By Woosuk Kim
The hotteok browning on charcoal grills, the blinking subway gates, the breath of pedestrians, were all plume in the frigid yet limpid November air. By the northern outskirts of Namyangju, the seven-floor apartment complex my grandmother lived in was gathering in a pool of fallen marigold leaves. Blackberry gardens lined the streets like ranks of dried meat, padding the eardrums with the rustles of shaking shrubs, as molding blackberries plastered the terra. I walked the road of scattered leaves which led to the barred metal gate of my grandmother’s complex, a plaid wrapped present tucked in the front pocket of my windbreaker. As I shuffled through the leaves decorating the beige street tiles, I remembered the first time I walked down the avenues of Namyangju to visit my grandmother. I had questioned my mother—who was burdened with carrying the dried gam—why my grandmother would have even considered moving into such an area far from home.
“Because.” My mother’s vacuous remark told me that she did not want to talk about it.
The November air blew whistles past my ears, a soft breeze carrying some of the crisp leaves half a step. The apartment was the last on the block before the signs that opened up towards the roads to Pocheon City. Behind the apartment’s set of shaded vinyl frames, an empty wooden conceived clubhouse drifted over a garden, pomegranate trees embellishing the trimmed green. As I walked through the frost-clotted sliding gate, I thought I heard music.
A tenor hum resonated, cutting through the breeze like the crackle on branches. The singing echoed from the screen door on the first level, a slit of curtain fluttering through as if signaling. I knew it was my grandmother’s window.
Ignoring the main entrance where the doorbell was tipped with grime, I stepped onto the side veranda before the dust clouded screen, my battered rubber shoes clunking on the wood. The door slid open with ease, the glass rasping against the vinyl.
“Halmeoni?” I said out loud, a limp silence reverberating through the room as if I were talking to myself. The living room was left how I expected it to be: a television set just warm from being recently turned off, pairs of shuffled photographs placed on top of one another, encased by frames washed in rainbow hues. Opposite the diminishing glow of the television screen was a mahogany coffee table, which lay by the foot of an overstuffed velvet sofa. The coffee table hosted a shamble of record covers, the top one depicting an archaic smile from Frankie Laine, abstractly similar to one from the Mona Lisa. The diaphanous plastic turntable on a record player clasped the margins of the records, the stack spreading like a wooden fan.
I sauntered through the living room, carefully exchanging my trainers on a rack of white house slippers by a passageway leading to the door. As I uncovered the muffled present out of front pocket, I noticed a bronze light coming from the door leading to the kitchen.
“Halmeoni,” I called, stepping into the kitchen’s tiled floor. She was in her usual pink floral dress, a cream cardigan covering her shoulders. I could make out her hushed whimperings, even underneath the scraping of her neon pink gloves swirling foam on patterned ceramic plates.
“Halmeoni,” I said once again, this time reaching to tap her on the back. And the moment the tip of my nail made contact with the fringe of her shoulder, her facial expression broke out into craggy grin, like she had been snapped out of a trance.
“Charles! Let me fix you your lunch. Have you eaten?” Before I could correct her by saying that Charles was actually my father’s name, she had already begun pulling out glass containers of banchan. She gestured to take a seat, so I pulled out the cushioned bar stool from underneath the kitchen counter. The lasting redolence of dishwashing soap charged up my nose, biting through the acumen scent of fresh cabbage kimchi.
“Halmeoni, I got you this.” I placed the packaged gift beside the metal chopsticks my grandmother lay out in front of me.
“What is it? Open it for me.”
I tore the tartan patterned paper, shaking out a mini jar of preserved blackberries. “I picked it up from the market on the way here. Mr.Lee wishes his best.”
When my grandmother was admitted into a hospital in Seoul, my mom told me that I would be heading to Namyangju to make sure the apartment was cleaned up properly. It didn’t surprise me. My grandmother had already been struggling to remember for quite a while now, even the lyrics to “That’s My Desire.” To her, Namyangju became the name of a place that sounded like saying a goodbye, before the memories faded away like breath on a window, the mist dissipating into a glass translucence.
I jogged down Namyangju to where my grandmother used to live, past the maze of narrow winding streets and roasting chestnuts blistering on wooden grills. My shoes peeled craters on the street tiles coated with a layer of mire, from rain the morning before. The children in their gardens gathered their woven berry baskets, and waved their goodbyes to the last batch of blackberries being grown. They would have to wait another year before the next blackberry harvest. It was already late when I reached my grandmother’s apartment, chromatic street lights hovering over the post-supper silence, a moving van planted right in front of the shadowed screen door. In the dark, the house smelled of packed away banchan and wet glass.
Woosuk Kim is a sophomore at the International School of Manila. His writing has been previously recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and the Zoetic Press.