Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [6]
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 calling 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