by Ae-ran Kim
* * *
My mom knew that a new life wasn’t so much born as it burst. She’d always known this. After all, she was a country girl. All the flowers, animals, and insects ripped through an opening smaller than themselves, exploding like a firecracker as if they had waited forever, as if they couldn’t wait another second. They burst into life like laughter, like jeers, like applause. Boom! Boom! Their bodies were fully formed; when you looked at the discarded shell, you marveled at how those large wings and legs and other parts had been packed so compactly inside.
In late spring, my mom gave birth to me after all kinds of agony. Unusual for a preemie, I burst out ferociously, confidently. To lessen the impact of that rupture I instinctively understood that I had to cry very loudly. But I didn’t know what it meant to cry, and I didn’t know what I had to do in order to cry. A hot, pliable something surged from inside me, but I felt nauseated and dizzy. I couldn’t make a peep. I had been breathing through my umbilical cord and now I was forced to use my lungs for the very first time. A tense silence hung in the delivery room. The doctor scooped me up and slapped my bottom. It hurt. I wanted to rage! But instead I burst into tears.
“Good, good,” the heartless doctor soothed. “He’s crying!” He brought me to my mom’s breast. She must have been so looking forward to that moment of introduction, but I was mortified that I was covered in all sorts of fluids. Like all newborns, I could barely see, but as soon as I nestled against her and felt her heartbeat, I relaxed. I knew that sound.
Mom looked solemnly down at me and made a strange noise out of her mouth. “Areum, I’m your mom.” Then she began to bawl. Later, she told me that she didn’t know why she was sobbing, only that she was suddenly feeling every human emotion all at the same time—sorrow and joy, pride and shame, relief and hurt, hollowness and satisfaction—the full range and force of which she had never experienced before. She wasn’t self-conscious; she no longer cared how she would be seen by anyone else. She simply disintegrated, like the controlled collapse of a high-rise.
I imagine there are only one or two times in a person’s lifetime that one cries like that, when one’s child is born and when one’s child dies. I felt relieved as I listened to my mom keen like an animal. I was born to people who cry like me. I made my mother feel something, and though I didn’t fully understand it, her tears told me that I wasn’t a completely worthless presence.
The family had been worried sick because of my mom’s preeclampsia, and when they heard the word “healthy” everyone was overjoyed. My grandmother collapsed, wiping her eyes, and my grandfather and dad, who had never before touched each other, embraced, swept up in the moment. The wailing that started with me before moving over to my mom passed through my grandfather and sank into my dad, until we were all crying. Even though they weren’t the ones who were just born, they bawled loudly, as if they knew that crying signified that they were alive, as if they wanted to live even though they were already alive. Among them all, my dad was the one who cried the hardest as he held me for the first time, his hands trembling. He wept twice as loud and three times as long as anyone else, deeply ashamed that he had been secretly praying that he wouldn’t be made a father, so much so that the nurses rolled their eyes.
2
I turned sixteen this year. People say it’s a miracle that I’ve lived this long. I think so, too; not very many people in my situation have lived past their sixteenth birthdays. But I believe that the larger miracle exists in the ordinary, in the living of an ordinary life and dying at an ordinary age. To me the miracles are my parents, my aunts and uncles, our next-door neighbors, the middle of summer and the middle of winter.
I’m no miracle.
* * *
A few years ago, a neighbor asked my parents, “So you don’t know what caused it? There’s no treatment?”
“Right,” Dad said.
“Then that’s not a disease.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s a message.” She was holding a worn Bible and a rosary.
“Ma’am,” Dad said, bristling. “He’s not a message. He’s Areum. His name is Han Areum.”
In the moment I was embarrassed about my gentle, round name that is at odds with my appearance, but I was also proud—my dad was all grown up. As a teenager, he had looked down like he had done something wrong when people said things like that, but now he tried to protect us from insensitive people. Still, he must have been upset. That night, he stumbled home drunk, holding a bag of cheap dumplings. It wasn’t the first time someone said something so rude to us, so I don’t know why it affected him like that. He came into my room and laid his head on my frail legs.
“Areum, what kind of music do you like?” he asked, grinning.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. I want to know what my son likes to listen to.”
With my dim eyes I looked over my glasses at my father, my incredibly young dad, and smiled. I wanted to make him feel better. “Anything a pretty girl sings.”
“Me tooooo!” he hollered, springing up. “Lee Hyori’s the bomb!”
I raised both arms high and yelled, “Park Jiyoon is the bomb!” as loud as I could, though my voice wasn’t as powerful as I wanted it to be.
Dad jumped up and down. “Uhm Jung Hwa’s the bomb!”
“Sung Yuri’s the bomb!”
“BoA’s the bomb!” He suddenly grew quiet. “You know what, Areum? The older you get, the more you start liking sad songs. And the saddest song in the world is what you listen to when you’re drunk. So when you’re grown up, make sure you’re drunk when you listen to ballads, okay?”
“Okay, Dad.” I grinned gummily, revealing my few remaining teeth. “Dad?”
“Huh?”
“Are you sad right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Because of me?”
“Yeah.”
“What can I do to make you feel better?”
He stared at me, thinking something over. “I don’t know what you can do to make me feel better, but I know what you shouldn’t do.”
“And what’s that?”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s a privilege for someone to be sad for someone else.”
I was quiet.
“Me, I’m just happy that you’re the reason I’m sad.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So you—you—”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“When you grow up, I hope you’ll be sad for someone. And when you’re sad, you should cry. Like a little kid.”
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m already a kid.”
“Right. I know.”
* * *
I usually read books when I was alone. At first I followed along with the school curriculum, but soon ended up reading other titles out of boredom. Books were everything to me—a grandmother who told me stories all night long, a teacher who imparted all the knowledge in the world, a friend who shared their secrets and problems. Philosophy was difficult and I still don’t understand many parts of those books, but I thought of them as a long, elegant poem. I figured the parts that didn’t make sense to me would someday walk toward me and say hi, the way important lessons usually sink in later in life. They made my heart race without having to physically run.
I liked everything composed of paper and print no matter the genre or thickness, from illustrated guides to insect, plant, and marine life to collections of poetry that stomped all over my heart to social science tomes that slapped my mind awake. Among them were random books for beginners: Go’s First Steps, What Is Golf, Beginning Japanese, Basics of Electrical Engineering, Classical Music for Beginners, Easy Feminism. I don’t know why I chose to read them. I studied electrical engineering, but I couldn’t change a single light bulb without becoming slick with sweat; I memorized hiragana but never set foot in Japan. I didn’t read for the love of knowledge but rather
with the anxiety of someone who would be the sole survivor when the world ended. If someone were to ask me how I could read all of that at my young age, I would reply that a person could do a surprising number of things if they were alone for a long time. Not because of their determination, mind you, but because they have to fill the time somehow. I liked fiction best, of course. Everything from the oldest story of humankind to a brand-new debut novel by a young author, from the story with the most mass appeal to experimental works penned by an author who wanted to flip the bird at the older writers in the canon. Books I didn’t have a chance to read and maybe never would kept being published.
I’d stealthily grown old while I hung out with all the writers in the world. Or maybe I didn’t grow old while I hung out with the books; maybe I was drawn to them because I was old. My skin had cratered long ago and my hair had been thinning for many years now, but despite my elderly appearance, I didn’t have the corresponding experience or wisdom. My wrinkles didn’t have layers or volume; my aging was a hollow process. I knew nothing about the lives of older people or the thoughts and problems of the youth. Thankfully, books contained a lot of that, even if they didn’t encompass everything.
* * *
Sometimes Mom asked, “Areum, what are you reading?”
“Just essays, Mom. This writer went suddenly blind at age seven when his mother died. But then eight years later, he could just see one day. Like a miracle.”
“Is it a novel?”
“No, it’s a memoir. Listen to this. So when he could see, the first thing he did was rush to the bookstore because he was afraid he might lose his sight again. The first book he grabbed was The Idiot.”
“Why? Is that a famous book?”
“To him it was, because his father always called him idiot when he was little. Isn’t that funny?”
Mom smiled bashfully. “I have a potty mouth, too.”
* * *
Another day Dad asked, “Areum, what are you reading?”
“A novel, Dad.” My breath whistled through my missing teeth. “It’s about a boy and his family who are moving to America, but before they get there they are stranded by a storm.”
“Yeah?”
“So this boy is left in the middle of the Pacific with a tiger. At a certain point he’s more afraid of despair than the tiger, but when the tiger disappears, he breaks down in tears.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“No, I swear it does. If you read it you understand why that is.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, really,” I said, my voice trembling. “So, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“When you feel alone, when the world feels like the vast Pacific?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be your tiger.”
Dad didn’t say anything for a while, then stroked my head. “A toothless tiger, I guess?”
* * *
On yet another day, my sixty-year-old neighbor, Little Grandpa Jang, asked, “What’s that?”
“It’s a really awful book that adults shouldn’t read.”
“I’ve had a pretty awful life. More awful than you’ll ever understand. And you better believe that I’ve done some unimaginably horrible things. So hand it over.” Little Grandpa Jang flipped through the book, which I’d brought over as a joke, and was immediately pulled into the racy, provocative stories. This was an old book that had been banned in China. Grandpa Jang insisted on borrowing it from me.
A few days later, I was walking by Little Grandpa Jang’s house when I heard voices from the front yard. Little Grandpa Jang’s father, ninety-year-old Big Grandpa Jang, was scolding his son. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was about but I clearly heard Big Grandpa Jang boom, “When will you grow up!”
A book flew over the wall and landed by my feet. It was the book.
* * *
As I read other writers’ words I naturally wanted to write something myself. I’d always scribbled in my diary and composed essays and movie reviews to post online. A few of them were so popular that dozens of comments were tacked on below, and some were even designated as recommended reads. Only recently did I decide to write a real story. I made that decision a few months ago, when I came home from the ICU. In the hospital I had been hooked up to a respirator, drifting in and out of consciousness. It seemed that my parents had been told to prepare themselves for the worst. I’d had a few health crises before, but this time was very serious. My grandmother, uncles, and other relatives came to visit me in the ICU. I’m sure everyone thought this was the end. Taking turns sitting by my bed, they talked among themselves. I sank into a deep, faraway sleep. Sometimes, even though my eyes were closed, I was clearheaded. Nobody realized I was conscious when that happened, so people spoke honestly.
“You shouldn’t have had an abortion that time,” my grandmother told my mom.
“Shhh!” Mom hissed. “Don’t bring that up in front of Areum!”
“I’m saying it to you because you’re as precious to me as he is to you, you silly girl. I thought you’d grow up once you had a kid.”
Another time one of my uncles said, “Mira, I’m sorry I couldn’t lend you money. I know you were disappointed. But we were really struggling.”
Once I heard one of my aunts say to Mom, “Remember when Areum was learning how to write? And how he wrote on the wall, ‘Han Daesu is a dummy’? Remember how funny that was?”
I found myself having an otherworldly experience during that time. The stories I was hearing mixed together with what I already knew and became reconstituted as a movie. I was the actor, but I was also behind the camera. Reality and daydreams merged as one. My dad was wearing a school uniform that was too short, with the hem of his pants hitting his ankles. My mom hunched in front of the vanity, popping pimples. I saw their expressions as they kissed by a stream. Other images flashed past in sepia—my dad smiling proudly in front of his business; my mom, with me on her back, mesmerized by a dress hanging in a shopwindow; my dad being beaten by his boss at a convenience store after being wrongly accused of stealing; my mom running out of our house barefoot to yell at the kids teasing me. I was reliving our history, though it wasn’t completely factual or completely made-up. It was all very clear but dim, distant but close. My family’s stories stacked up in my heart, one by one, like stones tossed into a well.
A few days later, I woke up to find Dad wailing on the floor. The heartbeat monitor showed some irregularity and he had thought the end was here.
“Dad, what are you doing?” I asked, startling and then embarrassing everyone.
I had been given another chance. A miracle like that happened only once in a lifetime. Maybe what saved me was my desire to hear more of my family’s stories.
When I came home from the hospital, my parents asked me what I wanted for my upcoming birthday. I’d never really asked for anything before, but I boldly requested a laptop. My parents hesitated. Perhaps that was more expensive than what they were expecting. They huddled in the corner to discuss, then awkwardly smiled at me and agreed. It was a clunky used laptop, but I’d been wanting one for a while, so I hugged that heavy thing to my chest as though it were a puppy, and grinned like an idiot to show my parents how much I loved it. It was perfect timing; I’d been wanting to do something I needed a computer for.
3
Despite their teenage insolence and arrogance, when I was born my parents realized just how much they didn’t know. They didn’t know how to properly hold a baby; they had never handled something so small and fragile. For a long time, my dad’s hands shook every time he held me. He knew he had to support my neck but was terrified that he would drop me. This was my dad, who was never intimidated by anyone at a Tae Kwon Do match, no matter how big. And yet he was cowed by a newborn who only weighed two kilograms. He turned to my mom with a profound epiphany. “I never imagined I would have to learn how to hold someone. That never even occurred to me.”
My mom was equally ill at eas
e. She had read books before giving birth and had taken the neighborhood women’s advice to heart, but practice was different from theory. If she couldn’t figure out why I was crying inconsolably, she would wring her hands and bawl even louder. “Areum, don’t cry. Okay? Please don’t cry.”
My grandmother, on the other hand, handled me skillfully. She moved calmly and leisurely, knowing exactly what I needed. My mom heaped praise on her, asking, “Mom, how do you know how to do that?,” and my grandmother answered in a rather bored way, unmoved by her daughter’s gratitude, “It’s not easy to raise a child, you know.”
There was much more that my parents had to learn: how to feed me, how to get me to sleep, how to bathe me, how to understand me. They had to learn everything, as if they were the newborns. Before me, they had no idea how expensive strollers were or how quickly they would go through diapers. They couldn’t remember if DDT or DPT was the vaccine. They didn’t realize how many attempts a baby made before it could flip over. They also didn’t know how proud they would be, and how thrilled I would look, once I succeeded.
* * *
From time to time my dad addressed my chronically sleep-deprived mom as they lay in bed. “Mira, are you asleep?”
“No.”
“I was thinking about Areum.”
“Hm?”
“Isn’t it amazing that he can’t do any of the things that every human knows how to do?”
“Mm-hmm,” Mom replied drowsily.
“And parents are the ones who teach a baby everything.”