Please Look After Mom (10 page)

“Is this your mother?”

His mom was standing behind the young man, shivering in the cold. Before he could say anything she said, “Hyong-chol! It’s me! Mom!” The young man looked at his watch and said, “There’s only seven minutes until the curfew!” and, turning to Hyong-chol’s mom, said “Goodbye!” and ran into the darkness to beat the government-imposed deadline.

Father had been away from home. When Hyong-chol’s sister read Mom his letter, Mom fretted, then went to his high school and got a copy of his graduation certificate and hopped on the train. It was the first time in her life that she’d ridden a train. That young man had seen Mom at Seoul Station asking people how to get to Yongsan-dong. Hearing her say that there was something she absolutely had to get to her son that night, he was compelled to bring her to the office himself. Hyong-chol’s mom was wearing blue plastic sandals in the middle of winter. During fall harvest, she had hurt her foot, near her big toe, with a scythe, and because it hadn’t fully healed, the plastic sandals were the only shoes she could wear. His mom left her sandals outside the night duty room before entering. “I don’t know if it’s too late!” she said, and took out his graduation certificate. Mom’s hands were frozen. Grasping them, he vowed to himself that he would make these hands and this woman happy, no matter what. But a rebuke tumbled
out of his mouth, asking her how she could follow a stranger just because he told her to. Mom scolded him right back: “How can you live without trusting people? There are more people who are good than people who are bad!” And she smiled her typical optimistic smile.

He stands in front of the closed office and studies the building. Mom couldn’t have come here. If she could figure out how to get here, she could have gone to one of her children’s places. The woman who said she had seen his mom here remembered her because of her eyes. She said his mom was wearing blue plastic sandals. Blue plastic sandals. He remembers just now that the shoes Mom had on when she went missing were low-heeled beige sandals. Father had told him. But the woman who had told him that Mom’s sandals had cut into her foot because she had walked so far had definitely said that they were blue. He peers into the office, then looks around the streets leading to Posong Girls’ High School and Eunsong Church.

Does the night duty room still exist in that office?

   That night duty room was where he slept next to Mom all those years ago, sharing a blanket. Next to the woman who had boarded the Seoul-bound train without a plan, to bring a graduation certificate to her son. That must have been the last time he had lain next to Mom like that. A chilly draft seeped in, in waves from the wall facing the street. “I can fall asleep better if I’m next to the wall,” Mom said, and switched sides with him. “It’s drafty,” he said, and got up to stack his bag and books next to the wall, to block out the wind. He piled the
clothes he had been wearing that day next to the wall, too. “It’s fine,” Mom said, pulling him by the hand. “Go to bed; you have to get up for work tomorrow.”

“How’s your first taste of Seoul?” he asked, looking up at the ceiling, lying next to his mom.

“Nothing special,” Mom said, and laughed. She turned to look at him, and started to talk of times gone by. “You’re my first child. This isn’t the only thing that you got me to do for the first time. Everything you do is a new world for me. You got me to do everything for the first time. You were the first who made my belly swollen, and the first to breastfeed. I was your age when I had you. When I saw your red, sweaty face, eyes shut, for the first time … People say that when they have their first child they’re surprised and happy, but I think I was sad. Did I really have this baby? What do I do now? I was so afraid that at first I couldn’t even touch your squirmy little fingers. You were holding those tiny hands in such tight fists. If I opened your fists up one finger at a time, you smiled. They were so small that I thought, If I keep touching them they might disappear. Because I didn’t know anything. I got married at seventeen, and when I didn’t get pregnant until I was nineteen, Aunt kept saying I probably wouldn’t be able to have children, so when I found out I was pregnant with you, the first thing I thought was, Now I don’t have to hear that from her—that was what made me the most excited. Later, I was happy to see your fingers and toes grow every day. When I was tired, I went over to you and opened your fingers. Touched your toes. When I did that, I felt energized. When I first put shoes on you, I was really excited. When you toddled over to me, I laughed so much; even if someone had spilled out a heap of gold and silver and jewels in front of me, I wouldn’t have
laughed like that. And how do you think I felt when I sent you to school? When I pinned your name tag and a handkerchief on your chest, I felt so grown up. How can I compare the happiness I got watching your legs get thicker with anything else? Every day, I sang, Grow and grow, my baby. And then, one day, you were bigger than me.”

He gazed at Mom as the words spilled out like a confession. She rolled over onto her side to face him and stroked his hair. “Even though I said, ‘I hope you grow tall and big,’ when you got bigger than me I was scared, even though you were my child.”

He cleared his throat and turned to stare at the ceiling again, to hide his watery eyes.

“Unlike other children, you didn’t need me to tell you anything. You did everything by yourself. You are handsome, and you were good in school. I’m so proud, and sometimes I’m amazed that you came from me.… If it weren’t for you, when would I have the chance to come to Seoul?”

He resolved then that he would earn a lot of money so that when Mom came back to this city she would be able to sleep in a warm place. That he wouldn’t allow her to sleep in the cold again. Some time passed. In a low voice, Mom said, “Hyong-chol.” He heard her voice from far away, half asleep. Mom reached out and stroked his head. She sat up and looked over his sleeping figure and touched his forehead. “I’m sorry.” Mom quickly took her hand away to wipe her tears, but they dropped on his face.

When he woke up at dawn, his mom was sweeping the floor of the office. He tried to stop her, but Mom said, “I might as well, I’m not doing anything,” and, as if she would be punished if she weren’t doing anything, washed the floor with
a wet mop and thoroughly cleaned the employees’ desks. Mom’s breath was visible, and the top of her swollen foot was pushing against her blue sandal. As they waited for the nearby bean-sprout-soup place to open so they could eat breakfast, Mom’s hands made the office gleam.

This house is still here. His eyes grow wide. He has been poking around the narrow alleys filled with parked cars, looking for Mom. Now, as the sun hangs low in the sky, he finds himself in front of the house where he rented a room thirty years ago. He reaches out to touch the gate, amazed. The sharp arrowlike steel spikes on top of the gate are still there, the same as thirty years ago. The woman who once loved him but ended up leaving him would sometimes hang a plastic bag filled with Chinese buns on the gate when he wasn’t there. All the other houses nearby have been converted to townhouses or studio apartments.

He reads the ad posted on the gate:

Having read even the cell-phone number and the e-mail address, he pushes the gate slowly. The gate opens, just as it did thirty years ago. He looks inside. A U-shaped house, the same as thirty years ago, the door to each unit facing the courtyard. The door of the unit he used to live in has a padlock on it.

“Anyone home?” he calls out, and two or three doors open.

Two young women with short hair and two boys around seventeen look at him. He steps into the courtyard.

“Have you seen this person?” He shows the flyer to the young women first, then quickly hands one to the boys, who are about to shut their door. There are two girls around the same age peering out from inside the boys’ room. The boys, thinking he’s looking into their room, bang the door shut. The outside looks the same as thirty years ago, but each unit has become a studio. The owners must have renovated, creating one space, combining the kitchen and the room. He can see a sink in the corner of the women’s unit.

“No,” the young women say, and hand him the flyer. They have sleep in their eyes; perhaps they were napping. They watch him turn around and head back to the gate. He’s about to step outside when the boys’ door opens and someone calls, “Wait! I think this grandmother was sitting in front of the gate a few days ago.”

When he approaches the room, the other boy sticks his head out and says, “No, I told you this isn’t her. This lady is young. That lady was really wrinkly. Her hair wasn’t like this, either—she was a beggar.”

“But her eyes were the same. Look only at her eyes; they were just like these. If we find her, are you really going to give us five million won?”

“I’ll give you some money as long as you tell me exactly what happened, even if you don’t find her.” He asks the boys to step outside. The young women, who had closed their door, open it again and look out.

“That lady was the one from the bar down the street. They keep her locked up because she has dementia, and it looked like she snuck out and got lost. The owner of the bar came and took her home.”

“Not that lady; I saw this lady, too. She’d hurt her foot. It was covered in pus. She kept chasing away flies … though I didn’t look closely, because she smelled and was dirty.”

“And? Did you see where she went?” Hyong-chol asks the boy.

“No. I just went in. She kept trying to come in, so I slammed the gate.…”

Nobody else had seen Mom. The boy follows him out, saying, “I really did see her!” He looks down the alleys, running ahead of Hyong-chol. Hyong-chol gives the boy a hundred-thousand-won check as he leaves. The boy’s eyes sparkle. Hyong-chol asks the boy to get the lady to stay with him if he sees her again and to give him a call. Not listening very carefully, the boy says, “Then you’ll give me five million won?” Hyong-chol nods. The boy asks for a few more flyers. He says he will hang them up at the gas station where he works part-time.
He says that if Hyong-chol finds his mom from that he should be rewarded with five million won, because it will be thanks to him. Hyong-chol tells him he will.

   They have faded—promises he made to himself for Mom, who changed places with him in the night duty room to protect him from the draft, saying, “I can fall asleep better if I’m next to the wall.” The pledge he had made that Mom would sleep in a warm room when she came back to this city.

   He takes a cigarette from his pocket and puts it in his mouth. He doesn’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point his emotions ceased to belong only to him. He went about his life, having mostly forgotten about Mom.
What was I doing when Mom was left behind on that unfamiliar subway-station platform, having failed to get on the train with Father?
He looks up once more at the office and turns back.
What was I doing?
He hangs his head. The day before Mom went missing, he went out drinking with his co-workers, but it didn’t end well. His co-worker Kim, who was usually respectful and polite, made a subtle dig at him after a few drinks, pronouncing him “clever.” At work, Hyong-chol was in charge of the sale of the apartments near Songdo, in Inchon, and Kim oversaw the sale of the apartments near Yongin. Kim’s remark referred to Hyong-chol’s idea of giving out concert tickets as promotional gifts for people coming to the model home. This wasn’t his idea but that of his sister, the writer. When Chi-hon was over at his house, his wife gave her a bath mat that had been the promotional gift for the last apartment sale, and his sister said, “I don’t know why companies think homemakers like this kind of thing.”