Kyung-sook Shin: Please Look After Mom

“When my sister died I couldn’t even cry.” Mom’s pale face was so hollow that you couldn’t say a thing.

Your aunt’s funeral was in the spring. You didn’t go. You hadn’t even visited her, although she had been sick for almost a year. And what were you doing instead? When you were young, your aunt was your second mom. During summer vacations you went to live with her, in her house just on the other side of the mountain. Your aunt had the closest relationship with you among all of your siblings. It was probably because you looked like Mom. Your aunt always said, “You and your mother are cast from the same mold!” As if she were re-creating her childhood with her sister, your aunt fed rabbits with you and braided your hair. She cooked a pot of barley with a scoop of rice on top and saved the rice for you. At night you lay across her lap and listened to the stories she told you. You remembered how your aunt used to slide an arm under your neck at night to fashion a pillow for you. Even though she had left this world, you still remembered your aunt’s scent from those childhood visits. She spent her old age looking after her grandchildren, while their parents ran a bakery. Your aunt fell down the stairs as she was carrying a child on her back, and was rushed to the hospital, where she found out that cancer had spread through her body to such an extent that it was too late to do anything. Your mom told you the news. “My poor older sister!”

“Why didn’t they catch it until now?”

“She’d never even gone in for a checkup.”

Your mom visited her sister with porridge and spooned some into her mouth. You listened quietly when your mom called to say, “Yesterday I went to see your aunt. I made sesame porridge, and she had a good appetite.” You were the first one Mom called when she found out that your aunt had died.

“My sister died.”

You didn’t say anything.

“You don’t need to come, since you’re busy.”

Even if your mom hadn’t said that, you wouldn’t have been able to go to your aunt’s funeral, because you had a deadline coming up. Hyong-chol, who went to the funeral, told you that he had been worried that Mom would be devastated, but she didn’t cry, and she told him she didn’t want to go to the burial grounds. “Really?” you’d asked. Hyong-chol said he thought it was strange, too, but he honored her wishes.

In the shed that day, Mom, whose face was marred with pain, told you she couldn’t even cry when her sister died.

“Why not? You should have cried if you wanted to,” you said, feeling a little relieved that she was returning to the Mom you knew, even though she spoke without revealing any emotion.

Your mom blinked placidly. “I can’t cry anymore.”

You didn’t say anything.

“Because then my head hurts so much it feels like it’s going to explode.”

With the setting sun warming your back, you gazed down at Mom’s face cradled on your lap as if it were the first time you were seeing it. Mom got headaches? So severe that she couldn’t even cry? Her dark eyes, which used to be as brilliant and round as the eyes of a cow that is about to give birth, were hidden under wrinkles. Her pale, fat lips were dry and cracked. You picked up her arm, which she’d flung on the platform, and placed it on her stomach. You stared at the dark sunspots on the back of her hand, saturated with a lifetime of labor. You could no longer say you knew Mom.

When your uncle was alive, he would come to see Mom every Wednesday. He had just returned to Chongup, after a nomadic life of roaming the country. There was no specific reason for the visit; he just rode in on his bike and saw Mom and left. Sometimes, instead of coming into the house, he called from the gate, “Sister! Doing well?” Then, before your mom could get out to the yard, he called, “I’m going now!” and turned his bike around and left. As far as you knew, Mom and her brother were not that close. At some point before you were born, your uncle had borrowed quite a lot of money from Father, but he never paid it back. Your mom sometimes brought that up, bitterly. She said, because of your uncle, she always felt indebted to Father and Father’s sister. Even though it was your uncle’s debt, it was hard for your mom to come to terms with the knowledge that he didn’t pay it back. When four or five years went by without news from your uncle, your mom always wondered, “What could your uncle be doing these days?” You couldn’t tell if Mom was worrying about him or resenting him.

One day, your mom heard someone push the gate open and enter, saying, “Sister, are you in?” Mom, who was inside eating tangerines with you, threw open the door and ran out. It happened so quickly. Who was it that got her so excited? Curious, you followed her out. Mom paused on the porch, looking at the gate, shouted, “Brother!” to the person standing next to it, and ran to him-not caring that she was barefoot. It was your uncle. Your mom, who had run out like the wind, beat his chest with her fist and cried, “Brother! Brother!” You watched her from the porch. It was the first time you had heard her call someone “Brother.” When she referred to her brother, she always called him “your uncle.” You don’t understand why you were so surprised when you saw Mom run to your uncle and call him “Brother” in a delighted nasal tone, when you had known all along that you had an uncle. You realized, Oh, Mom has a brother, too! Sometimes you laughed to yourself when you remembered what your mom was like that day, your aging mom jumping down from the porch and running across the yard to your uncle, shouting “Brother!” as if she were a child-Mom acting like a girl even younger than you. That mom was stuck in your head. It made you think, even Mom… You don’t understand why it took you so long to realize something so obvious. To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you.

You couldn’t leave Mom and return to the city after seeing her like that in the shed. Father was in Sokcho, with some people from the Regional Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. He was supposed to be home in two days. Although Mom got over the severe pain, she couldn’t free herself from the headache, and she couldn’t crack a smile, let alone cry. She couldn’t even understand your suggestion that she should go to the hospital. When you helped her into the house, she walked gingerly, trying to keep her pain in check. A long time passed before she could talk. Mom said that she always got headaches but only had terrible ones “once in a while,” and that she could put up with it since those moments passed.

Did your siblings know about Mom’s headaches? Did Father?

You wanted to tell them, and to take her to a big hospital as soon as you returned to the city. When she was able to move around by herself, Mom asked, “Don’t you need to go back?” At some point your visits home had become shorter; you would come for only a few hours and return to the city. You thought of your date the next day, but told your mom that you were going to stay the night. You remember the smile that spread across her face.