Please Look After Mom Read Free Page A

the rag in cold water and lifting it out and wringing it and rubbing the jars, Mom sang, “I hope you won’t leave me one day.” If you called to her at that moment, she would turn around with tears welling in her big, guileless eyes.
    Mom’s love for Hyong-chol was such that she used to make a bowl of ramen only for him, when he came home after remaining at school till late at night to study. Later, when you brought that up sometimes, your boyfriend, Yu-bin, would reply, “It’s just ramen—what’s the big deal?”
    “What do you mean, what’s the big deal? Ramen was the best thing back then! It was something you ate in secret so you wouldn’t have to share it!” Even though you explained its significance, he, a city boy, seemed to think it was nothing.
    When this new delicacy called ramen entered your lives, it overwhelmed every dish Mom had ever made. Mom would buy ramen and hide it in an empty jar in the row of clay jars, wanting to save it for Hyong-chol. But even late at night, the smell of boiling ramen would nudge you and your siblings awake. When Mom said, sternly, “You all go back to bed,” you would all look at Hyong-chol, who was about to eat. Feeling sorry, he would offer each of you a bite. Mom would remark, “How is it that you all come so quickly when it has to do with food?” and fill the pot with water, make anotherramen, and divide it among you and your siblings. You would be so pleased, each holding a bowl filled with more soup than noodles.
    After Hyong-chol had left for the city, when Mom reached the clay jar she used to hide the ramen in, she would call out, “Hyong-chol!” and sink down, her legs giving way. You would slip the rag from Mom’s grasp, lift her arm up, and drape it around your shoulder. Your mom would break out in sobs, unable to control her overflowing feelings for her firstborn.
    When Mom sank into sorrow after your brothers left, the only things you could do for her were to read your brothers’ letters out loud, and to slip her responses into the mailbox on the way to school. Even then, you had no idea that she had never once set foot in the world of letters. Why did it never occur to you that Mom didn’t know how to read or write, even when she relied on you as a child, even after you read her the letters and wrote replies for her? You took her request as just another chore, similar to heading out to the garden to pick some mallow or going to buy some kerosene. Mom must not have given that task to anyone else after you left home, because you never received a letter from her. Was it because you didn’t write her? It was probably because of the phone. Around the time you left for the city, a public phone was installed in the village head’s house. It was the first phone in your birthplace, a small farming community where, once in a while, a train would clatter along tracks that stretched between the village and the vast fields. Every morning, the villagers heard the village head testing the mike then announcing that so and so should come over to answer a call from Seoul. Your brothers started to call the public phone. After the phone was installed,people who had family in other cities paid attention to the sounds of the microphone, even from paddies or fields, wondering who was being sought.

    Either a mother and daughter know each other very well, or they are strangers.
       Until last fall, you thought you knew your mom well—what Mom liked, what you had to do to appease her when she was angry, what she wanted to hear. If someone asked you what Mom was doing, you could answer in ten seconds: she’s probably drying ferns; since it’s Sunday, she must be at church. But last fall, your belief that you knew her was shattered. You went for a visit without announcing it beforehand, and you discovered that you had becomea guest. Mom was continually embarrassed about the messy yard or the dirty blankets. At one point, she grabbed a towel from the floor and hung it,