Oldest Brother in the city. To meet someone there and hear from him that he is happy to be given the chance to know her. But today, once again, the mailman does not make a stop.

Here I am on the island Jeju-do.

It is my first time writing away from home. As far as writing habits go, mine has always been to head home to write, even if I was out. Even if I had just set out on a trip, I would impulsively lament the fact that I was not home when I felt the urge to write. Head on home, I would think, as I rushed to pack up, pushed along by the sentences springing to the surface in an unfamiliar place. Was writing home to me? Wherever I might be at that instant, these sentences, surging up through my body, pushed me to hurry back home. When I was writing, I had to have the things around that my hands found comfortable and that my eyes were accustomed to—cotton swabs to keep my ears clean and my toothbrush on its stand by the bathroom sink. I had to have, by my side, smells that did not feel strange, and to have nearby the T-shirts and pants that I always wore. Fresh socks that I could change into any moment. All of my daily routines in their respective places, like my tongue inside my mouth, like my plastic washbowl under the tap.

Some sentences are like ambushing soldiers, jumping out from behind the bushes inside of me on an autumn day like this one, while I am walking down the street to keep an appointment. They conquer reality in an instant and fill me up with an excitement that seems to be wrapped in light. I am willingly captured by these soldiers mid-ambush and turn my back on my appointment. I head home.

But this time I abandon my habits. I abandon home.

I abandon home and arrive here on this island, and think about home. About my childhood under the thatched roof, before the New Village Movement replaced straw with synthetic slates; my family in that house with the thatched roof; the springs and summers and falls and winters that circulated so vividly above that roof of straw.

I take a breath.

I, sixteen years old, am now down on my stomach on the yellow flooring of lacquered paper, writing a letter. Dear Brother, please hurry, come and take me from here. Halfway into the letter, I tear it to pieces. It is already June. Rice planting season out in the paddies. In the compost dump, barley straw is rotting. Sunlight lands on my neck, stinging hot. The rose moss growing by the gate already has its face sticking out, as if it were pouting. I am sick of sunlight and rose moss. I pull down the pitchfork from a wall inside the shed. At first I drag the pitchfork to the compost dump and poke at the barley straw. Sunlight pours down, stinging my forehead. My hands begin to move wildly. What has happened? I think I see the pitchfork flash in the sunlight, but then it strikes down all the way through to the sole of my foot, clumsily lifted from the ground and up into my foot. I am dumbfounded. I do not dare pull out the pitchfork stuck in the sole of my foot. My shocked sole does not even bleed. I collapse on the ground. I cannot quite register the pain and I am not crying, either. With the pitchfork stuck on my sole, I lay myself down on the barley straw. The blue sky pours down on my face. A while passes and Mom returns, shouting, What happened?

Mom.

Only when I feel Mom’s presence do the tears start streaming down. Only then I feel scared; only then I feel pain. Mom is in shock as she shouts, Close your eyes, close them tight. I close my eyes, close them tight. From my tightly shut eyes, tears stream down. Mom grabs hard at the pitchfork and shouts again. Don’t open your eyes until I pull out the pitchfork. My eyes open furtively and catch Mom’s eyes. She must find it all dreadful: her eyes also close as she holds on to the pitchfork by the tip of its handle. Without hesitating, Mom grabs the pitchfork with force and pulls it out of my foot. My nerves must have been so shocked that there is no blood even after the pitchfork is out.

What a viciously dogged girl you are. Mom throws the pitchfork aside and lifts me up. Just lying there, with that thing in your foot! Not even shouting out for help! Mom’s huge hand lands on my back with a sticky slap. Mom lays me down on the wooden floor of our veranda and places cow dung on the hole in my foot, wraps it with plastic. I lie on my stomach on the floor with cow dung on my sole and start writing my letter again. Dear Brother, hurry, please, come and take me away from here.

The springs and the summers, the falls and, especially, the winters . . . the wide wintry fields, the assault of snow-blasted winds, and heavy snows that would go on for days—yet somehow I do not recall winters in the country as being cold. The mittens that Mom had knitted with yarn that she had unraveled from Brother’s sweater were so worn they could not keep out the wind, making the tips of my fingers frigid. Sometimes Mom had no time to mend my socks, leaving me to go around with cold feet, in socks where my heels poked out like potatoes. So how is it that I have no memory of being cold? The winter chases everyone, male and female, the young and the old, from the wide fields into rooms. In these rooms, the winter makes them roast chestnuts in the brazier, makes them take out the soft, ripe persimmons from the rice jar, and fetch sweet potatoes from the pantry to throw them out the back door into the snow, to peel the skin off with a knife when they are frozen solid. It was during one of these winters that I saw them.

For some reason, I stand by the brook, gazing at the winter fields beyond the brook. Under the distant white snow, under the snowy wind again starting to blow from the direction of the railroad, which is the only path that lay open to other lands, the fields embosom flocks and flocks of mallards. Having lost the grass seeds and tree fruits and the invertebrate insects, these mallards now searching for ears of rice in the snow are so beautiful to me. These hungry flocks blanketing the wide open winter fields . . .

In the middle of writing my letter, with cow dung on my foot and my stomach on the floor, I lift myself up and drag myself toward the shed. Ever since I got my foot pierced, I feel as if the pitchfork is glaring at me wherever I go. I pull the pitchfork down from the shed wall. Still feeling as if it is glaring at me, I drag the pitchfork across the yard, to the well. Without hesitating, I throw it in. The water splashes. Much later, I gaze into the deep, dark well, which swallows the pitchfork then quickly goes quiet and still, welcoming in the sky as if nothing has happened.

Writing. Could it be that the reason I am so attached to writing is because only this will allow me to escape the feeling of alienation, that I, my existence, is nothing?

One day, standing outside Deoksu Palace, captivated by a sentence surging up my chest, I grab a taxi, and as I head back home I see a passage framed and set up on the dashboard that reads, May today be another safe day. Right above these words, the infant savior, dressed in white, sits kneeling in a column of light pouring down on him, his palms pressed together. Next to the painting of Samuel, praying, May today be another safe day, are photos of the taxi driver’s family—his wife and children. This was surely not the first time for me to encounter such a set-up, but somehow, this day, the Samuel portrait and the family photographs press down my unrealistic sentences and fill up my heart with a sense of reality. Only then I start to wonder why I am hurrying back home, breaking my appointment with the person standing outside Deoksu Palace.

Having lost my sentence, I tell the taxi driver to turn around, back toward Deoksu Palace.

Last April, one day not long after my first novel was published, in the middle of a languid nap, I received a phone call. A woman’s voice of substantial volume asked for me. An unfamiliar voice. I thought then that it was my first time hearing this voice. When she learned that the person on the line was the one she was looking for, she did a double take then expressed her delight, noticeable by the change in the texture of her voice when she asked if I remembered her, offering her name.

It’s me, don’t you remember? It’s Ha Gye-suk.

Ha Gye-suk?

On other occasions, even if I hadn’t the faintest idea who it was after the person on the phone stated his or her name several times, if that person seemed to know me for sure, I would have mumbled, Ah, yes, trying not to let that person realize that I could not remember him or her, but that day, I had answered the phone in my sleep and ended up blurting, Ha Gye-suk? She must have been dismayed by my being unable to remember her, but she acted as if she didn’t mind and right away explained who she was.

Back in school you and Mi-seo were friends, remember? And I was friends with Mi-seo as well. You know, I was kind of plump. Here she burst into laughter, perhaps because she was plump back then but had now gotten fat. And was an hour late getting to school every day.

When she got to an hour late getting to school every day, I was abruptly awakened from my stupor. When she first said back in school, I had wondered if she meant middle school or college, but when she introduced herself as the one who was an hour late getting to school every day, a door had discreetly opened, the door to a classroom in Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School, behind Janghun High School in Sindaebang-dong, Yeongdeungpo.

This girl, Ha Gye-suk.

The class is already underway. The girl in uniform with the ribbon bow tie, the purple-red schoolbag placed on the hallway floor, her hips slightly pulled back behind her as she discreetly opens the door at the back of the classroom, the girl with the bright red lower lip. Her plump cheeks, the curly hair, her eyes that always seemed to say to us, I’m sorry.

It was now 1994. It was 1979 when we first met. The girl had called me up, as if to chastise me for napping, saying, It’s me, don’t you remember? and was now sliding open the classroom door from sixteen years ago.

Our daily schedule comprised four classes. Ha Gye-suk’s lower lip always appeared slightly redder than the upper lip, and when she arrived an hour late and opened the door at the back of the classroom, her lower lip would turn even redder. How red it looked. This girl, her eyes, nose, and mouth were all gone now and all that remained with me was her red lower lip.

Thanks to this lower lip, the girl, Ha Gye-suk, had now come back to life in my memory. One day, when, again an hour late, she discreetly opened the door and stepped inside, Mi-seo whispered in my ear. She works for this really vicious company. All the other companies dismiss their workers in time for them to get to school, but this place always arranges the hours so that the students miss the first class. You know why her lower lip is always so red? It’s because each time she gets to the classroom door an hour late, she stands outside the door biting her lip over and over. When I realized that the person on the phone was the girl who used to discreetly open the door at the back of the classroom, that she was one of the girls who had, between 1979 and 1981, gone to school with me, it was my voice that changed texture. My, who’d have imagined I’d hear from you.

Here I am on an island; feeling as if I have reclaimed nature, from which I thought I had grown apart since my childhood. For several days I have been walking around the island. Walking around town the first day, I found a bookstore. Its humble storefront made me stop and smile. There was a sliding glass door with drapes hand-embroidered with tiny patterns. Because of these drapes, I never would have thought it was a bookstore had it not been for the sign. Pleased about encountering a bookstore in an unfamiliar place, I slipped inside, even though I was not looking for anything. I had to smile again. The shop was small, even for a bookstore, but in one corner, they were selling razors and school supplies—pencils, erasers, and fine-point pens—and in another, rice puffs and sweet chips were on display. The store’s owner was, unlike what one would expect, a pretty young woman, which made me smile to myself.

And then I smiled yet again, for among some one hundred books on the bookcase, there it was—the book that had made Ha Gye-suk call me up. My novel.

I took down a hymnbook from a corner of the bookshelf and paid for it before leaving the store. I was not a churchgoer but I had wondered about the composition of hymns and wanted to investigate. But back in the city, it is never easy to get things done except things that need to be done right away. My days were always wrapped up in one hassle or another, and I always had a long list of books I had to buy. From time to time it would again occur to me that I wanted a hymnbook and each time I would tell myself that next time I was at a bookstore I should pick one up, but that was all. The thought had passed me by for several years, and in the end, this was where I finally purchased a hymnbook.

With the hymnbook under my arm, again I walked around the island for hours and hours. The landscape that I was used to was the plains of the peninsula’s inland region, and its springs and summers and falls and winters, but now, I am standing before the island’s unfamiliar oleanders, windmill palms and crinum lilies, and the endless rows of dark blue waves. What I realize, out of the blue, is that nature is, to all of us, a nourishing nutrient, that it is nature that pushes us to travel back in time, to a remote path inside our hearts. Back in the city, designed so that we never once have a chance to step on soil, I would once again have let several years go by before I bought this hymnbook, which I have no immediate need for.

Ha Gye-suk’s phone call was the first I received from people from that time in my life. After her call, people from those days began to call from time to time, asking if I was that person from that classroom in that school. When I confirmed that I was that person from that classroom in that school, they said, It’s really you, and revealed who they were. It’s really you, this is Nam Gil-sun. This is Choe Jeong-bun. I saw you in the newspaper ad. It was your name and the face resembled yours, but I didn’t think it was really you. Still, I wondered and called the publisher. They wouldn’t give me your phone number, so I had to plead, you know. Most of the callers said they had seen me in the advertisement in the newspaper. And they said they were happy for me, as if it had happened to them.

One of them, whose name, she said, was Yi Jong-rye, said she had pointed out to her husband my photograph in the newspaper ad and told him this was her friend, and she felt this sense of pride; but her voice turned teary in the end. It was a school, all right, but since nobody keeps in touch, my husband asked once, ‘You sure you went to high school?’ He had brought it up casually only in passing, but it’s funny, because it really hit me hard, you know . . . How could he say that, when I worked so hard to get that diploma? I felt hurt, left with this ache in the pit of my stomach, and for days slept with my back to him. So when I saw you in the newspaper and I was able to tell him, ‘This is my high school friend,’ imagine how proud I was.

Listening to her words coming from the other end of the line, I laughed, but after we hung up, I was also left with an ache in the pit of my stomach and remained sitting there for a while, caressing the receiver. It’s not just you. I am not any different. That was true. I had once been a high school student as well, but I did not have a single friend from high school, either. When middle-aged women on some TV drama not even worth your time chatted about meeting up with high school friends, I would gaze at them blankly. Even now, when someone introduces the person next to her, saying, She’s a friend from high school, I falter and take another look at the two of them.

Pouting when a friend finds a new friend; pressing a fallen leaf dry and writing her name on the back; going biking with friends; writing a letter through the night and slipping it between the pages of her book—neither I nor the friends who had called me up, had ever experienced such times. No time to pout, no time to press leaves—we had none of that among us.

What did exist among us were assembly lines at sewing factories, electronics factories, clothing factories, food processing factories.

It is my destiny to leave my parents’ care early in life. All sorts of signs pointed toward this, even an online fortune-telling service that I tried out for fun. It said I would leave the place of my birth and experience hardships in my early years. Sometimes I ponder exactly when one’s early years end. I ponder this as hard as when I ask myself, What is literature? Then I conclude that thirty would be good. I am now thirty-two, so that would mean the hardships of my early years have passed. At sixteen, when I pierced the sole of my foot with the pitchfork, while sitting on the veranda of the house with the blue gate, waiting for Brother’s letter, I got a vague sense that life was made up of vicious wounds. And that in order to embrace that viciousness and live on, I had to retain in my heart one thing that was pure. That I should believe in and depend on that one thing. If not, I would be too lonely. And if I simply lived on, I would some day, once again, pierce my foot with a pitchfork.

I am sixteen years old and on the last day of rice planting I take the night train and leave the house and the well that swallowed the pitchfork. At the edge of the village is the railroad, across from which Father runs a store. Mom tells me to go say good-bye to Father and to get on the bus there. Then she’ll catch that bus when it comes through the village center. Before leaving the house, the sixteen-year-old sister gazes down at the face of her seven-year-old brother, asleep after an early dinner. From the moment he was born, Little Brother had been glued to his sister’s back like a turtle and is always wary and full of fear that she might disappear. To Little Brother, who had grown up on Sister’s back, breathing in her smell, she is still the only one. To Little Brother, school is the only place that he has to release her to.

When Sister says, I’m going to school, be back soon, then Little Brother can say, Yes, you will be back. Even when he is playing outside, as soon as the sun sets, he will call out Sister! and run back into the house. Anywhere he might be, he calls out, Sister. When he is fetching eggs, when he is pooping, or picking persimmons. Once, out on the newly paved main street, he hit his head on a truck, and he still called out, Sister, Sister, Sister as he was being taken to the hospital.

Sister, where are you? I want to go to Sister. Left without a choice, his fourth-grader sister heads to the hospital straight from school, carrying her schoolbag. She sleeps at the hospital with Little Brother, has her meals at the hospital, and goes to school from the hospital. The way things are, Little Brother is not at all ready to part with Sister. If she were to tell him she is heading out to the city, he would burst into tears, so she dare not tell him she’s leaving and just gazes down at Little Brother’s sleeping face. Little Brother opens his eyes slightly and looks at Sister. He must have found it strange that she is dressed to go out when it is nighttime, and demands an answer, even in his stupor.

Are you going somewhere?

Sister says no, she is not going anywhere. Relieved, Little Brother closes his eyes. Sister puts her hand on the scar, still visible on the head of her sleeping brother. What a fuss he will make when he wakes up in the morning.

I haven’t even crossed the railroad tracks when I see the bus lights. I had spent too long gazing into Little Brother’s sleeping face. I am sixteen years old, and suddenly anxious as the lights on the bus approach.

Father! I shout out. Father runs out of the store, at the same time the bus arrives at the stop. Father, I am off ! And without a proper good-bye to Father, I board the bus. I hurry to the back of the bus and look out the window. Father stands vacant and still in the dark. His face is not visible; only his silhouette stands vacant and still.

Since then I have not had the chance to live in the same house as Father. Even with Mom or Little Brother, we have not spent five days together under the same roof.

Boarding the bus in the village center, Mom asks of her sixteen-year-old daughter, Did you say good-bye to Father?

Yes.

But was that a good-bye? Shouting toward the store, Father, I am off, and not even getting to see Father’s face. I should have set out just a little earlier. Father’s silhouette glimmered in front of my eyes, as he ran out of the store and stood vacant and still in the dark. The bus is already leaving the village. What happened five minutes ago has already become a thing of the past.

Mom is dressed in traditional hanbok, an orange outfit. It comes with a lined jacket over her blouse, which is fastened with a chrysanthemum-shaped brooch instead of with ribbon strings. When I gaze at the brooch, Mom says, You got this for me when you went on that school trip. The thin white collar of her blouse is dirty. When she notices that I am glancing at her dirty collar, Mom says, I’d meant to sew on a new one, but got too busy.

At the train station in town, we meet Cousin, who will be going to the city with me. Her legs long and slender, Cousin stands carrying a large bag next to Aunt, Mom’s brother’s wife, who has become bone skinny. Cousin is a slender nineteen-year-old. I smell the raw odor of fish as Aunt’s hand caresses my cheek. Aunt takes her hand from my cheek to and touches Cousin’s hand. As they say good-bye, the mother’s hand intertwines with the daughter’s.

And don’t you fight and argue.

As she lets go of Cousin’s hand, Aunt’s eyes well up with tears. When it’s time to get our tickets punched, Aunt asks Cousin to write them soon. Leaving my haggard aunt behind in the waiting room, Mom, Cousin, and I enter the boarding area.

I press my palms on the window of the train car and look out at the platform. Good-bye, my home village. I am leaving you to fish for life.

Even on the night train, Mom does not speak. She would barely have had time to straighten her back all day as she finished up the rice planting, but Mom does not even doze off. From time to time she glances at me, sitting next to her. Farewells make one gaze intently into the other person’s eyes. And make one realize things out of the blue—this was the shape of this person’s eyes, which one had never noticed before.

For ten days I had been ordering lunch at the same table and the woman at the restaurant finally struck up a conversation. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The busiest hour had passed. Somehow I had been coming to the restaurant at this same time each afternoon, and had begun to feel apologetic that, at this hour, when the woman would likely be ready for a break after the busy lunch crowd, I was pushing her back into the kitchen. The woman brought out my food, then after washing her face, she spoke to me as she applied lotion on her face.

Where are you from?

I came from Seoul.

A long way, is it?

Instead of answering, I smiled. I had just put a slice of kimchi in my mouth, so I couldn’t answer even if I wanted. The woman said that if I had told her from the start that I would keep coming back this often, she could have arranged a special menu with dishes prepared for her family for a cheaper price. I glanced at the menu on the wall. How much cheaper would she charge? The price was written below each item. A pot of kimchi stew for 4,000 won. Bean paste stew cooked with abalone, clams, or crayfish for 5,000 won. Spicy beef soup for 3,500 won.

Have you come alone?

To my relief, she did not add, A woman, all by yourself?

Yes.

Tourist?

No.

That’s what I guessed. A tourist would not stay here day in and day out.

I smiled again.

Then are you here for work?

Now I was lost. Could I say I was here for work? Had I come for work? Unable to answer, I said, Well, kind of, then smiled again. The woman must have understood my smile as yes, I have come for work. She brushed her permed hair back over her ears and brought out three clementine oranges on a plate.

What kind of work do you do?

I could not go on eating my lunch. I put down my spoon and peeled the skin off one of the clementines. The citric fragrance seeped into my nose, cool and fresh. The woman brought me the paper from another table. She probably remembered me reading the newspaper after eating each day. The spot on the paper where her hand had touched carried the smell of her lotion. Her hospitality made me feel embarrassed for not answering her question and I quickly said, I’m a writer. Right at that moment, the woman’s face, on which had age spots settled across her cheeks like a map, brightened up.

Oh my, really? What an honor!

Honor? Overcome with shyness, I let out a quiet laugh.

It was the first time that I had referred to myself as a writer to a stranger, to someone in an unfamiliar place . . .

Mom.

Mom’s dark eyes, like a cow’s. I had this thought for the first time that night. And it remains unchanged, then or now. How, even now, after raising us, her six children, Mom can still have such clear eyes. . . . There are times when Mom’s eyes push me deep into thought.

It is early summer in my sixteenth year and on the night train, Mom’s dark eyes well up with tears. This is Mom’s second time riding the train to Seoul. A while back, Oldest Brother needed some papers for his college registration but for some reason his letter arrived only a day before the papers were due. It would be too late if they were sent by mail, so Mom took on the role of courier. She got on the night train with the papers.

The only thing on Mom’s mind was that she must deliver that night these papers, which her son needed the following day. And the only thing Mom knew about Seoul was that her son worked at the Yongmun-dong Community Service Center.

Whenever she tells the story of her first visit to Seoul, Mom always says that there are plenty of good people in the world. There sitting next to me was this young man, about your brother’s age, see, so I took out the big envelope from my bag and said, the thing is, my son needs this tomorrow if he’s to start university, but I don’t know where to go. What am I to do? This young man, he got off with me at the station and although it was late at night, he took me all the way to the Yongmun-dong Community Center.

Not even the taxi driver knew the way, but the young man asked around, here and there, and got me there. The building was dark, but the young man said, This is it, so I banged and banged on the locked door and your brother came out, and that young man, he went to such trouble bringing me there, but turned around just like that, before I could give him a proper thank-you, and was gone.

Mom had handled her first trip to Seoul with such courage, but now, en route to take me to Brother, her eyes are filled with tears. Looking away from Mom’s teary eyes, I stare out at the dark outside the window, orange with the reflection of the hanbok. I stare at Cousin, sitting there like a single transplanted blossom of rose moss. Mom reaches out her arm and caresses my hair. Having already bid farewell to Aunt at the station, Cousin looks away from Mom and me.

You want some? Mom takes out boiled eggs from her bag. I shake my head. As she accepts the peeled egg from Mom, Cousin takes out a book from her bag and hands it over to me to take a look.

What kind of book is it?

It’s a book of photographs.

With bits of the hard-boiled egg on her lips, Cousin speaks to me in a low voice.

I want to be a photographer.

A photographer? I repeat her word. It occurs to me that the photographers I’ve seen in photo studios were all men. I turn to Cousin and say that the all the photographers I’ve seen are men.

Cousin lets out a laugh and says, "Not someone who takes those kinds of photographs but these kinds of photographs," as she turns the pages of the book she has placed on my lap, one after another. Each page Cousin turns to carries beautiful scenery. The desert, trees, the sky, the sea. When she arrives at a page, Cousin stops and whispers to me, Look at this. It is