Drama of 7-train

I took a seven-train ride to Flushing, where there are many Koreans. If you are wearing fine make-up, designer bags and platform shoes, you are probably Korean.

When I saw the Korean people inside the train, I was under the illusion that I was in Korea. 'How come I can't forget my home country!'

Before I got married, I lived in an apartment in Elmhurst, Queens, as a roommate for several months. I went to school early in the morning and came back late at night. I haven't talked much with the roommates who was sisters. All I know is younger sister is a single with a lively personality and older sister is divorced single that is a quiet, decent.

One early evening when the sky turned red, I had a chance to take a 7-train ride with older sister to Manhattan. Looking at the red-colored sky from the running train, she looked so sad that she was about to cry.

I asked, "Are you all right?" She bowed her head and wiped her tears. "I miss my daughter." "Do you think she'll find me in the sunset like this?" "Do you have a daughter?' She opened her mouth. She is said to have supported her husband's Ph.D. while she was a waitress. After her husband, who received his Ph.D., was blinded by a woman and asked for a divorce. Furthermore he took the daughter too.

"Do you smell in my body?" "What smell?" "Because I've been working in the restaurant for a long time, my body smells so bad that even if take a bath well." "My husband didn't like me who smells like food.”

I also wet my eyes when I saw her sad face while she was staring into the distant sky. Her husband betrayed a small, thin woman who sacrificed herself to the point where she couldn’t get rid of the smell.  Besides, she was living in a world where she had to cry all her life after losing her child. Even after such a wound to her, he could live happily with a woman with a doctorate. I was afraid of the world where such people lived.

"Don't quit school. After get married don't support your husband. If you don't want to be like me," these brief, painful words have helped me a lot in my life.

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Trains wriggle and wiggle, carrying the struggles of the immigrants. Whenever I see the back of a curved train, my heart becomes salty and tears come to my eyes.