Kyung-sook Shin - Please Look After Mom

In the spring, the dog, growling, would lie with her new litter under the porch, where the family’s winter shoes were scattered. You could hear the water dripping from the eaves. That gentle dog, why did she get so aggressive when she had pups? Unless you were a member of the family, you couldn’t get near her. When she had a litter, Hyong-chol would repaint the sign on the blue gate that always hung there, the one that said “Beware of Dog.” Once, I took a puppy from the porch while the dog was sleeping after her dinner, put it in a basket, covered it with a cloth, and, with my hand, covered where I thought the eyes were, and brought it to Aunt’s.

“Why are you covering its eyes when it’s so dark out, Mom?” asked my younger daughter, following me. She looked confused, even after I explained that if I didn’t do it the pup would find its way home.

“Even though it’s so dark?”

“Yes, even though it’s this dark!”

When the dog discovered that her puppy was gone, she refused to eat, and lay around, sick. She had to eat to make enough milk to feed the other puppies, so they could grow. It looked like she would die if I left her alone, so I brought the pup back and pushed it next to her, and the dog started eating again. That dog lived under that porch.

Oh, I don’t know where to stop these memories, the memories that are sprouting all over the place like spring greens. Everything I forgot about is rushing back. From the rice bowls on the kitchen shelf to the big and little clay jars on the condiment ledge, from the narrow wooden stairs to the attic to the pumpkin vines spreading thick under the dirt wall, climbing up.

You shouldn’t leave the house to freeze like this.

If it’s too much, ask our younger daughter-in-law for help. She always carefully looked after their house, even though it wasn’t their own. She has an eye for this kind of thing, and she’s exact and warm. Even though she works, her house is always sparkling clean, and she doesn’t even have help. If it’s hard to maintain the house, try talking to her. I’m telling you, if she touches an old thing it becomes new. Don’t you remember how they rented, in the redevelopment area, a brick house that the owner didn’t maintain, and she mixed cement with her own hands and fixed it? A house takes on the characteristics of its occupant, and, depending on who lives in it, it can become a very good house or a very strange house. When spring comes, please plant some flowers in the yard, and rub down the floors, and fix the roof that collapsed from the snow.

A few years ago, when someone asked you while you were drunk where you lived, you said Yokchon-dong. Even though it’s been twenty years since Hyong-chol left Yokchon-dong. Even though Yokchon-dong has become faint even in my memory. You never really showed happiness or sadness. When Hyong-chol bought his first house, in Yokchon-dong, in Seoul, you didn’t say much, but in your heart I suppose you were very proud. And that’s why, when you were drunk, you forgot about this house and you named that house, where we would go three or four times a year, like guests, and stay one or sometimes two nights. I wish you would think about this house in that way. Around this house, small flowers bloomed every year and lived prettily until they faded, in the corner of the yard or near the back yard, without my having to plant them. In the yard and under the porch and in the back yard, something was always gathering or coming or going or dying. Birds landed on the clothesline as if they were talking laundry, and they played and chattered and twittered. I do think that a house starts resembling the people who live there. Otherwise, would the ducks living in that house have roamed around the yard and laid eggs anywhere? Otherwise, would I remember so clearly how, on a sunny day, I would sweep thinly sliced dried radish or boiled taro stems into a wicker tray and perch it on top of the dirt wall? Would the image of my daughter’s newly washed, clean white sneakers drying under the sunlight hover like this? Chi-hon liked to look at the sky reflected in the well over there. I can almost see her interrupting herself as she drew water from the well, looking down with her chin in her hands.

Be well… I’m leaving this house now.

Last summer, when I was left behind at Seoul Station, I could only remember things from when I was three years old. Having forgotten everything, I could do nothing but walk-I didn’t even know who I was. I walked and walked. Everything was foggy. The yard I used to play in when I was three came clearly to me. That was when my father, who dug for gold and coal, came home. I walked as far as I could go. In between apartment buildings, along grassy hills and soccer fields, I walked and walked. Where did I want to go, walking like that? Could it be the yard I played in as a three-year-old? When Father came home, he went to work every morning at the construction site for a new train station that was ten ri away. What was the accident he had? What kind of accident was it that cost him his life? They say that when neighbors came to tell Mom about Father’s accident, I was running around the yard. I played, watching Mom staggering, her face turning ashen, supported by neighbors, going to the accident site. Someone passing by said, “Here you are laughing, not even knowing that your father died, you silly child,” and smacked my bottom. With only that memory, I walked and walked until I collapsed from exhaustion.

Over there.

Mom is sitting on the porch of the dim house I was born in.

Mom raises her head and looks at me. My grandmother had a dream when I was being born. A cow with a shiny brown coat was stretching, having just woken, raising its knees. My grandmother said I would be very energetic, since I was born just as the cow was using its energy to get up, and said that I should be well taken care of, because I would become the source of a lot of joy. Mom looks at my foot, the strap of the blue plastic sandal digging into it. The bone is visible through the wound in my foot. Mom’s face crumples in sorrow. That face is the face I saw when I looked into the mirror of the wardrobe after I gave birth to a dead baby. “My baby,” Mom says, and opens her arms. Mom puts her hands under my armpits as if she’s holding a child who has just died. She takes the blue plastic sandals off my feet and pulls my feet into her lap. Mom doesn’t smile. She doesn’t cry. Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?

IT’S BEEN NINE MONTHS since Mom went missing.

You’re in Italy now. Sitting on the marble stairs overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, you’re looking at the obelisk from Egypt. The guide, sweat beaded on his forehead, shouts, “Come this way,” and directs people in your tour group to the bottom of the stairs, where there is shade, near the large pinecones. “We are not allowed to speak in the museums or the basilica, so I’ll tell you about the important things in the museum before we go in. I’ll distribute earphones, so please listen.”

You take the earphones, but you don’t put them in your ears. The guide continues: “If you don’t hear anything in the earphones, it means you’re too far away from me. There will be so many people that I won’t be able to look out for each and every one of you. I can guide you properly only when you’re near me, where you can hear my voice.”

You head for the bathroom with the earphones dangling around your neck. People in your group stare at you as you stride into the bathroom. You wash your hands at the sink, and when you open your purse to take out your handkerchief to wipe your hands, your gaze stops at your sister’s letter crumpled inside. It’s the letter you took out of your mailbox at your apartment three days ago, as you were leaving Seoul with Yu-bin. Holding your suitcase in one hand, standing outside your door, you read your sister’s name written on the envelope. It was the first time you’d received a letter from your sister. And it was a handwritten letter, not just an e-mail. You wondered if you should open it, but you just stuffed it into your purse. Perhaps you thought that if you read it you would not be able to get on the plane with Yu-bin.