XOXO, Miss Minnie - Chapter 56
CHAPTER 56
After his brother left, Taejun stopped going to school altogether. There was nothing to learn anyway, and he found it better to go to the public library and read the books he wanted.
He started taking on all kinds of odd jobs using his brother’s ID. Luckily, he was tall for his age, so he didn’t raise much suspicion. Even if they did suspect, there were plenty of children that young starting to work in that neighborhood.
When he earned money, he would give half to his father. He knew that his father would buy alcohol and some snacks from the apartment’s first-floor convenience store.
He didn’t have a specific goal, but he saved whatever money he could. Most of the cash jobs were manual labor, and Taejun was always hungry. He made sure to eat whatever he could manage, as his brother had instructed.
In the weeks before his death, his father grew grey and thin as a skewer. Even Taejun could tell that something was seriously wrong, with his unusually protruding stomach amidst his emaciated frame.
His father was rarely lucid, and when he ran out of alcohol, his eyes would often roll back in his head and lash out at Taejun. But it wasn’t his already weak fists that hurt.
‘It’s because of you. If you hadn’t gone to that gifted school or whatever it was in the States…she’d still be here…….’
When the alcohol brought a brief moment of clarity, and he remembered what he’d done, he held onto Taejun and cried.
‘Taejun… I’m sorry. What Dad said wasn’t true. It’s all my fault. I’m sorry, Yoojin. I’m sorry, Yoojin, Yoojin…’
The day before he died, his father couldn’t even get out of bed and was vomiting bile along with the alcohol. His eyes were yellow and glazed over, and he seemed to struggle to breathe. Taejun was terrified.
‘Should I call 911?’
As he turned to leave the room to borrow the phone from the old lady next door, his father’s hoarse voice stopped him.
‘You… it’s because of you. You shouldn’t have been born, you damn prodigy. What use is a prodigy that eats up its own mother? Ack!’
Taejun breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Thank goodness…! Looks like he’s feeling better now that he has the strength to speak. Must be because the alcohol has worn off.’
Taejun helped him up, propped him back against the pillows, and put the bottle in his hand. A pungent smell emanated from his father. It was hard to think of it as the smell of a living person. But Taejun was used to it. Having him there, even like this, was better than not having him at all.
As he quietly closed the door and turned to leave, his father called out to him once more.
‘Taejun.’
It had been a long time since his father had properly called his name.
Taejun turned his head, holding onto the doorknob, and his father held his unfocused gaze for a moment before shaking his head as if it was too much to bear.
‘I’m sorry.’
His father closed his eyes, a tear rolling from the corner of his wrinkled eye. Taejun’s heart rattled. Watching his father close his eyes, trembling and bringing the bottle of alcohol to his lips, Taejun breathed a sigh of relief and quietly closed the door.
That was the last moment Taejun saw his father alive.
The next morning, before heading out to work, Taejun cautiously opened his father’s door. When he saw his father reclining on the bed with his head drooping in the same position he had been sitting in yesterday, he assumed he was sleeping, so he closed the door and left the house.
When Taejun returned from work and opened the door, a horrific smell, overpowering the strong Indian curry scent from the neighbor’s, hit him, choking his breath.
His father was still reclining on the bed with his head drooped in the same position as in the morning.
As fear spread from his spine to his limbs and his heart clenched, his entire body trembled.
‘……Dad.’
He called out to his father in a small voice. The only sounds that could be heard were the thick curses and screams from the upstairs neighbors, and the gangster rap music flowing from the car speakers passing by the building.
His steps toward his father felt like dragging giant boulders. Taejun slid his hand across his father’s stone-cold forehead, trying to lift his head from its uncomfortable position.
But his head didn’t move as if it had frozen in that position. Taejun then slid his trembling fingers under his father’s nose to check if he was breathing.
He held his fingers there for a while, wondering if he was too shaky to feel properly because he felt nothing.
Strength leaving his legs, Taejun collapsed onto the bed. As the springs sank, the father slumped forward onto Taejun, his cold, rigid body resting against Taejun’s back and Taejun sat there, dazed.
After much time passed, Taejun leaned his father’s body back onto the bed. Then he left the room and knocked on the neighbor’s door. There was no answer for a long time.
[WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT!!]
An angry elderly woman’s hoarse voice sounded through the double-chained gap in the door. When she realized it was Taejun standing outside the door, her voice softened slightly and she asked bluntly.
[Do you know what time it is?]
[I’m sorry, Miss Martha, but can I borrow your phone? I need to call my brother, my dad’s…….]
Taejun, pale as a sheet, lowered his head and swallowed hard.
[I think he’s dead.]
The wrinkled, swarthy-skinned old woman rolled her eyes and let out a heavy sigh.
[I figured as much… Come on in.]
Before leaving for college, Taejun’s brother stopped by the old lady next door with a pack of cigarettes and a box of cookies. He wanted to ask her to let him talk to Taejun on her phone once a month.
So Taejun had been inside her house a few times. The one-room studio apartment, crammed with all sorts of junk, looked like an artifact from the last century. Everything was old and worn, with layers of grime.
The blunt green landline phone was grimy, with the paint peeling off its handle. The once curly cord now hung limp, frayed, and tangled in places. Holding the heavy receiver to his ear, Taejun called his brother on the mobile phone he had recently activated. The crackling, distorted dial tone barely sounded twice before his brother answered.
- Hello, Miss Martha?
“Hyung!”
- Taejun! What’s wrong?!
Sensing something was off from Taejun calling him first, his brother’s voice sounded urgent.
“Dad’s not breathing. He’s stiff. And he smells weird. Hyung, come quickly.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.
- …… Okay, I’m leaving now. I’ll take the bus, I’ll be there tomorrow morning, no later than twelve.
“Okay.”
- Taejun, let me talk to Miss Martha.
When Taejun handed the phone over, the old woman erupted in anger after listening for a moment.
Her gruff voice sounded like a big dog growling.
[I’m sorry, but lending you a phone for a cigarette and a cookie is the limit of kindness I can extend to you boys. Do you think I’m gonna let a grown man just hang around my place all night?]
Without waiting for a response, the old woman slammed the receiver down.
In this crime-ridden, drug-infested slum, it was common sense not to trust anyone. As Taejun quietly stood up, the old woman had a somewhat sheepish look on her face.
[I used the phone well. Thank you.]
As he left with a farewell, the old woman made an unapologetic excuse.
[Sorry. Life is just one misery after another, you know? You’ll have to get used to it, can’t change your fate.]
The clinking of chains being fastened behind Taejun echoed loudly.
Taejun sat at the kitchen table, staring at the closed door to his father’s room, keeping vigil through the night. He felt terrified, sorrowful, and sometimes even felt like screaming.
Until his brother arrived the next afternoon, Taejun desperately repeated every math formula he knew in his head. There was a constant rumbling in his stomach, and it felt like he’d vomit if he took even a sip of water.
The moment he saw the brother’s breathless, panting face racing up the stairs, the 13-year-old Taejun scrunched up his face and clung to him, wailing loudly.
***
Lost in a distant past, Taejun’s eyes shifted from his hands to the gentle warmth touching them. Thin, white fingers covered the back of his hand.
Following those fingers up, drops of water fell from her chin. Tracing the moist cheek, he found large, brimming eyes, the eyebrows matted together. Every time the eyes blinked, transparent, glistening tears rolled down the cheek.
Watching her for a moment, Taejun’s chest tightened. He wrapped both hands around Minhee’s face, gently wiping away the tears with his thumbs.
“That was the last time I cried.”
Minhee let out a shaky breath as if trying to hold back the tears. Her quivering lips then parted, and her distorted face buried itself in Taejun’s chest.
‘Why did I spill out the painful details of my father’s last moments to this young woman, as if deliriously rambling? I’ve never even told my brother.’
After a moment of stiffness, Taejun first cautiously, then with more strength, embraced Minhee’s waist. She sobbed as she stroked his broad back with her hands, comforting him.
“Sob… How did you endure all that alone at such a young age? Just hearing this makes my heart ache… But the loss of your mother, and what happened to your father – none of that was your fault! You know that, right?”
Taejun slowly nodded.
‘Is this what human warmth is like?’
He pulled Minhee closer and hugged her as tightly as he could. The warmth, like a damp breeze, melted his glacially frozen exterior and gently moistened his desert-like, parched heart.
It was a painful memory, one he remembered so vividly that he couldn’t quite put it out of his mind. It took 20 years to face them head-on, to drag out and burn the twisted monster that had been eating away at him.
‘My father killed himself.’