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By James J. Cho
I should have known better. I should have known that five were too many.
“One. One patch,” the emergency room doctor exclaims, elongating the word
while almost batting my nose with a sample patch. The doctor is tall with
streaks of gray through his coarse, black hair, and a purple birthmark stretches
like a fire across his right cheek and eye, circling around his brow, a quiet
inferno kept at bay from the other half of his face; and in that other side
I find neither comfort nor sympathy, only derision, as if I were his puppy
and had just urinated on the carpet.
“You could have killed her,” he says, and his words lose their exasperation,
perhaps suggesting that he has given up on my comprehension. But I understand.
My mother’s comatose body on the hospital bed is evidence enough.
For the past year she has complained about her back to such a degree that
she stopped mentioning her knees, often ceasing to speak for hours at a time
while lying in bed, motionless, as she does now in the emergency room. The
best acupuncturists in Philadelphia would grant her temporary relief at best,
and after a few days her face would turn sallow again, and she would refuse
to rise. Meals, which she has prepared for my husband and me for the last
fifteen years, have been reduced to leftover rice and whatever panchan
remained in the refrigerator. Otherwise, more elaborate meals have become
my responsibility when I am not working with my husband at our grocery store
in Lancaster.
So when our family physician recommended a specialist, we eagerly made the
two-hour trip to Hershey yesterday, not once concerning ourselves with our
language barrier, so anxious were we for a cure. But my hopes were shaken
when he entered. The specialist spoke quickly while pointing to X-rays of
my mother’s back, burying me under an avalanche of words: lumbar, impacted,
nerves, surgery. Then he handed me a prescription for medicated patches to
alleviate my mother’s pain. The recommended dosage, I missed, but they looked
no more harmful than the over-the-counter ones I buy for my husband’s arthritis.
When we returned home my mother sat on her bed without a shirt or bra, her
dark potato face fixed on a pair of socks lying on the floor where a dead
bulb had cast a shadow. It was only a short time ago when she would have placed
them back into her dresser drawer, tucked neatly on the far right side with
her other socks. But like their once snowy shade, time had dulled all.
I asked her in Korean how she felt, hoping the specialist’s initial treatments
in the hospital were still effective. She said, “It’s wearing off now. Before
it helped, but no more.”
The air was hot and stuffy and smelled of Bengay.
“The doctor said he wants to operate?” she asked.
“Yes, later in the month.”
I sat next to her and patted her sparse hair.
“I’ve never had surgery before.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she said and then shook her head as if to reassure me, which was unnecessary.
After war, poverty, widowhood and immigration, I knew there were few things
my mother feared.
“Maybe it’s time for another treatment,” I said.
Unwrapping a patch, I pressed it against her lower spine.
“It’s cold,” she said.
“Too cold?”
“No. Nothing could be too cold if it kills the pain.”
Resting my hands on her swollen shoulders, I imagined under all of her skin
and blood and inflamed tissue the depths of her agony, because for me her
pain was like a childhood memory from Korea, in which faces, names, and places
are both opaque and translucent; in which I can remember sharpening a pencil
on paper I stole from the mill next door, but I cannot remember the name of
the girl who traded with me so I could have a pencil of my own. Even when
my father was alive, things were difficult. Being a butcher, he would trek
every day to the homes in our village to sell his meats and other items. My
mother would accompany him, carrying a large bucket of sliced pork on her
head—no doubt the cause of her back problems today. When the war started and
meat became scarce, they sold jugs of soju to get by. This rice wine being
his favorite, my father would pour some into a small clay bowl to drink before
they set out, one hand cradling it to his mouth and the other below to catch
what spilled; then he would lick his palm, dried and brown like a late autumn
leaf, before departing.
After he died in the war, hunger became commonplace for us. One time my mother
and I journeyed all night to the rocky shore at Inch’on to find oysters during
low tide. For the few hours we had, she squatted over the jagged bed, prying
open countless shells while swatting away greedy birds that dove at the newly
exposed flesh, all the while encouraging me to keep going. But her support
was not needed. Even though my little hands ached, the burning hunger from
our long hike surpassed any cramp in my grip and kept me devouring oysters
by the dozen, tossing the rest in a jar of kimchee to preserve for
the long walk back. Their briny flavor making me nauseous, I at times struggled
to hold down the vomit tickling the back of my throat. No matter, for they
quelled my pain, and I think that was why my mother took me instead of my
brothers, who could have shucked many more than I. She knew I required immediate
relief more than they did.
“Can I lay down now?” she asked, her body hunched on her bed.
As her back rose and fell underneath my hands, I quietly wept for the little
girl and her mother, separated by so much more than time now.
“No, there’s more,” I said and unwrapped another, then another, three, four,
five, until I had covered nearly all of her back, steadfastly focused on killing
her pain like those oysters killed the hunger in that little girl’s belly.
•••
“It’s an opiate-based medicine. You basically overdosed halmeoni on heroin,”
shouts my son Michael after reading about the medication. “You should have
told me. I could have come with you and avoided this altogether.”
I nod and change the subject, well aware he is angry at me because I didn’t
tell him about his only grandparent until after she had awoken from her coma.
He learned of it when he randomly called late one night to ask how we were
doing, awakening me from a dreamless slumber, and the words slipped from my
consciousness. Stunned, Michael came home right away—I never doubted he would.
“You’re always so busy,” I say.
“Not for this. I can take time off!”
My son the English scholar should be my bridge to this jumbled land, yet
I struggle to divulge the details of his grandmother’s stroke to him. There
he sits, pristinely dressed in a silver suit, protesting our lack of communication
when he is the one who infrequently calls, visiting only once a year aside
from holidays, in August when the heat in Miami is unbearable. In the meantime
he barricades himself in his office, researching and writing, so driven that
he ignores my calls and his marriage.
Despite his degrees, his awards, his books and articles, there is a posture
that overtakes my son in times of frustration that reveals the impetuous child
who cried when I wouldn’t let him eat chocolate for breakfast. His spine curls
forward while he crosses his arms and buries his hands into his armpits, and
not even his silk tie can distract me from noticing that my son is throwing
a fit.
“You have to let me know the next time you take halmeoni to the doctor.
I can translate for you.”
I tell him OK, knowing it will cleanse his conscience, and he turns to his
grandmother, who sits no more than an outstretched arm away in a rocking chair.
“How are you doing?” he asks in Korean.
She says she is fine and that he is a good sonja for asking. Then he clasps
her hand while she subtly rocks back and forth, not from any effort on her
part but from the natural distribution of her weight. When he lets go, she
smiles, which satisfies my son. But he never sees her episodes at night when
a hard rain pours into her mind, washing away her sanity. That’s when I find
her on the floor, naked, her wet diaper flung to the recesses of the room,
sometimes still filled with dung if I am lucky and not smeared across the
floor. It takes all of my strength to lift her back into bed—I keep my husband
away, always away, for I can’t bear to see his pity—and spend the night scrubbing
the floor so that a pine forest scent hides the stench for others, though
I know it remains.
Although I should stay with her the entire night, the few hours in bed have
become my only respite, even if it is without sleep, from the weariness of
nursing, because in those crevices of night, while my husband lies next to
me, I can allow myself to imagine him caressing me in the way he did before
we were married and came to this country, when he would hold me close underneath
a pear tree in the hills beyond his house and brush his nose across my cheek,
his warm, steady breath tingling the tiny hairs on my skin, his hand clasping
my inner thigh, far enough away to remain respectable yet close enough and
firm enough to excite me.
Of course not all memories are pleasant; some are so painful that we spend
our lives avoiding them until at night, when sleep is elusive, and they appear
like an overripe pear that has smashed against the ground from its lofty perch,
its brown flesh bursting from its skin.
•••
While the winter sun sinks past the kitchen window, Michael waits for dinner,
picking from bowls of dried shrimp and boiled soybeans. As a pot of kuk
simmers on the stove, I prepare kimpap, his favorite. All the ingredients
are spread out before me on the counter—seaweed, rice, beef, eggs, spinach,
and carrots—and as I spread a handful of rice on sheets of seaweed, my son
again harps about my failure to tell him about his halmeoni.
“You have to tell me when her next visit to Hershey will be so I can go along.”
Then he gulps a cup of Starbucks coffee, which he has reheated in the microwave.
Although steam still rises from the cup, he gulps it as if it were Coca-Cola,
and I wonder if his nerves no longer detect pain. “You and appa aren’t
competent enough to handle these things on your own without an interpreter.”
His tone turns accusatory, so I quickly roll the kimpap, cut it, and
serve it to him.
“You have to tell me next time. No matter how busy I am, I can stop what
I’m doing and help.”
He eats a piece with his hands and then folds them across his chest, curling
forward.
“OK, I will.”
Despite my earlier reservations, I believe his sincerity if for no other
reason than I must as his mother. But I cannot tell him what he wants to
know—why I never told him earlier about the stroke—and scurry back to the
counter to roll more kimpap. I find solace in its repetitive preparation,
in measuring the perfect amount of ingredients with my hands each time and
meticulously folding them so that the grains of rice aren’t too loose but
aren’t packed too tight either. I also find comfort with the thought that
any one of the items rolled inside can hide among the other flavors and textures,
like dry, overcooked eggs masked by the crunchiness of carrots and the softness
of spinach, and I wish I could stuff more things in there, not just food,
but things like thoughts and feelings that a mother cannot tell her son, no
matter how much he insists, and no matter how much he needs to know.
•••
A picture hangs in our family physician’s office next to his medical degree,
depicting his wife and two children, both girls, standing in front of a sign
for Old Faithful. Beyond the girls’ boyish shoulders and sunburned arms is
the famous geyser. I wonder how long they waited and how many times they tried
before they got it just right, with each prepubescent child beaming a metallic
smile while the water rushes skyward. It must have taken either great luck
or great patience to get it just right, and if I must guess, I would choose
the latter, since it is a quality Dr. Stouffer has in great abundance. In
the 10 years he has been our family physician, he always has been courteous
and thoughtful, willing to explain things several times to ensure I understand
his instructions, unlike the specialist in Hershey. So when Dr. Stouffer raises
the possibility that my mother’s condition may worsen, I know he means not
to alarm me even though I turn defensive, saying I do not understand.
“What I mean is, your mother will need more care than what you can provide
if she gets worse. She’ll need a nursing home.”
Truthfully, it doesn’t surprise me, for my husband and I have prodded the
issue with unfinished sentences since she awoke from her coma, during the
days when her memory was no better than the incoherent scribbles of a child.
Nevertheless, the thought of putting her in a nursing home unnerves me, and
I think my facial expression exposes my displeasure.
“I know you may not like this option. But you need to keep it open,” adds
Dr. Stouffer.
How do I explain in my limited English that the speed with which our lives
have changed compels me to keep this door closed for as long as possible?
It was only three years ago that my mother flew to South Korea to be with
her mother during the final days of her life. She lived to be 96, and I had
hoped for a similar life span despite my mother’s many ailments and chronic
pain. Now I am forced to consider storing her in a foreign home, with strangers,
to supplant the only people she knows in this country, until she dies. And
what nursing home can cater to an elderly Korean woman who cannot speak English?
Certainly none in Mennonite-laden Lancaster County, which means she must live
far away in a city like New York or Philadelphia.
“Do you not agree?” asks Dr. Stouffer.
No matter how much I will my mouth to emit words, the only thing that comes
out is a whimper, audible only to me, and all of the shame I’ve been carrying
rushes forth while the manicured family photo in front of Old Faithful mocks
the chaos of my life. Fleeing his office without saying goodbye, I sit in
my minivan for nearly an hour. A curtain of frost barricades me in—shuts me
out—from making another decision or committing another act, leaving me alone
to huddle with myself for heat as I clasp my body tight. I find solace in
the interwoven crystals of ice that cover every last space of glass. With
its beauty soothing me, I scratch a line into the windshield, collecting ice
under my fingernail like a shovel unearthing dirt.
•••
It’s time to feed my mother. She’s outside in the backyard urinating, as
if we were back in our village in Korea, and I rush her inside with the hope
that no one has seen her.
Admonishing her while she balances against my arm, I tell her that she is
an embarrassment to us. Although she apologizes, the blank stare on her face
tells me that she does not understand. There was a hole—dug by a dog. Why
should she not relieve herself in it?
I take her upstairs to her room and put her down on her bed. A pale blue
sheet covers her—pale and not powder or sky blue because that is what it looks
like, having been washed so many times that the color is a faint echo of its
former shade.
“It’s time to eat,” I say. I place the tray before her. Her mouth opens,
expands, like a blossoming bubble, but it bursts without sound. She is in
one of her darker moments and begins to laugh maniacally. She does this now
and then with no memory of it occurring, and it takes all of my mental strength
not to interpret it as life mocking me for what I have done.
When her jesting ceases, she becomes lucid again.
“The kuk smells good,” she says.
“The bones are fresh.” I stir the broth, breaking up a pearl of grease floating
on the surface into smaller beads that mix with chopped bits of scallion.
Pouring a spoonful into my mother’s mouth, I wipe a little bit that dribbles
onto her chin with my hand. After a few more spoonfuls, I feed her a piece
of kimpap. It’s too big, unraveling in her mouth, and the ingredients I rolled
together earlier tumble onto her shirt and lap like the cries of an unhappy
baby. And this is exactly what I’m dealing with now, an 81-year-old baby who
splatters food across her mouth and defecates in her pants.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what?” I reply, barely holding in my tears.
“I’ll try harder.”
She opens her mouth wide, and with chopsticks I pick each ingredient off
and feed it to her: beef, spinach, carrot, and then egg. Pausing with this
last one, I remember the old Humpty Dumpty story, which I read to Michael
when he was a child. Unable to read English at the time, I invented my own
version based on the pictures in a book of nursery rhymes. I told him that
during a great famine in the land, a giant egg sat upon a tall wall, well
out of reach from the hungry masses that wanted to devour him. But able to
see all the suffering from his perch, he decided to sacrifice himself so that
others could eat.
One can imagine my surprise when Michael finally read the original version
back to me. He burst into laughter, not with malice but with an infectious,
unfiltered innocence that had me laughing as well.
That was a time when everything he did was tied to my love, allowing me to
forgive all that he did. I’m not sure if that bond remains; I’d like to believe
it does because I must as his mother, but I know from experience that it can
be severed.
Gazing at my mother, my child, her mouth gaping open for this last bit of
egg, I pray that she has forgiven her daughter. Then
she takes my hand. I expect another fit of laughter,
but she only flashes her toothless gums through a smile
and guides my hand to her mouth.
James J. Cho lives in Bethesda.
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