So much had happened to our family that I was more than happy to sleep snuggled up next to our grandmother while our father snored away, guarding the entrance to our tiny hut with his body. Ah, a home of our own! The only part I was sad about was Chilsung. The farmer had remarked on how fond his daughter was of the dog, and offered to buy him. Father hadn’t said a word about it, though I assumed he took the money. But I figured it was better for Chilsung to be raised with love in their house than to starve with us in the mountains.
Four
Winter in the foothills of the Baekdu mountain range was beautiful and harsh. The slope we sheltered ourselves against was probably one among the hundreds of baby mountains that flowed down from Mount Baekdu itself. The snow fell for so many days straight that the whole world was a storm of white both night and day. We stayed cooped up in our dugout hut the whole time, like hibernating animals. Snow weighed heavily on the spruce, larch and pine trees until the branches split down the middle or snapped off of the trunks entirely; during a break in the flurries, when we stuck our heads out from behind the straw mat that served as our door, the ice coating the branches glittered radiantly in the sun. But those icy branches looked more deadly than pretty to me.
Hyun, who was one year older but had been more like a younger sister ever since we were little, died that winter. One night a blizzard began to rage, and the wind whistled sharply.
“Grandma, I’m so cold I can’t sleep …”
I kept hearing Hyun’s faint voice, muffled by the blanket. Each time, Grandmother would tuck the blanket more tightly over her head and comfort her.
“There, now. It’ll be morning soon. Then it won’t be as cold.”
The wind whistling through the trees grew stronger and we heard a groan, like a huge wave bearing down, just before the storm crashed in on us without mercy. Our roof of woven branches flew off. Snow piled up on our blankets and threatened to bury the entire hut. Father sprang up and groped around in the dark for the tree branches and empty fertilizer bags that had served as our roof, but it had all blown away already. He began scooping up snow with his bare hands and tossing it outside, but soon gave up. The snow coming in was much greater than what he could dig out with his hands. When my blanket got so heavy that it was pressing down on my small body and making it hard to breathe, I crawled out and helped Grandmother scoop up the snow with a bowl and our cooking pot. Then I got back under the blanket, rubbed my hands together and tucked them into my armpits to warm them. My teeth chattered.
The snow didn’t start to die down until close to dawn, and finally stopped completely when the sun rose. Our beloved hut was in a gruesome state. The storm had passed, but the wind was still strong enough to turn the snow that had accumulated on the tree branches into a fine, white powder that hung in the air. Father ran around cutting branches while Grandmother and I collected them and dragged them back to the hut. We were able to do some makeshift repairs.
When the roof flew off again a few days later, Father despaired. He could have taken more of the vinyl sheeting the farmer would need in the spring to rebuild his greenhouses and used it to build us a roof strong enough to last for years — but he would sooner have taken us back to the farmer’s house and begged him to let us move back in. Father said generosity was like cooked rice: the longer it sat out, the faster it spoiled. In other words, if you kept imposing on people, then when you really needed their help later they would turn their backs on you. Grandmother nodded.
That day, the three of us were so busy clearing away the snow, shaking out the blankets and rebuilding the roof that we forgot all about Hyun. Father tied branches together with plastic twine to form a frame and wove leafy branches into it, while Grandmother dug out the dry branches and twigs for kindling that had been stacked beside the entrance to the hut, shook out all of the snow and used the wood to get the fire restarted. The smell of the wood burning made me feel warmer already. When we were sitting inside the hut, our breath white in the air, Grandmother finally realized that Hyun was gone.
“Where did little Hyun go?” she asked.
She checked under all the blankets, and Father groped around every corner of the hut. We went outside. Father searched all around and found Hyun in a thickly wooded area filled with large trees. She was lying on her side, curled up tight like a dried anchovy. Father picked her up and Grandmother stayed by their side, shaking her head.
“Wake up, child!” she said.
Hyun stayed curled up as though frozen in place. We brought her into the hut, placed her under the blanket and rubbed her hands, feet and legs. She opened her eyes and stared at us as if she’d just woken from a long sleep.
“What were you doing out there in the cold?” Grandmother asked.
“I had to pee …”
“You should’ve come back right away. You almost froze to death!”
Hyun closed her eyes and didn’t respond. She looked like she was sleeping. Father kept rubbing her hands and feet.
“Mother,” he said urgently, “she’s not warming up. Heat up some water and feed it to her.”
Grandmother went outside, filled the cooking pot with snow and boiled it on the stove. Then she filled a small bowl with warm water and held it up to Hyun’s mouth, but Hyun only sipped enough to wet her tongue a little and went limp again. We unpacked our belongings and pulled out all the clothes — which were frozen stiff — and squeezed, rubbed and sat on them until they were filled with our body heat. Then we piled them on top of Hyun and wrapped the blanket around her. The fire had built up nicely. The cardboard that covered the floor stones was starting to warm up. But a very soft, smoke-like something hovered darkly over Hyun’s body. I didn’t know what it was, but I was afraid to get any closer or to try to make it go away.
Hey, Big Sister, I thought to her, I know you’re trying to leave us.
We tucked our legs under the blanket and dozed off where we sat. Sometime in the night, Hyun passed. She’d grown too weak, and couldn’t bear the cold. But none of us — not Father, Grandmother or I — shed a single tear. Father wrapped her small body in several layers of clothes and fertilizer sacks. As he left the hut with Hyun, he narrowed his eyes at us.
“Don’t follow me!”
*
Winter passed, and bright green shoots poked up through the gaps in the lingering snow. Grandmother and I went down the mountain to pick the greens that had just begun to grow along the edges of the fields and the ridges of the paddies that had not yet been ploughed up. All we had was some salt and a little dwenjang that the farmer’s family had given us, but when we boiled the greens and seasoned them with the dwenjang or made them into a soup, the fragrant scent of the greens complemented the deep flavour of the fermented bean paste, and made for a perfect meal with a bowl of rice. And of course that was white rice we were enjoying!
Father did some work for the farmer’s family and returned with a sack of wheat flour — not the earthy, brown flour we were used to, but a strange variety that was as white as snow. Grandmother ground up mugwort shoots and added it to the flour to make dough, and then roughly moulded the dough into small, flat gaetteok cakes and steamed them.
One morning Father put on a thick, padded coat over his faded Mao suit, just as he used to do before heading off to work; he tightened the laces of his shoes and left home. I knew instinctively that he was heading out on a long journey. He stroked my head for a moment and then quickly pulled his hand away and coughed drily.