I text Sangki confirmation that I’ll see him later tonight and then apply myself to the translations in my inbox. It’s not much. For the first couple of weeks, they had me review all the English text on the website. I fixed errors here and there and then was sent around the different floors to check if all the translated signage made sense. Most of it was fine, except for one fire-safety sign that said you should light yourself on fire before exiting. I texted the signage to Yujun, who explained the Korean warning instructed you to check for fire before using the exit. We both cringed and laughed. That week I felt like I’d earned my paycheck.
Since then, my inbox has seen little action. I email Bujang-nim every day for more work, but he rarely replies. When he does respond, sometimes it’s to have me run an errand, deliver some paperwork, or even use my downtime to study Korean. That last suggestion felt like an attack even though I don’t think he meant it as one. My language skills—or lack thereof—are a sore spot for me.
Bomi said to keep walking, keep trying, and I’ll eventually get the hang of Korean, but she didn’t say how long that journey would take me. There are some days when I feel like I’m making decent progress, but most of the time I despair of even being able to hold a conversation with a baby. I can understand more than I can read, but I can’t form the words to express myself. Language learning is a damnable thing.
The lack of work makes the afternoon drag. All around me keys are clacking, phones are ringing, and conversations are being had about creative assets and campaign verbiage while I stare at my empty inbox. The minute hand moves slower than a snail across a seashell. At this rate, I might fossilize in my chair before the end of the workday.
I send Bujang-nim another email, this time in Korean, requesting a new project. When I still receive no response, I open my spam folder to see if I can decipher the Hangul. I can’t, which lowers my mood further. The fried-food high I floated in on drops to the pit of my stomach. My eyelids feel heavy and my head starts to ache. I pinch the flesh at the base of my thumb to keep myself awake. A phone rings. And rings. And rings again. It stops and then restarts. I hear someone from the next department over yell something about the phone.
A sharp blow to the back of my head has me whipping around. “What the he—”
Soyou, with her headset microphone in front of her mouth, snaps her fingers and points to Bujang-nim’s desk. It’s his phone that’s ringing. Chaeyoung is on a call, too. Does Soyou want me to answer his phone?
Tentatively, I start to rise from my seat, but before I can even clear my chair, Soyou rips off her headset and stomps over to Bujang-nim’s desk. She swipes the receiver off the cradle with an angry swoop and barks a Korean greeting into the phone. As the person on the other end talks, Soyou wedges the receiver between her cheek and shoulder and jots down a message.
Bujang-nim appears out of nowhere and I jump to my feet to defend Soyou. “Your phone kept ringing and the voicemail didn’t pick it up. I think the noise was bothering the other departments. Soyou wasn’t invading your privacy. She wanted to make sure you didn’t miss something important.”
“I don’t need you to explain. I was doing my job,” Soyou snaps. She hands the sticky note with the message she recorded to Bujang-nim and slams into her chair. Everyone is staring at me with varying expressions of disapproval, including Yoo Minkyu, who leaves bottles of energy drinks next to my monitor along with unsubtle hints that he’d like to meet my mother.
Even Bujang-nim frowns at me. “Whenever the phone is ringing, the person who is free should answer it. Even you, Choi Hara-nim.”
It’s the sharpest he’s been with me and so I know I fucked up. My cheeks grow hot. I stand up and bow to him. “I’m sorry,” I say in Korean. It’s one of the few phrases I can pronounce perfectly because I’ve had to say it so many times; it should be on my work badge as a warning.
The response I get to the apology isn’t what I wanted. Bujang-nim’s eyes widen as if he thinks he’s committed a grave error. “No. It is nothing, Choi Hara-nim.” He pushes me into my seat. “You are doing well. I have a project for you. Wait here and I will send it.” He hurries to his seat and rapidly types out a message while I ignore everyone’s gazes. I don’t have to see them to know that they’re staring at me with varying degrees of disgust. That’s how I would feel in their position. I’d hate me, too.
A new document appears in my inbox. Relief mixed with frustration swirls in my head as I open the file. Frustration wins the match as the familiar words of a document I edited two weeks ago appear on my screen. I swing my head in Bujang-nim’s direction to see if this was intentional, but he gives me a gummy smile and a thumbs-up. I force the corners of my lips up before returning to my screen. I see nothing for a long time. A hot sensation burns at the back of my eyes. I press a knuckle against one lid and then mumble an excuse about needing to go to the bathroom. No one responds because they’re too busy doing real work to care what the nakhasan is up to. Inside the bathroom stall, I lock the door and lean my head against the tiled wall. I’ve got to figure out a way to improve my work conditions on my own or I am not going to last here. I allow my eyes to drift shut as the cold tile eases the ache in my head.
The sound of a toilet flushing and a faucet turning on jolts me upright. I must’ve dozed off. The crisp tones of Soyou’s voice ring out above the running water. Some stupid, masochistic side has me opening the audio translator app on my phone.
I hate it. I really hate it. This is supposed to be a feminist workplace but we still have a hannam manager, and hannam coworkers outnumber us, Soyou rants.
At least we don’t have molkas here, is Chaeyoung’s subdued response.
Small things to be grateful for?
I looked up her US college and it is not highly ranked.
She’s the Sajang-nim’s daughter. A nakhasan. Sajang-nim is no different than any other chaebol. She is sitting in her chair because she slept with the president. Now she installs her abandoned daughter to one day take over.
Even over Choi Yujun?
Is rice white? He’s not Sajang-nim’s real child. Why are our lives like this?
Is the water cold in the Han today?
The water shuts off. The door slams shut. My head aches again. I want to go home, and not to the marble mausoleum that is Wansu’s house up in the mountains but my home in Des Moines. That small one-story brick house with the crabapple trees in the back that shed white flowers in the late spring. Where the white walls of my room are decorated with my mom’s and my poor attempts to copy designs we saw on television home shows. In the kitchen with the fake granite countertops and the stainless steel refrigerator where Ellen still hangs the tulip finger painting I did at a Science Center art camp as a five-year-old. It’s got your handprint on it. How can I ever get rid of it?
Where she and I baked two dozen apple pies one summer in an effort to find the perfect recipe. It’s lard in the piecrust, we decided, and Braeburn apples. Where I had friends who didn’t call me a nakhasan. But then I remember how even at my father Pat’s funeral I heard people separating his kids into real—the child that he made with his second wife—and not real—me, whom he adopted and then abandoned because fatherhood was too onerous a task for him.