The wardrobe is frozen solid, too.
The doors don’t even open. But it should be empty. When my head started to hurt so badly, I wanted to go to that man, whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. I thought maybe I would get better if I did. But I didn’t go. I pressed down my desire to go, and went through my things. I could feel that it was approaching, the day when I wouldn’t be able to recognize anything because I would be numb. I wanted to take care of all my things while I could still recognize them. I wrapped in a cloth the clothes I didn’t wear, which I’d hung in the wardrobe, unable to throw them out, and burned them in the fields. The underclothes that Hyong-chol bought me with his first paycheck had been in the wardrobe for decades, with the tags still on. When I was burning them, my head felt like it would split in half. I burned everything I could, except the blankets and pillows, which the children could use when they came home for the holidays. I burned the cotton blankets that my mother had made for me when I got married. I took out everything I’d spent a long time with and looked at it all again. The things I never used because I was saving them, the dishes I collected to give my elder daughter when she got married. If I’d known that she wasn’t going to get married, even though her younger sister is married and has three children, I would have given them to my younger daughter. I stupidly thought I had to give them to Chi-hon because I’d planned to give them to her. I hesitated, then took them outside and smashed them to pieces. I knew-one day I wouldn’t remember anything. And before that happened, I wanted to take care of everything I’d ever used. I didn’t want to leave anything behind. All the bottom cupboards are empty, too. I broke everything that was breakable and buried it all.
Even in that frozen wardrobe, the only winter clothing would be the black mink coat my younger daughter bought me. The year I turned fifty-five, I didn’t want to eat or go out. I spent my days buried deep in unpleasantness, feeling like my face was being torn off. When I opened my mouth, I thought I smelled something bad. At one point, I didn’t say a word for over ten days. I tried to shoo away negative thoughts, but every day a sad thought was added to my collection. Even though it was in the middle of winter, I kept dipping my hands in cold water and washing and washing them. And one day I went to church. I stopped in the churchyard. I bent over the feet of the Holy Mother, who was holding her dead son, to pray for her help to pull me out of this depression, which I couldn’t stand any longer, to beg her to take pity on me. But then I stopped myself, wondering what more I could ask of someone holding her dead son. During mass, I saw that the woman in front of me was wearing a black mink coat. Drawn by its softness, I quietly lowered my face to it, without even realizing I was doing it. The mink, like a spring breeze, gently embraced my old face. The tears I’d been holding back poured out. The woman moved away when I kept trying to rest my head on her mink coat. When I got home, I called my younger daughter and asked her to buy me a mink coat. It was the first time I’d opened my mouth in ten days.
“A mink coat, Mom?”
“Yes, a mink coat.”
She was quiet.
“Are you going to buy me one or not?”
“It’s not that cold this year. Do you have someplace to wear a mink coat to?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“No.”
She laughed out loud at my curt replies. “Come to Seoul, then. We can go shopping together.”
As we walked into the department store, to the mink coats, my daughter kept looking at me without saying anything. I had no idea that my mink coat, which was slightly shorter than the one I had buried my face in, the one that woman in church was wearing, was such an expensive thing. My daughter didn’t tell me. When we went home with the mink coat, my daughter-in-law’s eyes bulged. “A mink coat, Mother!”
I was quiet.
“You’re so lucky, Mother. To have a daughter who buys you expensive things like this. I haven’t even been able to buy my mother a fox scarf. They say a mink gets handed down for generations. When you pass away, you should leave it to me.”
“It’s the first time Mom ever asked me to buy something for her! Stop it!”
When my daughter shot back at her sister-in-law as if she was angry, I realized it. The reason she kept looking at the price tag, again and again. And the reason she kept looking at me. At that time, she had just graduated from college and was working at a hospital pharmacy. When I got back from Seoul, I took the mink coat and went to a similar store in town and asked the girl working in the mink-coat department how much it cost. I froze. Who knew one piece of clothing could cost so much! I called my daughter to tell her that we should return the coat, and she told me, “Mom, you have every right to wear that coat. You should wear it.”
In this region, there are very few cold days in winter, so I could wear a mink coat only occasionally. Once, I didn’t wear it for three years. When I had depressed thoughts, I opened the wardrobe and buried my face in the mink coat. And I thought, When I die, I will leave it to my younger daughter.
Although it’s frozen now, in the spring the flower garden near the wall will come alive again. The blossoms on the neighbor’s pear tree will bloom, and their scent will float over. The rose vines with pale-pink buds will flex their spikes, cheering. The weeds under the wall will grow thick and tall with the first spring rain. Once, I bought thirty ducklings from under the bridge in town and let them out in the yard, and they rushed over to the flower garden and stepped on all the flowers. When they ran around in packs with the chicks, it was hard to tell which were ducklings and which were chicks. Anyway, in the spring, the yard was noisy because of them. It was in this yard that my daughter, who was digging under the rosebush, saying that it would yield a lot of flowers if it was given manure, saw a wriggling worm in the dirt, threw the short hoe aside, and ran inside; the hoe hit a chick and killed it. I remember the wave of the smell of dirt that would reach my nose when, in the summer, a sudden rain fell, and the dog and chickens and ducks that had been wandering around the yard crawled under the porch and into the chicken cages and under the wall. I remember the droplets of dirt formed by the sudden rain. On windy late-fall nights, the leaves of the persimmon tree in the side yard would rustle off and fly around. All night, we would hear them scuttling across the yard. During snowy winter nights, the wind would blow the snow piled in the yard onto the porch.
Someone is opening the gate. Ah, Aunt!
You were an aunt to my children and a sister to me, but I was never able to call you “sister”: you seemed more like my mother-in-law. I see you have come to check on the house, because it’s snowing and windy. I thought nobody was here to look after this house, forgetting that you’re here. But why are you limping? You’re always so spry. I guess you’re getting old, too. Be careful-it’s snowy.