The moment I opened the front door, the sour smell hit me first. A long streak of vomit had dried across the shoulder of Jiho’s T-shirt. Clutching the fabric, Bomi was crying. When Jiho tried to stand, the baby arched backward. He sank back down against the shoe cabinet.
“How many times did she wake up?”
“I stopped counting after three.”
Jiho shifted the arm supporting Bomi’s bottom. She looked toward me, but her hands stayed clutched in her dad’s clothes. My first thought was that she’d calm down if I held her. I swallowed it and went to the kitchen. I set the cold baby bottle in the sink and mixed fresh formula. I took out a clean bib and brought diapers and wipes over to Jiho as well.
“Sit here. Feed her leaning back.”
When I propped up a cushion for him, Jiho scooted along on his bottom with Bomi in his arms. She pushed the bottle away, then sucked down a few mouthfuls. Her tear-damp lashes were stuck together. While I’d been gone, Jiho had gotten through this struggle alone more than three times. The time I’d spent poring over the contract in the consultation room was sleep that had been taken from here.
While Jiho held the bottle, I hooked up the breast pump. The hardness in my breasts painfully eased.
When Bomi started fussing again, I wiped away the formula that had run beneath her bib. Jiho patted her back without asking anything. The silence was easier to bear, which made me feel even more guilty.
The sleep Night Sleep Exchange had given us had definitely existed. On that night when Bomi didn’t wake up, I’d buried my face in my pillow and slept too. I was grateful. But even from what had already been confirmed, one of my joys and a first smile I hadn’t even chosen were missing. I couldn’t pretend either one had never happened.
When Bomi’s eyes were half-closed, Jiho said,
“Is that someone you only meet at night?”
While I was choosing an answer, Bomi let go of the bottle nipple. Jiho caught it before it fell and put it back in her mouth. I couldn’t say no.
The next day, Bomi clung to my leg all morning. The moment she finally fell asleep and I turned off the lights and went to set down the pot of baby food, she started crying again. Jiho got home from work while I was scraping the stuck rice off the bottom. Before he even put down his bag, he picked up Bomi. She grabbed at his chin.
“Are you going out again tonight?”
“I’m going to try one more time.”
“Someone from the broadcasting station?”
I soaked the porridge stuck to the spoon in water. If I gave him the same answer as yesterday, I could get through today too. But Jiho already had the look of someone who knew that answer wasn’t enough.
“I listen to people’s stories at night. I’m testing whether I can do it.”
“What kind of stories?”
“It’s still hard to explain everything.”
Jiho gave a weak smile. He took his employee ID out of Bomi’s hand and replaced it with a teether.
“If you go out at night, who’s supposed to get through the next day?”
“I’ll manage. I’ll sleep until you leave for work, and I’ll watch her during the day. I’ll make the baby food ahead of time, too.”
Even as I said it, I knew my calculations were wrong. Bomi’s naps never came according to my plans. Jiho couldn’t carry her all night and still leave the house in the morning looking perfectly fine.
“I’ll take care of her this once,” he said. “But if this is something you’re going to keep doing, don’t dodge the question about what it is. I don’t know how far you’ve been going on your own lately, trying to find what you forgot.”
I scrubbed the stuck-on pot harder. I hadn’t been given permission. Jiho was giving up his sleep for me one more time.
When night fell, Bomi wrapped her arms around my neck and wouldn’t let go. At the sound of me taking out my coat, Jiho came out of the bedroom. The baby carrier was already slung over his arm.
“You’re meeting that person again?”
I slowly transferred Bomi into Jiho’s arms. Her fingers followed, clutching a few strands of my hair. Even as I untangled them one by one, I couldn’t say no.
An old telephone sat on the desk in the consultation room. As soon as I sat down, Moon Haejin said briefly,
“I’ll act as your guardian. Don’t try to find the right answer.”
After she went into the inner room, the phone rang. When I picked up the receiver, a child’s crying drowned out the words. The sharp cries pierced my ear. I hadn’t been gone from home long, but the sensation of Bomi arching away from me came rushing back.
“I’m alone. I’ve been holding her the whole time, but she’s crying until her voice is hoarse.”
The woman’s voice broke off. I wanted to ask how long it had been happening and what she had tried before. The questions lined up neatly in my mouth like an interview.
“Who’s holding the baby right now?”
“I am. I told you, I’m alone.”
A door closing sounded in the background. A moment later, the woman said her spouse was asleep. That didn’t fit with her saying she was alone. Instead of pressing into the contradiction, I asked,
“Can you wake him? Just see if he can take the baby for you right now.”
Footsteps receded through the crying. Much later, a low man’s voice joined in. I heard fabric rustling and a short groan as the baby was handed over.
“He took her. My husband’s holding her.”
After that, the crying grew more distant and then stopped. It became so suddenly quiet that I couldn’t take the receiver away from my ear. I didn’t know whether the baby had fallen asleep or been taken to another room. Only the woman’s breathing remained close.
“I think she’s asleep now.”
She whispered it.
“But I don’t remember what I promised.”
I straightened my back. Bomi’s first smile came to mind. More precisely, the place where it should have come to mind was empty. What had I chosen? Had things I hadn’t written down disappeared too? Two questions rose to the tip of my tongue almost at once.
The breathing on the other end grew short again. The woman had only just managed to hand the baby to someone else. If I drew out more of her confession now, it might become a clue for me. I didn’t know whether it would help her.
“You don’t have to talk about that right now,” I said slowly.
“Can you trade off tonight? Just decide whether you can take turns resting with the person holding the baby.”
After a moment, the woman said she could. I told her she could decide for herself whether to talk again next time, then ended the call. Even after the line went dead, the questions I hadn’t asked remained caught in my throat. On the broadcast, I waited for the words that came after the silence. Right now, what mattered first was not taking that silence on as my responsibility.
The inner door opened. Moon Haejin didn’t sit across from me; she stood at the end of the desk.
“Why didn’t you ask what you wanted to ask?”
“Because it wasn’t a question she needed.”
I thought of the signature I’d written on the night I was falling apart most. If someone had pressed me for my memories before asking whether Bomi was safe, I would have answered anything.
“The reason I’m trying to get involved is because of my memory. I won’t dress it up as something noble.”
Moon Haejin lowered her head slightly.
“There’s only one thing I can tell you about the first smile. The choice written in the contract and the gap that’s been confirmed now are different. The first smile is, at least, not within the range of what you chose, Ms. Seoyoon.”
I repeated that sentence to myself once. It didn’t tell me who had taken it or why. There was no promise that I could get it back. The empty space had become clear, but it still wasn’t an answer.
“I have a condition.”
Moon Haejin looked at me.
“I’ll look for my memory through my own records, outside my on-call shifts. I won’t force anything I hear during a consultation to fit my case. I won’t open any records the caller hasn’t given permission to access.”
Making those conditions could slow me down on the road to wherever I wanted to go. Even so, I didn’t want to step over another parent’s broken night.
Moon Haejin only spoke after sliding her pencil to the side of the desk.
“That’s what we’ll do.”
“I’ll try tonight. I’ll decide about the next on-call shift after I talk it over at home. Leaving for the night isn’t something I can decide on my own.”
Moon Haejin pointed to the telephone.
“When it rings, ask first who the child is with right now.”
She retreated into the inner room. That was how my first on-call shift began.
For a while, no calls came. Whenever the pipes groaned beyond the wall, it sounded like Bomi’s first cry upon waking. I pictured Jiho walking around the room with the baby carrier on. I tried to separate the reason I was sitting here from my memory, but I couldn’t.
Just as my shift was about to end, the phone rang.
Someone on the other end was breathing quietly, trying not to make a sound. The thin, steady breathing of a sleeping child mixed in from nearby. After a long while, the man spoke.
“The child is sleeping beside me right now.”
He swallowed his next words, then said in an even lower voice,
“Please find the voice my wife lost.”
I didn’t answer. I listened to the sound he was barely managing to swallow between the child’s breaths.