If I Had Your Face

by Frances Cha

Sujin has told me how much these men pay a night to have girls like Kyuri sit next to them and pour them liquor, and it’s taken me a long time to believe her.

Unfortunately, the truth is that even apart from her asymmetrical eyelids, Sujin’s face is too square for her to ever be considered pretty in the true Korean sense. Her lower jaw also protrudes too much.

Kyuri, on the other hand, is one of those electrically beautiful girls. The stitches on her double eyelids look naturally faint, while her nose is raised, her cheekbones tapered, and her entire jaw realigned and shaved into a slim v-line. Long feathery eyelashes have been planted along her tattooed eye line, and she does routine light therapy on her skin, which glistens cloudy white, like skim milk. Earlier, she was waxing on about the benefits of lotus leaf masks and ceramide supplements for budding neck lines. The only unaltered part of her is surprisingly her hair, which unfolds like a dark river down her back.

Our high school was vocational so it was only two years long, but Sujin didn’t even finish that. She was always itching to get to Seoul, to escape the orphanage that she grew up in, and after our first year she went to try her luck at a hair academy. She was clumsy with scissors though, and ruining wigs was expensive, so she dropped out of that too, but not before she called me to come take her spot.

It is a big deal for smaller hair shops to snag a room salon girl as a client because room salon girls get their hair and makeup done professionally every day and bring in a lot of money.

The only thing that annoys me about Kyuri is that sometimes she speaks too loudly when she is talking to me, although Sujin has told her that there is nothing wrong with my hearing. Also, I often hear her whispering about my “condition” at the shop, when my back is turned. I think she means well though.

SUJIN IS STILL COMPLAINING about her eyelids. She has been unhappy about them almost the entire time I have known her—before and after she had them stitched.

SUJIN’S PET NAME for me is ineogongju, or little mermaid. She says it’s because the little mermaid lost her voice but got it back later and lived happily ever after. I don’t tell her that that’s the American cartoon version. In the original story, she kills herself.

Sujin and I first met when we were assigned to work a sweet potato cart together our first year of middle school. That was how a lot of teenagers made money back in Cheongju in the winters—we stood on street corners in the snow and roasted sweet potatoes over coals in little tin barrels and sold them for a few thousand won each. Of course, it was only the bad kids who did this, kids who were part of the iljin—the gangs of every school—and not the nerds, who were busy studying for entrance exams and eating cute little boxed lunches that their mothers packed for them every morning. But then again, the ones at the sweet potato carts were the good bad kids. At least we were giving people something for their money. The truly bad ones just took it from them.

The first thing Sujin taught me was how to use my fingernails. “You can blind someone, or punch a hole in their throat, if you want. But you have to keep your nails the optimal length and thickness, so that they don’t break at a critical moment.” She examined mine and shook her head. “Yeah, these won’t do,” she said, prescribing nail-strengthening vitamins and a particular brand of thickening polish.

I THINK I KNOW why Sujin is so obsessed with her looks. She grew up in the Loring Center, which everyone in Cheongju thought of as a circus. In addition to housing an orphanage, it was a home for the disabled and deformed. Sujin told me that her parents died when she was a baby, but recently it occurred to me that she must have been abandoned by a girl even younger than us. Perhaps Sujin’s mother was a room salon girl too.

“I mean, they have the best surgical staff in the world. It would be stupid not to get your face fixed there if you want to be a star.”

“Dr. Shim Hyuk Sang,” says Kyuri. “The waiting list to see him is months long. He really understands beauty trends before they even happen, and what girls want to look like. That’s so important, you know?”

“Can you refer me? I really need to fix my jaw and that article said that jaw surgery is his specialty.” Only I know that she has been plotting how to ask Kyuri this for weeks and weeks—in fact, probably since they first met. Sujin has often told me that Kyuri’s jawline is the prettiest she has ever seen.

“Look, I am not saying I regret having jaw surgery. It was the turning point of my life. And I’m not saying that it won’t change your life—in fact, it definitely will. But I still can’t say I recommend it. Also, Dr. Shim’s really busy and that hospital is really expensive. Really expensive, even without the premium. He only takes cash. They say they take cards, but they bait you with such a big discount if you pay cash that you can’t possibly not pay cash. It’s just too expensive, unless you’re an actress who has signed with a major agency, and then he’ll sponsor you.” Kyuri downs the rest of the soju and blinks her feathery lashes. “Otherwise, you’re going to have to borrow money from somewhere else. And then you have to pay off the interest forever.”

Offering a loan to keep them in control, controlling them with their debt

“Well it’s going to be the biggest investment of my life, and I’ve been saving for a while now.” Sujin tosses her head and shoots a quick look at me as she says this. I’ve been doing her hair for free so that she could save up for her new surgery. It’s the least I can do.

“I don’t know how much you have saved, but you’ll be surprised at the final bill. It never ends up being that ...

Later, Sujin and I will discuss potential reasons for why Kyuri does not seem to want Sujin to get this surgery—does she feel uncomfortable asking Dr. Shim for a favor? Or does she think Sujin might end up looking too m...

“I could pay for two surgeries with what most room salon girls spend on alcohol in one night,” Sujin said to me once. “You don’t understand the scale of the money they make and throw away every week. I have to get there. I just have to.” She says she’ll keep saving until she can stop worrying about how to get through another day, another month. And whenever she says these things, I nod and smile so that she knows I believe her.

SOMETIMES, WHEN PEOPLE ASK me how it happened, I tell them that it was because of a boy. He broke my heart and I lost my voice. Romantic, don’t you think?

Once in a while, I lie and write that I was born this way. But if I get a new customer that I like, I tell them the truth. It was the price of surviving, I write. Things are a little different outside of Seoul.

it would have made more sense if I had become deaf. Most of the blows landed on my ears. Although my eardrums were ruptured at the time, they have gained almost full recovery and I can hear fine. Sometimes I wonder if I can hear better than before. The wind, for instance. I don’t remember it having so many shades of sound.

guess I haven’t told you, but it’s actually a rule at Ajax. They can’t have too many girls in the room with the same hairstyle, so we get assigned a look for the season. I’m lucky because I got the waves. That’s what men like, you know.”

“The older girls have to try so hard with their hairstyles. It’s really tragic, getting old. I look at our madam and she is just the ugliest creature I have ever seen. I think I would kill myself if I looked that ugly. But you know what? I think we must be the only room salon with an ugly madam. It really makes Ajax stand out. And I think it makes us girls look prettier too, because she is so horrifying.” She shudders. “Sometimes I just can’t stop thinking about how ugly she is. I mean, why doesn’t she just get surgery? Why? I really don’t understand ugly people. Especially if they have money. Are they stupid?” She studies herself in the mirror, tilting her head to the side until I right it again. “Are they perverted?”

Sujin’s favorite program is this variety show called Extreme to Extreme, where they feature several severely deformed (or sometimes just really ugly) people every week and have the public phone in their votes on who should win free plastic surgery from the best doctors in the country. She loves watching the final makeover, when the chosen step out from behind a curtain while their families—who have not seen them in months while they recover from surgery—scream and cry and fall to their knees when they see how unrecognizably beautiful the winner has become. It is very dramatic. The MCs cry a lot.

“Kyuri was actually so nice about it when she finally came around. She said that she would talk to the place where she sells her bags, and they would be willing to lend me money for the surgery. She says that’s actually their main line of business—lending money to room salon girls! And then when I am better and everything is fixed, I can find work through her.”

i smell a scam/scheme. MLM buy in.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go to sleep at night and wake up rich every day? But I won’t spend it. Oh no. I will stay poor at heart. And that is what will keep me rich.” What will you buy me? I write. She laughs and pats my head. “For ineogongju,” she says, “her heart’s desire.” She walks over to the mirror and touches her chin with her fingertips. “Just make sure you know what it is by then.”

Thank you for introducing her to such a magician, I write. She is going to be beautiful. Kyuri’s face goes blank, but soon she smiles and says she likes the idea that she helped add more beauty to the world. “Isn’t it so generous of him to fit her in like that for just a tiny premium? He’s usually so busy that you can’t schedule a surgery for months.”

be a problem, and she needs to get both double jaw surgery and square jaw surgery, desperately. He’ll cut both the upper and lower jaws and relocate them, then shave down both sides so that she will no longer have such a masculine-looking jawline. He also recommended cheekbone reduction and some light chin liposuction. The surgeries will take a total of five to six hours and she will stay in the hospital for four days.

He was less forthcoming about how long it will take for her to look completely natural again. “Probably more than six months” was the most specific answer anyone gave us. Everyone’s recovery time varies wildly, they said. But a girl at the salon whose cousin got it done told me it took over a year for her to look normal. Her cousin still couldn’t feel her chin and ...

We laugh together, but my laugh is soundless.

IN THE HOSPITAL, all I can do is hold Sujin’s hand while she weeps silently, just her eyelashes and nose and lips visible in her bandaged head.

WHEN I GET home that night, I find a sheet of paper on the table. It is her will. We had read many news stories about patients who died from flecks of jaw bone getting lodged in arteries, causing them to choke to death on blood filling up in their throats while they slept. I made her stop after the first few articles, but secretly, I read them all.

I LEAVE EVERYTHING I own to my roommate, Park Ara, it says.

IN THE ORIGINAL STORY, the little mermaid endures unspeakable pain to gain her human legs. The Sea Witch warns her that her new feet will feel as if she is walking on whetted blades, but she will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. And so she drinks the witch’s potion, which slices through her body like a sword. What I want to say, though, is that she danced divinely with her beautiful legs, even through the pain of a thousand knives. She was able to walk and run and stay close to her beloved prince, and even when things didn’t work out with him, that wasn’t the point. And in the end, after she said goodbye to her prince and flung herself into the sea, expecting to disintegrate into sea foam, she was carried away by the children of light and air. — ISN’T THAT a beautiful story?

She was small and expensively dressed, in a flowing bird-patterned silk dress and high heels edged with mink. I’d seen that exact dress in the latest issue of Women’s Love and Luxury and it had been the same price as a year’s rent.

Up close, I could see that her face was devoid of surgery—her eyes were single-lidded and her nose was flat. I would not have been caught dead walking around with a face like that. But clearly, from the way she walked and held her head, she came from the kind of money that didn’t need any.

On their rare visits, women usually gape like fish, judging us. You can tell they are thinking, “I would never compromise my morals for money. You probably only do this to buy handbags.” I’m not sure who’s worse, them or the men. Just kidding, the men are always worse.

Bruce was a recent big catch for our room salon—not only was his family famous (his father owned a stem-cell clinic in Cheongdamdong) but he had started his own gaming company—and Madam was thrilled that he’d been here every week for going on two months now.

Madam keeps the room cold and comfortable for men wearing suits, while we’re in minidresses trying to hide our goosebumps.

I don’t know at what age men become assholes—boyhood, teenage years? When they start earning some real money? It depends on their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers, probably. Their grandfathers are usually the biggest assholes of all, if mine are any indication.

Men these days are actually much better than previous generations—the ones who used to bring mistresses into the house and make their wives feed and care for their bastard children.

I’ve just heard too many stories in my own family tree to have had any illusions to begin with, even before I started working in a room salon. If they don’t die early, stranding you with kids and colossal childcare expenses...

The only gentlemen I ever see are in those dramas on TV. Those men are kind. They protect you and cry and stand up to their families for you, although I wouldn’t want them to give up a family fortune of course.

A poor man cannot help me when he cannot help himself. I know, because I was in love with a poor man once. He could not pay to spend time with me and I could not afford to spend time with him.

“My grandmother has already picked a date for my wedding,” she continued. “Next September fifth or something. They just need a groom. She says she needs a lot of time to figure out which hotel I’m getting married in because she doesn’t want to offend the owners of whatever hotel she doesn’t choose.”

How funny, the wild variety of shit some people are worrying about in life. In the past, I would have been fidgeting, ashamed and uncomfortable, while she stared at me. Now, I just wanted to slap her face. And Bruce’s too, for good measure, for calling her here.

Then she began talking rapidly in English, using wide hand gestures. It’s a thing English speakers do, I’ve noticed. Their hands flail wildly and their heads move a lot when they talk. They look ridiculous.

She probably knew a good third of their sisters and wives and co-workers. Probably their parents too. The girl retreated further into her seat, looking as innocent as she could. She didn’t want to leave, it was clear. There was a silence, one that none of us girls cared to tide over. It was bad of Bruce to break the unspoken rule, but the guys couldn’t stay angry at him. For one thing, he was too drunk to care, and more important, he was paying for the whole night, as he always did. The bill was probably equivalent to half of their monthly paychecks. So the men turned back to their girls, though they were much more restrained now.

In the interview after the book, the author said she convinced her male friends to bring her to the salon with them so this is likely speaking from experience

“Why don’t you just break it off, then?” the girl said, impatient now. “She’s become my friend too, and I’m saying this for her. Don’t waste her time if she is going to have to meet someone new. It’s going to take her another year to meet someone, maybe a year of dating to talk about marriage, then another few months to marriage and then another year to have kids. And she’s thirty already!”