Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin Page B

went to his brother’s, he came to get her; when she went to his sister’s, she came to get her. Nobody ever said it out loud, but at some moment he and his family tacitly came to believe Mom couldn’t go anywhere in this city by herself. So, whenever Mom came to Seoul, someone was always with her. He realized, after placing the newspaper ad for Mom and passing out flyers, that he had lived in twelve different neighborhoods. Now he straightens and looksup. Yokchon-dong, he remembers, was the first place where he was able to buy a house.
       “It’s Full Moon Harvest in a few days.…” In the taxi heading for Yokchon-dong, his sister nervously rubs her fingernails with her hand. He’s thinking the same thing. He clears his throat and frowns. The Full Moon Harvest holiday is several days long. The media reports every time that this year more people were going abroad during the holiday than ever before. Until a couple of years ago, people criticized those who went abroad during the holiday, but now people blatantly say,“Ancestors, I’ll be back,” and go to the airport. When people started to hold ancestral rites in time-share vacation condos, they worried whether the ancestral spirits would be able to find them, but now people just hop on planes. This morning, his wife, who was reading the paper, said, as if it were news, “It says right here that more than a million people will be going abroad this year.”
    “People sure have a lot of money,” he replied, at which she mumbled, “People who can’t leave—well, they’re not too smart.”
    Father just watched them.
    His wife continued, “Since their friends go abroad during the Full Moon Harvest, the kids were saying, I wish we could do that, too.” When he glared at his wife, unable to listen to it any longer, she explained, “You know how kids are sensitive to that kind of thing.” Father got up from the table and went into his room.
    “Are you crazy? Is this something to talk about right now?” he snapped, and his wife retorted, “Look, I said the kids said that; did I say I wanted to? Can’t I even relay what thekids said? It’s so frustrating. I’m supposed to live without saying anything?” She got up and left the table.
       “Shouldn’t we hold the ancestral rites?” Chi-hon asks.
    “Since when did you think about the ancestral rites? You never even came home for the holidays, and now you care about Full Moon Harvest?”
    “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been that way.”
    He watches his sister as she stops rubbing her fingernails and sticks her hands in her jacket pockets. She still hasn’t gotten rid of that habit.
       When they lived together in Seoul, when he had to sleep in the same room as his brother and his sister, his sister took her place nearest the wall, he lay in the middle, and his brother lay near the other wall. Just about every night, he’d be smacked in the head and wake up to find his brother’s hand draped across his face. He would take it off carefully and be about to fall asleep again when his sister’s hand would be flung onto his chest. It was the way they used to sleep in the large room at home, rolling around as much as they pleased. One night, he let out a yell when he got punched in the eye. His siblings woke up.
    “Hey! You!”
    His sister, belatedly figuring out what had happened, hurriedly stuck her hands in the pockets of the cotton pants she wore to bed and fidgeted nervously.
    “If you’re going to keep this up, just go home!”
    When morning came, his sister really went home to Mom,taking all of her things. Mom brought her back to Seoul right away, telling her to get on her knees before him and ask for his forgiveness. His sister, obstinate, didn’t move.
    “Ask him to forgive you!” Mom said, but his sister didn’t budge.
       His sister was gentle, but if she had her mind set on something, nobody could move her. Once, when he was in middle school, he had forced his sister to wash