You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

Hye-won said Yu-jin had drawn it. She asked me if I’d seen him draw anything like this before. I’d never seen anything even remotely similar. In all honesty I hadn’t looked very carefully at Yu-jin’s sketchbook or picture diary, let alone his scribbles in a notebook; I wouldn’t have been able to describe my six-year-old’s artistic style. It might sound like an excuse, but I was so busy and Yu-jin wasn’t a boy who needed a lot of attention. He did everything on his own as soon as he could.

What’s the problem? I asked. I could hear how pointed my tone was. I wanted to tell her to stop psychoanalysing a six-year-old’s scribbles or criticising his morality. Maybe this was the first indication of a genius artist who would take the world by storm. Didn’t Jean-Michel Basquiat make strange scribbles in the streets?

Hye-won explained that the children were just coming out when she pulled up to the art studio. Yu-min had run out calling, ‘Auntie!’ then Yu-jin and a girl wearing a white dress came out together under a plastic umbrella. She was a pretty little girl, and from the way the umbrella was tilted towards her and the way Yu-jin was smiling and looking into her eyes, they looked like they were good friends.

It had taken them a while to get to the restaurant because of traffic. Yu-jin was in the back seat, drawing with his coloured pencils and ignoring Yu-min, who was addressing him from the front seat. He stopped sketching only when Hye-won parked. He laid the notebook in his lap and put his pencils back in his bag. Yu-min stretched out towards the notebook, but Yu-jin snatched it away and Yu-min accidentally tore the piece of paper out. Yu-jin glared at his brother.

Hye-won confiscated the piece of paper so that she could give it back to Yu-jin. That was when she saw the picture. The girl in the picture was his little friend from earlier; she had also had long hair and a crown headband. Hye-won asked if that was indeed his friend, but neither boy answered. Yu-jin asked for his picture back and Yu-min was deflated and silent in the front seat. She said that even when they went inside, he kept looking apologetically at his younger brother.

Hye-won said she had spoken to Yu-min privately, and that he had told her it wasn’t the first time Yu-jin had drawn a picture like that. When he liked a girl he drew her in similar ways and put the drawing in the girl’s bag or desk. One girl who’d received this unwanted gift had cried and made a scene, but the teacher couldn’t figure out who’d done it.

She suggested we run some tests, that there might be something seriously wrong with Yu-jin. My face burned. I felt like a stranger had slapped me in the middle of the street. I became argumentative. Had she asked Yu-jin about it? Had she given him a chance to explain? She nodded. When she asked him, Why did you draw this? he said, Because it’s fun. He didn’t elaborate on whether it was fun to draw the picture or scare the girl and make her cry.

What did that have to do with anything? A child could imagine something that could shock an adult, and he could draw from his imagination and play around. I reminded her of that. I reminded her that Yu-jin wasn’t sixteen but only six. Hye-won retorted that if he was sixteen they wouldn’t need to run any tests, that he would already be in a youth detention centre for sending threatening pictures. She said Yu-jin knew exactly what he was doing. She said the fact that I’d never seen him draw anything like this was proof that he knew it was something to hide. She pointed out that he’d never been caught even though he’d done something similar several times. She said he was meticulous.

I was so angry that I felt dizzy. I couldn’t believe she was saying he was a troubled child. But she didn’t back down. She pointed at the girl’s head in the drawing and said it wasn’t about the girl. She said it was about me. That for boys his age, all girls were the embodiment of their mother. That if a child cut off his mother’s head and speared it on an umbrella, it indicated a serious problem. She said she was just asking questions; why was I getting so angry?

I grabbed the boys and left the restaurant. I thought I’d get physical with her if I stayed any longer. We were never sisters so much as competitors. She was less than a year younger than me, so we always wore the same clothes and read the same books. She was always first in the class but she couldn’t stand it if I won an award in a writing contest. Even though people told her all the time that she was smart, she couldn’t handle it if someone occasionally complimented me on being intelligent. She wrote her name in large letters in my beloved collection of world literature and scribbled her name on an award I got. She even stole my book report once and submitted it as her own. Even after we became adults and lived our own lives, there was always tension between us. It wasn’t that we weren’t close. We were always engaged in a power struggle. That was why Min-seok sometimes complained that she looked down on him.

I stopped speaking to her after the incident in the restaurant. I heard she left the university and opened her own clinic, but I didn’t get in touch. I tried my best to avoid her during holidays or at Dad’s birthday. She never tried to reach out either. We met again a month ago, after they died.

As we left the funeral home, she told me to come by if I needed any help. She isn’t someone to just say something to be polite. She would only say, Let’s have lunch sometime if she definitely wanted to eat with that person. So telling me to come by was an indication that she wanted to help in some way. Maybe seeing her sister like this after three years of silence was so sad that it swept away all the previous emotions. Maybe she knew I’d have to bring Yu-jin in the near future. In either case, her assistance was a matter of urgency for me as time went on, my only hope.

When the nurse finally called me through, Hye-won didn’t seem surprised to see me; she didn’t ask what I was doing there or how I was. It would have been easier to bring it up if she’d said anything at all, but she just sat there staring at me. So I had to say it. I reminded her of a doctor’s vow before I told her anything, the oath to keep a patient’s secrets.

She didn’t answer right away. I could tell she was annoyed that I was asking for help, but I could also sense that she was curious about what was going on. I waited. I needed her promise; I couldn’t tell her without it. I sipped the water the nurse had given me. Hye-won finally opened her mouth when I was nearly done with the glass. I promise. I suddenly went mute. The speech I’d prepared over the last several days became a knot in my head. Where should I start? Should I start from the night before That Day?

I tried to move my tongue clearly, to speak calmly, to lay out the events in order. She didn’t speak even when I finished. She didn’t even change her expression. It seemed to me that she hadn’t blinked once. What do you want from me? she asked coolly.

I wanted tests. I wanted those tests she’d suggested three years ago. I could forgive Yu-jin if there was no cause and effect between the ‘serious problem’ she was worried about then and That Day, if it had all just been a terrible accident. I could stop hating him. I could stop being frightened of him. I could live my life with him somehow.

Hye-won asked me the question I’d been dreading the most. What will you do if I’m right? Will you handle it with common sense? I sat there twisting my poor fingers. Please, Hye-won, I said, tears filling my eyes. I looked down at my lap as I cried, the way I’d always done since we were girls. She sighed, glared at me and said she would help.

She said the tests would be spread out over a few days. First there would be basic psychometric tests at her clinic, then she would refer us for a comprehensive test at the neuroscience lab at Yonsei University. I hesitated at the word ‘refer’ but I trusted she would keep her promise. She didn’t make promises easily, but once she did, she always kept them.