a scarlet backpack

'People will forget what you said and did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.' 

This is what Maya Angelou said. As if to prove this quote, I often think of a woman I briefly passed on election day. The grim mass of her scarlet backpack, which was weighing her down on her back, sticks in my mind, like poppy blood, and I wonder if she still carries that heavy scarlet backpack these days.

Long ago, I worked as a primary and general election day clerk for many years, surviving an anxious life. Although it was a long day of work that required working from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., I did not miss the two days that allowed me to receive a decent amount of pay. It was early November one year, Tuesday, the day of the general election. I remember it as a polling place at a high school in  Queens. That day, I met her as an election worker. Perhaps because we were similar ages, we already became close during the morning of the election. And we went out to eat together at lunchtime. A rock-like scarlet bag was hanging on her back, pressing down on her body and pulling it down behind her. She hunched her shoulders and pulled on her backpack to keep herself from collapsing and took long strides.

We went into a nearby Chinese restaurant. She placed her bag carefully on the chair next to her. The two of us, who had been exposed to the cold air since dawn, shouted Jjamppong at the same time as the waitress approached us, as if trying to warm up. There was so much food that I couldn't even eat half of it. As if she had starved for several days, she ate it up in one go, as if the vacuum cleaner was inhaling it, without leaving a single drop of her soup. Her eyes were glued to the red jjamppong I left for a while with an expression of regret. She looked at me with a look that was hard to tell if it was a pity for me who couldn't eat well or if it was a waste of the jjamppong left behind.

Her hand, which had finished eating the jjambbong in an instant, was holding the bag strap tightly. I was curious and couldn't help but ask.

“Why are you carrying such a heavy bag?”

“This bag contains everything important to me.”

“If it’s an important item, you should keep it at home. What if you lose it while carrying it? “Isn’t it heavy?”

"I live with my roommate and I feel like she's going through my stuff and touching it. It's heavy, but I feel relieved to carry it around like this."

I wanted to say, 'That heavy scarlet backpack will dominate and crush your mental world and transform your body,' but I held it back. I can't forget her skinny body and dark expression, which have been cemented by the firm determination to carry the scarlet backpack.