Sung watched Jungho grow weaker. It was happening right in front of his eyes. Jungho didn’t have the energy to walk much anymore, and sat quietly near his mother like a wooden toy. At home, he lay under the heaviest blankets, not moving unless he was racked by a worrying cough. Then sweat broke out all over his body, and he turned damp and pale like snow. He often wore a serious expression.
One night, Sung heard his mother whispering to his aunt about Jungho’s health.
“Sister, I don’t know what to do anymore.”
In the silence, Sung imagined his aunt shaking her head. “We could take him to the herbalist again,” she said.
“What for? It didn’t work last time and only cost us precious money.” Sung listened to his mother cry softly.
“Let’s at least try to find some abalone at the market tomorrow. If we make him a porridge, it should restore some of hisenergy. Sister, don’t give up. If you give up, the children won’t survive.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Sister. I shouldn’t be crying like this in front of you when you’ve lost two daughters.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” his aunt said, squeezing his mother’s hand. “How can one compare such things? Besides, what can we do? There’s nothing to be done.”
In the cramped room, surrounded by the many limbs and sleeping faces of his cousins and siblings, Sung felt all alone. He understood how his mother would do anything to save Jungho, and how lonely that made her feel. She kept whispering to Jungho to wait until his father came to find them; she kept telling him it would be soon. All they had to do was stay together and alive.
Though Jungho’s pneumonia turned out to be tuberculosis, the boy revived fiercely but briefly for two weeks at the beginning of November and he was up, running through the alleyways with the other boys, wading in the filthy river, even celebrating his eighth birthday with seaweed soup.
Then one night, a little cough led to more coughing, and by morning a barking sound came along with the cough, a hollow echo from his failing lungs. A fever too that wouldn’t break.
Sung’s mother kept vigil next to Jungho’s bed, putting cool cloths on his head. She remembered all the trouble he had caused her—premature birth, lethargic to feed, constant whining, and maybe because she had coddled him, the furious temper that made him shout and stamp his feet even as a mere baby. Yet he was the one who remembered her the most, the one who put the choicest morsels on her plate and beat her back when she was tired. She could still hear him calling, Mother, Mother, I’m here!
She wondered why she had been born, why anybody was—it was bewildering and unknown.
The next morning, Sung woke up before his cousins and walked in the chill air to the train station, his uncle’s A-frame on his back. His uncle would be furious and probably whip Sung when he got back, but it couldn’t be helped. Sung was determined to buy Jungho’s medicines.
He took a shortcut down a narrow alley that eventually led out to Mo-Po, the main boulevard. The streetcars weren’t running yet. Sung had jumped on it once, unable to help himself, only to be chased away by the ticket collector after half a block. But it was still exhilarating. Seoul looked different when it passed by, like a real city he could live in. Nothing like the dirty alley he was walking down, lined with the back gates of houses, a terrible smell coming from the brackish water running out to the street. Suddenly, one of the back gates opened ahead of him and out came a young girl in a Western dress who wouldn’t look him in the eye when he passed.
Sung was lucky. The station was crowded that morning, with more than enough work for everyone with an A-frame and legs. Sung ran about for the UN soldiers who preferred him to the older men. They were mostly reinforcements coming up from Pusan, still in good spirits. A few gave Sung chocolate and packs of Juicy Fruit. Sung also carried the packs of the men going back to Pusan, tired, worn-out, wounded soldiers going to the rear for R&R. Their packs were much lighter. Some of them still smiled at Sung or gave him some treat, but most of them, when they took any notice of him, gave him a resentful, openly disgusted look. It was clear to see what they were thinking.
His cousins found him at lunchtime when they brought him a hot sweet potato for lunch. Sung expected them to be mad at him, but they seemed shy and hesitant instead.
“Uncle’s going to kill me, isn’t he?”
“No,” Jae, the older one, said. “He’s worried about your brother.”
“He’s going to die!” Jong said giddily.
“Shut up!” Jae said. “That is not going to happen.”
“Is he worse?” Sung asked, seized with fear.
Jae looked away. “A little,” he said.
“Look.” Sung held out the money he had made. “I can buy some medicine for Jungho now.”
“You can try,” Jae said. “But he might die anyway, understand?” He held Sung by the arm. “There might not be anything you can do.”
“Hey!” Jong said. “You told me not to say he’s going to die.”
“I said to shut up!” Jae said.
They went with him to the traditional herbalist, an old, virtually toothless man who mixed unknowable dark things with a mortar and pestle, finally dusting it onto a piece of paper he then carefully folded and gave to Sung. The old man told Sung to give it to his
