The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (49 page)

The collapse had occurred at around six in the evening. The basement floor was mostly the food section. Trapped in the basement, the most difficult to reach for rescuers, would be mostly housewives who had been getting groceries for dinner. The news reports continued.

. . . Many children were found dead in the children’s clothing section on the basement floor.

. . . There are about fifty people currently trapped in the basement restaurant.

. . . A woman’s amputated left leg has been transported to the hospital. If they can find the injured person right away, they will be able to save the leg.

It is Oldest Brother’s birthday one Saturday. Mom arrives from Jeongeup. I am walking to the bus stop after class when Cousin calls out to me, all out of breath. Since she moved to Yongsan, Cousin and I no longer ride the same bus. After class, most students take the night bus back to the industrial complex from Singil-dong in Yeongdeungpo District, but Cousin walks in the opposite direction to catch the bus that gets her all the way out of Yeongdeungpo.

“Hey! Are you training for a track meet or something? Look how fast you’re walking! Didn’t you hear me call?”

“Call, me?”

“What? You ask if I was calling? A deaf man could’ve heard me.”

“Uh . . . sorry. Mom’s probably arrived, you see.”

“Auntie?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, let’s get going.”

“You’re coming, too?”

“Of course, it’s
Oppa
’s birthday, isn’t it?”

“You didn’t forget, did you?!”

“What do you mean, ‘forget’ . . . Would’ve been better if it was tomorrow . . . Did you make him sea laver soup for breakfast?”

“He doesn’t like laver soup, remember?”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. So how come he won’t eat it? He doesn’t eat bean sprouts, either.”

“He went on a school field trip in sixth grade and at this restaurant he saw one of the cooking ladies step into a giant bowl in boots to toss the bean sprouts with a shovel.”

“A shovel?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What enormous amount of bean sprouts would they have been preparing to need a shovel?”

“I know.”

“Still, that was ages ago. He still won’t eat it because of that?”

“You still don’t know him after all this time? Would he ever eat it, after seeing someone stand inside the bowl in boots with a shovel?”

“What about laver soup, why doesn’t he eat that?”

“That I don’t know. Maybe someone stepped inside the pot in boots to serve the soup?”

Cousin and I burst into laughter. Oldest Brother, who would not eat laver soup, or bean sprouts, or bean curd. We, who did not buy dried laver or bean sprouts or bean curd because of him. We, who, left without much to choose from, used to linger in front of vendors that sold spinach or mackerel.

I step inside the alley with Cousin, the first time in a while. After we pass the sign for the inn, the alley turns dark. It used to be that when we stepped inside the alley the light from the corner store kept the alley lit past midnight.

“The store still closes so early?”

“The granny is sick.”

As we walk past the power pole, then past the store, Cousin glances at the chair outside the store.

“Still no news from
Ajeossi
?”

“No.”

The storekeeper who used to make Virgin Mary statues from plaster does not return. The granny, who has heard nothing after losing her son to men who had barged in in the middle of the night, grabs at anyone at the subway station and asks after her son.

“Look here now, please tell me where my son is, that’s all I need to know. I’m dying here, like my guts are on fire.”

Passersby stand looking lost, one of their arms caught by granny’s grasp. One day I see her holding on to Oldest Brother.

“You look like a learned man, so you ought to know. He’s done some wrong in the past, but he was all set, to settle down good. Already done his time, his body paid up for all the wrong he’s done. Why drag him away in the middle of the night, why not send him back home?”

Speaking in a thick northern dialect, the granny pulls out her heirloom double ring and hands it to Oldest Brother.

“It’s gold, weighs twenty
don
at least . . . I’m going to give you this, all I need you to do is let me know now, if he’s dead or alive, and if living, where he is, that’s all, you hear now?”

Older Brother says nothing.

“Whatever wrong he’s done, all in the past now. His body paid up for all the wrong done . . . That’s why he’s got no wife, no kids at his age. What hope can I have at my age. Worthless in the world he may be, he’s the only child I got. Back in the north, my life was a decent one. Had a husband, five children. All of them dead in the war, except for this one . . . Makes no sense, that he survived even back then, but now after all this time I don’t know if he’s dead or living, makes no sense.”

“I wouldn’t know, either, ma’am. All we can do is wait.”

“Wait, you say, after so much time’s gone by . . . If he’s still alive, he would’ve sent word, wouldn’t he? You used to work for
the government, I heard, so how come you don’t know? My ring’s not good enough, is that it?”

“Granny, please!”

The granny throws to the ground her double ring that she was trying to hand over to Oldest Brother.

“What good’s all this . . . Someone just tell me what’s happened to my son!”

The granny’s store no longer stocks laundry soap. No Sando crackers or toilet paper, either. The granny just sits in a chair outside the store, gazing at the alley. When young factory workers ask for cigarettes, she says, “Take them.” Does not check if they pay the right amount. Just sits there, in the spot where her vanished son used to open up the store at the crack of dawn, where he would set out a crate of fresh bean curd, or carry in a bucket of bean sprouts.

Look what Mom’s done. She’s locked up inside the kitchen of the lone room a rooster, its comb red and erect, with feathers scarlet and sleek. The bird, its feet tied up with straw rope then bundled up inside a blue wrapping cloth, jolts with a startle as Cousin and I fling open the kitchen door, calling out, “Mom, Auntie. We’re unable to step inside,” our schoolbags still in hand, just standing there staring at the chicken, ignoring Mom and her broad smile.

“What’s this chicken doing here?”

The rooster is in quite a fury. The way he’s glaring and squawking, he seems ready to nip my calf the minute the rope comes undone.

“Mom, you brought a live chicken?”

“Is the rooster all you see, not your mother?”

Mom herds Cousin and me into the room and sets the table for a late dinner. The factory no longer provides dinner for student
workers. Having returned home hungry with an empty stomach, we gobble up the food.

When Oldest Brother returns and sees the chicken from outside the door, he is also aghast. “What’s this?”

Mom looks out to where he’s standing. “What’s the matter with all of you. All you see is the rooster, not me!”

Only then Oldest Brother’s face fills up with an affectionate smile for Mom. We have a hard time sleeping with Mom’s chicken squawking in the kitchen. “That darned rooster,” says Oldest Brother, tossing in his sleep each time it crows. It seems the city is a strange place for the chicken as well. Mom is affected by none of this. She even snores quietly, as if the rooster’s restlessness is music to her ears. After Oldest Brother has turned over several times, Cousin taps my back.

“What is it?”

“Come, follow me.”

“I’m too sleepy.”

“Come on—” Cousin takes the rooster and its flapping wings in her arms and walks out of the kitchen.

“Where’re you going?”

Cousin takes discreet steps, as if she were a chicken thief. I follow behind, trying to be discreet like her. Where Cousin arrives at, carrying the rooster, bundled in wrapping cloth with its feet tied, is the rooftop. Once we get there, Cousin drops the chicken to the floor.
Squawk!
The rooster crows in the dark.

“Let’s head back down.”

“What about the chicken?”

“This’ll be better for him than the crammed kitchen and we should get some sleep.” When I glance at the chicken, hesitating, Cousin undoes the bundle to release him. “That should help him breath.”

After tying the chicken to a laundry pole with the rope on his feet, we climb back downstairs.

The next morning, Mom tells Oldest Brother, “Butcher the rooster, will you.”

“Mom, but I’ve never done it.”

“Well, I haven’t, either.”

“So why did you bring a live chicken in the first place?”

“I wanted to feed you fresh meat.”

“Well, I can’t do it.”

“Am I asking you to slaughter a cow or a pig? You’re a man and you tell me you can’t even butcher that little chicken? You’ve seen Father do it a hundred times, isn’t that right?”

“That doesn’t mean I can do it. I can’t.”

“A lame job I’ve done raising you!”

Disappointed with Oldest Brother, Mom glances at Cousin.

“Auntie! I can’t do it!” Cousin jumps, waving her hands. I’m amused, seeing that Mom is at a loss about a live chicken. Turns out there’re things that Mom can’t do.

It was always Father who butchered the chickens. Mom set out the big pot on the brazier in the backyard, and Younger Sister and I would start chopping garlic. Little Brother . . . you can rest your head on my lap and take a little nap. If I lay your head down on the floor, find your way back to my lap and sleep some more. Father would call out my name from the yard.

“Bring me the water when it starts to boil.”

Then Mom would pour the hot water into the pail. “Careful now.”

Three chickens lie dead next to Father, their necks twisted. Father soaks the chickens in the hot water and plucks the feathers. Little Brother has followed me out into the yard and joins Father at his side. When he is done plucking, Father pulls out matches from his pocket and burns the feathers. The flesh stench spreads through the yard.

Mom can make many different dishes with chicken. She makes spicy chicken stew with potato chunks thrown in; she chops the meat into pieces and drains them for frying; she shreds boiled meat to serve cold with vegetables . . . Ever since I moved to the city, Mom piles up my plate or bowl with heaps of whatever dish
she has cooked. The chicken porridge, made with garlic and rice, fills up the bowl in front of me. When she finds a drumstick in her ladle while serving the porridge, Mom slips it into my bowl.

“Eat up before it gets cold.”

Little Brother picks out a drumstick from his bowl and dips it into mine, imitating Mom’s words. “Eat up before it gets cold.”

Younger Sister plants her knuckles on his head, saying, “You little rascal.”

Food. Mom’s way of encouraging the family is to cook food in the old kitchen of the house. Whenever the family encounters unbearable grief, Mom steps into her old-fashioned kitchen. The men of the house. Father, whom she loved but was sometimes difficult to understand, and her sons, who were growing into adults—whenever they disappointed her, she would go into the kitchen, her steps feeble. As she did when she was in shock, at the daughter lashing back at her, “You have no idea!” By the fuel hole of the furnace, or the shelf lined with upside-down bowls, inside the old-fashioned kitchen of that house, that was the only place where Mom could endure the grief that has invaded her heart. And there she would regain her courage, as if the kitchen spirit had breathed a new energy into her. When she was delighted, when her heart ached, when someone left, or came back, Mom made food, set the table, made the family sit down, and pushed the bowl, piled with food, in front of the one who was leaving or had returned. Offering, endlessly, “Have some more. Try some of this. Eat before it gets cold. Have that, too.”

Mom and Cousin and I bundle up the rooster on the roof and carry him across the elevated walkway, to the chicken vendor at the market. To ask him to butcher the chicken for us. It seems the market isn’t open. The chicken vendor is closed. So is the fish vendor, the vegetable vendor, the snack stall where Cousin and I often go. We manage to buy two salted mackerels from a street vendor and also a steamer made of nickel silver, to make rice cake. Mom is disappointed since she wanted to cook up something
special for Oldest Brother. Back on the roof, as she ties up the rooster again, Mom tells us, “I have to go back on the night train, so as soon as you can find the time, I want you take the chicken to the vendor at the market and ask him to butcher it, and boil it slow and long for you and your brother to eat.