The package was thin and rectangular, and the paper was folded with a careless sort of care—the corners and edges sticking out randomly, but the surfaces smoothed over and flattened. She clung to these details as if they were a map to a secret terrain, clues to the heart of the hands that wrapped it.
The mistress savored the action of peeling the paper back, drawing it out for as long as she could. If it were possible, she would take a whole week to open the package. She had to fight an urge to rip at the paper, but she knew that the anticipation of opening it was as much the gift as whatever was inside. Finally the paper was open and slid onto the floor. Her hand went again to her face—her flesh and blood face. She was not invisible.
FINDING ENOUGH FOOD for the girls was the first obstacle the mistress had to overcome when she took the job at the orphanage six years earlier. Officially, the food shortage was nothing more than a mild inconvenience. In truth, people were dying every day on the streets. According to the state, the Chosun people were well cared for in the hands of the Dear Leader, and the distributed ration cards were more than sufficient to feed everyone. Yet even the most obedient Chosun could not pretend away the truth, though most of them tried in earnest. If she had relied solely on the rations allotted to the orphanage, many more of the children would have died.
The mistress supplicated her superiors for aid, and when they proved deaf she tried going above them. No one would listen. No one could afford to listen—the food did not exist to be distributed. In desperation, the mistress took the older children and went to the streets to beg.
There was little charity to be found there. People who wanted to help simply could not—it was every person for herself. Three of the younger children became critically ill, and still there was no help. When they died, there was no time or energy for ceremony. A cart came and took them away. There was no shortage of bodies. There was also no shortage of carts, or well-fed carters. This was both a relief, for the sanitation, and an outrage. Once again, the façade of the functioning of the state was more important than the well-being of the people. But that was a dangerous idea. She found it hard to swallow.
The mistress had reached a breaking point. It was a nightmare, and the only thing keeping her from suicide was the thought that so many children needed her. With her, there was little hope; without her, there was no hope at all. She had reached a level of despair and sadness that she had never thought possible. Just when she thought she might lose her mind to the tragedy she was witnessing, a small ray of hope opened up to her.
A man approached her on the street. He was clean and his salt-and-pepper hair was neatly trimmed.
“I think I might be able to help you,” he said. His voice was smooth and reassuring.
There had already been so much rejection and anguish that the mistress was shocked in disbelief, unable to speak.
“I can help you,” he continued. “But you must meet me later at my apartment.”
If the times had been any less desperate, the mistress would have sent the man down the street fleeing a screeching torrent of obscenities. She could not, however, afford to turn down any offer, even dubious or illicit. Either she survived in shame, or she and the children perished in hunger.
“Do you understand what I’m offering you?” the man asked.
The mistress nodded, still not able to find words.
Scared but resolved, the mistress sought out his apartment building on the outskirts of town later that same afternoon. It was a particularly shabby building, with many boarded windows and cracked walls. The stairwell smelled strongly of urine, and she had to stifle her second thoughts—children were starving. She made her way to a door on the fourth floor and, as she had been told, knocked exactly seven times, slowly. The man from the street answered and invited her inside with a subdued hand gesture. He was more handsome than she remembered, having morphed in her imagination, during the intervening hours, into an ogre of sorts. His clothes were a little frayed, but clean, and he had a warm, friendly face. The apartment was mostly bare, except for the portraits of the Great and Dear Leaders, a sleeping mat on the floor, and a small bookshelf with the works of Kim Il-sung. The mistress had an uneasy feeling, but she had already committed herself this far.
At the time, she was in her midtwenties and she had still not lain with anyone. There had certainly been advances from men, but their lurid nature had left her feeling cheap. She wanted her first time to be something special and meaningful. She wanted to be caressed and loved, taken gently by a man who looked at her and not through her. She was not holding out for the man of her dreams; she did not care if he was bald, or toothless, or worn out. She just wanted someone who could see her. This was not the scenario she had waited for, but at this point she would have done anything to feed the girls in her care.
“I am sorry to have to be so discreet,” said the man in a near whisper.
The mistress only nodded in response.
“I believe I can help you, but first let me introduce myself. I am Father Lee, but in public please call me Lee Won.” He had a habit of lifting the right side of his lip as he talked, as if he were smelling something foul through only one of his nostrils. This tic was at odds with his otherwise calm demeanor.
The mistress nodded.
“Have you heard of the teachings of Jesus Christ?”
Reflexively she looked over her shoulder at the closed door behind her. This was dangerous talk: To be implicated as a Christian could have dire consequences. She hoped she had not been recognized going into his apartment—there were eyes everywhere. She turned back to him and nodded.
“If you are willing to accept Jesus Christ as your savior and allow me to baptize you in his name, then I will bring food to your orphanage.”
That explained the secrecy. The proposal sounded both easier and more risky than what she had thought she was going to have to do.
“What kind of assistance can I expect, if I do as you say?”
“There are Christian organizations outside the country that work very hard to bring food across the border for their Chosun brothers and sisters. The less you know about it, the better it is for everyone. But suffice it to say that every week, more or less, I get a shipment of food and supplies from them. I can make sure that some of that shipment makes it to your orphanage.”
“And what do I have to do, to assure this charity?” She thought she knew the answer, and had steeled herself to go through with it. Surely there had to be a steeper price. She only hoped that it was a onetime fee.
“All I ask of you is to accept Jesus Christ as your savior. Pray to him.”
She would have accepted anyone or anything, animate or inanimate, as her savior for a regular shipment of food for the orphanage. And it seemed that his proposition ended there.
“Fine,” she said, relieved.
“So now I will baptize you in the name of Christ. Please kneel.” Father Lee then performed an incantation and dribbled water over her head. “Now you are officially in the fold of Jesus. Let us pray.” The whole ritual seemed like nonsense to the mistress, but she was not in any position to deride a man who claimed he could help her.
As she was leaving the apartment, Father Lee handed the mistress a book, one of Kim Il-sung’s more popular works. She was confused by the gift until she opened the cover. Instead of the words attributed to the Great Leader, she found, in bold characters, the words The Holy Bible. Looking closely, she could see where the binding had been cut and the prohibited book glued in place of the original text. The book was hot lead in her hands—it burned her fingers and exhausted her arms. She knew that if she were caught with it she would be taken away, tortured, and possibly killed. To hold the book was at once frightening and thrilling. She now possessed a deadly secret, which felt both powerful and liberating. Suddenly there was a sense of meaning for her; not because of what was in the book, but for the simple fact that it was forbidden. There was now a place within her where the rigid tendrils of society could
not reach. She was no longer just the plain girl with a window for a face—she was a woman with a secret.
7
WHEN THE GIRLS FINALLY left the factory and began their walk back to the orphanage, it was already dark. The street was lit by the moon, which was low in the sky over the city, and climbing. The street lights were not working, and there were no vehicles on the road at night to offer even temporary light. The cold, early spring air bit into the bare skin of their faces and hands, and their breath came out in cottonlike puffs. They walked in silence because Il-sun, who was normally animated, was too tired to talk.
During the rare moments when Il-sun was quiet, Gi’s mind had to work double-time to keep itself distracted. On the way home she turned her thoughts to the puffs of steam coming from her mouth as she exhaled. The girls had completed high school, but were not expected to go to university because of their low songbun. They had been taught rudimentary mathematics, as well as reading and writing. Being able to read the works of the Great Leader was considered extremely important, and even the lowliest of citizens was expected to have at least some proficiency in reading. Science was a topic that was generally glossed over in favor of the honorable history of the great Chosun nation and its leaders. In spite of this, Gi had developed a curiosity about the physical world and the way it works and tried to piece together the mysteries it held. Il-sun took it for granted that when it was cold, her breath would rise from her mouth as a visible vapor. But Gi was aware that there is a subtle order to the workings of nature, and she wanted to figure it out.
She had noticed that when a kettle is full of boiling water, a similar vapor escapes the mouth of the kettle. She had also noticed that breathing on a mirror or window causes a moist fog to appear on the glass. Maybe there is water trapped in the breath itself, she thought. When the water inside, warmed by the body, meets with the colder air outside the body, it somehow makes the water visible in the air. Maybe that is why the closer the temperature of the outside air is to the temperature of the body, the less visible the vapor is. But why does it become more visible? When water is very cold, it freezes. When water is very hot, it turns into vapor and rises away. But what happens when vapor gets cold? Maybe it turns back into water. So I wonder, is the breath that I see really just tiny particles of—
“Thanks for covering for me with the mistress last night,” Il-sun burst out suddenly.
“What?” Gi’s body shook.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Thank you for helping me last night.”
“Oh.” Gi had tried to forget it. She was feeling bitter.
“I know you don’t like doing that sort of thing. You know, lying.”
“It’s okay,” Gi replied, though she did not mean it. She knew that Il-sun wanted her to ask about her illicit adventure of the night before, the reason for her being so tired and unable to meet her quota at the factory. Gi felt like punishing her, and she let silence linger in the space of her expected response.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” said Il-sun after too many beats of silence.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb. You know what.”
“No, I don’t.”
“About last night!”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Oh, come on. Just ask,” begged Il-sun.
“Why don’t you tell me what you want to tell me and stop playing this game?”
“Because it’s more fun this way.”
“For you.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Just tell me and be done with it!” Gi had raised her voice. She almost never did that.
“You’re no fun,” Il-sun said, pouting.
“Maybe that’s true.” Gi was genuinely hurt. She could no longer hide her feelings from herself: She was jealous, but not for the reasons Il-sun believed.
The girls walked along in uncomfortable silence for a little while. Finally the storm passed between them and Gi gave in.
“Okay, I give up. What happened last night?”
“That’s more like it!” Il-sun grabbed Gi’s arm. “It was wonderful!”
“What was wonderful?”
“Everything!”
“Everything?” Gi felt embarrassed by her lack of sophistication. She knew that “everything” actually meant something specific, that it implied something that older people would make knowing eye contact about but never speak of directly. But she did not want to seem uninformed, so she said, “Oh, everything.”
“He met me on the street last night, and he took me on his scooter to a park overlooking the water.”
“On his scooter! Il-sun! You know that you can get into a lot of trouble for driving vehicles at night!”
“Relax, Gi. He knows a lot of people. He would never get in trouble. Besides, we drove with the light off so we wouldn’t be seen.”
“Are you insane? You could have been killed!”
“Really, Gi.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Can I tell you the story, or are you going to keep throwing a fit?”
“Okay, tell your story. I’m just glad you didn’t get killed. Or worse. Somebody could have seen you.”
“The moon was out and it was really bright outside, almost like daylight. He took me to a grassy area where we could see the outline of the city across the water. It was cold, but he had a blanket. He held me really close to him. Gi, he is so handsome!”
“You could see that at night?”
Il-sun either ignored her or wasn’t listening.
“He smelled really good too. He was wearing some kind of scent. I’ve never smelled anything like it before. It was so manly, I just wanted to bite him.”
Gi was unsure why anyone would ever want to bite a man, but she had stopped trying to figure out Il-sun’s little quirks.
“He brought a bottle of whiskey and he gave me a glass.”
“He had whiskey? Where did he get it?” Gi had heard of whiskey but had never seen it or known anyone who had actually tried it. She imagined it must be delicious, by the way people talked about it.
“He has a lot of connections. Really, Gi, I think he knows everybody.”
“How did it taste? Did you like it?” Gi did not think that she would have had the courage to try it.
“It was awful. It burns your mouth and throat. At first I thought he was playing a trick on me, making me drink gasoline or something. He told me it was an acquired taste. Anyway, it made me feel giggly.”
There was an expectant pause, and Gyong-ho realized that again she was supposed to prod for more information. This time she decided to play the game.
“So then what happened?”
“It was so wonderful, Gi! He had his arms around me, and I was feeling really good from the whiskey, and the water was lit up by the moon, and he smelled so tasty—and then he kissed my lips. I thought I was going to die! It was just like John and Daisy.”
No, not John and Daisy again, Gi thought to herself. She wished they had never found that book.
“As soon as he kissed me, I melted. I couldn’t stop kissing him back. I felt so hot.”
Feeling “hot” was a John and Daisy term Il-sun had started using that didn’t mean what it was supposed to mean. Gi again felt embarrassed by her own ignorance.
“I think he was getting hot too. Did you know that they get big down there, when they get hot?”
Gi had absolutely no idea what she meant and was relieved that it was a rhetorical question. Il-sun continued.
“So we were kissing, and then he reached under my shirt and grabbed my breast. Under my bra!”
Il-sun paused for maximum shock value.
“You let him touch you there?” Gi could not imagine letting anyone touch her there, especially a man.
“At first he squeezed too hard and it hurt, but then I told him to be more gentle. It feels really nice, Gi! He sort of pinched my nipples with his fingers. I thought I was going to go over the edge!”
&
nbsp; Gi flushed with sudden embarrassment. She would never be able to speak so freely about such personal things. “Going over the edge” was another John and Daisy term, and Gi had the feeling that even Il-sun did not fully understand it.
“It sounds awful to me.”
“That’s just because you’ve never tried it. Trust me, you’ll love it!”
Gi was pretty sure that she wouldn’t enjoy any of what was described, but she did have a curious sensation in her body hearing Il-sun talk about it. She felt like she wanted more of something. Maybe more of Il-sun’s story. Or maybe she was just hungry. There was something about the story that left her with a vague craving. It was different from other gossip.
“Then what happened?”
“That was it.”
“That was it?”
“Then I started to feel dizzy. He said it was from the whiskey. It was time to go home anyway, so he brought me back to the dormitory.”
Gi felt like there was something unfinished about Il-sun’s account, as if it weren’t supposed to conclude with getting dizzy and going home. The tale required something more punctuating and dramatic to feel truly complete. At the end of movies and popular fiction, the hero and heroine always exchanged pats on the back and then sang patriotic songs to celebrate their triumph. Getting dizzy and coming home was definitely not a satisfying ending.
They reached the orphanage in silence, Il-sun’s second wind spent. They signed in with the mistress and went directly to bed.
8
IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the night. There was a loud knock at the door, and Gyong-ho started awake. It had happened before. Normally it was just the inminbanjang asking if there were any unregistered guests staying at the apartment. There never were any. But this time it was different. This time there were three severe men in uniform, two of whom were carrying guns. They asked if this was the Song residence. Father bowed courteously. They said that they were there for an inspection, and for everyone in the apartment to line up against the wall outside the door. One of the men carrying a gun stood in front of Mother, Father, Grandmother, and Gyong-ho while the other two went inside. There was a lot of shuffling, sounds of ripping fabric, furniture being overturned. Eventually a man, the one without a gun, stepped outside and glared at them. Father was perspiring heavily. Mother was pale.
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