Kyung-sook Shin - Please Look After Mom

I think I’ll go now.

But, oh…

The baby looks sleepy. He’s drooling and his eyes are half closed. Now that the two older children are at school, the house is quiet. But what is this? The house is a complete mess. My goodness, I’ve never seen such a messy house. I want to tidy it up for you… but now I can’t. My daughter is drifting off as she gets the baby to sleep. Yes, you must be so tired. My baby is sleeping, curled around her baby. It’s in the middle of winter, so why are you sweating so much? My love, my daughter. Please relax your face. You’ll get wrinkles if you sleep with such a weary expression. Your youthful face is now gone. Your small, crescent-moon-like eyes have become smaller. Now, even when you smile, the cuteness of your youth is gone. Since I’ve lived to see you with wrinkles like this, I can’t say my life has been short. Still, dear, I never could have guessed that you would be living like this, with three babies. You were so different from your emotional sister, who got angry quickly and cried and got sullen and turned blue in the face if things didn’t work out her way. You created a schedule and you tried to follow it like you’d planned. When you said to me, “I didn’t know, Mom, that I would have three kids, but when I became pregnant, I had to have the baby,” you were so foreign to me. I thought your sister might be the one to have a lot of children. You never get angry. Of all my children, you are the only one who knows how to say things calmly, point by point, even to someone who is extremely angry. So that’s why I thought you would weigh whether to have a child, and have only one. You never begged for anything, unlike your sister, who threw tantrums asking for a desk like the one your brothers had. I would ask you what you were doing as you bent over the floor, and you would say, “I’m doing my math homework.” Your sister never even looked at a math book, but you were very good at it. You were the child with amazing concentration when it came to solving problems. When you came up with an answer, you would grin happily.

But you won’t be able to find the answer to why this happened to me. That’s why you must be in pain. Because of your three children, you can’t go looking for me like you want to. You can only call your sister every evening and say, “Sister, was there any news about Mom today?” My love, my daughter. Because of your children, you couldn’t look for me as much as you wanted to and couldn’t weep as much as you pleased. I couldn’t do for you as much as I wanted to recently, but I thought about you a lot when my mind was clear. About you, about how you have to raise three children, including the baby, who is just learning to walk, about your life. I felt regretful that the only thing I could do for you was to make kimchi and send some to you. My heart broke that time when you came to visit with the baby and said, with a smile, as you took your shoes off, “Oh, Mom, look, I’ve put on mismatched socks.” How busy you must be if you, who have always been so neat, can’t find the time to find a pair of matching socks. Sometimes when my mind was clear I thought of the things I had to do for you and your children. And it gave me the will to keep living… but then things turned out like this.

I want to take off these blue plastic sandals-the heels are all worn down. And my dusty summer clothes. Now I want to get away from this unkempt way I look; I can’t even recognize myself. My head feels like it’s about to crack open. Now, dear. Raise your head a bit. I want to hold you. I’m going to go now. Lie down, put your head on my lap for a little while. Rest a bit. Don’t be sad for me. I was happy so many days of my life because I had you.

Oh, you’re here.

When I went to your house in Komso, the wooden gate facing the beach was broken and the bedroom door was locked; it must have been empty for a long time. Why did you lock the bedroom like that but leave the kitchen door wide open? The ocean wind had banged the wooden door open and shut so many times that it was half shattered.

But why are you in the hospital? And what is the doctor doing? He’s not making you better, he keeps asking you silly questions. He keeps asking you your name. Why is he doing that? And why aren’t you telling him your name? All you have to say is “Lee Eun-gyu,” so why are you not answering, making him ask again and again? Really, why is the doctor doing that? Now he’s holding a toy boat and asking, “Do you know what this is?” Is this a joke? It’s a boat! What does he mean, “Do you know what this is?” But the strangest thing is you. Why aren’t you answering? Oh, you really don’t know? You mean you have forgotten what your name is? You don’t know what that toy boat is? Really?

The doctor is asking again: “Your age?”

“One hundred!”

“No, please tell me how old you are.”

“Two hundred!”

You’re really being grumpy. Why do you say you are two hundred years old? You’re five years younger than me, so that makes you… The doctor asks your name again.

“Shin Gu!”

“Please think carefully.”

“Baek Il Sup!”

The actor Shin Gu? The television actor Baek Il Sup? Are you talking about the Shin Gu and Baek Il Sup that I like?

“Please don’t do that, think and tell us what it is.”

You’re sniffling. What is going on? Why are you here, and why are you being asked these silly questions? Why are you crying, unable to answer these easy questions? I’ve never seen you cry before. I was always the one who cried. You saw me cry so many times, but this is the first time I’m seeing you cry.

“Now, please tell me your name again!”

You’re quiet.

“One more time!”

“Park So-nyo!”

That’s not your name, that’s mine. I remember the day you asked me what my name was. You’re paved in my heart like an old road. Like the pebbles in a pebble field, dirt in dirt, dust in dust, cobwebs in cobwebs. I was young then. I don’t think I ever thought I was in my youth when I was living it, but if I think about when I first met you, I can see my youthful face. One late afternoon, I was walking home from the mill on the new avenue, kicking up dust, my nickel basin filled with flour resting on my head. My youthful footsteps were quick. I was on my way home to make dough out of the flour and cook dough-flake soup to feed the children. The mill was four or five ri away, across the bridge. My forehead was sweaty from the flour-filled nickel basin on my head. You passed by me on a bicycle, then stopped along the road and called, “Excuse me.”

I kept walking, looking straight ahead. My breast was about to pop out of my chogori, which I was wearing with baggy pants.

“Put down that basin and give it to me. I’ll carry it for you on my bicycle.”

“How can I trust a stranger passing by and give this to you?” I said, but my youthful steps slowed. Actually, the basin was so heavy that my head felt like it would get crushed. I’d made a cushion out of a towel and put it under the basin, but I still felt as if my forehead and the bridge of my nose were going to collapse.

“I’m not carrying anything on my bike anyway. Where do you live?”

“In the village across the bridge…”

“There’s a shop at the entrance to the village, right? I’ll leave it there for you. So give it here and walk more freely. It looks so heavy, and here I am on a bicycle, carrying nothing on it. If you just put that basin down, you’ll be able to walk faster and get home quicker.”

I looked at you as you got off your bicycle, and I bit down on the end of the towel hanging by my face, the towel I’d placed on my head under the basin. Compared with Hyong-chol’s father, you were plain-looking, both then and now. You were pale, like you had never worked a day in your life, and your long horselike face and drooping eyes weren’t all that handsome. Your thick, straight eyebrows made you look honest. Your mouth made you seem respectable and trustworthy. Your eyes, gazing at me quietly, were familiar, as if I’d seen them somewhere before. When I didn’t immediately give you the basin and instead studied your face, you turned to get back on your bicycle. “I don’t have a hidden motive. I just wanted to help out because it looked so heavy. I can’t force you to let me help you if you don’t want me to.” You placed a foot on the sturdy pedal of your bicycle. That was when I hurriedly thanked you and handed over the basin from my head. I watched as you undid the thick rubber ties on the back of the bicycle and secured the basin with them.