Please Look After Mom

by Kyung-Sook Shin

  Sister. Not until yesterday, with the baby on my back, did I take a cab to So-orung and buy powdered chicken droppings, dig a hole on the spot Mom had pointed out, and move the persimmon tree there. I hadn’t felt at all bad when I didn’t listen to her and failed to move that tiny persimmon tree away from the wall, but now I was surprised. When I first brought the tree here, the roots were so scrawny that I kept looking at it, doubting that it could even grow in the ground, but when I dug it up to move it, its roots had already spread far underground, tangled. I was impressed with its grit for life, its determination to survive somehow in the barren earth. Did she mean to give me the tree so that I could watch its branches multiply and its trunk thicken? Was it to tell me that if I wanted to see fruit I had to take good care of it? Or maybe she just didn’t have money to buy a big tree. For the first time, I felt attached to that persimmon tree. My doubts that it could ever have fruit disappeared.

  Do you remember asking me a while ago to tell you something that only I knew about Mom? I told you I didn’t know Mom. All I knew was that Mom was missing. It’s the same now. I especially don’t know where her strength came from. Think about it. Mom did things that one person couldn’t do by herself. I think that’s why she became emptier and emptier. Finally, she became someone who couldn’t find any of her kids’ houses. I don’t recognize myself, feeding my kids and brushing their hair and sending them to school, unable to go look for Mom even though she’s missing. You said I was different, unlike other young moms these days, that there was a small part of me that’s a little bit like her, but, sister, no matter what, I don’t think I can be like Mom. Since she went missing, I often think: Was I a good daughter? Could I do the kind of things for my kids she did for me?

  I know one thing. I can’t do it like she did. Even if I wanted to. When I’m feeding my kids, I often feel annoyed, burdened, as if they’re holding on to my ankles. I love my kids, and I am moved—wondering, did I really give birth to them? But I can’t give them my entire life like Mom did. Depending on the situation, I act as if I would give them my eyes if they need them, but I’m not Mom. I keep wishing the baby would hurry and grow up. I feel that my life has stalled because of the kids. Once the baby’s a little older, I’m going to send him to day care, or find someone to sit with him, and go to work. That’s what I’m going to do. Because I have my life, too. When I realized this about myself, I wondered how Mom did it the way she did, and discovered that I didn’t really know her. Even if we say her situation made her think only about us, how could we have thought of Mom as Mom her entire life? Even though I’m a mother, I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven’t forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn’t have the opportunity to pursue her dreams and, all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn’t do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom’s dreams?

  Sister.

  I wanted to shove my face into the hole I dug for the persimmon tree. If I can’t live like Mom, how could she have wanted to live like that? Why did this thought never occur to me when she was with us? Even though I’m her daughter, I had no idea, so how alone must she have felt with other people? How unfair is it that all she did was sacrifice everything for us, and she wasn’t understood by anyone?

  Sister. Do you think we’ll be able to be with her again, even if it’s just for one day? Do you think I’ll be given the time to understand Mom and hear her stories and console her for her old dreams that are buried somewhere in the pages of time? If I’m given even a few hours, I’m going to tell her that I love all the things she did, that I love Mom, who was able to do all of that, that I love Mom’s life, which nobody remembers. That I respect her.

  Sister, please don’t give up on Mom, please find Mom.

  Your sister must not have been able to write the date or a goodbye. The letter has round blotches on it, as if she’d been crying as she wrote it. Your eyes linger over the yellowed spots; then you fold the letter and put it back in your purse. As your sister was writing the letter, her youngest, who had probably been eating something off the floor under the table, may have come to her and clumsily started to sing the children’s song that starts, “Mommy Bear …,” hanging on to her. Your sister may have looked at her baby, although with a dark expression, and sung for him, “… is slim!” The baby, who would not have understood his mom’s emotions, may have grinned broadly, and said “Daddy Bear …,” waiting for your sister to finish the verse. Your sister may have finished it, “is fat!” Your sister may not have been able to write the end to her letter. The baby, trying to climb up your sister’s leg, may have fallen down, bumping his head on the floor. And the baby would have burst into desperate-sounding sobs. Your sister, seeing the bluish bruise spreading on the baby’s soft skin, may have then spilled the tears she had been holding back.

  You fold the letter and put it in your purse, and the guide’s passionate voice echoes in your ears. “The highlight of this museum is the Creation of Adam, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which we will see at the end. Michelangelo hung from a beam on the ceiling for four years as he worked on the fresco, and later in life, his eyesight became so weak that he couldn’t read or see pictures unless he went outside. Frescoes are made with lime plaster, so they had to finish before the plaster set. If they couldn’t do the work, which would normally take about a month, in one day, the plaster set and they had to do it again. Because he had to hang from the ceiling like that for four years, it’s understandable that he had problems with his neck and back for the rest of his life.”

  The last thing you did at the airport before you boarded the plane was to call your father. After Mom disappeared, your father went back and forth between his house and Seoul, but he went home for good in the spring. You called him every day, in the morning or sometimes at night. Father picked up the phone after one ring, as if he was waiting by it. He would say your name before you told him it was you. This was something Mom always did. She would be pulling weeds in the flower garden, and when the phone rang, she would say to Father, “Answer the phone, it’s Chi-hon!” When you asked how she could tell who was calling, Mom shrugged and would say, “I just … I just know.” Living in the empty house by himself, without Mom, Father could now tell it was you, from the first ring. You told Father that you might not be able to call for a while, since you would have to think about when he would be awake to call from Rome. Father suddenly said, as if he wasn’t listening to you carefully, that he should have let Mom get surgery for sinus empyema.

  “Mom had pain in her nose, too?” you asked, your voice dull, and Father said that Mom couldn’t sleep when the seasons changed because she would be coughing. He said, “It’s my fault. It was because of me that your mom didn’t have time to look after herself.” On any other day, you would have said, “Father, it’s nobody’s fault,” but on that day, the words “Yes, it’s your fault” jumped out of your mouth. Father drew in his breath sharply on the other end of the phone. He didn’t know you were calling from the airport.

  “Chi-hon,” Father said after a long pause.

  “Yes.”

  “Your mom isn’t even in my dreams anymore.”

  You didn’t say anything.

  Father was quiet for a moment, then started speaking of the old days. He said that one day they cooked a scabbard fish that Hyong-chol had sent down. Mom dug up a radish topped with green leaves from the hillside garden, brushed off the dirt, peeled it with a knife, cut it into big chunks, spread it on the bottom of a pot, and steamed the scabbard fish, which turned red from all the seasonings she added. Mom plucked a plump piece of fish and set it on Father’s bowl of rice. Father wept as he recalled that one spring day, when they shared for lu
nch the scabbard fish that Mom had cooked in the morning and, stomachs full, napped together, stretched out. He said that back then he didn’t know that this was happiness. “I feel bad for your mom. I complained I was sick all the time.” It was true. Father was either away from home or, when he was home, sick. He seemed to be remorseful about that now.

  “When I started getting sick, the same thing must have been happening to your mom.”

  Was Mom unable to say that she was in pain, pushed aside by Father’s illnesses? Because she took care of everyone in the family, Mom was someone who couldn’t be sick. When he turned fifty, Father started taking blood-pressure medication, and his joints ached, and he developed cataracts. Right before Mom went missing, Father had a series of surgical procedures done on his knee, over a year, and because it was difficult for him to urinate, he had an operation on his prostate. He collapsed from a stroke and went to the hospital three times in one year, and each time he was released fifteen days or a month later, and the cycle was repeated. Every time this happened, Mom slept at the hospital. The family hired an aide for Father, but at night Mom had to sleep there. On the first night the aide slept over at the hospital, Father went into the bathroom, locked the door, and refused to come out. Mom, who was staying with Hyong-chol, got a phone call from the aide, who didn’t know what to do about Father’s sudden rebellion. Mom went to the hospital at once, even though it was in the middle of the night, and soothed Father, who was still locked inside the bathroom.

  “It’s me. Open the door, it’s me.”

  Father, who had refused to open the door no matter what anyone said, opened the door when he heard Mom’s voice. He was crouching next to the toilet. Mom helped him out to his bed; Father gazed at her for a while and finally fell asleep. He said he didn’t remember any of this. The next day, you asked him why he had done that, and he asked you, “You mean I did that?” And, worried you would continue to question him, he quickly closed his eyes.

  “Mom has to rest, too, Father.”

  Father had turned away. You knew that he was pretending to sleep but listening to you and Mom. Mom said she thought he had done it because he was afraid. He woke up, and he wasn’t at home but at the hospital, where there were only strangers and no family, and he must have hidden himself, wondering where he was, frightened.

  “What’s so scary about this?” your father must have heard you muttering.

  “Haven’t you ever been scared?” Mom glanced at Father and continued in a low voice: “Your father says that I do that sometimes, too. He says when he wakes up in the middle of the night and I’m not there and he looks for me, I’m hiding in the shed, or behind the well, waving my hands in front of me, and saying, ‘Don’t do that to me.’ He says he finds me shivering.”

  “You, Mom?”

  “I don’t remember doing that. Your father says he had to take me in and lay me down and give me some water, and finally I’d fall asleep. If I’m like that, I’m sure your Father’s afraid, too.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  Mom mumbled faintly, “I think it was scary just to live day by day. The scariest thing was when there was nothing left in the rice jar. When I thought I had to let you children go hungry … my lips were dry with dread. There were days like that.”

  Father never told you or anyone else in the family that Mom acted that way sometimes. When you called him after Mom went missing, he brought up random old stories to delay the end of your conversation, but he never told you that Mom had gone to hide somewhere in the middle of the night, while she was sleeping.

  You look at your watch. It’s ten in the morning. Is Yu-bin up? Has he had breakfast?

  · · ·

  Today you woke up at six in the morning in an old hotel facing Termini Station. After Mom went missing, a heavy despair weighed down your body and your heart, as if you were sinking in water. You made to rise from the bed, and Yu-bin, who was sleeping with his back to you, turned around and tried to embrace you. You took his arm and rested it gently on the bed. Rejected, he put his arm on his forehead and said, “You should sleep a little more.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  He moved his arm and turned over. You gazed at his stubborn back, then reached out and stroked it—your boyfriend’s back, which you haven’t been able to embrace warmly since Mom went missing.

  Your family, who were all exhausted from looking for Mom, would often sink into silence when you were together. And then you would all act out. One of you would kick the door open to leave, or pour soju into a large beer mug and gulp it down. Pushing away the memories of Mom that were sprouting up all around you, you all thought one thing: If only Mom were here. If only Mom would say one more time from the other end of the phone, “It’s me!” Mom always said, “It’s me!” After she went missing, your family couldn’t maintain any sort of conversation for more than ten minutes. The question Where is Mom now? trickled in between whatever thoughts you had, making you anxious.

  “I think I want to be by myself today,” you ventured.

  “What are you going to do by yourself?” he asked, still facing the other way.

  “I want to go to St. Peter’s Basilica. Yesterday, while I was waiting for you in the lobby, I signed up for the Vatican tour. I have to get ready and go. They said we were leaving at seven-twenty from the lobby. They said that the line gets so long that if we don’t get there by nine, it will take more than two hours to get inside.”

  “You can go with me tomorrow.”

  “We’re in Rome. There are so many other places I can go with you.”

  You washed your face quietly, so as to not disturb him. You wanted to wash your hair, but you thought the sound of the water would be too loud, so you just tied your hair back, looking at your reflection in the mirror. When you emerged from the bathroom after getting dressed, you said, as if you just remembered, “Thanks for bringing me here.”

  He pulled the sheet over his face. You knew that he was being as patient as he could possibly be. He introduced you as his wife to people you met here. You would probably be his wife by now, if Mom had been found. After his morning seminar, you two were supposed to have lunch with a few other couples. If he went to lunch by himself, the others would ask him where his wife was. You glanced at your boyfriend, the sheet still pulled over his head, and left the room.

  After your mom went missing, you developed impulsive behaviors. You drank impulsively, and you would impulsively take a train down to your parents’ home in the country. You stared at the ceiling of your studio, unable to sleep, then got up and ran around the streets of Seoul, pasting flyers, whether it was in the middle of the night or at dawn. You once burst into the police station and screamed at them to find your mom. Hyong-chol came to the police station after receiving a call, and just stared at you. “Find Mom!” you screamed at your brother, who at a certain point had started to accept Mom’s absence, sometimes even going golfing.

  Your scream was both a protest against people who knew Mom and hatred for yourself, who hadn’t been able to find her. Your brother calmly listened to your shrieking attacks: “How can you be like this? Why aren’t you finding Mom? Why? Why!”

  All your brother could do was to walk the city with you at night. You would search underground concourses, wearing the mink coat that you took from Mom’s closet and brought with you last winter, or with the coat slung over your arm—so that you could drape it on Mom, who was last seen wearing summer clothes, when you found her. Your shadow holding the mink coat would be cast on the marble buildings as you walked among the sleeping homeless who were using newspaper or ramen crates as blankets. You kept your phone on all the time, but now nobody called to say they had seen someone who looked like Mom.

  One day, you went to Seoul Station, to the spot where Mom was left behind, and bumped into your eldest brother, who was standing there aimlessly. You sat together, watching the subway trains come and go, until service ended for the night. He said that at first when he sat there like that he
thought Mom would appear and tap him on the shoulder and say, “Hyong-chol!” But now he didn’t think that was going to happen. He mentioned that he didn’t think anymore, that the inside of his head was blank. That when he doesn’t want to go home right away after work, he finds himself coming to the station.

  One holiday, you went to his house. You saw your brother get out of the car with his golf clubs and screamed, “You asshole!” and made a scene. If even your brother accepts Mom’s disappearance, who in the world is going to find her? You grabbed his clubs and threw them on the ground. Everyone was slowly becoming the son, daughter, and husband whose mom and wife was missing. Even without Mom, daily life continued.

  Another time, you went back in the early morning to the spot where Mom had gone missing, and you again bumped into your brother. From behind, you grabbed him in a hug as he stood in the dawn light. He said that maybe it was only her children who thought of Mom’s life as being filled with pain and sacrifice, because of our guilt. We might actually be diminishing her life as something useless. To his credit, he remembered something Mom always said, even when the smallest positive thing happened: “I’m thankful! It’s something we should be grateful for!” Mom expressed gratitude for the small moments of happiness that everyone experienced. Your brother said that Mom’s gratitude came from the heart, that she was thankful about everything, that someone who was so grateful couldn’t have led an unhappy life. When you said goodbye, your brother said he was afraid that Mom wouldn’t recognize him even if she came back. You told him that, for Mom, he was the most precious person in the world, that Mom would always recognize him, no matter where he was or how he changed. When he was drafted into the army and entered training camp, there was a day when parents were invited to visit. Mom made rice cakes and carried them on her head to see Hyong-chol, with you in tow. Even though hundreds of soldiers were wearing the same clothes and demonstrating the same taekwondo moves, she was able to pick out your brother. To you, they all looked the same, but Mom smiled a great big smile and pointed: “There’s your brother!”