Please Look After Mom Read Online Free Page A

mumbled something faintly. You leaned in.
    “When my sister died I couldn’t even cry.” Mom’s pale face was so hollow that you couldn’t say a thing.
       Your aunt’s funeral was in the spring. You didn’t go. You hadn’t even visited her, although she had been sick for almost a year. And what were you doing instead? When you were young, your aunt was your second mom. During summer vacations you went to live with her, in her house just on the other side of the mountain. Your aunt had the closest relationship with you among all of your siblings. It was probably because you looked like Mom. Your aunt always said, “You and your mother are cast from the same mold!” As if she were re-creating her childhood with her sister, your aunt fed rabbits with you and braided your hair. She cooked a pot of barley with a scoop of rice on top and saved the rice for you. At night you lay across her lap and listened to the stories she told you. You remembered how your aunt used to slide an arm under your neck at night to fashion a pillow for you. Even though she had left this world, you still remembered your aunt’s scent from those childhood visits. She spent her old age looking after her grandchildren, while their parents ran a bakery. Your aunt fell down the stairs as she was carrying a child on her back, and was rushed to the hospital, where she found out that cancer had spread through her body to such an extent that it was too late to do anything. Your mom told you the news. “My poor older sister!”
    “Why didn’t they catch it until now?”
    “She’d never even gone in for a checkup.”
    Your mom visited her sister with porridge and spooned some into her mouth. You listened quietly when your mom called to say, “Yesterday I went to see your aunt. I made sesame porridge, and she had a good appetite.” You were the first one Mom called when she found out that your aunt had died.
    “My sister died.”
    You didn’t say anything.
    “You don’t need to come, since you’re busy.”
    Even if your mom hadn’t said that, you wouldn’t have been able to go to your aunt’s funeral, because you had a deadline coming up. Hyong-chol, who went to the funeral, told you that he had been worried that Mom would be devastated, but she didn’t cry, and she told him she didn’t want to go to the burial grounds. “Really?” you’d asked. Hyong-chol said he thought it was strange, too, but he honored her wishes.
    In the shed that day, Mom, whose face was marred with pain, told you she couldn’t even cry when her sister died.
    “Why not? You should have cried if you wanted to,” you said, feeling a little relieved that she was returning to the Mom you knew, even though she spoke without revealing any emotion.
    Your mom blinked placidly. “I can’t cry anymore.”
    You didn’t say anything.
    “Because then my head hurts so much it feels like it’s going to explode.”
    With the setting sun warming your back, you gazed down at Mom’s face cradled on your lap as if it were the first time you were seeing it. Mom got headaches? So severe that shecouldn’t even cry? Her dark eyes, which used to be as brilliant and round as the eyes of a cow that is about to give birth, were hidden under wrinkles. Her pale, fat lips were dry and cracked. You picked up her arm, which she’d flung on the platform, and placed it on her stomach. You stared at the dark sunspots on the back of her hand, saturated with a lifetime of labor. You could no longer say you knew Mom.

    When your uncle was alive, he would come to see Mom every Wednesday. He had just returned to Chongup, after a nomadic life of roaming the country. There was no specific reason for the visit; he just rode in on his bike and saw Mom and left. Sometimes, instead of coming into the house, he called from the gate, “Sister! Doing well?” Then, before your mom could get out to the yard, he called, “I’m going now!” and turned his bike around and left. As far as you knew,