Every Falling Star

by Sungju Lee

  “Why do you think my mother didn’t take me with her?” I asked timidly. Another question I didn’t really want the answer to, but I felt I needed to know.

  “Because it’s too dangerous. She’d have to hitch rides with farmers. She was afraid, as she should be, that you might be caught by the Shangmoo.”

  “Shangmoo?”

  “You’ve never heard of the 9.27 Shangmoo?” he asked, staring at me wide-eyed. I grunted no. “On September 27, the government formed the Shangmoo, a band of police to collect people who are not at home or at school and take them to shelters. Every city has a force of these 9.27 Shangmoo, except maybe Pyongyang, because you’re like the golden perfect city in the sky, with golden perfect people who all have homes and who never do anything wrong. But everywhere else, there are so many kids not at school, adults hunting for food … the Shangmoo’s job is to clean the streets of these people. The Shangmoo send the people they find to so-called shelters—the adults to one place, the kids to another. But these are not nice places. They’re guhoso, jails. On the streets, we call the Shangmoo the cleaners, because that’s what they do. They rid Joseon of its dirty people.”

  “Where are you taking me?” I demanded, afraid he was taking me to the prison. Maybe he was one of these so-called cleaners.

  “Here,” he said, stopping. We were standing at the edge of the market.

  “Look,” he then said, speaking slowly and softly, as if he were the one in pain, not me, “it’s just my grandmother and me now. Aunt lives a few towns away from here, and her husband left for China and never came back, just like our dads. Aunt sells coal, and when she sells enough, she brings food for my grandmother. But that’s not often. I have to steal food to sell to buy medicine to keep my grandmother alive. I can’t … ,” he began, then stopped.

  “You can’t what?”

  “I can’t look after you. This is your kitchen now,” Young-bum said, waving an arm around the market. I followed his hand and looked into the tired eyes of the vendors, eyes that no longer reflected light. The men were wrinkled, sunken, and walking around on bowlegs; the children had runny noses, swollen stomachs, and open sores; the women, who like my own eomeoni, I could tell from their fine features and graceful movements, had been beautiful once like swans, until their skin became first pallid from malnutrition and then blue from dirt and their hair began to fall out.

  “At least you’re alive,” Young-bum whispered.

  “Am I?” I grunted, then added: “My grandfather, that grandfather who isn’t looking for me, told me when I was little that our nightmares always seem real. Maybe … ,” I whispered, but Young-bum didn’t hear. He had already left.

  I finished my sentence anyway. “Maybe I died a long time ago, and this is just my nightmare.”

  I moved to the side of the market and sat down on a piece of cardboard. I then spent hours thinking, looking out at nothing through dazed, disbelieving eyes, trying to make sense of all that was happening to me. I eventually gave up and focused on the market instead. Almost all the vendors, who had set up tables and were selling goods from dried fish to electronics, were men, often with a woman, perhaps a wife, helping them. Women without men walked around, in and out of the stalls, selling prepared foods, such as fried tofu, twisted bread sticks, and hard-boiled eggs, from baskets they held close.

  About midmorning, I spied some boys around my age, but some older. While their clothes were grease-stained, tattered, and dirty like those of the merchants, their skin and hair were healthy. Their bodies were filled out, too, not skeletal. They walked in and out of the market stalls with a confidence that I sure didn’t feel.

  I studied them closely and saw that they moved around the market like a wolf pack. One member of the group, a boy not much taller than me, reached up and opened a bag a woman wore draped down her back. Without her knowledge, he slipped his slender fingers inside and withdrew a small pouch.

  My eyes trailed the boy as he walked at a normal pace out of the market until he eventually disappeared, heading in the direction of the train station. I turned my attention back to the woman. She still had not noticed she’d been robbed.

  It was the aroma of baking bread that lured me to get up and walk around. I made my way behind a small table, on which some fresh bread had been placed underneath a fishing net. Blackflies fought one another on top of the netting.

  “Please, may I have one?” I turned to ask the woman. But no words came out. I had never begged before. I lowered my head in shame and blushed. I wanted to tell this woman that I was from Pyongyang, to assure her that if she knew me, I would pay her back if she would feed me now. I wanted her to know that I was a good son, a future general, and that I needed someone to help me, as the Koreans had helped our eternal leader on his childhood march from Manchuria back to his hometown, Mangyeongdae.

  She stared at me through lost eyes, waiting, I guess, for me to speak. Instead, I turned and skulked away, back to the side of the market where other boys like me, their faces downcast and their bodies disappearing in their oversize clothes, sat on cardboard boxes or on the bare ground and waited for someone to help them.

  People walked in front of me, back and forth. I looked up and into their faces, hoping that someone would give me something to eat. But no one even looked at me. I had never felt so ashamed in my life as I sat there waiting for a handout that never came. At dusk, I gave up, closed my eyes, and prayed silently for Chilseong and shan-shin-ryong-nim to help me.

  Then I smelled it again: the scent of fresh baked bread, and it was drawing near. I opened my eyes to find the woman standing in front of me, holding out a twisted bun. “Here,” she said, pushing it toward me.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying to pull myself up to bow. But she pushed my shoulders and me back down.

  “I want you to leave,” she said, kneeling down and leaning in real close. “You’re scaring customers away. Don’t come back tomorrow, dirty kotjebi.”

  I tried to tell her that I didn’t know what a kotjebi was. But she was gone, fast, just as Young-bum had left me, turning quickly and escaping back to a safer life than mine.

  When night fell, bringing with it heavy clouds and a cool wind, I looked around for some plastic sheeting I could pull over on top of me to keep me warm. There was nothing. Some of the merchants were from out of town, so they slept in the market. As these merchants lit their fires, I lay my head down on the dusty ground. Tiny pebbles dug their way into my cheeks, but I was too tired and hungry to care. I fell asleep.

  About midnight, I felt a sharp kick and then a deep, gruff voice chortled right up and into my ear: “Get out of here.”

  I pulled open my eyes, which were still swollen and sticky with puss, and stared up into the faces of two old men, both reeking of alcohol and urine. The men began pinching and poking me, telling me to get up. For a few seconds I didn’t move. Then I coughed up some phlegm.

  “At least he’s alive,” the huskier of the two men said. The other man was stick-thin, all bones.

  “Where is your house?” the bone-man asked. He was now leaning down and feeling my forehead to see if I was sick. I slapped his hand away.

  “You can’t stay here,” he growled. “Go home or else the Shangmoo will take you away. Only merchants are allowed to be here at night.”

  “Just take me to the guhoso. Don’t wait for the Shangmoo,” I hissed, tired and fed up.

  The men stood back and laughed. “The guhoso is a killing field,” the skinnier of the two said. “Kids go in and never come out.”

  “It’s full of disease and death,” the huskier man said. “Go home … go anywhere except stay here. Kotjebi can’t sleep in this market.”

  There was that word again. Kotjebi. “What does kotjebi mean?” I asked, trying to pull myself up. The slimmer of the two men saw me struggling and gave me a hand.

  “A kotjebi is a boy who lives on the street, stupid,” the huskier man snapped. He then pinched my earlobe hard to get me to turn around and start
walking away. I planted my feet.

  “I’m not a street boy,” I mumbled. “My parents have gone away to find food. I am from a good family, party members. Can you help me?”

  The men put their hands on their hips and started laughing again. “Every kotjebi has the same story,” the heavyset man finally said.

  “Here is the hierarchy out here,” the slim man said. “Army is on the top. You’ll only see them if you try to steal from certain government farms. Then the police, followed by the Shangmoo. Then there are workers, followed by merchants, followed by you, kotjebi. There is only one group of people lower than you.”

  “What is that?” I asked nervously.

  “The nightflowers,” he hissed. The two men then started howling and laughing again, loudly, like wolves, a cacophony that moved across the market.

  “I have nowhere to go,” I said shyly.

  The men suddenly stopped laughing. For a moment I felt as if everyone were staring at me, like on the first day of school. Then they started howling again, along with a bunch of other market men.

  I staggered away from the men at that point, out of the market and along the gravel road, tripping every so often on my tired feet, as if it were I who was drunk. I was halfway up a small hill, panting, keeling over from nausea and a sharp cramp in my side, not really sure where I was going, when I stopped. There was a bend in the road that overlooked a clearing. I walked up to it and looked down a sharp rock face. I could fall off here, I thought. And die. “Death will solve all my problems,” I whispered out loud.

  My feet inched toward the edge of the precipice. I took a deep breath and counted to ten.

  But then I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t jump.

  I looked up at the waning moon poking out from behind a rain cloud. “Why?” I yelled as some rays caressed the fields of the government potato farm, the same farm where my mother once worked.

  I felt so far away from beauty, stuck in the shadows of a nightmare, unable to find my way into the light.

  “Why?” I shouted again.

  I couldn’t go back to my house. There was no food. I could die there. Worse, no one would know I was dead, and I wouldn’t have a proper burial.

  I had no choice. I headed back to the only place I knew.

  Young-bum kicked me hard in my left leg when I pushed the door open and fell into his house like a bouncing ball for the second time in less than three days.

  “Don’t be angry. Don’t be cross,” I spluttered as I crumpled to the floor. “I’ve nowhere to go except the guhoso, where the men in the market say diseases run rampant.”

  “I told you that kids die there,” he snapped. “Not that you ever listen to me.”

  “I do, I do! I do now,” I pleaded. “Please let me stay here, and I will help you look after your grandmother,” I said, thinking fast, hoping to convince Young-bum that if I stayed, I could be an asset. “I’ll help you steal.”

  Young-bum crossed his arms and glared at me. “At least some of your swelling has gone down,” he growled at me.

  “Look,” I pressed on. “I’ve spent the past day observing the market. The only people who pass through who look at all like they’re surviving are the kotjebi … the kotjebi who work in teams. The kotjebi who are alone, like me, move like yu-ryeong, along the sides … We don’t have much of a chance, as we’re all just waiting for people to help us, and, of course, no one does. But those kotjebi who join forces—they seem to thrive. They are strong and healthy. Together we can make a team and care for each other and your grandmother.”

  Young-bum sighed, threw his hands in the air, and walked to where his grandmother lay. Still looking at me, he lowered his head and whispered something into her ear.

  She raised her head and mumbled something back. Young-bum nodded.

  “Okay, we’ll try,” he said to me. I exhaled. “My grandmother says we don’t have extra food, so you feed yourself,” he continued. “Here’s the deal. If we only have enough food for one person, my grandmother comes first, always. Agreed?”

  “Yes,” I replied with a weak smile.

  “There’s more,” he added. “If you die, I leave you out on the street.”

  I had no choice. I had to agree to that, too.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  “I know what you’re saying about forming a team … a gang,” Young-bum said the next morning as we shared the last remaining potato, which we ate with a broth he had made from dandelion roots. “I joined a gang after my mother died. The Jjacdari-pa gang. My gang taught me how to steal, but I got beaten up. That’s how I lost my tooth—remember?—and kicked out for keeping some of the money I stole for myself. I was supposed to share everything with them. That is the gang rule. I needed the money to buy my grandmother’s pills. Look.” He pulled out a small leather pouch from his back pocket. He placed it on the ground and slowly spread it open. Inside was a ring-nal, a razor blade, like the one my father used to shave himself.

  “Where did you get that?” I gasped. Since we arrived in Gyeong-seong, razors were hard to find. My father had shaved with a sharp knife.

  “Stole it … when I was part of the gang.” Young-bum picked it up. “Woosh woosh,” he said as he flung it through the air. “I go up behind women in the market, cut a small hole in their bags, and steal their wallets and purses.”

  I thought of the kotjebi I’d seen at the market stealing. I then thought of the woman he stole from. When I put a face to the victim, my heart sank. “Young-bum,” I whispered. “The people kotjebi steal from are starving, too. They might have children at home like us. They could be mothers—our mothers—and by stealing from them, their own children might go hungry.”

  Young-bum fell quiet. “If I think about that, I’ll die,” he finally said in a contemplative tone. “Morality is a great song a person sings when he or she has never been hungry. You can walk the noble road, Sungju. But if you die because of it, nobody will remember you were a noble person. Just a fool. Our enemy is death now. You know how Kim Il-sung said that children are the kings and queens of the nation?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think this is not true. If it were true, we wouldn’t be starving.”

  “You shouldn’t say such things about the regime,” I warned, still fearful of defying my government, including by speaking bad about it in public.

  Young-bum laughed. “This is why those fat cats in Pyongyang liked you so much,” he said, tickling me. “You’re a coward. You’re … What’s the word? Compliant. Easy. If your life hadn’t taken a different turn, you would have made a perfect general. You’d do whatever they asked of you, without thinking twice.”

  I stared at him for the longest time, my face growing hot as anger bubbled up inside me. He was right, of course. Even now, if my government asked me to do something, I would do it. I’m not sure exactly with whom I was most upset: Young-bum or the regime.

  Young-bum stopped smiling. “Look, those Pyongyang people care only about their own power,” he continued. “You were being raised to be one of their military officers, not because you were good but because you obeyed. But whether you saw it or not, your job, if you had been successful in becoming a general, would have been to protect their interests, no doubt about it. And one of their interests is to suppress people like me.”

  I didn’t want to think anymore. I had a pounding headache.

  “Let’s go to the market,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s just get on with it.”

  I skirted around vendors and the women hawking their steamed bread and candies, struggling to follow Young-bum through the market. He was very quick on his feet.

  At midmorning, when the market was at its most crowded and the din of people bartering over prices was at its loudest, Young-bum stopped and flicked his fingers, indicating for me to stand back. I did and then followed him with my eyes. He was on the tail of a middle-aged woman carrying a plate of steaming buns. A fabric bag, similar to my own and stitched together from old clothes, was slung over her
shoulders and fell low by her side.

  I didn’t move as Young-bum stalked her like a wolf does a wapiti. When he was right behind her, he used that double-bladed razor to slice a hole in the front of her bag. He then slipped his slender fingers into the bag and drew out some contents, including a small purse. He then spun around on his heels and walked back toward me. As he passed me, he didn’t make eye contact, but I could see the corners of his lips go up in a weak smile. He kept right on walking like the other kotjebi thief had, out of the market, nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t just stolen from someone.

  My mouth watered looking around at all the food: dried pollack from the East Sea, kimchi laid out in paper bowls, and rice cakes with sesame seeds, the aroma of which made me remember my recurring dream of abeoji’s return from China. I soon started to feel weak again, this time not from my illness but from hunger. I’d learned something about hunger in the past year. After a certain point, I didn’t feel it as a burning ache anymore. Rather, my body just didn’t do what I asked it to do.

  I slapped my cheeks to stop myself from passing out. “Get a grip,” I scolded myself. I took a few deep breaths to get the energy moving through me. I then imitated Young-bum’s steady, swift walk through the market, confident, as if I were either selling or buying, not about to steal. I approached an older, toothless man displaying electrical wires. On the table, off to the side, were candies placed in small envelopes.

  The man was engrossed in fixing what looked like a radio. I moved toward his table as if I were just passing by.

  He didn’t look up. He didn’t even notice me.

  Not even slowing down, I slid my hand out to the side and whisked the candies into the pockets of my pants, Young-bum’s old school uniform. I didn’t turn around to see if the man had seen. I kept moving, not fast, just steady, to where I had spent most of my first day at the market; the cardboard I had sat on still remained on the ground. I bent over to collect my breath and steady my nerves, all the while scanning the crowd for my next victim.