Red Ink

When I was six years old, my grandfather told me that if a name is written in red ink, death or misfortune will soon follow that person. The color of blood was reserved for names on gravestones or obituaries. Never for those still alive, he said.

I had been sitting by his feet, practicing writing my own name, clutching a fire-engine red crayon with my left hand. I dropped it immediately and picked up one that was sky-blue as soon as he uttered those words.

He looked down at me from the gray, muslin-cloth sofa that matched his long tunic. His thin, silver rimmed glasses were perched on the tip of his long, sharp nose. He looked like an owl.

“Jia.” He said solemnly, pointing at the scribbles that vaguely resembled my name. Red was the color of the three letters.

“Grandpa. What do I do? Will I die?” I asked frantically, leaping onto the sofa next to him and grasping his wrinkled, vein ridden hands in panic. My eyes welled up with unshed tears as I considered the prospect that my short life would come to an end all too soon.

“You don’t have much time. Quick. Write your name with that.” he pointed to the blue crayon I held in my grasp. I obeyed dutifully and we both breathed a sigh of relief at the potential tragedy that I had narrowly evaded.

Looking back in hindsight, I realize that my playful grandfather took that old superstition a bit too far. But now, even eleven years later, although the scribbles that make out my name have gotten a bit more legible, I can feel my grandfather peering over my shoulder in grave concern whenever I take out a red pen to write out the three letters that spell out my name. I always find myself switching it with a blue one even though I don’t believe in silly old superstitions.

******

My parents always say that I was the loudest baby they had ever heard in their life. Whenever my father shares the story of my birth, he jokes that the moment I was brought into the world, he wanted to give me back.

“I wanted to exchange you with another baby. Preferably one that was quieter.” he usually ruffled my hair after saying that, his dark brown eyes alight with mirth.

I was a thunderous wailer. One that provoked a lot of covering of the ears and made the nurses wince slightly at the sound.

“But the moment Grandpa held you. My God, you were silent. It was like someone had gotten a remote control connected to your brain and pressed mute.” My mother shook her head in wondrous amusement.

This was usually where my grandfather interjected in the story if he was present, “Don’t worry, Jia. If they had thrown you away for another baby, I would’ve walked to the ends of the Earth to get you back. I didn’t even think the crying was that bad. It was a sign of a healthy baby,” he said.

He would wink at me after saying that. His own special kind of wink -- one where both of his eyes crinkled and he would smile a crooked smile where half of his lips were raised slightly.

And then I would crinkle my eyes back at him -- our own special exchange that meant more than words ever could.

******

My grandfather was the one who taught me to write.

Calligraphy was his hobby. When we were alone together, he would spread out a huge piece of the thinnest paper made out of the bark of mulberry trees on the marble dining table. He would then meticulously grind jet-black ink sticks onto a wetted stone and voila -- black ink. Finally, with his majestic weapon, a brush made out of wispy goat hairs, he would dip the brush into the ink and write.

I loved watching him. The brush danced in his hand, waltzing across the blank paper and coming to a triumphant end with a flourish of ink and beautiful Korean characters. He was a wise wizard -- his steady hands and stoic expression belonged to the greatest master. He created art and I was the lucky spectator of the magic.

Before long, I was sitting right next to him with my own brush, messily imitating the graceful letters he made appear on the textured paper tinted yellow with age. Soon, my own brush turned into a simple pencil but I was creating my own magic. Not out of ink and elegant movements of my wrist, but in the form of words.

“Grandpa, listen.” I would say excitedly before reading out my own pathetic attempt at stories or poems.

“Amazing! That’s incredible! I can’t believe I’m sitting next to a genius.” No matter how horrible my small endeavors were, he responded with kind astonishment that spurred my love for writing and also my love for him.

I could sit there next to him for hours. His syncopated breathing calmed me down as did the sound of his brush scraping rhythmically against the rough paper -- a strange combination of noises that lit within me a serenity that reminded me of music.

We would rarely speak on some days while on others, he would chat about trivial things for hours, offering me small pieces of his own wisdom.

One of his favorite things to do on days like these was to recite poems to me.

“William Wordsworth. He’s a good one. And E.E. Cummings as well,” he said before repeating a quote from the ever-extensive collection stored in his brain.

I loved watching him write but I might have loved listening to him even more. His deep, gravelly voice flowed smoothly and energetically like a river rushing past rocks. His words hung in the air like an unanswered question and lingered there, encompassing me with warmth.

If you asked me now what my childhood was, I would reply that it was my treasured, tattered pink stuffed rabbit, the whirring hum of the washing machine next to my bedroom as I slept, the rush of going down the yellow plastic slide in the playground five minutes from our apartment. And of course, my grandfather.

My childhood was my grandfather.

******

We were all sitting around the dining table eating dinner when it first happened. I must have been twelve.

“Can you pass the water…” My grandfather started his question and then his voice faltered almost imperceptibly, the words trailing away very slowly like the sand in an hourglass reaching the end of its time.

The lively conversation stopped and we all looked at him.

My grandfather was staring at my mother, a curiously blank look on his face.

Then, he frowned so that there were four distinct wrinkles on his forehead, “I...forgot your name.” he said.

******

I understood the severity of that moment a few days later. It was late at night and I could hear the whisper of my parent’s urgent voices through the small crack I left open with my bedroom door. I stepped out of my bedroom and padded quietly to where the voices were coming from. I had never been an ominous person but I could feel something in the cold darkness, evil spirits or ghosts as my grandfather would probably call them. I remember wishing my grandfather was there next to me at that moment. He would have taken my small hand and led me back to my bedroom where my dim night light chased away the monsters under my bed and I did not have to hear a conversation I was too young to comprehend. But I was alone and so I stayed, standing and listening.

The lamp in the living room cast a spotlight on the wall. I could not see my parents, only the dark outlines of their bodies, and it felt like I was watching a shadow play. I could almost imagine that the two silhouettes I saw encircled by the lamp’s light were mere puppets and this was not real life, only a performance.

“They say it’s only going to get worse.” My father said in a low voice.

“I can’t believe it. He was so healthy. How can this just suddenly happen?” My mother’s voice trembled delicately, the slight waver of a house of cards before it crumbled to the floor. And then she was breaking down into my father’s arms, her whole body racking with heavy sobs. It was the sound of my mother crying that scared me the most. This was not a shadow play.

I watched, hidden, from the doorway as a cold fear sliced through my heart all the way down to my stomach. I didn’t understand what was going on but I realized that it was very, very wrong. I wanted to go to my parents and ask what was going on or maybe just comfort my mother but I couldn’t move. I stood alone in the darkness for maybe five minutes, maybe an hour, just watching the black, warped figures of my parents embracing.

Then, I walked back to my room in a slow trance. When I reached my desk, I ripped out a piece of paper from one of my school notebooks. After rummaging for a few minutes in my drawer, I found what I had been looking for: a sky blue crayon.

Please. Anybody. If you’re up there. Save him.

I wrote his name with trembling hands on the lined paper, pressing down so hard that there were indents on the sheet. I wrote his name five times for good measure.

I know how silly my actions were. What did I expect? For the misfortune that plagued my grandfather to suddenly disappear because of his name written in blue crayon? I don’t know what I was thinking. But I know that I just wanted to do something -- anything -- to help my grandfather. If that entailed believing in some old crazy superstition, so be it.

I woke up the next morning with my head on my desk. I touched my cheek. There was a vertical mark on my cheek where the crayon had dug into skin while I was asleep. I looked at the paper on my desk, at the smudged words in blue. And then I sent one last prayer and held it on my tongue, afraid that if I swallowed it would somehow disappear on the way down my throat.

Please.

******

I used to go on walks with my grandfather.

My thirteen-story childhood apartment was perched within a homey neighborhood surrounded by the characteristic high-rise towers of Seoul that had floor-to-ceiling glass windows so blinding in the sunlight it felt like you were looking at the sun itself; it stuck out not like a sore thumb but more with a sense of well-earned dignity -- it had lived through the modernization of South Korea and could not be shamed into being replaced by something as shallow as a parking lot or another glass building.

My grandfather and I would only circle the neighborhood once, rarely venturing beyond what we were used to. Sometimes, the walk took an hour and other times, it took a few minutes. It all depended on how my grandfather viewed the world that day.

On some days, my grandfather relished in the tiniest detail of nature. He would point to a fallen petal of a cherry blossom on the ground and we would study the miniscule veins that protruded throughout the pale pink. Or he would notice a small daisy growing out of a sewage drain and comment with childlike wonder on the strength of the flower to grow out of such a harsh environment.

Other days, he took a look at the buildings that surrounded our apartment and lamented the grey pollution that covered the city. “I can’t even see the stars during night,” he would complain before grabbing my hand and marching us back home.

He went on a walk once after he got sick.

“Jia, do you want to come with me?” he asked, poking his head into my bedroom. I had been busy so I said no.

He was gone for two and a half hours. By the second hour, my family was distraught with worry. We were all huddled around in the living room. My eyes fell onto the empty seat next to me on the couch that usually belonged to my grandfather. I clenched my fingers into tight fists, digging my nails into my palm. Angry crescent moons bloomed on my pale skin but I relished the pain. It was something to distract me from the paralyzing truth of my selfishness.

I should have gone with him. This is my fault.

I was a coward so I didn’t say my thoughts out loud, terrified that something had actually happened to my grandfather and that in the end, it was all because of me.

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang, two short sounds, and we all knew it was him.

When my grandfather finally shuffled into the house, my mother burst into tears. He looked like a bewildered, little child. His glasses were slightly skewed and his eyes were frightened.

“I got lost,” he said slowly. His words lilted with confusion.

I made my way across the room silently and grabbed his hand. His fingers were cold.

That’s when the first tears began to fall.

******

“Jia. Come write with me.” My grandfather said. He was already carrying his little set of inkstones and brushes when he opened the door and peeked into my room with a hopeful glance.

I smiled slightly at the familiar sight.

Yes. This was exactly what I needed. I would write with him and then everything would seem normal again, as if nothing had changed.

He placed the thin paper on the table and went to work as soon as I took my place next to him, grinding the inkstones together.

I had my own notebook and pencil and with the sound of the ink blocks rubbing together, I began to write. It was mostly nonsense, just my thoughts, but being there next to my favorite person and pretending that everything was as it had been was therapeutic. I lost myself in my writing, creating a world where my grandfather was healthy and nothing was wrong.

My grandfather’s soft cough startled me out of my thoughts. I turned to him and realized that he was quietly struggling. Gone were the graceful strokes of ink that seemed to come so naturally to him before. His brush no longer waltzed across the white. Rather, it seemed to have forgotten the steps to the dance, staggering around awkwardly and making ugly scratches on the paper. His hand trembled and his chin jutted out in concentration.

“My hand won’t stay still.” my grandfather put down his brush and looked at me. His eyes were weary and defeat was clear in his face.

I stopped writing after that day.

******

He called me into his room one day. When I walked in, he was in his bed, tucked into his covers like a small child.

The night was soundless. His wrinkled face was in a spotlight cast by the moon. He was closing his eyes.

He looked so frail and old that I wanted to leave. I did not want to see this stranger in front of me. But I stayed and walked to his side.

“Grandpa, did you call me?” I asked.

He said something softly, so soft that I couldn’t hear him. Then, he grabbed my hand, enveloping my fingers in warmth. He squeezed once. A strong squeeze.

“Grandpa?”

“Love is more thicker than forget.” he began in a clear, strong voice, “more thinner than recall/ more seldom than a wave is wet/ more frequent than to fail.”

With a jolt of surprise, I realized that it was a poem. He was reciting a poem.

My grandfather opened his eyes. They were bright and so alive. They looked silver in the moonlight. The deep bass of his voice resonated throughout the small room, embracing me. I listened in shocked silence. I listened to his strength, his magic with calligraphy. I listened to his love for me.

“and more it cannot die/ than all the sky which only/ is higher than the sky,” he looked at me and smiled his crooked smile. Crinkling his eyes, he repeated, “And more it cannot die.”