That house gave you a feeling.
The feeling is different from the impression you get of a house based on its scale, the raw materials used, or the owner’s upkeep. In a person, such things would be comparable to one’s temperament, manners, or fashion sense—factors that can easily and randomly change at a moment’s notice. What I’m talking about is an inherent and permanent quality that comes from a deep core, the very essence that exudes from within. Because of this feeling, people were drawn to this house and went out of their way to walk by it. Although the house stood alone, apart from the other houses in the neighborhood, it was strategically located at the crossroads to the local mineral spring as well as the shortcut to the nearest subway station.
Administratively, the house was in a neighborhood inside Y city, a satellite city near Seoul. The Y city residents called that neighborhood the native village. Not that any cottages or tiled-roof houses remained. Slab houses that were fashionable in the 1960s, now decrepit from neglect, and filthy, narrow streets made the place look older than it was.
The children from the newly built apartment buildings in Y city probably took the name of the village literally, believing those slab houses to be our cultural equivalent to the caves or huts of uncivilized tribespeople who have maintained their way of life since prehistoric times in the South Pacific islands or the African wilderness. But the truth of the matter is that the village was no more than thirty years old. Before the new neighborhood was built by landowners in collaboration with developers, the area consisted mostly of open farmland and orchards. With awe and admiration for the then novel homes cut square like tofu blocks and covered with shimmering tiles, the farmers called the new development the Western village. It took less than thirty years for the place to go from Western to native.
That house existed before the neighborhood became the Western village. It remained untouched during the development, like one last drop of flesh and blood preserved out of compunction before the farms were wiped out. Despite obvious signs of numerous remodeling jobs and expansions in the neighborhood, the house alone retained its rustic simplicity, which permeated down to its very frame. The U-shaped floor of the great room was spacious. The columns and rafters holding up the roof were made of pine, but the roof itself was made of gray slate. The contrast between the wooden framework and the slate roof created a peculiar balance with the contrast between the papered shutters with broken slats and the newly installed glass double door. Someone who has lived in the native village for a long time may remember that the roof was once made of corrugated iron. Before that, the roof must have been made of straw or Western-style tiles. But it’s impossible to find a witness to these changes in roof styles in this neighborhood, where a five-year resident, let alone thirty years, is a rarity. The term “native” is inappropriate not only for the houses but also for the residents whose turnover rate is greater than apartment dwellers. According to the city’s statistics, the average length of a stay in that village is one year and six months shorter than in the apartments. Enticed by rumors of redevelopment, which were probably cooked up by real estate brokers, buyers who moved into the homes there noticed soon enough that there were no plans in place for growth. Real estate developments do not just happen automatically without someone’s initiative, and the owners without a take-charge attitude or the industry know-how eventually resold their houses. Others, hesitant to abandon the last shred of hope, rented out their places before leaving. But leave they did, one way or another. Betrayed by the very thing that had hooked them in, it was no wonder that they no longer wanted anything to do with their houses.
If the native village was an island inside Y City, that house was an island within the native village.
The children from the native village and from the apartments attended the same schools. In the eyes of the apartment kids, the native kids were different somehow. Yesterday’s enthusiastic talk about computer games instantly turned into a back-stabbing betrayal once an apartment kid realized that his new friend was from the wrong part of town. If a child had lived in that house, he, too, might have been ostracized. But no child ever lived in that house. There may have been when the farms were still around, but those were during the prehistoric times of that house, with no one to bear witness.
2
She was well aware that parking spaces during these hours were scarce, but Young Joo still grumbled about how fed up she was and furiously turned the steering wheel toward the playground located behind the apartment building complex. The oval pavement surrounding the playground and a patch of grass was originally a no parking zone so that children could cycle and rollerblade. Banning cars there, however, was like urinating on frostbitten toes; the lot cleared up briefly before being taken over by cars again. Fortunately, Young Joo found an ideal open spot that would allow her to move her car easily the next morning. Gathering up a pile of stuff from the passenger seat, she again muttered the phrase “fed up.” She didn’t have many belongings: a jacket, a sac-like purse, and several books—items that she’d been lugging around since her peddling days. Today, she had the addition of two huge pumpkins to deal with. While driving on rural roads, she saw them piled high in beautiful pyramids on the side of the road, and today she finally bought a couple. The street vendor said that they were great in soups and gave her detailed cooking instructions, but she didn’t really listen. She was sure that her mother would make sticky pumpkin chunks.
How nice it would be if Mother got excited about making pumpkin chunks. Young Joo’s mind wandered off for a minute. Could her mother still make them? She really shouldn’t try to test her with things like pumpkins. She should understand. Day after day for more than half a century, her mother had been cleaning the dirt off collard greens to make side dishes, scraping the scales of fish to fry up in soy sauce, and adding pinches of spices to soups and stews. No, no one would expect her mother to perform these chores with much enthusiasm after all these years. After a lifetime of drudgery, her mother had naturally lost interest in the little things in life. So why did she look at her mother askance? Young Joo pushed aside her things and put her forehead on the steering wheel. She knew that her mindless anxiety was directed more at herself. What she earned after six years of door-to-door selling and getting her degree three years ago was a fulltime position at a university. Although the school wasn’t in a major city, she was in no position to be choosy. It wasn’t that her livelihood was at stake; her sense of urgency had come from age. It certainly wasn’t easy to commute to and from Daejeon, but the fact that it was even possible should be considered a blessing. She was now not just a capable but an expert driver. And she had another reason for braving the long distance commute. After her share of used cars, she now had her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel of a brand new car she’d bought two years ago. The car ran like a dream and felt as comfortable as an extension of her body. She was on the verge of turning forty. She expected the next ten years to go by in the blink of an eye, like a quick run down a slide. Anyone in academia with half a brain knew that a woman, especially at her age, should thank her lucky stars for securing a position at a university. During her first semester at the school, she was drunk with her own sense of achievement, and no amount of hard work could burst her bubble. These days, however, she thought with shame that she was the only one blind to the declining merit of doctoral students and professors. Why didn’t she realize this earlier? I wouldn’t have put myself through that hell if I’d known, she thought, but that line of thinking made her hate herself more because she knew it was the stumbling block of overzealous women in academia who never realized what they were getting themselves into. For her, the deflating value of a PhD had more to do with distinction rather than financial compensation for the time and effort invested in attaining it. A friend had mocked her blatantly one time: “Did you work like a dog so you could end up in a no-name school in the boondocks?”
“I suppose success for someone as shallow as you is to spend your whole life in Seoul enjoying what money can buy while keeping up appearances.”
That was how she wanted to retaliate, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Her friend had touched a nerve, and it made her insides ache with deep-seated hatred. Teaching, that is spreading her knowledge for other people’s benefit, was not as rewarding as she thought. She could have blamed the caliber of her students or her lack of pedagogical skills, but she was disillusioned with knowledge itself, which was even more depressing. In short, she was undergoing a completely corny and hackneyed form of disillusionment.
For her dissertation, Young Joo had chosen to study Heo Nanseolheon, a mid-Joseon Dynasty poetess, because she had been drawn to her, profoundly moved by her work and her life, which ended prematurely. She did not need much knowledge to be moved by Heo Nanseolheon. She knew only as much as other people about the poet’s family background and social context of that time. Of course, with her limited knowledge of Chinese characters, it was impossible for her to study Nanseolheon’s original works. She was enamored not just with the artistry of the poems but with the romanticized vision of the downtrodden female poet whose genius was denied by the myopic society of her time. Writing a doctoral dissertation, however, required not imagination but a concrete, substantiated output of knowledge. Her faculty advisor, who had persuaded her to enroll in graduate studies when she was teaching at a middle school, was very wary of Young Joo’s imagination. What she hated hearing the most was his constant advice: don’t mistake writing a thesis for writing fiction. While doing research for her thesis, she fell out of love with Nanseolheon. Moreoever, she had just about had it with the whole subject matter. Conducting research was like taking a pair of shears and ripping apart carefully constructed straw effigies of the poetess. In return for mutilating her love of Nanseolheon, she was left with a degree and a heap of straw clippings under her feet.
How long did she stay like that in the car? She lifted her head when she heard her son tapping on the car window. Choong Woo was wearing worn-out sweats and a pair of flip flops.
“Why are you out here? You going for a walk?”
“No, I’m not on a walk. I’m looking for Grandma.” Choong Woo spoke casually, but Young Joo felt her heart skip a beat.
“How come you let her out alone? I told you to keep a close eye on her.”
“She must be around here somewhere. Go in, Mom. I’ll get her.”
Then he walked away, swinging his arms. Gathering up her things hurriedly, Young Joo stepped out of the car and called out to him. The casual way in which he turned his back on her angered her suddenly.
“When did she leave?”
“It hasn’t been long,” he said hesitantly. She couldn’t let that pass.
“Exactly when?”
“If I knew exactly when, would I have let her out?” Choong Woo snapped defiantly at Young Joo’s hostile questioning.
“You didn’t even see her leave. What were you doing?”
“I was on the phone. She just disappeared.”
“On the phone with who? Probably a girl. That’s what kept you busy, right?”
Instead of answering, Choong Woo whirled around and left. Young Joo took a few quick steps after him, but changed her mind and turned toward home. She immediately regretted how she’d treated her son. He was a good boy who rarely gave her a hard time, but it was almost her habit to treat him like a rebellious teen. Why am I like this? She sensed something like panic at her slipping self-control. Looking at her reflection in the elevator mirror, she saw a handful of gray hair sprouting from the top of her head like resilient weeds. She instinctively felt ashamed of her doctorate degree, which seemed to hang from her like raggedy clothes. Unlike the mirrors on her dressing table or in her makeup case, the elevator mirror was unforgiving. This was especially true on her way home from work. When her shoulders, the flesh on her cheeks, her eyebrows, and even the hair she had carefully teased into place all drooped from exhaustion, the silver strands pushed their way out mercilessly. This is what her little sister called her “professor look.” Gray hair is common enough for people approaching fifty, but her sister constantly teased her about it and she couldn’t help but feel insulted every time. No one was home, but the front door was not locked. Inside, the house was messy.
I hope this is not a repeat of last time, thought Young Joo. It had been some time since she was first alarmed by her mother’s forgetfulness. It all started long before they’d moved into the apartment the previous year. In their previous residence, her mother occasionally had trouble finding her way back to the right apartment building after walking to the supermarket. But they had lived there for so long that someone eventually recognized her, or the security guard saw her and telephoned them. Then she was perfectly normal for long stretches of time, and refused to believe or became angry when told that she had been experiencing bouts of forgetfulness. But what happened soon after they moved into the current place was not something that could be taken lightly. It happened even before they had finished unpacking. Her mother had left at dawn before anyone else was awake and could not be found until after midnight. Clearly, her running away was not an impulsive but a carefully planned act. To everyone’s surprise, she had brought a sack with knick knacks inside and crumpled up money that she had been saving for this purpose. What was even more shocking was that the highway patrol found her at the Euiwang Tunnel. Young Joo’s family lived in Dunchon-dong. It was impossible to get her to tell them whether she walked or took some other means of transportation. She only spoke gibberish. After getting the call, the whole family hurried over. Everyone was relieved to see her standing there, tightly clutching her sack to her bosom and staring blankly into space. Kyung-A, who was always loving toward her grandmother, ran to her and cried loudly in her arms, and Choong Woo also hugged her from behind, rubbing his cheek against hers. Young Joo’s husband bowed his head many times to the patrol officer in gratitude and then took off his jacket and wrapped it around his mother-in-law, who was shivering in the cold.
Young Joo stood quietly out of everyone’s way. She couldn’t stop her heart from turning ice cold. When the kids clung to her, her mother’s empty face gradually regained an expression. She hugged them back, cooing, “My babies . . . my babies . . . Where have you all been?” Beauty spread over her face as it lit up. Young Joo’s two children, Choong Woo and Kyung-A, had often clung to their grandmother like this, ever since they were little. As a fulltime working mother, Young Joo didn’t have much time to dote on her children, but they also knew that it was their grandmother who loved to coddle them. They were old enough now to feel awkward about outward displays of affection, but with her, they still maintained their playfulness. When Grandmother’s food was especially yummy or when she stayed up late to fix them a snack after they came home, they clung to her freely, as if in compensation or in charity. This is not to say that the children were calculating with their affection; to them and to her, their interaction was no more, no less than happy playfulness, and watching them always brought a smile to Young Joo’s lips. She was sometimes secretly jealous of their mutually blissful intimacy, but it never occurred to her to be more like her mother in front of the kids. She had given birth to her children, but it was her mother who had raised them. Call it the special rights of an older person who’s accomplished a difficult and admirable feat. Her confidence with the kids could not be imitated or interfered with, as there was something so natural, and almost animalistic, in how she interacted with them. Watching the three of them, Young Joo sometimes felt as though her mother was licking the children with a soft, red tongue as if they were a litter of newborn animals, the three of them wrapped in an aura of soft, furry warmth.
But this time, things were different. Young Joo was upset enough to think that she must keep her aching heart in check. What upset her was the location—the Euiwang Tunnel. The young patrol officer noticed the different attitudes among the family members and presumed Young Joo to be a disgruntled daughter-in-law.
“Why leave home and trouble your good son here? I know things can get upsetting sometimes, but don’t let that get to you. It’s a different world nowadays. Do you know how lucky you are to have worried family members rush over to find you? I’ve seen people abandon their elderly parents. So sad, isn’t it? People like that don’t come running just because we say we’ve found their mother or father. You may not believe it, but some of them even move so that they can’t be contacted.”
When Young Joo’s eyes met her husband’s, she lowered her head in shame. Facing him was worse than being labeled a mean daughter-in-law. Pleased about how things had turned out, the patrol officer continued to prattle on.
“I was so sure that she was one of those abandoned folks. She kept insisting that she had to see her son—like a stubborn child, she was—but didn’t even know his phone number or where he lived. Well, we’ve seen that kind of act too many times from people who’ve got no place to go except nursing homes. Then your mother finally thought up a phone number, but we didn’t expect it to pan out. Sure enough, the person who answered said he had just moved there and didn’t know anyone like her. But that number eventually led us to you, thank goodness. It’s so nice to see you folks reunited like this.”
So that’s how it happened. Her mother’s destination was as Young Joo had expected. She decided to leave the scene and wait in the car. It seemed a fitting act for a crabby daughter-in-law, but she also wanted keep the truth under wraps. Her husband would certainly understand and faithfully play out the part of a good son. Young Joo smiled bleakly, thinking that her mother would likely approve of the arrangement.
Young Joo and her mother were not in-laws but mother and daughter. Thus, her husband was not a son but a son-in-law. She didn’t know exactly when Mother had begun to feel ashamed about living with a daughter, but it must have been soon after her younger brother had gotten married. That’s when relatives began wondering why she didn’t move in with him. Mother’s sisters, especially, fussed and fretted over her situation, even pitying her at times. Clicking their tongues, they’d said, “You eat standing up at your daughter’s house but you sit down for a meal at your son’s.” Young Joo wanted to spit on her aunts when they were condescending like that. Except for their parasitic existence with their sons, they were no better off than her mother. As a young girl, Young Joo dreamed of making it big and giving her mother a life of luxury. She was at her happiest when dreaming those dreams, but things hadn’t gone as she wished. Even if they had, Mother’s happiness would have been unaffected. That was what was so depressing. She knew her mother better than anyone. Her happiness came from nurturing her children, not from being nurtured by them. The self-assurance that came from a lifetime of hard work caring for them was her only pride, and Young Joo found it difficult to forgive anyone who threatened that pride— even if they were her mother’s own siblings.
Young Tak, her younger brother by thirteen years, was born after their father’s death. After Young Joo was born, her mother was without child for ten years until her younger sister, Young Sook, came along. Before Young Sook was one, Mother became pregnant again, and before she gave birth, their father passed away. All he left the family was their home. At that time, the house was located in an undeveloped area, but fortunately it was near a university so that Mother could bring in income providing room and board to students. Young Joo was known from that time on as the landlady’s daughter, and she fulfilled that role as if she was born to be one. Some chores, like running errands to the supermarket or fetching browned rice broth from the kitchen, she could do in her sleep. She also learned to keep alive the coal briquettes used to heat each of the rooms. In high school, she stayed up late with her mother to record in the household ledger, discuss the next day’s menu, set up the next month’s budget, and worry about her younger siblings’ futures. During the busy months leading up to the college entrance exam, she coaxed and bullied her younger siblings into giving up their rooms so that they could house more students. Even the master bedroom was put up for rent, and the family slept crammed in the small attic. For Mother, Young Joo was more of a partner than a daughter. They worked together and worried together. In her effort to be helpful, Young Joo was just as strict as her mother in dealing with her younger siblings. She never once harbored feelings of sibling rivalry or jealousy. She acted more like a parent than an older sister, so much so that the other two often complained, “Who does she think she is, our father?”
Choong Woo returned alone, dejected. Young Joo half expected this and wasn’t too disappointed, but nonetheless something burned inside her and she leapt to her feet.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Startled, Choong Woo apologized, clutching Young Joo’s shoulders.
“I’m not mad at you.”
Young Joo had a hunch that her mother had gone to Euiwang Tunnel again, and that was what made her mad. Euiwang Tunnel was on the way to her brother’s house. Her mother went there only three or four times a year, and Young Joo drove her each time. Previously from Gwacheon and also from their current residence in Doonchon-dong, they had to go through the tunnel. It was the only place that might stand out to Mother en route to her son’s house. Both the Gwacheon Tunnel and the Euiwang Tunnel were built a few years after Young Joo’s family moved to Gwacheon. Considering that they moved into a small apartment from a spacious house with enough rooms to sublet, Mother adjusted remarkably well. The apartment was only about seven hundred square feet, but it was on the first floor so that Mother could garden in the outside yard. From the yard, her domain continued to expand to the nearby Cheongye Mountain and then to Gwanak Mountain. She hiked several times a day to draw mineral water from springs and was also an expert at picking edible plants growing wild along the hiking trails so that other elderly neighbors, most of them too urbanized to tell an edible shoot from a weed, followed her around like groupies. Mother was a member of an outdoor badminton team, the Gwanak aerobics club, and the Cheongye senior’s league. When construction work began on the two tunnels, Mother was highly upset about the changes being made on her turf. She was especially annoyed with the Euiwang Tunnel, mostly because she had trouble pronouncing it. It was during that time that Young Joo’s brother moved into a newly developed neighborhood just past the Euiwang Tunnel, so she told her mother that the tunnel was being built as a shortcut to his house. Upon hearing this, Mother would immediately become happy. Construction on the tunnel coincided with Mother’s increasing lapses in memory, about the time when she began having trouble finding her way home. So the shortcut story was repeated many times.
“Aye, aye. So you’re saying that they blasted open a tunnel so I can get to Young Tak’s faster? Goodness gracious! Who’d do such a kind thing for me?”
Such was the conversation exchanged between the mother and the daughter countless times. But the faster route did not result in Mother visiting Young Tak any more often. She knew without being told that it was no longer socially acceptable to invite yourself over, not even to your own son’s house.
On the day that Mother went to the Euiwang Tunnel by herself, she never revealed how she ended up there. She probably could not have even if she wanted to. No doubt nothing registered in her mind except for the name of the tunnel. Mother probably did not walk all the way to the tunnel from Doonchon-dong. She must have walked some of the way and been driven the rest. Young Joo was about to run outside, but she stopped and looked for her car keys.
“Are you going somewhere?” Choong Woo asked.
“The Euiwang Tunnel.”
“There? Why, do you think she’s there?”
“Your uncle lives beyond the tunnel. Remember that other day? It wasn’t coincidence that Grandma was found there.”
“I know, but it could also be that the tunnel’s close to Gwacheon.” Choong Woo eyed his mother cautiously, for whenever that city was mentioned, Young Joo got angry. Her mother’s obsession with Gwacheon completely baffled her. Mother’s desire to be cared for by her son was understandable. It presented itself rather suddenly, but it was to be expected. If anything, it presented itself much later than it should have, given that it’s a long-established belief shared by all of the aging mothers of this land. The family had lived in Gwacheon for over ten years, but considering that much of that time was spent in a tiny apartment, Young Joo could not understand Mother’s strange attachment to the place. And what she could not explain, she didn’t want to acknowledge.
“If your grandmother likes Gwacheon, that’s because it’s closer to your uncle’s house than here,” she said in a cold tone that was unwarranted.
“If she thinks about him so much, why did you make her leave his home and bring her here?”
“Listen to yourself. She’s family. You’re making her sound like someone who’s not.”
“Please calm down, Mom. I think it’s you who think that. I know you’re upset, but this is not like you.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her. She’s really not better off here. I won’t even bat an eyelid this time if I find out that she went back there.”
“At any rate, she hasn’t been gone an hour. There is no way that she could have gone there in that time.”
“I doubt she walked all the way to the tunnel on that other day.”
“Don’t you remember how her feet looked?” Choong Woo asked, frowning slightly. Young Joo remembered how she cried after soaking her mother’s bruised and blistered feet in warm water. How angry she was! To Mother, her son’s house must have seemed so far beyond reach. The determination that sent her off on her journey despite that sense of hopelessness was evident on her mercilessly battered toes. Young Joo spent a sleepless night thinking of her mother’s feet with both compassion and disgust. In the morning, she called her brother and asked if he could take Mother in. It was more like begging than asking. Before he married, Young Tak talked big about how he was going to take care of Mother in her old age. Young Joo didn’t insist then and there that he didn’t need to, but she had been very proud of him. She wasn’t hoping for him to take Mother off her hands someday; she was just glad that Mother wasn’t going to be one of those unwanted elderly parents passed around from one child to another. Surely, Mother was loved and wanted. So why was Young Joo pleading with her brother now? She didn’t like the submissive way she came across, but she couldn’t readjust it. It was probably due to Young Tak’s response, which was completely unexpected. He listened to her quietly without revealing any emotion, and after hesitating for a long time, all he managed to say was, “Elder Sister, I guess you’re no different.” She didn’t understand what those words meant, but there was no mistaking the underlying sarcasm. Although she was offended, she couldn’t retaliate. She hated herself for ultimately conceding to the social norm that shoved the care of the elderly in the hands of the son. Perhaps she deserved to be offended.
“I’ll let you know after I talk to my wife,” said Young Tak.
Given his reaction, she had to say something.
“Tell me what you think. That’s what I want to know.”
“You know that women actually end up doing most of the caretaking. I can simply order my wife to take care of Mother, but I really don’t want to.”
Young Tak and his wife had dated for several years and were now happily married with kids. Mother would undoubtedly be a third wheel in their home. Young Joo knew that they needed time to prepare themselves mentally and to make practical arrangements to accept Mother into their household. But with no word from him since he left, Young Joo spent her days seething in resentment. How could he, as her only son, be this insensitive? Inability to forgive her brother overlapped with self-blame for backward thinking, and she couldn’t tell exactly where her anger was directed. Mother’s behavior made things worse. Whether he was making a real or an empty promise, Young Tak left that day assuring her that he’d return soon to take her with him for good. Mother packed her bags right away, anxious to leave.
“My son said he’ll come and get me. I wonder what’s keeping him.”
Muttering to herself, she’d pace around or stare out the window like someone confined to a waiting room. She even began pushing the other family members away, shutting down emotionally. Young Joo couldn’t stand it any longer, so she called her sister-in-law and had her come and take Mother.
Mother lasted less than three months there and returned to Doonchon-dong. It wasn’t correct to say that she didn’t last, because Mother was losing her will each and every day. Young Joo was the one who didn’t last.
After packing off her mother to her brother’s, Young Joo called every day to check on her. “I want to go to Gwacheon. Take me there, please,” was all Mother said to her each time they talked. She sounded so desperate. Because Gwacheon was where Young Joo’s family had lived previously, Young Tak and his wife understood Gwacheon to mean Young Joo’s house. But neither of them said anything to her, determined not to be the ones to first suggest that she take Mother back. Young Joo almost hated them for not suggesting it because she was so worried about Mother being there. After her mother left, Young Joo had not spent a single day in peace, and that was because she, too, believed her mother’s constant longing for Gwacheon was a plea to return home. She couldn’t ignore her mother’s plea unless she could undo all those years she shared with her as a daughter and a partner. Still, she did nothing, enduring it like she would torture. If they had begged her to take Mother back, she would have in a heartbeat. But she wasn’t going to be the first one to say it. Likewise, now that they’d taken Mother in, Young Tak and his wife weren’t about to send her back unless Young Joo begged them. Young Joo’s pride and Young Tak’s stubbornness seemed polarized, but in actuality, they were one and the same thing. What they wanted to uphold was not Mother, but the notion that it would be a disgrace to entrust an aging parent with a daughter when there was a son present.
Mother either didn’t know about or didn’t care that the two of her children were engaged in this tug of war. The issue of staying with a son or a daughter was immaterial to her. When she was here, she wanted to be there and when she was there, she wanted to be here. And neither here nor there was Gwacheon. Her mental acuity appeared to be slipping, but perhaps it was actually getting sharper. Instead of going back and forth between her children’s homes like an unclaimed package, she was demanding to be sent to Gwacheon, a no man’s land that was neither here nor there. Before long, Mother began running away from Young Tak’s home. She never got farther than the apartment parking lot because his wife had been so well prepared for such an event. She was an intelligent woman who also had an extensive social network in her building complex as the president of the women’s association. She dressed Mother in clothes no one would be caught dead wearing outside the home. In her pajamas or bloomer pants, Mother was easily spotted by children or building security guards. Once found, the nearest security guard was to be notified. With this system in place, Mother probably never got past their building, let alone the neighborhood. As Mother’s escape attempts continued, however, a new lock was added to the front door. Most apartment doors open from the inside but not from the outside, but with the new lock, the door could not be opened from the inside without a key. When Young Joo got upset with the new lock, her sister-in-law asked defensively what she should do when no one could be home with Mother. Short of hiring a fulltime caregiver, Young Joo knew that this was a necessary measure. Her sister-in-law certainly took care of everything with impeccable precision, but it was that very precision that so frightened Young Joo. She imagined her mother to be infinitely more frightened, wasting away and screaming for help. Young Joo showed her restraint at least up to that point. In a few days, another lock was presented, and this time, it was to keep Mother inside her room. They said they had no choice. Confined indoors, Mother spent the whole day opening and closing every door in the apartment. Because she kept reopening and reclosing every bathroom and closet door, Mother thought that the house had a countless number of rooms.
“Here’s a room. Here’s another one! How can a home have this many rooms? All shamefully empty, too. That no good, lazy housewife! Why doesn’t she rent them out?”
Muttering to herself like this all day, she’d roam from room to room until the other family members couldn’t take it anymore.
“Do you think we wanted to do this? It was too trying on our nerves, and we just couldn’t live like that anymore,” her sister-in-law had said. Young Joo could see from Mother’s haggard and desolate appearance that being locked up had taken a toll on her. The vicious battle of the wills had left both parties bleeding, but her sister-in-law trivialized the matter by describing it as “trying on their nerves.” Young Joo was filled with contempt for her sister-in-law. Instead of wishing for things to improve, Young Joo was now hoping for Young Tak and his wife to throw their hands up in defeat. Even that didn’t go as she had hoped.
It happened on a day when Young Joo was visiting. As usual, her sister-in-law greeted her impassively, and Young Joo walked in apologetically for coming too often. Long after the tea was brought out, her sister-in-law still had not opened the door to Mother’s room.
“Is she taking a nap?” Young Joo asked.
“If you’re curious, you can look through the window from the veranda.”
“What are you talking about? You don’t want to bother opening the door now? How can you be like this?”
“I learned it from Mother,” whimpered her sister-in-law, shedding a tear for the very first time. Mother’s condition had gotten worse lately. At all times of day and night, Mother escaped the confines of her room by crawling out the window to the veranda. From there, she’d stare into the couple’s bedroom window.
“When our eyes meet, she asks me with a straight face, ‘Who are you?’ Do you know how that makes me feel?”
Her sister-in-law didn’t say anything more, but Young Joo could clearly see how weary she was. Anger mixed with humiliation tightened Young Joo’s chest. She made her way outside to the veranda and looked through the window into her mother’s room. Mother was staring into a wall mirror, glowering at her reflection and stamping her feet in fury.
“Who are you, huh? Move out of the way. I told you to get out!”
Just as her mother didn’t recognize the old woman in the mirror, Young Joo could not acknowledge that the old woman trapped inside the room was her mother. She had not become thinner or scruffier. Dressed in clean, comfortable clothes, she looked better than when she had loose trousers or pajamas on. But Young Joo had never seen such fierce defensiveness in her eyes. Her mother, who was always as inviting and comforting as a warm hearth . . . It wasn’t just her eyes. Young Joo could see that her small body was tense, with every hair standing up. If someone were to lay a finger on her she would have fought back like a cornered rat. How agonizing it must be for her, fighting alone against the world . . .
Instead of asking for a key to the door, Young Joo climbed in through the window. Mother stood frozen with her back against the wall, neither asking the intruder who she was nor making a move to fight her. She was deathly afraid, as if she had run into a Herculean foe against whom her defense strategies were futile. Young Joo took her in her arms. Mother smelled pleasantly of soap. The room was plain and tidy, with a couple of landscape paintings adorning the bare walls. With an attached bathroom, this was the master bedroom suite in the apartment. Young Joo had been so grateful that her brother and his wife had given up their room for Mother. She needed to maintain a positive attitude now. Her mother’s tiny frame fit inside her arms, and Young Joo patted and stroked her back. In doing so, perhaps she was soothing her own anger and licking her own wounds. She knew she had to take Mother home with her, but she didn’t want to provoke her brother and sister-in-law. They must not exchange any angry words. She harbored no ill will against her brother, who must have struggled to mediate between his mother and his wife. Young Joo always felt more like a mother to him than an older sister. Not only was she many years older, but she had also shared with her mother the compassion for the fatherless boy and the responsibility of raising him to be a strong, independent man. Young Joo held her mother for a long time until her mother squirmed to get free. It took Young Joo that much time to get ahold of herself.
Thus, Mother returned to Doonchon-dong and began making an incredible recovery, gradually returning to her old self. On the car ride home, her accusing glares and defensive gestures began subsiding so that by the time Young Joo’s family greeted her, they had no suspicion of her worsened state. It was as if she was returning from a vacation. Young Joo even doubted herself briefly, wondering if she was too quick to blame her sister-in-law. The risk of Mother wandering away from home remained unchanged, so she could not be left home unattended. This was not an easy task without a fulltime homemaker defending the home front. Excluding Jung-A, a busy high school junior, Young Joo and Choong Woo took turns watching her on the days they didn’t have classes. But the two of them could cover only so many hours, so part-time domestic help and the aunts were brought in from time to time. Fortunately, Mother was faring well, even helping with household chores, and their vigilance was beginning to slacken. There wasn’t much to the chores—trimming bean sprouts, tearing up balloon flower roots, or determining whether the mushrooms or bracken at hand was Korea- or China-grown. Mother was peeved when she was spared from these chores, saying that she didn’t want her body to be idle when one day it would rot underground anyway. Young Joo was thrilled to hear her say those words. Mother used to say them often when she ran the boarding house, and hearing them again brought great relief. It was the same kind of relief she felt during her childhood when, after waiting for hours for her mother to come home, she’d finally see a familiar shape appear out of the fog. She’d then run toward her mother and would be swathed in the abundant pleats of her skirt. Mother’s impeccable laundry-folding skills also returned, making Young Joo even happier. Mother always took slightly damp clothes from the line and folded each article of clothing with such love and care that even the long johns looked like they had been ironed. No one else could fold laundry like her.
Young Joo must have become too careless. In fact her mother’s memory had never recovered fully, and was still coming and going haphazardly. She left Mother at home alone at times when she couldn’t find a helper. She felt bad about asking her aunts every time, but she was also afraid that they might brainwash her mother again into thinking that she must properly live out her days at her son’s house. Young Joo didn’t believe that idea was completely erased from Mother’s mind, but the last thing she wanted was to have the aunts rehash a latent memory and reinforce it over and over.
3
Myriad lotus lanterns hung from the eaves of that house. They appeared a few months after a sign went up with the symbol of a Buddhist temple and the words “Cheon-gae Temple Outreach House.” The lanterns on the eaves circled all the way around to the back of the house, and more were hung from a suspended rope above the front yard. It was the first celebration of Buddha’s birthday at the house after the temple sign was posted. From the native village, the lanterns looked like pink balloons, filling the villagers with an expectation that the house might lift off the ground and float away. That kind of expectation was silly but joyful, like a warm breeze blowing festive air into the neighborhood. Even before the lanterns were hung, the villagers were happy to see the temple sign go up and looked upon the house with fondness. This is not to say that their fondness translated into patronage. Not a single person from the village decided to attend the new temple. More than half of the neighborhood families considered themselves Buddhists, regularly frequenting temples to pray and seeking out fortunetellers from time to time. But no one patronized that temple. The villagers were delighted to see so many lanterns, interpreting that to mean that there were many members at the new temple. They were not the kind of people who easily delighted in other people’s successes. Before the house became a temple it had been a fortunetelling outfit, and this upgrade in identity may have factored into their favorable opinion. A temple was certainly a nobler place than a fortunetelling joint, better for a small neighborhood with impressionable children running around. Not that they snubbed the house when it was a fortuneteller’s. They didn’t have to, because the house was already isolated from the town. When a stranger came into town asking for the lady fortuneteller, they directed him to the old house beyond the empty field. No sign or banner identified the house, but all of the townsfolk knew of its purpose. But they didn’t know anything about the person running it. They assumed that a young woman was running the place because strangers asked about her, but they had no way of telling whether she was pretty or homely, a true psychic or a charlatan. Most of the native village residents had had tough breaks in life, so seeking out psychics and fortunetellers was a familiar practice. But even among those who engaged passionately in this activity, not a single soul had gone to see the woman. Apparently, Jesus was not the only one unappreciated in his hometown.
On Buddha’s birthday, the neighborhood children could be seen snooping around the house. Just as light objects are the first to be carried away by the wind, the children became excited by the festive mood. The adults did not budge. Families celebrating that day had already taken off on buses or trains to their regular temples far away. The front door of that house was wide open, and sitting on a silk cushion inside the room with sliding doors was a petite golden Buddha with a subtle smile on his face. The courtyard was bustling with visitors looking for the lantern labeled with their family name. The silk hanboks they were wearing for the occasion were beautiful to behold with all their colors in full splendor.
The person running the temple was a Buddhist nun. The lady fortuneteller and the Buddhist nun were one and the same person. Even the golden Buddha gracing the new temple was the same one worshipped by the lady fortuneteller. Only, the golden sheen was brighter than before because the figure had been plated again around the time the temple sign had been hung. Most of the temple members were formerly regular customers of the fortuneteller. The few new members were those lured in by the regulars’ claim of the temple Buddha’s divine powers. These regulars did not think it at all strange that the lady fortuneteller had become a Buddhist nun. As a fortuneteller, she had always worshipped Buddha and claimed him as the source of her psychic powers. So nothing had changed. She and her customers bowed to Buddha before and after each session, and this routine remained unchanged at the temple. Then and now, visitors came to the house to be inspired by her words, usually uttered in a brusque and indifferent manner, relating to the future endeavors of their spouses or the welfare of their children. Because she became spiritual around the same time that the Buddha she worshiped gained divine powers, nothing was strange about her change in status. Everyone had respectfully called her by the honorific title Bosal-nim when she was a fortuneteller, so when she became a Buddhist nun, they had no trouble calling her Jayeon Seu-nim.
If anything had changed, it was that one day a month had been set aside for the reading of the Buddhist scriptures. These sessions were conducted by an elder monk from the Cheongae Temple. He came to the house on red-letter days like Buddha’s birthday, New Year’s Day, and July seventh of the lunar calendar. He also came to lead the forty-ninth day ceremony following the death of a follower and to hold special prayer sessions requested by members. Oddly, none of the members knew where the main Cheongae Temple was located. Because Jayeon Seu-nim treated him with the utmost respect and because she used the phrase “came down,” they assumed that the temple was high up in the mountains in a distant, scenic place. The followers did not think all that highly of the elder monk. Although he commanded a certain presence befitting of someone with his age and position, he really hadn’t demonstrated any clairvoyant powers. There were at times persons of high social standing among the followers, and the consensus among the members was that he excelled in recognizing such persons. This particular ability was of no practical help to the followers, and if anything, disrupted the equality of fellowship among them. Thus, they accepted the elder monk simply as part of the change that took place at the house and hoped that Jayeon Seu-nim would soon learn to lead important services. Although she had never said anything to them, the word among the followers was that she was preparing to study Buddhism properly at an institution of higher education.
The elder monk from Cheongae Temple had not yet arrived, but food preparation was in full swing inside the kitchen where a large cauldron hung from a wall. All kinds of fruit, traditional pastries, and rice cakes ordered from a shop were laid out in abundance on tables on a small deck adjoining the kitchen. Since it was Buddha’s birthday, lunch as well as supper needed to be served. And there was no shortage of helpers to watch over soups or to season the vegetables. Mageum’s mammy, the person orchestrating the whole operation, had a surprisingly effective and commanding voice for someone nearing seventy. Mageum was the secular as well as the legal name of Jayeon Seu-nim. Since Mageum’s birth, Mammy had never felt this happy or proud. She was giving orders and her daughters-in-law were scurrying to carry them out. One word from her, and there was even a son-in-law who would run to a wholesale market in Seoul at the drop of a hat. At this rate of business, in two or three years the old house could be torn down to build a bigger one, or a new temple independent of the Cheongae Temple could be established elsewhere. Just thinking of these possibilities made Mammy stand taller. She looked around the house with eyes filled with intensity and desire. She wasn’t without her misgivings, though. The atmosphere of the house was transforming from moribund to thriving, as if the spark of change had just caught on fire. Mammy had reservations about touching up the house too soon because doing so might break its lucky streak. But greed often overpowers these feelings of reservation. Today’s festivities served as the defining moment in galvanizing the long-time patrons and the elder monk over the issue of building a Buddhist sanctuary on this very spot. It was almost a done deal. Mammy was no expert on spiritual matters of ministering hope and peace. But she clearly understood that this business was a goldmine and that few other enterprises could have such an auspicious beginning and promising outlook.
While sitting on the kitchen patio and yelling out orders, Mammy was busy making mental calculations of the offerings from the lantern lighting and the altar money that would be collected by the end of the day. As she did this, her face displayed conflicting emotions, grinning from ear to ear one moment and scowling in disgust the next. On the one hand, she was thrilled that the temple business was booming, but on the other, she knew that what they made was peanuts compared to how much the bigger temples raked in on days like this.
Mammy glanced at Jayeon Seu-nim, disapproving of her indifferent expression and relaxed attitude. The success of the temple business depended on their teamwork. Never mind teamwork, her daughter was refusing to make eye contact. Putting up with such a behavior was trying Mammy’s patience. Who got her to where she was now? Now that she was a big shot, how dare she look down on her mammy? But because her daughter had her reasons for acting that way, Mammy glowered at her in private, but hammed it up when she was around. Mammy hated putting on this act, and perhaps her daughter was avoiding her for the same reason. Avoiding eye contact had become something of a silent agreement between the two. Mammy only set foot in the temple for worship services and prayers, leaving Jayeon Seunim to be by herself at other times. As a fortuneteller and now as a Buddhist nun, her daughter remained the only breadwinner in the family. Mageum usually avoided making conversation as well as eye contact with her mother, but she allowed her to pull the purse strings. In fact, Mageum didn’t know how much she actually earned. Knowing would require her to talk to her family, so she ignored money matters in order to avoid her family. This much she knew: she was the sole breadwinner in the family, and her money was Mammy’s money; and Mammy’s money was always Mammy’s money.
Mammy was a true native of the neighborhood, for she was familiar with the prehistoric times of that house. She no longer lived in the native village. From her apartment where she now lived, she looked down at the village with the others, condemning it as an unsightly and unwelcome part of the neighborhood. Before the apartments were built and the native village was formed, the area consisted of vast farmland. Mammy was born somewhere around there, grew up and married someone from around there, and lived a tough, exhausting life. Even back then, the house stood alone, isolated in the middle of the fields. The house Mammy was born into was much worse than that house, and she married into a family whose house was worse than her own. Back then, she had no dealings with the house whatsoever. After the outbreak of the Korean War, she left her hometown for the very first time, and when she returned, she found that the neighborhood had changed greatly. Many people had moved, some leaving behind empty houses. That house had also been left empty and had further deteriorated. The owner was said to have been a cruel master of forced laborers, and one of them had massacred the whole family in revenge. Those who knew about the gruesome deaths went out of their way to avoid the house, believing it to be haunted. So it sometimes served as a den for hobos and vagrants. The house became more and more decrepit. Years passed and the area’s residents changed so much that no one who remembered the war remained, but the infamy of the house lived on in exaggerated tales. Mammy had married an orchard day-laborer and had five children. She was unable to break away from the village and lived in squalor without a home to call her own, but she never gave a second thought to the house as a place where her family could get a decent night’s sleep. To her and everyone else, that house was haunted, not a livable home.
Thin smoke rose from that haunted house one day. No one bothered to find out if hobos passing through the town had dropped in for a few days. This was before the native village had come into being, and houses were sparsely scattered in open fields or orchards. Although there were clear signs all around that the farms were dying out, no one suspected back then that the land there would become prime real estate. When the façade of that unkempt house suddenly showed signs that it had become a civilized residence, one person took notice: Mammy. She was also the only person around who could recognize the new resident of the house as the younger brother of the deceased slave owner. He was a mere boy during the war when he witnessed the brutal murder of his brother’s family. Having no other family to turn to, he lived apart from the world in a remote Buddhist temple for twenty years before returning home. Mammy had no specific intention of bullying him, but she got restless just thinking about his true identity. She had the inexplicable feeling that she could put that knowledge to good use someday. Real estate values began escalating around that time, and day after day, Mammy’s gaze toward the house became more and more fixed. For a man who had suddenly abandoned an ascetic’s life after spending his entire youth at a Buddhist temple, the new resident didn’t appear to have any other means of livelihood waiting for him in the secular world. The house soon donned a sign that read, “Meditation Center.” He must have gained quite a useful network of people from the temple because the influx of scholarly types to the house, though not abundant, was steady. Mammy and her husband frequented the house to help with menial chores and learned that most of the visitors came to study Chinese characters or Buddhist scriptures. There were even regular large-scale meetings every month. Mageum, who had recently graduated from elementary school, was sent there as a live-in helper to run errands and do chores. Certainly, times were hard for Mammy’s family and having one less mouth to feed was a relief. Unable to send her daughter to middle school, Mammy could have arranged for her to learn a trade. But Mageum had displayed from an early age a flair for the melodramatic and an occasional, uncanny ability to speculate about future events. Mammy thought that it wouldn’t hurt for Mageum to stay at the house and pick up some knowledge of the Buddhist teachings.
The native village was beginning to be referred to as the Western village during that time. The Western village residents called the strange man who was neither monk nor layman “Master” and kept a respectful distance from the dilapidated house known as the Meditation Center. No one from the village ever visited the house to offer prayers or to study the scriptures.
Soon after Mageum went to live in the house as a helper, the master violated the fourteen-year-old. Mageum told her mother, hoping to avoid a repeat of the incident, and Mammy went berserk and threatened the master. She also helped him to become the official proprietor of the house and the surrounding fields. Eventually, she extorted the house from him and he was left with the fields—a mutually beneficial resolution at the time. As a result of the incident Mageum came to abhor all men, but she also became more perceptive in reading people’s thoughts based on their facial expressions and manner of speech. Mammy tried to maximize these skills by raising her as a shaman, but because Mageum was fickle and not interested in money, the business never flourished as Mammy had hoped. It was just lucrative enough, however, for Mammy to support her other children, who wanted to live off their older sister’s gifts. For the house to transform itself from a shaman fortuneteller’s pad to a place of worship, synergy and timing was required. The master sold his portion of the property, bought a small temple somewhere remote, and returned to the mountains. More importantly, Mageum willingly endorsed the change, even suggesting that she take up Buddhist studies to further her new career.
But she was too old to begin her studies, which was just as well; she was inherently as uninterested in studying as she was in money. She didn’t believe in anything other than her instincts. And her one desire was to take off to another place by any means necessary, to be anywhere but where she was. She wanted to escape not so much the town, but the people. The people she had come into contact with thus far, including her family, thought of nothing but ways to take money or power away from others for their own gain. Her insight into this matter actually served her well in fortunetelling. But she had a vague feeling that not everyone in the world was like that. She didn’t have a child of her own, but her mother, by serving as the very antithesis, gave her an inkling of how a good mother should behave. This thought tortured her the most. It was an honest thought that stirred from deep within, and she wanted it to be validated by the silently smiling Buddha she faced when she woke up in middle of the night sometimes.
However much profit was netted from Buddha’s birthday, the house afterward became peacefully quiet like a bona fide temple. The lotus lanterns in the yard needed to be re-hung on the ceiling above the deck. Swaying in the wind, the scene resembled a pond being held upside down. Jayeon Seu-nim looked up at the sky and smiled. Then she went to the garden in the backyard to pick vegetables. So much food had been made, but rice cakes had been sent home with the visitors and other leftovers had all been carried off by her family. Not a single morsel was left to eat. Mammy had never seen her daughter eat anything with a hearty appetite. Instead of getting her to eat better, Mammy was more interested in taking food home, claiming it would go to waste if she didn’t. Before taking off with the food, she always warned her daughter sternly to abstain from meat and fish so as not to offend the spirits. As if Mageum had private feasts on her own. Without much knack or interest in cooking, Mageum got by eating whatever food she had on hand that could be prepared quickly. She ate just enough so she didn’t starve. She wasn’t the one who sowed the vegetable seeds in the backyard, so she knew little about cooking with them. She grabbed a handful of unidentified greens and sat down to sort through them when an elderly woman appeared. It was instantly obvious to Mageum that she was not a temple customer. The woman was wearing clothing that was out of season, but her face was beaming with a curious glow. She smiled and gently chastised Mageum.
“You don’t know what to do with curled mallow? You’re old enough to know better, tsk-tsk.”
She sat down casually across from her and began trimming the greens as if this was the most natural thing in the world to do. Mageum learned for the first time that the skin of the soft stem should be peeled for this particular green.
“You don’t know how to trim it, so I guess you don’t know how to rinse it either. I’ll show you.”
She walked over to the faucet and rubbed the vegetable hard under the running water with both hands, crushing it until the water ran green. Doubting that Mageum had saved any starch water, she demanded some uncooked rice. She washed the rice grains in the water also, and after pouring out the first couple of batches of rinse-water, she collected the milky, starchy liquid in a bowl. Looking around the old-fashioned kitchen, she exclaimed repeatedly how nice it was. Then she set the rice pot on the stove and dished out some bean paste from a giant clay jar to make soup. This granny was a veteran homemaker who obviously knew her way around a kitchen. Mageum combed her memory for the strange woman’s identity, but nothing came to mind. She knew from experience that unlike the thoughts that hit you right away, a protracted thought becomes less accurate the more it lingers in your head. Mageum wasn’t frustrated in the least that she didn’t know who the stranger was; instead, she felt the tingling sensation of happiness slithering onto her back. This was the first time in her life that she had felt this way.
The two sat down together at the table the granny had prepared. The bean paste soup with curly mallow was so delicious that Mageum finished off a bowl of rice with it in no time. The granny kept offering her more rice, worried that Mageum was too thin and weak. It was difficult to tell who was the hostess and who was the guest. In fact, ever since she set foot in the house, the granny behaved as if she was in her own home.
“I’ve got to cook you something good for dinner . . .”
Mageum suddenly longed to be babied by this woman who was already worrying about their next meal. This feeling, too, was a first. Never having been cared for by another, she soaked up every minute of this attention. It seemed too good to be true. In the evening, she picked up some groceries for the granny. She went to a convenience store in the native village and bought tofu, sprouts, and even some dried anchovies. Then she helped Granny prepare dinner in the kitchen, having more fun than she could remember. She was scolded for pouring out too much of the expensive sesame oil. Granny scolded her often for her shortcomings in the kitchen, but not in a scary or hurtful way. Mageum wondered how a person, especially an older person, could act with such ease around her. At night, the two placed futons side by side and lay down. Afraid that Granny might just as easily slip out at night as she had slipped in during the day, Mageum tentatively reached out for her hand. It was small, rough, and doughy.
“Shall I tell you a story?” Granny asked, gently squeezing her hand.
“A long, long time ago, there was a widow living with her young child. She had a lover, and every night, she went to bed fully clothed so that she could sneak out. The child, who caught on to the fact that she left every night, knotted the long strand of the bow on her hanbok top to his wrist before falling asleep. After the child fell asleep, the mother snipped off the bow with scissors and took off like the wind.”
“That is so sad, Granny,” Mageum muttered, drifting off to sleep. It was a deep, restful sleep that healed her body and mind, and when she awoke, it was morning.
Granny was not by her side. But she heard movements outside the room. Granny was sitting on the living room floor folding laundry.
“Aye, I’m losing my mind, for sure. I forgot to bring in the laundry last night.” She was smoothing out the wrinkles and patting down the clothes dampened by the morning dew.
“These have to get some more sun later. That’s how you get them nice and fluffy soft.”
Listening to the rhythm of her words, Mageum wondered how this gem of a person had walked into her life. She had wrung out her clothes the previous day and hung them without shaking out the wrinkles so that they had shriveled up in the sun like dried fish. In Granny’s hands, her crumpled clothes looked like they had been neatly pressed and folded into a rectangular stack.
Thus began Mageum’s new life with Granny and the days rolled by in peace and comfort. Mageum decided not to question where Granny had come from or where she was headed. She knew nothing of Granny’s identity except that Granny was more at home in that house than she was. When it came to her past, Granny made absolutely no sense. Mageum didn’t think that she did this on purpose. When pressed for details about something she’d mentioned, she looked confused and tried hard to search her mind. Then she got annoyed and changed the subject. Once, she was staring at the Buddha figure and mumbled that Jesus-lovers were also kind-hearted. She had passed out on the street from sickness and hunger, and when she came to, she was surrounded by Christians praying. When Mageum asked her for more details the next day, she said something completely off topic. Pointing to a greenhouse constructed from vinyl, she said that the reason her back ached was because she had been sleeping there all winter long. Mageum couldn’t make heads or tails of that, but she thought there might be some truth to what Granny said. Mageum knew instinctively that Granny’s memory came and went randomly. It was clear, however, that Granny was happy with her current situation. She was at ease, like someone lazily stretching out her limbs. Granny sometimes said that it was good for people to return to their roots, just as fish are happy in their home waters. Mageum wondered if Granny had lived in this house long, long ago. This was not at all an unpleasant thought. She imagined herself as her granddaughter from that time gone by, as if she had gone back to another time from her former life. But sometimes when Granny looked into the distant mountains and wondered out loud why her son hadn’t come looking for her yet, Mageum’s heart skipped a beat. What upset her was not that the son might show up one day and whisk Granny away but that Granny might be one of those old people intentionally abandoned by their families.
4
Young Joo’s guess that her mother’s destination was the Euiwang Tunnel proved to be incorrect. After a sleepless night, she spent the next day searching in vain all the places her mother might be. Then she filed a missing person’s report with the police and the family welfare departments of the village and the district offices. During this process she discovered that there was a national hotline just for missing persons. Despite Young Joo’s desperate search for her mother, days passed without much progress. She took out a newspaper ad and pulled some strings with her husband’s friend in the broadcasting industry to make radio announcements during peak listening hours. She obtained several leads through these efforts, but none of them got her any results. People claimed to have spotted her mother begging for change at Suwon subway station or some other similar place, and each time a tearful Young Joo ran over there only to be disappointed. She also received prank calls. Once, someone called to say that her mother was eating a bowl of noodle soup that was unpaid for and then hung up without disclosing the location. Distressing incidents continued in other ways. Young Joo had placed a request with the local police for confirmation of accidental death, and consequently, she was called in several times to view the decaying corpses of perfect strangers. Thereafter, her husband and her brother stepped in and spared her from these morbid tasks. Everyone in the family tried anything and everything they could to find Mother, because they couldn’t just sit around and wait. Young Joo, especially, couldn’t stay still at home for long periods, and soon her home became unkempt and neglected. She drove anywhere she thought her mother might have visited. As a result, she discovered that her mother had gone to Gwacheon once or twice. Having lived there for so long, the family still had acquaintances, and one of them had seen and talked with Mother. Mother was well-groomed and cheerful, so that person thought Mother was just visiting. She never imagined that Mother had been lost. If she had known, she would have surely held on to her and contacted the family. Young Joo could have kicked herself for letting Mother slip through her fingers. Thinking it was better late than never, she decided to print a flyer to be distributed as a newspaper insert. Choosing Gwacheon as the central search point, she spent several days visiting every newspaper agency in Pyungchon, Sanbon, Anyang, and the area. Still unsure whether the flyer inserts would catch the attention of the readers, she also printed posters. Putting them up within the parameters of Mother’s possible whereabouts was no simple task, but it was a blessing to at least be able to do something.
All these tasks required manpower and time beyond what Young Joo or her family alone could afford. To divide up the work and to consult with one another, the three siblings and their families gathered often. And when they gathered, they talked, and these talks sometimes led to finger-pointing, with much of the blame falling on Young Joo. Although Young Tak often said, “I have nothing to say because I’m responsible,” he and his family appeared to be the least guilt-ridden. His wife never interfered in family discussions, only watching with cold detachment. But Young Joo could almost see in her silent smile the accusation that door locks, indeed, would have prevented their current plight. Young Sook must have made a similar observation.
“Elder Sister, you should have waited. No, you just had to go and bring Mother back, and now look at them. They’re off the hook. I’m sure Sister-in-law is feeling quite smug about the whole thing.”
“Do you really think that now is the time to discuss who’s right and wrong? We don’t even know if Mother’s dead or alive. I only wanted to do what was best for Mother. That was my priority. I didn’t know things would turn out like this, but I still don’t think I did anything terribly wrong.”
“Well, when does my smart PhD sister ever do anything terribly wrong? And Mother’s still alive or else the police would have contacted us, right? Didn’t you say something about fingerprint matching?”
“What does my PhD have to do with anything?”
“You’re the one who got so much out of Mom. After all she did for you, you still kept her working until old age because you just couldn’t let go of your ambitions. And now look what’s happened.”
Her sister couldn’t be more different from her mother in her opinion of Young Joo. Who had financed their college educations? Mother had always been proud of Young Joo for taking care of her younger siblings and credited her with half the work of raising them to be responsible adults. Mother often used to say that if only Young Joo weren’t a landlady’s daughter, she could’ve made something of herself, that she was smart enough to be a professor. Young Joo would not have had the courage to undertake postgraduate studies at that age if it weren’t for Mother’s high hopes for her. And like the good daughter of a landlady, she met and married one of their tenants. Because her husband had married her knowing all about her family situation, he had no qualms about living with her family. They say you shouldn’t move in with your wife’s family even if you have to live on a few scoops of unshelled barley otherwise. But he did so for many years without complaints even after Young Joo became a middle school teacher. When asked, he said that he lived with his mother-in-law with the same kind of dignity that a daughter-in-law might show. It was at those times that Young Joo felt the greatest respect and love for her husband. Mother, too, loved her easygoing son-in-law. Young Joo knew that her husband was deeply distraught over Mother’s disappearance and that he missed her more than most of the other family members.
Nevertheless Young Sook was critical of her well-meaning brother-in-law. Days turned warm, easing their fears of Mother sleeping outside with the vagrants. Young Joo’s husband mentioned that he missed Mother’s fermented bean paste stew and kimchi radish stalks. Everyone knew that Mother could make this dish like no one else. Young Sook happened to be present when he mentioned this, and although he said it ruefully with a quivering voice, Young Sook stormed up from her seat, saying that kinder things would be said of a maid who had gone missing. If what he’d said was insulting, what were her memories of the mother she missed so much? As for Young Joo, the most endearing memory of her mother was, of all things, laundry. Every time she did laundry she was reminded of how Mother folded clothes so neatly that they looked ironed. Mother was present in those small things in her life, so Young Joo understood where her husband was coming from.
Almost six months had passed since Mother had left home. It was now early summer. Young Joo reordered posters numerous times, a thousand sheets at a time, but she was nowhere close to covering all of Seoul and its nearby areas. Leads had stopped coming in long ago. Young Joo routinely visited organizations serving the elderly to put up her posters and inquire about her mother’s whereabouts. Scattered throughout various regions, many of these organizations were privately run and were not registered with the local social welfare departments. She had to rely on word of mouth to find them.
Young Joo was returning from a visit to one of these hard-to-find places one day. She came upon a town on the outskirts of Seoul when she felt a sudden urge to stop and take a break. She got out of the car and took a deep breath. There was nothing particularly refreshing about the air in that small, rundown village. She was considering putting up a poster when she spotted a lone house. With so much land development in and around Seoul, it was amazing that such an old house was still standing. The house wasn’t old in a charming, historic sense; it was simply getting on in years, but Young Joo was strangely drawn to it. Not knowing what attracted her, she took a few hesitant steps. She suddenly remembered the room-and-board house of her youth even though the house in front of her did not bear much resemblance to it. As she approached she saw a sign that read “Cheongae Temple Outreach House” and her mother’s sweater swinging from a clothesline. She gasped. Still panting from lack of air, Young Joo let herself gravitate toward the house. Lotus lanterns hanging from the wooden ceiling and a golden Buddha were obvious signs that the house was a Buddhist temple. In front of the golden Buddha underneath the lanterns were two women in gray robes intimately chatting away while peeling mountain herb roots. A mystic aura of idyllic serenity enveloped the two women. Perhaps it was the oversized monastic robe hanging from her small frame, but Mother looked like a butterfly resting with its wings neatly folded. No, no, it wasn’t just the loose robe. It was the freedom, the lightness of being released from all the things that weighed her down in this life. Has anyone or anything ever made Mother feel this happy and free? Young Joo had never seen such pure innocence in a person well over seventy.
This can’t be real. I must be hallucinating. With her mother right before her eyes, Young Joo froze, unable to move a single step toward her. Her feet were grounded in reality. Because no matter how close or transparent the other side may appear, reality and illusion were two disparate worlds that could never be bridged.