One day, your mom heard someone push the gate open and enter, saying, “Sister, are you in?” Mom, who was inside eating tangerines with you, threw open the door and ran out. It happened so quickly. Who was it that got her so excited? Curious, you followed her out. Mom paused on the porch, looking at the gate, shouted, “Brother!” to the person standing next to it, and ran to him—not caring that she was barefoot. It was your uncle. Your mom, who had run out like the wind, beat his chest with her fist and cried, “Brother! Brother!” You watched her from the porch. It was the first time you had heard her call someone “Brother.” When she referred to her brother, she always called him “your uncle.” You don’t understand why you were so surprised when you saw Mom run to your uncle and call him “Brother” in a delighted nasal tone, when you had known all along that you had an uncle. You realized, Oh, Mom has a brother, too! Sometimes you laughed to yourself when you remembered what your mom was like that day, your aging mom jumping down from the porch and running across the yard to your uncle, shouting “Brother!” as if she were a child—Mom acting like a girl even younger than you. That mom was stuck in your head. It made you think, even Mom … You don’t understand why it took you so long to realize something so obvious. To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you.
You couldn’t leave Mom and return to the city after seeing her like that in the shed. Father was in Sokcho, with some people from the Regional Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. He was supposed to be home in two days. Although Mom got over the severe pain, she couldn’t free herself from the headache, and she couldn’t crack a smile, let alone cry. She couldn’t even understand your suggestion that she should go to the hospital. When you helped her into the house, she walked gingerly, trying to keep her pain in check. A long time passed before she could talk. Mom said that she always got headaches but only had terrible ones “once in a while,” and that she could put up with it since those moments passed.
Did your siblings know about Mom’s headaches? Did Father?
You wanted to tell them, and to take her to a big hospital as soon as you returned to the city. When she was able to move around by herself, Mom asked, “Don’t you need to go back?” At some point your visits home had become shorter; you would come for only a few hours and return to the city. You thought of your date the next day, but told your mom that you were going to stay the night. You remember the smile that spread across her face.
You left the live octopus you’d bought at the Pohang fish market in the kitchen, since neither you nor your mom knew what to do with it, and you sat across from Mom at the table like old times, quietly eating a simple meal of rice and panchan, side dishes of water kimchi, braised tofu, sautéed anchovies, and toasted seaweed. When Mom wrapped a piece of seaweed around some rice, as she did when you were little, and held it out, you took it and ate it. After dinner, to digest the food, you and Mom walked around the outside of the house. It was no longer the same house you grew up in, but the front, side, and back yards were still connected, like before. In the back yard, on the ledge, there were still so many tall clay jars. When you were young, they were filled with soy sauce, red-pepper paste, salt, and bean paste, but now they were empty. As the two of you walked, Mom sometimes leading and sometimes falling behind, she suddenly asked you why you’d come home.
“I went to Pohang.…”
“Pohang is far from here.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s farther to come here from Pohang than from Seoul.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“What made you come here from Pohang, when it seems like you don’t ever have time to visit?”
Instead of answering, you grabbed Mom’s hand, desperately, as if you were grasping for a lifeline in the darkness, because you didn’t know how to explain your emotions. You told Mom that in the early morning you had gone to lecture at a Braille library in Pohang.
“A Braille library?” Mom asked.
“Braille is what the blind read with their fingers.”
Mom nodded. As you circled the house, you told Mom about your trip to Pohang. For a few years, the Braille library had been asking you to visit, but each time you couldn’t because of a previous engagement. In early spring, you’d received another call. You had just published your latest work. The librarian told you that they wanted to publish your newest book in Braille. Braille! You didn’t know much about it, except that it was the language of the blind, as you told Mom. You listened to the librarian impassively, as if you were hearing about a book you hadn’t yet read. The librarian said they wanted your permission. If the librarian hadn’t said “permission,” you might not have agreed to go to the Braille library. That word “permission” moved you: blind people wanted to read your book, they were asking for your permission to recreate your book in a language only they could communicate through.… You answered, “Sure,” suddenly feeling powerless. The librarian said that the book would be completed by November, and that Braille Day was also in November. He said they would appreciate it if you could come that day and participate in the dedication ceremony for the book. You wondered how things had gotten to that point, but you couldn’t go back on your “sure.” It probably helped that it was early spring, and November seemed far away. But time passed. Spring passed, summer came and went, fall came, and soon enough it was November. And then that day had arrived.
Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual—if one thinks about it, it’s really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn’t think things through. Your trip to the Braille library and the events that occurred there were all things you could have predicted if you’d really thought about the Braille library. But you were busy in the spring, summer, and fall. Even on the day you headed to the Braille library, you weren’t thinking about the people you were going to meet there; you were worried that you would be late for the ten o’clock meeting time. You barely made it onto the 8 a.m. flight, then arrived in Pohang, took a cab to the Braille library, and went to the waiting room. The director sat down facing you, with the help of a volunteer. He greeted you politely—“Thank you for coming all this way”—and held his hand out. Trying to mask your nervousness, you shook it, saying brightly, “Hello.” His hand was soft. The director talked about your book until right before the event. You smiled and nodded at this blind man who had read your work, even though he couldn’t see you smile or nod. That day was Braille Day, their holiday. When you entered the auditorium, four hundred people awaited you, some still trickling in with the help of volunteers. There were men and women of all ages, but no children. The ceremony began, and a few people came to the front, one by one, and made little speeches. Some people received certificates of appreciation. They spoke about your book, and you went to the front to receive the Braille version. Your one book became four volumes in Braille. The books given to you by the director were twice as big as yours, but they were light. You heard applause as you returned to your seat with the books in your hands. The ceremony continued. As plaques were given to congratulate readers, you opened one of the volumes. At once you felt faint. An infinite number of dots on white paper. It was as if you had fallen into a black hole—as if you were walking on stairs you knew so well that climbing them didn’t even register in your mind and, while thinking about something else, you missed a step and tumbled down. Braille proliferated the white paper, each letter a hole made by a needle, words you couldn’t decipher at all.
You told Mom that you’d flipped past the first page and the second page and the third page, and then closed the book. Because your mom was listening intently to your story, you continued.
At the end of the ceremony, you stood in front of everyone and talked about your work. When you laid the books on the dais and looked out at the audience, your back stiffened. You had no idea what to focus on, standing in front of four hundred people who couldn’t see.
“So what did you do?” your mom asked.
You told her that the fifty minutes given to you seemed never-ending. You were the type of person who looked into someone’s eyes when you talked. When you talked you sometimes told the entire story, or maybe only half, depending on the feeling you got from the person’s eyes. Some eyes coaxed out stories you’d never told anyone. You wondered, Does Mom know that I’m like that? In front of four hundred blind people, you didn’t know whom to look at or how to start talking. Some eyes were closed, some half open, and some hidden behind dark glasses; some eyes seemed to stare straight through you and your nervousness. Even though all eyes were aimed at you, you became silent in front of eyes that couldn’t see you. You wondered what would be the point of talking about your book in front of these unseeing eyes. But it wasn’t appropriate to talk about something else, such as anecdotes from your life. If anything, they should be telling you their life stories. Because you felt stuck, the first thing you said into the mike was “What should I talk about?” They all burst out laughing. Did they laugh because they thought you meant you could tell any story? Or to make you feel more comfortable? A man in his mid-forties replied, “Didn’t you come to talk about your work?” The man’s eyes were pointed at you but were closed. Focusing on them, you started to talk about the inspiration behind the book, the things you experienced emotionally during its writing, and the hopes you had for the book after you were done. You were surprised. Of all the people you’d met, they listened to your words the most intently. They demonstrated with their bodies that they were listening carefully. One person was nodding, and another pushed one foot forward, and someone else was leaning into the person in front of him. Even though you couldn’t understand a word of their writing system, they had read your book and asked questions and shared their thoughts. You told Mom that they revealed such positive feelings about that book, more than anyone else you had encountered. Mom, who was listening quietly, said, “Still, even they’ve read your book.” A short silence flowed between you and Mom. Mom asked you to go on. You continued.
When you stopped talking, one person raised his hand and asked if he could ask a question. You told him to go ahead. “Even though he’s blind, he said traveling was his hobby, Mom.” You were stunned. Where would a blind person travel? He said he’d read something you had written a long time ago that was based in Peru. The character in the novel went to Machu Picchu, and there was a scene where a train went backward. He said after he read that he wanted to ride that train in Peru. He asked if you had personally ridden the train. It was a work you had written over ten years ago. You, who had such a bad memory that you often opened the refrigerator door and forgot why you had opened it, and would stand there for a while with the chill of the fridge washing over you until you gave up and shut the door, started to talk about Peru, where you had traveled before you wrote that book. Lima; Cuzco, dubbed the Belly Button of the Universe; San Pedro Station, where you took the train to Machu Picchu at dawn. About the train that started forward and jerked backward many times before starting off to Machu Picchu. You told Mom, “The names of the places and mountains that I’d forgotten about poured out.” Feeling friendship from eyes that had never seen, eyes that seemed to understand and accept any flaw of yours, you said something you had never said about that book. Mom asked, “What was it?”
“I said if I were to write it again I don’t think I would write it like that.”
“Is that such a big deal to say?” she asked.
“Yes, because I was rejecting what exists, Mom!”
Mom gazed at you in the darkness and said, “Why do you hide those words? You have to live free, saying whatever you feel,” and pulled her hand from your grasp and rubbed your back. When you were a child, she used to wash your face the same way, with her big soothing hands. “You tell such good stories,” she said.
“Me?”
Mom nodded. “Yeah, I liked it.”
She liked my story? You were moved. You knew that what you’d said wasn’t all that good; it was just that you were talking to her differently after your experience at the Braille library. After you’d left home for the city, you’d always talked to her as if you were angry at her. You talked back to her, saying, “What do you know, Mom?” “Why would you do that, as a mother?” you’d rebuke. “Why do you want to know?” you retorted coldly. After you figured out that Mom no longer had the power to scold you, if she asked, “Why are you going there?” you replied curtly, “Because I have to.” Even when you had to take a plane because your book was being published in another country, or you had to go abroad for a seminar, when she asked, “Why are you going there?” you stiffly replied, “Because I have business to take care of.” Mom told you to stop taking airplanes. “If there’s an accident, two hundred people die at once.” “It’s because I have work to do,” you’d say. If Mom asked, “Why do you have so much work?” you replied, sullenly, “Yes, all right, Mom.” It was difficult to talk to her about your life, which had nothing to do with hers. But when you talked about feeling lost seeing the Braille version of your book, and the mounting panic you felt standing in front of four hundred blind people, she listened as intently as if her headache had gone away. When was the last time you’d told Mom about something that had happened to you? At a certain point, the conversations between you and Mom became simplified. Even that was not done face to face, but by telephone. Your words had to do with whether she ate, whether she was healthy, how Father was, that she should be careful not to catch cold, that you were sending money. Mom talked about how she made kimchi and sent some, that she had strange dreams, that she sent rice, or fermented bean paste, that she’d brewed motherwort to send you, and that you shouldn’t turn off your phone because the messenger would call before delivering all these packages.
Carrying a paper bag that held your Braille books, you said goodbye to the people at the Braille library. You still had two hours to kill before your return flight. You remembered standing at the dais and looking out the window, averting your gaze from those blind eyes, and seeing the harbor dotted with boats. You thought, Well, since there’s a harbor, there’s got to be a fish market. You took a cab and asked to be taken there. You like to visit the market whenever you have time to spare in a place you’ve never been. Even on a weekday, the fish market was bustling. Outside the market you saw two people cutting apart a fish that was as big as a sedan. You asked if it was tuna, since it was so large, but the vendor said it was an ocean sunfish. You were reminded of a character in a book whose title you couldn’t remember. She was from a seaside town, and she would go to the huge aquarium in the city every time she had a problem, to talk to the ocean sunfish swimming inside. She would complain that her mother took all her life savings and went off with a younger man to a different city, but then, at the end, would say, But I miss my mom; you’re the only one I can tell this to, sunfish! You wondered if that was the same fish. Thinking it was a unique name for a fish, you asked, “Really, it’s called an ocean sunfish?” And the vendor said, “We also call it Mola mola!” As soon as you heard the words “Mola mola,” the tension you had been feeling inside the library dissipated. Why did you think of Mom as you wandered among the heaps of seafood, which cost a third of what they did in Seoul: live octopus with heads bigger than a human’s, fresh abalone, scabbard fish, mackerel, and crab? Was it the ocean sunfish that made you think of Mom for the first time at a fish market? That made you recall preparing skate at home, by the well, next to Mom? You could see Mom’s frozen hands peeling the brownish mucus stuc
k to the meat. You stopped at a store that had a boiled octopus as big as a child’s torso hanging from the ceiling and bought a live octopus for fifteen thousand won. You bought some abalone—though they were farm-raised, they had been fed different kinds of seaweed. When you said you were going to Seoul, the vendor offered to put your purchase in an ice chest for an extra two thousand won. As you walked out of the fish market, you realized you still had a lot of time left before your flight. Holding the Braille volumes in one hand and the ice chest in the other, you hopped into another cab and told the driver that you wanted to go to the beach. It took only three minutes to get there. The November beach was empty except for two couples. The beach was big. As you walked toward the water, you almost fell twice. You sat down on the fine sand and stared at the sea. After a while, you turned around to look at the stores and apartment buildings facing the ocean across the road. People who lived here could jump into the ocean on a hot night, then go home and take a shower. You absent-mindedly took out a Braille volume from the paper bag and opened it. The white dots on the pages sparkled in the sunlight.
Tracing your finger along the indecipherable Braille in the sun, you wondered who had taught you to read. It was your second-eldest brother. The two of you lying on your stomachs on the porch of the old house. Mom sitting next to you. Your brother, a gentle soul, caused the least trouble among your siblings. Unable to disobey Mom’s orders to teach you how to read, his expression bored, he directed you to write numbers and vowels and consonants over and over. You tried to write with your dominant left hand. Every time, your brother rapped the back of your hand with a bamboo ruler. He was doing Mom’s bidding. Even though it was more natural for you to favor your left hand and foot, Mom told you that there would be many things to cry about in life if you used your left hand. When you used your left hand to scoop rice in the kitchen, Mom wrenched the scoop out of your hand and put it in your right hand. If you tried to use your left hand anyway, she would grab the scoop and slap your left hand, saying, “Why won’t you listen to me?” Your left hand became swollen. Even so, when your brother wasn’t watching, you quickly switched the pencil to your left hand and drew two circles, one on top of the other, for the “8.” Then you switched the pencil back to your right. Your brother, who knew that you had stuck together two circles as soon as he saw your “8,” told you to put your palms out and slapped them with the ruler. As you were learning how to read, Mom looked over your crouched form on the porch, while she mended socks or peeled garlic. When you learned to write your name and Mom’s name and read books hesitantly before enrolling in school, your mom’s face bloomed like a mint flower. That face overlapped with the Braille you couldn’t read.
Please Look After Mom Page 3
