The God That Meets the Eye
Sena Moon
Honorable Mention
Coco sticks her paw through the door slit, and I notice its size, the ample length of her talons. This is not our cat.
"Open up. Umma's lost her keycard."
Tae-hwan springs up, but I pull him down. The voice is unmistakable, airy and fast-fading, yet something's off.
"She knows the password. Why would she knock?"
For Mom comes and goes like hail. Her entrance is rarely forewarned and just happens, like the time she whisked us from Grandpa's doorstep, leaving child-sized craters in his congested heart. How long had she been gone then, four summers? Maybe five.
"Wouldn't call herself Umma either."
Tae-hwan droops. I drum out another text on the phone.
"When will you be home? Just checking in."
The night is long and so's our hunger. My brother suspects our mother is dead. What's out there, surely, is a tiger in disguise.
****
The kitchen faucet is dripping. The counter teems with unopened mail and meal kit containers, the carton of quail eggs and a tab of gourmet butter Tae-hwan and I split. We're feverish with hunger.
"What if she's gone?" he wonders. My brother, age six, is anxious beyond his years.
"She'll be back."
"Then who's out there?"
"Maybe an evangelist," I snap, though they come in pairs, sporting the same perms, no paws.
If whatever out there isn't Mom, then I don't want to know. This is a low-rise villa in a lowbrow neighborhood. As a resident of pricey Bongseon-dong, Grandpa thought the area beneath us, but Mom chose agency over aegis, a word she uses to poke fun at him and his modest largesse.
"What about Coco?"
"She'll be back too."
But this, I doubt. Our cat is a former stray of genteel disposition. Mom has fallen out of affection with her for two reasons: Cats aren't a part of the twelve zodiacs, and isn't that suspicious? Also, Coco has a habit of nipping at our toes. Just a nibble, nothing more—but Mom gets upset whenever her rice-kernel teeth find Tae-hwan's foot. Meanwhile, I could wriggle my digits invitingly, make sure marks are left red and raised, and Mom won't bat an eye. Won't even offer Fucidin cream.
"Can you check again?"
Tae-hwan points. I paste my cheek obligingly to the peephole, but the view is pitch black, like that of an enlarged pupil.
"I want Mom," he insists. Immediately, she starts banging.
"Right here, sweetie," the tiger that is not Coco singsongs.
I stagger back. An involuntary pang runs through my being, for even now I am addendum.
****
When we were younger, about the height of a kitchen stool and table, our father fell from the clouds. And wouldn't you know it, he shot up straight to heaven from a celestial trampoline. I saw big holes in Grandpa's story, even back then. As the deacon of a megachurch, he was merely channeling his Christian Baptist side. In reality, Father slipped off Gureum Dari, a structure in Gwangju notorious for its steep and precarious nature—named "Cloud Bridge" for a reason.
That was the year bodies fell from the sky. The news spammed the words puppet, impeachment, and the ozone hole before detailing the latest provocations from North Korea. A number of things were prone to falling: presidential approval ratings, ballistic missiles, acid rain, fine dust, human bodies. His had been the second time in two months. In total, seven deaths in a span of a year, a frequency that had locals debating whether each incident was accidental or premeditated. Mom argued structural defect. With baby Tae-hwan in her arms, she raised the guardrails that resembled a crone's teeth, missing integral pieces in its slippery, muddy gums. But the local governance clapped back with health records, claiming hints of depression in Father's use of therapy—not the content, mind, but the fact that he needed one at all.
In the end, Father's death was ruled a suicide. The insurance company denied payment, as did the maintenance authorities. At the funeral, our money box swelled with condolences as Grandpa's community swooped in, serving soju and yukgaejang in place of the grieving widow. Yet not a spoonful of the hearty stew passed her lips. What was the point, Mom wondered. She knew how the rest of her life would go.
I, on the contrary, downed three bowls and threw up upon realizing I couldn't remember his face. What did Father look like again? Even now, I can study his portrait and lose the image upon turning away. So in lieu of faces, numbers fell from a fluffy bridge in my dreams, sevens and twos like magnets sliding off a fridge. Back in those days, our fridge was missing the number six, so Tae-hwan would skip six when counting to ten.
Nowadays, my brother counts to a hundred easy. He eats braised black beans with his own pair of chopsticks and is prone to dizzy, full-bodied laughter. But Mom had checked out by then. She's been that way for four summers, maybe five.
"Did we make her sad again?" he asks, too solemn for my liking.
I shake my head. No. We saw the angle of Mom's neck as she took leave. Her grief is a beacon leading out, and we're marooned by the docks. How do you explain this to a child?
"Go to sleep already," I order, with as much authority as my twelve years can muster.
Outside, the creature has fallen dormant. The night grows deeper. In its depth, my mind casts an ugly montage:
Once upon a time, a mother was on her way home when she came across a hungry tiger. She offered it a rice cake and went on her way, but the greedy tiger returned again and again. As her basket emptied, the mother began losing her limbs to this insatiable creature. In the end, only her head remained, still moving, rolling determinedly—homebound.
My throat grows prickly with salt. There was a period before Tae-hwan, before Cloud Bridge, when Mom cooked and read storybooks. Her stews were briny and the books unsettling, but she'd happily embraced motherhood.
"Noona," Tae-hwan whispers. "Do you hear that? It's back."
The door is pulsing again. We huddle like propped-up dolls as a siren cuts through, petering out northbound. When I palm the mattress, the spot he sits on feels damp.
"Sorry. Jwesonghamnida."
Tae-hwan reverts to honorifics, lending a formal tone to his usual speech. I toss an arm around my brother, feel the bones in his shoulder.
We move to the bathroom where there is no tub but a pink bowl and cracked cucumber soap, like the washing basin of an old-fashioned sauna. I crank the water until steam clouds the mirror and place the soggy sheets in a rubber tub, drape a sweatshirt over Tae-hwan, cup his ears. Umma's knocks seep through the sound of running water, escalating in staccato beats before slowing to a thump, ba-dump. I keep my eyes on Tae-hwan. They spy the whorl of his crown, the way it chooses a side to lean on.
"She'll be back tomorrow," I promise.
He nods, disbelieving.
In the living room, moonlight drips on Mom's topper. The scene is exactly as she'd left it, down to the paperback spread facedown, the spine cracked from reading the same pages over and over. Something about accepting hatred and being courageous in the face of animosity. Mom hoards self-help books. They have obnoxious titles like Tabula Rasa and A Side Dish of Feelings, boiling down to how fixing oneself is an exercise in "fertility". Her dresser is a shrine to sheet masks and retinol creams that promise a good fix, a life unblemished. Mom needs to be seen as someone who glides through life. She doesn't want her history etched on her face.
I sink into her blankets, Tabula Rasa in my hands. The scent of the days she spends inside, outside, away from us, settles like dust.
****
Shortly after the accident, Mom discovered saju. It was the year of the golden pig. The Korean Provisional Government celebrated its 100th anniversary, and a national policy on Government-Inclusive Child Protection was established. A movie made a haunting splash worldwide, and a decades-old cold case was finally solved. Far up North, two leaders convened under the veil of goodwill and nuclear peace. In the eyes of the universe, these facts were connected.
"Everything makes so much sense now."
Delighted with this take on life, Mom registered in a course on the Four Pillars of Destiny at the community center, run by a superstitious kook named Dohwa Seonnyeo. She whiled away summers perusing complex birth charts because, maybe, just maybe, an excess of fire element was why a celebrity got exposed for tax fraud in the year of the blue horse. A colleague must have placed second in the lottery because her life cycle was entering an auspicious phase. Under this logic, Father wouldn't have slipped had his birthday landed an hour later.
"It rained that day. Normally, he wouldn't go near the bridge. That was not a good time to move south, not for anyone born in the year of the ox. He was terribly afraid of heights. Wouldn't chance the Ferris wheel."
"I believe you," I'd whisper. "I'm scared of heights too."
Even a week ago, she'd laid slant on the topper, spouting theories from a mouth dusty with chips. She'd had a long shift at the call center, a workplace that Grandpa believed to be beneath her. Mom had a master's degree after all. Wore cashmere. But without dry cleaning, her clothes were forever shrinking.
"We were busy preparing for Tae-hwan's hundredth-day. His pocket held the gold ring when they found his body. Would he leave before such an occasion? He was not a cruel man."
Afterwards, she cried through a rerun of Animal Farm, an episode in which a lost peacock found community in a sleepy country village. With eyes glued to the TV, she dipped into a bag of potato chips, reaching, probing, until the bag slid off the table with a silent crinkle and I wanted to scream, Mom, it's empty, the bag is empty, are you fucking blind? At the same time, she deserved all the chips in the world, an industrial-sized bag that never ran out so she could dip forever. As Grandpa would say, it was nice to want things. But her hand dangled feebly until eyes veered from bird to bag, plain on the floor, just a breath from where she sat. Mom smiled politely, puffy-eyed, as if she'd made a cute but embarrassing faux pas. That smile triggered me all over again. I vowed to never fetch her anything. No more bag of chips, off-brand or otherwise, and no more forgiveness for weakness, for leniency, for pathetic plea, for all kinds of wrong wronged. My heartstrings stiffened to metal, but then she cut through my anger with, "Be a doll and pick that up? Throw it out for me?"
And I would.
"Check the pantry to see if there's more gga-gga? I'm being naughty today."
And I would.
****
"Open up."
The world is shaking. I must be dreaming.
"Open up. Umma is very cold."
I sit up. Slider windows wrap the walls, lined with newspaper and bubble wrap. Through its haze, the outline of a torso grows richer, pummeling, near-shattering the glass. We're on the third floor.
I swing to Tae-hwan, whose eyes are thick with sleep. They round before fluttering shut.
"Haven't I taught you manners? We're disturbing the neighbors. Why do you continue to inconvenience me so?"
My brother folds, erupting in a sob.
I numbly ask, "What time is it?" The phone is out of battery, our charger cord a mess of split rubber.
"What time?"
I address Umma, and the windows still.
This is typical Mom behavior. She has episodes in which she shuts out the world, her silence replaced with feral noises of knuckles cracking, teeth gnashing, boxes ripping after she's ordered an unholy amount of food from Market Kurly. Unclaimed, the produce spoils overnight, belt fish and hair crab, frozen then melting, decaying in skintight packaging.
Sometimes, she erupts from the bathroom. A phone goes flying to greet the wall. I assure her that my ears are open, to which on good days, she responds I'm the tongue in her cheek, the best friend she's never had. But most days, Mom wishes she never had children. Birth rates are dropping worldwide and DINK is growing in popularity. She sees the vision.
At school, we have Moral Education on Tuesdays. Our teacher preaches, "Be kind to your mother. She's the god that meets your eyes." Does he know, it's all I see. The scabs on her lips, the way she keeps clothes on our backs—nice ones, from reputable brands. But my brother would rather chance Grandpa, his money and control, his socially accepted religion that doesn't involve influencers or shamans. Maybe in another life, Mom would've made an excellent Christian. But what's the point of escaping the pan to embrace an induction? If Grandpa had been the deacon of atheism, logicians, and rationalists worldwide, would she have found Jesus?
"Can we go to Gramp's?" Tae-hwan whimpers. "It's quiet now."
"We can't leave the house dirty." Social services may come snooping. They've a penchant for saving children.
As Tae-hwan hovers, I feed a garbage bag. Comb the house, pinching dust mites off the waxy floor. I chuck the spoiled food and leave the packets, for that illusion of a stocked pantry. Blankets are tidied, the mail sorted, and the soggy sheets wrung until my arms ache.
Sweating profusely, I reach for the laundry basket, jumping when it shudders. Something's skulking in its crevice, emaciated but regal.
"Coco?"
She raises a crooked tail.
"Is that where you've been?"
She purrs, her eyes glinting like a chip of apple jade. I stoop over the basket, hoping to catch the glow.
"Sorry, but we've no cat food. No treats either."
Coco hisses, but not in response to my words. Someone's at the door, sliding the cap off, punching numbers into the keypad. The locks begin to whirl.
"It's Mom!" Tae-hwan yells. "She knows the password."
"Don't—" but he's already at the door, tippy-toed, undoing the chains. I'm aghast to see the horrors unveil, but when the motion sensor kicks in, all we see is a slim triangle dipped in shadows. Mom's dress is flat on the sides, hands weighed down with yellow, spunbond bags. Her face is a smudge, the features smoky and barely discernible.
"Gang-aji-deul, what a day. Sorry I've been away. Forgive me?"
She sets down her wares. Their square mouths brim with goodies: an assortment of savory snacks, honey-glazed yakgwa, and ice cream in the shape of fish and corn. My eyes and mouth water.
"Let's watch a movie," Mom suggests. "Two, even."
"Can we get food first?"
Thank you for being back, I daren't say. Don't leave again.
"We've got popcorn and pretzels. Look, your favorite. Garlic butter."
It's actually cheddar, but no matter. I peel an ice cream sandwich for Tae-hwan and stuff pretzels into my mouth. We settle like nothing's amiss, Mom on her topper and Tae-hwan and myself on the mattress. The TV lights up.
The movie, a family flick, is designed to jerk tears from willing eyes. I hate it. How condescending. Stupid, even.
"Just love the idea of a family united, no?" Mom beams.
I nod vigorously, garlic butter in my mouth. Before the credits roll, she unleashes another bag to the floor, creamy turtlenecks and corduroys obtained from some mid-level brand only mothers are obsessed with. The sweater bites into my neck. Tae-hwan is swimming in his, the collar cradling his head like the lips of an ancient monster.
"This is so pretty. Thank you."
I start undressing because Mom is a stickler about washing new clothes, but she stops me.
"We're going for a walk."
"Now?"
She throws open the window. A halo of white brushes past her, melting on my cheeks.
"Isn't that pretty? Like a fresh sheet of paper." She paints a picture of winter wonderland. "Don't you want to be the first one to stomp on it?"
The cold murmurs its way in. The last time she offered a nighttime outing, we were left at Grandpa's doors. Tae-hwan may not remember, but I do. Time passed like sticky syrup in a house filled with rosewood Jesus and the mother-of-pearl chest with albums no one bothered to sniff at. The world shut down and opened again. My heart did the same. Upon her arrival, I'd counted the scuffs on her suitcase, the clogs missing a chunky heel, thinking that there's nothing you can't bounce back from.
"Put on your coat. Scarves too, if you can find one."
I sneak Coco into my sweater like a heated blanket. Tae-hwan dons his corduroys, a smudge of red bean on his lips. Before we leave, I wipe it off.
"Are we really going?"
She smiles tiredly.
Outside, the snow falls thick. Street lamps turn off one by one, as if timed. I detect a rosy glow to the darkness that feels imagined.
Halfway out the compound, Mom flags a taxi using the KakaoTalk app, and then instructs the driver to take us to Bongseon-dong.
"Are we going to Grandpa's?"
Tae-hwan perks up, yelling Gramps, Gramps. Mom keeps her head level.
The taxi bisects the empty streets. Across the threshold, a cityscape sways, its foggy outlines blurring. We ride for a good twenty minutes.
When the taxi passes Munseong High and loops twice up an incline, my stomach clenches. The driver asks if this truly is the drop-off spot, that he can take us closer if need be, but I know better. This is the road to Mt. Jeseok, the very hill that houses Cloud Bridge.
"Can we go see Grandpa?" I plead.
His house has a nice view of Mt. Jeseok. He'll be up. Grandpa never misses morning prayer. I used to sit by the door while he recited psalms, in a room that smelled of seaweed and pencil shavings. His words may be bitter, his rules a little harsh, but affection is divvied equally as long as our hands clap in prayer.
"Not today," she says.
From the base, we scale the wooden steps mounted in dirt. No one else is on the trail. At any other time of day, Mt. Jeseok is a popular hiking spot among locals, standing stout at 166 meters. Even Tae-hwan can make it. Cloud Bridge is known for night viewing, crowning these steps like a jewel on a scepter. Soon enough, we see it looming, as if bursting from the hills themselves. The pier mounts glow with ambient lighting.
"I used to come here with your father," Mom says. "He was afraid to cross, so I walked along the bridge with his Leica. This way, Jae-ho could also enjoy the view. We had a whole scrapbook, of all the seasons. You may have seen them at your grandfather's."
I remember the pictures, stewing in some mother-of-pearl chest. How can something exist if nobody cares to look? Before I can imagine them real, she commands:
"Hold my hand."
I feel the soft down of a paw. Ungues retract into her skin with serpentine ease, but it's been many years since she's held my hand. I support Coco in the nook of my arm. She hums. As a family, the four of us slip and slide past the threshold, to where the lights are brighter and the cables soar the highest.
"Imagine what it was like," she orders.
We look down. A monstrous pit. Mom eyes it like someone possessed.
"He wouldn't take an airplane, so we boated to Jeju Island instead. Three full weeks. A bold move for a newly appointed government official, but he made it work. He always let me choose. Left or right turn? Pork belly or topside beef? Rent or buy? And I chose left, topside, buy. It was a beautiful apartment. But renting would have worked too."
I know the home she speaks of, the one before the villa. We played Hansel and Gretel in an apartment filled with buttery sunlight. Hands, soft and large, held chocolates that looked like pressed roses, pieces of which were broken off like breadcrumbs for me to find. We left smudges, but Mom didn't care. After eating all the petals, I'd jump into Father's embrace.
Her eyes are glassy. She is lost in that apartment, chasing the sun.
"Ever since I was a child, I'd dreamed of moving away. But habits are bred from womb, like motaesin-ang. Be it faith or sensibility, you never stray far from your roots. Did you know, I never applied for government assistance?"
Her nose is turning pink.
"My wedding ring was Cartier, and my starter house mortgage-free. Jae-ho was fine with starting in a rental. Something small but cozy, with a goal to work towards. I was the one who accepted your grandfather's money. I led us back to Gwangju, to this godforsaken bridge."
"Don't say that. It was a bad time for someone born an ox. You said." But she's not listening.
"A rundown apartment isn't so bad. It would have been bearable, together."
I nod and nod, in complete agreement. We can make this work. Her lips are wobbly, and I'm this close to tapping her back, gently guiding her home.
"To be honest, I'm afraid of heights too," Mom confesses. Her breath lingers, dissipates. "But it was possible to be brave on his behalf."
This is how she keeps me, with subtle twists and turns. I burn with loyalty for this woman. I'm flooded with longing for the man we can't let go of. If I can practice what Grandpa preaches, let me pray for her happiness, but with a condition. Let her be happy by my side. Put my eggs in one basket, let them jostle, spoil, crack open like a devious omen, but despite all, wish she'd be by my side, rotten or not, structural defect or not, missing parts and all. To have half of her is better than to have nothing.
"I'm cold."
Tae-hwan breaks the spell. His windbreaker flaps like a useless cape. The bridge is fractioned on both sides, with guardrails and white suspender cables spaced so widely a child could walk through.
"I think Tae-hwan should count for us," Mom prompts. "You can count now, can't you?"
"I can count to a thousand. A thousand gazillion."
"Wonderful."
She turns to him, away from me. We're linked by hands, an Orion's belt mirroring the open sky.
"Will you count for Umma? Just ten would do."
"One, two, three," Tae-hwan launches the countdown, then falters when he sees my face. "—four, five, seven."
A bird explodes into the night. The wind is especially gusty. From this vantage point, it's possible to see the high-rise complex Grandpa resides in, building 603.
"Six," I interject and feel Umma's hand tighten. "You forgot six."
A scream. Her arm flies up, revealing an angry gash where Coco, my sweet paunch, has swiped with all her might.
I rip Tae-hwan from Mom's grip. Buckle down. My back arches like I'm in tug-of-war and this is field day. The game will lead our team to victory. Our mother is cheering on the sidelines with doshiraks of kimbab and chilled shikhae. Let it be summer. Someone videotapes our game, a father figure, sweating bullets behind the ropes as the sun glints off his Ray-Bans. A teacher passes around hamburgers and fat cans of Coke. I taste the bubbles, the chill searing my thundering chest.
The surface of Cloud Bridge is cold and gritty. We writhe on it like fish out of water, chanting jwesonghamnida, jwesonghamnida.
Umma stands before us, side bangs matted on her widow's peak. Her eyes are bathroom walls onto which somebody had scribbled a number, a dirty joke. In permanent marker, so the blemish is there to stay. She steps forward.
I grab a rusty cable. We thread ourselves to the bridge. Up here, the sky softens to charcoal, and we're in the clouds, maybe the stratosphere. Down there, the cable stem elongates like a rice cake rolled thin, and at its base, the Tiger Umma circles, biding, her eyes yellow headlights. She stretches her limbs. Makes a great big leap. Her paw catches, but wouldn't you know it, my limbs loosen, first the legs and then the arms. The torso follows suit. All that remains is a head biting down, the blood flooding my sore gums.
****
In coming years, she makes this moment hers. She goes viral as the infamous Bridge Umma who almost killed her children. I stumble upon the video online, where Mom regales the world with a version of the story, of how she was ripped from death's grip by our brooding cow eyes. Her streams, titled The Shore of Life, trend until they're reported and taken down.
The years bring variations of the same story.
The taxi driver finds us. He is halfway past Yongsan Interchange before scratching the niggle in his heart, the overdressed passengers angling for a morning hike. He rings 119 before driving back, headlights slicing the night. They are still on when the police arrive.
We are taken into a shelter, and then a care center. The grandfather visits us weekly, parking his Hyundai Equus by a building filled with precocious children. When his nose sprouts an NG tube and his mind begins to wander, the church holds night bazaars in his stead, handing out beautifully wrapped gifts and perfectly fried chicken. The booths are rigged with fairy lights, red, blue, and green. The colors bleed into the road like a wet stroke of paint. I wonder, is this what Mom meant? I think I know how the rest of my life would go.
According to Tabula Rasa, we are all but one person, endlessly looping in a wheel of karma. She is me and I her. Whatever love and hate I harbor return to the source like unopened mail, forwarding hope to a future that seems painfully, impossibly linear.
I adorn a stone Buddha with spider lilies. Slather my skin with retinol. Buy ice cream for my brother in the shape of fish and corn. Surely, we'll find peace. If not in this lifetime, in the next one. On days when faith proves lacking, I will nuzzle Coco who'll have grown hoary, still jade-eyed and wise beyond ways, nibbling on my toes when I'm drawn again and again to Mom's videos, of how my nights were long but her days longer. No matter. We will have been estranged by then.
Let it be known that there were moments where I harbored hope, however brief.
In the year of the white mouse, there lived a family of three—a mother, a brother, and a sister. The first blast of January coated every surface with snow. Birds flew on the ground where slush had frozen solid, mirroring the world back to them. Before venturing outside, the siblings slipped into long johns, then long-sleeves, then sweaters, and finally, thin parkas, blood-orange for the brother and faded-green for the sister. The mother stood inspection by the doorway. She approached him first, rolling down the sleeves bunched inside the arms of his coat, first left, and then right, patting his sides to smooth out the kinks. The sister waited, elbows bulky with rolls she deliberately left unsmoothed. But the mother never reached for her coat. Instead, she bent down to kiss the brother's cheeks, first left, and then right, cupping his face, her thumb rolling the surface, giving it a tentative squeeze like she would a soft, fragile diamond. The brother endured these displays of affection with little thought and bounded out the door. The sister waited a while longer, fingering the buttons on her coat. But the crack between the outside world and the door inevitably widened, and Mom gently pushed me out into the cold.
