Brother's Keeper

by Julie Lee

  Youngsoo sat straight up. “What was that?”

  Omahni lit a kerosene lamp. I squinted and looked around the room. The large storage chest loomed down at me, its metal front hinges bared like teeth. Youngsoo and Jisoo huddled together on their sleeping mats, their small heads silhouetted against the wall. The nights were turning cold, and I rubbed my arms for warmth.

  Omahni glanced out the window in the direction of Abahji’s hole. “An explosive,” she said. “The Americans are pushing north. They may have reached Pyongyang.”

  I twisted the edge of my blanket. “Well, we’re miles and miles from Pyongyang, so we won’t ever be near any fighting. Right, Omahni?” Abahji had said so.

  “Distance doesn’t matter; they’ll be up here soon enough. This is what we must endure if we want the Americans to fight their way north and claim victory. Nothing comes without a price. Now get back to sleep.” She blew out the lamp.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. I lay awake listening to the new sounds booming in the distance. Could Abahji feel it in the ground? Was he scared outside, alone in the dark?

  There were more explosions over the next few weeks, each one growing closer.

  We never went to the air raid shelter, which was teeming with military police and the most ardent communist supporters. Instead, we huddled indoors as the temperature dropped and morning frost glistened in the fields. Omahni heated rocks in the stove, then wrapped them in towels and put them inside Abahji’s hole. I couldn’t stop shivering—whether from cold or fear, I could no longer tell the difference.

  We were eating dinner one day when it happened. A long whistle sliced through the air. Omahni, Youngsoo, Jisoo, and I looked at one another around the table, listening to that high-pitched sound, knowing that we were doomed.

  Before anyone could speak, the Earth collided with the Sun. The floor shook. Dishes crashed in the kitchen. Straw blew off the roof. And terror pummeled my heart into a bruise.

  The house stilled.

  I peeked through my fingers and saw Youngsoo’s trembling body covering Jisoo, and Omahni’s thin arms shielding them both. Then came the sound of debris raining down on the roof like crackling corn, followed by an unbearable silence—until the next bomb, which could drop at any moment.

  “Are you okay? Is everybody okay?” Omahni asked, her eyes wide.

  I nodded, but couldn’t stop shaking. How close had it come? I scrambled toward the window and saw thick black smoke rising from a neighbor’s field. So close. What about next time?

  I wanted to run and hide, but there was nowhere to go. Jisoo kept blinking and looking around as if he couldn’t figure out what had just happened.

  “What about Abahji?” Youngsoo cried. “Apah!”

  At that Omahni jumped up and darted out the door, the long hair fraying from her bun. Youngsoo ran to the window beside me, both of us peering out into the dark. Through the thick pines, we could see her clawing at the wooden board covering the hole, then Abahji’s dim figure climbing out, stumbling, and righting itself. They clutched each other like they were both made of water, their arms grasping for something solid to hold on to.

  Every night I waited for it to come, the one that would land right on top of us. I wore that worry like a noose around my neck.

  But it never came. Instead, after a few more strikes in the fields, the blasts eventually dwindled to a distant rumbling, like thunder.

  “Children! Children!” Omahni said one day, waving us close to the radio. “God has rewarded us for all our suffering and patience. The Americans have finally taken Pyongyang and are marching north toward the Yalu River. The communists will soon lose this war!”

  She held a leaflet—the kind that South Korean planes had started dropping overhead. It showed a picture of a white man with the name “General MacArthur” promising humane treatment to any surrendering North Korean troops.

  I couldn’t believe it. This was really the end. Abahji could come out of his hole. The North would become free like the South. We’d all be allowed to come and go as we pleased. I imagined going back to school, having my own books, going to America.

  Over the next two weeks, I noticed the hard knot between Omahni’s shoulders loosen. And I even thought I heard a sigh escape from the house itself.

  On the day the Americans came to our village, everyone stood outside in their coats, cheering and waving homemade South Korean flags like spectators at a parade.

  “Children, come out! They’re here! They’re here!” Omahni called from the front courtyard, holding Jisoo on her hip.

  Youngsoo and I ran out the door, past the gate, and down the path, stopping at the edge of the road where we wedged ourselves between a group of small children and an old couple dressed in their finest clothes. Through the trees’ bare branches, I could see a line of trucks, jeeps, and soldiers heading toward us from the top of the dirt road. I wouldn’t have believed they were really here if it wasn’t for Abahji’s familiar field behind them.

  I’d never seen Americans before. The men towered over us. They wore heavy green coats. Dark metal helmets rounded the top of their heads. Tall noses and deep-set eyes complicated their faces. Their skin came in different shades—white, brown, black—and I wondered how anyone could know they were American only by their features.

  I joined the clapping. Omahni stood beside me and wept. The soldiers strode past us, smiling and waving, a few even bowing. One soldier swaggered, laughing with a cigarette hanging from his lips. Another one caught my eye and winked, flashing a smile that made me turn a deep shade of red. I marveled at the ease in their step, at the way their faces were open, not closed.

  “Gooks,” a freckled soldier muttered, glaring at us.

  “‘Gooks’?!” a silver-haired officer demanded angrily. He spat out his cigarette, mashed it with his heel, and started to yell at the soldier.

  I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But I knew something was wrong. Something about Gooks. I turned to Omahni. “What does ‘Gook’ mean?”

  Omahni squinted hard, perhaps trying to remember—or trying to forget.

  When she wouldn’t tell me, I knew that “Gook” couldn’t mean anything good. And I was sure Omahni understood this, too. But we continued waving and cheering anyway. They were here to save us, and for that we would endure almost anything.

  “Tootsie Rolls! Tootsie Rolls!” a dark-skinned man shouted from a truck.

  Handfuls of candy rained down on us: long, skinny rolls in brown wrappers. All the kids shrieked, scrambling to collect the sweet gifts. Youngsoo jumped in the fray, disappearing for a moment, but reemerging triumphant with the edge of his coat drawn and cinched like a bag. Unsure whether I was too old to join, I picked up only the stray pieces that had landed near my feet.

  Youngsoo held his coat full of candy as if it were a pot of gold. “Here, Noona, have some.” He grinned, showing a mouthful of dark brown goo.

  I took one, peeled off the wrapper, and slipped it into my mouth. I bit down, and it stuck to my teeth, the creamy sweetness rolling over my tongue.

  All the remaining villagers were here, finally showing their true faces, laughing and talking freely: We had always dreamed of America, didn’t you know? How could we have told you the way we really felt when the Party was always listening? It was either your family or ours that would be called traitors; no hard feelings, eh?

  I listened—my mind spinning amid the loud cheering, candies falling, children scuffling—and didn’t know what to think. Was the war over?

  That was when I spotted Abahji standing outside instead of hiding, for the first time in weeks. His jacket hung at sharp angles around his shoulders. His complexion had paled to pure white. In the light, his holed-up body, now exposed like a snail out of its shell, glowed translucent along the edges. When he saw me, he laughed and cheered with the sun on his face. My arm flew up and wiped my eyes. I rushed over and pressed his hand into mine.

  Abahji looked as if he was expecting me to say something,
and when I didn’t, he only smiled and asked, “Is the candy delicious?”

  I nodded and savored the last bit, letting the sweetness linger for as long as it could.

  The Americans stayed for only an hour before continuing their push toward the North Korean–Chinese border. Jeeps rumbled down our narrow dirt road. One camouflaged in green beeped its horn in a few short bursts. Everyone wished them luck, thrusting both arms up and shouting “Mee-gook! America!”

  I squinted through the clouds of dust. The soldiers’ long torsos and unlined faces made them look more like boys than men, not much older than Myung-gi. I felt an affection for them that took me by surprise, as did the gratitude that caught in my throat. They sat in trucks heading to their next battle, lined in rows like easy targets.

  I wondered if they might die as I watched them rattle down the road until they disappeared completely.

  eleven

  November, 1950

  Weeks later, we listened to the news broadcast that would change everything. The announcer’s voice faltered in and out through the static:

  “This war, which was started by South Korea, the puppet regime of the evil U.S. Imperialists, will soon…to an end…”

  I glanced at Abahji. He sighed and shook his head. It was the lie they’d been telling us since the beginning of the war: that South Korea and the U.S. had attacked first. We knew it wasn’t true, because Omahni’s friend, the old choir member, had a black-market radio that could receive foreign broadcasts from the rest of the world—all of which reported that North Korea had invaded first. And the regime had lied to us before, about the whereabouts of the disappeared and even about the existence of God.

  “Our Chinese friends have joined heroic North Korean units and decimated the filthy American dogs and their allies in a crushing military defeat…Hook-nosed American monsters, who wish to wipe Korean…from the face of this…now tremble in fear and flee in retreat below the thirty-eighth parallel.”

  Abahji turned off the radio.

  The winning and losing sides had flip-flopped once again.

  Our joy had been almost as short-lived as Liberation Day, as those precious few hours when the Russian soldiers had become our saviors—until they started taking whatever they wanted, especially the men’s watches, which they wore five in a row up their arms. In the end, the Soviets were the same as the Japanese.

  “Those American soldiers. Dead. All dead,” Abahji said. He pounded his fist against the low table.

  I sat by the window and tried to remember their faces. Cigarettes hanging from the sides of their mouths. Dark sunglasses sitting high on tall noses. Dimple-capped smiles. Just a few weeks ago, they were here, but now they were gone. Even the freckled soldier who had said something about Gooks. His sergeant who scolded him. The man who had tossed Tootsie Rolls from the truck. I couldn’t believe it. I was sorry, so sorry.

  “We must go. Tonight, when it’s dark. No one will see us,” Abahji said. He sat on the floor rubbing his knees until I thought he might wear a hole in his pants.

  “What?” Omahni cried, sitting beside him. “Tonight? Are you crazy? It’s too late now—it’s almost winter. We’ll all freeze to death!” Her face hardened.

  “The Americans are leaving. Once they’re gone, we will be trapped here forever.” There was a sharpness in Abahji’s tone that I rarely heard. “This is our last chance to escape. We need to stay ahead of their retreat.”

  “You don’t know that! The Americans were winning! This is just one small setback. We don’t need to leave. They’ll free us all!” Omahni jumped up and started wiping the floor with a rag.

  Abahji stood and put his steady hands over hers so she’d look at him. “We can’t be sure that the Americans will win. This war is too unpredictable. How long do you want to continue living in fear? We saw what they did to your relatives. The Reds have no morals, no God, no loyalties, except to the Party. We cannot continue being amongst these brainwashed people who walk around like the living dead,” Abahji said, his voice quivering.

  “Then you go alone!” Omahni cried, flinging the wet rag across the room. “The trek is too dangerous! Soldiers will shoot us at the border! I know how to keep my head down and follow the rules. The children and I will stay here!”

  The floor dropped out from under me. She couldn’t have meant it. She was just angry. She would take it back.

  Please, Omahni, take it back.

  I looked at Abahji—at the way his shoulders hunched as if he’d just been struck with an arrow—and waited for him to say something. But he sank down mute at the table, leaning his entire weight on one arm as the rest of him went slack.

  Something inside me ticked louder and louder. Every day, our lives seemed only to worsen: smaller rations, greater fear, more vanishing people. If we stayed now, Abahji would have to go back to hiding in a hole. But in Busan, people could come and go as they pleased—maybe even I could come and go as I pleased. My breath grew shallow, and my head felt faint.

  Tonight could be our last chance.

  “Abahji,” I said, hardly able to keep my voice from shaking. They both turned to look at me. My face burned under Omahni’s intense glare. “I…I think we should go.”

  Omahni pressed her lips together in a severe line. Her eyes reflected every wrong thing I’d ever done to her.

  Abahji smiled and bent to smooth my hair. Then he straightened his back. “Sora-ya, you’re even braver than your father, who has been hiding in a hole.”

  I started to speak—I wanted to tell him that he was wrong—but shook my head instead.

  Abahji took a deep breath. “Everyone, pack quickly. We’re leaving now.”

  Now? I looked around the room, staring hard at every object, trying to soak up the memories. Youngsoo’s fishing net on the floor. The small cast-iron stove that warmed our backs. The low dining table, lacquered in black and inlaid with fake mother-of-pearl. The sturdy teak wardrobe that Abahji had made. I couldn’t believe we were leaving so suddenly, leaving the house that I’d lived in all my life. Everything—the mud walls, the stone floor, the thatched roof—began to blur, as if already escaping me.

  “Snap out of it, Sora!” Omahni said angrily, pulling her jacket from a drawer. “You asked for this, so hurry up and gather your things!”

  I knew she never really wanted to split the family apart. In the end, my voice mattered—it was two against one. She had no choice.

  But it was a shaky triumph at best. Omahni would be giving me the evil eye for the rest of my life. I avoided looking directly at her.

  “Abahji, what should we pack?” A faint blast rattled the windows.

  “Sora-ya, pack only essential items. Nothing too heavy. Warm clothes, coats. Quickly!” Abahji marched across the room carrying a sack of rice.

  But I grabbed Youngsoo’s history book off the floor and frantically turned to my favorite page—the world map—and cringed as I ripped it out. A mangled edge of paper ran down the middle like a fresh wound. I thought of Jisoo tearing sheets from this book and couldn’t believe that I had just done the same. But an entire book was too heavy to pack, while a single page was weightless. I folded it carefully and tucked it deep inside my coat pocket.

  Omahni yanked undershirts and sweaters over Youngsoo’s and Jisoo’s heads. She crammed their fingers into gray wooly mittens and their arms into padded-cotton coat sleeves. When she was finished, my brothers stood in the middle of the room like tree stumps. I changed into my warmest pants and put on my thick, quilted coat. Abahji swung the jigeh onto his shoulders—an A-frame backpack loaded with rice, blankets, and a small pot—and helped Omahni tie Jisoo onto her back with a long strip of cloth. Jisoo was lost in a swaddling of blankets, only his face peering out like a baby owl from its tree hole.

  “Okay,” Abahji said. “Let’s go. Quietly.”

  I glanced around for a final goodbye, a dull ache rising in my chest. Would I ever see our home again? The waving millet fields? The majestic mountains? The sparkling rive
r under the afternoon sun? Then that dull ache sharpened to a stab, and I clutched the edge of my coat.

  PART II

  ESCAPE

  twelve

  November 26, 1950

  Abahji opened the door. It was dark. The clouds had swallowed the moon whole.

  “It’s too black out. We need a lamp,” Youngsoo said, tugging on Abahji’s sleeve. I knew he was afraid of the dark.

  “No, son, a lamp will only put a spotlight on us. Now be quiet.”

  We followed Abahji out the door.

  “Make sure you hold Youngsoo’s hand,” Omahni whispered to me as she adjusted Jisoo on her back. “He’s your responsibility.”

  I nodded and held on to him.

  An icy wind swept around us. In the distance, deep rumbles made the air vibrate, as commonplace now as any hooting owl or chirping cricket. I took guilty comfort in the dull, muffled sound of those faraway blasts—they proved the battle raged farther north instead of here.

  Dried cornstalks waved in the wind. With a thick scarf and hat covering most of my head, my ears seemed stuffed with cotton. And, like a dream, my eyes grappled with dim and nameless shapes as I plodded through the darkness. Was this all really happening?

  I shivered. No one spoke, not even Jisoo. I walked behind Abahji, Youngsoo by my side, while Omahni stayed close with Jisoo on her back. Every few seconds, Abahji would turn his head to check on us.

  For hours, we marched in silence down the dirt road alongside corn and millet fields, the swish of corn leaves whispering around us. My canoe-shaped rubber shoes felt hard and stiff, and the sides of my feet chafed. I winced.

  “Youngsoo, stop leaning on my arm. You’re too heavy.” I nudged him off, and he whimpered in reply.

  Abahji halted.

  I stopped breathing.

  We listened for footsteps—and heard some.

  Seconds later, Abahji gestured toward the cornfield. I hurried between the rows, the blisters on my feet vanishing.