Please Look After Mom

by Kyung-Sook Shin

  “I’ll become an important person,” Hyong-chol promised.

  “What are you going to be?”

  “A prosecutor!”

  Mom’s eyes sparkled then. “If you want to be a prosecutor, you have to study hard. A lot more than you think you do. I know someone who wanted be a prosecutor and studied night and day and never made it and went crazy.”

  “I’ll do it if you come home.…”

  Mom looked into his anxious eyes. She smiled. “Yes. You can do it. You were able to say Ma before you were a hundred days old. Even though no one taught you to read, you learned to read as soon as you went to school, and you’re ranked first in your class.” She sighed. “Why would I leave that house when you’re there—why didn’t I think of that? You’re there.”

  Mom stared at his calves speckled with blood, then turned around and squatted, telling him to climb on her back. He looked at her. Mom turned her head. “Get on,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  That was how, in the late afternoon, Mom came home that day. She shoved that woman out of the kitchen and cooked. And when the woman and Father went to live in another house in town, Mom rolled up her sleeves, ran over to their house, grabbed the rice pot hanging over their hearth, and sent it rushing down the creek. It seemed as if Mom became a fighter so that she could keep the promise she had made to Hyong-chol, and return home. When Father and the woman, unable to stand Mom’s harassment, left the town altogether, Mom called Hyong-chol to her and sat him down before her, knee to knee. Calmly, she asked Hyong-chol, who was once again frightened that she might leave as well, “How much studying did you do today?” When he pulled out the test he had gotten a perfect score on, Mom’s gloomy eyes regained their fire. She looked at the test, on which his teacher had circled in red every correct answer, and grabbed him in a hug.

  “Oh, my baby!”

  Mom pampered him while Father was gone. She let him ride Father’s bicycle. She gave him Father’s sleeping mat and covered him with Father’s blanket. She scooped rice for him into the big rice bowl, which only Father had used. She placed the first bowl of soup in front of him. When his siblings started to eat, she would scold, “Your brother hasn’t even picked up his spoon!” When the fruit vendor came by with a rubber bin filled with grapes, she traded a half bowl of sesame seeds drying in the yard for some grapes and saved them for him, telling the other children, “This here is for your brother.” And every time she did that, Mom reminded him, “You have to become a prosecutor.”

  He thought he had to become a prosecutor to keep Mom at home.

  That fall, Mom harvested rice and hulled it and dried it by herself, without Father. At dawn, she went to the fields and, bent over, cut rice stalks with her scythe, stripped the grain, and spread it on the ground in the sun to dry. She came home when it got dark. When Hyong-chol tried to help, Mom said, “You go study,” and pushed him toward his desk. On warm Sundays after all the rice was harvested, Mom would take his siblings to the field in the hills to dig for sweet potatoes, but she would nudge him toward his desk. They would come back near dusk pushing a wheelbarrow filled with russet sweet potatoes. His brother, who had wanted to stay home to study but had been forced to go with Mom, hunched over the well, scrubbing the dirt from under his fingernails.

  “Mom! Is Hyong-chol that important?”

  “Yes! He’s that important!” Mom rapped his brother on the head without giving the question a second thought.

  “Then you don’t need us?” His brother’s cheeks were flushed from the crisp air.

  “No! I don’t need you.”

  “Then we’re going to go live with Father!”

  “What?” Mom was about to give his brother another rap on the head but stopped. “You’re important, too. You are all important! Come here, my important children!” Everyone laughed. Sitting in the glow of the room in front of his desk, listening to his family at the well outside, Hyong-chol smiled, too.

  It’s not clear exactly when, but Mom stopped locking the gate at night. Soon after, when she scooped rice for everyone in the morning, she started to put some in Father’s rice bowl and leave it under a blanket in the warmest part of the room. Hyong-chol studied even harder while Father was gone. Mom continued to refuse to let him help in the fields. Even when she was yelling at her other children that they had left the peppers spread out in the yard in the rain, she lowered her voice if she thought he was studying. In those days, Mom’s face was always crumpled with fatigue and worry, but when he studied by reading out loud, the flesh around her eyes became brighter, as if she had dabbed on powder. Mom opened and closed the door to his room quietly. She silently slid a plate of boiled sweet potatoes or persimmons into the room, then gently closed the door. One winter night when the snow drifted onto the porch, Father walked in the open gate, cleared his throat, took his shoes and smacked them against the wall to get the snow off, and opened the door. It was so cold that everyone was sleeping together. Through half-open eyes, Hyong-chol watched Father touch everyone’s head and gaze down at them all. He saw Mom placing on the table the rice bowl she’d kept in the warmest part of the room, saw her bringing sheets of seaweed toasted with perilla oil and putting them next to the rice bowl, and watched as she placed a bowl of rice-boiled water next to the rice bowl without a word—as if Father had left that morning and had come back at night, instead of having left in the summer and returned sheepishly in the bitter cold of winter.

  When Hyong-chol graduated from college and passed the entrance exam for the company he works at now, Mom wasn’t happy. She didn’t even smile when the neighbors congratulated her on Hyong-chol’s employment at a top corporation. When he came home with the traditional gift of underwear bought with his first paycheck, she barely looked at it, and coldly shot at him, “What about what you were going to be?”

  He replied simply that he would work hard at the company, save for two years, and start studying again.

  Now he reflects on this. When she was younger, Mom was a presence that got him to continue building his resolve as a man, as a human being.

  It was when Mom brought his sister, who had just graduated from middle school, to the city to stay with him that she started to tell him she was sorry all the time. She brought his sister from the country when he was twenty-four. It was before he was able to save money, before he could take the bar exam again. She kept her eyes lowered.

  “Since she’s a girl, she has to get more schooling. Somehow you have to make it possible for her to go to school here. I can’t have her live like me.”

  They met in front of the clock tower at Seoul Station. Before she went home, she suggested a meal of rice and soup. Mom kept picking out the beef in her soup and placing it in his bowl. Even though he said he couldn’t eat it all and that she should eat some, Mom kept transferring the meat from her bowl to his. And although it had been her idea to eat, not a single morsel reached her lips.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

  “I’m eating, I am,” she said, but kept plopping the meat into his bowl. “But you … what are you going to do?” Mom put down her spoon, which was rimmed with soup. “It’s all my fault. I’m sorry, Hyong-chol.”

  As she stood in Seoul Station to board the train home, her rough hands with her short-clipped nails buried deep in her pockets, Mom’s eyes were ringed with tears. He thought then that her eyes looked like those of a cow, guileless and kind.

  He calls his sister, who’s still at Seoul Station. The day is fading. His sister stays silent when she hears his voice. It seems that she wants him to speak first. They listed everyone’s cell-phone numbers on the flyer, but his sister has gotten most of the calls. Most of them were false reports. One guy said, “The lady is with me right now.” He even gave a detailed explanation of where he was. His sister rushed by taxi to the footbridge the caller directed her to, and found a young drunk, a man, not even a woman, snoring away, so inebriated that he wouldn’t have noticed if someone had carted him away.


  “She isn’t here,” he tells his sister.

  His sister releases the breath she was holding.

  “Are you going to stay at the station?” he asks.

  “For a little while … I still have some flyers.”

  “I’ll come to you. Let’s get some dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Then we’ll have a drink.”

  “A drink?” she asks, and falls silent for a moment. “I got a phone call,” she says, “from a pharmacist at Sobu Pharmacy, in front of Sobu Market, in Yokchon-dong. He said he’d seen a flyer his son had brought home. He thought he saw someone like Mom in Yokchon-dong two days ago … but he said that she was wearing blue plastic sandals. That she must have walked so much that the top of her foot had a gash, and that it was infected all the way to her toenails, and that he put some medicine on it.…”

  Blue sandals? His cell phone slides off his ear.

  “Brother!”

  He presses the phone back to his ear.

  “I’m going to go over there. Do you want to come?”

  “Yokchon-dong?” he asks. “Do you mean that Sobu Market we used to live near?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  He doesn’t want to go home. He doesn’t have anything particular to say when he meets his sister. When he called her, he was thinking only, I don’t want to go home. But Yokchon-dong? He raises his hand to flag a taxi. He doesn’t understand. Several people have called to say they saw someone like Mom wearing blue plastic sandals. Strangely, they all said they’d seen her in a neighborhood he’s lived in. Kaebong-dong, Taerim-dong, Oksu-dong, under the Naksan Apartments in Tongsung-dong, Suyu-dong, Singil-dong, Chongnung. If he stopped by, the callers would say they saw her three days ago, or sometimes a week ago. Someone even said he’d seen her a month before she went missing. Every time he received a tip, he went to that neighborhood, alone or with his siblings or with Father. Even though they all said they’d seen her, he couldn’t find anyone like Mom wearing blue plastic sandals. After hearing their stories, he could only post some flyers on the utility poles in the neighborhood, or on a tree in the park, or inside a telephone booth, just in case. When he passed the places he used to live, he would pause and peek in at these spaces where others were now living.

  No matter where he lived, Mom never came by herself to his house. A family member always went to greet Mom at Seoul Station or the Express Bus Terminal. And once in Seoul, Mom didn’t go anywhere until someone came to take her to her next destination. When she went to his brother’s, he came to get her; when she went to his sister’s, she came to get her. Nobody ever said it out loud, but at some moment he and his family tacitly came to believe Mom couldn’t go anywhere in this city by herself. So, whenever Mom came to Seoul, someone was always with her. He realized, after placing the newspaper ad for Mom and passing out flyers, that he had lived in twelve different neighborhoods. Now he straightens and looks up. Yokchon-dong, he remembers, was the first place where he was able to buy a house.

  “It’s Full Moon Harvest in a few days.…” In the taxi heading for Yokchon-dong, his sister nervously rubs her fingernails with her hand. He’s thinking the same thing. He clears his throat and frowns. The Full Moon Harvest holiday is several days long. The media reports every time that this year more people were going abroad during the holiday than ever before. Until a couple of years ago, people criticized those who went abroad during the holiday, but now people blatantly say, “Ancestors, I’ll be back,” and go to the airport. When people started to hold ancestral rites in time-share vacation condos, they worried whether the ancestral spirits would be able to find them, but now people just hop on planes. This morning, his wife, who was reading the paper, said, as if it were news, “It says right here that more than a million people will be going abroad this year.”

  “People sure have a lot of money,” he replied, at which she mumbled, “People who can’t leave—well, they’re not too smart.”

  Father just watched them.

  His wife continued, “Since their friends go abroad during the Full Moon Harvest, the kids were saying, I wish we could do that, too.” When he glared at his wife, unable to listen to it any longer, she explained, “You know how kids are sensitive to that kind of thing.” Father got up from the table and went into his room.

  “Are you crazy? Is this something to talk about right now?” he snapped, and his wife retorted, “Look, I said the kids said that; did I say I wanted to? Can’t I even relay what the kids said? It’s so frustrating. I’m supposed to live without saying anything?” She got up and left the table.

  “Shouldn’t we hold the ancestral rites?” Chi-hon asks.

  “Since when did you think about the ancestral rites? You never even came home for the holidays, and now you care about Full Moon Harvest?”

  “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been that way.”

  He watches his sister as she stops rubbing her fingernails and sticks her hands in her jacket pockets. She still hasn’t gotten rid of that habit.

  When they lived together in Seoul, when he had to sleep in the same room as his brother and his sister, his sister took her place nearest the wall, he lay in the middle, and his brother lay near the other wall. Just about every night, he’d be smacked in the head and wake up to find his brother’s hand draped across his face. He would take it off carefully and be about to fall asleep again when his sister’s hand would be flung onto his chest. It was the way they used to sleep in the large room at home, rolling around as much as they pleased. One night, he let out a yell when he got punched in the eye. His siblings woke up.

  “Hey! You!”

  His sister, belatedly figuring out what had happened, hurriedly stuck her hands in the pockets of the cotton pants she wore to bed and fidgeted nervously.

  “If you’re going to keep this up, just go home!”

  When morning came, his sister really went home to Mom, taking all of her things. Mom brought her back to Seoul right away, telling her to get on her knees before him and ask for his forgiveness. His sister, obstinate, didn’t move.

  “Ask him to forgive you!” Mom said, but his sister didn’t budge.

  His sister was gentle, but if she had her mind set on something, nobody could move her. Once, when he was in middle school, he had forced his sister to wash his sneakers against her will. Usually she obediently washed them clean, but that day she got upset and took them, his new but grubby sneakers, to the creek and sent them downstream. He ran all the way along the creek to retrieve his floating shoes. Later, it became a cherished memory that only siblings could share, but at the time, he came home angry with only one sneaker, which had turned green from the slimy water and clinging algae, and told on his sister. Even when Mom picked up the poker, asking where his sister had learned to be so ill-tempered, she wouldn’t say she was sorry. Instead, she got angry at Mom. “I said I didn’t want to! I told him I didn’t want to! And from now on I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to do!”

  In their small room, Mom ordered his obstinate sister: “I told you to ask him to forgive you. I told you your brother was your parent here. If you don’t correct your habit of taking your things and leaving because your brother scolded you, this will stay with you your entire life. If something doesn’t go your way when you are married, are you going to take your things and leave even then?”

  The more Mom told her to ask for his forgiveness, the deeper his sister’s hands burrowed into her pockets. Saddened, Mom sighed. “Now this child won’t listen to me. This child is ignoring me because I don’t have anything and have no education.” Only when Mom’s lament turned into teardrops did his sister say, “That’s not it, Mom!” To stop Mom from continuing to cry, she had to say, “I’ll ask for forgiveness, I’ll say I’m sorry,” and she took her hands out of her pockets and asked him to forgive her. From then on, his sister slept with her hands in her pockets. And any time he raised his voice, she’d quickly stuff them there.
r />   After Mom went missing, when someone pointed something out, even something trivial, his stubborn sister would admit, subdued, “I was wrong, I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Who’s going to wash the windows at home?” Chi-hon asks him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If we called around this time of year, Mom was always cleaning the windows.”

  “The windows?”

  “Yes, of course. She’d always say, ‘How can we have dirty windows when the family will be coming for Full Moon Harvest?’ ”

  The many windows of their country home flash before his eyes. The house, newly rebuilt a few years ago, has windows in every room, especially in the living room, unlike the old house, which had one sole windowpane in the door.

  “When I suggested that she hire someone to clean the windows, she said, ‘Who’s going to come to this country hole to do that?’ ” His sister heaves a sigh and stretches her hand to the taxi window and rubs it.

  “When we were little, she took off all the doors in the house around this time of year—remember?” she asks.

  “I do.”

  “Do you remember?”

  “I said I do!”

  “Liar.”

  “Why do you think I’m lying? I remember. She used to paste maple leaves on the doors. Even though Aunt gave her a hard time about it.”

  “So you really do remember. Remember going to Aunt’s to pick maple leaves?”

  “I remember.”

  Before the new house was built, Mom would choose a sunny day around Full Moon Harvest and take off every single door in the house. She would scrub the doors with water and dry them in the sun and make some paste and brush new, half-translucent mulberry paper onto the doors. Whenever Hyong-chol saw doors taken off their jambs, drying, leaning against the wall of the house, he would think, Ah, it’s almost Full Moon Harvest.