You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

I closed her eyelids. I pressed down on her bent arm and straightened her neck, hearing the bones crunch. I forced her chin up to close her mouth, nearly breaking her teeth. I pulled down the hem of her nightgown, which had ridden up her thighs.

It was the nightgown I’d bought for her fifty-first birthday last spring, I realised. She didn’t like it. She was annoyed that I’d bought her a ‘granny nightgown’. I never saw her wear it, so I’d assumed she’d thrown it out. I’d even forgotten that I’d given it to her. What was she doing, wearing this nightgown last night?

I spotted something in the front pocket. Something small and long, like a lighter. Her car key. That was strange. She didn’t leave her things just anywhere. The key should have been in her desk drawer. And in this nightgown, of all places? She wouldn’t have gone out in a nightgown, even in the middle of the night.

I placed the key on the counter and wrapped her body up in the blanket. A rope would keep the blanket from falling open, but I didn’t feel like going to find one; why waste time and leave bloody footprints everywhere? Just dealing with the existing bloodstains was plenty.

I slid my arms beneath her body again, drew in a deep breath and stood up. My heart rate spiked and the veins in my forehead bulged. Her body had somehow become even heavier. I moved carefully towards the stairs, avoiding the puddles of blood on the floor, one foot at a time, as though walking on a frozen lake. I stepped onto the first stair and the world quieted. I took another step and sound fell away completely. I started sweating and grew dizzy. My feet squelched. Sticky, slippery clumps of blood oozed between my toes. Mother’s voice echoed endlessly in my head. ‘Yu-jin.’ Low and trembling. I stepped onto the fourth stair. ‘Yu-jin!’ A sharp, stabbing scream. The fifth stair. ‘Yu-jin…’ Her voice pulled my shoulders down. My feet seemed to sink into the stairs. I pulled them up slowly, step by step.

I stopped for a moment on the landing and leant against the wall to take a breath, but my arm slipped on the blood smears. I gasped. Mother’s voice vanished. Her weight vanished as well.

When I collected myself, I was sitting in a puddle of blood. Mother was lying between my legs, the blanket open. I felt faint. I couldn’t believe I had to wrap her up again, pick her up and climb the remaining steps. I wanted to lie down. I might have given up and done just that if a shout hadn’t rung out from my mind to remind me that Hae-jin was due home soon.

I got up. I threw the blanket around Mother and lifted her from between my legs. I went up the rest of the stairs and reached the sliding doors leading to the roof, thinking all the time about Hae-jin’s imminent arrival. I managed to slide it open and went out onto the deck. The sharp marine wind greeted us. Seagulls cried in the fog. The pergola swing shrieked in the wind. We’d brought the old swing with us from Bangbae-dong. Mother liked to take breaks on it while she gardened. She would pretend to drink tea and spy on me in my room.

I walked along the paving stones to the pergola and laid her down on the swing. Also under the pergola were two benches, a table with room for eight, and a barbecue. Mother had designed the table herself. If you pushed the top of it, it slid open to reveal a deep storage space, where she kept all the things she used up here: a blue tarpaulin, clear plastic sheeting, a bag of fertiliser, a hoe, pruning shears, a trowel, a saw, empty planters and small pots, a coiled rubber hose.

I took everything out and spread a sheet of plastic in the empty space. I picked Mother up and placed her inside. I felt suddenly lost. I didn’t remember a thing from when Father and Yu-min were buried. Mother had told me that I’d slept until the day the coffins were interred. Even if I did remember, what would it matter?

I didn’t think Mother would want me to mark her death in any way; she would probably just ask why I was trying to make it better when I was the one who’d caused it all. I pulled the tarpaulin over her body and started shoving everything else back inside. I put the pots and planters by her feet and the fertiliser and hose near her head. I picked up the saw.

‘I should have done away with you,’ I heard her say.

My face burned.

‘We should have died back then. You and me both.’

What did she mean? I never knew she’d hated me so much that she would want to kill me, her own son. I didn’t realise she’d pretended to love someone she hated so much. My blood boiled with rage. I tossed the saw in, shoved the tabletop back into place and stalked away from the pergola without a backward glance. I didn’t want to pull out my dead mother and shake her to bits; Hae-jin was on his way home and I didn’t have much time.

I slammed the sliding doors shut. Quiet rolled over me like storm clouds. I couldn’t hear Mother’s voice any longer. I shut off those thoughts. I had to focus on the things I needed to do. I’d wanted to open the windows, but I changed my mind. The wintry wind would flood into the flat, which would neutralise the smell, but small, light objects might fall onto the floor and be dragged around. Then the whole place would be covered with new bloody traces.

I decided to wipe up the blood first. I took off my blood-caked sweater and trousers. Naked, I went into the kitchen and found red rubber gloves. I took rubbish bags and clean rags out from under the sink, along with bleach and two buckets. I found a plastic broom, dustpan, mop and steam cleaner and gathered them by the island. Then I began to clean with military precision. I swept the blood puddle Mother had been lying in into the dustpan, poured it into a bucket and flushed it down the toilet in Mother’s bathroom. I flushed the puddle on the landing down as well. Then I began to mop. The upstairs hallway and living room floor were marble and cleaned easily, but the wooden stairs were a problem. They were laminated, so most of the blood came off, but some of it had seeped between the cracks and wouldn’t budge. I didn’t know how to get rid of it, and I didn’t have the time to figure it out. I moved on, hoping that Hae-jin and his eagle eye wouldn’t notice it.

Once the floors were clean, I put on slippers so that my crusty feet wouldn’t make new prints. I cleaned the walls and the banister, scrubbed everything on the second floor, and finally went over the whole lot with the steam cleaner.

By the time I’d finished, it was 10.30. I leant the steam cleaner against the wall and straightened up. I threw the mop pad, rags, slippers and rubber gloves into the bin bag, then shoved the broom, dustpan and mop into a bucket with my clothes and placed it all in my room. The razor and Mother’s car key went into my desk. Finally, I opened all the windows. The windows at the back, the kitchen window, all of them. Sharp, cold wind careened into the living room.

Outside the front door, a soulless female voice declared, ‘The door is opening.’ It was the lift. The only person who would get out on our floor was Hae-jin; the flat opposite ours was still empty, and non-residents had to be buzzed in to get past the main doors of the building. I looked at the clock: 10.55.

The keypad on the front door lock beeped. I looked around quickly. I hadn’t tidied Mother’s room or mine. Bloodstains remained on the roof deck. And I was naked and covered in blood. In less than five seconds, Hae-jin would open the door and walk in.

I dragged the steam cleaner behind me as I ran into Mother’s bedroom and closed the door. I heard the entrance foyer door sliding open. I heard footsteps entering the living room. Silence. Hae-jin was probably standing by the stairs, looking confused. He’d gone all the way to Yeongjong Island to pick up a mobile phone that wasn’t there, the person who’d sent him on a fool’s errand was nowhere to be seen, all the windows were wide open, and the smell of bleach was lingering in the air. Maybe he could even detect the tang of blood. Damn. I should have aired the place before doing anything else.