Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin, published in Korea in 2017 to critical and popular acclaim and adapted into a film in 2024 by the young woman filmmaker Lee Mi-rang, is narrated from the perspective of a woman in her sixties who works as a carer at a nursing home. The unnamed narrator is assigned by her agency to “Jen” (full name Yi Jehee), a highly-educated woman who has never been married. Jen studied overseas when she was young and spent her life looking after the weak and marginalized, writing books about overseas Korean adoptees, opening an education center for immigrant children, and sponsoring a young boy in the Philippines. But the life of self-sacrificing devotion Jen once led is a world apart from her present situation. With no family or assets to support her, and slowly losing her memory, Jen is only granted a single bed in a nursing home. And even that is contingent on support—financial or otherwise—from charitable organizations. The moment her illness worsens and the support ends, even that bed will be taken from her. All that awaits her now is a transfer to a care facility for people with Alzheimer’s, a place where she will be bound hand and foot, a place that “pumps patients full of sedatives and gives them nothing to do besides expend all their energy waiting for death.”

This is the point that angers the narrator, a professional carer. Is it just for society to treat a woman like Jen, who devoted her years to caring for others, this way? Is it truly right to sacrifice human dignity in the name of bureaucratic effi­ciency? The narrator sees herself in the elderly woman’s shoes as she witnesses the world treating Jen like “garbage,” and realizes that this treatment is not just “the way of the world,” but her “business.” This realization underpins the narrator’s determined struggle to bring the dying Jen into her own home, caring for her with extreme devotion. By nature, human beings are dependent on others, reliant on others’ care from birth to death. Providing unconditional care to vulnerable people who are completely reliant on others, then, is an ethical duty that all humans must undertake.

This does not, of course, mean that those carrying out this ethical imperative will be free from hesitation, guilt, fear, or regret. The truth is, the “work” it takes to care for someone and the “grueling” task of picking up after someone else are an inextricable part of the labor of care; ugly realities that cannot—must not—be wrapped up into purely beautiful and noble packages. While refusing to turn a blind eye to that grueling work, Concerning my Daughter captures the fleeting instant in when the positions are reversed—when the reality of care is flipped upside-down and the carer becomes the cared-for. In the case of this book, the reversal overlaps with the moment when the title of the book is fully thrust into the spotlight. The narrator has thus far attempted to pressure her lesbian daughter to conform to social norms, unable to understand her. But as she comes to share the work of caring for Jen with her daughter, the narrator comes to accept her child for who she is. At Jen’s funeral at the end of the book, as the daughter (accompanied by her partner) volunteers to be the chief mourner, the narrator manages to tell the couple, “Thank you for being here.” It is a sort of olive branch; a ceasefire left as a final gift from Jen to her carer. After the funeral, the narrator and her daughter will return to their old dynamic, continuing to argue and hurt each other. But so long as they hold on to their gift from Jen, who ironically had required grueling and unconditional care, the energy to “get through the next bit of life ahead of [them]” will remain and keep them moving forward. Life goes on, and as the novel’s final line says, “all [they] can do is believe that [they] will make it through the long stretch of tomorrows,” supported by Jen’s gift.

By depicting a carer gladly bringing her patient into her own home—with no blood relation or promise of an inheritance in the picture—and fostering an alternative, female-centered family community with her lesbian daughter and her partner, Concerning My Daughter explores alternative possibilities for the ethics of care in Korean literature. These gendered ethics of care go beyond the heteronormative boundaries of blood relations, shaking the foundations of the traditional institution of the family. But can such new communities truly serve as an alternative?

To answer this question, we can turn to Jadu by Lee Juhye. Narrated by a fictional translator of Adrienne Rich’s When We Dead Awaken (reflecting Lee’s status as the actual translator of that book), the novel offers glimpses of the fictional under­standings and misunderstandings concerning Rich’s concept of the “lesbian continuum.” In the prologue, Rich and the feminist poet Elizabeth Bishop drive from New York to Boston and discuss the recent deaths in their lives (Rich has lost her husband, while Bishop lost a same-sex lover, both to suicide). As they discuss the circumstances that led to those deaths, the two women form a connection over the fact that they have both been misunderstood by the public and gossiped about.

This anecdote immediately informs readers of the inten­tion behind Jadu. The narrator’s father-in-law was once a charming old gentleman. But after his bile duct cancer relapses, he is hospitalized, becoming delirious in his illness, and soon Lee reveals the realities of patriarchy through the progression of the cancer. Prior to the narrator’s marriage and the medical crisis, the father-in-law had been a sweet poet of a man who called the narrator “more welcome than the flowers in springtime.” Following her marriage, he had promised to treat her “not as a daughter-in-law, but a daugh­ter,” buying her shiny hairpins studded with fake gemstones and flower-print scarves from street stands, insisting on putting them on her with his own two hands. The delirium, however, changes him completely, and he begins to call his daughter-in-law a “thief” who has stolen his radiant sun. He openly expresses his hatred for her, lamenting, “What has she done for us since she married into this family? Since she mar­ried a professor? Did she bring a big dowry? Have a baby? She’s the reason my line is going to end!” He is also highly suspicious of his carer, to the point of grabbing her by the hair and verbally abusing her. 

Though suddenly faced with the brunt of the hypocrisies of patriarchy and branded a thief while attempting to care for the sick man, the narrator is not supported by her husband. The husband remains willfully blind to his father’s true nature. And it seems only right, in some ways, that she is more outraged by her husband’s cowardice than by her father-in-law’s direct displays of hate. The only person who takes her side and understands her is the carer, Hwang Yeongok. The narrator reciprocates her empathy by saving her from violence, shoving the patriarch in the chest when he suddenly grabs Yeongok by the hair and calls her a thief. The father-in-law’s patriarchal family is connected by blood and constitutes an exclusive society of its own from start to finish. But the two unrelated women, joined by their exclusion from that community, form a new community of their own. This is the moment when the lesbian continuum Rich describes comes into being, where “although nothing was said, it felt as though we had shared everything.”

However, Lee does not gloss over the limitations of such moments of connection. Overemphasizing the value of gender-based solidarity in the face of imbalanced expecta­tions of care in heteronormative family institutions runs the risk of erasing the real differences between the individuals in this alternative community. The reality is that one of these women is well-educated and belongs to the middle class, while the agency-dispatched carer has been hired for a paltry 80,000 won a day. At the end of the book, the narrator purchases a pretty postcard in Hokkaido, and writes down “an address discovered by looking up the name of the agency from a once-remembered, lilac-hued business card,” con­fessing that “although it was very unlikely the postcard would make it to Yeongok, the remoteness of the possibility was the very reason” she was sending it. This confession is a clear reminder that the bond the narrator and Yeongok share is almost fantastical. Although this is an act “as childlike as tossing a message in a bottle into the Pacific,” Jadu empha­sizes that the narrator’s intentions are not laughable in the least. This reading is supported by the translator’s afterword, written in the form of a letter “to all the Hwang Yeongoks out there.” In Jadu, the act of writing is one way of resolving to never give up on those fleeting connections, to always look forward to a new form of community that acknowledges and overcomes the real differences between people.

Another author who may have something to say about such hopes is Hwang Jungeun. It is only natural, then, for this essay to end with a discussion of “Things to Come”—the last section of her novel Years and Years. Following “Gravedig,” “Words to Say,” and “Nameless,” which all follow the Han family, “Things to Come” centers on playwright Han Sejin, the family’s second daughter and virtually a self-portrait of the author, as she participates in a book festival in New York City. Sejin is very much unlike her elder sister Yeongjin, the archetypal “K-jangnyeo”: the eldest daughter in a standard Korean family who sacrifices her wants for the sake of the family by internalizing the idea that “you can’t always do everything you want.” Sejin has chosen to form a new connection with her same-sex partner Ha Miyeong in direct opposition to the heteronormative Korean family—and on a business trip to America, she comes to notice the things she had not recognized “back in Seoul.”

At a talk titled “Reading Peace, Writing Resistance,” Sejin has a lengthy conversation with American writers, but at the end of the talk, a member of the audience asks a question that silences her. The questioner, petite with straight black hair and most likely a Korean adoptee, says, “I’ve been sitting here, listening for an hour and a half, but no one brought up Korean adoptees or the export of Korean adoptees. For an hour and a half, not once did anyone mention it. I need to know. Why?” A similar moment of silencing occurs during a conversation with Jamie, who tells Sejin about how her father Norman—who grew up around a Korean-American community that called his mother a “yanggalbo,” that is, a “Yankee whore”—“couldn’t forgive the people who said those things, so he decided he wouldn’t forgive the language they used either,” and slowly became a man of very few words. The reason for Sejin’s silence is simple: such issues had never even occurred to her “back in Seoul.”

Perhaps our problems with family, care, and gender can only be seen clearly when we step back from internalized injustices to examine them in the context of society as a whole. Sejin’s breaking away from her blood family to form an alternative female community with Ha Miyeong does not magically solve these inherent problems; Miyeong, in spite of daily phone calls with Sejin about happy nothings, eventually complains of trouble breathing, finds a hospital on her own, packs her things, and checks herself in. What is it that chokes the air out of these pioneers of the future, forcing them to hospitalize themselves? Rather than try to clumsily answer that question and offer blanket solutions, “Things to Come” cautiously suggests an alternative: “dashing any hope of romance and reconciliation, disappointing those who had been hoping for those things.” That is to say, the future will always generate hope, but our expectations will never be fully met. But life goes on in spite of our disappointment, and busily. In the same way, the sense that our desperate hopes for a tran­scendent new alternative are about to fail is not necessarily a bad thing. As Hwang writes, “While she weeps, while she is disappointed, while she loses hope, while she rages. In other words, while she loves,” she—that is, we—must once more bring the future toward us. That is probably the underlying answer prescribed by Hwang, that our hopes will continue to come toward us for “years and years.” Does that not mean that it is time for both a change in our mindsets, and a mild disappointment of the radical hopes we have concerning care? Who knows? When Ha Miyeong is finally discharged from the hospital, “While she weeps, while she is disappointed, while she loses hope, while she rages. In other words, while she loves,” she may yet be welcomed by a day filled with hopes for such a love.

KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED: 

· Kim Hyejin, Concerning My Daughter (tr. Jamie Chang, Picador, 2022) 

  김혜진, 『딸에 대하여』 (민음사, 2017) 

• · Lee Juhye, Jadu (Changbi, 2020)

  이주혜, 『자두』 (창비, 2020) 

• · Hwang Jungeun, “Things to Come,” Years and Years (tr. Janet Hong, Open Letter, 2024)

  황정은, 「다가오는 것들」, 『연년세세』 (창비, 2020)

울고 실망하고 환멸하고 분노하면서, 다시 말해 사랑하면서
-돌봄과 가족, 그 기대와 실패의 나날

2017년 출간 이후 비평과 대중 모두의 지대한 관심의 대상이 되었다가 2024년 젊은 여성감독에 의해 영화화되기도 했던 김혜진의 장편소설 『딸에 대하여』는 요양보호사로 일하는 60대 여성을 화자로 설정하고 있다. ‘나’는 간병인 파견업체가 지정해준 요양병원의 고학력 비혼여성 이제희의 간병을 담당하게 된다. 일명 ‘젠’이라는 애칭으로 불리는 그녀는 젊은 날 외국에서 공부하고 돌아온 엘리트로, 해외입양아들을 위한 책을 쓰기도 하고 이주민 인권센터를 오픈하거나 필리핀 꼬마 아이를 후원하기도 하는 등 평생 취약한 타인들을 돌보는 삶을 살아온 인물이다. 그러나 소설 속 이제희의 현재는 과거의 헌신과 아무런 상관이 없어 보인다. 돌보아줄 가족 구성원이나 재산도 없이 서서히 기억을 잃어가는 그녀에게 우리 사회가 제공하는 것은 그저 요양병원의 침대 한쪽 뿐이다. 그것도 후원금이나 단체의 지원이 이어지는 한 겨우. 그녀의 병이 심각해지고 후원이 사라지는 순간 그마저도 용납되지 않는다. 그녀를 기다리는 것은 손발이 꽁꽁 묶인 채 “종일 수면제나 먹이면서 죽음을 기다리는 데 남은 생을 죄다 소진시키는” 치매 전문요양병원으로의 이송 뿐이다. 

돌봄 노동에 종사하는 화자가 분노하는 것은 바로 이 지점이다. 평생 돌봄에 헌신했던 존재를 한 사회가 이런 식으로 취급하는 것이 정당한가? 아니 효용성이라는 이름으로 인간의 존엄을 훼손하는 것은 올바른 일이 아니지 않은가? ‘나’는 ‘젠’을 ‘쓰레기’ 취급하는 세상을 통해 자신의 미래를 엿보며 그것이 단지 ‘세상일’에 그치지 않고 ‘자신의 일’이기도 하다는 사실을 자각한다. ‘나’가 우여곡절 끝에 죽음이 임박한 그녀를 자신의 집으로 모시고 와 극진한 돌봄을 제공하는 배경이 여기에 있다. 인간은 필연적으로 의존적인 존재일 수밖에 없고, 태어나서부터 죽을 때까지 나로 살아가기 위해 타인의 돌봄을 필수적으로요청한다. 사정이 그러하다면 취약한 의존자에게 무조건적 돌봄을 제공하는 것은 인간으로서 마땅히 요구되는 윤리적 의무라고 할 수도 있을 것이다.

물론 이 돌봄의 윤리가 주체의 주저와 자책, 두려움과 후회를 동반하지 않는 것은 아니다. “누군가를 보살피는 것의 수고로움. 내가 아닌 누군가를 돌보는 것의 지난함”은 언제나 항존한다. 어쩌면 아름답고, 고결해 보이는 일 자체가 그런 식의 끔찍함과 가혹함을 요청하는 일인지도 모른다. 그런데 『딸에 대하여』는 그 수고로움과 지난함을 모른 척하지 않으면서도 그것이 초래하는 또 다른 역설, 즉 돌보는 자가 오히려 돌봄을 되돌려 받는 전복의 순간을 놓치지 않고 있어 주목을 요한다. 이 소설의 표제, ‘딸에 대하여’가 환기하듯 세상과 불화하는 ‘레즈비언 딸’을 이해하지 못하고 그녀를 자신의 영역 속으로 끌어당기려고만 하던 ‘나’는 ‘젠’을 돌보는 행위를 딸과 공유함으로써 마침내 딸의 존재를 있는 그 자체로 받아들이게 된다. 소설의 마지막 ‘젠’의 장례식에서 상주 역할을 자처하는 딸과 그녀의 파트너를 향해 ‘나’는 간신히 입을 열어 말한다. “이렇게 있어 줘서 고맙다”고. 그것은 돌봄을 요청하는 ‘젠’이 돌봄 제공자에게 선사한 잠깐의 평화이자 휴전이라고 할 만하다. 이 시간이 지나면 ‘나’와 딸은 다시 싸우고 상처를 주고받는 이전의 일상으로 되돌아갈 것이다. 그러나 절대적 돌봄을 요청했던 ‘젠’이 되돌려준 선물이 있는 한, 그들에게 주어진 삶을 다시 살아나갈 얼마간의 ‘기운’은 사라지지 않을 것이다. 이 ‘기운’에 힘입어 우리의 삶은 지속된다. “그런 식의 길고 긴 내일들을 지날 수 있을 거라고 믿어 볼 뿐이다”로 마무리하는 이 소설의 마지막 문장이 의미심장한 것은 그때문이다.

어떤 혈연관계에 놓인 것도 아니고 남몰래 유산을 상속받은 일도 없는 그야말로 완전한 타인에 불과한 요양보호사가 자신이 돌보던 환자를 기꺼이 집으로 데리고 와 레즈비언 딸과 그녀의 파트너와 더불어 여성 중심의 새로운 대안 가족공동체를 열어가는『딸에 대하여』는 돌봄과 관련한 우리 문학의 또 다른 가능성의 조건을 심문하는 측면이 있다. 이로써 젠더화된 돌봄의 윤리가 이성애 중심의 혈연가족의 울타리를 넘어 우리 사회의 가족 제도의 근간을 흔드는 중요한 기제로 작동하는 면도 없지 않다. 그런데 이런 식의 새로운 공동체가 과연 우리의 대안이 될 수 있을까? 

이를 확인하기 위해 우리는 이주혜 작가의『자두』를 경유할 필요가 있다. 이 소설은 에이드리언 리치의 『우리 죽은 자들이 깨어날 때』의 번역자를 소설의 화자로 설정하고 있는데, 작가 이주혜가 실제 이 책의 번역자이기도 하다는 점에서 리치가 이야기하는 ‘레즈비언 연속체(lesbian continuum)’라는 개념의 허구적 ‘이해/오해’의 가능성을 엿볼 수 있는 대목이 적지 않다. 이는 프롤로그에 해당하는 소설 서두의 페미니스트 시인 엘리자베스 비숍과 에이드리언 리치의 에피소드에서도 확인된다. 비숍은 동성 파트너를, 리치는 남편의 자살이라는 ‘공통의 경험’을 공유하는 두 여성은 어느 날 뉴욕에서 보스턴으로 가는 차안에서 “각자 삶에서 최근 겪은 자살에 대해” 이야기를 나누는 우연을 경험한다. “‘어쩌다 그런 일이 일어났는가’를 말”하며 그들은 그간 그들을 둘러싼 세간의 오해와 소문에서 놓여나 모처럼 “자기 이야기가 이해받고 있다”는 느낌을 받는다. 이 순간 그들 사이에 놓여 있던 어떤 ‘차이’는 훌쩍 사라져버리고 “단 한 번의 친밀함”이 형성된다. 

『자두』가 이 일화를 서두로 삼았다는 것은 이 소설의 의도를 짐작하게 만들기에 부족함이 없다. ‘로맨스그레이’의 현신 같던 시아버지가 담도암이 재발하여 대학병원에 입원한 뒤 섬망이 찾아오면서 그간 숨겨오던 가부장제의 민낯이 드러나는 장면은 이 소설의 의도를 드러내기 위한 배경으로 적절한 삽화적 기능을 한다. 섬망이 찾아오기 전 처음 인사를 하러 온 아들의 연인에게 “봄꽃보다 반가운 사람이 왔구나”라는 낯간지러운 말을 건네고, 결혼한 며느리에게 “이제 너를 며느리가 아니라 딸로 대할 것이다”라는 말을 스스럼없이 전하며 큐빅이 잔뜩 박힌 머리핀을 사서 머리에 꽂아 주기도 하고 가판대에서 꽃무늬 스카프를 사서 목에 둘러주기도 하던 그는 섬망과 더불어 순식간에 며느리를 시아버지의 반짝이는 태양을 가로챈 “도둑년”으로 지목한다. “저 애가 우리 집에 시집와서 지금껏 뭐 한 일이 있나? 박사님과 결혼하면서 열쇠 세 개를 해왔나? 애를 낳았나? 저 애 때문에 우리 집 귀한 손이 끊겼다”며 며느리를 향해 혐오를 드러내는 것을 주저하지 않고, 자신을 돌보는 요양보호사를 의심하고 머리채를 움켜쥐며 욕설을 남발하는 것도 부끄러워하지 않는다. 

이 느닷없는 가부장제의 허위를 전면으로 마주하며 순식간에 “도둑년”으로 전락한 화자는 남편의 지지를 받지 못한다. 남편은 시아버지의 민낯을 못 본 척 외면하며 눈을 감을 뿐이다. 그런 점에서 그녀가 직접적인 증오를 발산하는 시아버지보다 남편의 비겁한 방관에 더욱 분노하는 것은 일견 타당해 보인다. 오로지 그녀의 편이 되어주고 그녀를 이해하는 사람은 간병 경험을 공유하며 환자를 ‘가족처럼’ 돌보던 요양보호사 황영옥뿐이다. 그녀 역시 시아버지가 갑작스럽게 황영옥의 머리채를 움켜쥐며 “도둑년”이라는 욕설을 내뱉을 때 아무도 건드리지 않는 가부장의 가슴팍을 밀어버리며 그의 폭력으로부터 황영옥을 빼내고자 애쓴다. 두 사람은 “처음부터 한통속”이었던 혈연중심의 부계가족과 달리 그들이 ‘우리’의 일원이 아니라는 사실을 공유함으로써 또 다른 ‘우리’가 된다. 소위 리치가 말하는 레즈비언 연속체가 “어떤 말도 나누지 않았지만 모든 것을 말해 버린 기분”을 공유하는 것은 바로 이 순간이다. 

그러나 『자두』는 이 찰나적 ‘한편’의 한계 역시 잊지 않는다. 이성애 가족 제도에 내재하는 돌봄의 불균형 상태에도 불구하고 젠더에 기반한 동성의 유대와 연속의 가치를 지나치게 강조하는 행위는 자칫 그들 사이에 존재하는 차이, 예컨대 엘리트 중산층 지식인 여성과 간병 업체에 고용된 일당 8만 원짜리 요양보호사의 계급적 불평등을 지우는 계기가 될 수도 있기 때문이다. 소설의 마지막, 북해도에서 산 예쁜 엽서에 “기억속의 라일락색 명함에 적혀 있던 간병인 파견 업체 이름을 휴대폰으로 검색해 찾은 주소”를 적으며 “엽서가 영옥씨에게 전달될 가능성은 매우 희박했지만 어쩌면 그 희박한 가능성 때문에” 엽서를 보내는 것인지도 모른다고 고백하는 화자의 목소리는 그들 사이에 공유된 친밀감이 얼마나 환상에 가까운 것인지를 드러내는 정직한 토로 같기도 하다. 그러나 『자두』는 그것이 “유리병에 쪽지를 넣어 태평양에 던지는 것만큼이나 치기 어린 행위”일 수도 있지만, 자신의 마음만은 절대로 우습지 않다는 것을 강조하는 것을 잊지 않는다. 이 소설이 황영옥‘들’에게 보내는 편지 형식을 빌려와 역자 후기를 갈음하는 데서도 이 마음은 여실히 드러난다. 단 한 번의 친밀성의 시간, 그 희박한 가능성의 조건을 절대 포기하지 않겠다는 것, 차이에 눈감지 않으면서도 그것을 넘어서는 새로운 공동체가 다가올 것이라는 기대, 어쩌면 『자두』의 글쓰기 행위는 이 기원의 다른 이름이라고 할 수도 있을듯하다.

이런 종류의 ‘기대’에 관해서라면 작가 황정은이 할 말이 없지 않을 듯하다. 그런 의미에서 돌봄을 둘러싼 우리의 이야기가 황정은의 연작소설『연년세세』의 마지막 단편 ｢다가오는것들｣로 마무리되는 것은 자연스러워 보인다. ｢파묘｣, ｢하고 싶은 말｣, ｢무명｣등과 더불어한 권의 연작소설을 구성하고 있는 이 소설은 한씨 가문의 둘째 딸이자 작가 자신의 초상에 가까운 희곡작가 ‘한세진’이 초점화자로 등장하여 ‘북페스티벌’에 참가하는 닷새간의 뉴욕의 일정을 따라간다. “하고 싶은 걸 다하고 살 수는 없다”는말을 내면화함으로써 자신의 욕망을 잠재우고 가족 전체의 안위를 돌보는 쪽을 선택했던 ‘K-장녀’ 한영진과 달리 ‘K-가족’ 대신 동성 파트너 하미영과의 연속체를 결성하는 방식을 선택한 그녀는 미국에 도착해서야 비로소 ‘서울’에 있을 때 미처 보지 못한 것들을 확인하는 시간을 갖는다. 

 ‘평화의 읽기, 저항의 쓰기’라는 주제로 세션을 마련한 주최측의 요구로 미국 작가들과 대담을 나누던 그녀는 방청석의 마지막 질문이 한국의 입양아 수출에 관한 것임을 깨닫고 할 말을 잃는다. 검은 직모의 마른 몸을 한, 아마도 한국계 입양아임에 분명해 보이는 여성은 말한다. “한시간 반을 여기 앉아 당신들 이야기를 들었는데 한국인 입양아, 한국의 입양아 수출에 대해 말하는 사람이 없다. 당신들은 한시간 반 동안 그것에 관해 한마디도 하지 않았다. 나는 정말 궁금하다. Why?”. 이 언어의 상실은 엄마의 이모인 윤부경의 아들 노먼이 그의 엄마가 ‘양색시’라고 수군거리는 한인 커뮤니티가 있는 지역에서 어린 시절을 보내며 “그말을 한 사람들을 용서할 수 없어서 그들이 사용하는 말 자체를 용서하지 않기”로 결심한 채 점점 말을 잃어가는 사람이 되어버렸다는 이야기를 그의 딸 제이미를 통해 들었을 때도 발생한다. 이 당혹스러운 모든 이야기들은 ‘서울’에서는 짐작조차 하지 못하던 것들이기 때문이다.

어쩌면 우리의 가족과 돌봄과 젠더의 문제는 내부적 모순에 그치지 않고 세계와 연결된 더 큰 그림 속에서 나타나는 또 다른 형상을 동시에 고민할 때 더 잘 보일 수 있는지도 모른다. 혈연가족에서 이탈하여 하미영과 대안 공동체를 형성한다고 해서 이런 문제들이 해결되는 것은 아니다. 여전히 매일 한세진과 전화 통화하며 일상의 소소한 풍경과 감상을 주고받던 하미영이 어느샌가 숨을 쉬기가 어렵다며 스스로 병원을 찾아보고 작은 짐을 꾸려 그리로 들어가 버린 상태라는 사실은 이 새로운 ‘여성 공동체’ 역시 만능은 아니라는 것을 잘 보여주는 사례라고 할 수도 있겠다. 무엇이 이 새로운 일상의 선구자들을 숨을 쉴 수 없도록 만들고, 스스로 병원을 찾아 떠나게 만드는가? ｢다가오는 것들｣은 거기에 답하고 그것을 해결하려는 섣부른 시도 대신 반대로 “로맨스와 화해에 관한 기대를, 그것을 기대하는 사람들을 적절하게 실망시키는” 방식을 조심스럽게 제안한다. 다가온다는 것은 언제나 ‘기대’와 함께하지만, 그것이 언제나 우리를 충족시킬 수는 없으며, 그렇게 하지 않아도 삶은 지나가기 마련이라는 것이다, 그것도 바쁘게. 그렇다면 지금 이곳을 넘어서는 다른 대안에 대한 간절하고 급진적인 기대 못지않게 그것의 실패, 그것에 대한 실망의 예감 역시 꼭 나쁘다고만 할 수는 없겠다. 황정은이 이야기하고 있는 것처럼 “울고 실망하고 환멸하고 분노하면서, 다시 말해 사랑하면서” 우리는 다가오는 것들을 다시 한번 다가오게 만들어야 하기 때문이다. 그것만이 실망으로 다가오지 않는 기대를 ‘연년세세’ 다가오도록 만드는 근본적인 처방이 될 수도 있겠다. 그런 의미에서 발상의 전환과 함께 돌봄을 둘러싼 급진적인 기대를 적절하게 실망시켜야 하는 시간이 다가오고 있는지도 모르겠다. 여전히 “울고 실망하고 환멸하고 분노하면서, 다시 말해 사랑하면서.” 스스로 찾아 들어간 병원에서 하미영이 퇴원하는 날은 그런 사랑에 대한 기대로 가득 찬 하루인지도 모르겠다.   

Korean Books Mentioned:

황정은, ｢다가오는 것들｣, 『연년세세』 (창비, 2020)

김혜진, 『딸에 대하여』 (민음사, 2017)

이주혜, 『자두』 (창비, 2020)

신수정

명지대 문예창작학과 교수이자 문학평론가로 활동 중이다. 계간 『문학동네』 편집위원을 역임했으며, 평론집 『푸줏간에 걸린 고기』를 펴냈다.