Finding Safety Across the Street
The next day, the wedding takes only half a day. It begins with an early morning trip to the hair shop for me and Sori, another one of my sisters, followed by a long wait for our family’s turn in the five-story, wedding-only hall. Then comes the ceremony, where I blink repeatedly to stop the tears from falling, and afterward, the paebaek—the newlyweds’ deep bows to the elders.
At the reception, I run into relatives I haven’t spoken to since my divorce. They ask if I really live in America, what I do there, how old my children are. Thankfully, no one asks whether my now-husband is Korean. I answer their questions honestly; I have nothing to hide. My mom, though, wants them to stop prying, afraid my past—the divorce, the remarriage—will resurface. I am proud of myself, my husband, and my children, but people are always drawn to gossip, past or present.
By midafternoon, everything is finished. The guests are gone, along with the newlyweds, who check into a hotel for their first night before leaving for their honeymoon in Spain tomorrow. Sori heads home with her husband and their two boys. My parents, Hyeri, and I go back to my brother’s house. I stop at the hotel and check in. My room is a standard twin, but it doesn’t feel cramped. I like the floor-to-ceiling window and the cushy lounge chair beside it. Mom would like it here.
That’s when I realize no one asked him to join us. No one told him I’d be staying at a hotel, either.
Back at Myungwoo's house, Mom, Hyeri, and I are in the living room, munching on the spread from the ibagi—the food offering from the bride's family to the groom. The ceremony is done, everybody's gone, we're relaxed now. A good time to make amends. I ask Mom casually if she'd like to come check out the hotel. She perks up at once and says yes, then disappears into the master bedroom. When she reemerges a few minutes later, her comfy loungewear is gone—the clothes she’d just changed into after spending all day in that stuffy Korean dress. Now she’s dressed in her favorite style: a purple dress shirt, brown slacks, a black padded jacket, and a gray bucket hat. All this just to cross the street. I tell her she looks great. She grins wide.
“Dad, Mom and I are going to hang out in Sissi’s room at the hotel,” Hyeri tells my father, who’s been resting in the guest bedroom since we got back from the wedding hall. “We’ll be back soon.”
“Yuri booked a hotel? She’s not staying here?” He steps out of the guest room and into the living room, where the ibagi is spread out, the same food Mom and Hyeri and I had already started picking at. That’s when I realize no one asked him to join us. No one told him I’d be staying at a hotel, either.
“I need a bed,” I give him the same excuse I gave Mom. “I got it pretty cheap, though.” I wait for his response, a nonchalant smile hiding how nervous I feel.
“Okay, you guys have fun,” he says, then turns back to his room, letting me exhale in relief.
On the twelfth floor of the Seoul Garden Hotel, I open the door to my room for Mom and Hyeri. They step inside, look around, and go, “Wow~” I tell them to check out the window, and they gasp at the mesmerizing night scenery: neon signs from restaurants and bars and other shops, brightly lit windows from high-rises across from us, and glowing streams of car lights below.
“I love it,” Hyeri says, settling on the bed next to me. “I might stay here tonight!”
“You can if you want to,” I say from the lounge chair by the window. A small table sits in front of me with a cold can of beer I just grabbed from the fridge, plus beef jerky and dried fruits from the ibagi tray. I still haven’t had a chance to be alone with my sister. Maybe tonight I’ll finally share stories from the past, compare notes, though not too many.
“What about me?” Mom asks from the other bed.
“Umm…” I’m unable to speak what I have in mind. No, I don’t want you to. I know what you’ll do if we’re left alone. You’ll drown me in your endless complaints, bottomless grievances about your life, the years that nobody saved you, not even your God.
“I’m kidding.” She smiles. “I know you want to be alone.”
“Sorry, Mom.” I smile too, apologetic.
With that settled, Mom turns her purse upside down over the covers. Hyeri and I watch as white envelopes—at least a hundred of them—spill out like a landslide, each one holding bujodon, the gift money collected at Myungwoo’s wedding. She goes through them one by one, jotting down the amounts in a notebook while Hyeri and I talk in low voices so we won’t distract her. This gift money isn’t free. Someday it will have to be returned when it’s the giver’s turn—births, funerals, weddings. Which is why I married my ex-husband: so my parents could get their bujodon back, the contributions they’d made over the years. The biggest mistake of my life.
Which is why I married my ex-husband: so my parents could get their bujodon back, the contributions they'd made over the years. The biggest mistake of my life.
Just as Mom finishes counting and begins to relax, her phone rings. It’s my father. She puts him on speaker.
“Ya! Park Soonja! What time is it? Why aren’t you back?”
Hearing him call her by her full name, his voice clipped and sharp, our smiles fade and our bodies tense. After a deep sigh, Mom pleads, “Can I stay a little longer? I’m with your daughters.”
“No, you come back right now! Or I’ll lock the door. Your choice.”
Then he hangs up.
“I don’t want to go back right now.” Mom looks at us, the corners of her mouth turned down. “What should I do?”
“I’ll call him,” I tell her. He has no right to treat his wife this way.
Mom nods, and I call him.
“Dad, it’s me. Mom wants to stay here just a little longer.” I sound calm, composed. “Why don’t you let her? I’ll make sure she gets home safe.”
“Ya! Jung Yuri!” he shouts, and I jerk away from the phone. “You take care of your family, and I’ll take care of mine.”
A click. He hung up on me too.
“Ya! Jung Yuri!” he shouts and I jerk away from the phone. 'You take care of your family, and I'll take care of mine.’
Yesterday, when I was upset with him after their fight—the one that drove me to book this hotel—part of me wondered if I was overreacting. Because, until then, for a short while, I’d fooled myself into believing he’d changed, that age had softened him. His warm smile at the airport when he saw me through the arrival gate. His affectionate gaze when I talked about Mark and the girls on the airport bus. What did I expect? When will I accept that my parents will never change? That where I came from will never change?
Hyeri and I tell Mom that she’s too old to endure his tyranny, that we’ll support her if she leaves him.
“I know,” Mom says. “I want to leave him, too. But... too much is at stake.”
She doesn’t have to explain what’s at stake. It’s money. When we were young, it was us, her four young children. Now, it’s money. I guess it always has been.
When we were young, it was us, her four young children. Now, it's money. I guess it always has been.
Mom stays for another hour, growing only more restless. To lighten the mood, Hyeri and I try different topics: how rich Myungwoo’s new wife’s family must be to send her overseas to study; how stiff and robotic my brother’s smile looked at the wedding; how beautiful, despite everything, they looked together. We smile and laugh as we talk about the wedding, the guests, the relatives that I haven’t seen in forever. But I can’t help noticing our smiles look contrived, our laughter sound deflated.
“If he gets violent, just call me,” I say when she gets up to leave. “I’ll call the police. I don’t care that he’s my father. I’ll have him arrested.”
Mom says she will, in such a low voice that I’m not sure she means it.
Hyeri, who’s been chatty and cheerful all day, now seems tired. She says little as she pushes the door open and holds it for Mom. Her creased forehead tells me she’s thinking hard, running through scenarios in her head, calculating what to do in each one. Or maybe wondering why she still has to deal with this—a thirty-something-year-old woman having to drop everything to stand between her incompatible parents.
Once alone, I finish the beer and crawl under the warm, feathery hotel covers. But my mind is running in circles, trying to think ahead to whatever happens next. If I get a call from Mom and call the police for her, am I ready to let the officers—basically outsiders, strangers—into our family’s forty-year-old secrets? Am I ready to let them know how poor and pathetic our family is?
It wouldn’t be my first time, though. I called them a few times because of my ex-husband, hoping they would protect me, teach him a lesson: you don’t hit anyone. Disappointingly, it never went as I hoped. All they did was assure me it was just a misunderstanding or a mistake and let me watch them shake his hand, not mine.
When I wake up the next morning, exhausted, I realize Mom hasn’t called. Crossing the street to Myungwoo’s house, I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad one. Out of the elevator, walking toward his unit, I brace for mess, tears, destruction. But when Mom opens the door, there’s none of it—her hair isn’t disheveled, the floor isn’t littered with thrown things.
“How was it? Nothing happened?”
She snorts, shaking her head. “He was passed out drunk when we got here. And when I woke up this morning, he was gone.”
I never imagined he’d just leave for Pohang, the city where we grew up, where he and Mom still live. Now I almost wonder if I overreacted last night, if I worried myself sick for nothing, if it was just a misunderstanding. Or a mistake.
The thing is, no one would ever know until it’s too late.
With only a few days left in Korea, I decide to have fun, to enjoy myself, as that was the original plan. I take Mom to a health-themed restaurant where she can choose from a wide selection of low-carb dishes for her diabetes. I meet Sori and her children and marvel at how much salmon her ten-year-old can put away. I stop by Namdaemun Market, the oldest street market in Korea, where excited foreigners and seasoned Korean shoppers hunt for bargains and sample street food. There, I shop for Mark, Hannah, and Savannah, playing the part of a delighted tourist like everybody else in this lively maze of stalls and carts and sounds.
I'm shivering inside and out, looking like someone who can't afford a warm jacket, feeling like someone for whom the tail end of this freezing winter will never taper off, for whom a bright-colored spring will never arrive.
And the biting cold.
The American jacket I brought isn’t thick enough for the icy Korean February. I’d thought Seoul would be like Virginia, where I’d already put away the heavy winter coat that weighed me down, though it kept me warm. I’m shivering inside and out, looking like someone who can’t afford a warm jacket, feeling like someone for whom the tail end of this freezing winter will never taper off, for whom a bright-colored spring will never arrive.
But long before this trip, my story began in a place far smaller—and far more dangerous.
© 2025 The SteelMaker’s Daughter by Yuni J. All Rights Reserved.
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