Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

History has failed us, but no matter.

She wanted to keep talking. It felt easier to whisper to him in the dark;

When she was there, she had not loved it enough.

“But things get better. Life is shitty, but not all the time.

“You have this scent,” Hana said quietly, “I used to think it was your perfume. Joy, nee?” “I still wear that.” “I know,” Hana said, and Etsuko resisted the urge to sniff her own wrists. “It’s not just the perfume, though, it’s all the other creams and things that you wear, and it makes up this smell. I used to walk around department stores wondering what it was. The smell of mama.”

Etsuko had failed in this important way—she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.

“Go-saeng,” Yangjin said out loud. “A woman’s lot is to suffer.” “Yes, go-saeng.” Kyunghee nodded, repeating the word for suffering. All her life, Sunja had heard this sentiment from other women, that they must suffer—suffer as a girl, suffer as a wife, suffer as a mother—die suffering. Go-saeng—the word made her sick. What else was there besides this? She had suffered to create a better life for Noa, and yet it was not enough. Should she have taught her son to suffer the humiliation that she’d drunk like water? In the end, he had refused to suffer the conditions of his birth. Did mothers fail by not telling their sons that suffering would come?

He felt excited around Hana, but she also made him nervous and afraid.

He didn’t want to play this stupid game where they wouldn’t talk about what was real.

The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa’s small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet, grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.