Hyong-chol’s letters always started with “Dearest Mother.” As if he were following a textbook on how to write letters, Hyong-chol asked after the family and said he was doing well. He wrote that he brought his laundry to Father’s cousin’s wife once a week, and that she washed it for him, as Mom had asked her to do. He reported that he was eating well, that he had found a place to sleep as he had started staying overnight at work, and asked her not to worry about him. Hyong-chol also wrote that he felt he could do anything in the city, and that there were many things he wanted to do. He even revealed his ambition to become a success and give Mom a better life. Twenty-year-old Hyong-chol gallantly added, So, Mother, do not worry about me, and please take care of your health. When you peeked over the letter at Mom, you would see her staring at the taro stalks in the back yard, or at the ledge of tall clay jars filled with sauces. Your mom’s ears would be cocked like a rabbit’s, trying not to miss a single word. After you finished reading the letter, your mom instructed you to write down what she would tell you. Mom’s first words were “Dear Hyong-chol.” You wrote down, Dear Hyong-chol. Mom didn’t tell you to put a period after it, but you did. When she said, “Hyong-chol!” you wrote down, Hyong-chol! When Mom paused after calling his name, as if she’d forgotten what she wanted to say, you tucked strands of your bob behind your ear and waited attentively for your mom to continue, ballpoint pen in hand, staring down at the stationery. When she said, “The weather’s turned cold,” you wrote, The weather has turned cold. Mom always followed “Dear Hyong-chol” with something about the weather: “There are flowers now that it’s spring.” “It’s summer, so the paddy bed is starting to dry and crack.” “It’s harvest season, and there are beans overflowing on the paddy banks.” Mom spoke in your regional dialect unless it was to dictate a letter to Hyong-chol. “Don’t worry about anything at home, and please take care of yourself. That is the only thing your mother wishes from you.” Mom’s letters always swelled with a current of emotion: “I am sorry that I can’t be of any help to you.” As you carefully wrote down Mom’s words, she would shed a fat tear. The last words from your mom were always the same: “Make sure you eat all your meals. Mom.”
As the third of five children, you witnessed Mom’s sorrow and pain and worry when each of your older brothers left home. Every morning at dawn after Hyong-chol left, Mom would clean the surface of the glazed clay sauce-jars on the ledge in the back yard. Because the well was in the front yard, it was cumbersome to bring water to the back, but she washed each and every jar. She took off all the lids and wiped them clean, inside and out, until they shone. Your mom sang quietly. “If there were no sea between you and me there wouldn’t be this painful goodbye.…” Her hands busily dipping the rag in cold water and lifting it out and wringing it and rubbing the jars, Mom sang, “I hope you won’t leave me one day.” If you called to her at that moment, she would turn around with tears welling in her big, guileless eyes.
Mom’s love for Hyong-chol was such that she used to make a bowl of ramen only for him, when he came home after remaining at school till late at night to study. Later, when you brought that up sometimes, your boyfriend, Yu-bin, would reply, “It’s just ramen—what’s the big deal?”
“What do you mean, what’s the big deal? Ramen was the best thing back then! It was something you ate in secret so you wouldn’t have to share it!” Even though you explained its significance, he, a city boy, seemed to think it was nothing.
When this new delicacy called ramen entered your lives, it overwhelmed every dish Mom had ever made. Mom would buy ramen and hide it in an empty jar in the row of clay jars, wanting to save it for Hyong-chol. But even late at night, the smell of boiling ramen would nudge you and your siblings awake. When Mom said, sternly, “You all go back to bed,” you would all look at Hyong-chol, who was about to eat. Feeling sorry, he would offer each of you a bite. Mom would remark, “How is it that you all come so quickly when it has to do with food?” and fill the pot with water, make another ramen, and divide it among you and your siblings. You would be so pleased, each holding a bowl filled with more soup than noodles.
After Hyong-chol had left for the city, when Mom reached the clay jar she used to hide the ramen in, she would call out, “Hyong-chol!” and sink down, her legs giving way. You would slip the rag from Mom’s grasp, lift her arm up, and drape it around your shoulder. Your mom would break out in sobs, unable to control her overflowing feelings for her firstborn.
When Mom sank into sorrow after your brothers left, the only things you could do for her were to read your brothers’ letters out loud, and to slip her responses into the mailbox on the way to school. Even then, you had no idea that she had never once set foot in the world of letters. Why did it never occur to you that Mom didn’t know how to read or write, even when she relied on you as a child, even after you read her the letters and wrote replies for her? You took her request as just another chore, similar to heading out to the garden to pick some mallow or going to buy some kerosene. Mom must not have given that task to anyone else after you left home, because you never received a letter from her. Was it because you didn’t write her? It was probably because of the phone. Around the time you left for the city, a public phone was installed in the village head’s house. It was the first phone in your birthplace, a small farming community where, once in a while, a train would clatter along tracks that stretched between the village and the vast fields. Every morning, the villagers heard the village head testing the mike then announcing that so and so should come over to answer a call from Seoul. Your brothers started to call the public phone. After the phone was installed, people who had family in other cities paid attention to the sounds of the microphone, even from paddies or fields, wondering who was being sought.
Either a mother and daughter know each other very well, or they are strangers.
Until last fall, you thought you knew your mom well—what Mom liked, what you had to do to appease her when she was angry, what she wanted to hear. If someone asked you what Mom was doing, you could answer in ten seconds: she’s probably drying ferns; since it’s Sunday, she must be at church. But last fall, your belief that you knew her was shattered. You went for a visit without announcing it beforehand, and you discovered that you had become a guest. Mom was continually embarrassed about the messy yard or the dirty blankets. At one point, she grabbed a towel from the floor and hung it, and when food dropped on the table, she picked it up quickly. She took a look at what she had in the fridge, and even though you tried to stop her, she went to the market. If you are with family, you needn’t feel embarrassed about leaving the table uncleared after a meal and going to do something else. You realized you’d become a stranger as you watched Mom try to conceal her messy everyday life.
Maybe you’d become a guest even before then, when you moved to the city. After you left home, your mom never scolded you. Before, Mom would reprimand you harshly if you did something even remotely wrong. From when you were young, Mom always addressed you as “You, girl.” Usually she said that to you and your sister when she wanted to differentiate between her daughters and sons, but your mom also called you “You, girl” when she demanded that you correct your habits, disapproving of your way of eating fruit, your walk, your clothes, and your style of speech. But sometimes she would become worried and look closely into your face. She studied you with a concerned expression when she needed your help to pull flat the corners of starched blanket covers, or when she had you put kindling in the old-fashioned kitchen furnace to cook rice. One cold winter day, you and your mom were at the well, cleaning the skate that would be used for the ancestral rites at New Year’s, when she said, “You have to work hard in school so that you can move into a better world.” Did you understand her words then? When Mom scolded you freely, you more frequently called her Mom. The word “Mom” is familiar and it hides a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side, whether I’m right or wrong. You never stopped callin
g her Mom. Even now, when Mom’s missing. When you call out “Mom,” you want to believe that she’s healthy. That Mom is strong. That Mom isn’t fazed by anything. That Mom is the person you want to call whenever you despair about something in this city.
Last fall, you didn’t tell her that you were coming down, but it wasn’t to free your mom from preparing for your arrival. You were in Pohang at the time. Your parents’ house was far from Pohang, where you arrived on an early-morning flight. Even when you got up at dawn and washed your hair and left for the airport, you didn’t know that you were going to go see Mom in Chongup. It was farther and more difficult to go to Chongup from Pohang than from Seoul. It wasn’t something you’d expected to do.
When you got to your parents’ house, the gate was open. The front door was open, too. You had a lunch date with Yu-bin back in the city the next day, so you were going to return home on the night train. Even though you were born there, the village had become an unfamiliar place. The only things left from your childhood were the three nettle trees, now mature, near the creek. When you went to your parents’ house, you took the small path toward the nettle-lined creek instead of the big road. If you kept going that way, it would lead you straight to the back gate of your childhood home. A long time ago, there was a communal well right outside the back gate. The well was filled in when modern plumbing was installed in every house, but you stood on that spot before entering the house. You tapped the sturdy cement with your foot, precisely where that abundant well used to be. You were overwhelmed with nostalgia. What would the well be doing in the darkness under the street, the well that had supplied water to all the people in the alley and still sloshed about? You weren’t there when the well was filled in. One day you went back for a visit and the well was gone, just a cement road where it had been. Probably because you didn’t see the well being filled with your own eyes, you couldn’t stop imagining that the well was still there, brimming with water, under the cement.
You stood above the well for a while, then went through the gate, calling, “Mom!” But she didn’t answer. The setting autumn sunlight filled the yard of the house, which faced west. You went into the house to look for her, but she wasn’t in the living room or in the bedroom. The house was a mess. A water bottle stood open on the table, and a cup was perched on the edge of the sink. A basket of rags was overturned on the floor mat in the living room, and hanging on the sofa was a dirty shirt with its sleeves flung apart, as if Father had just taken it off. The late-afternoon sun was illuminating the empty space. “Mom!” Even though you knew nobody was there, you called one more time, “Mom!” You walked out the front door and, in the side yard, discovered Mom lying on the wooden platform in the doorless shed. “Mom!” you called, but there was no reply. You put on your shoes and walked toward the shed. From there you could look over the yard. A long time ago, Mom had brewed malt in the shed. It was a useful space, especially after it was expanded into the adjacent pigsty. She piled old, unused kitchen supplies on the shelves she had mounted on a wall, and underneath there were glass jars of things she had pickled and preserved. It was Mom who had moved the wooden platform into the shed. After the old house was torn down and a Western-style house was built, she would sit on the platform to do kitchen work that she couldn’t easily do in the modern kitchen inside. She would grind red peppers in the mortar to make kimchi, sift through beanstalks to find beans and shuck them, make red-pepper paste, salt cabbage for winter kimchi, or dry fermented soybean cakes.
The doghouse next to the shed was vacant, the dog chain lying on the ground. You realized that you hadn’t heard the dog when you walked into the house. Looking around for him, you approached Mom, but she didn’t move. She must have been cutting zucchini to dry in the sun. A chopping board, a knife, and zucchini were pushed to the side, and small slices of zucchini were cradled in a worn bamboo basket. At first you wondered, Is Mom sleeping? Recalling that she wasn’t one to take naps, you peered into her face. Mom had a hand clutching her head, and she was struggling with all her might. Her lips were parted, and she was frowning so intently that her face was gnarled with deep wrinkles.
“Mom!”
She didn’t open her eyes.
“Mom! Mom!”
You knelt in front of Mom and shook her hard, and her eyes opened slightly. They were bloodshot, and beads of sweat dotted her forehead. Your mom didn’t seem to recognize you. Weighted with pain, her face was a miserable knot. Only some invisible malevolence could cause an expression like that. She closed her eyes again.
“Mom!”
You scrambled onto the platform and cradled your mom’s tortured face on your lap. You hooked your arm under her armpit, so that her head wouldn’t slide off your knees. How could she be left alone in this state? Outrage flashed through your conscience, as if someone had tossed her in the shed like that. But you were the one who had moved away and left your mom’s side. If one is deeply shocked, one cannot figure out what to do. Should I call an ambulance? Should I move her into the house? Where’s Father? These thoughts raced through your head, but you ended up gazing down at Mom lying across your lap. You had never seen her face contorted like that, so miserable, in such pain. Her hand, which was pressing down on her forehead, fell listlessly to the platform. Mom breathed laboriously, exhausted. Her limbs drooped, as if she could no longer exert the effort to try to avoid the pain. “Mom!” Your heart pounded. It occurred to you that she might be dying, just like this. But then Mom’s eyes opened calmly and trained themselves on you. It should have surprised her to see you, but there was nothing in her eyes. She appeared to be too weak to react. A while later, she called your name, her face dull. And she mumbled something faintly. You leaned in.
“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.