Violets

by Kyung-Sook Shin

It’s these autumn flowers that finally rouse the mother back to the land of the living, as if the blooms help rally her feelings.

For countless generations women have suffered and wasted away in strange rooms just like this baby’s mother.

She lies down and puts her ear against the dike and looks down on the whole field where the minari grows. What could she hear if she listened hard enough? Could she hear the thoughts of her father, who left as soon as she was born; the feelings of her grandmother, who ripped into her mother time and again; the rage of her mother, who gripped the flashing shears in her hand?

How could she describe the heat she felt when she put her forehead to the wall? The desire to crash into something. A desire she still feels in her heart.

When their warm bodies meet, San feels a surge of loneliness she’s sure will last for the rest of her life.

Despite her years of sacrifice, San’s mother is deemed irredeemable for throwing scissors at her own mother-in-law. Lifelessly and without protest, she signs the divorce papers. This makes San’s mother the first divorced woman in the village. The family has split; now San is only her mother’s daughter.

Trees are like people. They grow well if you love and care for them, and wither if you don’t.

Standing beneath the ginkgo across from her apartment, she looks up at her room. There are a pair of long windows, both unlit. The traditional paper-covered framing of the inner windows lends them a serene, templelike mood that seems out of place. There she is, staring up at her home. It feels like she’s coming back after a long time gone, even though she only left that morning. She even misses the long room. The lights of the realtor’s office are off, and of course those of the recreation office.

In her heart, whenever she returns home late at night, there’s always the hope that when she looks up from the street, someone will have turned on the lights for her. This has never once come to pass.

San wears an expression of melancholy, perhaps, but also of loneliness. It is an expression that is not hers alone. A young woman on an escalator, a young man silently walking from building to building with a résumé in hand, salarymen on the subway at dawn—the same expression appears and disappears from their faces.

I don’t know what happened to my sister’s necklace but I cherished that ring. When I saw a relationship near its death, when my pride was hurt, or whenever I felt anxious or desperate, I would unconsciously fondle that ring. When I had to pick a side, or found myself suffering the urge to destroy something, I would twist the ring on my finger. That fidgeting allowed me not to make a fuss. It allowed me not to express violence. This ring I had for seven years just disappeared without my ever remembering where I had taken it off. Being one of my few jewels, I’d rarely removed it from my hand. Now there’s only the groove it left on my finger.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m a bad person. Usually when I feel twisted about inside. A sense of endless distraction finds me lying prostrate on the floor. My ungoverned hurt manifests as aches all over my body. A bad person is someone who makes it impossible to long for them. Their heads feel like bursting, their shoulders ache, and their legs are drained of strength. They’ll spend a day prostrate, maybe even a week. Until they hear a pop in their heart. Until they think there is nothing more to lose. Until they walk back the long way they came in solitude. That is the person I am, someone who hurts the one who hurt me until they too hear a pop in their hearts. This realization fills me, every time, with sorrow.

When she thinks of herself writing on such a big table in a wide-open room, she feels like perhaps life is worth living.

On their first night living together, they bought a tiny cake from Paris Baguette, lit it with candles, and congratulated each other.

San had first seen Wanted: A woman to look after flowers and had promptly fled. Now, as she takes in the plants, she can’t conjure what she felt back then at all. That repulsion toward having a job out on the street—that’s what had made her run. But now as she regards the gloxinias she seems content with her place in the flower shop.

San’s fingers no longer tap I am waiting for the bus as she waits at the stop. The San who typed I am riding the bus on her lap seems to have disappeared. Not to mention the San who would spread open a notebook and copy sentences. Her notebook is gathering a layer of dust. The Pilot ink in her fountain pen is drying up. The ink bottle she had gotten open with such difficulty is closed again, neglected in a corner.

Taking care of the plants might be a kind of consolation for her sinking heart, for the feeling that she’s losing out on her dreams. Perhaps whenever she wipes the window or sprinkles the plants exposed out on the street, it’s her own fragile inner self that she’s watering.

Su-ae projects a sort of toughness that suggests she’ll never be hurt. This probably wasn’t her personality to start. Su-ae affects a jaded cynicism that hints she’s seen too much of the world. To San, Su-ae’s strength feels magical.

San was nothing if not hesitant. Su-ae had no hesitation whatsoever. When she wanted to laugh, she laughed. She was bold to the point of aggressive. Was it her firmness of manner, or her clear and calm voice? And yet there was nothing vulgar about her boldness; it was even beautiful. Anyone with a bit of insight might have guessed that Su-ae’s personality came from some kind of lack. Just as San’s endlessly hesitant personality was a different kind of lack. And that excessive hesitation and excessive boldness were really part of the same story.

“So I decided to exact my revenge. By ruining my life. She’s not here anymore, but if she’s watching me from somewhere, I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me live a good life. I wanted to ruin what life I had left.”

San tended to give more water to the plants she was interested in. That became a problem. When perfectly healthy plants began to drop their petals or buds, Su-ae would say, That’s because you’ve overwatered them; if you love things too much, they die. She said the same thing when the spider plant’s long blades turned yellow.

Watching the dancers, San continues to eat the cake little by little, unaware the candles Su-ae had made sure to include are on the floor. Her mouth and nose are dusted with cinnamon powder. Youths with bleached blond hair and baggy trousers, youths surrounded by music but still wearing earphones and swaying to their own beat. Sitting there, San feels like she doesn’t really exist.

Violets. They bloom everywhere, making them seem more like weeds than proper flowers. San takes a closer look at them. Their little green leaves are small, their purple blossoms tiny.

“It’s amazing! Two seeds, growing into this. And they’re all alone here, too. Side by side. Like friends, right?”

Memory is an unannounced visitor. It lies crumpled in some corner of the body, then suddenly knocks on the door of reality and makes you scream. San finally catches up.

“Purple violets are the color of congealed blood. Believers make garlands of violets to lay on the altar of the Virgin Mary. Because when Christ was crucified, a violet shadow fell over the cross. The purple robes of Christian funerals, the amethysts worn by widows—that’s all from violets. The flowers are very finicky. They wilt in too much sun, and when you water them, you have to avoid getting water on their leaves or petals. And a fun fact is that their leaves make roots. If you take a leaf and put it in water, it grows roots.”

She feels as if she is observing herself. The observing San knows well the San that has put her head down. She knows that the latter San, crying into the tabletop, has been possessed by something since last night.

She’s being foolish. Bumping into everything in her path. Talking even more slowly than before, her eyes out of focus. Looking at something but not really seeing it. Mourning, but smiling when prompted. As if angry at this observing self, the corporeal self suddenly raises her head.

It takes all kinds to make a world.

Violets. Remembering something, she finds an English to Korean dictionary and comes back. Turning the onionskin pages, her gaze wanders around the definition of violets. Violator: Noun, one who breaks rules, invades, insults, rapes Violence: Noun, a disturbance, disruption, destruction Violet: Noun, a plant, a swallow flower … purple, the color, also used to describe … an oversensitive person, a shy person (“shrinking violet”)

There were plenty of things I gave up on, using the heat as an excuse. Which means I spent this past summer repeatedly deciding to do things and then giving up on them. As if my life were an exhibition of how good I am at giving up. It was that kind of summer.

I wonder: Is this your first time hearing this cry? This cry, which for centuries was never given an ear, or a means to be heard?

The thick leaves with their white, neat flowers look as if they’re about to hurl themselves over the bucket to strangle her. She takes the asters out, pours out the water, fills the bucket with fresh water, and puts the asters back. The smile she used to have when handling flowers is gone.

Where has the San from her first day of work gone? The one who would walk among the flowers and trees, whose lips would part slightly in wonder when she found a sprout she hadn’t seen before or an unfamiliar plant tucked into a shelf corner? The one who took out the toolbox and hammered a nail to hang the watering can? Whose heart would fill up and cheeks turn red?

She remembers clearly thinking that her sadness might kill her one day. In the face of the hate thrown at her before she’d even had the chance to ask if the girl loved her—the only thing to do was to die. Only my death can make her love me. And if I have to die, I’ll die right here. The thought of sitting down before the wild minari field and chanting, If I have to die someday, I will die right here, if it means making you love me, if I could make you love me then I will die—that has been the only thing, day to day, that has allowed her to endure anyway.

When her heart felt empty, she would try to listen carefully to what sound it made; now all that overflows in her ears is her scream. Violet. Violence. Violator … With all her might she scratches the excavator with her nails. It does nothing to the machine. Despite her scratching at it with all ten fingers, the excavator remains oblivious and all that breaks are her nails. She makes two fists and beats down on the machine. It only makes her hands bleed. This time, she closes her eyes and smashes her face against it. It only breaks her nose. Violet. Violence. Violator …

She is not actually on vacation. That girl likes to run off from time to time. An old habit. She is an unhappy child. One summer day, her vacationing family was in a ravine when there was a flash flood, and only she survived. She pretends to be strong and cold but she is actually sensitive and vulnerable. Sometimes she goes off and comes back. Once she didn’t come back for two years. Now it’s not so long. She’s always back after four or five days. It’s a bit long this time. About a week already. But she’ll be back. She loves this flower shop very much.

I want to hide my pain from the flowers. I don’t want to tell them of life’s suffering. Because if they know my sadness, the flowers will cry too.

Don’t wake me up, they are all sleeping. Gladioli and white lilies. I don’t want my sadness to be known to the flowers. If they see my tears they will die.

This is the story of a woman unable to find a place to fit in the world, suddenly swept up into a warped desire for love that eventually breaks her; it is the story of a woman punished by violent men in a cruel city because she is unable to express her confused desire for love and connection, who then disappears into the dark.

Violets are very small plants. So small, they’re easily overlooked as weeds. That’s why I decided on the title Violets. There are women all around us who exist in silence, anonymous and without anything special about them; she could be me and she could be you. To amplify the voices of those women, whom no one could hear unless one was listening very carefully, to let them speak through my words—this is Violets.