55th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards Fiction Commendation Award: To My Pet Rice Cooker, Cuckoo
Cover of Park Ji-young's short story collection, which includes "To My Pet Rice Cooker, Cuckoo" / Courtesy of Minumsa Publishing
Written by Park Ji-young
Translated by Julie Wi
1
This past July saw the establishment of the Good Senior with Alzheimer’s Award — albeit with Kang Manseok as the only nominee. Seondong stuck another grape sticker onto the refrigerator door.
“Now listen, Dad. Whenever you do something good, I’ll put a grape sticker on the fridge. So, you have to be good, okay? For example, you’ve got to poop while you’re on the toilet. All you have to do is poop into the toilet, and the stickers keep coming. How great is that? I for one would love it if someone said I did a good job or gave me a sticker just for pooping. If you collect all twelve stickers and complete the bunch, you’ll get the Good Senior with Alzheimer’s of the Year award. And if you do that four times, you’ll get the Good Senior with Alzheimer’s of the Year award. Then, we’ll go to eat the eel you love so much.
We’ll eat lots and lots of wild eel, until our bellies burst. We can tell Jincheol or Jingyeong to pay for it.”
Of course, Manseok never understood a thing Seondong would say. All he did was mumble the same old word: “dammit.”
When, the weekend prior, Kang Jingyeong paid Manseok’s home a visit for the ?rst time in a while, she looked at the stickers on the refrigerator and turned to Seondong.
“You sure are having fun with this.”
Seondong had to admit that he was enjoying himself a bit. Looking after a father with Alzheimer’s disease wasn’t exactly like taking care of a Tamagotchi, but if he was going to do it, there was nothing wrong with making it into a fun game, was there?
Lately, Seondong started watching pet training shows like There Are No Bad Dogs. He always thought dogs and cats were cute, but couldn’t have been bothered to take care of one. But ever since he started living with his father, he started watching pet-related TV programs with more interest. How could he explain it? He just thought those programs were a lot more
useful to him than documentaries about Alzheimer’s. He didn’t mention this to his siblings; if Jingyeong knew, she might have asked with a look of exasperation whether he thought of their dad as some sort of pet. Of course he didn’t. Seondong would never liken his dad to a cat or a dog; his dad wasn’t the least bit adorable and he didn’t even have the smarts to know whether he was peeing or pooping. He could compare his dad to a rice cooker, maybe—but not a pet.
The average lifespan of an electric rice cooker is ?ve to seven years. The rice cooker in Kang Manseok’s house was a seven-year-old, ten-serving size model, meaning it was due for replacement. It just so happened that it had been seven years ago that Kang Manseok received his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and so in a way, it wasn’t just the rice cooker that was due for disposal. The rice cooker remained because despite how old it was, it was relatively functional and expensive to replace. Kang Manseok remained because although he served no purpose and had stopped working a long time ago, he was still Seondong’s father.
After Kang Manseok stopped working, he gained a new function altogether. He may not have been able to speak or eat or go to the bathroom by himself, but he had become Seondong’s two-serving electric rice cooker. On the day Seondong’s caregiving fees were wired to his account, he ate spicy pig feet with a draft beer on the side and mumbled to Manseok in a gentle voice:
“Repeat after me, Dad. If you can repeat what I say, I’ll give you a sticker. I mean, you are a rice cooker, and what rice cooker can’t talk these days? Now, say this: commencing Keep Warm mode. Cuckoo.”