French Cup: A Neighborhood Story

Chapter 93: -Gyeong-Wan- To Love Purely

She was conscious. Amazingly, she'd been conscious throughout the whole ordeal. Sitting in one of our office chairs, in her blood-stained purple nightgown from her nosebleed and askew pink curlers, she was very worse for the wear. Her lip was split and starting to swell. There were red abrasions here and there on her cheeks and eyebrows. No doubt, in an hour she would be entirely swollen as if bees had attacked her instead. 

But, here she was. Holding her sons now silently as they clung to her in our back office. That same brave face I'd seen on her when he'd yelled at her on the stairs. She was using it now. 

The older boy was saying something over and over that only showed me that my feeling outside of their room had been correct. Making me even more confused and lost. 

"It's going to be okay, mom. You did the right thing. He's gone now. It's going to be okay. We're here together. You did a good job. I love you."

He'd been saying that ever since the police had left. They'd talked to her, and she'd told them exactly what happened. That her husband started yelling at her about firecrackers. That he'd beaten her over the purchase of firecrackers, and how the police were going to investigate him over firecrackers and it was all her fault. He was a desperate man, pointing fingers at anything he could. How this wasn't the first time. That she was always to blame, and she'd rather be blamed than the children. 

She couldn't protect herself, only her children. So, the older boy was protecting her. 

That cold stare he'd had on the stairs. Seeing her getting yelled at in front of everybody for taking them to French Cup. A place with a rainbow flag. That same cold stare he'd had, when he'd said he'd bombed French Cup. 

Was he protecting her then, too? What had he been thinking? When I'd confronted him outside, around the corner of French Cup, when he'd given me that same cold stare. What had he been thinking then? 

I'd wondered about it before. Immediately after, in my anger. My grief. Wondering about that moment on the stairs. Wanting to know if there had been a connection, learning that indeed they'd been to French Cup before. 

Was this the connection? Maybe, a protective instinct of his own? The need to take care of them? 

It disturbed me how similar it was to my need to protect everyone in French Cup that day. Why I'd run out of there in the first place. This love I had for everyone there, only wanting them to be happy and free. The man I loved, crying and hopeless in that instant. Wanting to protect him most of all, because he represented everything that I wanted. Because he was everything I wanted. 

Did this boy only want happiness and freedom for his family, too?

How had that led to something so horrible? What kinds of horrors had he seen, that it led to this? That he'd gotten that desperate? 

"Mom, it's not your fault. He did it. I know you're blaming yourself right now. That's what he wants you to believe. We can get away from him now. It's over. He messed up. You did so good." 

She sniffled, tears there despite her bravery. "I don't want your grandma to see me this way. Look at me. I let you down again. She's going to see my face like this. What is she going to say?"

"Your face is fine. You're just fine." Hugging her more. These strange desires she was saying. This priority. I didn't understand.

"No, I'm not." Her cheeks were already getting puffy, swelling. "I don't have a face now. I don't have a face." There were tears now. She'd held it in for so long, but now here they were. 

A face. I pretended not to be looking, but I couldn't bear it. I knew just what she meant. This double meaning. What a face means to us. 

She was talking about her reputation. What she was going back to. I knew that all too well, thinking about my own mother. This shame I'd had for so long. Questioning telling her about myself, in case she lost her face with her friends. Their gossip and lies, excluding her from functions. Her own opinion about me almost didn't matter. It was others. I didn't want her to lose her face, her reputation with those she cared about. Now, the Matsudas would be going back to their own world. Their own lions' den of gossip and rumors. How unkind it could be, how these people were. I'd seen these kinds of people in our hotel this whole time, and I knew them in other forms my whole life. They'd be going into their own torture the second they left these doors, coming from a torture to go into a new one.