이 포스팅은 쿠팡 파트너스 활동의 일환으로, 이에 따른 일정액의 수수료를 제공받습니다.
Marcus turned the soil on the first Saturday.
The backyard — the Glendale backyard, the yard that held the avocado tree and Linden’s roots and the specific, Southern California December warmth that was not cold enough for winter but was cool enough for the soil to accept what the gardener put in it. The yard had been — yard. Grass, mostly. The avocado tree. The patch where Misuk grew perilla leaves in summer. The yard had not been — a garden. The yard had been the space between the kitchen and the fence. The space that existed but that had not been — cultivated.
Marcus knelt in the soil at 7:30 AM. The kneeling was — the kneeling was the gardener’s equivalent of the cook’s standing. The position that said: I am here. I am at the work. The work is in the ground. The ground is where the work lives.
He had borrowed a shovel from the hardware store on Brand Boulevard — not borrowed, Jihoon had purchased it, the Assessment Division’s budget apparently extending to garden tools when the garden tools were for a former federal prisoner paroled to a kitchen that had diplomatic status under the Glendale Protocol. The shovel was — a shovel. The standard Home Depot shovel, the shovel that every gardener in every suburb used for turning soil. Marcus held it the way he had held the prison garden’s shovel: with the specific, I-know-this-tool confidence of a man who had been turning soil for two years.
He turned the first row. The Glendale soil was — different from the Victorville soil. The Victorville soil had been hard, compacted, the soil of a desert prison where the water table was deep and the organic matter was minimal. The Glendale soil was softer. The avocado tree’s roots had been conditioning it for decades. Linden’s mycelial network had been conditioning it for two years. The soil was — alive. The soil was inhabited. The soil carried, in its microbiology, the between-frequency that the kitchen produced every morning and that traveled downward through the floor and into the foundations and into the soil.
“The soil here is different,” Marcus said.
Jake was standing at the kitchen door, watching. The cook watching the gardener — the reversal of the usual dynamic, where the gardener had watched the cook through a prison letter.
“Different how?”
“It’s — it’s listening. The prison soil wasn’t listening. The prison soil was — enduring. This soil is — this soil is paying attention.”
“Linden’s roots are in there.”
“The tree? The roots are — I can feel them. Under the shovel. The roots are — the roots are warm.”
The roots were warm. Linden’s roots — the mycelial network that connected the avocado tree to the Crystal village to the dimensional bridge — pulsed with the between-frequency at 848 hertz. The frequency warmed the roots. The roots warmed the soil. The soil that Marcus was turning was — warmed from below. The soil was being heated by a tree from another dimension whose roots carried the frequency of a kitchen where the Question was asked every morning.
Marcus planted the first seeds on Saturday afternoon.
Korean radishes — the same variety he had grown at Victorville. But also: gochugaru peppers. The peppers that produced the gochugaru that Misuk used in the kimchi and the tteokbokki and the stir-fry and the everything. The peppers that Misuk bought at H Mart in dried form and that Marcus was going to grow in fresh form. The peppers that would, if the soil and the sun and the water cooperated, produce the gochugaru that the kitchen used.
“직접 기르면 — 직접 기르면 다를 거야,” Misuk said, when Marcus told her the plan. If you grow it yourself — it will be different.
“Different good or different bad?”
“달라. 그냥 달라. 네 손에서 자란 고추니까. 마트 고추는 모르는 사람 손이야. 네 고추는 — 네 고추는 네 손이야.”
Different. Just different. Because it’s peppers grown from your hands. The market peppers are a stranger’s hands. Your peppers are — your peppers are your hands.
Your peppers are your hands.
The same principle. The same kitchen principle applied to the garden. The food carried the hands. The ingredient carried the grower. The gochugaru that Marcus grew would carry Marcus’s hands — the hands that had committed a robbery and grown radishes and made kimchi and been released from prison. The hands that were — now — in the soil of a kitchen that asked the Question.
The garden grew through December and January.
Marcus in the backyard every morning at 6:15 — after the kitchen’s 5:47, after the jjigae and the rice and the five-note chord. Marcus in the garden while the morning continued, the gardener’s morning beginning where the cook’s morning paused. The two practices — cooking and growing — occupying the same day, the same hands (different hands), the same house.
The radishes appeared first. The familiar green tops pushing through the soil — the same tops that Marcus had watched in Victorville, the same shape, the same color, but faster. The Glendale radishes grew faster than the Victorville radishes. The warm soil, the Linden-conditioned soil, accelerated the growing. The radishes that had taken eighteen weeks in Victorville were showing in eight weeks in Glendale.
“The soil is — the soil is in a hurry,” Marcus said.
“서두르는 게 아니라 준비가 된 거야,” Misuk said from the kitchen door. She watched Marcus in the garden the way she watched Jake at the stove — from the threshold, from the between-position, the position that was neither inside nor outside but at the door. It’s not hurrying. It’s ready.
The peppers were slower. The gochugaru peppers — the long, thin Korean peppers that dried into the red flakes that were the foundation of Korean cuisine — the peppers needed warmth and patience and the specific, pepper’s-own-timeline stubbornness that peppers carried. The peppers did not hurry. The peppers kept their own time, the way the kimchi kept its own time.
Marcus learned to wait for the peppers the way he had learned to wait for the tomatoes. The waiting that Aldridge’s letter had described — the days when nothing happened, the days when the soil looked the same as yesterday. But Marcus was better at waiting now. Marcus had been waiting for two years in a prison garden and eight years before that in a prison cell. Marcus knew waiting. Marcus was — waiting’s student. The student who had graduated.
“The peppers will come when the peppers come,” Marcus said. The sentence that sounded like Misuk. The sentence that sounded like the kitchen. The sentence that said: the food keeps its own time.
In February, the first pepper turned red.
Marcus picked it at 6:30 AM on a Wednesday. The pepper was — small. Six inches. The long, thin shape of the Korean gochugaru pepper. The skin turning from green to the red that would, when dried and ground, become the flakes that colored the kimchi and the tteokbokki and the jjigae.
He carried the pepper to the kitchen. He held it up — the way a fisherman holds a first catch, the way a baker holds a first loaf, the way any person holds the first thing their hands have produced. The holding that said: this exists because I existed. This grew because I grew it.
“First one,” Marcus said.
Misuk took the pepper. She held it — the cook’s hold, the assessment hold, the hold that read the vegetable’s weight and firmness and color. She smelled it. The pepper smelled like — the pepper smelled like a pepper. Fresh. Green, even though the skin was red. The specific, alive, this-is-a-thing-that-was-growing-ten-minutes-ago smell that dried peppers from H Mart did not carry.
“이거로 고춧가루 만들 수 있어,” she said. You can make gochugaru with this.
“One pepper?”
“하나면 하나지. 한 개 고춧가루면 한 번 김치야.”
One pepper is one pepper. One pepper’s worth of gochugaru is one batch of kimchi.
One pepper. One batch of kimchi. The ratio was — absurd. One pepper would produce perhaps a tablespoon of gochugaru when dried and ground. One tablespoon of gochugaru would make — a small batch. A very small batch. A Marcus-batch. The batch that one man could make from one pepper that he grew with his own hands in the soil of a kitchen.
“How do I dry it?” Marcus asked.
“햇볕에 말려. 창문에. 일주일.”
Dry it in the sun. In the window. One week.
Marcus set the pepper in the kitchen window — the window that caught the afternoon sun, the window through which the 6:03 AM light entered and fell on the pot. The pepper in the window, red against the glass, the sun drying it slowly the way the sun dried everything: patiently, consistently, one photon at a time.
One week. The pepper in the window for one week. The pepper shrinking, the moisture leaving, the skin wrinkling, the color deepening from fresh-red to dry-red, the red that was — gochugaru red. The red that was the color of Korean cooking.
On the seventh day, Marcus ground the pepper. Not with a machine — with a mortar and pestle. Misuk’s mortar and pestle, the granite mortar that Misuk had brought from Korea, the mortar that her mother had used, the mortar that was — old. Older than Marcus. Older than Jake. The mortar that carried, in its stone, the hands of Misuk’s mother and Misuk’s grandmother and the generations before.
Marcus ground the pepper in the mortar. The pestle in his hand — the big hand, the robbery hand, the radish hand, the kimchi hand — pressing and turning, the pepper breaking, the flakes forming, the gochugaru emerging.
One tablespoon. The entire harvest of one pepper, dried for one week, ground in a grandmother’s mortar. One tablespoon of gochugaru.
Marcus held the tablespoon.
“That’s it?” he said. “That’s all one pepper makes?”
“다야,” Misuk said. That’s all.
“That’s — that’s not a lot.”
“충분해.”
It’s enough.
충분해. Enough.
One tablespoon was enough because the one tablespoon was — his. His pepper, his sun, his week, his hands, his grinding. The one tablespoon carried the garden and the waiting and the soil and the morning and the kneeling and the growing and the picking and the drying and the grinding. The one tablespoon carried — everything. One tablespoon could carry everything because the carrying was not about the quantity. The carrying was about the hands.
Marcus made kimchi.
One small batch. Six radishes from the garden — the Glendale radishes, the Linden-conditioned radishes, the eight-week radishes. Cut into cubes. Salted. The radish crying for two hours. Rinsed three times. The paste: one tablespoon of Marcus’s gochugaru, fish sauce, garlic, sugar. Mixed with hands — his hands, the hands that had learned from Misuk’s letter, the hands that had been practicing for seven months.
Packed into a jar. Pushed down. No air. Sealed.
The jar on the counter — not in the refrigerator, not yet. Three days at room temperature first. The fermentation beginning. The kimchi beginning to become.
Marcus stood at the counter and looked at the jar. The jar that held — one tablespoon of gochugaru from one pepper from his garden. The jar that held the smallest possible kimchi from the longest possible journey. Eleven years in prison, two years in a garden, eight weeks of radishes, one week of drying, one afternoon of grinding — all of it in the jar. All of it becoming.
“마커스 김치,” Misuk said. Marcus’s kimchi.
Not prison kimchi. Not Glendale kimchi. Marcus’s kimchi. The kimchi that belonged to the name because the hands belonged to the name.
Three days later. The first taste.
Marcus opened the jar in the kitchen. The smell — the kimchi smell, the fermented radish smell, the gochugaru-and-fish-sauce smell. But different. Different from the prison kimchi. Different from Misuk’s kimchi. Different because the gochugaru was different — one pepper, one tablespoon, the gochugaru that carried Marcus’s garden and Marcus’s sun and Marcus’s hands.
He served it. Small portions — there was only enough for small portions, the batch being the smallest batch in the kitchen’s history. He served: Misuk. Jake. Rosa. Sua. Jeonghee. Dowon. Seven portions from one pepper’s worth of kimchi.
Misuk tasted.
She chewed. The slow chewing. The reading chewing. The tongue that had been tasting kimchi for forty years, reading this kimchi — the kimchi made by a man who had been in prison eleven years ago and who was now standing in her kitchen holding a jar that contained the smallest batch of kkakdugi ever produced in the Glendale house.
She swallowed.
“맵다,” she said. It’s spicy.
“Is that — is that good?”
“매운 게 맛이지. 하나에서 이만큼 매우면 — 열 개면 어떻겠어.”
Spicy is flavor. If one pepper is this spicy — imagine ten.
Ten peppers. The garden had — Marcus checked that morning — six more peppers turning red. Six more peppers that would produce six more tablespoons of gochugaru. The garden was — producing. The garden was answering the question that Marcus had asked of the soil when he knelt and turned and planted and waited.
“여름에는 — 여름에는 백 개 될 거야,” Marcus said, in the Korean that he was learning. Misuk’s Korean. The Korean of the kitchen — not textbook Korean, not grammar Korean, the Korean that emerged from standing at the counter beside Misuk for two months and absorbing the language the way the radish absorbed the salt. In summer — in summer there’ll be a hundred.
“백 개면 — 백 개면 1년 김치야.”
A hundred peppers — a hundred peppers is one year of kimchi.
One year of kimchi from one garden. The garden that Marcus had planted and tended and knelt before every morning at 6:15 AM, the garden that was becoming — the garden was becoming the kitchen’s source. The kitchen’s ingredient garden. The garden that produced what the kitchen consumed. The circle — the growing and the cooking and the eating — closing. The garden to the kitchen to the table to the garden. The soil to the food to the body to the soil.
The circle that was — the circle was Beatriz’s drawing. The yellow line drawn as a loop. The line that had no beginning and no end. The line that was — always.
항상.
Marcus wrote a letter to Aldridge that evening.
Colonel,
I made kimchi. Not prison kimchi — Glendale kimchi. From peppers I grew in the backyard. One pepper. One tablespoon of gochugaru. The smallest batch of kimchi in the world. Mrs. Misuk said it was spicy. She said that was good.
The garden here is different from the prison garden. The soil is alive. There’s a tree — I can’t explain the tree, you’d have to see it. The tree’s roots are warm. The soil around the roots is warm. Everything grows faster here. The radishes took eight weeks instead of eighteen. The peppers are turning red already.
I’m growing gochugaru peppers. The Korean peppers that make the red flakes. One hundred peppers in summer — that’s a year of kimchi. A year of kimchi from one garden. The garden feeding the kitchen. The kitchen feeding the table. The table feeding the garden. The circle.
The waiting list at Victorville — how is it? Sixty-seven men last time you wrote. Are they still growing? Is the kimchi still being made?
Tell Rodriguez: the Glendale soil says hello. Tell him — tell him the radishes remember the prison soil. The radishes carry the prison soil in their roots. The radishes are — the radishes are both. Victorville and Glendale. Prison and kitchen. Both.
I washed my hands before planting. I wash my hands before everything now. The soil needs to read the hands. Mrs. Misuk was right. Mrs. Misuk is always right.
항상.
Marcus
He sealed the letter. He set it on the counter for mailing.
Misuk, passing the counter on her way to the refrigerator, saw the letter. She saw the Korean at the bottom: 항상.
She did not say anything. She touched the letter — the same touch that she had given the stove, the same touch that said: 수고했어. Good work.
The letter. The garden. The pepper. The kimchi. The table.
The circle.
항상.
Always.
One pepper at a time.
One garden at a time.
One question at a time.
Always.