Kim Yi-seol
TRANS. BY Janet Hong
A Phantom Pain
My hands were chapped red with cold. Scraping with the spoon and fruit knife did nothing. The frost was as stubborn as the cancer cells that cling to the body, despite multiple removals. I started to feel hopeless. My hands were numb and I couldn’t feel a thing. How long do you have to avoid cleaning something for it to get this bad? For the past two hours, I’d been trying to remove the frost buildup from the refrigerator. Ice about the size of my palm covered each wall of the fridge, except the floor and door. It wasn’t something I could rid with a spoon.
“It’s past two in the morning,” my mother said.
She seemed to be having trouble falling asleep. In the morning, she would begin chemotherapy—her first. Of course, she’d have trouble sleeping.
“Try to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
Whether the fridge broke down or not, I decided to pour hot water over the buildup. A foul smell gushed out. The ice finally began to thaw. Every time I’d gone into the hospital for treatment, the first thing my mother had done was to clean out my fridge. No matter how strung out I was on medication, the moment I caught a whiff of the fridge, I’d bring everything up, unable to even sit up—a fact I’d only recalled past midnight. It didn’t matter that it was late. After all, my mother’s body may react the same way as mine did.
When I lay back down, ashen light was breaking outside the window. I curled up on my cot. I was tired, but sleep didn’t come. My hands became itchy as they warmed up. I recalled the day I had received my first treatment.
People with dark, sunken eyes, hairless heads, and skeletal, wasted bodies. These were the images I’d seen of cancer patients on television. I’d been diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer. My oncologist said it could be treated with chemotherapy and surgery, speaking confidently, as if he were talking to a patient with a cold, but I couldn’t believe him. I’d heard all kinds of horror stories—how someone was cut open, only to be sewed back up again because there was no use operating, how someone was discharged from the hospital, only to discover at the next checkup that the cancer had spread beyond hope. I knew these situations could very well apply to me. I imagined the worst. It was a natural response to dying.
* * *
The vomiting started. Chills from fatigue and fever, blackouts. Her nausea was so severe she’d throw up uncontrollably. My mother’s lower lip shuddered. Since her sheets had just been changed, they would feel like ice. Everything was gray outside the window, because of yellow dust pollution. Though the windows were shut, the dust managed to work itself into every seam of your clothes so that you felt as if your whole body was plastered with damp sand. My phone rang. I tiptoed out of the room into the hall. It was my husband.
“How is she?”
“It’s just starting now.”
Our voices were devoid of any emotion.
“Did you have lunch?” I asked.
“Yup.”
The care worker with the patient in the next bed called out to me. “What are you doing? Your mother is throwing up!”
My mother was vomiting yellow fluid on her knees, unable to sit up. I quickly pulled the curtain closed. I heard rushing footsteps on the other side of the curtain. It seemed the young woman in the bed across from my mother’s had started vomiting as well. Five patients in the six-person ward were undergoing chemo, and the sixth patient was getting a hysterectomy to remove a fibroid. My mother clenched her teeth and clutched my hand, her eyes squeezed shut. She let out a tortured groan.
“It’s okay, Mom. Don’t hold it in. Let it all out.”
After retching a few more times, she collapsed onto the bed. It was hard to change her, because of the three catheters in her arms. She couldn’t look me in the eye. She seemed embarrassed, though her body’s response wasn’t something she could help. I’d felt bad, too, when my mom and husband had been forced to take care of me. My diagnosis had felt like a disgrace.
The young woman continued to vomit. My mother’s fingernails left marks in my palm. I pulled the curtain closed around the bed and brought out her soiled gown and bedsheet. A pungent odor filled the ward.
* * *
“Maybe it would be a good idea for you to get checked out,” my mother-in-law had ventured carefully.
I hung my head as if I’d sinned. My husband slowly got to his feet.
“I’m saying you both should get tested since we don’t know if it’s because of you or him.”
That night, my husband embraced me. We had sex, but it was an act performed out of a sense of duty. After he finished, he turned away and said, “Let’s see a doctor.”
The word doctor was enough to depress me. I’d dated my husband, who was my age, for seven years before getting married. Hardly six months into our marriage, our families had started talking about us having a baby. At thirty years old, I wasn’t, by any means, too young to start having kids. But two years later, I still hadn’t gotten pregnant. My mom often brought up my age as the reason, while my mother-in-law talked in a roundabout way, asking if it were possible for me to stop working. Still, there seemed no reason to worry. Even without children, both my husband and I had enough on our plates, but most importantly, we were healthy. I’d even stayed away from birth control, so I was confident that when the time was right, I’d get pregnant. But had I been overconfident? Thirty-two wasn’t considered exactly young. The first thing to do was to get a fertility test.
“Please go to a bigger hospital immediately,” the doctor said. “We’ll write you a referral.”
It was complete nonsense. His indecipherable scrawl on my chart looked like a secret code meant to trick me. Why would he tell me to go to a bigger hospital when I was waiting to hear the results of the fertility test? I didn’t understand. If he’d looked concerned at least, I would have thought his diagnosis was completely wrong. But his tone had been nothing but professional.
“But I’m not in any pain. I’ve never even missed a period!”
He said nothing. After stepping out of the hospital, I stood in the middle of the street. Everything grew blurry. The white envelope in my hand containing the doctor’s referral seemed to be the only thing that was real.
I got tested at three different hospitals, but the results came back the same. All three oncologists recommended the same treatment: surgery in conjunction with chemotherapy.
“Tell me this isn’t happening,” I’d said, gazing at my husband’s face. “Tell them they’ve got the wrong person. There’s been a mistake. Tell them they’re wrong.”
But each time his face had looked grimmer than mine.
* * *
“Were you in this much pain, too?”
I snapped awake at my mother’s voice. I had nodded off, hunched over on the cot next to her bed. Past midnight, the ward was quiet. I felt her forehead. Her fever had come down a little.
“It’s supposed to hurt. The funny thing is, you won’t even remember later.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
That was a lie. Hadn’t I cried and clung to my husband out of dread and terror, each time I was admitted? Certain memories don’t fade with time. Pain that the body remembers can’t ever fully be erased. So shouldn’t I have told her how awful it had been, how it had been a living hell? Rather than telling her to stay strong, that it was just the beginning, shouldn’t I have warned her that sometimes it’s all over in the beginning?
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” my mom asked.
“Why would it be hard for me? Are you saying it was hard for you when I was sick?”
“Of course it was. You think it was easy to watch a young thing turn completely useless overnight?” my mom said slowly, catching her breath.
“Well, I’m sure I’ll be fine since I’m a lot younger than you.”
She smiled, her face pale. The fact that she was awake and able to have a conversation meant that the infusion was nearly finished. Everyone responds differently to chemo drugs, but my mom and I seemed to be similar. For most people, the side effects kick in after the infusion, but in my case, I started suffering from the moment the drugs entered my system. I’d go limp, and start to vomit and run a high fever. Because I couldn’t keep anything down, I had no strength to withstand the toxic drugs. Though the infusion hardly lasted a day, those hours were an absolute nightmare. Sometimes chemotherapy begins before surgery to slow cancer growth or its spread. Depending on how her cancer responded, the doctor would adjust my mother’s surgery date, the number, and dosage of her infusions, as well as different treatment options. She may even have to receive radiation therapy. Her almost sixty years of age was a concern, but the possibility of the cancer spreading to other parts of her body was a bigger risk. There was still a long road ahead, but what was demanded of her seemed much too harsh for the time she had left. She stared up at the ceiling, the skin around her eyes dark.
“Eunhui,” she said. “Isn’t life unfair?”
What was she talking about now? There was no point in asking the question. After I’d completed my treatment, I was told I’d made a full recovery. All that awaited me were regular physicals and medication, which I needed to take for the rest of my life. In return, I was left with a scar that ran from my belly button down to my groin, and no uterus, no baby, no husband.
After the hysterectomy, while I received chemo, my husband and I used separate rooms. I didn’t want to be self-conscious about my dark haggard face and hairless head, the bruises, but most of all, my missing uterus. No, I didn’t think it was unfair. After all, anyone could get cancer. I simply happened to be one of countless cancer patients. It was just bad luck that I would never have a child. It wasn’t unfair. Maybe that’s what I needed to think in order to console myself.
My mother had fallen asleep, her breathing even. Did she think what was happening to her was unfair? Maybe that was a normal reaction.
The day before I was discharged from my last hospital stay, my mother-in-law came to visit. My mother and husband hadn’t been there at the time. I sat up, straightening my disheveled hair. Since my stay was short, I’d asked her not to visit. Not just her—I hadn’t told anyone I was going in for treatment. The last thing I wanted was for visitors to gawk, their eyes brimming with pity or false hope. Their attempts to comfort me would have only made me more conscious of my illness. It had been nearly two years since I’d seen her.
“So you’re done now, this was your last one,” she said.
My treatment was over. It was hard to believe, but my oncologist had said I was finally finished. My mother-in-law clasped my hand for a long time. It seemed she had something to tell me.
As I watched her leave the hospital room, I saw her age in her feeble shoulders. My husband was her only child. Since I couldn’t give her a grandchild, she had nothing to show for her old age. At that moment, I realized I needed to split up with my husband. My lower belly tingled, and I felt something stir where my uterus used to be.
* * *
When I returned after taking care of the discharge procedure, I found my husband standing beside my mother. He was long overdue for a haircut; the back of his hair was scruffy and his suit jacket was badly wrinkled. My mother let go of his hand. He looked exhausted.
“Thanks for coming.”
Thanks. The word rang in my head for a long time. Thanks for sticking around. Thanks for smiling for my mom. Thanks for being my husband still. That word told us we were now strangers. He picked up my mother’s things and led the way. She slowly shuffled along, as I supported her. His shoes were badly worn. I’d given them to him for his thirty-second birthday, just a few days before my first round of chemo.
“You know what they say. If you buy someone shoes, they’ll run off in them. That’s why I got them for you.”
He had gazed down at the floor, clutching the shoes. I wrapped my arms around his head.
“Eunhui, you’re not going to die,” he said, his voice trembling.
It was then that reality sank in. I hadn’t shed a single tear, even when we’d gone from hospital to hospital and heard the same report. Each time, I’d hoped there had been a mistake. I’d been scared. He hugged me tightly.
“You’re going to get better, that’s why you’re sick right now. It’s so that you can get better. You gotta fight it, okay?”
He was right. I couldn’t give up. Until the night before I was admitted to the hospital, I washed our bedding, curtains, and sofa cushions. I made kimchi and packed the fridge with side dishes. I sorted the garbage and recycling, ironed my husband’s dress shirts and handkerchiefs, and took a bath. The next day, I received my first infusion. In some ways, I was better off back then, when I’d suffered from a nameless dread.
My mother said she was feeling nauseous and closed her eyes. Neither my husband nor I said anything. Dust pressed in around us. Despite all the harsh yellow dust pollution, the sidewalk trees had started budding in the past few days. I couldn’t help marveling at the green buds.
I settled my mother in her room at home and went into the living room. My husband was smoking out on the balcony.
“You started again?”
“Looks that way.”
He quickly put out the cigarette. He glanced around the balcony, and then put the butt in his pocket.
“You doing okay? You look tired,” I said. I slipped my hand in his pocket and pulled out the cigarette butt. It was still warm.
“I’ve been busy. Aren’t you going to go shopping?”
When you return home after your discharge from the hospital, another battle begins. You have to fight small fevers and eat nourishing foods to combat the loss of appetite. If you don’t force yourself to eat, it only delays the next treatment. I was walking in my mother’s steps, and she was walking in mine.
“I’ll take you,” he said.
I placed a basin, wet cloth, and some clean clothes beside my mother and stepped out of the apartment. My husband was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead. Instead of getting in, I stood outside, gazing at his profile. His reflection in the windshield was obscured by shadow. He had been a cheerful, healthy man, but now he looked too old to be thirty-five. He started the car. I climbed inside.
We stopped at a shop he knew in order to buy some ginseng. My mother had used ginseng to boost my immune system. After boiling down the roots to make an extract for drinking, she’d even forced me to eat them. My husband knew how to choose good ginseng. He had a lot to teach me since I needed to do everything on my own now. He picked his way easily through the market he must have frequented because of me, but I kept losing sight of him. The narrow side streets were like a maze, crowded and crammed with display stands. I grabbed hold of his arm.
“Hey, you okay? You don’t look well.”
My husband only stared ahead. “You have to stay healthy yourself if you want to take care of your mom.”
He tugged on my arm, threading it through his. I could feel the warmth from his body. I pulled my arm away. He didn’t reach for me again. When we got back in the car with the ginseng and some greens, rush hour was already starting. He put a cigarette in his mouth.
“Eunhui,” he said in a low voice. The car filled with cigarette smoke. “You really plan on going through with this?”
I said nothing. He tossed the cigarette with its long cherry out the window. “Eunhui,” he said again.
“Do I have to say the same thing again?”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You’ll get over it soon enough.”
“I don’t understand why we have to split up.” He lit another cigarette. “You know it isn’t your fault. There are things in life you can’t avoid, you know that better than anyone, so why do you insist on doing this?” He spewed out a long stream of smoke.
The first thing I did once I was fully recovered was to arrange for my mom to have a pelvic exam. Since I’d been diagnosed with cervical cancer in my early thirties, I couldn’t be sure my mom was okay. It’d just been a precaution, but it had turned out to be too late. I’d wished there was someone to blame. I’d wished I could pin it all on someone and scream at them to make things right, to fix everything. Rage choked me. Because of my chemotherapy, my mother’s cancer cells had kept growing. She was diagnosed with stage 4 uterine cancer. If she had been treated first, I wouldn’t have felt so guilty.
My husband asked how it could have possibly been my fault, even if my mom and I had developed the illness at the same time. Of course, I knew that. Some people become run down from a change in diet even before they start chemo, while some finish their entire treatment plan without vomiting once. Some go completely bald, while some lose hair only in places, as if they’d been involved in a hair-pulling match with their husband’s mistress. There are those who wail for the entire infusion, those who shudder with cold until the day they are discharged from the hospital, those who go in and out of Intensive Care. I received eighteen chemo infusions over three years. I was fed up with cancer. It was depressing, not to mention downright appalling, to see once again all the care workers who practically lived at the hospital, all the doctors and nurses I’d come across in every examining room, this time as my mother’s care person, after bidding them what I’d believed to be a permanent goodbye. I understood. It wasn’t my fault my mom had cancer, and it wasn’t my fault she was dying. But only if we’d discovered her cancer first. It was this I felt guilt about.
“You’re really selfish, you know that?” my husband said, looking at me.
“I know.”
“But—you little shit!”
He slammed on the brakes as a car squeezed in front of us. I flew forward against my seatbelt. We’d nearly hit the car in front. Loud honking sounded behind us. My husband hit the horn and flashed on his lights. As if that were not enough to release his anger, he rolled down his window and shook his fist. The cars started moving once more, but neither of us could carry on with the conversation.
“Nothing’s going to change, so quit wasting your time,” I said finally, trying to keep my voice flat. “I told you, my mind’s made up,”
He had pulled up in front of my apartment building. His face was rigid. “I’ll call you.”
I didn’t bother to respond. Of course none of this made me feel good, but there was no point in dragging things on. Even if I had to use my mother as an excuse, I needed to stay firm. I hoped he’d give up soon. It was the best thing I could do for him. I watched him drive away. The one left behind always suffers more. That night, my mother went into the ICU. She’d had a sudden onset of vaginal bleeding. My husband didn’t answer his phone.
* * *
Because no rooms were available, I had to wait in the waiting room. I was finally allowed to see her in the middle of the night. She was asleep. I held my hand in front of her nose. To my relief, I felt her breath on my skin. Was her life meaningless, to have to endure such exhaustion at the end of her life? I waited once again in the waiting room. I was scared that this waiting would end with the news of her death. Every time I nodded off, I had a nightmare, and would startle awake to find the other caregivers staring at me. But the fact that I was in the same room with them was comforting. Two days later, my mother was finally moved to a room.
“You should know, it’s not going to be easy, but we’ll try,” the doctor said.
He said there seemed to be a problem with her rectum. This time as my mother’s caregiver, I stood awkwardly in front of my doctor before whom I’d spread my legs every two months. Everything felt surreal. Mom lay in her bed, her gaze turned toward the window. She must have heard me come in, but she didn’t turn her head. After pulling the blanket up to her shoulders, I went out into the hall to call my husband. Because we’d come so urgently to the hospital, I hadn’t been able to bring anything. He didn’t pick up. I needed to go home. Though it might be a strain, the oncologist had said a hysterectomy should be performed as soon as possible. It meant she would be hospitalized for a long time. From home, I brought back the same bags I hadn’t been able to unpack. A light blanket, underclothes, toiletries, toilet paper, washbasin, and even a large bowl. When I bought some strawberries from a vendor in front of the hospital, my arms were full.
My mother was lying in the same position, facing the window.
“Mom, I’m back.”
She didn’t answer. Wondering if she was sleeping, I snuck a peek. She was weeping, with her eyes squeezed shut. I took the strawberries into the hall. Though they weren’t in season, they were big and red. When she’d been pregnant with me, she’d had terrible morning sickness, and strawberries had been the only thing that had helped with the nausea. When you get pregnant, I bet you’ll crave strawberries, too, she’d told me once, stroking my forehead. Because you’re just like me.
My fingertips tingled, already red from the icy water. Tears fell while I was pulling the tops off the strawberries. The moment I had seen my mother’s narrow back, I’d thought for the first time that she might actually die. I was scared. I sank to the floor.
When we finally booked her hysterectomy for a week later, I bathed my mother in the hospital bathroom. Since she would be given many tests and injections before surgery, she needed to wash beforehand. We went into the bathroom at midnight to avoid busy times. She looked like a living corpse, with arms bruised from needles, a bald patch on the crown of her head, loose sagging skin, and sunken eyes. Slowly, I washed every part of her body, as if bathing a child. Depending on how quickly she healed from the hysterectomy, other surgeries and chemotherapy would follow. I hoped this wouldn’t mean the end, but I couldn’t help feeling uneasy.
That night, my husband came to the hospital. He reeked so much of booze that I snapped awake. A silhouette stood in the dark doorway. I jumped to my feet. Only when I covered my mouth in terror did I realize it was my husband. He was crying.
I led him to a motel by the hospital. We didn’t say a word to each other, but as soon as we got in the room, he shoved me onto the bed. His lips moved roughly over my face and neck, and his hands pushed my clothes aside. I couldn’t keep him off.
Eunhui, Eunhui, he sobbed, running his hands over my body. I didn’t try to stop him. I planned to stay still and let him do whatever he wanted, but the instant his hand burrowed into my pants, I pushed him off with a strength that surprised me. He fell off the bed. I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. Why did we have to come to this point? What were we doing? The pattern of the wallpaper made me dizzy. He buried his head between his knees. I straightened my clothes and sat down beside him. Without saying anything, I wrapped my arms around his head.
“I know it’s harder on you…” he said.
I lifted his head and stared into his eyes. I held him for a long time, stroking his bloodshot eyes. Slowly, his breathing calmed to match my heartbeat. After removing his clothes, I got him to lie down on the bed, then took his small, soft penis in my mouth. He clutched my shoulders. I received a mouthful of his semen and swallowed it.
I waited until he’d fallen asleep and stepped into the bathroom. I took a hot shower. In the fogged-up mirror, my surgery scar stood out garishly. I ran a finger along the scar, from my belly button down to my groin. I touched my vagina, where the raised scar ended. I stuck my finger inside. It was warm. I trembled.
As I was coming out of the bathroom, I saw a clump of hair in the garbage. The trace left behind by a previous guest. For some reason, it seemed ominous. My husband slept deeply and didn’t wake up when I left. It was an impossibly still night.
* * *
In the waiting room, time crept by while my mother was in surgery. It must have been the same for her and my husband. Just as mine had, her surgery would take longer than six hours. I was anxious the entire time. Her name was called. A small door beside the surgery room opened and the doctor came out, holding a receptacle, the front of his gown stained with blood. The receptacle contained a red lump of flesh smaller than a fist. It was her removed uterus, which looked as if it would start thrashing about at any second. The doctor gave a brief report on the surgery and went back inside to sew my mother up. I couldn’t believe I had actually seen her uterus. How could I have been formed and developed inside that small organ? How could it be crawling with cancer cells now? Had my uterus looked the same? Strength drained from me. As soon as her name showed up on the electric signboard, the doors to the surgery room swung open. She opened her eyes while she was wheeled into the ICU. Though the anesthetic hadn’t worn off, she smiled at me.
The doctor paged me soon after. The surgery had been a success. I bowed deeply to him in thanks.
“Do you have a religion?” he asked, as he flipped through her chart. He looked straight at me. “We found tumors in the rectum, lungs, liver, and breasts.”
“Pardon me?”
He began to talk about the tumors that had been found in every corner of my mother’s body.
“What I’m saying is, what does this mean?”
He turned toward the computer screen and started to book her next surgeries. I wanted to ask him: Where should you even start? Was there a priority? Was it possible for a body to be so crammed full of cancer? How could someone who’d been relatively well until now become a mass of cancer cells overnight? Was it the body’s way of telling her she should prepare for death? My body went limp. I couldn’t feel a thing.
After the hysterectomy, it took about a month for my mother to heal. During that time, she was subjected to biopsies of each organ, plus another round of chemotherapy. The biopsy results were horrific.
In the next two seasons, she received three more surgeries, along with chemotherapy and radiation treatments. She became ravaged. Not a strand of hair remained on her head, and her skin blackened. Her body became a battlefield. Her eyes lost focus often and her mind soon floundered. When the pain came flooding in, she bared her teeth and snarled. But even that lasted only a moment, for she lost consciousness as her limbs convulsed, losing her strength almost immediately.
At the start of fall, she went in and out of intensive care. Everything had happened in just a year since her cancer diagnosis. The worst thing of all was watching death invade her body.
Her last wish was to live out the rest of her days on her own strength. Eventually, we ceased all treatment. Her eyes grew still. Only then did I accept her death. But I wasn’t sure if it was my heart that had finally become still.
* * *
My husband was smiling at my mother. I smiled, too. After all, what choice did we have? My mother, who had been staring vacantly at us, stretched out her hand toward him. He quickly took it. Her breathing was even, but labored. She gave a faint smile.
“I hope you’ll meet up with Eunhui sometimes and eat something good together.” She collected her breath. “I know this was hardest on you. It wasn’t fair to you. Thank you. I won’t forget it, even when I die.”
What she said about not forgetting, even in death, became lodged in my heart. She had tried to stop me. Why do you have to split up with him? Couldn’t you two just lean on each other?
Mom, I can hardly look at him. I’m ashamed of my body, I’m ashamed he saw me at my worst. I hate thinking it’s all my fault.
I had become infertile, even before we could desperately hope for a child. As soon as I accepted the fact that I could never have children, I’d lost the reason to carry on with our marriage. Was it my inferiority complex or my defense mechanism about my infertility? I hated to think I was holding him back. Wasn’t it enough that he’d seen me through three years of sickness? After my last round of chemo, I headed to my mother’s apartment. That had been the start of our separation. If I’d known what would happen with my mom, I wouldn’t have rushed everything like this.
My mother clasped my husband’s hand for a long time. Her expression was extremely serene. She was too close to death to be scared. It was my husband who started crying. She told him she was sorry. He said he was sorry. They felt that way because of me, and so I couldn’t say a thing.
“Call me anytime,” he said gently, as I was seeing him out.
It was the first time I’d seen him in almost half a year, since the time he came to the hospital, drunk. He was looking better, and he had on a shirt I’d never seen before. I found it ridiculous that I wanted to ask him where he’d gotten it. Perhaps I was the one who wasn’t ready. I stood gazing after his car long after it had disappeared. I broke out in goosebumps. It was the middle of winter.
* * *
An empty shell. That was the only thought in my head as I prepared her body for burial. Her shrunken body was hideous, with a few wispy strands of hair on her bald head, her swollen wounds where she’d been sewed back together, dark spots blooming like mold in places, and her dark finger and toenails. Still, at one time, this body had been dewy with life. Hadn’t its rich soil received seed and flowered and produced fruit? Though that fruit had ended up becoming just an empty shell, unable to produce seed. If there had been a shroud my size, I would have liked to lie down beside her.
Mom had gasped for breath until the morning she died. It isn’t easy for anyone to keep their dignity in the face of so much physical pain. The last three months she spent at home were short, but intense. She clung to me, screaming, or kept silent. She laughed sometimes, and she cried sometimes. She stained the bedding with bloody excrement and mucus, and she was unable to keep down a sip of water. It was a brutal, yet happy, time. When the pain swept in, I was glad, for I hoped death would come quickly. Even on the day she died, I’d prayed, Please, let it be today. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. I crouched by her feet and listened to her gasp for air. Because of the ringing in my ears, I didn’t realize right away that she’d stopped breathing. Her eyes were wide open. She looked no different from when she had been alive.
Only a few people came to the funeral. Occasionally I fainted while wailing. When there weren’t any visitors, I leaned against the wall and nodded off. If someone tugged me toward the cafeteria, I followed along and polished off a bowl of soup. It was a simple, modest funeral. My husband stayed with me the entire time.
Reality sank in three days later when I returned home and glanced around at the empty apartment. I sat across from my husband with cups of tea between us. Time passed. As the day waned, all grew silent.
“I should go,” my husband said, but he remained seated.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
His phone rang. He cautiously got to his feet and answered it, turning his head. The faint sound of a woman’s voice that came through the earpiece hovered between me and my husband.
It grew dark. I don’t know how long I continued to sit in darkness after my husband left. I didn’t know what to do. It was strange that I had nothing to do. The hum of the refrigerator sounded unusually loud. I opened the fridge door. It smelled bad. More than half of the food inside had spoiled. I started to clean out the fridge, first pulling out the plug and removing everything. After spraying the shelves and drawers with a cleaner, I wiped them with a dishcloth. Most of the contents were old soybean paste, salted seafood, and side dishes black with mold. I only left what could be eaten immediately, and tossed the rest. I plugged the cord back in. With a hum, the fridge started up again. I was hungry. Before, at the start of my period, my hunger would be insatiable. I put the rice in the cooker. Though there was no longer any reason for cramps, my lower belly began to throb. I clasped my belly. I smelled rice cooking.
“Mom, let’s eat,” I called, opening the door to her room.
Her blanket lay rumpled in the empty room. My forehead was damp with sweat. Thinking I’d probably feel better after some sleep, I crawled onto her stained bedroll, burrowing under her blanket that had collected dust in a matter of days.
* * *
I now go for a checkup every six months. It took several years to get to this point, rather than going every two months. Every day I take hormone therapy pills, and I regularly get screened for breast cancer, as well as other types of cancer. I got a new doctor when my old oncologist left to become a visiting professor, and the maternity wing was moved next to the inpatient wing. Even a postpartum care center came in. Every time I passed that building, I recalled my mother’s removed uterus and wondered if my uterus had looked the same.
For the first time in a long while, it’s a clear day, with very little yellow dust. The sun is dazzling. Spring is officially here. In the distance, I see a man with a familiar silhouette stride near.
“Oh!” I cry, genuinely glad to see him. Just as I’m about to wave at him, he steps into the maternity wing. He comes out soon after, arm in arm with a pregnant woman. Her round belly shines in the sun. The light is so bright my eyes sting. At that moment, he and I see each other, but I hurry into the cancer wing. It’s checkup day. I hear a baby cry from far away. For just a second, my belly throbs.
Kim Yi-seol is a feminist writer in South Korea, with a reputation for stating the case of the disenfranchised and depicting the violence done to women and their bodies. English translations of her work have appeared in Guernica, the Lifted Brow, and Korean Literature Now. She is the author of What No One Tells You and Bad Blood, among others. Her novel Welcome has been translated into French and German.
Janet Hong received the 2018 TA First Translation Prize and the 2018 LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, which was also a finalist for the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and the 2018 National Translation Award. Recent translations include Ha Seong-nan’s Bluebeard’s First Wife and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass, which won the 2020 Harvey Award for Best International Book and the 2020 Krause Essay Prize.