창작과 비평

"The things that man was saying keep bothering me. We gave up hope long ago because we were sure we were given the right body. You all shouldn't give up, though. Do what you can to find out who that child was."
The woman went straight to her daughter's room. Things like her pillow, quilt, clothes, kindergarten notebook and sketchbook were all just as they had been a year ago. She opened the notebook and flipped through the pages. She turned all the pages until she got to the end. She had always been too busy to sit with her daughter and teach her penmanship or read her a storybook. The handwriting was large and unsteady and went over the lines. I am six years old. I do not have a younger brother or sister to play with. I do not have an older sister either. Daddy watches television and mommy does the computer. I am not supposed to make a fuss. I am supposed to sit quiet. There were many spelling mistakes.
The woman put her nose to her daughter's pillow and inhaled a deep breath. She could almost smell her daughter's scent. With her hand she felt where her daughter had drooled on the pillow in her sleep. She could hear her husband noisily washing his face from through the wall.
It had been a year now but without fail she still woke at six in the morning. Without as much as washing her face she would jump up, go the refrigerator, pull out some bread, toast it along with a fried egg. It would take calling her daughter's name for her to remember she no longer had a child to wake in the morning.
It was only after the fire that she stopped working. There was no longer any need for the both of them to earn incomes. She would walk around all day instead of working. Sometimes when she got a hold of herself she would be standing in a dead end alley in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Having no idea how she got there she would wander around looking for a way back. Occasionally she would walk the three blocks to where the Morning Star Kindergarten was. Morning Star Kindergarten was closed now. Next to the stairs there was a sign that read 'For Rent.' Colorful animal drawings were pealing off of the windows. It was the middle of summer but they were shut tight. The woman would have a struggle getting herself back home again, where she would munch on the hardened toast and greasy fried egg waiting for her at the table.
There on the pillow she found a strand of hair. It was thin and short and a little curly and positively her daughter's. Her husband had come out of the shower and seemed to be standing outside the door. The doorknob moved slightly but then he walked away. Eventually she heard him quietly open and close the door to the small room near the entryway. They had been living out of separate rooms since the fire. The woman took the strand of hair dangling between her thumb and forefinger and carefully stuck it to a piece of transparent tape. The strip of tape already held fingernail clippings and other strands of hair that she had found in the room.

The woman hurried to where she and Gyeonghui's mother had agreed. She had said she finally got a hold of Miss Kim's phone number. Miss Kim was the teacher in Forsythia Class. They were supposed to meet in an underground coffee shop about an hour by bus from their neighborhood. Some of the mothers were already sitting at a table off to the side.
Gyeonghui's mother informed them that Miss Kim had been working for about a month at the office of the apartment complex across the street from the coffee shop. She telephoned several times before Miss Kim finally appeared. She sat on the edge of her chair and stared at a spot on the ground. One of the mothers blurted right out.