A Novel
By Shimmanni Park
Episode 1: The Girl on a Swing
I met the girl on a summer's day on the children's playground of my apartment complex in Seoul, South Korea. It was the middle of June, 2010. She was on a swing, riding it. She was on it, kick pushing it high up with verve.
She was tall for her age. She was thin but not skinny. She had smiling long face with funny glasses with no lenses. She was wearing a slung denim skirt reaching down the knee.
I was with Cyon, my grand daughter of six. She wanted to ride on a swing, so I took her to the place, trying to push her on the swing. Cyon said no to my effort. She said she wanted to kick push it by herself. She did it very well.
Time flies. It was like yesterday that Cyon had been on a sitting swing. When Cyon and her parents called on us on every other week, her grandma used to take Cyon to the place, sitting her on the swing and pushing her. On each pushing, Cyon said to her grandma, "much stronger," which meant that she wanted to be pushed much higher.
It once happened that my wife, urged by her grand daughter that she be pushed higher, had given it a real hard push. In an instant, Cyon lost the grip of the swing wire, flying into the air and making a crash landing on the playground, with her mouth full of sand dust.
Though Cyon rejected the idea of being pushed by insisting on doing it herself, push kicking it higher and higher from the ground, I was on nerves, glancing at her frail hands. Of course, she seemed to be holding tightly on the wire, but her over-confidence made me worrisome, still.
Fact is the girl of next swing started talking to Cyon, asking about Cyon's age or something. I said "five years" from the railing on which I was sitting, then Cyon was correcting it, as if muttering to herself "not five years but six years." There was something else the girl was boasting about. She said she was strong, so much so that she could beat the class in arm wrestling. I looked up at her arms which seemed no less frail.
I was worried about their safety, that is, Cyon's safety, above all things. I was wondering why they were talking while moving on the swing. "Why not concentrate?" I wondered aloud. They did not know that they could fall down to the ground with brain concussion. "Hold on, Cyon!" I shouted. And I shouted to the other girl, "Stop talking to each other, O.K.?" Nonetheless, the girl over was giggling.
-----------------------------
I have had a memory of an unwholesome experience as a child. I had been a loner, living as a lonely boy in a remote mountain-deep valley. So bashful and shy I had been that I hadn't talked to a girl, any girl on the village.
It was Dano, the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar. It was a happy day for all the village folks, who had a lot of things to celebrate. The sky was high and clear. I had been on a swing.
"Get on and fly it," I was told to get on the swing from uncles of the family clan, who had made the village swing for half the day long yesterday. They lifted me up and let me get on it, which was a little tough at first, but some uncle helped me get on it with my two feet.
Before I knew, a girl, who had been much older and taller than me, jumped on the swing, facing me. I was astonished. Shocked was the right word for the occasion. I fell from the swing to the ground as a result, with my left arm broken,
My grandma had raced to the doctor's, that is, the only doctor's office in the town, carrying her grandson on her back. The doctor had fixed it in a hurried and a wrong way. That's how I have had a warped left arm.
The girl on the swing loomed large to me. I imagined for just a moment that the fearful girl on a Dano day of my boyhood years materialized. Before I knew, she got off from the swing and appeared beside me. In correct words, she seemed to appear beside me.
"May I sit beside you?" she said. I fantasized for just a while if I was dreaming. The voice sounded as if it was coming from a girl of my earlier memory farther away. I was not able to raise or turn my head toward her. She seemed to have made a metamorphosis of me into a shy and bashful boy. I found myself actually blushing. Shame on you.
I wondered why she was so immune to a stranger, that is, why she was not afraid of an adult man, regardless of whether he was young or old. I also wondered aloud whether she was cut off from the city legends, that is, the horror stories in which the rapists would take advantage of the extremely young victim's ignorance and insouciance.
I didn't know how to greet to the girl who had come suddenly close next to me just as I hadn't known it as a little boy sixty or so years ago at the remote valley and on the swing on my earlier Dano day. I was at a loss how to respond to the opposite sex. I haven't developed a skill all these years. I only said, "Of course, you may."
I was curious to know the other day just as I had been so as a boy why the girl on the swing approached me, saying hello to me, and the girl far older and taller than me had jumped on the swing, giving me a frontal jump.
No comments:
Post a Comment