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The phone is ringing.
“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, y
ou 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.
Please Look After Mom Page 15