You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

Hye-won came down late after hearing the news. She said Yu-jin was in shock, that it was too much for him to have seen his brother and father die in front of his eyes. I was frozen and couldn’t tell her anything about his part in it. She said that I should leave him alone until he woke up on his own, that I shouldn’t force him awake.

I couldn’t accept that. I didn’t feel like watching him sleep angelically. I wanted to wake him up and ask, Why did you do that? Why did you do that? After Hye-won left, something in me snapped and I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. I wanted to drag him outside and throw him into the ocean. He opened his eyes as though he sensed it. His big black pupils probed mine hesitantly. He whispered, ‘Mum, I love you,’ in a small, low voice, like an abandoned baby bird. I understood. It wasn’t I love you , it was Mum, don’t abandon me . I stopped breathing. My heart sank and my rage turned to confusion. I felt the curse of the ties of blood, and somewhere among the fury, and losing my mind, I realised anew how much I loved him. I suspected I would never be able to forgive him. I would live the rest of my life in guilt and fear. But I realised who I was. I was Yu-jin’s mother. He was my child. That’s a fact that can’t be erased no matter what. I felt paralysed with feelings and tried for weeks to push everything away.

On the day of the funeral, Yu-jin woke up on his own. The coffins were to go to the cemetery that morning. As always, he moved quietly and discreetly. He ate the food he was served and changed into the mourning clothes I handed him. As the chief mourner, he carried his father’s portrait and climbed on the bus to the crematorium without a word. He didn’t look sad, exactly. Neither did he look regretful. He sat there, his chin resting on the portrait frame, looking out of the window.

I watched him all day long. I had questions for him – questions I had pushed away but could no longer hold back. Had I seen correctly? Why had he done that? I didn’t have a chance until we got to the crematorium. There were too many people around. Once the funeral was over, we were alone, just the two of us, on a park bench. Yet still nothing came out of my mouth. I was afraid to hear the truth. I was scared of myself: if I confirmed that I had indeed seen what I thought I had, I felt I would have to kill my own boy.

That same day, the police came to see us with questions. I began to shake, so I pressed my hands on my knees, hoping they wouldn’t be able to tell. Yu-jin looked calmly at the officers. I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. His eyes didn’t betray fear, anxiety or guilt. He was so expressionless that it blew me away. Was he always like this? Was he always this indifferent and brazen? How had I not realised this before? It was like I was looking at him for the first time.

The police officers asked why the boys had gone all the way to the bell tower. Yu-jin explained that they were playing a survival game while their parents were sleeping. His brother had arrived first and rung the bell, but while he was ringing the bell, the cord snapped and he slipped and fell into the water. Yu-jin had stretched out to grab him, but he was too late.

That whole time, he was calm. He didn’t look away or stutter once. Sometimes he took a moment to think before he spoke. I started to doubt myself. Maybe I hadn’t seen what had really happened. Yu-jin said he’d reached out. He’d stepped forward to grab his falling brother. I thought of the scene looping through my head. The more I thought about it, the more I realised a simple truth. Yu-jin, a mere nine years old, was calmly lying to the police.

I was no better. When asked who had first discovered what had happened, I automatically lied and said it was Min-seok. I said I had been asleep. They asked if I had seen anything. I looked at Yu-jin, who was sitting beside me. I was met with those eyes, the eyes I had seen in front of the bell tower, with the dark open pupils and a strange glow inside. I felt like screaming. For the first time, I realised how many thoughts could be mixed up in someone’s head – the awareness that Yu-jin was all I had left, the criticism that would pour down on me, Yu-jin’s future plucked before it had a chance to bloom, doubt about what I had seen, uncertainty that I would be able to live with the secret I was hiding, Yu-jin’s voice whispering, Mum, I love you. I love you. I love you.

I finally said I hadn’t seen anything. That was how we joined forces. A cowardly voice in my head tried to make me feel better. I’d just lost my husband and son, I couldn’t give up my only remaining child to the police, I wasn’t sure I could stand the shame that would come my way. More than anything else, I loved Yu-jin. He didn’t have anyone he could trust.

Later I learned that the lodge manager had said the same thing I did. I do believe he didn’t see anything. We were the only family at the lodge, and he had only come out as I ran past the office. The incident was determined an accident.

I am thinking about Hye-won often. Rather, I am thinking about Yu-jin’s problem that Hye-won had mentioned three years ago. Yu-jin is still my son, but he’s not the child I knew. He’s now something unfamiliar and unknowable. A fallen meteorite.

I closed the journal and put it down. Just because something seems self-evident doesn’t mean it’s true. As Mother admitted, she wasn’t there when it happened. She didn’t know the whole story. She insisted she’d seen what happened clearly, but it wasn’t necessarily true. Maybe she believed what she wanted to believe so she could accept the outcome and reduce the weight of her own sins. After all, the tragedy began when she got drunk and fell fast asleep. How could she sacrifice me like that? Because of that she lost her life and destroyed mine. She’d committed an unforgivable crime. If she had believed me, if she’d given me a chance to explain myself, the incident could clearly have been explained as an accident. Then a nine-year-old boy wouldn’t have been labelled a psychopath who needed to be isolated from society, and she wouldn’t have had to die at the hands of that ‘danger to others’.

Mother had never mentioned That Day in the last sixteen years. She never even mentioned Yu-min. She’d cut off all other possibilities and believed firmly that I had killed my brother. Sure, my own memories weren’t flawless. I was only nine at the time and it was a long time ago. Still, there was proof that I was right; I was the victim of the accident. I had dreamed the same thing over and over again, reliving that day the way I had experienced it as a boy.

The dreams and the truth were different in exactly one spot: it was always night in the dreams, but the actual events had happened in the early hours of the morning. The rest was detailed and clear enough to make me wish that I could forget it all. Each moment was vivid and immediate: Yu-min’s voice, eyes, expression, actions, what I saw, thought, felt, sensed. I remembered it all. I could even remember every detail of the terrace at the lodge. It was a long, wide area with a green metal banister and there was a large outdoor table with benches attached. Over a dozen beer cans stood along the table; a champagne bottle lay on its side; cigarette butts swam in a half-filled water bottle; clam and oyster shells were piled up, along with blackened pieces of meat and sausage; and the grill was filled with white ash. The anniversary cake, uneaten, was cut into four slices, covered entirely with black ants. A bouquet of roses fluttered in the wind, and burnt sparklers and deflated balloons were strewn about. My parents giggled drunkenly as they stumbled towards their bedroom.

The following morning, the two sons of the drunkards sat out on the terrace, having woken in the early hours. We had nothing to do inside, but there was nothing to do out here either. Yu-min looked bored to death. He leant against the wall, playing with his BB gun, glancing at me every now and then, signalling, Should we sneak away and go and play?