Wet footprints—mine and Jiho’s—and Bomi’s small, slippery tracks overlapped across the bathroom floor.
Jiho wiped away the water with a towel, one knee raised. Bomi stood pressed against my thigh, wearing nothing but a diaper. Drops of water fell from the ends of her wet hair onto the diaper waistband.
“Give me your arms.”
When I opened my sleeves, Bomi twisted around. She reached both arms toward Jiho, then her feet slipped. I caught her under the arms, and Jiho dropped the towel and picked her up. His right wrist didn’t straighten right away.
“Your wrist again?”
“I held her a lot yesterday.”
Jiho said it like it was nothing and shifted Bomi to his left arm. His body had gone to work after sleeping less than two hours following his last on-call shift. Bomi pressed her cheek to his shoulder and gripped the back of his neck with her damp hand.
I picked up the towels from the floor first and put them in the laundry hamper.
“I’ll finish her bath and feed her today. I’m leaving at seven and I’ll be back before nine-thirty.”
“What if you’re late?”
“I’ll cut it off so I won’t be late. When I get back, I’ll be the one to handle her first wake-up.”
Jiho put one of Bomi’s feet into her pajama pants. When she bent her knee and resisted, he waited instead of forcing her ankle with his stiff wrist. Once Bomi relaxed, he put in her other leg.
“Have you scheduled your next on-call shift?”
“Not yet. I want to see how this job goes a little longer—”
I almost told him that his voice and the contract said different things, but stopped myself.
“Let’s decide after we look at your schedule and how much daytime sleep I can get. If neither of us can manage it, I won’t take it.”
Jiho pulled down the pajamas that had ridden up over Bomi’s stomach.
“Going today and continuing with the next job are two different things.”
“Yeah. I’ll treat them differently.”
Bomi wriggled out of Jiho’s arms and grabbed my leg. While I fed her formula, Jiho wiped up the last of the water in the bathroom.
Once I put on my coat, Bomi wouldn’t get down from my arms. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her cheek against me. The sweet smell of formula rose from her bib.
Jiho started to take her from me, then looked at me.
“You said the mother from that house told you not to ask her to try to remember.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re sticking to that condition, right?”
Bomi’s fingers caught on my coat zipper. I removed them one by one and moved them onto Jiho’s shoulder.
“I won’t make her.”
Bomi watched me until I closed the front door.
Small socks were scattered around Minjeong’s house. One was beneath the shoe cabinet, and the other lay at the edge of the living room mat. Even after opening the door for us, Doyoon looked back inside first.
“She’s doing a little better now. She only took a short nap earlier.”
The skin beneath his eyes was dark and hollow. One of his shirt buttons was fastened crookedly. There was a cup of cold coffee on the living room table, with a few grains of formula powder floating on the surface.
Uju was sitting with Minjeong in the nursing chair by the window. The fabric on one armrest had been pressed flat on only one side. When the child saw me, a stranger, Uju tried to climb down from Minjeong’s lap, then burrowed back into her chest.
Minjeong spoke first.
“Please do what we talked about yesterday. Don’t ask me to guess.”
“Okay. I’ll keep the questions to a minimum. And I’ll stop right away if it becomes uncomfortable.”
Doyoon picked up the phone from the table.
“It’ll be faster if we start with the video. Her face is clearer than what we heard last night, too—”
“Wait.”
He stopped at Minjeong’s word. The light from the screen went out between his fingers.
I sat on the floor a short distance from the nursing chair. The corner of the mat had been stepped on so many times that it had worn gray.
“Can I just act like it’s a normal evening?”
Minjeong studied me while supporting Uju’s back.
“Just watching is okay?”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t realized how conspicuous it could be not to ask questions.
Uju tugged at the collar of Minjeong’s T-shirt. Minjeong stood from the chair with the child in her arms. She moved slowly as she pushed her hips back once and straightened her lower back. Doyoon held out a hand, but Minjeong shook her head.
“Some water.”
When Doyoon started toward the sink, Minjeong was already walking toward the kitchen with Uju in her arms. Supporting the child with one arm, she picked up the water bottle beside the sink. She didn’t drink from it, but brought it to Uju’s lips first. When the child turned away, she set the bottle down and returned to the living room.
Minjeong walked along the edge of the mat. She changed direction in front of the sofa, went around the back of the nursing chair, and walked until she could see the sink again. Uju’s legs thumped against Minjeong’s thigh with every step. Doyoon started to follow her, then stopped beside the table.
“She walks around like that normally, too.”
Uju fussed and arched backward. Minjeong lifted the child a little higher, letting her bury her face in her shoulder. She changed direction again at the worn corner of the mat.
Her palm tapped Uju’s back three times.
Tap, tap, tap.
After a short pause, it touched twice more.
Tap, tap.
Doyoon opened his mouth.
“That.”
Minjeong stopped walking. Uju lifted her head again.
“What about it?”
Doyoon didn’t answer right away. His jaw tightened.
“It’s the same as what happens in the video.”
Minjeong’s hand remained on Uju’s back.
“So you’re saying I remember something?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Here we go again.”
Uju looked back and forth between them, then burst into tears. Minjeong soothed the child and started walking again. This time, she didn’t pat her back.
Doyoon rubbed his temple.
“I’m scared too. Uju woke up four times after you fell asleep last night. When I’m holding her, that’s all I can think about. What’s going to disappear next?”
Minjeong stopped in front of the nursing chair. Without putting the child down, she said,
“If you keep telling me to remember, does that make something that isn’t there suddenly appear?”
Doyoon lowered his head. He reached to move the coffee cup, then only straightened its handle.
I wanted to give a name to the beat from a moment ago. It felt like it would become clear if I had them do it a few more times. But Uju was crying, and Minjeong’s back was more hunched than it had been when I saw her at the door.
“I’ll only watch the video when you want to, Minjeong.”
Minjeong made one more circuit around the mat before sitting in the chair. Uju leaned against her chest and caught her breath.
“I know the song’s title.”
She smoothed the child’s hair back.
“I know her mother used to sing it often, and I know the lyrics. I remember the house I lived in as a child, too.”
“But I don’t have her voice. I don’t know whether it was high or low. If you tell me my mom touched my back, I guess she did, but I don’t know whether it was warm.”
Uju put the collar of Minjeong’s shirt in her mouth. Minjeong pulled out the damp fabric and wiped the child’s chin.
“Should we watch the video?”
This time, she asked first.
Doyoon didn’t play it right away. Only after Minjeong gave a single nod did he slide the phone in front of her.
The video began in an old living room. A young Minjeong sat leaning against the bottom of a sofa. Behind her, Minjeong’s mother was helping her into a light-green cardigan.
“This was the day I came home from the postpartum care center,”
Minjeong said.
“I recognize that cardigan, too. Mom bought it at the market.”
The mother in the video said something. Minjeong didn’t take her eyes off the screen. Uju also looked toward the source of the faint voice.
“Back then, Mom told me to eat first when I got home. I remember that, too.”
“Her voice?”
Doyoon closed his lips after asking.
After a long while, Minjeong shook her head.
“She sounds like a stranger.”
In the video, Minjeong leaned forward. Her mother patted her back three times. After a brief pause, she patted it twice more.
Doyoon’s knee struck the underside of the table. A dull thud sounded. Minjeong didn’t replay the video.
“Nothing comes back.”
Uju’s cheek was pressed against Minjeong’s shoulder. Minjeong turned the child’s face to the side so she could breathe comfortably.
Doyoon paused the video.
“I’ll get the contract.”
He braced himself against the edge of the table as he stood. After swaying for a moment, he reached toward Uju, but Minjeong pointed toward the bedroom with her chin while still holding the child.
“It’s in the drawer.”
Doyoon brought back a sheet of paper that had been folded so many times its edges had turned white.
Just as he was about to place it on the table, Uju bent forward and reached for it. Minjeong pulled the child back, and I pressed down on the edge before the paper could crumple.
Doyoon began to say that there was no lullaby written on it. I said I wanted to look at the paper first. On the folded outer side, only the two words “Travel” were visible.
Minjeong stared at the crease and said,
“I did go traveling. Alone, to Jejudo. It was spring, but the wind was so strong I couldn’t even go into the sea that morning.”
“You wrote this?”
Doyoon asked.
“I remember the trip, but I don’t know what I wrote on this paper.”
When Uju’s hand came near again, I pulled the paper toward my chest and unfolded the last crease.
One line was printed in the selection field.
The morning of a solo trip taken before childbirth