Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [83]
Sister.
I wanted to shove my face into the hole I dug for the persimmon tree. If I can’t live like Mom, how could she have wanted to live like that? Why did this thought never occur to me when she was with us? Even though I’m her daughter, I had no idea, so how alone must she have felt with other people? How unfair is it that all she did was sacrifice everything for us, and she wasn’t understood by anyone?
Sister. Do you think we’ll be able to be with her again, even if it’s just for one day? Do you think I’ll be given the time to understand Mom and hear her stories and console her for her old dreams that are buried somewhere in the pages of time? If I’m given even a few hours, I’m going to tell her that I love all the things she did, that I love Mom, who was able to do all of that, that I love Mom’s life, which nobody remembers. That I respect her.
Sister, please don’t give up on Mom, please find Mom.
Your sister must not have been able to write the date or a goodbye. The letter has round blotches on it, as if she’d been crying as she wrote it. Your eyes linger over the yellowed spots; then you fold the letter and put it back in your purse. As your sister was writing the letter, her youngest, who had probably been eating something off the floor under the table, may have come to her and clumsily started to sing the children’s song that starts, “Mommy Bear …,” hanging on to her. Your sister may have looked at her baby, although with a dark expression, and sung for him, “… is slim!” The baby, who would not have understood his mom’s emotions, may have grinned broadly, and said “Daddy Bear …,” waiting for your sister to finish the verse. Your sister may have finished it, “is fat!” Your sister may not have been able to write the end to her letter. The baby, trying to climb up your sister’s leg, may have fallen down, bumping his head on the floor. And the baby would have burst into desperate-sounding sobs. Your sister, seeing the bluish bruise spreading on the baby’s soft skin, may have then spilled the tears she had been holding back.
You fold the letter and put it in your purse, and the guide’s passionate voice echoes in your ears. “The highlight of this museum is the Creation of Adam, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which we will see at the end. Michelangelo hung from a beam on the ceiling for four years as he worked on the fresco, and later in life, his eyesight became so weak that he couldn’t read or see pictures unless he went outside. Frescoes are made with lime plaster, so they had to finish before the plaster set. If they couldn’t do the work, which would normally take about a month, in one day, the plaster set and they had to do it again. Because he had to hang from the ceiling like that for four years, it’s understandable that he had problems with his neck and back for the rest of his life.”
The last thing you did at the airport before you boarded the plane was to call your father. After Mom disappeared, your father went back and forth between his house and Seoul, but he went home for good in the spring. You called him every day, in the morning or sometimes at night. Father picked up the phone after one ring, as if he was waiting by it. He would say your name before you told him it was you. This was something Mom always did. She would be pulling weeds in the flower garden, and when the phone rang, she would say to