The History of This Place Cannot Be So Completely Erased

“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river / but then he’s still left / with the river.” Richard Siken, “Boot Theory”

The trip to 마포대교(Mapo Daego) wasn’t planned. Walking there was arduous in the winter wind, and the river spread much wider than J anticipated; but J kept walking. She could feel her hair tangling in the air. The weight of J’s workbag pulled her shoulders down into a slouch, which made her back sore. It felt alive.

Step. The bridge’s farewell notes have been replaced with love letters and dates. Walk. The emergency buttons and SOS telephones are too far apart. Keep going. The rescue stairs on the outside of the bridge are locked, and the locks rusted. Step; pause.

A crumpled paper caught on the bars of the bridge handrail stood out among the cigarette boxes and soju receipts. J looked left, and right. She estimated she reached the middle of the river, of the bridge, the deepest point. J picked the paper up and unfolded it. 이월 일일: 영어 연습 (February 1st: English practice). A page from a planner, ripped out and future abandoned.

The ice of 한강 (Han River) broke apart and swayed across the current, slow as it went. Cold made the world look sharp. J turned the planner page over and over, asking it, “Where did you come from? Where have you been?” Then she shoved the page into her coat pocket. She put her hair up—a chill ran down her neck—she pulled the hair tie out, and ripped out some knots; J continued walking across the bridge until she found another page.

This page contained the month of January. J hoped to find a birthday, but found only weekly business dinners and one café meeting, at noon on a Saturday. This person ate earlier than most, around five. The handwriting for business plans squished messily within each date’s box, while the Saturday café glazed over the outlines of the 16th, printed legibly. J brushed her hand across the page, and wiped the dirt off onto her jeans. She laid it in her pocket more gently this time, careful not to rip the fragile edges.

By the time J reached the opposing riverbank, she had found January through March and a map of China that must have sat at the front of the planner. J set her workbag on the ground. Her eyes grazed across the river, the bridge, and the cars chasing each other relentlessly across the road. A biker rang his bell, and skimmed J’s elbow as she stepped back too late. J wished the river looked blue, but between the slabs of ice, she thought it only looked blank. She didn’t know how deep the river bed waited.

J donned her bag once more and decided to walk back across the way she came, attentive for the missing pieces of this person’s mystery. She tugged her sleeve over her watch. Another map page tucked underneath a deserted 수능 (sunung; SAT) workbook; three empty note pages stuck to the bike trail; and caught midair, after she mistook the whiteness for a magpie, J held the very first page, that read, “문경희, CHINA FERRY CO.” (Moon Kyunghee).

Passersby began to give J glances of suspicion, eyebrows raised at the shivering woman holding tainted trash. J’s fingers were red and swollen with chill. Moon Kyunghee’s email and phone number curled against the paper’s lines. It was so dissatisfying. J sighed at the gray horizon, obscured by the metal gleam of the cars that never stopped.

A taxi honked at a small truck filled with flowers. The two vehicles swerved away from each other. J pushed herself to the edge of the sidewalk, pushed against the railing separating human from machine. On the white dividing line of the road, a black notebook flapped pages in the wind. It lay there, like a slowly dying flightless bird that all the cars avoided.

Moon Kyunghee’s future lay barricaded on Mapo Daego. It felt dishonorable to leave, so J had stood there, staring, begging “I can save you, little bird. Hop over to me.” The rush of the buses, the trucks, the taxis, the motorcycles, all were not enough to make it budge. Once, a gust slid the book ten inches, but parallel to the line of the road, neither farther nor nearer to salvation.

Twenty minutes passed this way. J stood up straight; her back popped. It felt as though a mask of unknowability fell away. She offered the planner one last, squinted stare. At no reply, she turned away and kept walking.

The SOS telephone line rang. J shuffled between the handwritten numbers and the water. She wondered if the phone would ring ceaselessly if there was no answer, or how long it would wait before terminating the call, how long before it told her to give up. She ran her free hand through the tangles in her hair, and watched as the hairs floated away, off the bridge…

“Hello?” A voice called out.

“Hello? Is this Moon Kyunghee?” J gripped the phone with both hands as she responded.

“Yes, it is…”

“I found your planner,” she told the voice.

“My planner?” A stapler clicked in the background, papers shuffling.

“The small black book. China Ferry Company. It has this number.”

“Ah, really? Where was it?”

“It’s in the road, on Mapo Daegyo.” The strangers went silent together…

“It’s not mine,” the voice muttered, and hung up.

The sun began to set. The skin around J’s knuckles and her ears stung. She slammed the telephone onto its holster four times, thrust her hands into her pockets. She ground her aching heels into the concrete with every step. Rush hour makes the traffic stop. Walk. The streetlights turn on early. Walk faster. The bridge is devoid of pedestrians, now. Keep going.

J threw her bag to the ground and stretched her fingers in front of the planner. A city bus drove by. J considered whether going under or over the railing would be faster. She looked down at the oncoming wave, and dove into the road of Mapo Daegyo. Cars going both directions screeched, brake sparks floated upwards, the metallic honk of drivers harmonized and echoed. Headlights impaled her; J scraped her knee, but her numb fingers reached and wrapped around the book binding. Like a whip, she tossed the book to the safety of the path and rolled after it, into the gutter.

The cars sped on without incident.

J crawled under the metal bars. The red light of a CCTV camera blinked above her. With the planner in hand again, she settled against the railing as a back rest. J’s finger traced the spine and each embossed letter. She opened the front cover, and placed down each found piece, matching up the tear lines. She read Moon Kyunghee’s life: English tutors on Monday’s, Chinese lessons on Wednesdays; an anniversary in April, a China Ferry Co. Convention in May; an entire week in July dedicated to using sick leave in 강능 (Gangneung), almost thrown away by tire rubber.

Hidden on the back cover of the planner was a pocket, and hidden in that pocket was a slip of paper. A driver threw his cigarette out of the window, where it landed next to J, who quickly flicked the butt away and saw the bent corner of that slip of paper peeking. With just her forefinger and thumb, J slowly pulled on that corner, feeling the friction between the layers of pulp, and read Moon Kyunghee’s last mystery. A check for 20,000 dollars.

J slammed the book shut. She wanted to bury it. She wanted to burn it. She wanted to tear the pages out again, all of the pages out, make a collage on a vacant building and watch a wrecking ball bring it down. J thought about who Moon Kyunghee wasn’t. She thought about how long it would take to walk home. She thought about twenty thousand individual dollars of currency.

The book dissolved in between two blocks of refreezing ice, black into black. It felt alive.