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also Chinese and some English. And the missionary says they’ll teach our language, our history and the Bible!”
    He continued to read, and she noticed his lips tightly pressed. She let a long silence fill the room until she saw his chin and then his neck relax. As if musing to herself, she said, “Who can say if her schooling will be valuable? At least it can’t be harmful.” The embroidered edging finished, she gently flipped the cap right side out, pressed it flat on the floor between them and brought the lamp near, making the light catch on the stepped geometric pattern she had embroidered. She fussed with the cap, pressing its corners, and said boldly, “All that I learned from my brothers has been useful to me, wouldn’t you agree?”
    He folded his paper and took up his tobacco box. She approached to fill and light his pipe and poured more wine, positioning her two hands attractively and letting the liquid slap into his cup appetizingly. He raised his eyes to her, showing a mixed expression of annoyance and acquiescence, and gave an almost-snort. “It won’t do if she’s unprepared for marriage.”
    Haejung, shouting triumphantly inside, bowed her head slightly and folded one leg gracefully over the other, waiting until she knew her tone would be calm. “She’ll be as prepared as I was, if not more so.”
    He snorted fully but couldn’t quite hide the smile that sweetened the corners of his mouth. “If it makes her coarse ways any rougher, it must cease,” he said. Pause. “I’ll speak to the magistrate.”
    His eyes met hers when she gathered her sewing things and rose. She was pleased, so pleased, and saw that this pleased him. He stroked his beard, and she knew he did so to mask his emotion. “How many days?” he asked.
    “One hundred and twelve.”
    “You’re well?”
    He was, of course, remembering the four before their robust daughter had come—this month eight years ago—wailing and flailing into a world they’d just learned was no longer theirs and would likely never again be the same. She thought this had to be the reason he hadn’t named hisdaughter, even after a hundred days, and now, almost a hundred months. Perhaps with so much loss behind and ahead—and the disappointment he’d tried to hide when he saw she’d borne a girl—he could find no meaningful name to mark her place on this earth. Still, Haejung couldn’t fully understand his unwillingness to name their daughter and felt in every part of her body that it would be different this time. “Yes, praise God, very well.”
    “Amen. Goodnight,” he said.
    “Goodnight. Thank you.”
    She passed the folding screen and put her hand behind its edge to beckon the child who most certainly hid there. Najin appeared, shamefaced but with eyes that matched her mother’s in excitement. Najin scampered behind until Haejung gestured “hush.” When they reached the kitchen they clasped hands, smiling broadly at each other.
    “Lucky blessed child! Thank God for your generous father!” The brilliance of realized hope filled Haejung’s eyes with laughing tears. Though it wasn’t their family’s custom to give birthday presents, she said, “Your father has given you the best birthday gift a child could ever have.” Najin hopped and spun, asking if she’d have books and paper and pencils and new clothes. And Cook, beaming at the stove, banged a wooden paddle on an iron pot in congratulations.
    A few days later, Haejung’s husband asked her to join him after supper. This request was his way of obliging her, and it gave her contentment. The evening’s early coolness hushed summer’s singing night insects, leaving only occasional owls’ hoots and frogs’ croaks to break the companionable silence in his sitting room. She listened to the night and wistfully recalled the hourly clang of the ancient iron bell in the South Gate, whose clarion toll had for centuries pealed across the valley. She thought the Japanese had proscribed