The Day Sori Brought the Knife
There were times when my father became so intoxicated that he couldn't walk straight or even stand still. His speech slurred, each word dragging out with an R sound. In those moments, he couldn't strike Mom, but he could still inflict harm just as cruel. Just a different kind.
“Yuri, get up. I need help,” Mom whispered in the middle of the night, shaking my shoulder.”
I groaned, rubbing my eyes, squinting at the harsh glow of the fluorescent light on the ceiling. “What is it?” But deep down, I knew—this was about my father.
“Your appa puked everywhere,” she said, and walked out of my room as I sat up.
When I followed her to her room—by this time, I wasn't even sleepy anymore but alert, since this was an emergency—I found my father sprawled on the floor, snoring, oblivious to his head lying at the edge of a whitish, orange-ish puddle of his own vomit. A chunky streak ran from the corner of his mouth, still dripping to the floor beside his head.
“We need to clean it up,” Mom said, her eyebrows furrowed.
But I was already sickened. I could feel some kind of pressure—or wave?—coming up through my throat. Even so, I agreed with Mom: this puddle had to be cleaned right away.
Mom grabbed a rag and wiped up the mess, then shook it off in the toilet. I did the same. When most of it was gone, we picked up another clean rag, wet it, and wiped the floor around his head, under his head. I thought I was going to puke. She looked like she was going to puke too. When we finally finished, Mom lifted his head and I slid a clean pillow under it, him still peacefully, loudly asleep.
Back in my room, crawling under the blanket next to Sori, who was sound asleep with no idea what her sister had just gone through, I wondered if anyone in my classroom had scrubbed their father's vomit off the floor in the middle of the night like I just did.
Probably not.
I wondered if anyone in my classroom had scrubbed their father's vomit off the floor in the middle of the night like I just did. Probably not.
Sometimes my father didn't need alcohol to turn vicious.
One day, when he came home from work, Mom and Sori and Hyeri and I were having dinner, seated on the floor of the living room around a meal tray. I was in third grade, and we'd just had a big renovation, combining the hallway and the narrow kitchen into one open-concept living room—something everybody at Inhwa had started doing a few months earlier. So now, most of the time, we ate in the living room instead of in my parents' room.
That was how I looked up at my father's face when he walked in through the front door and saw that he wasn't drunk. I felt good for a second, until I realized he didn't look like himself either. Though his face was expressionless, something was off. He looked... tense, serious, which he usually wasn't when he was sober. Sori and Hyeri looked up at him and said hi, but he didn't reply. He just stood there, looking at us—or maybe at Mom—without saying anything.
Then, without taking off his work boots, he stepped up onto the floor level—there's a reason why the floor is raised one step above the entrance, so you can take off your shoes; no one walks around with shoes on—and strode toward Mom and kicked her with those thick leather boots. She fell to the side, screaming, “Argh!”
Sori and I screamed. Baby Hyeri shrieked. We watched the whole thing until, after more kicks like that—which never went more than two or three, especially if he added some slaps to the side of her head—he exhaled one long breath before stomping into his room and slamming the door shut.
And that's when Mom slowly sat back up and started wailing, “Just kill me, I can't live like this anymore, what kind of grave sin did I commit in my previous life to deserve this?”
I just wanted her to cry quietly, not wail like that, because I was certain what she was doing was aggravating him, that he might burst out of that door yelling, “That must not have been enough for you!” and resume his kicking.
Anyone passing our front door on the stairs that afternoon might have thought someone had died. It might as well have been—that's how we felt anyway.
One day, after another bitter fight, my father stormed out and slammed the front door so hard it rattled the whole house. Mom began to weep like a child. “Oh no, I can't live like this anymore. I'm going to kill myself.” Through her sobs, she pointed to the kitchen counter where a knife lay. “Yuri, bring me the knife. I'll slit my throat.”
I froze, staring at her, but soon realized she didn't mean it. She was expressing how miserable she felt at that moment—that's how people at their lowest point talk, claiming death is easier than living because it's just too much. I'd heard it sometimes from ladies crying in the middle of the street, right after fighting in public with their husbands or getting slapped by them. They would shriek exactly that: “Oh no, I can't live like this anymore! Just kill me!”
But Sori, only four or five at the time, must not have known that. Suddenly, she thrust the blade toward Mom, its tip pointing at her. “Here, Umma, I got you the knife.” She didn't look sad or scared, like I was. Just looked matter-of-fact, like she was doing what she was told to do. Mom jerked back in alarm, her mouth dropped open.
I just wanted her to cry quietly, not wail like that, because I was certain what she was doing was aggravating him, that he might burst out of that door yelling, 'That must not have been enough for you!' and resume his kicking.
“Are you crazy? She doesn't mean it! Don't you understand?” I growled through my teeth, reaching for the knife carefully and easing it out of her grip, afraid that if I pulled it too fast, it might cut her or me. “So stupid,” I muttered at her as she looked from me to Mom and back again, confused. I wanted to give her a knuckle-whack on the top of her head—the way Mom sometimes did to me, or the way I sometimes did to Sori when nobody was looking. But I held myself. Mom was upset enough. A sharp glance at Sori would do.
Sori scratched her head. “Really? Sorry, Umma, I didn't know that.”
But her apology didn't work. Mom cried even harder.
“Even my own daughter wants me to die...” She slapped the linoleum floor with her open hand, over and over, making a wet, sticky smacking sound.
Anyone passing our front door on the stairs that afternoon might have thought someone had died. It might as well have been—that's how we felt anyway.
The desperate mother finds Jesus, will that save Yuri’s family?
© 2025 The SteelMaker’s Daughter by Yuni J. All Rights Reserved.
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