Namsan dong

It seems that I have lived in America for a long time. There was a time when I counted 10 years, 20 years and 30 years. But I am no longer count. I just live in this place. Am I going to die here?  

I have no place I can call home. Itaewon was the longest place to live before coming to the United States. Before that, I only lived in Namsan-dong, Jung-gu in Seoul. I used to live Garden City, Long Island, Elmhurst, Queens, Grand Street, Manhattan, and Green Point, Brooklyn, and now l live in Upper West Side Manhattan. When I lived apart from my parents, there was no one to lean on, so I packed and moved around here and there.

I lived under Soongeui Girls' High School in Namsan-dong as a child. My mom used to shout and waked me up, 'The principal is passing by,' whenever a small, well-mannered person wearing a white blouse and a black skirt passed by in front of our house every morning. If the philosopher Kant walked past the entrance of the village, would the people in the neighborhood set the hand of their clocks?

After the principal passed by, beggars came to begged. My mom used to put the white steamed rice in their black iron containers. I woke up and looked at the door, but I didn’t know their hunger and I only remember the white of steamed rice and the black contrast of iron containers that were so dirty.

My partner at Namsan Elementary School was a child from an orphanage on above my house. Everyone hated being paired with her, but I hesitated to say no. Her sniffling made me unable to concentrate on exams as well as during class. I thought, if I ask teacher to change my partner she do not have a place to go. I just looked forward to the end of the school year. The memory of trying to sit at a distance from her still shows a sharp reaction when my husband sniffs at his nose.  

After school, I played in the yard, keeping the laundry with my sister. It is because the homeless people often took the laundry. When I shouted, “mom, someone took the laundry ~”, Mom entered to the house, saying, “that’s enough.” To see they’re ragged, hopping away in the distance.   

One day, while playing in the yard, a young man opened gate and entered. Mom was running barefoot! It is that the friend of the dead son came in thinking that her son had come back alive. My mother, who has touched her heart and tears and welcomed her son’s friend.

At the end of the Korean War, her son pulled out a buried land mine and played with it, and the land mine exploded and died together. One day, mom woke with a daughter who was dead. I was born after losing my two older brothers and sister. 

Does my mom got sick with the sorrow and lived in the sorrow and left the sorrow world? The generation that has gone through the dirty years, where only such a house would be my home!