My Korean name

My grandfather left Korea to live with us in New York when he was almost eighty years old. My parents fixed¹ up the attic²（阁楼） so that he had his own room. He wore traditional Korean clothes: shiny vests（背心） with gold buttons, and puffy（肥大的） pants that made his legs look fat even though he was really very skinny. He chewed on small dried fish snacks（快餐，小吃） that smelled up everything. He coughed a lot.

My grandfather spoke³ only Korean, so I never understood what he was saying. He scared me. I had never seen anyone so old so close.

“Take this tea up to your halabogee,” my mother told me soon after he had moved in.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“He’s your grandfather,” she scolded. “Be nice to him.”

I brought up the steaming cup of tea, hearing him cough once, twice, and again. I peeked⁴（偷看，窥视） around the corner and said, “Here’s your tea.” He looked up at me, chewing his dried fish snack, and smiled. He began speaking Korean to me, but I didn’t understand him. He waved me over and continued talking.

“What? What? I don't understand Korean,” I said. “I never learned.”

"Aigoo," he said, which was like “Oh my!” in Korean. My mother said that word to me all the time. He waved his finger at me and said, “Korean important. Yes?”

“I guess so,” I said, surprised. So he did speak a little English.

He smiled and nodded and sipped⁵ his tea loudly. He began speaking to me in Korean again. He talked for a long time, and I didn't understand a single word. I said, “Grandpa, I told you I can't understand you!”

But he just smiled and nodded and kept on talking. After a while, I just listened. I liked the sound of his raspy（刺耳的，粗糙的） voice filling the warm attic. My mother gave my grandfather a colorful shiny hand fan that he used to keep himself cool during the hot afternoons. My father gave him a small transistor⁶（晶体管） radio, which my grandfather listened to late at night, tuned⁷ to the Korean Gospel station. My mother also gave him a goat-hair brush, rice paper, an ink stick, and an inkstone to practice his calligraphy⁸（书法）, a special kind of writing.

One day I was watching him draw lines on the paper. He looked up and said,

“You.” I was surprised. Another English word.

“Me,” I said.

He smiled, his face wrinkling.

“You,” he said again. “Won Chul.”

“Me,” I said. “Won Chul is my middle name.”

He nodded and dipped his brush in the inkstone, shaking off some of the extra ink. “You,” he said. “Won Chul.”

“I know my middle name,” I said, getting annoyed.

He talked to me in Korean again for a long time, then motioned for me to come closer.

I walked to him. He smelled like mothballs（卫生球） and fish.

He drew some stick figures overlapping⁹（相互重叠的） each other, swirling¹⁰（打旋） his brush easily, quickly. “Won,” he said, pointing.

He drew another figure, this time going slowly. The brush made a swish（嗖嗖） sound on the thin rice paper. He pointed¹¹ to this second figure and said, “Chul.” Bringing me nearer so that I could study the picture, he said, “Won Chul. You.”

“That’s my name?”

He nodded. “Won Chul.”

“That looks neat,” I said.

He pushed it toward me.

“For me?” I asked.

“For Won Chul,” he said.

My mother later told me that this was hanja（韩文汉字）, a special Korean way of writing using the Chinese alphabet. This was the hanja version of my Korean name. She said, “Your grandfather was once a famous artist. All the people in his town wanted him to draw their names.”

“Wow,” I said, holding the rice paper carefully.

“You know what your name means, don’t you?” she said. “It means ‘Wise One.’ Do you remember?”

“I remember,” I said. I held up my Korean name to the light, the paper so thin it glowed.

Not too long after that my grandfather went to a nursing home, and during the next summer he died while I was away at camp. My father turned the attic into a storage room. Now it's filled with dusty boxes of old clothes and shoes and old furniture.

I still have the drawing of my Korean name. My mother had it framed for me, and it hangs in my room right now. I wonder what my grandfather used to tell me those afternoons when he spoke in Korean, going on and on in this strange language that I never learned. Maybe he was telling me stories. Maybe he was telling me about his life in Korea.

Sometimes, if I go up into the attic and listen very carefully, I can almost hear his voice rising and falling, telling me stories I don't understand. I can almost see him in the corner, hunched¹²（弯腰驼背） over, listening to his radio and fanning himself. I can see him swishing his brush over the rice paper, and then pointing to me, telling me my own name.