Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [62]
Your daughter is crying.
“Chi-hon!”
She is quiet.
“Your mom was very proud of you.”
“What?”
“If you were in the newspaper, she folded it and put it in her bag and took it out and looked at it again and again—if she saw someone in town she took it out and bragged about you.”
She’s silent.
“If someone asked what her daughter did … she said you wrote words. Your mom asked a woman at the Hope House orphanage in Namsan-dong to read her your book. Your mom knew what you wrote. When that woman read to her, Mom’s face brightened and she smiled. So, whatever happens, you have to keep writing well. There’s always the right time to say something.… I lived my life without talking to your mom. Or I missed the chance, or I assumed she would know. Now I feel like I could say anything and everything but there’s nobody to listen to me. Chi-hon?”
“Yes?”
“Please … please look after your mom.”
You press the phone closer to your ear, listening to your daughter’s forlorn cries. Her tears seem to trickle down the cord of your phone. Your face becomes marred with tears. Even if everyone in the world forgets, your daughter will remember. That your wife truly loved the world, and that you loved her.
4
Another Woman
THERE ARE SO MANY pine trees here.
How can there be a neighborhood like this in this city? It’s hidden away so well. Did it snow a few days ago? There’s snow on the trees. Let me see, there are three pine trees in front of your house. It’s almost like that man planted them here for me to sit on. Oh, I can’t believe I’m talking about him. I’m going to visit with you first and then go see him. I’ll do that. I think I should do that.
The apartments and studios that your siblings live in all look the same to me. It’s confusing which house is whose. How can everything be exactly the same? How do they all live in identical spaces like that? I think it would be nice if they lived in different-looking houses. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a shed and an attic? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a house where the children have places to hide? You used to hide in the attic, away from your brothers, who wanted to send you on all sorts of errands. Now even in the countryside apartment buildings that look the same have sprouted up. Have you gone up on the roof of our house recently? You can see all the high-rise apartments in town from there. When you were growing up, our village didn’t even have a bus route. It has to be worse in this busy city if it’s like that even in the country. I just wish they didn’t all look the same. They all look so identical that I can’t figure out where to go. I can’t find your brothers’ homes or your sister’s studio. That’s my problem. In my eyes, all the entrances and doors look the same, but everyone manages to find their way home, even in the middle of the night. Even children.
But you’re living here, where it’s nice.
Where is this, by the way? Puam-dong in Chongno-gu, in Seoul … This here is Chongno-gu? Chongno-gu … Chongno-gu … Oh, Chongno-gu! The first house your eldest brother set up as a newlywed was in Chongno-gu. Tongsung-dong in Chongno-gu. He said, “Mother, this is Chongno-gu. It makes me happy every time I write my address. Chongno is the center of Seoul, and now I’m living here.” He said, “A country hick has finally made it to Chongno.” He called it Chongno-gu, but he lived in a tenement house crammed on a steep hill called something like Naksan. I was so out of breath when I went all the way up there. I thought, How can there be somewhere like this in this city? It feels more like the country than our hometown! But I’m saying the same thing here, where you live. How can there be a place like this in this city?
Last year, when you came back to Seoul after spending three years abroad, you were disappointed that you couldn