by Ae-ran Kim
“Right.”
“I don’t remember how it happened when I was a baby.”
“Yeah.”
“And isn’t it so weird to count his age in terms of days or weeks or months? How does that even make sense?”
“It doesn’t,” Mom agreed listlessly.
Our neighbor’s peaceful snores came through the concrete wall. That young man had recently begun looking haggard because I kept waking him up.
A long time passed.
“Mira, are you asleep?” Dad asked again.
“No.”
“I was thinking about Areum.”
“Hm?”
“You know how he looks at us and moves his lips? Doesn’t it look like he has a lot to say? What do you think he wants to talk about? I wish there was some kind of translation device or something. So we know what he wants to say. So we can hear all of it.”
Mom was silent.
“And you know how he smiles when he’s sleeping? Do you think babies dream? He smiles like he’s the Buddha. I wish I could tape everything he dreams and watch it. To see what he dreams about. Do you think kids dream in color?”
She remained quiet.
“What do you think? Aren’t you curious?”
“Hey, Daesu?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m curious. I’m dying to know. So—”
“Yeah?”
“Let me sleep.”
* * *
With my appearance many changes came to our house, the most obvious being the change in color. Our plain, one-room home, hastily prepared for the newlyweds, was soon filled with baby gear, all in primary colors. Everything changed gradually but also suddenly, the way winter becomes spring. A lot of things were geared to aid the development of my senses: hearing, sight, touch, and smell. They affected not only my senses but also my parents’ as they reexperienced the world through me. As they looked at the world through the eyes of a growing child, they found they were growing up themselves. Though that might seem like cause and effect had been transposed, it was true that thinking like an infant made them wiser.
Another change was the smell. Everything smelled like the milky scent of a newly breastfeeding mother, the sour stench of my poop and spit-up, and freshly washed cotton hanging in the sun to dry. That smell stuck to you if you sat in our small, cozy room for even a short time. Sometimes it made my dad wish he could be alone. Still, he liked to sniff my head. He liked to say that each part of my body had a slightly different scent. At the time, my dad was more partial to my mom than to me. That was only natural, since we didn’t share the true bond of those who risked death together during childbirth. And it was also only natural that they were a little more distant with each other because of me. My dad sometimes expressed how hurt he was about the decrease in their intimacy, yet another change I brought with me. Every night, he let out shallow sighs, thinking this wasn’t what was supposed to happen when you got married. He was so disappointed in his changed circumstances that he grew tearful, and buried his head between my mom’s shoulder blades as she nursed me, timidly petting her shoulder. That was where he felt the safest in the world.
“Mira, are you asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Oh my god! Yes!”
Thrilled that my mom was responding, he tried to wake her up completely. “Aw, come on. How can you talk when you’re sleeping?”
My mom heaved an irritated sigh. “Daesu.”
“Yeah?” my dad said expectantly.
“There’s nothing a parent can’t do.”
* * *
At the time our family had some money, though my grandfather was the only one who knew exactly how much we had. Other members of the family knew that he’d received decent compensation from the Daeho Tourism District construction. My uncles went to their father when they needed some assistance. Each of my uncles got funds for various businesses: a fried chicken restaurant, a fruit stand, and the kind of stationery store that was in every neighborhood. The negotiations that occurred in my grandfather’s room were a mystery to us all. My second-eldest uncle believed his elder brother got more, while the eldest suspected that the third had taken more than his share. My dad was the only one who didn’t get greedy, not because he was a better man that anyone else but because it never even occurred to him that money mattered.
My grandfather had a change of heart once he met me, and called my father into his room. In a single year, the teenager had morphed from “that kid” to his son-in-law to Areum’s dad. “Daesu, what do you want to do with your life?”
My dad was caught off guard. “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t just make something up,” my grandfather warned. “It’s not a gift, it’s a loan.” It was rare for my grandfather to be the first to bring up money, particularly when it had to do with a loan.
My dad sat there stupidly, his mouth hanging open.
My grandfather told my dad that he needed to take charge of his own finances, now that he was a father himself. How long could he continue doing physical labor? Didn’t he want a more stable, career-oriented job? Continuing his schooling was one thing, but it was clear he wouldn’t be a scholar with that brain of his, so it would be better to first get a decent job.
My grandfather’s lecture stemmed not only from his love for me, but also from hearing rumors about construction for the Daeho Tourism District. Accidents were happening, from trees falling on workers to cars hitting them to people nearly drowning. People whispered about how a worker died in an accident but the company hushed it up. Nobody knew if the rumors were true, but it was absolutely a fact that several people had nearly died on the job. One of my grandfather’s renters, our next-door neighbor, had hobbled around with one foot in a cast; he’d gotten hurt trying to avoid a falling steel beam, which almost killed him. That neighbor always increased the volume of his TV whenever I cried. If I was just fussing, the volume went up to five, but if I screamed and screamed it would be raised up to twenty. That would make me shriek even louder, and he would just keep increasing the volume. His other neighbor would kick the wall and that person’s neighbor would holler, “Hey! I’m trying to sleep here!” Tensions never really boiled over, though, since we were related to the landlord.
In any case, the frequent accidents on the site made my dad feel worried, and though my grandfather didn’t show it, I’m sure he felt responsible, since he was the one who pushed my dad into construction to begin with.
“So, um, you want me to set up a business?” asked my dad.
“What else? You want to run a Tae Kwon Do studio?”
“Well, that wouldn’t be such a good idea—”
“Why not?”
“An upperclassman I know is already operating one in town and I wouldn’t want to take…”
My grandfather frowned; anyone who backed away from opportunities for other people’s benefit rarely was good to their own family. He summoned all the patience he could muster and asked gently, “Then what is it that you want to do for a living, Daesu?”
My dad was seventeen—an age where one knew both extremely little and surprisingly a lot. He understood he was being given an opportunity, but he was fearful. He’d never had a business, of course, so he wasn’t entirely sure he could do it. His father-in-law was demanding that he grow up and be a real adult. Even though he always wanted to be treated like one, he didn’t know what a real adult was, and, truth be told, he didn’t really want to be a grown-up. Despite his lack of experience, he understood that the word “adult” held a certain stench—not of fatigue or authority or depravity, which he’d believed was the case just moments ago, but of loneliness. That was what my dad sensed almost instinctively on the cusp of adulthood. He would never be able to escape this ominous magnetic field just beginning to take shape. His father-in-law’s smile and gentle support were obscuring the demand that he lead a respectable, upstanding life. How could a seventeen-year-old kid lead a respectable life? Was that ev
en possible? But my dad also knew he couldn’t decline my grandfather’s offer with mock humility. It wasn’t really a choice, and though he had never mentioned it to anyone, he secretly felt burned out by the physical labor. His body ached, and he worried about providing for his growing child. Not long ago, he had been so exhausted that he had wet the bed, which rocked him to his core. He made Mira promise she wouldn’t tell anyone, threatening that he would leave and stay away for ten years if anyone found out. Did she tell her father? What did his father-in-law mean by asking “What do you want to do with your life?” What did he want to do? Perhaps he could be happy if he had a video game store or a comic book shop. But none of these would be acceptable for his father-in-law. My dad wanted my grandfather to view him as trustworthy. What did the kids in town want these days? What wasn’t already available?
A brilliant idea popped into his head.
“Father,” he started.
“Yes, Daesu,” my grandfather said grimly.
“These days Nike is really popular.”
“What? What key?”
My dad was getting excited. “A sporting goods store, Father. Nikes are what everyone my age is dying to buy these days. Setting up near the bus terminal would be the best, so that we can target the students with long commutes, too.”
* * *
Although I came out looking like a crumpled rag, I was blooming like a flower. My newborn acne subsided, my lanugo had been shed, and I turned cute and bouncy, the way babies got. My mom believed that there was nothing easier for a baby than to be loved. I was fascinating to her, and even though she was constantly with me, she always treated me as if she were meeting me for the very first time. Her face exuded love, which grew with every passing day. To her, I was a fellow warrior with whom she had tromped through the muddy trenches. That was what her gaze told me. Of course, every parent thinks their child is adorable, but my parents were truly head over heels in love with me, particularly since they had given up so much to have me.
“Were you this obsessed with your first?” my mom asked her mom, rocking me in her arms.
“Of course. Until your brother turned three I thought everything he did was perfect.”
“Three? What happened when he turned three?”
“That’s when they stop listening to you.”
At the time, my mom didn’t fully understand what my grandmother was telling her. She didn’t understand how your child willfully ignoring you can drive you insane, how an angelic child could turn into a monster, how irritatingly logical they can be when they talk back to you in their limited vocabulary, how good their memories are, and how instantly they understand what’s really going on. My mom didn’t understand that when parents screamed and fought with their children, it wasn’t because the kids were born with disagreeable personalities.
I didn’t say “Mama” until well after my first birthday. I only really started talking when I was around eighteen months old. This milestone was something most everyone achieved, but for my mom it was beyond thrilling. As for me, this was the first time I was speaking after a long silence, and I wanted to say something proper, like, “Hello, Mother. How worried you must have been all this time!” but all that came out of my mouth was a plain and simple “Mama.” With that, I never stopped talking, which annoyed everyone. My mom, who was already exhausted from all the housework, grew gaunt in the storm of “Mama, what’s this? Mama, what’s that?” It got so bad that when I pointed to my sleeping grandfather and asked, “Mama, what’s this?” she replied, “Nothing important.” Still, this paled in comparison to the endless “why”s that were to come.
* * *
I grew and grew, making soft, adorable poops, falling and getting boo-boos, thriving ferally in my large family’s indifferent care. I poked sorghum rice cakes laid out to commemorate the hundredth day of my birth, and on my first-birthday celebration grabbed cotton threads that signified that I would lead a long life. Love and care were seeped into daily life for country folk, and my uncles treated me as a small human, not a baby, as did my grandmother.
I don’t remember what I said when I was that young, of course, only what I’ve been told. What divine providence makes you forget the first encounter with language? I think it’s odd to learn then forget then relearn. I do like that I learned to speak at Mom’s family home. That feels special for some reason.
4
“Areum?”
I came to my senses and looked up to find Mom leaning against the doorframe. The living room behind her was dark.
“Why so startled?” she asked, her voice parched and her thirty-two-year-old face layered with a dense, seemingly permanent exhaustion.
“No reason,” I said, quickly minimizing the document I was working on and opening my browser. “I was online.”
“Go to bed. We have to go to the hospital tomorrow.”
“I know. Just a little longer.”
“Did you take your blood pressure medicine?”
“Yes.”
“And your pain relievers?”
“Of course.”
“And the arthritis meds?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“And the one for your stomach?”
“Come on, Mom. I take them all the time. Don’t worry, I took them all.”
She hovered by the door, in deference to her teenage son’s territory. The first time I had asked her to knock, I had witnessed enormous hurt spreading through her face at the word “knock.”
“Mom?”
“Hm?”
“Something wrong?”
“No, I just came over because your light was on. I was having weird dreams.”
“You look tired.”
“Yeah. I don’t know. Sometimes I’m more tired on my days off.”
“What was your dream about?”
Mom hesitated. “About the water. The same dream I always have.”
“Oh, that again?”
“I wish I’d saved you before I woke up.…” She sounded genuinely remorseful.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m planning to dream tonight that I’m a star swimmer. How about I swim over to your dream and show you how elegantly I can do water ballet?”
“And you won’t float away from me?”
“I won’t.”
Mom smiled. “Someone like you…”
I was quiet, waiting.
“… shouldn’t have to be sick.”
I gazed at her with my sunken eyes that lacked eyelashes. I didn’t know what to say. “Mom, you know, someone like me…”
“Yeah?”
“Someone like me, who’s a really great kid…”
“Yeah?”
“… always comes from great parents.”
She seemed to be wondering what that meant before giving me a faint smile. “Go to bed. No more going online. If you keep this up, I’m taking your computer away.”
I’d been writing slowly for a few months, sometimes a page or even just a few lines each day. What I was writing and why was still a secret. My goal was to finish the manuscript by my seventeenth birthday, and that was why I had wanted the laptop. We did have an ancient desktop computer in the living room, but it kept breaking down and I couldn’t get any privacy there. Once someone sat down at the computer, the others had to wait, looking as anxious as the slum dwellers of the 1970s waiting their turn to use the public bathrooms. When my dad settled in front of the computer, I would get impatient, and when I managed to get online, my mom would hint at how much she’d like to use it. Everything my dad did on the computer was useless, to be honest, though I’m sure he thought the same of everything I was doing.
I closed the document I had been working on and opened a new one. My mom had interrupted my flow by barging in. Since I completed what I’d set out to do that day, I figured I would do something else. I thought about the question I’d assigned myself long ago, the one I hadn’t been able to solve yet.
One of my oldest habits
was to give myself homework. And since my homework was self-imposed, I was both teacher and student. I could solve some problems immediately, while others took time. Some had answers and others didn’t. Sometimes it was more entertaining to formulate a question than it was to answer it, but unfortunately I was still the one who had to solve it. Over the years I’d assigned myself all kinds of useless tasks, like memorizing constellations, drawing all the subway lines in the entire country, and investigating all the trees of the world. There was no set format or rule, but I did have a habit of jotting things down I was curious about.
Why do people have children?
I gazed anxiously at the blinking cursor on my laptop screen. This question had stumped me, even though I had been mulling it over in the last few days. Would I be able to answer it if I had been educated in schools? From time to time I felt sad about missing out on school, but it would be better to shake off my lingering fantasies. I had a general idea of what went on in middle school and high school, but that didn’t mean I knew what kids my age were learning, and not knowing made me nervous. I wanted to know as much as the other kids so that I felt normal, but what was normal? Since I had no idea, I opted to study as much as possible. In my mind it was better to be excessive in my efforts than to fall short. That way, in the event I ever made a friend, I could hold up my end of a conversation, no matter what topic came up.
Crossing my arms, I stared at the screen. I gave up on this question and opened another document. I might as well start on today’s homework. I began to type out a to-do list.
Write down what I think about the picture of my parents from when they were young.
Earlier I had removed a picture from our family photo album, and the photo was now sitting on my desk. My parents had gone to the local photography studio soon after I was born. They looked so youthful, smiling awkwardly at the camera. I was not yet three months old, sitting on my mom’s lap, looking into the distance. Now, I smiled plaintively, meeting my parents’ eyes. It was as if they were smiling back at me from beyond time and space.