Page 36 of The Way Back Home

“Since when do you throw the first punch?” He wipes the blood off his lip with the back of his hand, examining it, then flicks it into the dirt. “That’s my job.”

“Had to learn from somebody.”

He snorts at that and drops onto his back beside me so we’re both lying in the dirt staring up at the trees.

Mrs. Nam takes one look at us when we come through the door and the color drains from her face.

“What happened?” She hurries around the counter, hands reaching, her eyes darting between us. “Who did this? Were you attacked? How many were there?”

“No one attacked us, Halme,” Ryowoon says, grinning, his split lip making it lopsided. “We just got in a fight.”

She stops. Looks at me. I nod sheepishly.

“With each other?”

“He started it,” Ryowoon says, jerking his thumb at me.

Mrs. Nam’s hand goes to her chest. She clutches at the collar of her blouse, closes her eyes, and lets out the deepest sigh. Then she shuffles toward the back without another word. We hear the freezer open and close.

She comes back with two bags of ice wrapped in thin towels and presses one against my cheek hard, making me wince, she shoves the other into Ryowoon’s hands.

“Aish, you two.” She stands in front of us, arms folded, surveying the damage. “You’ll never grow up, you still can’t keep from beating each other senseless.”

“To be fair,” Ryowoon says through the ice he’s holding to his lip, “he’s the one who punched me.”

“Don’t.” Mrs. Nam holds up a finger. “Don’t tell me who started what. I don’t care. Sit.”

We sit. In the courtyard, same spot we’ve been sitting since we were six, the low table between us, the worn stone under our legs. Mrs. Nam brings out leftover japchae and rice and sets it down and watches us eat with an exasperated expression, her mouth set in a line, one hand on her hip.

“This,” she says, gesturing between us, “is why I never had children.”

Ryowoon chokes on his rice.

We get into two more fights that summer, both of them stupid. Over a comic book Ryowoon borrowed and returned with a torn cover, which spiraled into shoving and then a full brawl behind the harbor wall that ended with both of us in the water, soaking wet and breathing hard, treading waves while yelling at each other until some old fisherman told us to shut up. The second I don’t even remember the cause of afterward, just that we were walking up the hill from the docks and then suddenly we weren’t, suddenly we were rolling around in the street while Nuri barked her head off and Mrs. Park from up the road leaned out her window screaming.

But most days aren’t like that. Most days we end up at Mrs. Nam’s after school or after wandering, the two of us sprawled in her courtyard eating what she puts in front of us while she sits in her chair by the back door watching her drama through the open doorway, the tinny sound of the TV carrying out into the yard.

She tells us about her husband sometimes. Mr. Nam, who died before either of us was born, a fisherman who went out one December morning and didn’t come back. She doesn’t cry when she talks about him, just gets a soft, faraway look as she describes the way he used to sing while he mended his nets, how he’d bring her flowers from the hillside every spring, how he snored so loud she could hear him through the walls.

“Forty years,” she says one afternoon, shelling beans into a metal bowl, her fingers quick despite the arthritis. “Forty years of that man’s snoring. And you know what?” She pauses, looking at the two of us over the rim of her glasses. “I still can’t sleep without it.”

Ryowoon and I glance at each other. Neither of us says a word. Mrs. Nam goes back to her beans.

“You two keep beating each other up,” she says mildly, not looking at us, “and I’m going to have to start buying ice in bulk. You think I’m made of money? I’m an old woman on a fixed income.”

“We’ll pay you back,” Ryowoon says, grinning.

“With what? Your good looks?” She tosses a bean hull at him. “Get in there and restock the chip shelf. Both of you. Earn your keep.”

We go. Ryowoon bumps my shoulder on the way through the door, I bump his back, and Mrs. Nam sighs behind us wearily, knowing she’ll be patching us up again before the week’s out.

14 Years Old

On the second day of the new school year Jiae catches me before first period. She steps out from behind the big ginkgo tree near the entrance as I’m coming through the gate, bag slung over one shoulder, still half asleep, and she holds out a folded piece of paper with both hands, her head bowed slightly, cheeks pink.

I stare at it. Then at her.

Jiae’s been in my class since we were seven. Skinny, quiet, always sitting near the window. But she’s come back from summer break looking like a different person. Her hair’s long now, past her shoulders, and she wears it down with a little clip on one side. The roundness in her face is gone, replaced by sharper lines that make her eyes look bigger and brighter. She’s taken to wearing lip gloss and maybe mascara and some other makeup. Whatever she’s done, it’s working.