Last Night at the Café

7 | Hyeonmi-cha

THE PITTER-PATTER OF rain filled the kitchen, driving out the warmth she usually associated the space with, and filling it with a cold that chilled her to her bones. Seollal sipped silently at her spicy beef soup, composed of a generous amount of cabbage and sliced mushrooms, bean sprouts and onions. She had dumped half a bowl of rice into the soup, soaking it in so that it resembled some sort of rice porridge. If she had hoped to regain some heat from her meal, then she thought wrong.

Her mother sat across of her, a scarf wrapped around her neck, the ends of the soft fabric clutched around her fingers. Grey smudged the skin under her eyes and she seemed more tired than when Seollal had last seen her.

"Why would she want to meet me? All of a sudden?"

Appa had left to 'let them talk'.

Eomma broke into a gentle smile, her fingers reaching across the table to rest on Seollal's hand. Her skin was cool and dry, but the gesture left Seollal with some warmth.

"She is the person who gave birth to you," she said gently. "She wasn't always good, but now that so many years have passed and she's gone through rehabilitation, she wishes to connect with you again. I know you don't like talking about her, and your appa and I have never spoken about her with you but this time, she is the one who reached out to us."

"I don't know," she muttered listlessly, jabbing her metal spoon into the depths of her soup. She hadn't thought that her first night home after a year would be spoiled with a discussion of the woman who gave birth to her. "I don't really want to see her."

Her tone sounded childish and petulant in her ears, and Seollal hated herself for it. She thought she had long gotten over the events of her childhood, but she could not negate the angry tugging in her heart, where a part of her younger self still questioned and ached and felt lost.

How could she? Will she blame me? Those were the foremost thoughts in her mind when it came to the woman who gave birth to her.

Eomma let out a soft sigh, her smile patient.

"Seollal ah, she's the woman who gave birth to you after all. She has been writing, saying that she wants to see you."

She could not bear to look up from her bowl.

"I don't know. What does she want anyway?'

She barely tasted the soup. In fact, her hands had stilled on either side of her bowl, as a leaden weight settled in her stomach. Eomma and appa never brought up the woman who gave birth to her because there simply was no need. She had been in prison, then undergoing rehabilitation for some years, before disappearing to the murky edges of society and Seollal's mind, where she remained, unheard of and unmentioned simply because she had found a place for herself in the Jeon family where she was clothed and fed and housed and loved.

She didn't know a channel had been left open so that her birth mother's letters could still reach them.

"At least give it some thought?" Eomma reached for her cup of hyeonmi-cha, a brown rice tea with a toasted scent. It was her favourite drink and the beverage most served in the house. "It's been a while. She says she's been working and - "

A scoff left her as she shook her head, dully digging into her broth with less enthusiasm than before.

"Let's hope she's working an honest job this time," she muttered unkindly.

"Jeon Seollal!" The bones of her knuckles were white through her skin, painfully obvious. "You know my health isn't good. I don't want to see you carrying this bitterness in your heart."