It was cold, and as day took firm hold of the earth, the sky whitened with a pearly sheen. Ting observed glumly, “It will snow soon. Then we will leave tracks.”
Long after the point where I had left exhaustion and entered catatonia, when every step was an existential conundrum as my raw and bloody heels rubbed against the exact same unyielding joints of my boots, I stumbled and landed sharply on a rock with my knee. I lay where I collapsed. “I can’t go on,” I panted.
Ting squatted beside me. “OK, let’s rest,” she said grudgingly. “There’s food in your backpack. Eat sparingly.”
Wiping my mouth after chugging water from a canteen I found in the backpack, I asked foolishly, hopefully, “How much farther?”
She lifted a lip and took a delicate sip from her canteen. “We have only just started.”
I wanted to ask more questions but became distracted by a carrot, which I gnawed at with rabbity ferocity. Still chewing, I reached in and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. “Oh man, Cookie’s roast beef,” I said, drooling.
Ting was systematically demolishing an apple. She warned, “Don’t forget the carrot top. It’s all fuel for the body. You’ll need it.”
“Mmm,” I said, my mouth stuffed with the tastiest morsel of bread and meat that I had ever eaten. Washing it down with another great gulp of water, I caught Ting’s eye.
She frowned and shook her head. “Slow down!”
One more furtive gulp before I lowered the canteen. “Where are we going, Ting?”
She pointed away from the sun. “China.”
“China,” I echoed in wonder, crunching on the woody substance of the carrot’s stem. “How far is it?”
She gave me a wary look. “Far.” She pulled her black woolen cap more snugly over her ears, eyes disappearing into the shadow of the brim. It was getting cold just sitting there. “We should go. Are you ready?”
Reluctantly, I carefully folded the rest of my sandwich up in the wax paper and got to my feet. “Uh,” I groaned, “that hurts. I don’t think I have toes anymore, just blisters.”
Ting nodded. “I was able to break mine in, but we couldn’t risk it for you.”
I looked down at her boots, which indeed appeared comfortably creased, already balding in a crescent along the toecap, the soles gently eroded at the back heel. “How long did you think about escape?”
Trudging forward, Ting replied, “Since I came.”
“You were a child bride?”
Ting snorted. “I was kidnapped. Snatched in broad daylight from my own village. It’s common where I come from. The parents have no money to search for their children, who are taken far away to the mines, or to the brick factories, or to the brothels, which is where I went. I was twelve, but due to the poor diet in my village, I had not yet developed breasts, grown hair, or begun to menstruate. They told me someone special was coming to get me and that I should tell him I was eight. It was Miura-san.”
I opened my mouth to ask her another question, but she shook her head. “That’s enough talking. We must save our strength.”
We marched on, scrambling over boulders and up steep inclines, ascending to an altitude too high for trees or meadows, where it was just rocks and patches of low scrub that we crashed through, our boots breaking the brittle twigs to release an herbal odor that powdered the insides of our noses.
Snowflakes began to flutter down like tiny wisps of the thick, cotton-batting clouds that veiled the late-afternoon sun. “The snow has come for good,” Ting observed softly.
Involuntarily, I shivered, even though I was sweating from the upward climb. “Where will we sleep tonight? How will we stay warm?”
She stopped walking and faced me. I knew that it must be serious for her to stay our advance, even if only for a few seconds. “Soon we will search for a place to lie down.”
“Where?” I asked, my voice rough with panic. “There’s nowhere. All day long, we haven’t seen anywhere to sleep.”
Gesturing up to the scree-strewn horizon that never seemed to get any closer, Ting said, “We need to get over this peak. On the other side we can find a tree, or the lee of a boulder.”
We trudged on. The snow, at first so fine that it was barely perceptible, began to fatten and proliferate. The mountain never seemed to end, the peak hanging tantalizingly above us.
“Shit,” I wailed, collapsing to my knees. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” I started to cry. “We’re going to die!” I repeated in Chinese.
She nudged at me hard with a boot. “If we sit down and cry, yes, we will die. If we give up, we will die. But if we keep going, we can live.”
The cold air burned my lungs. I screamed at her, “I don’t want to die!”
“Do you want me to leave you here?” she asked in a clinical voice. As if she really meant she could abandon me.
“Yes!” I ducked my forehead onto my folded arms, tears of anger and frustration dripping from my eye sockets. “I’m going back. I never should have come with you in the first place.”
“I’m walking away.”
I heard her footsteps puncturing the thin crust of snow, and then a long period of silence but for the steady soughing of the wind in my ears. The cold settled in, covering me like a blanket. Finally, I lifted my head and Ting was nowhere to be seen. For one moment I continued to sit there, watching the snow descend in helix patterns, then I leapt up and started back down the mountain. But very quickly, I realized that the odds were infinitesimal that I’d find my way back. I was but one speck on the flank of a massive mountain, with other massive mountains echoing on all sides of me into infinity. A hot flush of shame brought some warmth to my wind-chapped cheeks as I realized that I had fallen back into my old habit of running away instead of facing up to the consequences of my actions. I whirled back to face the mountain and set off at a gallop, screaming, “Tiiiiing! Tiiiiiing!” Up the slope I scrambled, eyes straining to penetrate the scrim of snow. Just as I thought that I had lost her, I saw a black dot way up the rock face of the peak. Squinting to make sure it wasn’t an illusion of the falling snow, I screamed her name, and the dot pulsed with movement. She was waving.
We spent that night at the base of a scrubby, long-armed pine tree, curled up into each other, wrapped in gold-foil emergency blankets, the snow pinging off the crinkly material with a sound like breaking glass. Despite my bone-deep exhaustion, I was unable to sleep. The tree’s roots dug into my side, I was terrified that I was going to freeze to death, and I yearned for my little dots of pure light. “Ting, I wish I had my pills,” I sobbed.
She locked her arms around me, spoke softly into my ear. “I never forgot home. Every single day of every single year, I planned for my escape. When you came, I knew I would take you with me. I pictured the two of us, lying together just like this, keeping each other warm, keeping each other alive. But we cannot stay alive if we do not get some sleep. So please, close your eyes, because tomorrow will be even more difficult than today.”
“But they say you shouldn’t sleep in the cold, because you may never wake up,” I whimpered, my teeth chattering.
“We’ll wake up,” she said, hugging me closer. “I promise.”
Soon, her breath was stroking my cheek in slow intervals and I wanted to shake her awake; I didn’t want to be left all alone on this windswept mountain, the snow sifting down to bury us beneath its awful beauty. But I must have eventually fallen asleep, for Ting was patting me on the cheek, telling me it was time to wake up. I burrowed deeper into her chest. “I need more sleep. Just give me a few more minutes.”
She pushed me away from her. “No. The snow is deep and will slow us down.” Sitting up, she rummaged in her backpack and then held out a hard-boiled egg. “Breakfast. Egg, just like your usual breakfast. It will taste so good.”
“I can’t feel my toes,” I groaned, still curled up on my side. “My bones ache!”
She tossed the egg at me, and it landed with a soft thud in front of my nose. “Your com
plaining is tiresome, Lisa. I understand that you have never had anything bad happen to you before. But this is it. This is the bad thing that you must overcome. If you don’t, you will die, and maybe take me with you.”
I scrambled to my feet, wadding the reflective blanket in my fists. “I was kidnapped too!” I screamed at her. “My body was violated, my nose taken away from me. By my own mother.” Bent double, I screamed at Ting as she munched on her egg. “How can I ever be normal again?”
“Good,” she said, brushing eggshells from her lap. “Keep that anger. It will give you fuel for the next mountain, and the next. The Korean people have a great thirst for revenge. It is the Korean in you that will carry you back to your home.”
“Let’s go then,” I seethed, grabbing up the egg and marching forward. Soon, though, I became aware of the pain in my feet, the weariness in my muscles, the dryness of my mouth. Every fiber of my being was consumed by pain. We were going uphill again and then scrambling down. Over and over, up and down, my muscles trembling with the effort, the sweat popping out on my forehead despite the cold that made my bones feel as brittle as ice. When I was about to collapse, I thought of Honey and, as Ting had said, my anger pushed me onward. If I could survive the abyss that was my own mother, I could surely survive this.
When the dark came, we made our bed in the lee of a jumble of boulders that somewhat sheltered us from the snow and wind. In the morning, I begged Ting to let us stay there one more day. She refused. “We don’t have enough food and we must take advantage of the announcement of Comrade Kim’s death. Grieving and uncertain about the future, the border guards will be more pliable.”
“What if we get there too late?”
“It may be.”
“Won’t they have the border guards on alert, looking for us? Jonny will do everything he can to have me caught.”
“It may be.”
“So really, your plan is full of holes?” I accused her angrily.
“Nothing is for certain, but this is the best and only chance that we have. Even if we get caught, we can try to bribe our way across. It is the usual way, and I have things that the guards will want.”
Taking off a mitten, I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out the broken necklace and the yin-yang pendant. “Maybe they will want this too.”
Ting lightly pushed my hand away. “Keep it.”
“No,” I insisted. “It is made of gold and silver. The guards will like it.”
“All right, but you keep it. You can give it to me if we need it.”
“Please, Ting.” I stopped walking. “I want you to have it. If we don’t have to give it to the guards, then keep it. As a symbol of our friendship. Please.”
She must have sensed my determination, for she took off her mitten and let me place the necklace in her hand. “Thank you, friend,” she whispered, briefly holding it against her cheek before slipping it into her backpack.
We trudged onward. It was the beginning of another brutal ascent up a snow-swept peak.
“This one is the tallest. After this one, though, there is only one more before we get to the border.”
The snow was deep now, and each step was a struggle. “Two more mountains?” I panted. “I don’t think I can make it.”
“How many times will you say that?” she wondered to the sky. At least it was blue, and the sun was out. “Don’t slow down. We must make it to the lower elevations by nightfall or else we will die in the cold.”
“How many times will you say that?” I mimicked her. I think we both would have laughed if we had the energy.
When we crested the mountain, the view was hypnotic, like an optical illusion. We were on top of the world, dazzling, cloud-tufted peaks rolling away from us in ever-diminishing crenellations until they disappeared in a lavender haze on the horizon. “How will we know when we get to China?” I asked as I turned in a slow circle to peer into the kaleidoscopic distance.
“There is a river,” Ting said, her words curling from her mouth in a vaporous cloud.
“How will we cross the river?”
“With a lot of luck.”
Two more days of careful descent—toes crushed against boot leather, knees screaming hinges, thighs quivering like aspic—followed by hard scrabbling up steep slopes—hamstrings burning fiery trails of pain, from aching buttocks down to macerated heels. Two nights of clinging to each other under shiny golden Mylar blankets that made me feel like Tutankhamun in a space-age casket. Our backpacks sagged limply from our backs; we were down to our last rations, a few rubbery dried apricots and a small handful of crumbled crackers. My mind was blank, numb, glazed over, attached to reality by a tenuously thin string. Our water was gone and we nibbled at the snow, but it freezer-burned our digestive tracts, chilling us from the inside out. As night began to fall again, I suddenly realized that my death no longer scared me. It would bring an end to my misery and make my growing anxiety about what would happen once we reached our destination moot. The unknown at the end of our journey terrified me more than the plodding certainty of our arduous march. I could never return to the person I was, but I wasn’t sure who I would turn out to be. Would I have the strength and the will to put in the hard work that I knew awaited me? Would things be different with me this time? Better to stay forever in this painful limbo, with my trusty guide. Here it was simple: put one foot in front of another, up the mountain, down the mountain. Be careful not to step in a hidden hole or trip over a hummock. Rest when Ting tells me to rest, get up when she tells me to get up. Follow her, follow her, follow her. Tiny little Ting was my leader, to be wordlessly obeyed, with the reward of a nighttime embrace. Life was simple. No ambition, no regrets, no failures. No drugs, no sex, no rock and roll.
A gray fog was stealing over the mountain, coiling thickly over the rocks, settling heavily into crevices and shallows. I stumbled again and again, the bloody mush of my toes unable to balance my tottering body. Passing my hand in front of my face, I realized it wasn’t fog; it was my vision clouding. Reality was a flossy tissue, easily torn. The thin string that connected my head to my body snapped, and I floated overhead, looking down upon two figures floundering in the snow. One of them fell and clutched her ankle as if it hurt her. It did hurt her. I knew that because it hurt me, the pain retethering my consciousness to my body, so that I became aware of the rock, hard and frozen, under my thighs, the wind whining in my ears, the cold a dull and constant ache. Ting extended a mittened hand; I took it. Her grip was iron strong, pulling me onto my feet. For a moment, I leaned against her, testing my tender ankle, before falling in step behind her.
“Mindy,” I think I said, “did I ever tell you about James Michener?”
“My name is Ting,” I think she replied. “Call me that.”
“James Michener’s mother told him he was adopted to hide the fact that she had given birth to him outside of wedlock. She denied being his real mother, even though she was.” I felt giggles escaping from me in frozen bubbles of air. “It doesn’t get more fucked up than that. Mothers! I tell you. What about your mother, Ting?”
“She was disappointed that I wasn’t a boy. She would have killed me right after I was born, but my father said no. She never let me forget that I was taking someone else’s life, someone who deserved it more. But I don’t blame her. If I had been a boy I would not have been kidnapped to be Miura-san’s wife. Now I’m going home to help her and my father on their farm, to show her that even though I am a girl, I can work hard, I can look after them.”
“They are lucky, your parents,” I said. I stumbled and almost splatted down into the snow but caught myself. “If I fall again, I want you to leave me here. You have a chance to make it. Go on without me.”
I didn’t want to die, but being smothered by a gray fog was an easy way to go. Much better than being slaughtered in five-hundred-thread-count satin-finish sheets, a gold Rolex glittering on my wrist.
“Careful. Let’s go slowly,” Ting advised as the downward slope sharpe
ned dramatically. “Follow in my footsteps.”
The snow swallowed her boots as she crushed through blanketed humps of undergrowth and dodged the fallen boughs of the proliferating pine trees that became taller as we descended. I looked down at the dark smudge of my boots sinking and rising against the sparkling snow, my legs moving even while my mind blotted in and out of consciousness. Thoughts came in on distant radio waves, more static than intelligible phrases. I talked to keep my mind from slipping out of my body, my voice droning and small in the immense clarity of the crystal air. “I’ve still got things to do, Ting, so I don’t want to die. I mean, I’ve just figured out how to live. I bet you figured it out early, but I was a little slow. A late bloomer, let’s say. Recently, I’ve started writing a book in my head. I have the first few chapters finished already.”
Ting plodded ahead, giving no response. I wasn’t sure if I was talking in English or Chinese, but I kept going, my words stumbling after her.
“It’s kind of a memoir. It starts in Seoul, as I argue with my friend Mindy. But before I sit down to write that book, I have to…” The fog began to roll in again, and I had trouble seeing my feet, so far below. “I have to… put… one… foot… in front… of… the other.” I missed Ting’s footprint, my exhausted leg twitching my step a little short. Too late, I saw the sunken spot that was disguised by the depthless white of the fresh snow, and I went pinwheeling down the slope, slamming to a stop against a tree trunk. The snow felt good on my bare cheek.
“You go ahead,” I murmured, turning to snuggle into the soft bed of snow. I heard her footsteps crunch away and closed my eyes, wrapping myself in the whirling darkness.
But a moment later, something roused me from the soft sucking oblivion. It was Ting batting lightly at my cheeks. “Get up, Lisa. We made it! I can see the river from here. All we have to do is cross it.”
Famous Adopted People Page 31