Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [35]
“People sure have a lot of money,” he replied, at which she mumbled, “People who can’t leave—well, they’re not too smart.”
Father just watched them.
His wife continued, “Since their friends go abroad during the Full Moon Harvest, the kids were saying, I wish we could do that, too.” When he glared at his wife, unable to listen to it any longer, she explained, “You know how kids are sensitive to that kind of thing.” Father got up from the table and went into his room.
“Are you crazy? Is this something to talk about right now?” he snapped, and his wife retorted, “Look, I said the kids said that; did I say I wanted to? Can’t I even relay what the kids said? It’s so frustrating. I’m supposed to live without saying anything?” She got up and left the table.
“Shouldn’t we hold the ancestral rites?” Chi-hon asks.
“Since when did you think about the ancestral rites? You never even came home for the holidays, and now you care about Full Moon Harvest?”
“I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been that way.”
He watches his sister as she stops rubbing her fingernails and sticks her hands in her jacket pockets. She still hasn’t gotten rid of that habit.
When they lived together in Seoul, when he had to sleep in the same room as his brother and his sister, his sister took her place nearest the wall, he lay in the middle, and his brother lay near the other wall. Just about every night, he’d be smacked in the head and wake up to find his brother’s hand draped across his face. He would take it off carefully and be about to fall asleep again when his sister’s hand would be flung onto his chest. It was the way they used to sleep in the large room at home, rolling around as much as they pleased. One night, he let out a yell when he got punched in the eye. His siblings woke up.
“Hey! You!”
His sister, belatedly figuring out what had happened, hurriedly stuck her hands in the pockets of the cotton pants she wore to bed and fidgeted nervously.
“If you’re going to keep this up, just go home!”
When morning came, his sister really went home to Mom, taking all of her things. Mom brought her back to Seoul right away, telling her to get on her knees before him and ask for his forgiveness. His sister, obstinate, didn’t move.
“Ask him to forgive you!” Mom said, but his sister didn’t budge.
His sister was gentle, but if she had her mind set on something, nobody could move her. Once, when he was in middle school, he had forced his sister to wash his sneakers against her will. Usually she obediently washed them clean, but that day she got upset and took them, his new but grubby sneakers, to the creek and sent them downstream. He ran all the way along the creek to retrieve his floating shoes. Later, it became a cherished memory that only siblings could share, but at the time, he came home angry with only one sneaker, which had turned green from the slimy water and clinging algae, and told on his sister. Even when Mom picked up the poker, asking where his sister had learned to be so ill-tempered, she wouldn’t say she was sorry. Instead, she got angry at Mom. “I said I didn’t want to! I told him I didn’t want to! And from now on I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to do!”
In their small room, Mom ordered his obstinate sister: “I told you to ask him to forgive you. I told you your brother was your parent here. If you don’t correct your habit of taking your things and leaving because your brother scolded you, this will stay with you your entire life. If something doesn’t go your way when you are married, are you going to take your things and leave even then?”
The more Mom told her to ask for his forgiveness, the deeper his sister’s hands burrowed into her pockets. Saddened, Mom sighed. “Now this child won’t listen to me. This child is ignoring me because I don’t have anything and have no education.” Only when Mom’s lament turned into teardrops did his sister say, “That’s not