Take them off and there is a blur. Faint images of you on your seventieth birthday, slicing a strawberry cake with a plastic knife. You’re wearing cardboard “2007” glasses, your eyes wide through the two zeroes, and the two and seven decorated with rainbow hued glitter and beads. You can hear the tintinnabulation of the drinks being poured, the scent of sucrose filled drinks flaring your nostrils. You notice the frothing sound of the drinks are eventually drowned out by the squeals of children on their Game Boys™, banter amongst adults, and the constant crunch from someone chewing on a french fry. A fly lands on your daughter’s floral dress and I giggle.
“Mama has a fly on her dress!” I poke at the dress with my tomato stained fork, the fly slipping right through the prongs. Mother scolded me for the stain on the dress you bought her, wiping at it with wet tissues as if she was insulted by the ketchup. Outside, the danburite clouds swirled like water on a blue basin. Cars drone underneath them on a road still wet from melting ice.
You twirled your coffee spoon inside the glass of white wine as if you were a fairy granting a wish. You tapped the glass twice, marking the cupped edges with a sparkling liquid, and turning the heads of everyone on the extended table of twelve. As I sat down on your lap, you adjusted the collar of my shirt, avoiding eye contact as you stuttered.
“Yuhruhboon, thank you all for being here... A toast, for long life.” You flattened out the collar of my Polo and raised your transparent glass of wine.
“Gunbae.” As you leaned over and said the word, everyone else followed, clinking together their glasses of wine and iced teas. The wine quivered the back of your throat, leaving an astringent aftertaste. The celebration then continued, the chatter amongst family members was revived, with a fly buzzing on cousin Charlie’s plate, the clicks of stay-tabs being torn from aluminum cans, adults fervently arguing which stocks would rise higher, and the road outside still drying. You sipped on your wine, crumbling the agglomerations of cake, the tart flavor of the strawberries gradually being disintegrated.
Put them on and you are lying in a hospital bed, feeling the edges of the photo with your straw-like finger tips, trying to remember the names of the people in them and the taste of the same strawberry cake and white wine. You are surrounded by blinking contrivances and an empty couch. A wide TV lay at the foot of your bed, displaying an assortment of information: the week’s weather forecast, a preview of CNN news, and balletic snapshots of the hospital from the outside. Drained tea cups sit on the coffee table, pinning down a pile of shuffled photographs, strewn out from the insides of your wallet. Droplets of mist cloud the window and the view of the Han River.
“Ready for lunch?” I walk in carrying a tray of black-bean noodles and chilled yellow radishes.
“Thank you Charles.”
“It’s Phillip.” Charles is my father.
Take them off and there’s only sepia images of you walking with your mother towards the market at noon, carrying straw baskets - itching through your sleeveless shirt - containing packaged kimbap, droplets of olive oil bedewed on the rice and seaweed. The market was pellucid in the afternoons, with strands of sunlight and lamps etched through the cracks on the roof. The crowd packed the stands of magazines and cigarettes as everyone wanted a roll of the afternoon paper; their pages crusted from the dampness of fish in the stalls to the right. Further down the concrete road, the briny scent of fish was fogged by the smell of cheap Aloe and the sesame seeds on the rice cakes. You can see the Ajusshi, their hair graying, unloading fruits from the tow attached to their bicycles while a huddle of Ajumma turned the dial on the FM radios, complaining about their sore feet. The voice of Patti Page rose like melted butter, singing about going to a wedding, the man she loved about to be married.
Remember returning to the same market thirty years later, the night after your mother’s funeral. You sat with your brother on plastic stools, pouring him a shot of soju. Your shirt was halfway undone, sleeves folded before the elbows, a tie hanging loosely under. Dry alcohol rested on the roof of your mouth making it slightly tingle. Your soju-stained breath blocked out the sweet odor of fish cakes wrinkling in chicken stock, and sausage sticks browning on grills. The Ajusshi and Ajumma began to close their stands, placing unsold fruits and pastries into color coded baskets. They counted piles of loose change, organizing them in silver lined cash boxes. The radio cut off G.O.D. mid song, as they sung about how their mothers sacrificed a bowl of black-bean noodles. Remember forgetting how you only shed one tear as you stood over the coffin being lifted onto the hollowed out ground.
Put them on and you are sitting upright on your bed, a wooden stand hovering over your lap. On the table are five items: a plate of unfinished jjajangmyun, a pack of unconsumed pills, a glass of wheat tea, an ink-filled pen, and a sheet of paper with the words, “Black-bean noodles” written in Hangul. I was the one who gave you the words, praying you would remember not only the taste of the unfinished noodles, but the feelings of grief, and love that you are letting go of, like a tree in autumn, slowly shedding off leaves.
Woosuk Kim is a sophomore at the International School of Manila. His works have previously been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.