Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller Page B

shimmered, ghostlike, underneath the surface, I never even tried.
    I did, however, ask my mother what she saw in the water, why she tried to drown herself in the canal. Actually, I think I asked her why she wanted to leave me when she said I was the only thing she loved.
    â€œBeccah,” she told me, touching my hair, “it’s not a matter of leaving you, but of retrieving something that I lost.”
    My mother looked so sad then that I wanted to take back my words, words I said without thinking, just because I felt them. “Mommy,” I said, “I could help you look for it, if you told me what you lost.”
    Back then, I thought I was good at finding lost objects. “Remember?” I told her. “Remember when you lost the jade frog Auntie Reno gave you for good luck? And I found it under the bed, under all those old boxes? Remember the Wishing Bowl money you thought we lost, that I found in Auntie Reno’s trunk?”
    I named the specific things I’d found for her over the years, from ever since I could remember, but I was really asking her to remember me, her daughter, and how much I could help her. I was her finder, and she needed me. I wanted to remind her that she was bound to me.
    Instead of telling me what she was looking for, my mother told the story of Princess Pari. She pulled me down next to her on the couch, partially cradling me as if I were a much younger child. When I tried to ask my questions, her fingers fluttered over my mouth in a gesture so soft and fleeting that even then I was not sure if she’d actually touched me.
    â€œOnce on a time, many, many years ago...,” my mother began as soon as I had wriggled into a comfortable space. With my knees tucked close to my body, I sat with my back nestled into my mother’s bosom. As she spoke, I could feel her words tickle the back of my head. “... A king and queen with no sons had yet another daughter, their seventh. Full of despair, not knowing what else to do to turn away their bad luck, the royal couple offered this girl to the Birth Grandmother spirit.”
    My mother spoke often of the Birth Grandmother, the spirit assigned to protect and nurture the children of the world. Every year on my birthday, my mother would place an offering of sweet rice cake on our shrine, thanking Birth Grandmother for the blessing of my birth. I was taught to pray to her, calling her by name—Induk—if ever I was in trouble or frightened.
    â€œDid you offer me to the Birth Grandmother?” I interrupted my mother.
    My mother tapped me on the head. “Listen,” she said.
    â€œWhen Princess Pari’s parents died without any sons, Saja the Death Messenger carried them to hell. The daughter felt sorry for her parents and dived through the skies, into the earth, and across the deep, dark river that flowed past Kasi Mun, the Thornwood Gate, which is the entrance to hell. At the gate, the princess threw handfuls of barley and rice, she rolled oranges and poured whiskey through the bars, until Saja, greedy for the offerings, opened the gate.
    â€œSaja was so distracted by the feast, the princess was able to slip into hell and, once there, searched for her parents. She swam through schools of human souls trapped in fish bodies until she heard a song she recognized as the song her mother had sung when she was still in the womb. ‘Mama!’ she cried, and caught her parents with strips of long cloth that she tied around her waist. Quickly, before Saja could belch and close the gate, she dragged them back through the gates of hell, through the earth, through the skies, and into the Lotus Paradise, where they were reborn as angels.”
    After the story, I crawled out of her lap and turned to face her. “What was the song?” I asked. “The one that Princess Pari recognized.”
    â€œYou know it.” My mother laughed, and sang: “Pururun mul, Kang muldo mot miduriroda ... ”
    I