Every Falling Star

by Sungju Lee

  I lay down on my mat, gasping for air.

  “What happened?” my mother asked.

  I jumped, despite her voice that cooed softly like a dove’s.

  “Shush, shush,” she said, sitting down beside me and rubbing my forehead.

  “Y-y-you’re home early,” I spluttered.

  “What’s the matter? You’re upset about something?”

  “I … at school … I … ,” I began, but I wasn’t clear. I was struggling to breathe, taking in big gulps of air. “We went … to … an execution … ,” I somehow eventually managed to get out.

  My mother moaned and knelt down beside me. “Your father and I wanted to protect you from that,” she said, her voice heavy, as if a rain cloud had moved on top of her.

  “Why didn’t we see these things in Pyongyang?”

  My mother shook her head.

  “Why didn’t you tell me people were being executed out in public like this, for crimes … that seem so …”

  “Petty?” she asked. I nodded. “Your father and I wanted to protect you,” she repeated.

  “What else are you protecting me from?”

  My mother shook her head again. “Nothing,” she whispered, but I didn’t believe her.

  “Is it true what the boys at school say? Is Joseon starving? Are people doing things—wrong things—because they’re desperate to eat?”

  My mother’s eyes filled with tears. She tried to look away, but I touched her face ever so lightly, enough to force her to look at me.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “Yes,” my mother muttered.

  “But we have food!” Lots of food, I thought.

  “Only because we have won that your father has saved from Pyongyang.” I could hear the knot in her throat as she talked. I could feel the knot in mine forming. I wanted to believe Chulho and Young-bum were the ones lying, not my parents.

  I studied my mother’s face: her eyes, which were lined in dark circles and creased in the corners with wrinkles she didn’t have a few months earlier; her cheeks, which were sinking into her mouth, making her cheekbones look severe. She was no longer young or like that sunset. Something about her was changing.

  “Your father didn’t want you to know,” she said slowly, covering her mouth and talking in a low voice. “He wanted you to feel safe. He’s buying food at the markets with won he saved from his job in Pyongyang.”

  I heard heavy footsteps approaching the front door. “Abeoji!” I exclaimed. “Eomeoni, I need to know. Please tell me. We’re not on vacation. Why did we leave Pyongyang?”

  “Don’t tell him we spoke,” my mother whispered, ignoring my question. She jumped up, wiped her eyes, and smoothed down her black cotton top and slacks. “Men in Joseon are measured by their position and loyalty to the government,” she said as she pulled me to my feet and brushed my hair with her fingers. “Your father is seen as a failure now. But he can bear all those bad looks and all the gossip … He can bear it all, except for one thing.”

  “What?” I whispered as we heard the door latch.

  “The thought of you thinking of him as a failure, too,” she whispered back.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Every time I neared sleep, the image of one of the dead prisoners popped into my head. I’d hear the gunshots as if I were still on the execution field, and I’d sit bolt upright. All I could think about was what my father could have possibly done to lead to his fall from a very tall ladder. He didn’t travel, at least not in the past few years, so there was no way he could have told our enemies military secrets. He went to work every weekday; he took part in all his required party activities. He loved and was devoted to Joseon.

  “What did he do?” I found myself asking out loud.

  The next day at school, I was so tired I wanted to slip under my desk and sleep. I pinched my legs hard to wake myself up. Young-bum noticed, leaned over, and asked me if I was all right. I waved him off. I didn’t want him to know that I was confused and upset and that, well, maybe he and Chulho had been telling me the truth all along.

  As the weeks wore on, I began to sit and listen to Chulho, Young-bum, and their friends during our breaks, hearing about their struggles to find food. Chulho talked about how the forests were a great place to catch chipmunks. “There are so many,” he said, “that no matter how many hungry people trample the ground up there, there are always more chipmunks.”

  “And they taste like chicken,” Young-bum said, beaming.

  I shuddered.

  I was pretending to read my book when I overheard Young-bum tell some of the boys at school that his mother had died and that his father had left a few months earlier in search of food. He hadn’t returned.

  Every week when I took attendance as student council president, at least five more children had disappeared. Some I saw return a few days or weeks later. Most never showed up again, though.

  One day, when the azaleas had begun to wilt and the begonias now colored the grasses, Chulho and I found ourselves alone together under a giant weeping willow on the school grounds. I put down my textbook about Kim Il-sung’s childhood that I wasn’t really reading anyway and asked him haphazardly if he knew where the students were going.

  “Some of the girls are being married off to old Chinese men—some old enough to be their grandfathers,” he replied in a tone of voice that made me feel as though I were the only one who didn’t know this.

  “Why?” I asked. I was finally going to take his bait. I was finally prepared to hear his stories. Believe them, though? That was something else.

  “Families can get a lot of won for selling girls to Chinese men. The family might even get food sent back across the border if the husband is good.”

  Chulho then spat a huge gob of saliva as far as he could.

  “And what about the boys?” I asked, spitting, too, trying to act cool.

  “They become slave laborers on farms or in mines in China … farms and mines owned by Koreans—Koreans who have lived in China since before the Japanese army invaded the Korean Peninsula.”

  “Huh,” I said, scratching my forehead. I was thinking to myself, Shouldn’t these Korean people in China be nicer to Koreans coming from here?

  “You do know that there are many Koreans in China, families and descendants of people who moved there during the Japanese era, right? Kim Il-sung started his guerrilla army in China, you know. Those Korean people the Chinese government considers citizens,” Chulho pressed on, as if reading my mind and knowing what I was thinking. “But Koreans coming from Joseon … the Chinese view them as criminals. Chinese police hunt us down, beat us up, and then send us back to Joseon, where we’re beaten again and sent to jails and …” His voice trailed off. He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. “The Chinese hate us,” he eventually continued. “We’re like rats to them. They do everything they can to exterminate us if we step over onto their side of the border. In fact, everyone hates us—the West, the South, even Pyongyang. Those fat people in the capital would like to pretend everyone outside the city doesn’t exist.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I was book-smart. But the truth? If what Chulho said was half true, I knew nothing.

  “Lots of people outside of Pyongyang are now trying to go to China to connect with family who have lived there since before liberation,” Chulho continued, as if somehow he knew to just keep talking, to give me more information, that he was my new teacher. “Joseon people trade things, like dried pollack and squid from the coast, dried herbs, mushrooms, and metal. If they can sell enough, earn enough won in China, they can live a good life in North Korea, bribing police and border guards to let them go back and forth across the river. They can even start regular businesses. It’s only the poor who are doomed in Joseon. The poor who can’t afford to bribe officials. It’s the poor we see executed. Never the rich.”

  Chulho and I sat for a long while in silence. At one point I closed my eyes and tilted my head up to catch the warm ray
s of the sun. As I did so, I listened to the calls of some thrush and starlings. I thought of eomeoni and abeoji and when they took me to the State Symphony Orchestra at the Grand Theater in Pyongyang. As I drifted further into my thoughts, I could even hear the violin concerto dedicated to our eternal father that played that night.

  For a moment, just a brief moment, I forgot where I was and realized I didn’t remember much of Pyongyang, except things like going to the symphony. In fact, I wondered if I’d ever lived there at all, even though I’d been here, in Gyeong-seong, for only a few months. But then I remembered something about Pyongyang, making it real again. One midsummer, when I was maybe six, my maternal grandfather, hal-abeoji, stayed with us. One afternoon, when the sky turned black and the air suddenly stopped moving, he said to me: “Have you not noticed that right before a storm, the leaves stop wrestling against the wind, the birds no longer sing their lullabies, and time stops moving forward?” Before I could answer, thunder groaned in the distance, and lightning flashed across the sky.

  The wistful, hazy days of summer soon fell over Gyeong-seong. At first, I was too intoxicated by the heat and humidity and the country scents of leaves and fresh-cut grasses to notice that our meals had largely become cheap corn rice.

  I realized for the first time that I was hungry when the August full moon hung low in the sky. I was on school holiday, not doing much of anything except listening to Chulho and Young-bum. My father had taken a break from work, too, and I went with him as he met with neighbors and hiked the forest paths.

  An ache had formed in my stomach, a wanting, a yearning, a desire that could not be filled. As I’d lick my bowls dry of all broth, my insides were still crying out for more. For entire mornings, I’d sit under the willow tree in the school yard and watch the swallows skirting from tree branch to tree branch. Other times, though, I’d have so much energy I’d run up and down the mountains, getting exercise to replace the tae kwon do I was no longer doing. Every third or fourth day, Young-bum and I would slink off into the fields and lift rocks as weights, hoping to become like our classmate Mingook, whose body was agile and strong.

  One night just days before school was to start again, I made a bonfire outside our home. Abeoji, eomeoni, and I roasted some corn, fresh and still in its husk. Afterward, abeoji and I lingered behind, watching the embers turn blue.

  “I’m only going to work two days a week to make sure I am there for self-criticism and to take part in party meetings,” he said just as I was about to call it a night and head to bed. I stopped dead in my tracks and turned slowly. My father was still staring into the fire. But he must have known I was looking at him, for he pressed on.

  “There are no rations. It’s a waste of time for me to even show up.”

  I swallowed hard as I sat back down beside my father on a dead tree trunk we had pulled up together from the riverbank earlier in the day.

  Eomeoni sat down beside me and told me next that she, too, was only going to work two days a week.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked when they had both finished speaking. I suddenly remembered something else from Pyongyang. Hal-abeoji had also told me during that visit when I was about six that inside ourselves we already know the things that will happen to us in life. We spend our days just waiting for them to be revealed. I felt that now more than ever. I had been expecting this conversation.

  “On the days we don’t work, your mother and I are going to the forests to pick and hunt for food, like small animals and herbs, fungus and wild vegetables,” abeoji continued. I thought of the squirrel Chulho was eating the day I met him. I felt a chill.

  “I want to come with you,” I said, surprising even myself.

  I waited for my father’s response. Nothing.

  “There’s no point in my going back to school,” I continued. “I’ve already learned everything they teach there.”

  “You need to study,” my mother finally cut in.

  “No,” I said quietly. “I need food, not knowledge.” I was shaking now, for I had never defied my parents before.

  My mother began to sob, and my father breathed heavily. I started to tremble. But I wasn’t going to back down. “Eomeoni. Abeoji,” I began, this time slowly and trying to remain calm. “The boys at school—they come and go. They earn won with their families. They catch their own squirrels, mice, and, well, anything, anything, that they can eat. Take me with you. I want to help us find food.”

  The next day, I headed to the market with my Korean language and geometry textbooks under my arm. My plan was to trade the books for tofu, cabbage, and corn oil.

  As I crossed the Ha-myeon Bridge onto the gravel road that led into the market, I saw Chulho sitting off to the side. As I neared, he looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, his face lined in dark shadows and peppered with stubble.

  “I’ve never asked,” I said, stopping in front of him. “Do you sleep outside?”

  “Yeah, sometimes,” he said, rubbing his head. “My mom and dad—well, same story as everyone else. They left to find food … didn’t come back. What are you doing, Pyongyang fancy-pants?” He pointed to my books.

  “Selling these,” I said, sitting down beside him. We faced the road, looking out at the merchants heading into the market to sell their goods.

  “So the fancy-pants Pyongyang family has finally fallen on hard times,” he said dryly.

  I shrugged. “I guess so.” No point escaping the truth anymore. “Chulho, my friend,” I said, wrapping an arm around him. “We’ve been on hard times since we left that fancy-pants city.”

  We both laughed.

  “Why did you leave Pyongyang?” he asked next. “I mean, the entire town has their ideas, but none of us knows for sure.”

  “I don’t know,” I said with another shrug. I really didn’t know.

  “Someone will use the pages of those books for toilet paper or fire kindling or women will plug up their monthly cycles,” Chulho explained, pointing to my books again.

  “Imagine that,” I said, holding up my Korean language book. “Our mamas can study while they go to the washroom.”

  “School is a luxury for the kids who are fat,” Chulho added.

  Just then I spied Mingook trudging up the road like a tank. He was whistling “We Are Kid Scouts,” the song from the cartoon Squirrel and Hedgehog. I shook my head. “No matter how much Young-bum and I try, we will never be in shape like this guy,” I said with a groan as Mingook spied us, waved, and started heading our way. “How does he keep so fit?”

  Chulho grunted. “He used to make money as a pull-cart operator. He also carried his mother, who just died from a hunger disease. For more than a year, his mom couldn’t walk, and he would carry her everywhere.”

  Mingook sat down and pulled out from underneath his shirt a twisted bread stick. My mouth began to water.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked. He broke the bread into three pieces and handed one to me. I popped it into my mouth and sucked on it, letting it dissolve slowly. I hadn’t tasted anything so good in a long time.

  “At the market,” Mingook replied with a wide smile. “I sold some of my mother’s pots and pans. After I bought corn rice and eggs, as well as some alcohol for my father, I, well … I got me some dessert.” He ate his piece more slowly, dotting the front of his shirt with bread crumbs.

  Chulho turned away from the road and lit up a smoke.

  “Don’t,” I said, swatting the cigarette away from his hand. “You’ll get into trouble for being a kid smoking in public.”

  “Trust me,” he said, rolling his eyes and picking up the cigarette. “The party leaders in Gyeong-seong have way more to worry about than me smoking in a public place.”

  “But what will people think?” I asked, truly aghast. I mean, what could come next up here?

  “Trust me,” Chulho repeated, using the same sarcastic tone. “People have a lot more to worry about than me smoking in a public place. Nobody, fancy-pants Pyongyang boy, cares! Now leave m
e to smoke alone in peace.”

  I sighed and turned back to Mingook. “How did you sell your things? I mean, do you just walk into the market and hold the items up, waiting for someone to approach you?”

  “No,” Mingook replied. “You go up to people and ask them if they want to buy what you’re selling. But be careful not to hold what you’re selling too loose. Someone will grab them from you. Lots of thieves in the market. What are you selling?” he then asked.

  I held up the books. He hummed. “I sold mine last winter. The school doesn’t seem to care that students don’t hand the books back anymore at the end of the school year. Everyone kind of knows where they’re going. I didn’t buy the bun,” he then added, as if I had asked. “I lifted it from the woman who’d sold me the eggs.”

  I gasped. “Aren’t you afraid of stealing? I mean, you could go to prison,” I said.

  Mingook and Chulho looked at each other and then sighed.

  “People expect stealing now,” Chulho said in that voice again, as if I were a small child and not very bright. “Sure, if we’re caught, we could be in trouble. But … well … what else are we supposed to do?”

  Too many thoughts were swimming around in my head: kids smoking, kids stealing …

  “I’ve quit school,” I said, feeling I had to change the subject or else I’d end up with one major headache.

  “We all knew it was just a matter of time,” Chulho said, patting me on the back, as if welcoming me to his club. “I have, too. May as well enjoy what time we have left on this planet. Walk on the wild side before you die.”

  “We’re not going to die,” I scoffed. But as I said this, I had that sinking feeling again that I already knew this wasn’t true.

  Chulho chuckled. “You think so? I buried my younger brother a week ago,” he said with no emotion, no sadness, no regrets. It just was.

  “Why didn’t you tell me—us—your classmates?” I exclaimed. “I would have come by and paid my respects.”

  “Are you joking?” Chulho said, blowing rings of smoke into the air. This time he wasn’t laughing.