and lit a cigarette. I grabbed it from his mouth and took a puff. He sighed and said nothing.
“Fifteen years ago, on Lunar New Year, when I went to the head family’s house to run an errand for Mom, and that thing happened to me, no one in the family cared. Do you know why I’m like this? Why I swallowed pills and cut my wrists three times? The thing I could not understand, what I really could not forgive, was the fact that everyone acted like nothing happened—Mom, you and our brothers, even Dad! It was swept under the rug, the same way my drunk driving charges never happened because my big prosecutor brother showed up and made them go away. I thought I was going to die—I wish I had died—and meanwhile everyone just closed their mouths and pretendedthat nothing happened. It didn’t take me long to figure out why you all did that. If it hadn’t been for our uncle—Dad’s brother, the big-shot National Assembly member for the ruling party—the family business would never have survived. If he hadn’t been watching out for us, Dad wouldn’t have been able to embezzle all that money and commit malpractice and put in illegal bids and evade taxes. That’s why!”
“Enough!”
I could tell he was holding back. He yanked the cigarette from my lips and crushed it out hard in the car ashtray. But it wasn’t in my nature to back down.
“I was only fifteen. Do you understand now why I tried to kill myself, and why I’m still trying? Our family, Mom, Dad, our brothers—you all thought that was more important than me. Do you know now what you did to me? What made me even more miserable than dying? And yet you have the nerve to call those men animals? I think
you’re
the animals!”
He yanked hard on the steering wheel, pulled the car around, and started heading toward our mother’s house. I couldn’t speak from the force of the U-turn. It seemed like his way of saying,
No, I will not leave you on your own tonight. If I do, something bad will happen again.
I could hear my mother playing the piano. It was Chopin’s
Tristesse
. My mother was sitting with her back to me at the grand piano in the middle of the living room. There was a time when my mother would have paid any amount of money to lose weight, but now she was as gaunt as if someone had stripped a heavy coat from her body. I thoughtabout the fact that, with or without cancer, it would not be long before I would have to say goodbye to my mother, who was in her seventies, and I felt sentimental. What cannot be reconciled in the face of death? What in this life is worth clinging to? Especially if that thing is hatred. I had once overheard her telling her friends that it made her feel ashamed as a woman to have one of her breasts removed. She said that she had no idea what caused her cancer, and that it would cost twenty million won to reconstruct her breast. I had taunted her, saying,
What are you going to do? Try out for Miss Old Korea?
As I listened to her playing the piano, I thought,
Twenty million won would mean ten thousand won for each inmate who has nothing in his account half the year.
I was surprised at myself for thinking that. Why was I making that kind of comparison?
Over a pink silk blouse, my mother wore a silk scarf draped long in the front, and her shoulders were moving quietly. I didn’t know if it was my sentimental mood, but for once, her piano playing didn’t make me want to plug my ears the way it used to. When the song ended, I clapped. I could hear the housekeeper in the kitchen clapping, too. My mother smiled as if deep in thought, to make herself look as elegant as a real pianist on stage, and began playing another song.
The reason I hated my mother and the rest of our family was not that they fancied themselves to be cultured and artistic, wearing looks on their faces that said they weren’t all about money, camouflaging their own snobbishness in that all-too-typical way. I hated them because even though they all felt
“Fifteen years ago, on Lunar New Year, when I went to the head family’s house to run an errand for Mom, and that thing happened to me, no one in the family cared. Do you know why I’m like this? Why I swallowed pills and cut my wrists three times? The thing I could not understand, what I really could not forgive, was the fact that everyone acted like nothing happened—Mom, you and our brothers, even Dad! It was swept under the rug, the same way my drunk driving charges never happened because my big prosecutor brother showed up and made them go away. I thought I was going to die—I wish I had died—and meanwhile everyone just closed their mouths and pretendedthat nothing happened. It didn’t take me long to figure out why you all did that. If it hadn’t been for our uncle—Dad’s brother, the big-shot National Assembly member for the ruling party—the family business would never have survived. If he hadn’t been watching out for us, Dad wouldn’t have been able to embezzle all that money and commit malpractice and put in illegal bids and evade taxes. That’s why!”
“Enough!”
I could tell he was holding back. He yanked the cigarette from my lips and crushed it out hard in the car ashtray. But it wasn’t in my nature to back down.
“I was only fifteen. Do you understand now why I tried to kill myself, and why I’m still trying? Our family, Mom, Dad, our brothers—you all thought that was more important than me. Do you know now what you did to me? What made me even more miserable than dying? And yet you have the nerve to call those men animals? I think
you’re
the animals!”
He yanked hard on the steering wheel, pulled the car around, and started heading toward our mother’s house. I couldn’t speak from the force of the U-turn. It seemed like his way of saying,
No, I will not leave you on your own tonight. If I do, something bad will happen again.
I could hear my mother playing the piano. It was Chopin’s
Tristesse
. My mother was sitting with her back to me at the grand piano in the middle of the living room. There was a time when my mother would have paid any amount of money to lose weight, but now she was as gaunt as if someone had stripped a heavy coat from her body. I thoughtabout the fact that, with or without cancer, it would not be long before I would have to say goodbye to my mother, who was in her seventies, and I felt sentimental. What cannot be reconciled in the face of death? What in this life is worth clinging to? Especially if that thing is hatred. I had once overheard her telling her friends that it made her feel ashamed as a woman to have one of her breasts removed. She said that she had no idea what caused her cancer, and that it would cost twenty million won to reconstruct her breast. I had taunted her, saying,
What are you going to do? Try out for Miss Old Korea?
As I listened to her playing the piano, I thought,
Twenty million won would mean ten thousand won for each inmate who has nothing in his account half the year.
I was surprised at myself for thinking that. Why was I making that kind of comparison?
Over a pink silk blouse, my mother wore a silk scarf draped long in the front, and her shoulders were moving quietly. I didn’t know if it was my sentimental mood, but for once, her piano playing didn’t make me want to plug my ears the way it used to. When the song ended, I clapped. I could hear the housekeeper in the kitchen clapping, too. My mother smiled as if deep in thought, to make herself look as elegant as a real pianist on stage, and began playing another song.
The reason I hated my mother and the rest of our family was not that they fancied themselves to be cultured and artistic, wearing looks on their faces that said they weren’t all about money, camouflaging their own snobbishness in that all-too-typical way. I hated them because even though they all felt
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