“It’s the first time Mom ever asked me to buy something for her! Stop it!”
When my daughter shot back at her sister-in-law as if she was angry, I realized it. The reason she kept looking at the price tag, again and again. And the reason she kept looking at me. At that time, she had just graduated from college and was working at a hospital pharmacy. When I got back from Seoul, I took the mink coat and went to a similar store in town and asked the girl working in the mink-coat department how much it cost. I froze. Who knew one piece of clothing could cost so much! I called my daughter to tell her that we should return the coat, and she told me, “Mom, you have every right to wear that coat. You should wear it.”
In this region, there are very few cold days in winter, so I could wear a mink coat only occasionally. Once, I didn’t wear it for three years. When I had depressed thoughts, I opened the wardrobe and buried my face in the mink coat. And I thought, When I die, I will leave it to my younger daughter.
Although it’s frozen now, in the spring the flower garden near the wall will come alive again. The blossoms on the neighbor’s pear tree will bloom, and their scent will float over. The rose vines with pale-pink buds will flex their spikes, cheering. The weeds under the wall will grow thick and tall with the first spring rain. Once, I bought thirty ducklings from under the bridge in town and let them out in the yard, and they rushed over to the flower garden and stepped on all the flowers. When they ran around in packs with the chicks, it was hard to tell which were ducklings and which were chicks. Anyway, in the spring, the yard was noisy because of them. It was in this yard that my daughter, who was digging under the rosebush, saying that it would yield a lot of flowers if it was given manure, saw a wriggling worm in the dirt, threw the short hoe aside, and ran inside; the hoe hit a chick and killed it. I remember the wave of the smell of dirt that would reach my nose when, in the summer, a sudden rain fell, and the dog and chickens and ducks that had been wandering around the yard crawled under the porch and into the chicken cages and under the wall. I remember the droplets of dirt formed by the sudden rain. On windy late-fall nights, the leaves of the persimmon tree in the side yard would rustle off and fly around. All night, we would hear them scuttling across the yard. During snowy winter nights, the wind would blow the snow piled in the yard onto the porch.
Someone is opening the gate. Ah, Aunt!
You were an aunt to my children and a sister to me, but I was never able to call you “sister”: you seemed more like my mother-in-law. I see you have come to check on the house, because it’s snowing and windy. I thought nobody was here to look after this house, forgetting that you’re here. But why are you limping? You’re always so spry. I guess you’re getting old, too. Be careful—it’s snowy.
“Anyone home?”
Your voice is still powerful, like it’s always been.
“Nobody’s here, right?”
You are calling out even though you know nobody is here. You sit on the edge of the porch, not waiting for an answer. Why did you come without wearing enough layers? You’ll catch a cold. You’re looking at the snow in the yard as if you’re somewhere else. What are you thinking?
“It feels like someone’s here.…”
Halfway to being a ghost, Aunt.
“I don’t know where you’re wandering around when it’s this cold.”
Are you talking about me?
“The summer went by, and fall went by, and it’s winter.… I didn’t know you were such a heartless person. What is this house going to do without you? It’s just an empty shell. You left wearing summer clothes, and you haven’t come back even though it’s winter—are you already someone of the other world?”
Not yet. I’m wandering around like this.
“The saddest person in the world is the one who dies outside their home.… Please be alert and come back home.”
Are you crying?
Your eyes, long slants, look up at the gray sky and become wet. Your eyes aren’t scary at all, now that you’re acting like this. I was always so frightened by your stern eyes that I honestly didn’t look at your face, so as not to meet your eyes. But I think I liked you better when you were no-nonsense. This doesn’t seem like you, sitting with your shoulders drooping. I was never able to hear anything nice from you when I was alive, so why do I have to look at your dejected figure now? I don’t like seeing you weak. I wasn’t only afraid of you. If something difficult happened and I didn’t know what to do, I thought, What would Aunt do? And I would choose what I thought you would do. So you were my role model, too. You know I have a temper. All the relationships in the world are two-way, not determined by one side. And now you’re going to have to look after Hyong-chol’s father, who’s all alone. I don’t feel good about it, either. But since you are near him, I feel a little better. When I was alive, I knew full well that you were depending on Hyong-chol’s father, since you were all alone, and I didn’t feel hurt or left out or disappointed. I just thought of you as a difficult elder of the family. So much so that you felt like our mother and not our sister. But, Aunt … I don’t want to go to the grave set aside for me a few years ago at the ancestral grave site. I don’t want to go there. When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death. It was sunny, and I liked the pine tree that stood bent but tall, but remaining a member of this family even in death would be too much and too hard. To try to change my mind, I would sing and pull weeds, sitting there until the sun set, but nothing made me feel comfortable there. I lived with this family for over fifty years; please let me go now. Back then, when we were assigning grave sites and you said my plot should go on a site down the slope from yours, I glared and said, “Oh, so even when I’m dead I can do your errands.” I remember saying that. Don’t be upset about it, Aunt. I thought about it a long time, but I didn’t say that with ill will. I just want to go home. I’ll go rest there.
Oh, I see the shed door is open.
The wind is pounding at the shed door as if it would knock it down. There’s a thin layer of ice on the wooden platform that I liked to sit on. If someone sat there without seeing the ice, he would slip right off. Chi-hon used to read in this shed. Getting bitten by fleas. I knew that she crept in here with a book, in between the pigsty and the ash shed. I didn’t look for her. When Hyong-chol asked where she was, I said I didn’t know. Because I liked seeing her read. Because I didn’t want to disturb her. Straw was piled on the board covering the pigsty. Chickens would have taken over one side and would be laying and sitting on eggs. Nobody would find the child squeezed in there, on top of the straw pile, putting spit on her flea bites to soothe them, reading. How much fun must it have been for her to hide there, reading, hearing her brother opening doors, pushing into the kitchen, looking for her? And the chickens, how particular were they? Huddled over eggs on the straw pile on top of the pigsty, they would get annoyed at the sound of my daughter turning pages. These chickens, who didn’t lay eggs if we didn’t make their nests cozy and tempting with nest eggs, became sensitive to Chi-hon’s rustling, and one time they cackled so much that her brother found her. What did she read, hidden quietly in the shed, with a pig grunting next to her and the chickens clucking above her and the hoe and rake and shovel and all kinds of farm equipment and straw around her?
In the spring, the dog, growling, would lie with her new litter under the porch, where the family’s winter shoes were scattered. You could hear the water dripping from the eaves. That gentle dog, why did she get so aggressive when she had pups? Unless you were a member of the family, you couldn’t get near her. When she had a litter, Hyong-chol would repaint the sign on the blue gate that always hung there, the one that said “Beware of Dog.” Once, I took a puppy from the porch while the dog was sleeping after her dinner, put it in a basket, covered it with a cloth, and, with my hand, covered where I thought the eyes were, and brought it to Aunt’s.
“Why ar
e you covering its eyes when it’s so dark out, Mom?” asked my younger daughter, following me. She looked confused, even after I explained that if I didn’t do it the pup would find its way home.
“Even though it’s so dark?”
“Yes, even though it’s this dark!”
When the dog discovered that her puppy was gone, she refused to eat, and lay around, sick. She had to eat to make enough milk to feed the other puppies, so they could grow. It looked like she would die if I left her alone, so I brought the pup back and pushed it next to her, and the dog started eating again. That dog lived under that porch.
Oh, I don’t know where to stop these memories, the memories that are sprouting all over the place like spring greens. Everything I forgot about is rushing back. From the rice bowls on the kitchen shelf to the big and little clay jars on the condiment ledge, from the narrow wooden stairs to the attic to the pumpkin vines spreading thick under the dirt wall, climbing up.
· · ·
You shouldn’t leave the house to freeze like this.
If it’s too much, ask our younger daughter-in-law for help. She always carefully looked after their house, even though it wasn’t their own. She has an eye for this kind of thing, and she’s exact and warm. Even though she works, her house is always sparkling clean, and she doesn’t even have help. If it’s hard to maintain the house, try talking to her. I’m telling you, if she touches an old thing it becomes new. Don’t you remember how they rented, in the redevelopment area, a brick house that the owner didn’t maintain, and she mixed cement with her own hands and fixed it? A house takes on the characteristics of its occupant, and, depending on who lives in it, it can become a very good house or a very strange house. When spring comes, please plant some flowers in the yard, and rub down the floors, and fix the roof that collapsed from the snow.
A few years ago, when someone asked you while you were drunk where you lived, you said Yokchon-dong. Even though it’s been twenty years since Hyong-chol left Yokchon-dong. Even though Yokchon-dong has become faint even in my memory. You never really showed happiness or sadness. When Hyong-chol bought his first house, in Yokchon-dong, in Seoul, you didn’t say much, but in your heart I suppose you were very proud. And that’s why, when you were drunk, you forgot about this house and you named that house, where we would go three or four times a year, like guests, and stay one or sometimes two nights. I wish you would think about this house in that way. Around this house, small flowers bloomed every year and lived prettily until they faded, in the corner of the yard or near the back yard, without my having to plant them. In the yard and under the porch and in the back yard, something was always gathering or coming or going or dying. Birds landed on the clothesline as if they were talking laundry, and they played and chattered and twittered. I do think that a house starts resembling the people who live there. Otherwise, would the ducks living in that house have roamed around the yard and laid eggs anywhere? Otherwise, would I remember so clearly how, on a sunny day, I would sweep thinly sliced dried radish or boiled taro stems into a wicker tray and perch it on top of the dirt wall? Would the image of my daughter’s newly washed, clean white sneakers drying under the sunlight hover like this? Chi-hon liked to look at the sky reflected in the well over there. I can almost see her interrupting herself as she drew water from the well, looking down with her chin in her hands.
Be well.… I’m leaving this house now.
Last summer, when I was left behind at Seoul Station, I could only remember things from when I was three years old. Having forgotten everything, I could do nothing but walk—I didn’t even know who I was. I walked and walked. Everything was foggy. The yard I used to play in when I was three came clearly to me. That was when my father, who dug for gold and coal, came home. I walked as far as I could go. In between apartment buildings, along grassy hills and soccer fields, I walked and walked. Where did I want to go, walking like that? Could it be the yard I played in as a three-year-old? When Father came home, he went to work every morning at the construction site for a new train station that was ten ri away. What was the accident he had? What kind of accident was it that cost him his life? They say that when neighbors came to tell Mom about Father’s accident, I was running around the yard. I played, watching Mom staggering, her face turning ashen, supported by neighbors, going to the accident site. Someone passing by said, “Here you are laughing, not even knowing that your father died, you silly child,” and smacked my bottom. With only that memory, I walked and walked until I collapsed from exhaustion.
Over there.
Mom is sitting on the porch of the dim house I was born in.
Mom raises her head and looks at me. My grandmother had a dream when I was being born. A cow with a shiny brown coat was stretching, having just woken, raising its knees. My grandmother said I would be very energetic, since I was born just as the cow was using its energy to get up, and said that I should be well taken care of, because I would become the source of a lot of joy. Mom looks at my foot, the strap of the blue plastic sandal digging into it. The bone is visible through the wound in my foot. Mom’s face crumples in sorrow. That face is the face I saw when I looked into the mirror of the wardrobe after I gave birth to a dead baby. “My baby,” Mom says, and opens her arms. Mom puts her hands under my armpits as if she’s holding a child who has just died. She takes the blue plastic sandals off my feet and pulls my feet into her lap. Mom doesn’t smile. She doesn’t cry. Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?
EPILOGUE
Rosewood Rosary
IT’S BEEN NINE MONTHS since Mom went missing.
You’re in Italy now. Sitting on the marble stairs overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, you’re looking at the obelisk from Egypt. The guide, sweat beaded on his forehead, shouts, “Come this way,” and directs people in your tour group to the bottom of the stairs, where there is shade, near the large pinecones. “We are not allowed to speak in the museums or the basilica, so I’ll tell you about the important things in the museum before we go in. I’ll distribute earphones, so please listen.”
You take the earphones, but you don’t put them in your ears. The guide continues: “If you don’t hear anything in the earphones, it means you’re too far away from me. There will be so many people that I won’t be able to look out for each and every one of you. I can guide you properly only when you’re near me, where you can hear my voice.”
You head for the bathroom with the earphones dangling around your neck. People in your group stare at you as you stride into the bathroom. You wash your hands at the sink, and when you open your purse to take out your handkerchief to wipe your hands, your gaze stops at your sister’s letter crumpled inside. It’s the letter you took out of your mailbox at your apartment three days ago, as you were leaving Seoul with Yu-bin. Holding your suitcase in one hand, standing outside your door, you read your sister’s name written on the envelope. It was the first time you’d received a letter from your sister. And it was a handwritten letter, not just an e-mail. You wondered if you should open it, but you just stuffed it into your purse. Perhaps you thought that if you read it you would not be able to get on the plane with Yu-bin.
You come out of the bathroom and sit down with the group. Instead of putting the earphones in your ears, however, you take out your sister’s letter, hold it for a moment, then rip the envelope open.
Sister.
When I went to Mom’s soon after coming back from America, she gave me a young persimmon tree that came up to my knees. It was when I went to get the things I’d left there. Mom was crumpled in the storage area next to the shed, where my cooktop stove and fridge and table were stored. She was lying there, her limbs limp. The neighborhood cats that Mom fed were sitting around her. When I shook her, she managed to open her eyes, as if she were waking up, and looked at me and smiled. She said, “You’re here, my baby daughter!” Mom told me she was fine. Now I see that she had lost consciousness, but she insisted that she was fine, that she was in the stor
age shed to feed the cats. Mom had kept everything I left there when I went to America. Even the rubber gloves I told her to use as I was leaving. She said that she almost used the portable gas range during one ancestral rite but then didn’t. “Why not?” I asked, and she said, “So I could give everything back to you the way you left it when you came home.”
When I finished loading all the things onto the truck, Mom came over with the persimmon tree from behind the house, where she kept all the condiment jars. She looked embarrassed. The roots of the tree were wrapped in dirt and plastic. She had bought it for the yard at our new place. It was so small that I wondered when it would start bearing fruit. Honestly, I didn’t want to bring it back. We were going to live in a house with a yard, but we didn’t own it, and I wondered who would take care of the tree. Mom, seeing through me, said, “You’ll find persimmons on this tree very soon; even seventy years go by quick.”
I still didn’t want to take it, but Mom said, “It’s so when I die you can pick persimmons and think about me.”
Mom started saying “When I die …” more frequently. You know, that was her weapon for a long time. Her only weapon when it came to kids who didn’t do things the way she wanted them to. I don’t know when it started, but when she didn’t approve of something, Mom would say, “Do that after I die.” I brought the little persimmon tree to Seoul on the truck, although I didn’t know if it would survive, and buried the roots in the ground, as deep as Mom had marked on the tree. Later, when Mom came to Seoul, she said I’d planted it too close to the wall and that I should move it to another spot. She asked me often if I’d moved it. I said yes, even though I hadn’t. Mom wanted me to move the tree to an empty spot in the yard where I thought I could plant a big tree if I had enough money to buy this house. I didn’t really think I would move the little tree, which only had a couple of branches and now barely came up to my waist, but I answered yes. Before she went missing, she suddenly started calling every other day, asking, “Did you move the persimmon tree?” I just said, “I’ll do it later.”
Please Look After Mom Page 18
