I placed my index finger beneath Bomi’s nose.
I couldn’t feel anything.
I moved my finger a little closer. Careful not to block her nostrils, I waited for the warmth of her breath. A faint heat brushed my fingertip. Only then did I see Bomi’s chest rising and falling. Her tiny belly lifted and lowered beneath her thin pajamas.
Holding my breath, I counted the movement three more times.
The clock beside the bed read 3:17 a.m. Bomi had fallen asleep at 2:21 and was still sleeping well past the time she usually woke up.
Bomi usually opened her eyes not long after falling asleep. Her heels would tap the mattress twice, her lips would pout, and then she’d burst into tears. It took forever to hold her and get her back to sleep. If she woke up while I was putting her down, I had to start all over again. Even when I managed to put her down without waking her, it never lasted long.
But today, her heels hadn’t tapped the mattress. Her lips hadn’t pouted. There had been no crying.
The sound of rain came from the white-noise machine. It was the same sound I heard every day, but the room was too quiet. I could hear the refrigerator motor stopping, Jiho turning over in our bed and letting out a long breath, even the dry crack of his joints when he straightened his knees.
I placed my palm on Bomi’s belly. It was warm. When I lifted my hand, her eyelids trembled slightly. I froze.
Bomi didn’t wake up.
I should have felt relieved. She was finally sleeping. It was the moment I’d been waiting months for. To take a shower, eat a hot meal, sleep for three hours straight. Just one of those things would have made me feel alive again.
But now that Bomi was asleep, I couldn’t lie down.
I took my hand off the crib rail. I stepped back and checked her chest again. The rise and fall was steady.
I left the bedroom door open the width of my palm and went out to the living room.
Three baby bottles stood in the sink. Formula residue had dried white inside one of them. When I picked up the bottle brush, the inside of my wrist pulled painfully. I turned the water on as low as it would go. Even while I scrubbed the bottle nipple with the little brush, my ears stayed turned toward the bedroom.
I couldn’t hear any crying.
I turned off the water.
Still nothing.
As I listened to the rain coming from the bedroom, I tried to remember when I’d turned on the white-noise machine. I knew it had been before two. I’d fed Bomi formula, patted her back, and walked back and forth between the living room and bedroom. I knew the order of things, but the time between them was hazy.
The phone on the couch gave a short buzz.
`Revisit a memory from the past.`
When I tapped the notification, an old video appeared in the photo app. Bomi in the preview was smaller than she was now. Her cheeks were less chubby, and her newborn hair lay thinly against her forehead. It was a short untitled video. It had been taken when Bomi was a little past her hundred-day milestone.
I sat on the couch, found the earbuds wedged between the cushions, put them in, and pressed play.
Bomi looked up at the swaying mobile. Someone clicked their tongue—click, click. Bomi took her eyes off the mobile and looked at me, just outside the frame. The corners of her mouth lifted. Soon her mouth opened, and she made a bright sound halfway between a cough and a laugh.
The camera shook.
“Jiho, did you see that?”
It was my voice.
I was crying in the video. The screen was covered by a palm. When it brightened again, my face filled the screen. The arm I’d extended toward the camera was shaking. My hair was stuck to my forehead, and the skin beneath my eyes was sunken. But I was smiling so broadly all my teeth showed. I kept smiling even as I wiped away my tears and runny nose with the back of my hand.
“Bomi smiled. She smiled at me.”
Nothing came back to me.
I replayed the video from the beginning. Then I played it once more, raising the volume. Jiho’s laughter in the background, the mobile’s motor turning, my voice calling Bomi’s name—all of it was clear.
The video had been filmed in our living room. The gray sofa, the mobile, and the nursing shirt I wore every day were all visible. But I couldn’t recall the light from that day, the sound of Bomi’s laughter, or the feeling of my heart swelling with emotion.
It felt like I was watching a video someone else had sent me.
I was about to put down my phone when I checked the date again. I opened the baby journal app and found the same date. There was a sentence I had written myself.
`Today Bomi smiled at me for the first time. I’ll never forget this for as long as I live.`
My fingertips turned cold.
I had forgotten something I’d written I would never forget.
There might be other records I didn’t remember. When I opened the work folder on the home screen, the recording app I’d used at the broadcasting station was right at the front. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to delete it even after going on parental leave. The last file had been created at 1:48 that morning.
The filename was nothing but an automatically assigned number.
I had no memory of making the recording.
I pressed play.
At first, the sound of fabric brushing against something mixed with the sound of Bomi crying nearby. It wasn’t the long, continuous crying I was used to. It came in short bursts. A door opened, and the wheels of a stroller crossed the threshold. After the stroller stopped, I heard a chair scrape nearby.
I listened, holding my breath.
A low mechanical hum played underneath it all. It sounded like the sound of an old cassette tape turning. Something like a glass touched the tabletop. A strange woman’s voice came through very softly, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Then my voice came on.
“If Bomi can just sleep…”
A long silence.
“I get to choose, right?”
Sweat trickled down my back. I dragged the playback bar back and listened again. The pronunciation and breathing were mine. Even the way my throat caught at the end of the question was the same.
Then came the sound of pages turning. The woman said something. I couldn’t hear it through the static. I didn’t answer.
The sound cut off at one minute and twelve seconds. The playback bar kept moving, but the waveform lay flat.
I took out my earbuds and tried to stand, but my legs gave out. I grabbed the edge of the dining table. My grip tightened until the skin beneath my fingernails turned white.
I looked toward the bedroom.
Bomi still wasn’t crying.
Then the bedroom door, which I’d left open the width of my palm, opened a little farther. Jiho came out, one eye squinted shut. He was wearing a stretched-out T-shirt and pajama pants. He glanced toward the crib once from the threshold, then looked at the phone in my hand.
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Bomi’s still sleeping.”
Jiho looked up at the wall clock. A faint smile spread across his not-quite-awake face.
“She really is.”
“It’s been over an hour.”
“That’s great.”
I couldn’t answer because he wasn’t wrong.
I didn’t have the courage to play him the recording first. I wanted to find out whether Jiho remembered that day. I closed the recording app and brought up the video of Bomi’s first smile. I lowered the volume and held out the phone. Jiho leaned against the arm of the couch and watched. Bomi’s laughter trickled softly from the phone. He pressed his lips together as he watched the screen, looking like he was trying not to smile.
“What happened that day?”
He looked at me.
“What?”
“Before Bomi smiled. Did we go somewhere?”
“No. We were home all day.”
“Who took this?”
The sleepiness left Jiho’s eyes.
“I did. Bomi was lying under the mobile.”
I pointed to the moment when the screen was covered by a palm.
“But I’m holding it from here on.”
“I was filming at first. You asked me to hand it over. You were afraid Bomi might smile again.”
“Was I the one making that clicking sound?”
“Yeah. Every time you clicked your tongue, Bomi smiled.”
Jiho clicked his tongue—click, click. It sounded exactly like it had in the video.
I tried to imitate him, but I couldn’t even figure out where to place my tongue. It was a sound I must have repeated dozens of times to make Bomi laugh.
“Seoyoon.”
Jiho grabbed my wrist. Only then did I realize it wasn’t the phone shaking. It was my hand.
“I don’t remember this.”
“You mean it’s your first time seeing the video?”
“No. I mean that day.”
The smile disappeared from Jiho’s face. He didn’t tell me it was okay. He looked back and forth between my face and the screen.
I asked one question after another. What day of the week it had been. What happened before the video was taken. Why I had cried. Jiho paused briefly each time he answered, like someone checking to make sure he didn’t get it wrong.
“It was Saturday. Bomi had gotten her shots the day before, so neither of us had slept much.”
I remembered the yellow onesie in the video. The formula stain around the neck had been hard to wash out. I remembered Bomi running a fever after her shots and how many times I’d taken her temperature again.
Only the moment Bomi smiled that day was missing.
“Did I keep crying after that?”
Jiho’s hand slowly slipped from my wrist.
Bomi whimpered briefly in the bedroom. We both turned our heads at the same time. The crying didn’t continue.
“You cried more than Bomi did that day.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it without a word.