Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Lo, ve, Looo, veee, Love, LoveLo,-veLo,-veLo.
Eternity, Eternity, Eternity, Eter,-nity, Eeeter,-niiity.
Now the meanings were gone. Just like the inside of my head, which had been a blank slate from day one.
15
Time passed through the endless cycle of seasons—spring, summer, fall, winter—and back to spring. Mom and Granny bickered, often laughed out loud, then grew quiet when dusk fell. When the sun painted the sky red, Granny took a swig of soju and let out a satisfied Kyahh, and Mom chimed in with her throaty, “So good,” finishing Granny’s sentence.
Mom was popular. She’d had a few more boyfriends even after we’d started living with Granny. Granny said the reason men were after Mom, despite her eccentric personality, was because she looked exactly like Granny herself when she was younger. Mom pouted but conceded, “Yeah, your granny sure was pretty,” although no one could verify that statement. I wasn’t all that curious about her boyfriends. Her dating life followed the same pattern. It always started with men approaching her and ended with her clinging onto them. Granny said all they wanted from Mom was casual when Mom was looking for father material.
Mom was slim. She wore chestnut-colored eyeliner that made her big, dark, round eyes look even bigger. Her straight seaweed-black hair fell down to her waist, and her lips were always painted red like a vampire’s. I sometimes flipped through her old photo albums and found out that she’d looked the same throughout her adolescence until now almost reaching her forties. Her clothes, her hairstyle, even her face all stayed the same. As if she hadn’t aged a bit, save for growing taller inch by inch. She didn’t like being called rotten wench by Granny, so I gave her a new nickname, unrotting lady. But she only sulked, saying she didn’t like that either.
Granny also didn’t seem to age. Her gray hair turned neither blacker nor whiter, and neither her large body nor the amount of alcohol she drank by the bowlful showed signs of decrease as the years went by.
Every winter solstice, we went up to the rooftop, put a camera on the bricks, and took a family photo. Between Mom the Ageless Vampire and Granny the Giant, I was the only one growing and changing.
*
That year. The year when everything happened. It was winter. A few days before the year’s first snowfall, I found something strange on Mom’s face. I thought short strands of her hair were stuck to her face, so I reached out to take them off. But they weren’t her hair. They were wrinkles. I didn’t know when they’d appeared, those deep and long lines. That was the first time I realized that Mom was getting old.
“Mom, you have wrinkles.”
She beamed at me, which made her wrinkles longer. I tried to picture Mom aging but couldn’t. It was hard to believe.
“The only thing left for me now is to grow old,” she said, her smile gone for some reason. She stared blankly into the distance, then slowly closed her eyes. What would’ve gone on in her mind? Was she imagining herself laughing like an old grandma in her golden years?
But she was wrong. It turned out that she wouldn’t have the chance to age.
16
When Granny washed dishes or wiped the floor, she would hum a random tune, adding her own lyrics.
Corn in summer, sweet potatoes in winter,
Yummy, sweet, tasty, and sugary.
Granny used to sell them to passersby at the Express Bus Terminal when she was younger. She would squat somewhere in front of the entrance. The only luxury that young Granny could afford was to roam around the terminal after work. She was especially enchanted by the decorations on Buddha’s Birthday and Christmas. Rows of lotus lanterns hung outside the terminal from late spring to early summer, and Christmas ornaments adorned it in winter. It was both her workplace and her wonderland. She said she’d wanted those sloppy lotus lanterns and fake Christmas trees so badly. So when she opened a tteokbokki stall with her savings from selling sweet potatoes and steamed corn, the first thing she did was buy pretty lotus lanterns and a miniature Christmas tree. Seasons didn’t matter to her. All year round, lotus lanterns and Christmas ornaments hung side by side over her stall.
Even after Granny closed her store and Mom opened the used-book store, one of Granny’s ironclad rules was to always celebrate Buddha’s Birthday and Christmas.
“No wonder Buddha and Jesus were saints. They made sure to avoid overlapping birthdays for us to enjoy both holidays. But if I had to choose one birthday over the other, my favorite is, of course, Christmas Eve!” said Granny, stroking my hair. Christmas Eve was my birthday.