Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin [89]
“It was blessed by a priest this morning.”
Is this the rosewood rosary Mom talked about?
“Is this the only place you can get this rosary?”
“No, you can get it anywhere. But since it’s the Vatican, there is more meaning to it if it comes from here.”
You gaze at the sticker on the rosary case: fifteen euros. Your hands shake as they give the money to the nun. Still holding the rosary case, the nun asks if it’s a gift. Gift? Could I give this to Mom? Could I? When you nod, the nun takes from the inside of the display case a white envelope with the image of the Pietà printed on it, puts the case inside, and seals it with a sticker.
Holding the rosewood rosary in your hand, you start walking toward St. Peter’s Basilica. From the entrance, you look inside. Light cascades from the dome above the majestic bronze ciborium. Angels float among the white clouds in the ceiling fresco. You set one foot in the basilica and look beyond the large, lacquered halo. As you walk down the center aisle toward it, your feet pause. Something pulls at you, intensely. What is it? You wade through the crowd, toward the thing that is pulling at you like a magnet. You look up to see what people are looking at. The Pietà. The Holy Mother holding her dead son is ensconced behind bulletproof glass. As if you are being dragged forward, you push through the crowd to the front. As soon as you see the graceful image of the Holy Mother holding the body of her son, who had just breathed his last breath, you feel as though you are frozen in that spot. Is that marble? It seems that her dead son still has some heat in his body. The Holy Mother’s eyes are filled with pain, as her head tilts down at her son’s body laid across her lap. Even though death has already touched them, their bodies seem real—as if a poking finger would dent their flesh. The woman who was denied her motherhood still gave her lap to her son’s body. They are vivid, as if alive. You feel someone brushing against your back, so you look swiftly behind you. It’s as if Mom is standing behind you.
You realize that you habitually thought of Mom when something in your life was not going well, because when you thought of her it was as though something got back on track, and you felt re-energized. You still had the habit of calling Mom on the phone even after she went missing. So many days, you were about to call Mom but then stood there, numbly. You place the rosewood rosary in front of the Pietà and kneel. It’s as if the Holy Mother’s hand, cradling her dead son under his armpit, is moving. It’s hard for you to look at the Holy Mother’s anguish as she holds her son, who has reached death after enduring pain. You don’t hear anything, and the light from the ceiling has disappeared. The cathedral of the smallest country in the world falls into deep silence. The cut in the tender skin on the inside of your lip keeps bleeding. You swallow the blood that pools in your mouth and manage to raise your head to look up at the Holy Mother. Your palms reach out automatically to touch the bulletproof glass. If you can, you want to close the Holy Mother’s sorrowful eyes for her. You can sense Mom’s scent vividly, as if you two had fallen asleep under the same blanket last night and you embraced her when you woke up this morning.
One winter, Mom wrapped her rough hands around your young, cold ones and took you to the furnace in the kitchen. “Oh my, your hands are sheets of ice!” You smelled the unique fragrance of Mom, who huddled around you before the fire, rubbing and rubbing your hands to warm them.
You feel the Holy Mother’s fingers, which are wrapped around her dead son’s body, stretching out and stroking your cheek. You remain on your knees in front of the Holy Mother, who barely manages to raise her son’s hands, clearly marked by nail-inflicted wounds, until you can no longer hear footsteps in the basilica. At one point you open your eyes. You stare at the Holy Mother’s lips, beneath her eyes, which are immersed in sorrow. Her lips are closed firmly, with