How I Became a North Korean (16 page)

I sat upright. Imagined her hands cradling my head, my neck. “Do you want your pillow back?”

“What pillow?” she said scornfully.

We sat in silence. Suddenly she laughed, and her hands fluttered up and covered her mouth. Her laugh, her gesture, moved through me as real and necessary as water or sleep.

“You're a good person,” she said. She sounded surprised by herself. Then she leaned in and I smelled the sweet sesame of her breath. “My baby—she never even had a name.”

 • • • 

Soon we had a second intruder, a white man who Missionary Kwon called an ally of our people. Still, we shrank from the tall American who ducked to pass through the front door. I assumed all white people were Americans. The man had a thin, ungenerous nose and an overdeveloped torso, like a tree stump. He took off his black cap and sunglasses and said, “I've been so eager to meet all of you.”

His eyes were the color of grass. He wasn't my first white man; there were times in Pyongyang when people parted at a white man's approach, afraid to attract attention by looking at him, and I'd seen plenty of them in smuggled movies.

“Say hello to our guest.” There was a warning in Missionary Kwon's voice.

The man's broad smile didn't drop away and he waved both
hands in the air to show that he was harmless. But he was a stranger and a foreigner, and only Daehan and I managed to greet him in formal Korean.

The white man addressed us with the honorific form in pristine Korean and bowed, confusing us. We were young, we were refugees—used to pity but never respect—we were the ones who should be bowing. I found myself bowing back, a situation so absurd that I laughed. But this only angered me. Laughing, when everyone I loved was gone.

All around me the murmurs began. “White man, white man.”

“Matthew's an American raised in South Korea. He's an ally of yours—a friend.” As usual, Missionary Kwon gave us a skeletal explanation. “I expect you to tell him all about your lives and answer his questions.”

“I'm not eating at a table with a long-nose,” Bakjun said, standing to his full height, at age sixteen no bigger than ten-year-olds I would see in the South.

“Nonsense.” Missionary Kwon was firm. The American was a journalist and the son of Missionary Kwon's good friend. “Matthew's father came as a missionary himself to South Korea several decades ago and is now one of the country's best pastors. His family's practically Korean.”

This man drew back at the mention of his father.

“Too good,” he said in perfect Korean, and laughed hoarsely. “He's a hard man to live up to.” It hurt to think that I could never be a better son for my
abeoji
.

The stranger's head tilted toward each of us as he presented himself as a friend to all. He bowed awkwardly in every direction,
his sloppy smile spilling into the room. But he, like everyone else in China, wanted something from us.

That night, terse fragments drifted out from Missionary Lee's room.

“A white man, and a journalist!” said Missionary Lee sharply, and he was never sharp. “That's dangerous, dangerous for all . . . He'll be all over their lives—they've been . . . he could expose them. We're here to do God's work, not to sell stories.”

“Part of the Lord's work is letting people know what's happening in that dark country,” said Missionary Kwon. “Matthew will live here, no one will see him; he's going to write . . . and with the donations we'll have coming in . . .”

“There's enough money.”

“You know nothing.” Missionary Kwon's voice rose, but only a little. “Where's the windfall going to . . . The sky? The trees? Trees don't pay for my shelters.”

“God, God will provide,” Missionary Lee said. “If we don't believe that, what do we have?”

Missionary Kwon wasn't present the next morning. Neither was Missionary Lee, who felt ill and stayed in bed. There was only this Matthew.

The journalist Matthew was deft—too deft—at handling our suspicion and unease and the sneaking stares at the light brown fuzz, like that of a deer's antlers, that seemed to cover every part of him. He called it his animal hair, tugging at a crinkly strand as he smiled. None of it unnerved him.

He waited. He ate our food with exaggerated relish, popping a spicy strand of kimchi into his mouth at breakfast as if to show
us:
I'm like you
. He regaled us with stories about being a white man in Asia, though the boys probably only listened so they could skip studying. He passed out exotic sweets and played soccer with them, impressing Namil by keeping the deflated ball aloft for more than a hundred kicks, bouncing it from ankle to knee to hip to head. It wasn't hard to like him. Only later did he maneuver us to the storage room, one at a time, and, wedged between the sacks of beans and cans of ham, retrieve our stories from us.

When it was my turn, he cajoled and waited as I fled, avoided him, then reluctantly returned. He was armed with Missionary Kwon's directive: Ask them anything you want, anything. He knew how to be patient; he sympathized, he prodded with his florid language. To tell was to remember and to remember was to relive, but I had little choice. I cooperated. We all did, except for Jangmi, who refused to be interviewed.

We sat in a messy circle with Matthew on his last afternoon, waiting for the dipping creak of the front door, the particular music of Missionary Kwon's arrival. Matthew massaged the pocket stitching of his slacks and said to us, but really to Jangmi, “I was the only white person in a class of forty-five South Korean high schoolers. You been to high school?” He continued. “Mine was on Jeju Island! You ever heard of Jeju Island?”

He told her about the place, an island surrounded by azure sea, full of lava tubes and sunflowers, with a dormant volcano in the middle. South Koreans had always honeymooned there, though the well-off now headed to Europe or to tropical countries. He glanced down the hall. He must have known that the
missionaries didn't like South Korea spoken of around us because they said it made us restless. “Where did you grow up? Was it beautiful there, too?”

A tremor passed through her as if her past was moving through her and taking hold, demanding payment.

“I know it's difficult for you. I won't use your name or your face. Your story's important—it's the only way to stop the abuses you've suffered in China from happening.”

That may have been true, but Jangmi wasn't ready to speak.

“Nothing happened to me,” she said. “I crossed a river and lived in a room. And now I live in another room.”

The journalist crouched close to her, his green eyes turning filmy in the reflected light. “Missionary Kwon told me where he found you. It must be so hard. Let me help you.”

Though he was my senior in all ways, I set my hand down on the journalist's shoulder so that he couldn't lean in any closer to Jangmi. “Can't you see she doesn't want to talk to you?”

Matthew raised his arms high into the air. “Look, I'm a good guy, really.”

She sought my other hand, laying hers lightly across mine.

“Do people like me get to go to your country?” Her question made even Cheolmin freeze.

“My country?” Matthew smiled. “If you mean America, actually, yes,” he said, his voice lowered. “Once you're out of China, you can apply to live in a number of different countries. Japan, Norway, South Korea, America, you name it. It's called asylum.”

“You know people, important people,” she said. “If you
wanted to, you could help us. The longer we're in China, the more dangerous it is for us. You know that.”

He stood up. “I'm just a journalist, not a diplomat.”

Jangmi let go of me and gripped his ankle.

“Help me get out,” she whispered. “I'm begging. You have the power.”

He shielded his eyes. “You need to stop this.”

“If you help me, you can take as many photos as you want and I'll tell you everything you would ever want to know.” Her fingers turned white as she strengthened her grip. “Things you can't even imagine.”

He looked awkward and afraid. “Missionary Kwon knows best what to do.”

The light and speed went out of her. “He'll keep us as long as he can. Kids? A woman, a boy from Pyongyang? We're his prizes.”

“She's right,” I said. “But you're different from them—the Christians.”

Matthew shook his head vigorously. “Believe me, there are many different kinds of Christians.”

Jangmi said, “We didn't risk our lives just to end up in this jail. There's no one in this room who crossed without thinking they could die. You must be able to help us—you know people.”

“I don't, it's not like you think.” He pried her fingers from his ankle and backed away. “I trust Missionary Kwon knows what he's doing. Give him time.”

 • • • 

That night, I dreamed that people were after me. I was wading through the river again, half-naked and shivering in its glassy
chill. I was in Pyongyang watching a Hollywood movie with a friend: I was Leonardo DiCaprio, I was Tom Cruise. Now I was sleeping on cold, marbled rock. Pine needles jabbed into my back.

I woke up and a cool hand brushed across my sweaty forehead. A familiar voice said, Wake up, my son. It was my
eomeoni,
so I followed her. We journeyed in reverse across the river and the barren mountains of our country, and back to our home in Pyongyang. The house invited and repelled, opened and closed. It opened again, and we were inside, gazing at another family's belongings: old-fashioned celadon vases showcased in the hall, a set of painted ceramic dolls, the portraits of our leaders dusted and prominently displayed in gold frames. No one was back from work or school and still the house echoed with bright, new voices. I felt betrayed.

“And look here,” Eomeoni said, and we were suddenly outside a mansion barricaded by gate upon gate. Tanks surrounded the perimeter, their great noses pivoting toward us until we were past the first gold-plated gate, past a golf course and ponds, a riding stable and a verdant forest with families of deer, then finally inside, under the light of a heavy chandelier.

“Look.” Eomeoni withdrew a gun from her sable coat. “Here is where your father died.”

I wasn't ready to die yet, so I left her and walked out.

I was walking in the dream in which I had awakened from a dream, and then I was only walking. I found myself in the common room, in its great white silence. The full moon seemed to step on my foot's shadow. Twice I whirled around, but there
was no one there, just the sensation of breath, the weight of heavy steps that seemed to pursue me.

I went to check on Jangmi, hesitating before looking in. Blankets were pushed into a corner in the shape of a body. The moonlight caught silver cobwebs tangled across the corners of the walls, dust rustled across the room, and there was Jangmi. Jangmi, on the ledge of the window whose plastic sheath she had sliced open with the kitchen scissors, her plastered leg already swung over the ledge, and the other tucked up to her chest, as she breathed in the night air. Her hair flamed blue in the moonlight. She looked peaceful, almost—happy. But her breath came in raspy huffs, as if someone were choking her. She swung the other leg over.

I stepped slowly across the gritty floor, dizzy, the room devouring me. She was so close—if only I could convince her to wait out the masquerade of the days and months until we were finally free to make the dangerous journey to a safe third country. Then one of her legs settled on the other side of the sill; for her there must have only been the reality of the ledge.

There was a hot hiss of liquid, and a musky smell rose from her. I caught a glimpse of her wet, trembling leg. She was afraid, of course she was afraid to jump. If I made a mistake, one more life would be lost.

“
Dongmu.
” I kept my voice a gentle harmony even as my heart thundered in my ears. “Take my hand. You've gotten this far.”

“You don't know what's happened to me. You're a man . . . you can't know . . .”

I thought of my
eomeoni,
my
dongsaeng,
and it hurt to breathe.

“It's two floors up. You'll be badly hurt, and you won't get what you want.”

She made small, shuddering animal pants. The shadows of trees danced across the walls and the wind breathed out, breathed in. Her foot, hands, and lips, her whole body was soaked blue with moonlight. A breeze gusted in, stilled.

“
Dongmu,
trust me.”

“Trust is what dead people do.” She sucked on a strand of hair caught on her lip. “I want to decide when I die.”

“You'll make it out of here, I promise.” Slowly, I stepped closer. “We'll make a way.”

In that room where time had slowed down, I finally took her by the waist and pulled her trembling body in.

“Just a little more, you're almost there. China's the worst part—everyone says that. We will get out,” I said. “We will.”

V
oices whirled outside my room, making shapes that I couldn't understand. The tin sheet of roof rattled with rain. I thought of calling out, suddenly scared of what I might do alone. I didn't trust myself anymore. I gazed at the torn window covering, the great gap into the rest of the world, and I tried to believe that the future still meant something.

This was what I believed: Men are animals. Everybody wants something from one another. Everything is an exchange.

I asked myself: What does Yongju want from me? The missionaries continued to talk. I tried and failed to sleep. Their sounds continued from down the hall as I felt my limbs, my hair against my shoulders. I was all there. My leg smelled of dried urine and my face was tight with dried tears. I disappointed myself. I expected to be stronger than this, for hadn't I given up my world for another?

I heard Missionary Lee say, “Yongju's right. This isn't working. If he hadn't seen her—we almost lost her.”

“Who decides what's going to work or not? It takes time.”

“The journalist was . . . a mistake.”

Their voices continued to drift in. Beside me was a basin of water and a cloth. Yongju had left it for me, and the thought made me feel like a dried-up apple. He had seen me so compromised. I washed my face, then scrubbed down my leg, though someone had already cleaned me up.

Missionary Kwon said, “We're giving them an incredible chance to walk hand in hand in a new life with God. You think the streets are better for them?”

I was so tired. Missionary Lee's voice dropped.

“You don't think I care?” Missionary Kwon asked. “I used to guide them, dodging police, slave traders, border guards. And you're telling
me
that we should send them all south right away because one girl tried to jump?”

“You've devoted your life to helping them,” Missionary Lee said. There was some mumbling, then, “We almost lost her.”

“What about their religious education? Saving their souls? You know the conversion rates drop steeply once they leave China.” There was pacing. “And who will sponsor us if we bring them in for a week or two, then let them go? Which church organization is stupid enough to do that? It's safety or nothing!”

“God will provide,” said Missionary Lee. “There are good people everywhere, but
good
is too simple a word to describe God. Maybe the more important question to ask ourselves is, Am I living a good life? A worthy life? We should be asking ourselves this right now.”

“Isn't that the clearest thing you've ever heard a Christian say?” Daehan's voice startled me.

Daehan was standing just outside the lantern's ring of light, and though his dislike of me was clear, I was grateful not to be alone.

He hunched down to my level and cupped his hand to my ear. “They're talking about you.”

“I know.”

“I'm only here because Yongju asked me to keep an eye on you.”

As the voices continued to rise, he frantically grabbed handfuls of his hair with both hands. He said he'd been told to board up my window but thought I should have fresh air. He talked about reading the stars the way the ancients had and how he wished we could see the stars that would map our way. Then he gripped my hand.

“Don't give up,
nuna
.” His voice was as fervent as his grip. “It's a mistake to give up. I promise I'll get us out of here.”

Fatigue overwhelmed me. I wondered if my baby would have been like Daehan, always feeling too much. Or calm, like her
abeoji,
who would always have his way.

The murmurs became shouts.

“This is my life's work. Don't waste my time any longer. Get out.”

“Listen—”

“Get out. Get out!”

Missionary Lee entered my room and, with a faltering smile, kissed me on the forehead. Then he grimaced, as if a hand had
reached in and squeezed his heart, and toppled sideways to the floor. I drew back from his straw-colored flesh; Daehan shouted for help and the others rushed to the missionary's side.

Missionary Lee murmured, “I'm fine, it's just a little dizziness.” His breath was shallow, his forehead sticky with sweat.

Daehan said, “He needs a doctor!”

“I'm perfectly fine, no need for the fuss.” The missionary rubbed at his chest.

Within minutes I heard the front door open and the stairs echo with footsteps.

 • • • 

My window was sealed with wood, and slivers of light came in through the slats by the time I woke up. I longed for the sun-covered hill of my village, for the way my
eomma
and I peeled hot potatoes in winter. The heat, I told myself, was responsible for how weak I had become. I crawled out from under the blanket, trying to believe that yesterday was merely the past and everything before that even more distant from me. When Yongju leaned toward me, his face as slender as candlelight, I drew back onto the
yo.

“Have you been sitting here watching me all night?” I was sure of it.

“Only till this morning.” He flexed his feet as if they were numb.

“What happened to Missionary Lee?”

His hand brushed gently across my eyelids, closing them. “I don't know, but,
nuna,
I'll be here, if you need me.”

“I don't need anyone.” I pulled the thin blanket over my head. But I listened for his movements.

When I dared to look out again, Yongju was slouched against the wall, his fingers picking precisely through the Bible's pages as if they were the taut strings of a
gayageum
. But he wasn't reading; his dark eyes were resting on me. I turned away. Caring about someone was another weakness and I couldn't afford to be weak again.

I hobbled out of the room alone, avoiding the arm he offered me. Daehan darted in once I left, as if he had been outside listening.

The briny smell of the common room made me gag. The others were sprawled and tense in the stifling room. Their every sentence concerned what would happen when Missionary Kwon returned and whether they would finally be sent to a safe country. Their tension shocked me awake, and I flipped through some books from the shelf, the words just pictures to me as I thought about the few choices I had left. Until voices rose from talking to shouting, and Cheolmin slapped Gwangsu across the head.

“Get out of my sight,” he said. “You make me sick.”

Gwangsu cringed and crawled away on his knees.

Bakjun said, “If I don't get out of here, I'm gonna lose my mind. I'm gonna kill someone. Or maybe I'll jump out of the window.”

He looked alarmed as he glanced my way, as if he'd forgotten I was there.

They huddled together, speaking in low voices, until Yongju came out.

Yongju said, “What is it?”

Cheolmin stuck a wad of gum under the
saang
. “Nothing, nothing.”

“Just waiting for Missionary Kwon,” Bakjun said, “like everyone else.”

Yongju stopped in front of them and gave them a long look. “Are you boys hiding something from me? Troubles already multiplying.”

“Now we're not even allowed to talk?” A tear ran down Cheolmin's cheek before he angrily wiped it away. “What is this place? Missionary Kwon, and now you?”

When Missionary Kwon returned the following day, I took in his rumpled linen trousers and his shoes still caked with mud, and became anxious. Yongju took the garment bag and suitcase from him, then beat the shoes against the door with his free hand.

“You boys been good?”

Cheolmin said, “What else is there to be here?”

Namil said, “Where's Missionary Lee?”

“It was a heart attack, not Missionary Lee's first, it seems. He had to have double bypass surgery. He's very lucky to be alive.”

“You mean Missionary Lee isn't coming back?” Yongju dropped the shoes.

“No, probably not. But that tough old snail will be okay.
God was watching out for him.” Missionary Kwon patted Yongju on the back. “You could say his heart sent him a stern warning.”

“What will happen to us?” Hope flared in Yongju's voice, but I knew better than to hope.

“You'll be moved to new safe houses in the next few weeks where my people can be with you full-time,” Missionary Kwon said. “In the meantime I'll be completely available to you here.”

In front of me was another safe house, another bare cell of a room. Like a rock, I would be worn down by the wind and the sand in this country that had taken everything from me. I thought of my
eomma
. Maybe she blamed my
abba,
then me, before retreating into a medicated haze. I thought of how easily I had left her, how I could never take that back.

Cheolmin hurled a slipper at the plastic-covered window. “What kind of scam is this?”

“This is my establishment and my rules.” Missionary Kwon unlocked the door and swept it open. “If any of you want to leave, anytime, feel free. You're not a prisoner here.”

The boys' voices rose in protest, but no one walked out.

The missionary looked fiercely at us. “How do you understand God's will? You can't understand, you merely accept.”

The will to live is stronger than hope, and I made my decision before I knew there was a choice to be made. Maybe I would have decided differently if Missionary Lee had been with us.

The day I was to have my cast removed, Missionary Kwon drove me to the doctor's house, an hour's drive away. It was the first Western-style house I had ever seen.

I had visited this confused house that first terrible time, but only now was I able to see it. Missionary Kwon's hand curved around my waist, his touch an electric shock. “Come,” he urged, and steered me into the house.

The back room where I'd been treated before was cluttered with reproductions of paintings and souvenirs from the doctor's travels. Travel, something beyond my understanding. The doctor directed a blur of questions at me, then told me to sit on a long raised bed. While he cut open the cast with an angrily buzzing machine, he kept flashing his pink, fleshy gums and gold fillings at me as if a smile could make everything better. I had lost my family, my country, my unborn baby. Where were the smiles in that? I thought of Yongju's face, how it carried its sadness so plainly, how it comforted.

“All this big country,” Missionary Kwon said afterward in the car. The wind carried his words out the window into the green hills. “How do you feel?”

“I feel safe with you.” My words came automatically. I knew what men needed to hear.

I knew he needed to be needed by us. And we did need him, he who put food on our table every day and had paid for my escape, who decided when we would be allowed to make the last dangerous crossing. But he couldn't bring my baby back. In that sense there was nothing he could give me.

But that wasn't true, either. When he said suddenly, “Your child is with God,” I was filled with gratitude.

I asked, “Is that your son?”

He nodded at the photo hanging from the mirror.

“How old is he?”

He smiled briefly. “Only fourteen, and he already speaks better English than I ever did. He's taking English, taekwondo. And he's already a black belt.”

“And your wife?”

His eyes lingered on my face, and I felt his interest rise.

“He's with his
eomma
in Seoul. We're no longer married. Let's just say it's a difficult situation.”

On the drive back, he stopped in town to pick up a carton of ice cream from a small corner shop. When he got out, his eyes darted left and right as if he was the hunted one.

Once the road became an empty road to nowhere, soybean fields on both sides, he kept glancing my way. His clean, earthy smell reminded me of newly churned farmland. He had desirably pale skin and wasn't a bad-looking man, though he was thick in the waist and had large yellowed teeth. I took stock as I dipped into the carton of mint chocolate chip, its sweetness so bruising that it stung my tongue. Holy men were still men.

Then he said, “I recently got someone to South Korea.” As if he knew precisely what to say to me.

“To South Korea.”

“Yes, through my people. I'm capable of doing that, and more.” He seemed awed by who he had become.

“Why did she get to go?”

He slowed the car. “What makes you think it's a she?”

I considered his hand, that mighty hand that I swore would be the last in the sequence of hands in my life. I wished all those hands to be dismembered, strung up, hung on a laundry line to dry and shrivel in the sun.

Instead I drifted my hand to his thigh, and waited. I did what I had to do to live.

 • • • 

I didn't know then that Daehan had called his mother and that people outside of Missionary Kwon's organization were starting to move and work for us. I was too used to thinking of myself as alone.

It happened the way I expected. The next night Missionary Kwon walked quietly into my room. He was dressed the way he always was, in a dress shirt, jacket, and slacks. The man seemed to sleep in uniform, so determined to preserve this upright image of himself. He had me follow him to the front door, turned the key, and led me outside into the monsoon rains. I ignored the large umbrella he held out and descended the slippery steps, letting the rain cleanse me. The mud sucked at my slippers and water turned my nightdress into a river. I was alert and ready until I smelled the sweetness of my breasts becoming moist with milk, and my weak leg buckled despite the walking stick. He gripped me by the shoulders and helped me into the backseat of the car. Water pooled under me. As he unzipped his slacks, I prepared myself.

“It's a solitary life, a hard life for any man, even a religious man.” His face was half in shadow. He tossed his tie over his shoulder. “You seem to understand that about me.”