From outside, if she looked carefully, she could see a faint light seeping out of #101. The glow of the TV was blunted by the dew. As it mixed with the trapped moisture, the light grew soft.
Se-oh turned her back on the light and slowly walked away. Toward the place that the darkness made look like an empty void.
EPILOGUE
Her mother was staring vacantly at the veranda window. Ever since she’d stopped dyeing her hair, claiming that the dye was bad for her eyes, her hair had gone completely white, making her look older and more feeble. Ki-jeong glanced over at her on her way into the kitchen to cook. Their dinners together, with just the two of them, were quiet.
She sometimes thought about the noisy dinners they’d shared when her younger sister was around. There were times when she felt that her failure to properly enjoy those evenings had left her with these too-quiet evenings instead. But it was nothing more than a belated thought. Such regrets were common when someone was gone; they weren’t for her sister’s sake, but for Ki-jeong alone.
“How was work?” her mom asked.
Ki-jeong automatically nodded yes before realizing that her mother had not asked, “Is work going okay?” She normally asked simply to confirm that Ki-jeong was doing well, but today was different.
“Every day’s the same,” Ki-jeong said with a smile.
Her mom smiled back. It had been a long time since they did that. Shared a smile.
Ki-jeong had followed her suspension with a leave of absence; having returned to work after a year off, it was, in a word, okay. Every now and then she bumped into the principal in the hallway and would mumble hello. When he was in a good mood, he would respond by commenting on the weather, his hands clasped behind his back. Ki-jeong would follow suit by glancing out the window at the sky and remarking on how clear it was or how it looked like rain. She made no special effort to try to improve his mood or to get an apology for the unfair treatment she’d suffered. The extent of their camaraderie—greeting each other and inquiring after each other’s welfare purely out of etiquette—wasn’t the worst way of knowing people.
Once she realized that her judgment was not always going to be exact and correct, and that it didn’t have to be, she stopped feeling obligated to perform the role of a teacher. She was still afraid of giving her students the wrong impression, but she found the courage to admit when she was not sure or did not know the answer to one of their questions.
Maybe it was the way her mother had phrased the question this time, but Ki-jeong found herself wanting to come clean. After clearing the table, her mother said she was going to lie down for a moment. Ki-jeong followed her into the room. Her mother looked at her quizzically.
She’d gone over it in her mind so many times. How she would begin. When she should tell her. How much she should tell. Contrary to how she’d imagined it, she began with what had happened with her job. After she was done, her mother asked what had become of Do-jun, the boy who’d gotten her in trouble. He was in his graduating year now. She ran into him sometimes in the hallway. His face would turn stony and he would pretend not to see her. She knew, the moment she turned her back on him, he would make fun of her or pretend to take off one of his slippers and hit someone with it, but she never let on that she knew. Nothing had changed. Ki-jeong and the boy both continued to believe their own truths. Nevertheless, it drove home to her the passage of time. It was enough to have realized that they believed different things. Her mother gently stroked Ki-jeong’s hand.
Then she brought up her sister. She’d put it off for so long, but once she began talking, it was easy to get the words out, just as it always was when something was finally behind you. She told her mother about holding her sister’s funeral alone, about taking legal steps to void her debt, and about all that she’d learned from her sister’s friends.
Her mother listened quietly the entire time. She didn’t interrupt to ask for more details. She didn’t demand to know what something meant or how something had happened. She simply listened. Which was fortunate. If Ki-jeong had had to retell any part of it, she might have lied and said it was all a bad joke, just to get out of it.
All her mother needed now was time. Time to swallow her sadness and guilt and pity. Ki-jeong rose to give her mother some space to herself.
“It must’ve been so cold,” her mother said quietly.
Her tone was gentle, but it was hard to tell what she meant. Ki-jeong looked down at her. Her mother’s chin dropped to her chest. Her head hung so low that her neck looked broken. Her shoulders rounded. She brought both hands up to cover her face. Every gesture happened very slowly, as if she were gathering her strength. Quietly, she wept. Ki-jeong stared at her crying mother. Should she put her arm around her, or clasp her shaking hands? She wondered, but did nothing.
Looking at her this way, her mother looked small and so thin that her collarbone stood out in sharp relief. Her once-taut skin had lost its firmness—had probably lost it a long time ago—and faint age spots had spread across her cheeks. Her short hair was stylish but also emphasized her angular face, making her appear peevish and tired.
Ki-jeong sometimes had trouble seeing the connection between herself and her mom, but seeing her up close now, it didn’t take any effort. It wasn’t because of their facial features that instantly gave them away as mother and daughter. Ki-jeong and her mother sometimes lashed out at each other, clawed at each other, and scared each other. But they were always together. They ate together, folded the laundry as they watched television side by side, went to the bathhouse where they took turns scrubbing each other’s backs, after which they shared a small carton of milk and shook out their wet hair before heading home. Other than when teacher training took her away from home, Ki-jeong was always by her mother’s side. Maybe that was why her sister was gone while Ki-jeong remained.
Another fit of shivers came over her mother. Though she knew it was not because she was cold, Ki-jeong grabbed a light quilt and covered her with it. Her mother let her. Finally, she realized what her mother had meant when she said, “It must’ve been so cold.” Her sister had slipped into the river in the dead of winter. It would have been freezing, and terrifying.
So much of her mother’s life had changed because of her sister. The thought hadn’t really occurred to her before. Her mother was only thirty-five when she’d found out about Ki-jeong’s half-sister’s existence. That was younger than Ki-jeong was now. Learning that her husband had had a baby with another woman would have filled her with suspicion and resentment. She would have become depressed and helpless, and her regrets and her skepticism toward life would have grown. She’d probably felt like her life had been stolen right out from under her. Sometimes she had been unable to overcome her anger at the situation and lashed out at Ki-jeong, beating her. She’d had no one to rely on but her daughter. And so she’d grown vicious, paranoid that her own child was conspiring with someone to make a fool of her.
Her mother and father had stayed together, but as far as Ki-jeong could tell, they lived as little more than acquaintances. They ate at the same table for the most part. Sometimes her mother even hand-washed his underwear for him. Whenever there was a family gathering, they got into the car together, sat next to each other, ate together, and talked and laughed with relatives. When her father died, her mother poured her all into giving him a proper funeral. Ki-jeong had figured it was simply what you did for someone you’d lived in the same house with for so long.
Watching her cry now, Ki-jeong realized she’d had it all wrong. Her mother wept. It was the first time she’d seen her mother weep like that. Ki-jeong held her mother’s trembling hand. Her mother did not pull away. It didn’t seem like she wanted to hold hands so much as she was too weak to resist.
As Ki-jeong watched her continue to weep, she thought about how her mother used to give her younger sister her daily baths. The look on her mother’s face had always been flat and harsh, less like she was bathing a young child than scrubbing a mud-caked, o
versized radish. Her mother had regarded herself as the child’s babysitter. Though she didn’t love the girl, she had probably wanted to raise her just to prove that she could. With the same look on her face as when she did the laundry or the dishes, she’d shampooed the girl’s hair and scrubbed off the dirt and dead skin and rinsed her face with water, the girl’s eyes squeezed tight to keep the soap out. Without any of the wonder of gazing upon a child’s growing body or marveling at how they could chew food with such tiny teeth. No different from scrubbing a stain out of some clothes or a grease spot off of a dish.
And yet, her mother had rinsed off kimchi to feed to Ki-jeong’s little sister, who couldn’t eat spicy food. She’d taught her numbers and letters with a reluctant look on her face and a forceful tone to her voice. As the girl grew older, she taught her the English alphabet and the times tables. She scolded her when she chewed her nails, helped her to trim her ingrown toenails, and cleaned her ears of wax. When the seasons changed or the child grew, she bought her new clothes. On the first day of elementary school, she went with her to the entrance ceremony. She attended parent-teacher conferences. She signed her report cards, and under the question, “What do you hope your child grows up to be?” on the girl’s student records, she wrote in “teacher.” When the girl got her first period, she did not congratulate her or start treating her like an adult, but she kept the bathroom stocked with menstrual pads.
During that time, Ki-jeong never once saw her mother laugh or stroke the girl’s head or tuck her in at night or speak warmly to her. Her mother did everything in silence, her expression flat. Ki-jeong was grown by then and didn’t need that kind of care. Though she loved her and depended on her, Ki-jeong gradually grew apart from her mother. But her sister was young enough to have to depend on their unloving mother.
As the child grew, she began to act free-willed and independent. In truth, their mother and Ki-jeong gave her no choice. She was always there; Ki-jeong and their mother simply refused to meet her halfway, unwilling as they were to grow close. They looked askance at her secret, at the enigma of the girl who would never really be the same as them.
Ever since she’d joined them, their lives had all branched out, away from each other’s. It wasn’t strange at the time, and it still wasn’t. They’d simply realized—her mother through her sister, her sister through her loveless family, and Ki-jeong through her mother—that life had a way of unfolding beyond anyone’s control.
Ki-jeong squeezed her mother’s limp hand. Her mother was still weeping. She put her arm around her shoulders; this time, as well, her mother let Ki-jeong pull her close. Her mother felt weightless. Only after she became aware that the sense of weight-lessness wasn’t because her mother was so thin and light but rather because Ki-jeong was leaning on her mother, and that her mother was stroking her arm as if she were a small child, did she finally figure it out.
Ki-jeong knew now what the very first thing was that she should have done for her sister. It was not feeling guilty, or inspecting her phone records, or even tracking down Se-oh.
What she should have done was feel sad that her little sister was gone and would never come back. It should have tugged at her to know that her sister spent her final moments alone. She should have missed her. Just as their mother was doing now. Not because she felt sorry for her, or guilty. Simply because she missed her. That was the first step to mourning.
The Law of Lines Page 20