Martoons

Today: Cleaning Lady’s fascinating background.

Cast of characters

Fred

Cleaning Lady – the lady that cleans Mrs Won’s home

*

After morning Englishy classes at the institute, Fred usually worked-out and then went home for lunch.

Cleaning Lady was usually still there putting the final shine on the apartment.

She walked over from her neighboring village, which was visible from Fred’s room window.

He sometimes gazed out at it, wondering what kind of lives the people there had.

Mrs Won had told him the village used to be an old Japanese prison camp, the skeleton of which was still in tact:

The high cinder-block walls surrounding the perimeter and the rusted barb wire mounted on top; the old, abandoned guard towers in each corner.

The village was frozen in time.

The houses were shanties, and roads were just wide enough to accommodate one car.

Most of the residents of the hamlet were poor, yet Korean poverty was not the hopeless, miserable variety of, say, Central America with unwashed kids in the streets selling candy cigarettes.

There was no child labour here and even if a family didn’t earn much money, they worked hard and had a basic income and wore decent clothes.

“I own land in there,” Cleaning Lady said as they talked about her village. “I inherited it from my father. He died about twenty years ago.

“The land is quite large but isn’t worth much. Problem is, because a lot of Koreans were killed there in that prison by Japanese guards, people around here believe ghosts haunt that village so real estate value is low.”

“Anyway, my neighbors and I get a lot of use out of it. I rent out little plots to them for gardens. I grow gochu– hot chili peppers.”

Cleaning Lady had a formidable work ethic.

She kept Won’s apartment immaculate.

She was also nosy.

She asked Fred almost every day how old he was, if he was married; if he had a girlfriend.

She told him she’d officially introduce her unmarried daughter Rose to him, meaning as a potential marriage partner.

“She’s very beautiful,” Cleaning Lady said dreamily, “Truly beautiful.”

* Do you think Fred and Rose might get together? *

Fred absently nodded as he recalled his first meeting with Rose the night he’d arrived.

In all due respect, he could never imagine himself married to a woman so traditional, quiet and passive; so willing to serve a man.

It just wasn’t in him.

He’d been castrated by decades of feminism back home.

He worried that the placid, submissive Rose would eventually gain a feminist consciousness and the wild, pent-up beast within her would be unleashed – on Fred.

Several days later he jogged into Cleaning Lady’s village on his way into the small mountains behind Good Lucky Apartments.

He’d seen a trail from his window.

Cleaning Lady happened to be gardening in her little plot.

Her gochu were mostly green, but a few had turned ripe red and she was picking them.

* Will Fred try one of Cleaning Lady’s hot chilli peppers? *

“Cleaning Lady! Hello!” he yelled huffing and puffing while swiftly passing by.

“Fred! Fred! Canada Fred!”

She ran out from her plot to meet him in the middle of the road.

He intended to keep jogging but she grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Come to my house. You must meet my daughter!”

He laughed at the directness of her invitation.

“That’s okay but no thanks. I’m very busy. I have to go jogging. Last night – beer – too much! Today my head – crazy!”

Cleaning Lady laughed. “Oh don’t be ridiculous! Relax and enjoy. Come with me.”

*

*The Inimitable Cleaning Lady*

As much as Fred needed the jog to burn off his nasty little hangover, he couldn’t turn down an impending cultural moment.

So he walked with Cleaning Lady back to her little house.

The dwelling must have been fifty years old.

It was situated inside a small courtyard, fronted by a squeaky cast-iron gate.

The house had a knee-high, faded wooden porch covered in storage pots of various sizes.

A piece of burlap laid-out on the porch had several dozen red gochu drying on it.

Cleaning Lady and Fred stepped onto the porch and she slid open the house’s rice paper entrance door.

“Come in,” she said, motioning enthusiastically with her arm.

* How do you think this visit will go? *

*

Tomorrow: Fred visits with Cleaning Lady and Rose.