Years and Years

After the Chuseok holiday, before the ground freezes. 

So her mother had said numerous times, and now the time had come. It was the second week of November. At six o’clock in the morning, Han Sejin got in her car and sped along the mostly empty Olympic Highway and arrived at Yi Sunil’s apartment. She pulled up to the shuttered garage and turned off the engine. Her seat chilled almost immediately. The day was bitter cold. It would get a little warmer when the sun rose fully into the sky, but they were heading toward the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), where the temperature, even at midday, was lower than during nights in the city. It was the same every year. 

Sejin peered down at the cracked, uneven surface of the parking lot and retied her hair. She went up to the fourth floor. Her mother was waiting, everything already packed. Containers of mung bean pancakes, stuffed chili peppers, and stir-fried beef were stacked inside a paper shopping bag, along with some apples and pears, and a bottle of liquor. Next to the bag sat a smaller backpack. Sunil had said she wanted to use plates this time. Not Styrofoam or aluminum foil trays, but real plates, since this visit was to be their last. As soon as Sejin picked up the backpack, there was a clatter, as it sagged under the weight of the dishes. 

They’re going to break. You don’t care? 

Why would they break? They won’t, as long as you’re careful, Sunil said, and then added, I’m planning on bringing them back. 

Sejin said no more and carried the bags down the stairs. 

*

She loaded the bags in the trunk and spread out a blanket in the backseat. She started the car and turned on the heat. When her mother finally appeared from the entrance of the mid-rise, Sejin was crouched in front of the car, examining the ground. Two rusted screws, dull and as fat as a thumb, protruded from the surface; they were all that remained of the parking barrier. Her brother-in-law had installed it to prevent people from parking illegally in their lot, but it must have been a hassle for him and the tenants to get in and out, because it was removed one day, leaving behind these two screws anchored deep into the ground. They weren’t too sharp, but sharp enough to puncture a tire if a car drove over them at a certain angle. On her last visit, Sejin had mentioned they could be dangerous, and her mother had said she’d relay the message. 

They’re still here, Sejin said, standing up. 

Sunil frowned, shaking her head. 

Did that mean she’d told her son-in-law, but he’d done nothing? Or that she hadn’t mentioned it yet, because she hadn’t found the right time to bring it up? Sejin didn’t prod any further and helped her mother into the backseat, taking the duralumin cane from her and stowing it in the trunk. She then removed Sunil’s right shoe, helping her prop her leg onto the center console and covering her swollen knee with a blanket. Sunil was wearing a wool cap with a small brim, a pair of thick quilted trousers, a red-and-brown cardigan in a dizzying pattern, and a skinny knitted scarf wrapped around her neck. 

You won’t be cold dressed like that? 

Sunil said she had on many layers underneath and patted her belly. She’d also packed hiking boots, which she’d found stored neatly in a box. They belonged to Sejin’s older sister, Yeongjin, who hadn’t touched them after wearing them once. Though they were a little big for Sunil, as long as she put on an extra pair of socks before going up the mountain, they should fit just fine. At last, the mother and daughter left. 

*

They headed northeast. If they traveled 100 kilometers an hour, they would arrive at their destination in two and a half hours. Grandfather’s grave was in Jigyeong-ri village, in the town of Galmal of Cheorwon County, Gangwon Province. Both Sejin and her mother called him Grandfather, but he was actually her mother’s grandfather, which made him Sejin’s great-grandfather. He was buried deep in the mountain where a frontline military unit was stationed; the graves of other Jigyeong-ri residents lay scattered over the mountain as well. They needed to pass through the military base in order to access the graves. And so, every year around Chuseok, villagers gathered in front of the base, carrying sickles and bundles of food. After leaving their IDs at the checkpoint, they hiked up the mountain to hold memorial ceremonies in honor of their ancestors, each family escorted by one or two armed soldiers. From the mid-eighties, Sunil visited her grandfather’s grave every year without fail, but once Sejin got her driver’s license and a car of her own, Sunil went with her daughter. When Chuseok drew near, Sunil would give an old neighbor from the village a call and ask when everyone was planning to head up the mountain. Then she’d call Sejin to let her know what had been decided for that year’s visit. 

Hey, let’s have some gotgam. 

Sunil pulled off the end and tore the dried persimmon in two. She held it out toward Sejin, who accepted it without taking her eyes off the road. The car continued to glide forward. The sun was rising, and to their right the mountain fog crept down toward the rice paddies spread below. Sejin said they weren’t going to be late after all, since there was no traffic on the roads, but Sunil was worried that the workers had headed up the mountain already, and said they should have set out earlier. 

We need to make the last offering before they start digging. 

Sunil was born in Galgol, north of Jigyeong-ri, but after she lost her parents, she went to live with her grandfather in Jigyeong-ri. Some of her relatives had disappeared without a trace in the border clashes that took place along the 38th parallel during the Korean War, and her grandfather, her only remaining next of kin, took the four-year-old Sunil in, raising her and getting her to run errands for him. When she was fourteen, she was sent to live with a distant relative in Gimpo, and there she helped out at a market until she married Han Jungeon, in a match arranged by one of the merchants. Sunil liked to tell Sejin how she’d never in her wildest dreams expected her grandfather to make the long, inconvenient journey to see her get married, but he’d come after all, dressed in his worn traditional coat. He’d sat in the wedding hall for a bit, eaten some noodles, and then left.

Why go through all that trouble every year?

Sejin’s sister and father couldn’t understand why Sunil went to such lengths to visit her grandfather’s grave. How could they possibly know about the dried-up burrows or the shrubs draped occasionally with snakes and how, in just a year, they would become overgrown with weeds—weeds as tall as a person that Sejin and her mother would have to hack at them with a sickle to pass through? Or about the moss and the trees twisted from lack of sunlight, the burial mound crushed and trampled by wild boars, the chestnut trees surrounding the grave, or the silence of pine trees? Sejin alone knew the reason why her mother went up the mountain every year, cutting a path through the forest. It was her home. For her, that grave was the same as her childhood home.

Grandfather, I’m a granny now. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come next year.

For the past few years, this is what Sunil has been saying at the graveside, but this visit was truly her last. She was seventy-one years old and planned to have knee replacement surgeries in both knees next year. Once a child of the mountains, she’d been surefooted on steep terrain, harvesting fiddleheads and young shoots off angelica trees, but now she needed a cane even on flat land, and she walked slowly, grimacing from the pain. She’d held out for several years, saying each time it was her last, but she couldn’t manage the wild rugged terrain anymore and had finally accepted the truth earlier this year. After worrying about Grandfather’s resting place that would lie deserted deep in the mountains, she resolved to dig up his remains and get rid of the grave altogether. After all, no one would visit him once she was gone.