Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [20]
“Two hundred in one month? Did you only eat croakers?” you asked, and she said they had.
This was before their things had arrived from America, and she wasn’t used to the new house yet, and the newborn was still breastfeeding, so there wasn’t time to go to the market. Her mother-in-law sent a chest of baby croakers, salted and gently dried, and they ate the whole thing in ten days. Your sister laughed and said, “I would make bean-sprout soup and broil a couple of fish, then make zucchini soup and fish.” When she asked her mother-in-law where she could get more, she found out that she could order them online. Because they had eaten through the first batch so quickly, she ordered two.
“When the croakers came, I washed them and counted; there were two hundred. I was washing the fish so that I could wrap four or five of them in plastic and put them in the freezer, to make them easier to cook, and all of a sudden I wanted to fling them all on the floor,” your sister said calmly. “And I thought of Mom. I wondered, How did Mom feel all those years in that old-fashioned kitchen, cooking for our big family? Remember how much we ate? We had two small tables filled with food. Remember how big our rice pot was? And she had to pack all of our lunches, including the side dishes she made with whatever she could get in the countryside.… How did Mom get through it every day? Since Father was the eldest, there was always a relative or two staying with us. I don’t think Mom could have liked being in the kitchen at all.”
You were caught off guard. You had never thought of Mom as separate from the kitchen. Mom was the kitchen and the kitchen was Mom. You never wondered, Did Mom like being in the kitchen?
To earn money, your mom bred silkworms and brewed malt and helped make tofu. The best way to make money was not to use it. Mom saved everything. Sometimes she would sell a ratty lamp, a worn ironing stone, or an old jar to people from out of town. They wanted the antiques that Mom was using, and even though she wasn’t attached to any of those things, she haggled with people over the price as if she had become a vendor. At first it would seem your mom was losing, but then she would get her way. After listening to them quietly, she’d say, “Then just give me this amount,” and they would scoff, “Who would buy that useless thing for so much?” Mom would retort, “Then why do you go around buying this stuff?” and take the lamp back. They would grumble, “You’d make a good merchant,” and give Mom what she asked for.
Your mom never paid full price for anything. Most things she did herself, so her hands were always busy. She sewed and knitted, and she tilled the fields without rest. Mom’s fields were never empty. In the spring she planted potato seeds in furrows and planted lettuce and crown daisies and mallow and garlic chives and peppers and corn. Under the fence around the house she dug holes for zucchini, and in the field she planted beans. Mom was always growing sesame and mulberry leaves and cucumbers. She was either in the kitchen or in the fields or in the paddies. She plucked potatoes and yams and zucchini, and pulled cabbages and radishes from the ground. Mom’s labor showed that nothing would be reaped if the seeds were not sown. She paid only for things that could not be grown from seeds: ducklings or chicks that ran around in the yard in the spring, piglets that lived in the sty.
One year the dog gave birth to nine puppies. After a month passed, Mom left two behind and put six in a basket and, because the basket was full, put the last one in your arms. “Follow me,” she said. The bus you and Mom rode was crowded