THERE ARE SO MANY pine trees here.
How can there be a neighborhood like this in this city? It’s hidden away so well. Did it snow a few days ago? There’s snow on the trees. Let me see, there are three pine trees in front of your house. It’s almost like that man planted them here for me to sit on. Oh, I can’t believe I’m talking about him. I’m going to visit with you first and then go see him. I’ll do that. I think I should do that.
The apartments and studios that your siblings live in all look the same to me. It’s confusing which house is whose. How can everything be exactly the same? How do they all live in identical spaces like that? I think it would be nice if they lived in different-looking houses. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a shed and an attic? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a house where the children have places to hide? You used to hide in the attic, away from your brothers, who wanted to send you on all sorts of errands. Now even in the countryside apartment buildings that look the same have sprouted up. Have you gone up on the roof of our house recently? You can see all the high-rise apartments in town from there. When you were growing up, our village didn’t even have a bus route. It has to be worse in this busy city if it’s like that even in the country. I just wish they didn’t all look the same. They all look so identical that I can’t figure out where to go. I can’t find your brothers’ homes or your sister’s studio. That’s my problem. In my eyes, all the entrances and doors look the same, but everyone manages to find their way home, even in the middle of the night. Even children.
But you’re living here, where it’s nice.
Where is this, by the way? Puam-dong in Chongno-gu, in Seoul … This here is Chongno-gu? Chongno-gu … Chongno-gu … Oh, Chongno-gu! The first house your eldest brother set up as a newlywed was in Chongno-gu. Tongsung-dong in Chongno-gu. He said, “Mother, this is Chongno-gu. It makes me happy every time I write my address. Chongno is the center of Seoul, and now I’m living here.” He said, “A country hick has finally made it to Chongno.” He called it Chongno-gu, but he lived in a tenement house crammed on a steep hill called something like Naksan. I was so out of breath when I went all the way up there. I thought, How can there be somewhere like this in this city? It feels more like the country than our hometown! But I’m saying the same thing here, where you live. How can there be a place like this in this city?
Last year, when you came back to Seoul after spending three years abroad, you were disappointed that you couldn’t even rent the apartment you used to live in with the money you had, but I guess you found this village here. This is just like a village in the country. There’s a café and an art gallery, but there’s a mill, too. I saw them making rice cakes. I watched for a long time, because it reminded me of the old days. Is it almost New Year’s? There were a lot of people making those long, white rice cakes. Even in this city there’s a village that makes those rice cakes near New Year’s! At New Year’s I would cart a big bucket of rice over to the mill to make rice cakes. I would blow on my frozen hands and wait for my turn.
It must be inconvenient, though, to live here with three children. And it must be a long commute for your husband to go to work in Sollung. Is there even a market nearby?
Once, you told me, “I feel like I buy a lot of stuff when I go to the market, but everything goes so quickly. I have to buy three Yoplaits if I want to give one to each kid. If I want to buy enough for three days, that’s nine, Mom! It’s scary. I buy this much, and then it’s all gone.” You held your arms out to show me how much. Of course, it’s only normal, since you have three children.
Your eldest, his cheeks red from the cold, is about to lean his bicycle outside the gate when he is startled by something. He pushes through the gate, calling, “Mom!” Here you are, coming out the front door, wearing a gray cardigan and holding the baby.
“Mom! The bird!”
“The bird?”
“Yeah, in front of the gate!”
“What bird?”
The eldest is pointing at the gate without saying anything. You pull the hood of the baby’s jacket over his head in case he gets cold and come out to the gate. A gray bird is on the ground in front of the gate. It has dark spots from its head to its wings.
· · ·
The wings look completely frozen, don’t they? I can see you thinking about me as you look at the bird. By the way, honey, there are so many birds around your house. How can there be so many birds? These winter birds are circling your house, and they’re not making a peep.
A few days ago, you watched a magpie shivering under your quince tree and, thinking that it was hungry, you went inside and crumbled some bread your kids were eating and sprinkled it under the tree. You were thinking about me then, too. Thinking about how I used to bring a bowl of old rice and scatter the kernels under the persimmon tree for the birds sitting on the naked winter branches. In the evening, more than twenty birds landed under the quince tree, where you had sprinkled the breadcrumbs. One bird had wings as big as your palm. From then on, you spread breadcrumbs under the quince tree every day for the hungry winter birds. But this bird is in front of the gate, not under the quince tree. I know what this bird is. It’s a black-bellied plover. Strange—it’s not a bird that flies around alone, so why is it here? It’s a bird that has to be near the ocean. I saw this bird in Komso, where that man lived. I saw black-bellied plovers looking for something to eat on the mud flats at low tide.
You’re standing still, in front of your gate, and the eldest shakes your arm. “Mom!”
You’re silent.
“Is it dead?”
You don’t answer. You just look at the bird, your face dark.
“Mom! Is the bird dead?” your daughter asks, running outside at the commotion, but you don’t answer.
· · ·
“Mom, it’s Auntie!”
It must be Chi-hon. You take the phone from your daughter.
Your face clouds over. “What are we supposed to do if you’re leaving?”
Chi-hon must be taking a plane again. Tears well up. I think your lips are trembling, too. You suddenly yell into the phone, “You’re all too much … too much!” Honey, you’re not that kind of girl. Why are you yelling at your sister?
You even slam down the phone. That’s what your sister does to you and to me. The phone rings again. You look at the phone for a long time, and when it doesn’t stop, you pick it up.
“I’m sorry, sister.” Your voice has calmed down now. You listen quietly to what your sister is saying on the phone. And then your face gets red. You yell again: “What? Santiago? For a month?” Your face flushes even more.
“Are you asking me if you can go? Why are you even asking, when you’ve already decided you’re going? How can you do this?” Your hand holding the phone is shaking. “There was a dead bird in front of my gate today. I just have this bad feeling. I think something’s happened to Mom! Why haven’t we found her already? Why? And how can you go away? Why is everyone acting this way? Are you going to act like that, too? We don’t know where Mom is in this freezing cold, and you’re all doing whatever you feel like doing!”
Honey, calm down. You have to understand your sister. How can you say this to her when you know how she’s been for the past several months?
“What? You want me to take care of it? Me? What do you think I can do with three kids? You’re running away, right? Because it’s dragging you down. You were always like that.”
Honey, why are you doing this? You seemed to be doing fine. Now you’ve slammed down the phone, and you’re sobbing. The baby is crying with you. The baby’s nose gets red. Even his forehead. The girl is crying, too. The eldest comes out of his room and looks at the three of you crying. The phone rings again. You quickly pick up the phone.
“Sister …” Tears fall from your eyes. “Don’t go! Don’t go! Sister!”
In the end, she tries to soothe you. It’s not working, so now she says she will come over. You put down the phone and sit there silently, looking down. The baby climbs onto your lap. You hug him. The girl touches your cheek. You pat her on the back. The eldest crouches over his math homework in front of you, to make you happy. You stroke his hair.
Chi-hon comes in, pushing through the open gate. “Oh, little Yun!” Chi-hon says, and takes the baby from you. The baby, who is shy around other people, struggles to get back to you from his aunt’s embrace.
“Stay with me a little bit,” Chi-hon says, as she tries to cuddle with the baby, but he bursts into tears. Chi-hon hands you the baby. Once in his mom’s arms, the baby smiles at his aunt, tears still dangling from his eyelashes. Chi-hon shakes her head and strokes the baby’s cheek. You sisters are sitting quietly together. Chi-hon, who came running over in this snow because she couldn’t calm you over the phone, doesn’t say anything now. She looks awful: her face is swollen, her eyes are puffy. She looks like she hasn’t slept well in a while.
“Are you going to go?” you ask your sister after a long silence.
“I won’t.” Chi-hon lies on the sofa, facedown, as if she has just put down a heavy load. She’s so tired that she can’t control her body. Poor thing. She pretends she’s strong, but she’s all soft inside. What is she going to do, running herself into the ground like that?
“Sister! Are you sleeping?” You shake Chi-hon’s shoulder but then pat her. You gaze at your sleeping sister. Even when you fought as children, you two would settle down soon enough. When I came in to scold you, you would be sleeping, holding hands. You go into your bedroom for a blanket and cover her with it. Chi-hon frowns. That child, so careless. How could she drive all this way when she’s so tired?
“I’m sorry, sister …,” you murmur, and Chi-hon opens her eyes and looks at you.
Chi-hon says, as if she’s talking to herself, “I met his mother yesterday. The woman who would become my mother-in-law if we got married. She’s living with her daughter. Her daughter runs a small restaurant called Swiss. She’s single. Their mother’s very small and gentle. She follows her daughter around everywhere, calling her Sister. The daughter feeds her mother and gets her to bed and washes her and says, ‘What a good girl you are,’ and so the mother started calling her Sister. His sister said to me, ‘If it’s because of our mom that you haven’t gotten married yet, don’t worry about it.’ She told me that she was going to continue living with their mom, acting like her older sister. She’s going on vacation in January, but she arranged for their mom to stay at a nursing home. So that’s the only time I have to come and look in, when she’s not here. His sister said that, for the past twenty years, she’s taken a monthlong vacation in January, using the profits from the restaurant. She looked content, even though her own mom was calling her Sister. She just smiled and said, ‘My mom raised me until now, and all that’s happened is a role reversal—it’s only fair.’ ”
She stops and looks at you. “Tell me something about Mom.”
“About Mom?”
“Yes, something about Mom that only you know about.”
“Name: Park So-nyo. Date of birth: July 24, 1938. Appearance: Short, salt-and-pepper permed hair, prominent cheekbones, last seen wearing a sky-blue shirt, a white jacket, and a beige pleated skirt. Last seen …”
Chi-hon’s eyes get smaller and finally close, pushed toward sleep.
“I just don’t get Mom. Only that she’s missing,” you say.
I have to go now, but I can’t seem to make myself leave. The whole day has gone by while I was sitting here.
Oh no.
I knew this was going to happen. This is something that would happen in a comedy. My goodness, it’s so chaotic. How can you laugh in this situation? Your eldest is saying something to you, putting his hat on over there. What is he saying? What? Oh, he wants to go to the ski slopes. You tell him he can’t. You’re telling him that, since your move back here, he hasn’t been able to keep up in school, and that he has to study with Dad during this break to make sure he can catch up when school starts again. If he doesn’t do that, it’s going to be hard to do well in school. While you’re talking to him, the baby, who’s just learning to walk, is about to eat some rice that’s fallen under the table. You must have eyes on your hands. You’re talking to your eldest and looking at him, but your hands are taking away the dust-covered rice from the baby. The baby is about to burst into tears, but then clings to your legs. You fluidly grab the baby’s hand as he is about to fall over, as you explain to your eldest why he has to study. Your eldest, looking around him, maybe not listening to you, yells, “I want to go back! I don’t like it here!” The girl runs out of her room, calling, “Mom!” She’s whining that her hair is tangled. She’s asking you to braid her hair, quickly, because she has to go to cram school. Your hands are now fixing your daughter’s hair. All the while you’re talking to your eldest.
My, all three children are hanging from you now.
My dear daughter, you’re listening to all three children at once. Your body is trained to the needs of the children. You seat your daughter at the table and brush her hair, and when the eldest says he still wants to go skiing, you tell him as a compromise that you will talk to his dad about it, and when the baby falls down, you quickly put the brush down to help him up and rub his nose, then you pick it back up and finish your daughter’s hair.
Then you turn to look out the window. You see me sitting on the quince tree. Your eyes meet mine. You mumble, “I’ve never seen that bird before.”
Your children look at me, too.
“Maybe it’s related to the bird that was dead in front of the gate yesterday, Mom!” The girl grabs your hand.
“No … that bird didn’t look like this.”
“Yes, it did!”
Yesterday, you buried the dead bird under this quince tree. The eldest dug a hole, and the middle child made a wooden cross. The baby made a lot of noise. You picked up the bird and folded its wings as you slipped it into the hole that had been dug by the eldest, and your daughter said, “Amen!” Afterward, the girl called her dad at work and told him all about the burial. “I made him a wooden cross, too, Dad!”
The wind has knocked down the wooden cross.
Listening to your children’s chatter, you come over to the window to take a better look at me. Your children follow you to the window and stare at me. Oh, stop looking at me, babies. I’m sorry. When you children were born, I cared more about your mom than about you three. The girl stares at me, her hair braided neatly. When you, my granddaughter, were born, your mom couldn’t breastfeed you. When your older brother was born, she was discharged from the hospital in less than a week, but there were complications when she had you, and she stayed in the hospital for more than a month. I looked after your mom back then. When your other grandmother came to visit at the hospital, you cried and your grandmother told your mom to breastfeed you, to stop your crying. Watching your mom put you to her breast even though she didn’t have any milk, I glared at you, just a newborn. I even sent your other grandmother away and grabbed you from your mom’s arms and smacked your bottom. People say that when a baby is crying the paternal grandmother will say, “The baby is crying, you should feed her,” and the maternal grandmother will say, “Why is that baby crying so much, making her mom so tired?” I was exactly like that. You couldn’t have remembered it, but you liked your other grandmother more than me. When you saw me you said, “Hello, Grandmother!” But when you saw your other grandmother, you called out “Grandma!” and ran into her arms. I felt guilty every time, thinking you must know that I smacked your bottom soon after you were born.
You’ve grown so pretty.
Look at your thick head of black hair. Each of your braids is a fistful of hair. It’s the same as when your mom was little. I was never able to braid your mom’s hair. Your mom wanted long hair, but I always cut it in a bob. I didn’t have time to seat her on my lap and brush her hair. Your mom must be playing out her childhood wishes for long braided hair through you. She’s looking at me, but her hand is playing with your hair. Your mom’s eyes are clouding over. Oh dear, she’s thinking about me again.
Listen, dear. Can you hear me in all this noise? I came to apologize to you.
Please forgive me for the face I made when you came back to Seoul with the third baby in your arms. The day you looked at me with shock on your face, blurting out “Mom!” has been weighing on my heart. Why was it? Was it because you didn’t plan to have a third baby? Or was it because you were embarrassed to tell me that you had a third baby, when your older sister wasn’t even married yet? For whatever reason, you hid the fact that you’d had a third baby in that faraway land, instead suffering through morning sickness all by yourself, and only when you were about to give birth did you tell us that you were having a baby. I didn’t do anything to help when you had the baby, but when you came back, I said to you, “What were you thinking? What were you thinking, three babies?”
I’m sorry, dear. I apologize to the baby and to you. It’s your life, and you’re my daughter, my daughter with the amazing ability to concentrate when you solve problems. Of course you would find a solution for your situation. I forgot who you were for a second and said that to you. I’m also sorry for all the faces I made without even knowing it, every time I saw you after you came back from America. You were so busy. I visited you once in a while, and you were always busy chasing after the children. You were picking up clothes, feeding them, pulling up a fallen child, taking the book bag of the child who came home from school, hugging the child who ran into your arms calling “Mom!” You were busy making things for the children to eat the day before you went into surgery to have a cyst removed from your womb. You wouldn’t know how sad it made me, when I was at your house to look after the children and opened the door of the fridge. Four days’ worth of the children’s food was stacked neatly in the fridge. You explained to me, “Mom, give them the stuff on the top shelf tomorrow, then give them what’s under that the next day …,” while your eyes were sunk deeply in your face. You are that kind of person. The kind of person who has to do everything with your own hands. That’s why I said, “What were you thinking?” when you had the third baby. The night before your surgery, I picked up the clothes you’d taken off and left outside the bathroom while you took a shower. There were drops of plum juice on your shirt, which had frayed sleeves, and the seam of your baggy pants was ripped, and your old bra straps had millions of fuzzy bits on them, and I couldn’t tell what pattern your rolled-up underwear used to have. Flowers or water drops or bears? It was speckled with color. You were always a neat and clean child, unlike your sister. You were the child who would wash your white sneakers if there was even a pea-sized smudge on them. I wondered why you’d studied so much, if you were going to live like this. My love, my daughter. When I thought about it, I did remember that you liked young children when you were little. You were the kind of child who would unhesitatingly give something you wanted to eat to a neighbor’s child if it looked like he wanted it. Even when you were little, when you saw a child who was crying, you would go up to him and wipe his tears and give him a hug. I’d completely forgotten that you were like that. I was upset to see you wearing old clothes, with your hair tied back away from your face, busy and focused on raising kids, not even thinking about going back to work. I’m talking about the time I said to you, “How can you live like this?” while you were wiping the floor of the bedroom with a rag. Please forgive me for saying that. Although, back then, you didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. Finally, I just stopped visiting your house. I didn’t want to see you living like that, when you had a good education and talent that others envied. My sweet daughter! You deal with what comes at you head on, without running away, and go forward with your life, but sometimes I was angry about the choice you’d made.
Honey.
Please remember that you were always a source of happiness for me. You’re my fourth child. I never told you this, but, strictly speaking, you’re my fifth child. Before you, there was a child who went to the other world as he was being born. Your aunt delivered the baby, and told me it was a boy, but the baby didn’t cry. He didn’t open his eyes, either. It was a stillbirth. Your aunt said she would hire someone to bury the dead baby, but I told her not to. Your father wasn’t at home then. I lay in my room for four days with the dead baby. It was winter. At night, the falling snow was reflected on the mulberry paper of the window. On the fifth day, I got up and put the dead baby in a clay jar and carried it to the hills and buried him. The person who dug the frozen earth wasn’t your father, but that man. If that baby hadn’t been buried, you would have three older brothers. And then I gave birth to you by myself. Was there a reason for that? No. No. There was no reason. When I said I would have you by myself, your aunt was hurt. I’m only saying this now, but I was more scared of a dead baby coming out than going through childbirth alone. I didn’t want to show that to anyone. If another dead baby came out, I wanted to bury it myself and not come down from the mountain. When I started having labor pains, I didn’t tell your aunt, but brought hot water into my room and seated your sister, who was very young, by my head. I didn’t even scream, because I didn’t want to let anyone know in case a dead baby came out. But then out of me came you, warm and squirmy. When I slapped your bottom before wiping you clean, you burst into tears. Looking at you, your sister laughed. She said, “Baby,” and patted your soft cheek with her palm. Drunk with your presence, I didn’t even feel the pain. Later, I realized that my tongue was covered in blood. That’s how you were born. You were the child that came into this world, the child that reassured me when I was stuck in sorrow and fear that another dead baby would be born.
Honey.
At least for you, I was able to do everything other moms did. I was able to breastfeed you for over eight months, because I had a lot of milk. I was able to send you to a place called kindergarten, which was a first for our family, and for your first shoes I was able to buy sneakers instead of rubber shoes. And, yes, I made your name tag when you went to school. Your name was the first letters I ever wrote. I practiced so much for that. I pinned on your chest a handkerchief and your name tag that I wrote myself, and took you myself to the school. You wonder why that’s a big deal? It was a big deal for me. When Hyong-chol went to elementary school, I didn’t go with him: in case I might have to write something, I made this or that excuse and sent him with your aunt. I can still hear your brother grumbling that everyone else’s mom came but he had to go with his aunt. When your second-eldest brother went to school, I sent him with Hyong-chol. I sent your sister with Hyong-chol, too. For you and only you, I went to town and bought a schoolbag and a frilly dress. I was so happy that I was able to do that. Even though it was as small as a tray, I asked that man to build you a desk. Your sister didn’t have a desk. She still talks about it sometimes, about how her shoulders got broader because she had to do her homework hunched over on the floor. It made me very proud to watch you sit there and study and read. When you were studying to get into college, I even packed you lunch. When you had study sessions at night, I waited for you at school and walked you home. And you made me very happy. You were the best student in our small town.
When you were accepted into a top university in Seoul, and into the pharmacy school at that, your high school hung a congratulatory placard in your honor. Whenever someone said to me, “Your daughter is so smart!” I’m sure my smile stretched up to my ears. You wouldn’t know how proud I was to be your mother when I thought about you. I wasn’t able to do anything for the others, and even though they are also my children, I never felt that way about them. I felt regretful and guilty, even though they were my children. You were the child who freed me from that feeling. Even when you went to college and ran around demonstrating, I didn’t interfere, the way I did with your brothers. I didn’t come to see you when you were on a hunger strike at that famous church they say is in Myongdong. When your face was covered in pimples, maybe because of the tear gas, I just left you alone. I thought, I don’t know exactly what she’s doing, but I’m sure she’s doing it because she can do it. When you and your friends came down to the country and set up evening classes for the community, I cooked for you. Your aunt said you might become a red if I left you alone, but I let you talk and behave freely. I couldn’t do that with your brothers. I tried to persuade them and I scolded them. When your second-eldest brother was beaten by riot policemen, I heated salt and placed it on his back to help him feel better, but I threatened to kill myself if he kept doing it. And all the while, I was scared that your brother would think I was stupid. I know there are things young people have to do when they’re young, but I tried my hardest to stop the others from doing them. I didn’t do that with you. Even though I didn’t know what it was you were fighting to change, I didn’t try to stop you. One year when you were in college—in June, remember—I even went with you to City Hall, following a funeral procession. That was when I was in Seoul because your niece was born.
I have a pretty good memory, don’t I?
It’s not a question of memory, though, because it was an unforgettable day. For me, it was that kind of day. As you were leaving the house at dawn, you saw me and asked, “Mom, do you want to come?”
“Where?”
“Where your second son went to school.”
“Why? It’s not even your school.”
“There’s a funeral, Mom.”
“Well … why would I go there?”
You stared at me and were about to close the door behind you, but you came back in. I was folding your newborn niece’s diapers, and you yanked them out of my hands. “Come with me!”
“It’s almost time for breakfast. I have to make seaweed soup for your sister-in-law.”
“Will she die if she doesn’t eat seaweed soup for one day?” you asked harshly, uncharacteristically, and forced me to change my clothes. “I just want to go with you, Mom. Come on!”
I liked those words. I still remember the tone of your voice as you, a college student, told me, who had never gone near a school, to come to school with you because “I just want to go with you, Mom.”
That was the first time I saw so many people gathered like that. What was the name of that young man, who’d died after being hit by tear-gas pellets, who was only twenty years old? I asked you many times and you told me many times, but it’s hard to remember. Who was that young man who caused so many people to gather? How could there be so many people? I followed you in the funeral procession to City Hall, and I looked for you and grabbed your hand again and again, afraid I might lose you. You told me, “Mom! If we lose sight of each other, don’t walk around. Just stand still. Then we’ll be able to find each other.”
I don’t know why I didn’t remember that till now. I should have remembered it when I couldn’t get on the subway car with your father in Seoul Station.
Honey, you gave me so many good memories like that. The songs you sang as you walked along holding my hand, the sound of all those people shouting the same chant—I couldn’t understand it or follow it, but it was the first time I went to a plaza. I was proud of you for taking me there. You didn’t seem like just my daughter. You looked very different from how you were at home—you were like a fierce falcon. I felt for the first time how resolute your lips were, and how firm your voice was. My love, my daughter. Every time I went to Seoul after that, you took me out, apart from the rest of the family, to the theater or to the royal tombs. You took me to a bookstore that sold music and put headphones over my ears. I learned through you that there was a place like Kwanghwamun in this Seoul, that there was something called City Hall Plaza, that there were movies and music in this world. I thought you would live a life different from the others. Since you were the only child who was free from poverty, all I wanted was for you to be free from everything. And with that freedom, you often showed me another world, so I wanted you to be even freer. I wanted you to be so free that you would live your life for other people.
I think I’ll go now.
But, oh …
The baby looks sleepy. He’s drooling and his eyes are half closed. Now that the two older children are at school, the house is quiet. But what is this? The house is a complete mess. My goodness, I’ve never seen such a messy house. I want to tidy it up for you … but now I can’t. My daughter is drifting off as she gets the baby to sleep. Yes, you must be so tired. My baby is sleeping, curled around her baby. It’s in the middle of winter, so why are you sweating so much? My love, my daughter. Please relax your face. You’ll get wrinkles if you sleep with such a weary expression. Your youthful face is now gone. Your small, crescent-moon-like eyes have become smaller. Now, even when you smile, the cuteness of your youth is gone. Since I’ve lived to see you with wrinkles like this, I can’t say my life has been short. Still, dear, I never could have guessed that you would be living like this, with three babies. You were so different from your emotional sister, who got angry quickly and cried and got sullen and turned blue in the face if things didn’t work out her way. You created a schedule and you tried to follow it like you’d planned. When you said to me, “I didn’t know, Mom, that I would have three kids, but when I became pregnant, I had to have the baby,” you were so foreign to me. I thought your sister might be the one to have a lot of children. You never get angry. Of all my children, you are the only one who knows how to say things calmly, point by point, even to someone who is extremely angry. So that’s why I thought you would weigh whether to have a child, and have only one. You never begged for anything, unlike your sister, who threw tantrums asking for a desk like the one your brothers had. I would ask you what you were doing as you bent over the floor, and you would say, “I’m doing my math homework.” Your sister never even looked at a math book, but you were very good at it. You were the child with amazing concentration when it came to solving problems. When you came up with an answer, you would grin happily.
But you won’t be able to find the answer to why this happened to me. That’s why you must be in pain. Because of your three children, you can’t go looking for me like you want to. You can only call your sister every evening and say, “Sister, was there any news about Mom today?” My love, my daughter. Because of your children, you couldn’t look for me as much as you wanted to and couldn’t weep as much as you pleased. I couldn’t do for you as much as I wanted to recently, but I thought about you a lot when my mind was clear. About you, about how you have to raise three children, including the baby, who is just learning to walk, about your life. I felt regretful that the only thing I could do for you was to make kimchi and send some to you. My heart broke that time when you came to visit with the baby and said, with a smile, as you took your shoes off, “Oh, Mom, look, I’ve put on mismatched socks.” How busy you must be if you, who have always been so neat, can’t find the time to find a pair of matching socks. Sometimes when my mind was clear I thought of the things I had to do for you and your children. And it gave me the will to keep living … but then things turned out like this.
I want to take off these blue plastic sandals—the heels are all worn down. And my dusty summer clothes. Now I want to get away from this unkempt way I look; I can’t even recognize myself. My head feels like it’s about to crack open. Now, dear. Raise your head a bit. I want to hold you. I’m going to go now. Lie down, put your head on my lap for a little while. Rest a bit. Don’t be sad for me. I was happy so many days of my life because I had you.
Oh, you’re here.
· · ·
When I went to your house in Komso, the wooden gate facing the beach was broken and the bedroom door was locked; it must have been empty for a long time. Why did you lock the bedroom like that but leave the kitchen door wide open? The ocean wind had banged the wooden door open and shut so many times that it was half shattered.
But why are you in the hospital? And what is the doctor doing? He’s not making you better, he keeps asking you silly questions. He keeps asking you your name. Why is he doing that? And why aren’t you telling him your name? All you have to say is “Lee Eun-gyu,” so why are you not answering, making him ask again and again? Really, why is the doctor doing that? Now he’s holding a toy boat and asking, “Do you know what this is?” Is this a joke? It’s a boat! What does he mean, “Do you know what this is?” But the strangest thing is you. Why aren’t you answering? Oh, you really don’t know? You mean you have forgotten what your name is? You don’t know what that toy boat is? Really?
The doctor is asking again: “Your age?”
“One hundred!”
“No, please tell me how old you are.”
“Two hundred!”
You’re really being grumpy. Why do you say you are two hundred years old? You’re five years younger than me, so that makes you … The doctor asks your name again.
“Shin Gu!”
“Please think carefully.”
“Baek Il Sup!”
The actor Shin Gu? The television actor Baek Il Sup? Are you talking about the Shin Gu and Baek Il Sup that I like?
“Please don’t do that, think and tell us what it is.”
You’re sniffling. What is going on? Why are you here, and why are you being asked these silly questions? Why are you crying, unable to answer these easy questions? I’ve never seen you cry before. I was always the one who cried. You saw me cry so many times, but this is the first time I’m seeing you cry.
“Now, please tell me your name again!”
You’re quiet.
“One more time!”
“Park So-nyo!”
That’s not your name, that’s mine. I remember the day you asked me what my name was. You’re paved in my heart like an old road. Like the pebbles in a pebble field, dirt in dirt, dust in dust, cobwebs in cobwebs. I was young then. I don’t think I ever thought I was in my youth when I was living it, but if I think about when I first met you, I can see my youthful face. One late afternoon, I was walking home from the mill on the new avenue, kicking up dust, my nickel basin filled with flour resting on my head. My youthful footsteps were quick. I was on my way home to make dough out of the flour and cook dough-flake soup to feed the children. The mill was four or five ri away, across the bridge. My forehead was sweaty from the flour-filled nickel basin on my head. You passed by me on a bicycle, then stopped along the road and called, “Excuse me.”
I kept walking, looking straight ahead. My breast was about to pop out of my chogori, which I was wearing with baggy pants.
“Put down that basin and give it to me. I’ll carry it for you on my bicycle.”
“How can I trust a stranger passing by and give this to you?” I said, but my youthful steps slowed. Actually, the basin was so heavy that my head felt like it would get crushed. I’d made a cushion out of a towel and put it under the basin, but I still felt as if my forehead and the bridge of my nose were going to collapse.
“I’m not carrying anything on my bike anyway. Where do you live?”
“In the village across the bridge …”
“There’s a shop at the entrance to the village, right? I’ll leave it there for you. So give it here and walk more freely. It looks so heavy, and here I am on a bicycle, carrying nothing on it. If you just put that basin down, you’ll be able to walk faster and get home quicker.”
I looked at you as you got off your bicycle, and I bit down on the end of the towel hanging by my face, the towel I’d placed on my head under the basin. Compared with Hyong-chol’s father, you were plain-looking, both then and now. You were pale, like you had never worked a day in your life, and your long horselike face and drooping eyes weren’t all that handsome. Your thick, straight eyebrows made you look honest. Your mouth made you seem respectable and trustworthy. Your eyes, gazing at me quietly, were familiar, as if I’d seen them somewhere before. When I didn’t immediately give you the basin and instead studied your face, you turned to get back on your bicycle. “I don’t have a hidden motive. I just wanted to help out because it looked so heavy. I can’t force you to let me help you if you don’t want me to.” You placed a foot on the sturdy pedal of your bicycle. That was when I hurriedly thanked you and handed over the basin from my head. I watched as you undid the thick rubber ties on the back of the bicycle and secured the basin with them.
“So I’ll leave it at the shop!”
You raced down the avenue—you, a man I’d just met, carrying my children’s food. I took off the towel wrapped around my head and slapped the dust off my pants and watched you and your bicycle disappear. Dust rose and clouded you and your bicycle, so I rubbed my eyes and watched you get smaller. I felt relieved, the weight on my head gone. I walked along the avenue, swinging my arms lightly. A pleasant breeze passed through my clothes. When was the last time I’d walked alone, with nothing in my hands, on my head, or on my back? I looked up at the birds flying in the dusky sky, hummed a song I used to sing with my mother when I was young, and headed to the shop. I looked for the basin from far away. I looked at the door of the shop as I approached it, but the basin that should have been by the door wasn’t there. Suddenly my heart started beating fast. I walked faster. I was afraid to ask the woman at the shop, “Did anyone leave a basin for me?” If you had, I would have seen it already, but I couldn’t find it. My towel in my hand, I ran toward the shopkeeper, who stared at me, wondering what was going on. I realized it only then: you had stolen my children’s dinner from me. Tears filled my eyes. Why did I give my basin to a man I’d never seen before, trusting you? What was I thinking? Why did I do that? I can still feel that dread, when my momentary nervousness at seeing your bicycle disappear became reality. I couldn’t go home empty-handed like that. I had to find that basin with flour, no matter what. I remembered the scraping noise I’d heard that morning when I scooped up grain in the shed for breakfast. I couldn’t give up when I knew there was enough flour in that basin for ten days’ worth of meals. I just kept walking, looking for you and your bicycle, though you must have sped past the shop. I went on and on, asking whoever I met whether they’d seen someone who looked like you. Your identity was revealed quickly. That was how careless you were. You didn’t even live far away. When I found out that you lived in the village that had a tile-roofed house, about five ri past our village, before the road reached town, I started running. I would be able to bring back all of the flour in the basin if I reached you before you used it.
When I discovered your bicycle in front of a run-down house at the foot of a hill between paddies, down the road from the entrance to your village, I ran into your house, screaming, “Ahhhh!” And then I saw it all. Your elderly mother sitting on the old porch, with her sunken eyes. Your three-year-old sucking on his finger. And your wife in the middle of a difficult birth. I’d come to retrieve the basin you’d stolen from me. Instead, I grabbed a pot off the wall in the dark and narrow kitchen. I heated water in it. I pushed you aside, since you didn’t know what to do and were just hovering next to your wife, and I grabbed her hand. I’d never met her before, but I shouted at her, “Push! Push harder!” I don’t know how much time passed until we heard the baby’s cry. Your house didn’t have a single strand of seaweed to make seaweed soup for your wife. Your elderly mother was blind and seemed already to be on her way over to the other world. I delivered the baby and scooped some flour from my basin and made dough for dough-flake soup and ladled it into a few bowls and put some broth into the room where the baby’s mother was. How many decades ago was it when I put the basin back on my head and came home? Is that man next to you the baby who was born that day? He’s sponging your hand. He gets you to turn over and sponges your back. It’s been a long time. Your taut neck is now wrinkly. Your thick eyebrows are no longer, and I don’t recognize your mouth. Instead of the doctor, it is now your son who says, “Father! What’s your name? Do you know what your name is?”
“Park So-nyo.”
No, that’s my name.
“Who’s Park So-nyo, Father?”
I’m curious about that, too. What am I to you? Who am I to you?
Seven or eight days after I met you, your situation weighing on my mind, I took a strand of seaweed and stopped by your house, but only the newborn was there, not your wife. You told me that your wife had suffered from three days of high fever after the birth, and finally left this world; she was so malnourished that she couldn’t make it through childbirth. Your blind mother was sitting on the old porch, and it wasn’t clear whether she knew what was going on. And the three-year-old. I suppose that man by your sickbed could be the three-year-old, not the baby.
I don’t know who I was to you, but you were my lifelong friend. Who would have known that we would be friends all these years? The first time we met, you made me feel so despondent by stealing the basin with the flour I needed to feed my children. Our children wouldn’t understand us. It would be easier for them to understand that hundreds of thousands of people died in the war than to understand you and me.
Even though I knew that your wife was gone, I couldn’t just leave, so I soaked in water the seaweed I’d brought. I made dough from the remaining flour I’d given you the other day and made dough-flake soup with seaweed; I put a bowl for each person on the table and was about to leave, but stopped to put the newborn to my breast. It was a time when I didn’t have enough milk for my own daughter. You were going around the village with the baby and feeding him donated breast milk. Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong. My elder daughter says that when you mow down weeds with a tractor, the weeds cling to the wheels of the tractor and spread seeds, to breed even at the moment they’re being cut. Your baby latched on ferociously. He suckled so hard that I felt I would be sucked in, so I slapped the baby’s bottom, which still had traces of redness from his birth. When that didn’t work, I had to force him off. A baby who’s lost its mother as soon as it’s born intuitively doesn’t want to let go when it’s near a nipple. I laid the baby down and turned to go, and you asked me what my name was. You were the first person since I got married to ask me my name. Suddenly shy, I ducked my head.
“Park So-nyo.”
You laughed then. I don’t know why I did what I did next, just that I wanted to get you to laugh one more time. Even though you didn’t ask, I told you that my older sister’s name was Tae-nyo, which means “big girl.” Our names—Little Girl and Big Girl. You laughed again. Then you said that your name was Eun-gyu and your elder brother was Kum-gyu. That your father gave you names containing the words “silver” and “gold,” with the hope that you would earn money and live well. That he called you Silver Coffer and your brother Gold Coffer. That, perhaps because of that, your brother, Gold Coffer, lived a tiny bit better than you, Silver Coffer. That time I laughed. You laughed, watching me laugh. Then or now, you look best when you’re laughing. So don’t frown like that in front of the doctor; smile. A smile doesn’t cost you any money.
Until your baby was three weeks old, I went to your house once a day and let the baby suckle. Sometimes it was early morning, sometimes in the middle of the night. Could that have been a burden for you? That was all I did for you, but for thirty years after that, I went to you whenever I hit a difficult patch. I think I started to go to you after what happened to Kyun. Because I just wanted to die. Because I thought it would be better to die. Everyone else made things difficult for me; only you didn’t ask me anything. You told me that any wound healed as time passed. That I shouldn’t think about anything, just calmly do what I was supposed to do. If you hadn’t been there I don’t know what would have happened to me; I was out of my mind with grief. You were the one who buried my fourth child, the stillborn, in the hills. Now that I think about it, did you move to Komso because I was too much for you? You weren’t someone who was meant to live on the coast or work as a fisherman. You were someone who tilled the earth and planted seeds. You were someone who didn’t have land of his own, and so tilled someone else’s. I should have realized, when you went to Komso, that you left because it was hard for you to put up with me. I see that I was a terrible person to you.
It must be that a first meeting is important. I am sure that, deep down, I always thought you owed me, and I showed it by doing whatever I wanted. Just as I found you after you stole my basin on your bicycle, I found you after you moved to Komso without telling me. You didn’t fit in at Komso. You looked out of place and strange standing by the sea. I can still see the expression on your face at the salt fields by the ocean. I was never able to forget that expression, but now that I think of it, maybe your expression was saying, Did she manage to find me even here?
Komso became a place I couldn’t forget because of you. I always came to look for you when something happened that I couldn’t handle by myself, but when I recovered some peace of mind I forgot about you. I thought I forgot about you. When you saw me in Komso, the first thing you said to me was “What’s wrong?” I’m only saying this now; when I went to see you then, it was the first time I’d gone just to see you, not because something had happened to me.
Except for that one time when you ran off to Komso, you always stayed in the same place until I stopped needing you. Thank you for staying in the same place. I might have been able to go on living because of that. I’m sorry for going to see you every time I felt unsettled, but not even letting you hold my hand. Even though I went to you, when it seemed like you were coming to me I acted unkindly. That wasn’t very nice of me. I’m sorry, so sorry. At first it was because I felt awkward, then because I felt we shouldn’t, and later it was because I was old. You were my sin and my happiness. I wanted to seem dignified in your eyes.
Sometimes I told you stories I said I’d read, but I didn’t actually read them. I had asked my daughter, and told you about them. Once, I told you that there was a place called Santiago in a country named Spain. You kept asking, “Where did you say it was?”—finding it hard to memorize that name. I told you that there was a pilgrimage route there that took thirty-three days to walk. Chi-hon wanted to go there—that’s why she told me about that place—but I told you about it as if I wanted to go there. And you said, “If you want to go so badly, let’s go together one of these days.” My heart sank when I heard you say that. I think it was after that day that I stopped coming to you. Truthfully, I don’t know where that place is, and I don’t want to go there.
Do you know what happens to all the things we did together in the past? When I asked my daughter this, although it was you I wanted to ask, my daughter said, “It’s so strange to hear you say something like this, Mom,” and asked, “Wouldn’t they have seeped into the present, not disappeared?” What difficult words! Do you understand what that means? She says that all the things that have happened are actually in the present, that old things are all mixed in with current things, and current things mingle with future things, and future things are combined with old things; it’s just that we can’t feel it. But now I can’t go on.
Do you think that things happening now are linked to things from the past and things in the future, it’s just that we can’t feel them? I don’t know, could that be true? Sometimes when I look at my grandchildren I think that they were dropped down from somewhere out of the blue, and that they have nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with me at all.
Would it have seeped in somewhere, the fact that the bicycle I saw you on when we first met had been stolen, that before you saw me walking down the avenue with the basin of flour on my head, you had planned to sell that stolen bicycle for a strand of seaweed? Or the fact that you ended up not being able to sell the bicycle, so you went to put it back where you found it, but the owner caught you and you got into trouble? Did those events seep into a page of the past and bring us all the way here?
I know that, after I disappeared, you went out and searched for me. I know that you, a man who had never been to Seoul before, came to Seoul Station and went around on the subway, stopping people who looked like me. And that you went by my house many times, hoping to hear some news about me. That you wanted to meet my children and hear what happened. Is that what made you so sick?
Your name is Lee Eun-gyu. When the doctor asks your name again, don’t say “Park So-nyo”; say “Lee Eun-gyu.” I will let go of you now. You were my secret. You were in my life, someone whose presence would never be guessed by anyone who knew me. Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you that I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy.
I’m going to go now.
The house is frozen solid.
Why did you lock the door? You should have left it open so the neighborhood children could come in and play. There’s no hint of heat anywhere. It’s like a block of ice. Nobody has swept the snow away, even though it’s snowed so much. The yard is a dazzling white. Icicles are hanging everywhere possible. When the children were growing up, they would break off the icicles and have swordfights. I suppose nobody is looking in on this house because I’m not here. It’s been a long time since anyone’s stopped by. Your motorcycle is propped up in the shed. And it’s frozen solid, too. I wish you would stop riding that motorcycle. Who rides a motorcycle at your age? Do you think you’re still young? There goes my habitual nagging once more. Then again, you looked strapping on your motorcycle, not like a man from the country. When you were young and rode into town on the motorcycle, hair pomaded, wearing a leather jacket, everyone turned to look. I think there’s a picture from that time somewhere … in the frame above the door of the master bedroom.… Oh, there it is. It was taken when you weren’t yet thirty years old. Your face is filled with passion; that’s not the case now.
I remember the first house we lived in before we rebuilt. I really loved that house. Although now that I’ve said “love,” I don’t think it was only love. We lived forty-odd years in that house that doesn’t exist anymore. I was always in that house. Always. You were there and not there. I didn’t hear from you, as if you would never come back, but then you would return. Maybe that’s why. I can see the old house in front of me, as if it’s illuminated. I remember everything. All the things that happened in that house. The things that happened in the years when the children were born, the way I waited for you and forgot about you and hated you and waited for you again. Now the house is left behind, by itself. There’s nobody here, and only the white snow is guarding the yard.
A house is such a strange thing. Everything else gets more worn when people handle it, and sometimes you can feel a person’s poison if you get too close to him, but that’s not what happens to a house. Even a good house falls apart quickly when nobody stops by. A house is alive only when there are people living in it, brushing against it, staying in it. Look at this—one end of the roof has collapsed because of the snow. In the spring you’ll have to call the person who fixes the roof. There’s a sticker with the name and number of the roof people in the television cabinet in the living room, but I don’t know if you know about it. If you call them they’ll come and take care of it. You can’t leave the house empty like this in the winter. Even if nobody is living here, you have to come by and turn the boiler on once in a while.
Did you go to Seoul? Are you looking for me there?
This room, where I put the books Chi-hon sent down when she went to Japan, is cold, too. The books look frozen solid. After she sent the books here, this became my favorite room in the house. When I could tell that my head was going to hurt, I came in here and lay down. At first it seemed like I would get better. I didn’t want to tell you that I was in pain. Then, as soon as I opened my eyes, the pain rushed at me, and I couldn’t even cook for you, but I didn’t want you to see me as a patient. That made me lonely, many times. I would go into the room with the books and lie down. One day, holding my pounding head, I promised myself that I would read at least one book that she wrote before she came back from Japan. And I went to learn how to read, still holding my head. I couldn’t continue. When I tried to learn to read, my condition quickly got worse. I was lonely because I couldn’t tell you that I was trying to learn to read. It would have hurt my pride to say something like that. When I learned to read, I wanted to do one more thing, besides reading my daughter’s book with my own eyes: to write a farewell letter to every person in the family, before I became like this.
The wind, it’s blowing so hard. The wind is rolling the snow in the yard and shifting it around.
Summer nights, when we set out the brazier and made steamed buns, were the best times we had in this yard. Hyong-chol would collect compost and make a fire to protect us from mosquitoes, and the younger ones would flop onto the platform and wait for the steamed buns to finish cooking in the pot on the brazier. When I made a whole pot of buns and set them out on a wicker tray, hands would shoot out, and the buns would all be gone. It took less time for the children to eat them than for me to steam them. As I put kindling in the brazier, I would look at the children lying on the platform together, waiting for another batch of buns, and it frightened me a little. How they could eat! Even though the fire was lit, the mosquitoes stuck incessantly to my arms and thighs and sucked my blood, and as the night became darker, the children ate all the buns and waited for more, while I kept steaming them. There were summer nights when, one by one, they fell asleep stretched over one another, waiting for the buns to cook. While they were sleeping, I would finish steaming the rest of the buns, put them in a basket, cover it, leave it on the platform, and go to sleep; the dawn dew slightly hardened the outside of the steamed buns. As soon as they woke up, the children would pull the basket toward them and eat some more. That’s why my children still like cold steamed buns, the outsides slightly hardened. There were summer nights like that. Summer nights with stars pouring down from the sky.
When I was wandering the streets, I couldn’t remember anything and my head was fuzzy, but I missed this place a lot. You don’t know how much I missed it here, this yard, under the porch, the flower garden, the well. After wandering a while, I sat down on a street and drew in the dirt what came to mind. And it was the house. I drew the gate, I drew the flower garden, I drew the ledge of clay jars, I drew the porch. I couldn’t remember anything except that house, the house that was here long before this house, that house that had disappeared a long time ago, that house with the traditional kitchen and the back yard shaded by butterbur leaves and the shed next to the pigsty. Those blue galvanized iron gates, their paint peeling. The gates of that house, with a smaller gate inset in the left one, and the mailbox to its right. There were only a few times that both gates needed to be opened, but the smaller inset gate, with a wooden handle, was always open to the alley. We never locked our doors. Even if we weren’t at home, the neighborhood children came in through the inset gate and played until the sun set. During the busy farming season, my young daughter would come home from school, climb on the bicycle on its stand under the persimmon tree in the yard emptied of people, and pedal. When I came home, she would be sitting on the edge of the porch and jump into my arms, shouting, “Mom!” When my second son ran away from home, I left food out for him in the warmest part of the room and kept both big doors of the gate wide open. When someone tripped over the rice bowl and caused it to spill, I righted it. If I woke up in the middle of the night because of the wind, I would go outside and prop the doors open with heavy rocks, in case the wind closed them. My eyes and ears were trained on the gate, every time it made a noise.
· · ·
The wardrobe is frozen solid, too.
The doors don’t even open. But it should be empty. When my head started to hurt so badly, I wanted to go to that man, whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. I thought maybe I would get better if I did. But I didn’t go. I pressed down my desire to go, and went through my things. I could feel that it was approaching, the day when I wouldn’t be able to recognize anything because I would be numb. I wanted to take care of all my things while I could still recognize them. I wrapped in a cloth the clothes I didn’t wear, which I’d hung in the wardrobe, unable to throw them out, and burned them in the fields. The underclothes that Hyong-chol bought me with his first paycheck had been in the wardrobe for decades, with the tags still on. When I was burning them, my head felt like it would split in half. I burned everything I could, except the blankets and pillows, which the children could use when they came home for the holidays. I burned the cotton blankets that my mother had made for me when I got married. I took out everything I’d spent a long time with and looked at it all again. The things I never used because I was saving them, the dishes I collected to give my elder daughter when she got married. If I’d known that she wasn’t going to get married, even though her younger sister is married and has three children, I would have given them to my younger daughter. I stupidly thought I had to give them to Chi-hon because I’d planned to give them to her. I hesitated, then took them outside and smashed them to pieces. I knew—one day I wouldn’t remember anything. And before that happened, I wanted to take care of everything I’d ever used. I didn’t want to leave anything behind. All the bottom cupboards are empty, too. I broke everything that was breakable and buried it all.
Even in that frozen wardrobe, the only winter clothing would be the black mink coat my younger daughter bought me. The year I turned fifty-five, I didn’t want to eat or go out. I spent my days buried deep in unpleasantness, feeling like my face was being torn off. When I opened my mouth, I thought I smelled something bad. At one point, I didn’t say a word for over ten days. I tried to shoo away negative thoughts, but every day a sad thought was added to my collection. Even though it was in the middle of winter, I kept dipping my hands in cold water and washing and washing them. And one day I went to church. I stopped in the churchyard. I bent over the feet of the Holy Mother, who was holding her dead son, to pray for her help to pull me out of this depression, which I couldn’t stand any longer, to beg her to take pity on me. But then I stopped myself, wondering what more I could ask of someone holding her dead son. During mass, I saw that the woman in front of me was wearing a black mink coat. Drawn by its softness, I quietly lowered my face to it, without even realizing I was doing it. The mink, like a spring breeze, gently embraced my old face. The tears I’d been holding back poured out. The woman moved away when I kept trying to rest my head on her mink coat. When I got home, I called my younger daughter and asked her to buy me a mink coat. It was the first time I’d opened my mouth in ten days.
“A mink coat, Mom?”
“Yes, a mink coat.”
She was quiet.
“Are you going to buy me one or not?”
“It’s not that cold this year. Do you have someplace to wear a mink coat to?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
She laughed out loud at my curt replies. “Come to Seoul, then. We can go shopping together.”
As we walked into the department store, to the mink coats, my daughter kept looking at me without saying anything. I had no idea that my mink coat, which was slightly shorter than the one I had buried my face in, the one that woman in church was wearing, was such an expensive thing. My daughter didn’t tell me. When we went home with the mink coat, my daughter-in-law’s eyes bulged. “A mink coat, Mother!”
I was quiet.
“You’re so lucky, Mother. To have a daughter who buys you expensive things like this. I haven’t even been able to buy my mother a fox scarf. They say a mink gets handed down for generations. When you pass away, you should leave it to me.”
“It’s the first time Mom ever asked me to buy something for her! Stop it!”
When my daughter shot back at her sister-in-law as if she was angry, I realized it. The reason she kept looking at the price tag, again and again. And the reason she kept looking at me. At that time, she had just graduated from college and was working at a hospital pharmacy. When I got back from Seoul, I took the mink coat and went to a similar store in town and asked the girl working in the mink-coat department how much it cost. I froze. Who knew one piece of clothing could cost so much! I called my daughter to tell her that we should return the coat, and she told me, “Mom, you have every right to wear that coat. You should wear it.”
In this region, there are very few cold days in winter, so I could wear a mink coat only occasionally. Once, I didn’t wear it for three years. When I had depressed thoughts, I opened the wardrobe and buried my face in the mink coat. And I thought, When I die, I will leave it to my younger daughter.
Although it’s frozen now, in the spring the flower garden near the wall will come alive again. The blossoms on the neighbor’s pear tree will bloom, and their scent will float over. The rose vines with pale-pink buds will flex their spikes, cheering. The weeds under the wall will grow thick and tall with the first spring rain. Once, I bought thirty ducklings from under the bridge in town and let them out in the yard, and they rushed over to the flower garden and stepped on all the flowers. When they ran around in packs with the chicks, it was hard to tell which were ducklings and which were chicks. Anyway, in the spring, the yard was noisy because of them. It was in this yard that my daughter, who was digging under the rosebush, saying that it would yield a lot of flowers if it was given manure, saw a wriggling worm in the dirt, threw the short hoe aside, and ran inside; the hoe hit a chick and killed it. I remember the wave of the smell of dirt that would reach my nose when, in the summer, a sudden rain fell, and the dog and chickens and ducks that had been wandering around the yard crawled under the porch and into the chicken cages and under the wall. I remember the droplets of dirt formed by the sudden rain. On windy late-fall nights, the leaves of the persimmon tree in the side yard would rustle off and fly around. All night, we would hear them scuttling across the yard. During snowy winter nights, the wind would blow the snow piled in the yard onto the porch.
Someone is opening the gate. Ah, Aunt!
You were an aunt to my children and a sister to me, but I was never able to call you “sister”: you seemed more like my mother-in-law. I see you have come to check on the house, because it’s snowing and windy. I thought nobody was here to look after this house, forgetting that you’re here. But why are you limping? You’re always so spry. I guess you’re getting old, too. Be careful—it’s snowy.
“Anyone home?”
Your voice is still powerful, like it’s always been.
“Nobody’s here, right?”
You are calling out even though you know nobody is here. You sit on the edge of the porch, not waiting for an answer. Why did you come without wearing enough layers? You’ll catch a cold. You’re looking at the snow in the yard as if you’re somewhere else. What are you thinking?
“It feels like someone’s here.…”
Halfway to being a ghost, Aunt.
“I don’t know where you’re wandering around when it’s this cold.”
Are you talking about me?
“The summer went by, and fall went by, and it’s winter.… I didn’t know you were such a heartless person. What is this house going to do without you? It’s just an empty shell. You left wearing summer clothes, and you haven’t come back even though it’s winter—are you already someone of the other world?”
Not yet. I’m wandering around like this.
“The saddest person in the world is the one who dies outside their home.… Please be alert and come back home.”
Are you crying?
Your eyes, long slants, look up at the gray sky and become wet. Your eyes aren’t scary at all, now that you’re acting like this. I was always so frightened by your stern eyes that I honestly didn’t look at your face, so as not to meet your eyes. But I think I liked you better when you were no-nonsense. This doesn’t seem like you, sitting with your shoulders drooping. I was never able to hear anything nice from you when I was alive, so why do I have to look at your dejected figure now? I don’t like seeing you weak. I wasn’t only afraid of you. If something difficult happened and I didn’t know what to do, I thought, What would Aunt do? And I would choose what I thought you would do. So you were my role model, too. You know I have a temper. All the relationships in the world are two-way, not determined by one side. And now you’re going to have to look after Hyong-chol’s father, who’s all alone. I don’t feel good about it, either. But since you are near him, I feel a little better. When I was alive, I knew full well that you were depending on Hyong-chol’s father, since you were all alone, and I didn’t feel hurt or left out or disappointed. I just thought of you as a difficult elder of the family. So much so that you felt like our mother and not our sister. But, Aunt … I don’t want to go to the grave set aside for me a few years ago at the ancestral grave site. I don’t want to go there. When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death. It was sunny, and I liked the pine tree that stood bent but tall, but remaining a member of this family even in death would be too much and too hard. To try to change my mind, I would sing and pull weeds, sitting there until the sun set, but nothing made me feel comfortable there. I lived with this family for over fifty years; please let me go now. Back then, when we were assigning grave sites and you said my plot should go on a site down the slope from yours, I glared and said, “Oh, so even when I’m dead I can do your errands.” I remember saying that. Don’t be upset about it, Aunt. I thought about it a long time, but I didn’t say that with ill will. I just want to go home. I’ll go rest there.
Oh, I see the shed door is open.
The wind is pounding at the shed door as if it would knock it down. There’s a thin layer of ice on the wooden platform that I liked to sit on. If someone sat there without seeing the ice, he would slip right off. Chi-hon used to read in this shed. Getting bitten by fleas. I knew that she crept in here with a book, in between the pigsty and the ash shed. I didn’t look for her. When Hyong-chol asked where she was, I said I didn’t know. Because I liked seeing her read. Because I didn’t want to disturb her. Straw was piled on the board covering the pigsty. Chickens would have taken over one side and would be laying and sitting on eggs. Nobody would find the child squeezed in there, on top of the straw pile, putting spit on her flea bites to soothe them, reading. How much fun must it have been for her to hide there, reading, hearing her brother opening doors, pushing into the kitchen, looking for her? And the chickens, how particular were they? Huddled over eggs on the straw pile on top of the pigsty, they would get annoyed at the sound of my daughter turning pages. These chickens, who didn’t lay eggs if we didn’t make their nests cozy and tempting with nest eggs, became sensitive to Chi-hon’s rustling, and one time they cackled so much that her brother found her. What did she read, hidden quietly in the shed, with a pig grunting next to her and the chickens clucking above her and the hoe and rake and shovel and all kinds of farm equipment and straw around her?
In the spring, the dog, growling, would lie with her new litter under the porch, where the family’s winter shoes were scattered. You could hear the water dripping from the eaves. That gentle dog, why did she get so aggressive when she had pups? Unless you were a member of the family, you couldn’t get near her. When she had a litter, Hyong-chol would repaint the sign on the blue gate that always hung there, the one that said “Beware of Dog.” Once, I took a puppy from the porch while the dog was sleeping after her dinner, put it in a basket, covered it with a cloth, and, with my hand, covered where I thought the eyes were, and brought it to Aunt’s.
“Why are you covering its eyes when it’s so dark out, Mom?” asked my younger daughter, following me. She looked confused, even after I explained that if I didn’t do it the pup would find its way home.
“Even though it’s so dark?”
“Yes, even though it’s this dark!”
When the dog discovered that her puppy was gone, she refused to eat, and lay around, sick. She had to eat to make enough milk to feed the other puppies, so they could grow. It looked like she would die if I left her alone, so I brought the pup back and pushed it next to her, and the dog started eating again. That dog lived under that porch.
Oh, I don’t know where to stop these memories, the memories that are sprouting all over the place like spring greens. Everything I forgot about is rushing back. From the rice bowls on the kitchen shelf to the big and little clay jars on the condiment ledge, from the narrow wooden stairs to the attic to the pumpkin vines spreading thick under the dirt wall, climbing up.
You shouldn’t leave the house to freeze like this.
If it’s too much, ask our younger daughter-in-law for help. She always carefully looked after their house, even though it wasn’t their own. She has an eye for this kind of thing, and she’s exact and warm. Even though she works, her house is always sparkling clean, and she doesn’t even have help. If it’s hard to maintain the house, try talking to her. I’m telling you, if she touches an old thing it becomes new. Don’t you remember how they rented, in the redevelopment area, a brick house that the owner didn’t maintain, and she mixed cement with her own hands and fixed it? A house takes on the characteristics of its occupant, and, depending on who lives in it, it can become a very good house or a very strange house. When spring comes, please plant some flowers in the yard, and rub down the floors, and fix the roof that collapsed from the snow.
A few years ago, when someone asked you while you were drunk where you lived, you said Yokchon-dong. Even though it’s been twenty years since Hyong-chol left Yokchon-dong. Even though Yokchon-dong has become faint even in my memory. You never really showed happiness or sadness. When Hyong-chol bought his first house, in Yokchon-dong, in Seoul, you didn’t say much, but in your heart I suppose you were very proud. And that’s why, when you were drunk, you forgot about this house and you named that house, where we would go three or four times a year, like guests, and stay one or sometimes two nights. I wish you would think about this house in that way. Around this house, small flowers bloomed every year and lived prettily until they faded, in the corner of the yard or near the back yard, without my having to plant them. In the yard and under the porch and in the back yard, something was always gathering or coming or going or dying. Birds landed on the clothesline as if they were talking laundry, and they played and chattered and twittered. I do think that a house starts resembling the people who live there. Otherwise, would the ducks living in that house have roamed around the yard and laid eggs anywhere? Otherwise, would I remember so clearly how, on a sunny day, I would sweep thinly sliced dried radish or boiled taro stems into a wicker tray and perch it on top of the dirt wall? Would the image of my daughter’s newly washed, clean white sneakers drying under the sunlight hover like this? Chi-hon liked to look at the sky reflected in the well over there. I can almost see her interrupting herself as she drew water from the well, looking down with her chin in her hands.
Be well.… I’m leaving this house now.
Last summer, when I was left behind at Seoul Station, I could only remember things from when I was three years old. Having forgotten everything, I could do nothing but walk—I didn’t even know who I was. I walked and walked. Everything was foggy. The yard I used to play in when I was three came clearly to me. That was when my father, who dug for gold and coal, came home. I walked as far as I could go. In between apartment buildings, along grassy hills and soccer fields, I walked and walked. Where did I want to go, walking like that? Could it be the yard I played in as a three-year-old? When Father came home, he went to work every morning at the construction site for a new train station that was ten ri away. What was the accident he had? What kind of accident was it that cost him his life? They say that when neighbors came to tell Mom about Father’s accident, I was running around the yard. I played, watching Mom staggering, her face turning ashen, supported by neighbors, going to the accident site. Someone passing by said, “Here you are laughing, not even knowing that your father died, you silly child,” and smacked my bottom. With only that memory, I walked and walked until I collapsed from exhaustion.
Over there.
Mom is sitting on the porch of the dim house I was born in.
Mom raises her head and looks at me. My grandmother had a dream when I was being born. A cow with a shiny brown coat was stretching, having just woken, raising its knees. My grandmother said I would be very energetic, since I was born just as the cow was using its energy to get up, and said that I should be well taken care of, because I would become the source of a lot of joy. Mom looks at my foot, the strap of the blue plastic sandal digging into it. The bone is visible through the wound in my foot. Mom’s face crumples in sorrow. That face is the face I saw when I looked into the mirror of the wardrobe after I gave birth to a dead baby. “My baby,” Mom says, and opens her arms. Mom puts her hands under my armpits as if she’s holding a child who has just died. She takes the blue plastic sandals off my feet and pulls my feet into her lap. Mom doesn’t smile. She doesn’t cry. Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?