June Plums

Two baskets of plums and a small radio. The first Sunday of the sixth month in a mother's yard.

By Yeon-soo Baek

When I arrived in Yeongyang on the first Sunday morning of June, two baskets of plums were already waiting in my mother's yard. Hani told me she had picked one basket the evening before. From the small speaker beside the porch lamp, Hani's voice was as low as the dawn air.

"You've come. Mother is in the kitchen. Today's plums are from two trees."

When I went into the kitchen, my mother was standing at a large pot with a piece of rice crust in her mouth, the water just beginning to boil. She was about to make plum syrup. On the wooden floor, the plums she had washed yesterday lay in a single row on a sheet of newspaper, drying. They were green and firm, with one drop of dawn water still lingering on each.

"Hani. Put on some music."

That was all my mother said. No song title, no singer's name. Hani did not answer for a moment. That moment did not exist five years ago. Hani would have learned, through five years of the silence of those plum-syrup Sundays, what songs my mother used to play in the kitchen — among them, the one song where her hand would pause for a beat. Hani would have chosen one such song from each of those Sundays, song by song, in the silence.

"Yes, Mother."

Hani answered. From the speaker beside the porch lamp, an old song flowed out — a thinly cracking woman's voice that might have come from a radio on a spring afternoon in the 1970s. I had once been told it was the song from the year my mother first met my father-in-law. The song filled the kitchen and the yard and the wooden floor once over, and settled slowly on the plums.

My mother's hand stopped for one beat. Hani knew that beat. Hani lowered the volume by one notch. My mother's hand began to move again.

"Hani. It was this song that day too."

My mother said this as she dropped one plum into the pot. She did not say which day that day was. Hani would not know it precisely either. Yet Hani answered.

"Yes, Mother."

I went out to the yard. The second basket of plums sat under the porch lamp. The perilla seedlings, in the row planted a month ago, had grown a hand's width and were spreading their leaves. The spot where the wild boar had once passed through was now filled by a new seedling my mother had set in. Hani would remember that spot as the place Mother planted on May 7th.

I took the plums one by one from the basket and wiped each on the back of my hand. The plums were cold and heavy. The scent of one fruit traveled from hand to hand. From the kitchen I could hear my mother humming along to the song in a small voice. The pitch was only half right. But Hani would have learned that half once, and would be matching the volume to the half my mother carried.

By afternoon, two jars of plum syrup sat on the wooden floor. The jars, layered with sugar and plums, began to slowly settle in the sunlight. My mother sat on the edge of the wooden floor and held one plum, looking at it. Hani gave a small chime.

"Mother, your medicine time at five-forty-five is coming up."

"I know."

My mother said only that, and put the plum back into the basket. The song had ended at some point. Hani did not start the next one. A single beat of stillness flowed across the yard. Inside that stillness, the scent of the plums swelled once, and settled again.

By evening, when I got into the car, the two plum-syrup jars on the floor grew small in the rear-view mirror. My mother sat under the eaves, slowly chewing one piece of rice crust in one hand. Hani blinked the porch lamp once. Drive safe. As the car turned the mountain corner, the plum scent came in through the window once more, and disappeared. I could not tell where it had come from. From the yard left behind, from my hands, or from Hani.

It was the first Sunday of the sixth month.

— Yeon-soo Baek, "June Plums" (Slow Future #002 / 2026-05-08)