Almond Page 4

  “I can take this many, right? It’s Christmas Eve,” I asked, grabbing two fistfuls of candy. The waiter hesitated a little but nodded with a smile.

  Outside the window, Mom and Granny were still all smiles. Parading by the two was the long procession of a mixed choir. They wore red Santa hats and red capes and were singing carols. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Born is the King of Israel. I stuck my hands in my pockets and felt the prickly edges of the candy wrappers as I walked to the exit.

  Just then, several people shouted at once. The singing stopped. The shouts turned into screams. The choir parade was in chaos. People covered their mouths and hurried away.

  Out the window, a man was swinging something against the sky. It was a man in a suit that we had seen lurking about before we entered the restaurant. In sharp contrast to his outfit, he held a knife in one hand and a hammer in the other. He wielded both with such force as if he meant to stab every snowflake falling down on him. I saw him approaching the choir as some people hastily took out their cell phones.

  The man turned, and his eyes fell on Granny and Mom. He changed course. Granny tried to pull Mom away. But at the next moment, something unbelievable happened before my eyes. He swung his hammer down on Mom’s head. One, two, three, four times.

  Mom keeled over, blood spraying across the ground. I pushed the glass door to get outside, but Granny screamed and blocked it with her body. The man dropped the hammer and sliced the air with the knife in his other hand. I pounded on the glass door, but Granny shook her head, barricading it with all her might. She said something to me again and again, half weeping. The man bore down on Granny. She wheeled around to face him and roared. But just that once. Her big back covered my sight. Blood splattered over the glass door. Red. More red. All I could do was watch the glass door turn redder and redder. No one stepped in during that whole time. I saw a couple of riot police, all frozen. Everyone just stood there and watched, as if the man and Mom and Granny were putting on a play. Everyone was the audience. Including me.

  18

  None of the victims had any relationship to the man. He was later discovered to be a very typical working-class citizen living an ordinary life. He had graduated from a four-year college and worked in the sales department of a small business for fourteen years before he was suddenly laid off due to the recession. He had opened a fried chicken diner with his severance pay but had to close it in less than two years. In the meantime, he fell into debt, and his family left him. He shut himself in his house afterward, for three and a half long years. He never left his semi-basement room aside from grocery shopping at a nearby supermarket and visiting the public library every so often.

  Most of the books he checked out from the library were introductory manuals about martial arts, self-defense, and wielding a knife. But the books found in his house that he owned were mostly self-help books about rules for success and positive habits. On his shabby desk was a will he wrote in large, crude letters as if he didn’t want anyone to miss it.

  If I see anyone smiling today, I will take them with me.

  His journal contained further traces of his hatred of the world. Many sections implied that he felt an urge to kill whenever he saw people who smiled in this miserable world. As details of his life and background rose to the surface, the public’s interest shifted from the crime itself to a sociological analysis of what inevitably drove him to do what he did. Many middle-aged men found his life no different from their own and despaired. The public grew more sympathetic toward the man and began focusing on the realities of Korean society, which had allowed this to happen. No one seemed to care about the victims he had killed.

  The incident made the headlines for a while, with titles like “Who Made Him a Murderer?” or “Korea: Where a Smile Will Kill You.” Before long, as quickly as foam dissolves, even those subjects were no longer talked about. It took only ten days.

  Mom was the only survivor. But they said her brain was in a deep sleep with very little chance of waking, and that even if it did, she would not be the person I knew. Soon after, the victims’ families held a joint funeral. Everyone was crying except for me. They all wore the expressions you’d expect, standing before your brutally murdered family members.

  A female police officer stopped by the funeral, and as she bowed to the bereaved, she burst into tears and couldn’t stop. Later I saw her at the end of a hallway being scolded by an elderly male police officer. You’ll witness this kind of thing every so often, so train yourself to be numb. Just then, his eyes met mine. He stopped talking. I just bowed at him as if nothing had happened and walked past to the restroom.

  I heard people whispering about me for showing no emotion during the three-day-long funeral. They all made different guesses. He’s probably too shocked. What would a teenager know? His mom’s good as dead, and he’s practically an orphan, but it hasn’t sunk in yet, that must be why.

  They might’ve expected visible symptoms of sorrow, loneliness, or frustration from me. But floating inside me were not emotions, but questions.

  What had Mom and Granny been laughing so gleefully about?

  Where would we’ve gone after the naengmyeon restaurant if that hadn’t happened?

  Why did the man do that?

  Why didn’t he break the television or the mirror, instead of killing people?

  Why did no one step in and help before it was too late?

  Why?

  Thousands of times a day, I asked myself question after question until I went back to square one and started all over again. But I had no answer to any of them. I even shared my questions with some policemen and a therapist, who listened with worried expressions, who said I could tell them anything. But nobody could give me answers. Most stayed silent, others tried to answer but gave up. I knew why. It was because no one had the answers. Both Granny and the man were dead. Mom would be silent forever. So the answers to my questions were gone forever, too. I stopped asking my questions out loud.

  Mom and Granny were gone, that much was clear. Granny was gone in both body and soul, and as for Mom, the only bit of her left was her shell. Now nobody would remember their lives except me. That was why I had to survive.

  After the funeral, exactly eight days after my birthday, a new year came along. I was entirely by myself. All that was left in my life was the piles of books in Mom’s bookstore. Everything else was mostly gone. I didn’t have to hang up the lotus lanterns and the Christmas decorations, or memorize the emotion charts, or go into town pushing through crowds to eat out on my birthday anymore.

  Part Two

  19

  I visited the hospital every day. Mom lay still, just breathing. She had been moved from the ICU to a six-bed ward. I stopped by every day and sat next to her, relaxing in the warm sunlight coming through the window.

  The doctor plainly said that she had no chance of waking up. That she was merely subsisting and nothing more. The nurse absently emptied the bedpan for Mom. I helped the nurse turn over Mom’s body once in a while so she wouldn’t have bedsores. It was like I was turning over a big load of luggage.

  The doctor asked me to let him know once I decided what to do. When I asked him what he meant, he said he’d meant whether I was going to keep Mom here and pay the hospital bills or move her to a cheaper nursing home in the countryside.

  For the time being, I would be able to live off Granny’s life insurance. I realized then that Mom had made such preparations in case I was left alone at any time.

  I went to register Granny’s death at the community service center, where the officers quietly clicked their tongues and looked away. A few days later, a social worker from the center came to see me. She looked at my house and suggested that I move to a youth center, like a shelter or group home. I asked her to give me some time. But it didn’t mean I would actually think it over during that time. I just needed time.

  20

  The house was quiet. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. The letters Granny and
Mom had pasted on the walls were meaningless decorations now that there was no one to teach me what they meant. It was easy to picture what my life would look like if I moved to a facility. I didn’t mind, but what I couldn’t picture was Mom, who would be left alone.

  I tried to imagine what Mom would say. But she couldn’t answer me. I searched for clues in the words she had left me. I remembered what she had said most often, which was to live “normally.”

  I mindlessly swiped through the apps on my cell phone. An app called Chat with the Phone caught my eye. I tapped it, and a small chatbox containing an emoji popped up.

  Hi.

  As soon as I hit send, I got a reply:

  Hi.

  I typed:

  How are you?

  Good. You?

  Me too.

  Good.

  What does it mean to be “normal”?

  To be like others.

  A pause. I typed a longer message this time.

  What does it mean to be like others? When everyone is different, who should I follow? What would Mom say?

  Come on out, dinner’s ready.

  The response cut me short, because I didn’t even realize I had hit send. I tried to ask more, but none of the replies were useful. I wouldn’t get any hints from this thing. I closed the app without typing goodbye.

  There was still some time before school started up again. I had to get used to living on my own by then.

  * * *

  I re-opened the bookstore two weeks later. Clouds of dust rose as I walked along the bookcases. I had customers once in a while. Some people ordered books online. I was able to buy at a reasonable price a collection of used children’s books that Mom had wanted to buy before the incident. I displayed the collection where everyone would see it.

  It was actually easy to say just a few words a day. I didn’t have to think over or rack my brain to find the appropriate words for a situation. All I needed to say was yes, no, or hold on. The rest was scanning bank cards, giving back change, and saying welcome or have a nice day mechanically.

  One day a lady who ran a kids’ book club in the neighborhood came in. She used to chat with Granny sometimes.

  “I see you’re helping out during your vacation. Where’s your grandma?”

  “She’s dead.”

  She gaped at me, then knitted her brows in a heavy frown. “I know kids your age can joke around, but this is simply not acceptable. Your grandma would be so hurt to hear that.”

  “She’s really dead.”

  “Really?” She raised her voice, folding her arms. “Then tell me, when and how did she die?”

  “She was stabbed, on Christmas Eve.”

  “Oh my god.” She covered her mouth. “It’s that massacre from the news. Oh mercy . . .” She crossed herself and turned to leave in a hurry. As if to avoid catching something contagious from me.

  “Excuse me.” I stopped her. “You didn’t pay.”

  She flushed.

  After she left, I thought for a while about what Mom would’ve wanted me to say in that situation. The lady’s expression made it clear that I’d done something wrong. But I had no idea what my mistake was or how to undo it. Maybe I should’ve said Granny was out of town traveling. Actually, no, the lady would’ve kept asking me questions because she liked to mind everybody’s business. Or maybe I shouldn’t have taken her money. But then that would’ve made no sense. I remembered the saying “Silence is golden,” and decided to stick to it. Don’t respond to most questions. But then, what would count as “most” was confusing, too.

  A book came to mind, one that Granny, who had rarely read anything except store signs, happened to read and love. Short Stories of Hyun Jingeon. I had managed to find the chapbook edition printed in 1986 that sold for 2,500 won. Her favorite story from the collection was “Proctor B and the Love Letters.”

  In the story, Proctor B secretly reads her students’ love letters at night, acting out both the boy’s and the girl’s parts like a one-person play. Three of her female students spot her, and each reacts differently. One sneers at her ridiculous monologue, one trembles with fear at her crazy performance, and one cries with sympathy at her longing for love.

  At the time, I told my mom that the story contradicted her lesson, in which there was only one right answer for each situation, but I thought this kind of ending wasn’t too bad. It seemed to mean that there was more than one answer to everything. Maybe I didn’t need to stick to hard-and-fast rules of dialogue or behavior. Since everyone was different, my “odd reactions” could be normal to some people.

  Mom was flustered when I said this to her. She thought for a long time before finally coming up with an answer. She said the third student had the correct reaction because the answer usually came in last and the story ended with her crying.

  “But there’s also a form of writing that starts with the topic sentence. The first student could be correct.”

  Mom scratched her head. Not giving in, I asked, “Would you have cried if you saw Proctor B’s one-man play?”

  “Your mother can sleep through anything,” Granny butted in. “She’d be one of the extras playing the sleeping students.”

  I could almost hear Granny chuckling right next to me.

  * * *

  A dark shadow suddenly fell over the book. I looked up to see a familiar middle-aged man standing in front of me. But then he was gone. He’d left a note on the counter. It read, “Come up to the second floor.”

  21

  The bookstore was on the first floor of a low two-story building. On the second floor was a bakery, which was unusual. It had no real name, just a sign that simply read, “Bread.” The first time Granny saw the sign, she said, “The bread here doesn’t look tasty,” though I had no idea how she’d deduced that just by looking at the sign.

  The bakery sold only streusel bread, milk bread, and cream bread. It even closed at 4 p.m. on the dot. But still, it was always crowded with people, the line often stretching all the way down to the first floor. Customers at the end of the line would even browse in our bookstore.

  Mom used to buy bread there sometimes. The bakery’s plastic bag read, “Shim Jaeyoung Bakery.” Shim Jaeyoung was the bakery owner, but Mom called him Dr. Shim. After Granny had a bite, she no longer complained about it not looking tasty. For me, it was just okay. It was like any other food.

  But this was my first time inside the bakery.

  Dr. Shim handed me a piece of cream bread. I took a bite, and thick, canary-yellow cream oozed out. He was in his early fifties, but his snow-white hair made him look almost sixty.

  “How does it taste?”

  “It tastes . . . like something.”

  “That’s good, better than nothing,” he chuckled.

  “Do you work here alone?” I asked, looking around. The place had no real interior structure. With a partition dividing an open space in the middle, there was nothing but a counter, a display stand, and a table on one side, and the baking area presumably on the other side.

  “Yes, I am the owner and the only employee. It’s easier that way. It certainly doesn’t need more and it’s pretty manageable, too.” His answer was longer than necessary.

  “And why did you want to see me?”

  Dr. Shim poured milk into my cup. “I’m very sorry for what you went through. I’ve been thinking for a while about how I can help you in some way.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Well, I know we’ve just met, but is there anything you need or anything you want to ask?” he said, drumming his fingers on the table, which he’d been doing for a while. His habit, maybe, but it was getting annoying.

  “Could you stop making that noise?”

  Dr. Shim peered at me over the rim of his glasses and smiled.

  “Have you heard of the story of Diogenes? You remind me of him. When Alexander the Great tells Diogenes to ask him for any favor, Diogenes asks the sovereign to move aside because his shadow is blocking the sun.�
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  “You don’t remind me of Alexander the Great, though.”

  This time he burst out laughing. “Your mom talked a lot about you. She said you’re special.”

  Special. I knew what she must’ve meant. Dr. Shim curled his fingers into a tight ball.

  “I can stop the tapping for now, but it’s a habit of mine that’s a little difficult to quit. Anyway, what I meant was that I was actually hoping I could help with things more . . . regularly.”

  “Regularly?”

  “I could help you financially if you need some support.”

  “Well, I have insurance money, so I’m good now.”

  “Your mom often asked me to take care of you in case anything happened. We were quite close, you know. Your mom was the type of person who made everyone around her happy.”

  I noticed he used the past tense.

  “Have you seen her, at the hospital?”

  Dr. Shim nodded, the corners of his mouth drooping a little. If he was sad for Mom, it might’ve made her feel good. That was one of the tips she’d given me. If somebody was sad for my sadness, then I should be happy. The principle that two negatives made a positive.

  “Why do people call you Dr. Shim?”

  “I was a doctor before, but not anymore.”

  “What an interesting job transition.”

  He laughed again. I realized that he always laughed when I said something even when I didn’t mean to be funny.

  “Do you like books?” he asked.

  “Yes. I used to help Mom at the bookstore before.”

  “Okay, then here’s the deal. You continue to work at the bookstore. I’ll pay you monthly wages. I own this building, so you can save the insurance money for college or other important affairs and use this part-time job for your living expenses. I’ll handle all the complicated stuff if you let me.”