Famous Adopted People

by Alice Stephens

  “What? Why would he lie to me?” I asked, feeling my cheeks redden.

  “Men like him are born liars. It’s the only way they can survive in society.”

  “What do you mean, ‘men like him’?”

  The two of them shared a private smirk. “Since you are such good friends, ask him. See if he tells you.”

  Annoyed, I nibbled on a mini-quiche. Spinach and bacon. Very nice.

  Unable to keep it in any longer, Jonny tittered and said, “He likes little girls. As part of his contract, I have to provide him with a new one every year. But he’s become very demanding lately, complaining that he can see them aging before his eyes, and insists on a fresh one every six months. I think he’s getting restless.” He and his mother exchanged a meaningful look.

  The quiche turned mealy in my mouth, sticking in my throat like sand. “I don’t believe you!” I protested. “Miura-san is a really nice guy!”

  Jonny’s eyes bugged out to Honey-like dimensions and he fixed me with a cold stare. “It is foolish not to believe me. My word is truth.”

  “His word is law,” Honey berated me, petting the bulging roll of flesh that was Jonny’s neck consolingly.

  I hung my head to show proper remorse. “Yes, of course, I’m sorry for contradicting you. It was just the shock of hearing that about Miura-san.”

  “Pedophiles are often charming, that’s how they keep on getting away with it,” Honey declared as if she had some authority on the subject.

  After pouring the last of the champagne, Yolanda minced over to the bar and plinked ice cubes into tumblers, bringing them to us with a bottle of Chivas Regal.

  “Ah, Yolanda, now you’re a treasure,” Jonny exclaimed, smacking her on the butt as she poured him a hefty drink. “You make Cookie seem like a coward and a traitor.”

  Yolanda actually blushed, which I never would have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, tiny starbursts of scarlet mottling her pale cheeks. After she had distributed drinks all around, he flicked a finger peremptorily at her. “Now run along.”

  She obediently retreated to the far reaches of the room, stationing herself beneath the mournful head of an Isis-horned buffalo. “So, Lisa.” Jonny propped his elbows on his knees, leaning toward me, his belly straining against his Mickey Mouse T-shirt. “I believe that my mother had a little talk with you earlier.”

  “Yes, she did,” I agreed, smiling sweetly. “She explained everything.”

  “Quite a story, huh?” he asked, chewing on the inside of his lip as he watched me closely.

  “Oh, yeah.” I laughed. “Unbelievable!”

  “Moms explained that we brought you here to help me, right?”

  Biting my lip to show that I understood the gravity of the situation, I nodded. “She explained everything but how, specifically, I might help you.” I hoped Honey took note that I was loyally guarding the secret of the website.

  He struck a ruminative pose, one arm folded across the hillock of his belly and propping up the elbow of the other arm, a loose fist cupping his chin. “Some people are born lucky, others have to make their own luck. I am somewhere in between the two. If I were the oldest son of my father’s wife, life would be easier, but my destiny was not handed to me on a velvet cushion, as it is to some. I must make it come true myself.”

  “You decimated your closest competitors,” Honey purred, stroking a thick curl of hair that hung over his forehead.

  “Ha, my half siblings were easy prey. Now I face real warriors, experienced men—tough, wily, battle hardened, and allied against me. They are just waiting for my father to die to stick their knives into my back.”

  “If only he could last another year.” Honey laced her fingers together in prayer. “That would be time enough to settle everything, and then the generals wouldn’t dare to lift a finger against you.”

  “Mother, you saw how frail he is. It’s a matter of months.”

  Burying her face in her hands, she leaned heavily against him, whimpering, as he patted her perfunctorily on her back.

  “Moms will need your help in this crucial period as we prepare for my regime. Smart as she is, she cannot do it all alone.”

  Dropping her hands to reveal a face that bore no trace of the anguish that had seemed to torment her just a moment ago, she proclaimed, “If I had stayed in the US, I’d be the one running the family interests now, not that idiot Eric, who didn’t even learn to tie his shoes until he was ten!”

  Trying not to overplay my eagerness to ingratiate myself to them, I mused, “I am flattered that you think I can help, but how? I don’t imagine I would be joining the politburo or the central committee, or whatever it’s called, and I know very little about governance or politics.”

  Honey waved her hand in the air, ivory bracelets clicking. “So what? Great leaders are not made; they are born. It’s a matter of native intelligence and killer instincts. Bill Gates was a college dropout.”

  “So was Steve Jobs,” I added brightly, touched that she thought I had the native intelligence to survive in the cutthroat world of North Korean politics, even though I knew that her confidence was based on self-regard rather than on any cold, hard evidence.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed like a hallelujah. “You have people like Angelina Jolie and Bono representing the UN, advising politicians on refugees, and eliminating poverty. What does Bono, a fabulously wealthy Irishman, know about poverty in Africa? Nothing, but people listen to him anyway. It’s all about confidence and charisma.”

  “But what exactly is it that you want me to do?” I insisted, looking at Jonny, who was sorting through a bowl of Oriental mix for the wasabi peas and already seemed bored with the conversation.

  “Whatever Honey asks of you,” Jonny replied with a shrug. “She’ll guide you every step of the way.”

  Because I knew I would not earn their respect unless I tried to bargain a little, I asked, “What do I get in return?”

  Nudging her son in his well-padded side, she exulted, “See, Jonny? She’s already learning! Didn’t I tell you that she had the instincts?”

  Crunching a mouthful of peas between his powerful, well-exercised jaws, he looked at me thoughtfully. “You get your life.”

  “Not just any life,” Honey said breathlessly, “but all this!” She scooped outstretched hands through the air, like a game-show hostess showing off the prizes that could be won.

  “Could I ever leave the compound, say for excursions into Pyongyang?”

  Honey brushed some crumbs off Mickey Mouse’s smiling face. “It is imperative that we not be seen. No one must ever guess that I am his mother.”

  Jonny shrugged his shoulders and raised his carefully groomed eyebrows, as if to say he didn’t agree but would defer to the wisdom of his mother.

  “OK, then can I have access to pen and paper? I’ve always kept a journal, and it would help me to adjust to my new life here if I could maintain some of my old habits.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that, no,” Jonny said, licking the residue of a stuffed mushroom from his fingers. “Writing is a dangerous activity here. But as for other habits…” He raised his glass at me suggestively.

  I raised mine back and we matched slug for slug. There was one last request, and if they refused it, I feared I’d break down and cry in front of them, losing what little respect I had managed to gain so far. “What about books? I mean, real books, not propaganda.”

  “Why, Lisa,” Honey exclaimed, “all books are propaganda.” She clapped her hands for Yolanda, who came bounding across the room. “Show Lisa the books.”

  Yolanda stood on tippy-toes to pull down the notched horn of a mounted antelope head. The wall began to move with a whir, a whole herd of small, delicate deer heads disappearing, replaced by bookshelves. I leapt up to see what was there, my fingers hungrily running over the spines. Kim Il Sung Works, volumes 1 through 44, packed two shelves; another shelf was dedicated to Kim biographies, the one below filled with books on Juche. Lots of Marx, Len
in, Trotsky, Mao. But also the collected works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Melville, and, bizarrely, Philip K. Dick. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Frankenstein, Animal Farm, The Catcher in the Rye, The Metamorphosis, Fahrenheit 451, Light in August, The Bell Jar…

  “There are more,” Honey purred. “Two huge vaults crammed with books.”

  Finally, clutching Great Expectations under an arm, I wandered back to the two of them leaning crookedly against each other on the couch, Honey watching me with a small smile playing at the end of her lips. “I was a nobody in America, just a spoiled rich kid. If I’d stayed there, I’d be wasting my talents organizing charity galas and chairing vanity foundations. But my destiny was different. It brought me here, to the highest echelons of power. That same destiny is now yours, Lisa. Just think about it: the whole world trembles before North Korea. Billions of dollars are spent monitoring and negotiating with us. We have China eating out of our hand, South Korea and Japan quaking at our every move, the United States allocating huge sums and some of their most formidable minds to containing and managing us. You will be a part of world history. You will help affect the course of the human race.”

  I tilted my head, as if considering their offer. What was there to consider, though? What answer could I give them, except for the one they wanted? It was an offer I literally could not refuse. And the way that Honey put it, why would I want to? Who didn’t want to leave her mark on humanity? Fame didn’t always come through talent or brave deeds. Look at famous adopted person Soon-Yi Previn, who gained worldwide notoriety through salacious scandal, or poor, martyred Vincent Chin. I nodded slowly. “OK. I’m all in for Team Jonny.”

  Throwing her arms exuberantly around Jonny’s neck, Honey screamed, “That’s my girl!” Her sweater rode up to reveal the soft, milky swell of belly hanging over the tight band of her jeans, white on white.

  Jonny stared inscrutably at me with flat, dark eyes, lips pushed out as he chewed on the inside of his cheek.

  Chapter 10

  “I was always just a little afraid of being sent back to wherever it was I came from.”

  –Melissa Gilbert

  When Ting brought my breakfast the next morning, I was dry heaving into the toilet. She came into the bathroom and knelt beside me, pulling my hair back from my face. “Go away!” I rasped.

  Last night’s bottle of champagne had been just the beginning of our bacchanalia. There were tumblers of Chivas Regal and then sake, soju, and wine with Cookie’s sushi dinner. The meal was a revelation in sea flesh, platter after sumptuous platter emerging from the kitchen, each one a jeweled mosaic accented with the perfect garnish: diaphanous slivers of fugu arranged into the shape of a flying crane, strips of eggplant for the legs, neck, and beak; marbled rectangles of rosy whale meat artfully fanned over shiso leaves and dotted with tiny yellow blossoms; vermilion fatty tuna, alabaster squid, and creamy blue suckered octopus tentacles arranged to resemble the North Korean flag; a massive lobster spilling snowy flesh from its tail while its tentacles yet waved. The evening culminated with Hennessey X.O, sipped and then gulped as we reviewed the audition clips of the finalists for this year’s crop of the Joy Brigade, which Honey explained was the ultimate dream of all North Korean girls and their families, securing their position in the “core class,” with all the privileges and opportunities that came with that coveted designation. As we watched an endless parade of teenaged girls disrobe, I learned that Jonny had recently been married to the daughter of a powerful general, a political arrangement that Honey assured me would soon blossom into a love match, because “Sally” was beautiful, graceful, and charismatic. “And none of this hiding the woman at home,” Honey chided Jonny. “You need Sally to be your Jackie O, an inspiration for all the commoners and a trendsetter for the women to model themselves after.”

  Honey took her Joy Brigade obligations very seriously, keeping a careful evaluation of each girl, rating her on beauty, figure, breasts, legs, sex appeal, comportment, talent, and patriotism. Oddly, a 1 was the highest rating, a 5 the lowest, so the girls with the least points won. Each candidate gave an impassioned speech on her warm feelings for the Dear Leader, a few words of which Jonny would translate before collapsing into giggles at their clumsy metaphors or scoffing indignantly at their lack of ardor. Then she had to walk back and forth, bow, clap, wave, perform—the accordion was especially popular—and, finally, disrobe. Honey and Jonny favored full-figured girls with apple cheeks, a strong jaw that tapered to a softly rounded chin, and big, plump wonton-shaped eyes.

  It seemed as if we auditioned every pubescent schoolgirl in North Korea, and I quickly found it depressing, but then Yolanda brought in a second bottle of Hennessey, and I decided to go with the flow, shouting out whatever free-association thing floated in my brain—Teacher’s pet! Banana tits! Wants it hard! Likes to kick puppies!—until Honey told Yolanda to take me back to my room.

  Finally, I turned to look at Ting, a strand of saliva wobbling from my lips. Solemnly, she presented me with a note, which rested on her upturned palms. The notecard, monogrammed with Honey’s initials, was blank. “What the fuck, Ting?” I whined. My brain felt like there was an ax wedged into it, and I wasn’t in the mood for Honey’s weird games. Ting gracefully lifted herself up from her subservient crouch and beckoned for me to follow her out the bathroom door. She guided my hand to hold the stationery over the steam curling from the lip of the coffee press. A wild, childish scrawl began to appear.

  Dear Lisa,

  Let’s have fun together! We’ll leave tomorrow morning. I’ll show you my town. Shh!!! Don’t tell anyone!!

  Your bro,

  Jon-Jon

  P.S. Dress for a day of thrills, chills, and laughter, because you’re going to the happiest place on earth!

  P.P.S. Rip this note up and flush it down the toilet so that you-know-who doesn’t see it.

  During her noontime visit, Ting delivered two white pills with my lunch, scrunching up her face and pointing to her head to tell me that they were for my headache. I seized her hand and covered it with kisses, until I remembered that my lips were probably still flecked with vomit. I was pretty sure I saw her lips briefly circumflex into a small smile. On the lunch tray was another missive, this one also on Honey’s personal stationery, the words elegantly transcribed as if by a calligrapher.

  Baby,

  You won’t be seeing Jonny before he leaves. He wants to spend some alone time with his mother. But I haven’t forgotten about you and have sent you some books to help you pass the time.

  Kisses,

  Honey

  One by one, I picked up the books that Ting had piled on the bedside table: The Koreans, The Two Koreas, and two volumes of The Origins of the Korean War. They were heavy, forbidding tomes, and I almost wept in gratitude for them.

  When I disembarked the Qingdao ferry in Incheon, there was no thrill of recognition or homecoming as I returned to the land of my birth, just a weariness with travel, with Asia, and with myself. I spent the days before Mindy’s arrival huddled in the common room of my cheap youth hostel, poring over my journals for a theme that I could expand into a witty and poignant essay on how my year in China led to life-changing insights into the nature of my own character or some such shit. The problem was my journals were an incoherent mess, filled with petty and inconsequential observations with nary a profound thought in sight. Though I had been keeping a diary since Santa gave me my first one when I was six, this was the first time I actually read through what I had written, and I was shocked at the laziness of the prose, the artlessness of the descriptions, the trivial things that preoccupied me, and my sneering, negative attitude. Time was running out, though, and the paper was due the day Mindy arrived, so I rushed through a sloppy essay on the system of guanxi—the reciprocity of favors between individuals—and how it had shaped my relationships with my Chinese friends, emailing it off just before leaving for the airport to pick up Mindy, queasy with the knowledge that I had submitted a disappointin
g, disorganized, and fatuous paper.

  When Mindy came through the international passengers exit, juggling a ridiculous amount of luggage and looking impossibly fresh and dewy-skinned after a fifteen-hour flight, she dramatically dropped all her bags and ran to me with open arms, the eyes of about fifty Koreans following her. “Liiiiisaaaa! Don’t ever leave me for so long again!” she yowled as she threw herself into my arms.

  “Oh my god,” I snickered. “You’re such a diva.”

  She frantically kissed me, leaving butterflies of lipstick all over my face. I tried to fend her off with small slaps. More people stared at the commotion.

  “Let me kiss your scruffy face. Oh, who couldn’t love your scruffy little face? You know who you remind me of right now?” She leaned away from me, squinting critically.

  “A dancing bear? The sad clown in the circus?”

  “Noooo. Though we could try a frilly tutu on you. But no. Melissa Gilbert, when she was Laura on Little House on the Prairie.”

  “The fuck…?”

  Brushing my face to accentuate where I resembled Melissa Gilbert, she crooned, “She had these cute little almond-shaped eyes that crinkled up when she smiled. Freckles across her nose. That crazy smile that showed all her teeth. The frizzy hair.” She flicked at the two stubby braids I had put my hair in to keep it off my neck in the sultry summer heat. “The braids.”

  “You are such a bitch,” I said, laughing and picking up the handle of one of her rolling suitcases. “Come on, let’s go. It’s a long ride into Seoul.”

  “My dad booked us a room at the Hyatt Regency airport hotel. He knew I’d be exhausted after the trip.”

  “The worst kind of bitch, a rich bitch,” I grumbled, hitching my ratty, towering pack higher on my back.

  “You know you love it!” She laughed.

  Walking out of the terminal into the heat and fumes, we shuffled up to the hotel shuttle bus stop. “So, Melissa Gilbert—who you so adorably resemble right at this moment—is adopted!” She shook a bright smile at me, playing up how cute she was to both annoy and cheer me up. “Another one for the list.”