I tucked my knees to my chest and blubbered loudly, hiccuping rapid, shallow breaths, my face red with agony. I rocked back and forth on the wooden floor of my bedroom, feeling as if my whole being would just give out. For the first time, she didn’t scold me. Perhaps because she could no longer fall back on her staple phrase. Because here they were, the tears I’d been saving.

“Gwaenchanh-a, gwaenchanh-a,” she said. It’s okay, it’s okay. Korean words so familiar, the gentle coo I’d heard my whole life that assured me whatever ache was at hand would pass. Even as she was dying, my mother offered me solace, her instinct to nurture overwhelming any personal fear she might have felt but kept expertly hidden. She was the only person in the world who could tell me that things would all work out somehow. The eye of the storm, a calm witness to the wreckage spinning out into its end.

10

Living and Dying

My father booked me a flight from Philadelphia to Seoul. I’d meet my parents there and after two weeks in Korea, we’d all fly back to Oregon together. The morning came for Peter to drive me to the airport. It was early and the sun was just beginning to come up, casting a romantic light on our dingy block, empty cartons of Arctic Splash swept into piles of fallen leaves, the Little League field enclosed in its high chain-link fence.

“Maybe we should get married,” I said offhandedly. “So my mom can be there.”

Peter squinted. He was groggy and focused on traffic. The warm orange light of dawn flitted like an open slat across his eye line. He didn’t respond, just reached over to squeeze my hand, which was annoying. Like everyone else, he never knew the right thing to say. His method of consolation was just to lie beside me in silence until my emotions ran their course and quieted down. To his credit, that was all there really was to do anyway.

I slept for most of the eighteen-hour flight, took the bus from Incheon to Seoul, then a taxi to Nami’s apartment. It was dark by the time I got in, a little after nine. The air was cool and the breeze made a pleasing sound, purling through the leaves as I crossed the gated courtyard toward the complex. I buzzed in and took the elevator up. Leon yipped at a distance as I took my shoes off in the entryway.

Nami hugged me and rolled my suitcase into the guest room. She was dressed in a nightgown and looked uneasy. Quickly, she ushered me back to her bedroom. My parents’ flight had not gone well. My mother was in Nami’s bed, shivering uncontrollably and burning with a fever. My father lay beside her, holding her over the covers. The fever had started before they left, he admitted. Not wanting to cancel the trip, he’d pressed her body to his, willing it to stop, willing his body heat to cure her.

I stood at the foot of the bed watching her teeth chatter and her body shake. Emo Boo was crouched at my mother’s side in loose-fitting pajamas, inserting acupuncture needles into the pressure points of her legs.

“We need to get her to the hospital,” I said.

Nami was standing in the doorway, arms crossed and brow furrowed, unsure of how to move forward. Seong Young came up behind her, towering over her head by more than a foot. It was remarkable that someone so large could grow from a woman so small. My mom used to say it was the influence of American food. Nami said something in Korean and he translated.

“My mom think…if we go to the hospital. Maybe. They will not let her leave.”

“The last time we waited to go to the hospital she nearly died,” I said. “I really think we need to go.”

The room was quiet for a moment and my mom let out a moan. Nami breathed a heavy sigh, then left the room to begin gathering her things. The six of us split into two cars and drove to a hospital just across the Han River. My denial was still in full force. I was convinced that all she needed was another infusion, an IV to stabilize her. I felt we could go on like this for years, just fixing her.

* * *

—

WE HOPED that my mother could recover and fly to Jeju in a week’s time. Nami had already booked our flights and reserved the rooms. But her condition continued to worsen. A week passed and she remained bedridden, plagued by horrible fever and shaking throughout the night. We canceled our trip to Jeju. A week later, we had to cancel our return tickets to Eugene.

Again I was my mother’s companion through the night. I’d arrive in the evenings around six and stay with her through the morning until my father came at noon. Then I’d take a cab, bleary-eyed, across the Hannam Bridge to Nami’s and fall into the guest bed, where I’d try to regain the sleep I’d lost overnight.

In the hospital I woke with her at all hours, her advocate. When she gasped in pain, I would ring the call button, and when the nurses never came fast enough, I’d screech and point to our room from the fluorescent hallways, babbling desperate pleas in convoluted Korean. I exiled the nurse who failed multiple times to find a vein, leaving a smattering of track marks on my mother’s arms. I crawled into the hospital bed and held her as we waited for the painkillers to kick in, whispering in the dark, “Any second, any second, just another minute and this will all go away. Gwaenchanh-a, Umma, gwaenchanh-a.”

The onslaught of her symptoms was like something out of a disaster movie. As soon as we’d gotten a handle on one, something deadlier would emerge. Her stomach bloated though she hardly ate. Edema plagued her legs and feet. Herpes completely took over her lips and the inside of her cheeks, covering her tongue in raised white blisters. The doctor gave us two different kinds of herbal mouthwash and a cream for her lips, a thick green ointment to help soothe her sores. The two of us kept up with the regimen religiously, hopeful we could remedy at least one of her ailments. Every two hours, I brought a cup for her to spit in and water to rinse, then a tissue to wipe her lips before applying the dark-green goop. She would ask if I thought the sores were getting better, opening her mouth for me to see. Her tongue looked rotten—like a sack of aging meat, as though a spider had cast it in a thick gray web.

“Absolutely,” I would say. “It’s already so much better than yesterday!”

Because she was hardly able to eat, they hooked her up to a milky bag that supplied most of the nutrients she needed to survive. When she could no longer get up to go to the bathroom, even with assistance, they inserted a catheter, and we began using a bedpan, which fell to me to empty. When she could no longer pass food, the nurses gave her enemas. They dressed her in a large diaper and when it released, liquid gushed from the top and out of the leg holes like soft silt. There was no embarrassment left, just survival, everything action and reaction.

* * *

—

IN THE MORNING, if my mother was still sleeping, I would slip on a pair of hospital sandals and take the elevator downstairs. Outside, I’d wander around the block in search of something to bring back to her, to remind her of where we were.

There was a Paris Baguette nearby, a Korean chain that serves French baked goods with a Korean twist. I’d return with an array of glistening pastries and colorful smoothies, hoping to spark her appetite. Soboro ppang, a soft bun with peanut crumble on top that we’d shared together on visits to Seoul. A red-bean donut, a soft sweet-potato cheesecake. Or steamed corn bought from an ajumma on the street, seated on a square of cardboard. Mom and I picked the stiff kernels off the cob one by one, meticulous as Eunmi, remembering how she used to leave behind a perfect row of clean, square, transparent membranes when she was done. I bought jjajangmyeon from a Korean-Chinese restaurant and rinsed the kimchi with water from the sink in the bathroom so the red pepper wouldn’t sting her tongue.

“What do I even have left to look forward to, Michelle?” she said, welling up as she eyed the wilted white cabbage. “I can’t even eat kimchi.”

“Your hair is really growing back,” I said, trying to change the subject. I put my hand on her head and gently ran my palm over the sparse white fuzz. “For someone who’s sick you still look very young and beautiful.”

“Do I?” she said, feigning modesty.