Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [87]
Only after Mom went missing did you realize that her stories were piled inside you, in endless stacks. Mom’s everyday life used to go on in a repeating loop, without a break. Her everyday words, which you didn’t think deeply about and sometimes dismissed as useless when she was with you, awoke in your heart, creating tidal waves. You realized that her position in life hadn’t changed even after the war was over, and even when the family could afford to feed itself. When the family got together for the first time in a long while, sat around the table with Father, and talked about the presidential elections, Mom would cook and bring out the food and wash the dishes and clean and hang damp dishrags to dry. Mom took care of fixing the gate and the roof and the porch. Instead of helping her do the work that she did nonstop, even you thought of it as natural, and took it for granted that this was her job. Sometimes, as your brother pointed out, you thought of her life as disappointing—even though Mom, despite never having been well off, tried so hard to give you the best of everything, even though it was Mom who patted your back soothingly when you were lonely.
Around the time tiny new leaves started to sprout on the ginkgo trees in front of City Hall, you were squatting under a large tree on a main road that led to Samchong-dong. It was unbelievable that spring was coming without Mom here. That the frozen ground was thawing and the trees were starting to wake up. Your heart, which had sustained you throughout this ordeal with the belief that you would be able to find Mom, was crushed. Even though Mom’s missing, summer will come and fall will come again and winter will come, like this. And I’ll be living in a world without Mom. You could imagine a desolate road. And the missing woman plodding down that road, wearing blue plastic sandals.
Without telling anyone in the family, you left with Yu-bin for Rome, where he was going to attend a seminar. He’d asked you to come with him but didn’t expect you to say yes. When you actually decided to go with him, he was a little taken aback, though he patiently made a few changes in his schedule. The day before you were to leave, he even called to ask, “Nothing’s changed, right?” As you got on the Rome-bound plane with him, you wondered for the first time whether Mom’s dream was to travel. Mom would always worry and tell you not to get on planes, but when you came back from somewhere, she would ask you detailed questions about the place you’d visited: “What kind of clothes do Chinese people wear?” “How do the Indians carry their children?” “What was the most delicious food you had in Japan?” Mom’s questions would spill out onto you. You would always reply curtly, “Chinese men take off their shirts in the summer and walk around like that.” “The Indian woman I saw in Peru carried her child wrapped in a sack on her hip.” “Japanese food is too sweet.” When Mom asked more questions, you got annoyed and said, “I’ll tell you later, Mom!” But you had no opportunity for these conversations later, because you always had something else to do. You leaned back in your airplane seat and heaved a deep sigh. It was Mom who’d told you to live someplace far away. It was also Mom who’d sent you at a young age to live in a city far from your birthplace. Mom back in those days—you realized, painfully, that Mom was the same age as you are now when she brought you to the city and left, taking the night train back home. One woman. That woman disappeared, bit by bit, having forgotten the joy of being born and her childhood and dreams, marrying before her first period and having five children and raising them.