kicks ✓ || namgi || k.th

039: online

chapter 39: online
location: biloxi, mississippi, day 3

Taehyung logged onto his email and, sure enough, found a long email from Sara in his inbox.

Hey, V.

I humbly apologize for not communicating with you before. It appears that this decision, which I made to protect myself, has only brought you and your brothers (family?) hardship and strife. It's hard for me to admit the truth, but I feel like I should do so now. I will do my best; while I am accustomed to writing long letters, it is hard for me to put my feelings onto a computer. The keys on this typewriter are so small.

You have mentioned before that you thought that I might be a ghost. I am not a ghost, because I would need to be dead in order to be a ghost, but perhaps I am stuck somewhere between the land of the living and the land of the dead. I do not know for sure. My guess is that it is more science than spirituality. Let me explain.

I was born in 1935. My father, Hubert LaPostale, was CEO of what was then LaPostale Telephony Corporation of America, headquartered in Philadelphia. The company was in charge of most of the phone lines in America, so naturally we had amassed a fortune. I was not the heir of the company; rather, that title fell to my younger brother, David James. He spent most of his time learning the ins and outs of the business from my father, going with him on business trips and traveling the world after the war.

And I remained at home, with our many maids and assistants, where I attended school and learned how to be a good wife and mother.

And I hated it, oh, V, I loathed the entire lot of it. I had no freedom of my own. I had my friends, and sometimes I had a good book and a radio drama to listen to -- my mother had a certain fondness for The Guiding Light. But I even slept while being watched by security guards, unable to get a glass of water for myself in the night without someone knowing. My father was never outright mean in my childhood; he was simply eternally absent.

As I sit here, writing about these memories, it occurs to me that it feels like they happened so long ago, when to me it still seems like it was just yesterday. Do you ever feel that way, V, about your own life?

After I graduated high school I was blessed with acceptance to the Benton Women's College in Indiana. Upon arriving there I made friends with several young women my own age, and in between homemaking classes and English lessons we played baseball, went sledding, and various other activities within the safety of the women's college. We even completely recreated a production of The Pirates of Penzance! Oh, it was an absolute bash.

While I was at college, one of the students from San Francisco suggested that we start a poetry night. This was also wild fun, and once a month we would gather in the dorms to read aloud poems that we had written, all inspired by Emily Dickinson and Amy Lowell. My poems were the highlight of these nights, and everybody loved them. It was my intent to find a way to continue with my poem writing, and more importantly with having others hear my work, when I returned to Philadelphia upon graduation.

But shortly after I graduated in 1957, I was shipped home and told I was betrothed -- to Kim Youngchul, a man I had never met before, an Asian man from an ocean away who spoke no English. I later learned from Davie that this man was the son of Kim Youngsik, the CEO of the Baepsae Conglomerate, and that Baepsae and LaPostale were busy with a cooperative project. I was to be this Kim Youngchul's wife, even though I was a white girl and he was a busy Korean businessman, simply as a promise of a better, more capitalist world. I would live in Korea for the rest of my life, surrounded by servants and security guards, and I would never leave my house. In return, our children would be the symbol for a united East and West, and my father promised to make them rich and famous, on the cover of every magazine promoting our products and our way of life.