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Mostly and usually, babies are born one at a time to ensure

that they get all the attention they deserve. But Mom

dreams of a glossy full moon over a mountain peak splitting

in two, and soon afterward Inah and I arrive in this world

together as "winter twins." Already a year old by the way

Koreans count age. We come in a hurry, barely ten minutes

apart under the flood of cold, green fluorescent light in an

overheated room at a university hospital in Seoul. Red and

wrinkled and tightfisted and kicking feet, each no bigger

than a hammerhead, and issuing the shrill cries of a squealing

crow. Indistinguishable other than the greenish Mongolian

spots we carry on our bottoms, which will fade in time.

It's January 1973, but still 1972 by the lunar calendar, the

Year of the Rat. Wet snow falls all night.

We are the first children and will be the only children

born to our parents. Mom is a twenty-five-year-old novice

teacher at a primary school. Pretty mostly from her youth

and her open moon face blessed with beautiful, pale, dewy

skin. Daddy is forty-four, considered too old to be a first

time father or, for that matter, even a second-time father.

He weeps as he holds his newborn twins in his arms. He

can't help himself.

Afterward, every Saturday, Daddy hurries home for the

weekend from his teaching job in the eastern city of

Choonchon, Spring Stream, and spends hours sitting next

to us twins, transfixed, never tiring of looking at us, lying

side by side, babbling and dribbling, sleeping and dreaming,

he's sure, the same dreams. Noticing things like new feathery

hair sprouting all over our warm heads. Our faces filling

out from Mom's breast milk. His dark lips open, and smiles

leak out. He talks in whispers to us twin girls. He tells us

how we will always have each other as a companion on the

road of life. How lucky we are.

Time flies, leaving us with no apparent memories. A year

passes. Then two, three. We know these stories because they

are told to us later. In careless repetition by tired Grandma

at our bedtime. We are now four years old. Wispy little

things. With spindly legs and arms. People in our old

neighborhood at the foot of Nam San, South Mountain,

where traditional, tile-roofed Korean houses run shoulder-to-

shoulder along the narrow alleys crisscrossing each other

in a seemingly endless gridlock, now refer to our old Japanese

house as "the twins'" instead of "the Japanese house."

On the street, strangers, whom Grandma never fails to meet

when she goes out with us in tow, stop and marvel and say

we look as if stamped from the same mold. Laughing, they

pat us on the head and ask Grandma how she could tell us

apart. Every time, Grandma imperiously declares to the

curious and always rapt audience, "You wouldn't guess it,

but they are different." Pointing to me, she claims I am the

quiet one of the two, a watcher, and then, pointing to Inah,

she says, proudly, "She is the spirited one."

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It's true. Already such a self-absorbed and self-involved

thing, Inah is feistier and more vociferous. She leads, and I

follow. Inah thinks out loud and I listen. Inah will try everything

a little harder. She even talks faster, as if in a race.

Almost in a stutter. In her slightly high-pitched tone. Impatiently

repeating words. Stumbling and tripping over them

because her mind races faster than she could string them up

together and give them voice. Waving her arms. Anxious to

keep the attention from slipping away. Her bright, sparkling

eyes become two black rambling seas of emotion. It's as if

she knows and is in a hurry to grab what fun, love and attention

she can.

Shoving past Grandma, Inah runs after Mommy across the

courtyard. Her feet are barely inside her silver, fur-trimmed

shoes, and on top of her head, from the elastic bands holding

her feather-brown hair in two rabbit ears, the plastic

cherry-colored beads jump and go click-clack like abacus

beads, and the balloon sleeves of her jacket (iridescent green

on one side and iridescent blue on the other; the colors of

peacock feathers) go swish, swish making the sound of wind

in the trees.

All the way out to the damp alley, where winter mornings

always smell like soot, Inah hangs on to Mommy's coat

sleeve until Grandma grabs her, firmly planting her by her

side.

"Say good-bye quick to your mother and get inside,"

Grandma says, all bundled up like a snowman. "It's cold."

Inah pushes off the scratchy sleeve of Grandma's gray

wool sweater that smells like salted oily fish and turns up

her bun face to Mommy and asks if she's coming home

early. Mommy assures her that she is. What time? Inah

asks. At four o'clock maybe? Maybe. Promise? Mommy

hooks her baby finger to Inah's, but Inah still looks unsatisfied.

"Bye, Mommy," Inah says finally, looking dejected.

"Bye," Mommy says, pretending not to notice the tears

brimming in Inah's eyes. She pats us on the head, first Inah

and then me. Resigned, Inah watches Mommy walk down

the narrow alley in her long tea-colored winter coat as the

sound of her shoe heels, soft clucking tongues, drift away

like melodies of a slow song. Then, just as Mommy reaches

the end of the alley, Inah, stretching all of her wispy four-year-

old frame, belches out one more time, "Bye, Mommy!"

"Bye, Mommy!" I repeat after her, copying even her

slightly aggressive tone.

Mommy turns, smiles and waves back with her hand in a

black leather glove. And then she is gone, turning the corner.

Suddenly, the sunless alley, hemmed in on both sides by

the stone walls of the houses, feels empty and desolate.

Inah, sad-faced and looking puzzled, stares at the gray space

where Mommy has just disappeared. Then, even as she is

being pulled away by Grandma's cold and cracked hand,

Inah looks over her shoulder just one more time, wistful.

For the rest of the day, Inah waits, and I watch her wait.

When noon comes and passes and the sunlight that floods

the house in the morning pulls out, leaving the old, dank

Japanese house dark as a cave, time slows down, and the

afternoon drags on interminably long as uneven hours and

minutes accumulate and play tricks. Inah and I, confused

with our still hazy sense of time and not comprehending the

arbitrary nature of it, play, eat lunch and take a nap, and

constantly ask Grandma how many hours before Mommy

comes home and count and recount, folding and unfolding

our small fingers. We never get tired of this daily repetition

of waiting because of the sheer shiver of excitement that

punctuates the end of it.

Then finally comes Saturday, and Daddy, a college art

teacher, is back home for the weekend. How anxiously Inah

and I wait for Saturdays. Sharing that aching thrill, and

holding on to the memory of his warm voice and unique

smell, so familiar, so recent but nonetheless fading. With

none of the certainty that accompanies our daily waiting for

Mommy. But with the fierce affection we reserve only for

him. Every time he walks in through the door, Inah and I

simply soar and fly to heaven. Ecstatic and breathless and

momentarily shy and very much relieved, we rush and dive

into his wide-open arms.

The next morning, even before sleep falls from our

eyes, we rush to our parents' room to wake him up so

unceremoniously, pulling off the cover and shaking his

arms. Jostling each other, Inah and I beg him to get up and

play with us. Our hearts skip when he finally opens his

blurry eyes, looking a little confused and sorry at the

memory of sweet sleep, and massaging his sour morning

stomach through his loose pajama top. But he's ready to

oblige us twins, who are climbing onto his lap, competing

for his attention.

Soon, we get him on his hands and knees and climb up

to his back and go on a horse ride. Out of the room, across

the maroo, the slippery, varnished wooden floor, cold as ice

in the winter, and then down the dank hallway splashed

with morning sunlight. First in a halfhearted trot but soon

in a full gallop, he goes carrying Inah and me on his back as

we shout, "Iri-yah, ggil-ggil!" to get the Daddy-horse to

hurry up even more. After a while, Daddy-horse gets angry

and raises and tilts back his head and hisses and jumps up

and down (we can see his splayed hair on the crown ripple

like black waves), threatening to toss us up into the air.

Inah and I shriek and scream, scared out of our wits, desperately

clinging to his long, skinny back, wiggling and

rolling.

Then, reaching the other end of the hallway, at the foot

of the wooden staircase, Daddy-horse stops full and refuses

to move. But we shrilly order him to climb up the steps and

take us to the big, mildewy tatami-floored room upstairs,

his painting studio, shut up for the winter. He pulls up his

neck and cries for our mercy, but we shake our heads,

laughing and giggling. He turns and asks us how we would

like it if Daddy-horse grew wings on his shoulders and

became a flying horse and carried Inah and Yunah to the

sky over the river and mountains instead. No, no, no! We

will be too scared! Just take us upstairs, Daddy-horse, we

say. Crawling, he scales just a couple of steps before he collapses,

out of breath. We scramble off his back fast, and

bend down over Daddy-horse, sprawled on his back over

the steps with his eyes shut tight and his long arms dangling

at his sides. Terrified, we plead, "Apa! Apa!! Wake up!

Open your eyes!" But he doesn't wake up or open his eyes.

Inah places her sticky thumb and forefinger on one of them

and tries to pry the lid open, but it closes right back when

she lets it go.

Now convinced Daddy is really dead, Inah and I are

ready to burst out crying. That's when he suddenly springs

back to life. Opening his eyes wide, he bolts up, spreading

out his arms and roaring over us, "Woo-waah!!" Inah and I

jump up like two beans on a hot pan and run for our lives,

screaming and squealing. Grandma looks in, loudly clucking

her tongue, and says what a beautiful sight it is: an "old

man" about to turn fifty in just a couple of days, horsing

around with his two little girls. Fiercely protective of him,

Inah hates Grandma so for that brief second, but Daddy

just laughs.

By late afternoon on Sunday, though, Daddy is gone, and

Inah and I start waiting and counting out loud for the next

Saturday all over again. In our unerring conviction that the

future holds only more fun and excitement.

Copyright © 2004 by Mia Yun