“Garbage Truck”
Jae Kyung Lee
For Dr. Bruce Fulton, ASIA 357
The blaring of my alarm drags me to consciousness from a deep sleep. My eyes rip open and my body feels like molasses spread over my warm bed. I reach for my phone.
10:45 a.m.
“Shit.”
I swing my legs around and greet the cold hardwood floor with my bare feet and make my way to the bathroom. I jump in the shower hoping the warm water will melt away the residue of sleep from my tired eyes. I glance at the mirror and stare at my reflection. Nothing new. It’s surprising how accustomed you grow to your face but you never really grow content. I rush through my usual morning routine; add color to my lips, life into my cheeks, and a twinkle in my eyes. I pack my make-up pouch and leave the bathroom feeling a little bit more like myself.
11:10 a.m.
I scurry around my apartment with a thousand and one pieces of paper sticking out of my bag.
“OK, papers? Check. Makeup pouch? Check. Wallet? Check. Breath mints? Check. Pepper spray? Check,” I ritually mumble to myself as I slam my apartment door behind me.
I run down from my apartment on the 6th floor, no time to wait for the over-crowded elevator, then make my way past the front gates of my building.
The warm wind greets me as I step outside the gates; the air carries a hint of the sweet scent of summer. I take a half-breath as I power-walk to Yŏŭido Station. If I hurry, I can make the 11:25 subway and get to school by 11:50. I rush past the fruit vendors, the butchers, the headless chicken hanging by its ankle, the sweet red bean cakes in the shape of fish, and all sorts of greens carefully placed across layers of newspaper on the ground. The smell of this place always makes me cringe.
Once on the subway I find a seat in the middle of the car, the best spot for people watching. Most mornings I see overworked, underpaid businessmen returning home from an all-nighter at the office, sometimes I see tired students nod away as their English textbook slips from their sleepy hands. But mostly I see the tops of people’s heads as they distract themselves with the latest celebrity gossip or send meaningless messages to meaningless people. I quite enjoy this part of my day actually; I think it’s fascinating how the world turns. How every person, no matter how unworthy, is a small but crucial part of our society that seems to flow seamlessly like clockwork. Every little tick unnoticeable but unwasted.
Once the subway pulls to a stop I push past the herd of people and run onto the street. “Okay, 7 minutes till the start of class, I can make it.” I give myself a little pep talk as I sprint down the familiar streets that lead to my school. Turn right, go straight, and turn left at the café, then head to the classroom.
I scan the room and see my friend An waving at me.
“You dodged a bullet, the professor must also be running late today,” she whispers as I settle down next to her.
For the next hour and half I write down what the professor tells me and I try to listen to ethical justification of why we should stop the Communists from taking over the Korean peninsula. From time to time the beeping of the garbage truck outside distracts me but otherwise the class passes by uneventfully.
“Want to go drink down by the riverside? I don’t have money to go out but I still want to get really drunk,” An asks.
“Yes, please! I’ll bring the soju, you bring the chicken and we can have ourselves a little party,” I reply.
I’ve always loved to sit by the Han River and drink. The way the water splashes gently against the concrete makes a sad but beautiful sound. I could watch the lights of the city bounce off the river endlessly, and when I’m by the river I am able to be 100 percent myself, let down my guard and simply enjoy the view.
After class An and I part ways after agreeing to meet in a few hours.
With a slightly lighter step I make my way to the stationery shop near school. When I have a couple hours to myself I like to come here and look at all the different pens and notepads. I like the smell of plastic and ink and I especially love the scratchy sound that a sharp new pencil makes against a thick notepad.
“Mr. Kim! How are you today?” I ask as I enter the store
“Hmph,” Mr. Kim replies with his usual grunt. He’s never unhappy to see me, but never really happy to see me either. The perfect kind of person to visit every day as he never expects meaningless small talk, and doesn’t seem to mind even when I spend hours browsing.
I pick up a mechanical pencil. It’s light blue with little flowers painted all over the pencil. It feels heavy between my fingers and there is no grip to prevent it from slipping from my hands. The pencil itself is decorative and full of life but nonetheless useless. I decide to buy it.
“8000 wŏn,” Mr. Kim mumbles.
I pay, say a short goodbye and leave the store enjoying one last whiff of ink.
“What to do now…what to do…” I mumble to myself. Still a few hours to kill before I need to make my way to meet An. I decide to go for a walk to a nearby café to catch up on some reading.
On my way I catch a glimpse of several men looking at me. I give a little condescending smirk and hurriedly make my way as if I have someplace important to be.
Once inside the café I order my favorite yuzu tea and plop down next to the window with my notebook and new pencil in hand. I write down anything that comes to mind.
That man has a rather large head
That woman is talking too loudly and I’m pretty sure what she’s saying isn’t even correct
I’m hungry
I should come here more often
I find that writing helps me to organize my thought. Even if my thoughts are trivial and simple. The new pencil, however, is more useless than I thought. It rolls around my hand and my hand hurts from trying to grab it too hard. What’s the point of having a pretty pencil if I can’t use it? I promise myself to stop buying such ridiculous things knowing full well I’ll be back to buy another useless pencil in just a couple days.
Slowly, I make my way to the Han River. On my way I stop by a convenience store and pick up 2 bottles of soju and a can of dried squid and nuts. The sun has started to set and the sky is stained with a thousand shades of orange, pink, and blue. As I walk towards the water, the colors have smeared onto the river, giving it a golden orange sheen.
I walk down to the water and choose a spot on the ground to sit. From here you can see the river and the light of the city. A few moments later I hear An’s familiar footsteps.
“You bring the soju?” she asks.
I grin and show her the two bottles.
She sits down next to me and opens one of the bottles, takes a big sip and scrunches her face as if the alcohol burns her mouth. She passes me the bottle and I take a small sip and then stuff my face with dried squid.
“You know, Oh isn’t talking to me anymore? Last time I saw him was nearly 3 weeks ago and he won’t return my calls,” An huffs.
“He could be out of town–didn’t you say his parents live on Cheju Island? Maybe he went there? Maybe he’s busy? Maybe he forgot your number and is looking for you in the phone book as we speak? Maybe he was murdered? Maybe he got into a car accident and is in a coma? You know, I did hear about a very serious car accident on the news a few weeks ago,” I sputter. I do this almost instinctively, spewing out lies to avoid the truth, that maybe he just isn’t interested in her anymore. It doesn’t matter anyways, An’s spirits have already been lifted and I imagine she secretly consoles herself with the possibility that he might actually be dead, and not disinterested in her.
We entertain ourselves for a few more hours and by this time the sun is long gone and the darkness has engulfed Seoul itself.
After both bottles of soju are empty, it’s 10:45 and we decide to call it a night.
An wobbles her way to the nearest metro station.
“Do you want me to walk you to your bus stop?” she asks.
“Nope, I can go alone, the bus stop is only 10 minutes from here. Besides, you’re more wasted than I am. See you later.”
I send her off and head into the darkness.
A little bit of soju gives me the courage to walk home alone. Normally I would have my pepper spray discreetly hidden in my sleeve and be ready to run at any moment, but tonight I forget about my paranoia and enjoy the short walk to the bus stop. I see it ahead of me, surrounded with tourists who are tired, I imagine, from a long day of visiting every attraction in Seoul.
Suddenly a pair of hands are firmly wrapped around me. A man to my left, his right hand on my right shoulder, his left hand on my left arm.
“Hello, my love.”
He starts to drag me in the direction opposite the bus stop. I realize very quickly I’m in trouble and I’ve been taught ever since I was a little girl to scream, make a scene if such things were to happen. But nothing. I can’t produce a single sound. I don’t know how long, but I wonder to myself how to make a sound come out from my throat. Eventually, a pathetic scream leaves my mouth and a couple walking maybe 100 feet in front of me turn around, they see me and start running away from me. I turn to my left and see that the man who is dragging me away is someone I’ve never seen before. He’s wearing a denim jacket and has a window-cleaner spray hanging from his belt. My mind immediately goes to the pepper spray in my bag and I curse myself for not having it hidden in my sleeve like I always do. Within seconds I deliberate a million times between taking out the pepper spray from my bag, but I’m held back by the possibility of angering him and doing more damage. If I try to hurt him and I don’t succeed, I’ll probably anger him and who know what he’ll do, maybe he’ll snap my neck in half, maybe he’ll stab me. So, I do nothing. Instead I try pathetically to make him let go. How could someone be so much stronger than me? I quickly realize there’s no use trying to struggle, he’s inconceivably stronger than I am.
As we near the end of the street, I don’t know what I’m doing. My body is still struggling to make him let go of me, still trying to break free, but my mind is racing to a million different places.
Just then, I see a police car drive towards me. The flashing lights send a wave of relief. The man is no longer holding onto me, he tries to run away. The policemen get out of the car, the couple that ran away from me is now talking to the officers and in what seems like eternity they catch the man in the denim jacket. They pin him against the wall and put handcuffs on him. While I should have stayed and given my statement, I see that my bus is approaching and I run towards the bus. The only thought that comes to my mind is to go home. The only thing in the world that matters to me is that I go home immediately.
I run onto the bus, hands trembling. The tourists standing at the bus stop are now with me on the bus, they saw the whole thing and say nothing to me, maybe they’ll talk about me and the guy in denim jacket with their friend tomorrow, maybe they’ll tell their friends that Seoul is no place for a women to walk home alone and use me as an example. I wait for the bus to drive off and I breathe again. My insides are burning. Like someone has made me drink gasoline and then lit me on fire from the inside out. I guess this is what the “fight or flight” response is, I’ve learnt about it in high school during biology class. It somehow comforts me to know that my body was working for me to survive too; I guess I wasn’t completely alone.
On the bus ride home I am so grateful. Grateful that he didn’t actually get to rape me and even more grateful that I will be returning to my warm bed tonight and not remain lying lifeless on the cold streets of Seoul. I laugh a little, strangely I feel invincible. Remarkably, I think of how unaffected I am by this situation. I mutter a little prayer and thank whoever was looking out for me. I know many people who would be crying like pathetic idiots if they encountered what I just did, but not me, I’m stronger than them, obviously.
It would be a lie to say I am not startled, but if you think about it, nothing really happened, did it? I didn’t actually get raped and I didn’t actually get killed. I thank my lucky stars and walk into my apartment.
Once inside, I make sure the doors and windows are locked. I draw the curtain and I stick a chair under the doorknob, just to be sure.
“At least I didn’t get raped tonight, at least I didn’t get killed tonight.” I keep muttering to myself like a crazy person.
I sit down on my bed for a little bit. My pajamas and pillows are still sprawled out on the bed as I left them this morning. Everything in my apartment looks identical to when I left it this morning. This gives me a slight scare.
After a few minutes I decide to change into my pajamas. As I take my shirt off I look at my left arm, at the place the man in the denim jacket was grabbing, it still felt like his big firm hands were wrapped around me. As I look at my arm I see his hand left a mark on my arm, the imprint of four nails digging into my skin. The sight of his nails on my body makes me feel violated and sends a shiver up my spine, but nevertheless I put on my pajamas and head to my medicine cabinet. I open a bottle of sleeping pills and pop one into my mouth, tilt my head back and swish it down with a gulp of water. I hope that between the sleeping pill and two bottles of soju I can pass out for the night.
I lie in bed and thank my lucky stars again for being back home in one piece. I slip easily out of consciousness and fall into the bliss of that warm molasses feeling again.
“Ahhhhhh!!”
My eyes snap open and my heart races. I recognize that scream, she sounds just like I did only a few hours ago. There must be another girl facing her denim jacket man right now. I don’t know what to do and I am paralyzed with fear. After only a few seconds pass I realize that the scream belongs to the little 7-year-old girl down the hall. She is known amongst the tenants as an annoying little screamer but I’ve never noticed her scream till now. I curse her for throwing me back into the grip of the denim jacket man and I try to lull myself back to sleep.
The alarm blares once again and I am forced to pick myself up from bed and do the usual routine. As I take off my pajamas I instinctively look at my left arm and see it’s an ugly greenish blue. A little shiver goes up my neck but to be honest I’m not that bothered. Last night seems like a distant memory already and I feel fine now that the sun is out and the city looks like somewhere nothing bad could happen. I pack my bag and head off for Yŏŭido Station again.
Once I get off the subway I turn right, go straight, turn left at the café, and head inside the classroom once again. An greets me with a nod and I settle down next to her just like I do every other day.
“BEEP!”
I jump in my seat and my heart races again. A couple seconds later I realize it’s just the garbage truck making its usual rounds; I calm myself down and try to focus on the monotone voice of my professor. After class An and I go for a quick coffee break. I tell her what happened the night before. She listens attentively but as I get on with my story her eyes shift around the room and I realize I’ve lost her focus. She politely listens to the end of my story.
“Wow that’s quite scary. I’m glad you’re all right,” she says, trying to sound genuinely worried.
“Yeah it’s no big deal though, I feel fine and it’s not like something REALLY happened, it’s nothing really,” I reply. I’m not lying–I really do feel fine, but I exaggerate a little bit and raise my voice in an overly happy tone as I do not want to bore An with a pity party for myself.
“You should really be careful when you’re walking home alone at night, you already know that, though. Anyways, last night, when I got back home from seeing you I actually worked up the courage to call O again. Turns out you were right, he was visiting his parents in Cheju and you know how unreliable the phone service can be out there,” she starts.
My cue to step in with the “See I told you so. He really does like you, I heard that men would never even bother to talk to someone they weren’t interested in.” I swallow any more words I want to say to her and force myself to say this instead. An speaks of how O is doing and all the sweet things he said to her. I grin and listen to her story, all the while feeling as if I’ve swallowed a boulder. After an hour of her filling me in on every detail of O’s life I make up an excuse and I leave the café.
I want nothing more than to talk to someone about last night but I don’t want to seem like I am playing the role of a victim, because I’m really not a victim. Nothing happened to me, really, I didn’t earn the title of calling myself a victim of anything.
I decide to walk to the same café I was at yesterday, I skip the stationery shop entirely, for some reason I don’t want to see Mr. Kim. On my way to the café I see that a man is looking my way; his gaze is penetrating. I don’t look at him; instead I quicken my step towards the café. Once inside I open my notepad again and start scribbling useless thoughts.
Every loud sound makes me jump for some reason”
“That man by the window, I bet if he wanted, he could kill anyone in this café, if he wanted he could come over and snap my neck in half and I would have no way of resisting. All that crap about t’aekwŏndo is useless
But I am fine in the end
I realize I still have this need to talk to someone about last night, although I can’t quite wrap my head around why I feel like I need to tell everyone. I decide to call up everyone I can think of who might listen to my story. I desperately search for anyone who will listen without changing the subject to herself. I try ten different numbers. They all start out the same way, I tell the story in the most nonchalant way possible and he or she responds with a socially appropriate response.
“That’s scary, I’m glad you’re all right!”
Then something strange happens–the blame is somehow shifted onto me. “You know, you shouldn’t be walking home alone at night anyways.” They shift the blame onto me and ease the growing fear within themselves that maybe something like this could potentially happen to themselves or their loved ones. By blaming me for the events of last night they seem to be comforted. I seem to be comforting them as I agree and say, “Yeah I guess I was naïve.” They take great joy when they’ve had their fill of indulging themselves with blame for me and they move on to something that’s been bothering them. Mostly, it’s things like a husband who won’t come home early enough, a job that doesn’t pay what it should, or a professor who won’t give out the A+ and insists on the A-. Failing once again to find any sort of comfort, I hang up and soon I reach the end of my list of people to call.
I am not sure how I feel about the events of last night. Sometimes I feel invincible for having made it out quite all right, sometimes I feel terrified, and sometimes I feel I don’t deserve to ponder the events of last night, because nothing bad actually happened. I’m just not sure about how I am feeling, to be honest. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and forget the whole thing, or maybe this memory will leech itself into the deep fibers of my brain and morph into something much greater, much more terrifying as time passes on, making itself noticed at every thought my mind spews out.
After trying to find someone who will actually listen without feeling the need to comfort themselves becomes an impossible task, I give up. I pick up my notebook and useless blue pencil from the table and head home.
Once I’m home the silence of the room is so loud and obvious that I need to leave again. I decide I’ll change into some runners and go for a walk nearby. Just as I’m about to tie my shoelaces a sharp painful thought cuts into my mind.
“What if he had a knife?” If he had a knife I would have no doubt been unable to let out even the smallest noise and no one would have noticed that I was being taken against my own will. If people knew this, they probably would have thought we were a couple on an after dinner stroll, he would doubtless have taken me to a dark alley and I would be… I stop myself; I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to start down that never-ending abyss of “what if…” But my mind becomes obsessed with a dizzying amount of what-ifs.
What if no one was there?
What if the police hadn’t come?
What if he’d hit me in the head and I’d lost consciousness?
What if there were two of them?
What if I had taken An’s offer and let her walk with me to the bus stop?
What if I was there 5 minutes earlier, would I have missed him? What if I was there 5 minutes later, would I have missed him?
What if…
I can’t stop my brain from raking through all the possibilities of that night, and this never-ending game consumes me. My brain simply doesn’t function; its sole purpose is to taunt me with all the different ways in which that night could have ended. So I sit down in front of my apartment door and I hug my legs, I sit there for hours letting my brain scrimmage through all its fears, and all its worries. I figure maybe after I let myself do this, maybe I won’t be haunted by this “what if” game any longer.
I wake up to the sound of the alarm again; I look around and realize that I fell asleep on the floor in front of my front door. I move my legs that are locked in place and slowly turn my body. My back aches and my legs feel like they’ve never moved before. I limp my way into the bathroom and take a hot shower. Maybe the hot water will melt away any remaining “what ifs” from every corner of my thought. I step out of the shower and I set off to school again.
Yŏŭido Station, get off, turn right, go straight, turn left at the café, but someone catches my attention. In front of the café with the orange neon sign that I always turn left at to go to class is a man in a denim jacket. He is wiping the windows of the orange café and is joking with the owner of the café about the soccer match last night. My heart falls into my stomach and my hands start to go numb. It’s him.
Maybe I should have gone there with a knife and slit his throat for this spiral he sent me into, maybe I should have confronted him, asking how he got out of jail and cursing the pathetic Korean criminal system. But all I do is run to class and don’t look back. He looked so normal, he looked like someone I could have bought my useless blue pencil from, he looked like someone who would sit next to me in the subway, he looked like someone who could be washing windows in a nearby café for a living. How could someone like him be the source of so much terror and yet look so completely normal? This thought both comforts and petrifies me. As I make my way into the classroom I say to myself,
I wonder if he will ever know what he did to me.
I settle next to An and listen to the monotone professor once again, startled from time to time by the BEEP of the garbage truck nearby.
