Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [18]
“I gave you the money for it and everything. Country people are terrible. Don’t you feel bad for the dog? How is it supposed to live in that tiny space, especially in this heat? There’s feces inside, and the poor thing has stepped all over it, and you don’t even clean it up. How can such a big dog live in such a small contraption? Otherwise, let him roam free in the yard! Don’t you feel bad for the dog?”
The phone went silent. You started to regret saying that country people were terrible.
Mom’s angry voice came shooting across the line. “You care only about the dog, and not your own mother? Do you think your mother is the kind of person who would abuse a dog? Don’t tell me what to do! I’m going to raise it my way!” Mom hung up first.
You were the one who always hung up first. You would say, “Mom, I’ll call you back,” and then you didn’t. You didn’t have time to sit and listen to everything your mom had to say. But this time your mom had hung up on you. It was the first time Mom had gotten so angry with you since you left home. Once you moved out, Mom always said, “I’m sorry.” She confessed that she’d sent you to live with Hyong-chol because she couldn’t take care of you well enough. Mom would try as hard as she could to lengthen the call when you phoned. But even though she hung up first, you were more disappointed in the way she was keeping the dog. You were puzzled. How had Mom become that person? She used to look after all the animals in the house. She was the kind of person who would come to Seoul for an extended stay and three days later insist on going home to feed the dog. How could she be so clueless now? You were annoyed at your mom for becoming so insensitive.
A few days later, Mom called. “You weren’t like this before, but you’ve become cold. If your mother hangs up like that, you’re supposed to call her back. How could you dig in your heels?”
It wasn’t that you had been stubborn; you hadn’t had time to think about it for that long. You would remember how Mom had hung up, angry, and think, I should give her a call, but because of one thing or another you would push calling her to the end of your list.
“Are all educated people like this?” Mom snapped, and hung up.
Around Full Moon Harvest, you went to your parents’ house and saw that there was a big doghouse next to the shed. On the floor of the doghouse was a soft layer of hay.
Standing next to you on the hill, your mom started talking. “In October, while I was washing rice at the sink to make breakfast, someone kept tapping me on the back. When I looked around, nobody was there. It was like that for three whole days: I felt something tapping me, as if they were calling me, but nobody was there when I looked. It must have been the fourth day; as soon as I woke up, I went to the bathroom, and the dog was lying in front of the toilet. You got angry with me last year, saying that I was abusing the dog, but that dog had been wandering around the railroad tracks, covered with mange. I felt bad for him, so I brought him home and tied him up and gave him food. If you don’t tie him up, you don’t know where he’ll go, or whether someone’s going to catch him and eat him.… That day, he didn’t move. At first I thought he was sleeping. He didn’t move even when I nudged him. He was dead. He’d been eating well and wagging his tail the day before, but he was dead, and he looked peaceful. I don’t know how he got loose from the chain. At first he was all bones. He’d fattened up, and his coat was getting shiny. And he was so smart. He would catch moles.” Mom paused to sigh. “They say that if you take in a person he will betray you, and if you take in a dog he will pay you back. I think the dog went in my place.”
This time you sighed.
“Last spring, I donated money to a passing monk and he said that this year one member in our family