Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [79]
Oh, I see the shed door is open.
The wind is pounding at the shed door as if it would knock it down. There’s a thin layer of ice on the wooden platform that I liked to sit on. If someone sat there without seeing the ice, he would slip right off. Chi-hon used to read in this shed. Getting bitten by fleas. I knew that she crept in here with a book, in between the pigsty and the ash shed. I didn’t look for her. When Hyong-chol asked where she was, I said I didn’t know. Because I liked seeing her read. Because I didn’t want to disturb her. Straw was piled on the board covering the pigsty. Chickens would have taken over one side and would be laying and sitting on eggs. Nobody would find the child squeezed in there, on top of the straw pile, putting spit on her flea bites to soothe them, reading. How much fun must it have been for her to hide there, reading, hearing her brother opening doors, pushing into the kitchen, looking for her? And the chickens, how particular were they? Huddled over eggs on the straw pile on top of the pigsty, they would get annoyed at the sound of my daughter turning pages. These chickens, who didn’t lay eggs if we didn’t make their nests cozy and tempting with nest eggs, became sensitive to Chi-hon’s rustling, and one time they cackled so much that her brother found her. What did she read, hidden quietly in the shed, with a pig grunting next to her and the chickens clucking above her and the hoe and rake and shovel and all kinds of farm equipment and straw around her?
In the spring, the dog, growling, would lie with her new litter under the porch, where the family’s winter shoes were scattered. You could hear the water dripping from the eaves. That gentle dog, why did she get so aggressive when she had pups? Unless you were a member of the family, you couldn’t get near her. When she had a litter, Hyong-chol would repaint the sign on the blue gate that always hung there, the one that said “Beware of Dog.” Once, I took a puppy from the porch while the dog was sleeping after her dinner, put it in a basket, covered it with a cloth, and, with my hand, covered where I thought the eyes were, and brought it to Aunt’s.
“Why are you covering its eyes when it’s so dark out, Mom?” asked my younger daughter, following me. She looked confused, even after I explained that if I didn’t do it the pup would find its way home.
“Even though it’s so dark?”
“Yes, even though it’s this dark!”
When the dog discovered that her puppy was gone, she refused to eat, and lay around, sick. She had to eat to make enough milk to feed the other puppies, so they could grow. It looked like she would die if I left her alone, so I brought the pup back and pushed it next to her, and the dog started eating again. That dog lived under that porch.
Oh, I don’t know where to stop these memories, the memories that are sprouting all over the place like spring greens. Everything I forgot about is rushing back. From the rice bowls on the kitchen shelf to the big and little clay jars on the condiment ledge, from the narrow wooden stairs to the attic to the pumpkin vines spreading thick under the dirt wall, climbing up.
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You shouldn’t leave the house to freeze like this.
If it’s too much, ask our younger daughter-in-law for help.