by J. M. Lee
“No,” I said.
“What?”
“You won’t be able to.”
The detective clucked and addressed Mr. Cho. “What is he, slow? Doesn’t he understand what’s happening to him?”
By the time immigration authorities sent the detective a fax in response to a document request, he had realized that I wasn’t slow. In fact, I had known exactly what was happening, even predicting his failure to find Yong-ae. It turned out that Yong-ae had left the country at 6:25 p.m. on April 22 on Northwest flight 296 to Mexico City.
The detective shook his head in dismay. “She’s clearly a pro. You’ve been tricked by a con artist.”
But I didn’t mind that she had taken the money. I never cared for money in the first place, and I would have used it for her anyway. So she had just taken what was rightfully hers. “She’s not a con artist,” I said.
The detective looked exasperated. “She’s not a con artist? They took your money and fled.”
“Who?”
“She left with some guy named Yun Yong-dae. He pretended to be some kind of a social worker or something, but it turns out he was a fraud, too. The defector organization was in name only. He set it up to take in all the government funding he could.” The detective studied the printout again. “She’s hot. She must be clever, too.”
I snatched the photo out of his hand. I recognized her middle part, her long lashes, and her pert nose. She had stood erect, confidently, as if she had known someone would study her every move.
The detective wiped his shiny head. “They’re in Mexico by now. You might as well just forget about getting the money back.”
I could forget about the money, sure. But I wouldn’t be able to forget her. “Yong-ae’s gone to America,” I announced.
“No, I told you, they went to Mexico,” the detective said. “Well, I guess they could be on their way to America. Defectors who settled in the South aren’t recognized as refugees, so the only way they can get to America is to cross illegally from Mexico or Canada. Going to Canada or Mexico is much easier with a Korean passport than to America.”
I had my path laid out before me. I would go to Mexico and smuggle myself into America.
Four weeks later, a letter arrived to my attention. It came in an airmail envelope rimmed with red and blue stripes. It was from a Claire Kang, but there was no return address. Over the stamp were the words: “New York.”
Mr. Cho glanced over at me. “What is that?”
“Something beautiful.” I ripped the envelope open. I thought I could smell her fragrance.
Dear Gil-mo,
I’m here in New York. Every morning, I eat a bagel and look out into the city from my narrow window. My window’s pretty dirty and it streaks when it rains. Is it raining where you are? I go to this café where I can see the Statue of Liberty and drink coffee. I think about all the places we passed through. The industrial neighborhoods of Seoul with black smoke thick in the sky, the night stage in Macau and the lights shimmering in the harbor, the haze surrounding Shanghai, the stinking streets of Yanji, the pebbles on the bottom of the river that tickled my feet as I crossed, the prison camp with rusted steel and smoke. That’s our past, whether we like it or not.
I can’t say I’m sorry. I know I took everything you had, but I don’t think it’s helped me much. Yun Yong-dae, that prison camp butcher who toyed with our lives—I couldn’t stand it when I thought about everything he did to us. I swore I would kill him if I ever saw him again. But when I landed in Seoul, he vouched for me. He told them we’d known each other since the camp, so I found myself making a happy face. Do you know how he came to be so accepted in the South? He told them he had been imprisoned! When he was the one who imprisoned everyone else! He made up a fake organization, supposedly to help defectors. He pocketed government funding, sold fake information about North Korea, and paid for his lifestyle with rewards he got for accusing defectors he didn’t like of committing espionage.
You couldn’t have really believed that I was this hotshot spy—or did you? I was just a pawn in his grand scheme. See, we made a deal. He would inform on me and accuse me of being a spy, then I’d be put in prison and go on trial. By the time they figured out that I was a nobody, he would have already taken the reward money. We’d go to America. He needed my looks and I needed his skills. He told me how he put you up to steal the inheritance from a homesick old man’s family. He told me about the account and the money. He didn’t know your PIN, though. I was able to figure out what it was, since I guessed it would be in our language, but I didn’t let on that I knew while I was in prison.
The investigators suspected that Yun didn’t have the right information about me. Or maybe they never believed it from the beginning. But the government needed a distraction like that, since the administration’s approval rating is so low. It’s a great story, don’t you think? A femme fatale who seduced loyal soldiers into handing over secret information. Eventually, everyone moved on and I was released after signing an affidavit that I would be loyal to the South.
So then we took your money. I don’t know how I could do that to you. What’s wrong with me? I hope you can figure that out. I feel like you’re the only person who really knows me.
Yong-ae
Finishing her letter, I sat for a long while. What’s wrong with me? I knew it wasn’t necessarily the money she had been after. She hadn’t been able to elude the warden’s grip. It wasn’t just her; I had also relied on him, believing blindly in whatever he told me. Maybe we were too used to obeying him; after all, he protected us while directing our lives. It occurred to me that we were like ducklings bonding to whatever they saw when they first hatched, whether it was a tractor or a duck. This wasn’t her fault, just like nobody could fault ducklings for trailing after a tractor.
From the far end of the hallway, Angela’s footsteps approach, low and sturdy. The door opens and she enters, holding a thermometer. I’m sitting at the table, rubbing my thighs with my palms. She pulls a bouquet of flowers from behind her back. They’re all different colors, shapes, and sizes—seven yellow freesias, seven red roses, five green canna lilies, seven lilies, and three reeds. The sweet scent of freesias envelopes me. “They’re beautiful,” I say. “They must have been expensive.” I undo the arrangement and sort the flowers into five bundles. I hand her the freesias first. She takes them, looking puzzled, but inhales their scent. I then hand her the roses, then the cannas, then the lilies.
“You don’t like them? Why are you giving them back?”
“I’m not giving them back. I’m giving them to you.”
She just blinks.
“You gave me this, right?”
She nods.
“Then it’s mine.”
She nods again.
I hand her the reeds. “I want to give you a gift, but all I have are these flowers.”
She changes the subject. “All the crimes you’ve been accused of until now are acts that you didn’t entirely understand. Or others used you without your knowledge. But illegal entry—this is different.”
“I can’t tell you that I’m not an illegal immigrant,” I admit. “I came into America illegally. I crossed the Sonora Desert.”
“Even the fittest have a hard time crossing it. How were you able to cross? Hundreds of migrants lose their lives there every year.”
“There’s magic in this world. And miracles.”
Angela looks frustrated. “What magic?”
“I was sent to America by the Messiah. He put me on a donkey and I crossed the desert.”
“You’re delusional,” Angela says, sighing. “How did you even get to Mexico in the first place?”
“After Yong-ae left, Mr. Cho found me a broker, who wanted twice as much as the going rate because of the way I am. He told me to contact him when I had all the money.”
“And how did you get all the money?”
“I had kept 200,000 won in cash in my room. In three months, I managed to multiply i
t a hundredfold by playing the stocks. Then I got on a plane to Mexico.”
HOW TO CROSS THE DESERT
The local broker was waiting for me in the Mexico City airport, wearing a short-sleeved shirt printed with large flowers and green vines, holding a big placard with my name on it. He was Asian and fluent in Korean, but introduced himself as Jesus. His body language and expressions were Mexican. His white teeth shined against his darkly tanned face, and he had a round stomach. He motioned for me to follow him. I hitched my knapsack over my shoulder and stepped into the dry heat outside.
Jesus opened the back door of an old pickup in the airport parking lot, revealing two men sitting inside. One was Korean with a Seoul accent who introduced himself as Jang Ju-han. He had bankrupted his small business and was headed for a new life. Jesus later let it slip that Jang was actually going to America to escape his creditors. The other man was Kim Yong-jo, an ethnic Korean by way of Yanji. An illegal immigrant in South Korea, he figured he might as well go to America to make more money if he was going to be looked down upon by his own people in Seoul.
The pickup passed an empty lot piled with tires and a gloomy industrial area. Different smells came at us at each new intersection. Mildew, something rotting, the sting of chemicals. The truck stopped at a shabby motel on the outskirts of the city. Jesus told us to get some sleep. He would be back at five in the morning. He drove off, leaving a trail of exhaust behind him.
The next morning, he knocked on our door, right on time. We rubbed our eyes and trudged out after him. The truck sped through the darkness. At Central Station, Jesus handed out train tickets and we all settled into our seats. “This is the best way to do it,” he explained. “Thousands die on the tracks going to Rio Bravo.” As the train left the city, the scenery turned bleak. Rocks, sand dunes, and low brush flew by, and the train rattled precariously across a ramshackle bridge and a tall rocky gorge. The brush turned into a thicket then became sparse. The desert appeared. The train slowed to a stop in the middle of the desert. Mexican immigration officials herded illegal immigrants riding on top of the train, and we watched the desperate hide-and-seek of the hunted from the comfort of our windows. Police dogs paced outside and a helicopter hovered overhead. Thirty minutes later, the train began to move again.
We got off the train in Torreón. According to Jesus, we were moving by car from this point on, as it was easier to fly under the radar that way. Another pickup truck was waiting for us. We began to drive through the billowing dust. I fell asleep. When I woke up, the sky was a dark scarlet. We drove on for two days straight. I threw up a few times, my stomach churning from the constant bouncing and rattling. My head throbbed and my body felt liquefied. There was no longer any brush around us.
38 km to the border
Drive slowly
Welcome to Ciudad Juarez
We drove past a plaza in the center of Ciudad Juarez. Small groups of bedraggled people huddled on the church steps. We arrived in front of a run-down motel.
“We’ve made it this far,” Jesus said, smiling broadly. “We’re close. We’re halfway there.” He gave each of us a big hug. The others grinned as though they had already become American citizens. “We’ll be staying here for about two weeks to get you ready to enter America.”
We were forbidden to leave our room. Jesus stopped by once a day to give us provisions that would help us get to America. One day it was rain clothes and work gloves, and the next day it was an inner tube. Sometimes he woke us early in the morning and made us pack up and move, playing hide-and-seek with border agents.
Two weeks passed, then another. We were still in Ciudad Juarez. The other two became anxious. Our costs were increasing. They were starting to get cranky and angry, their hope and optimism wearing down.
“I’m going to end up dying here, right next to America!” Kim groused.
Jang told him to shut up. Their argument grew into fisticuffs. “I can’t do this anymore!” shouted Jang. “I’d rather die on the way there. I’m going to insist that we cross, now.”
The next day, Jang demanded a refund if he wasn’t going to be able to cross.
Jesus looked helpless. “You think I want to be here?” he snapped. “I can’t tell when the route will open. Shut up and sit tight, unless you want to get shot up by border agents. I can’t wait for this to be over, too.”
“What is it going to be, a month? A year? You want me to just keep trusting you?” Kim joined the argument.
Jesus put the arm of his sunglasses in his mouth. “Look. You could fill a baseball stadium with all the people I helped into America. I’ve done it every which way. I’ve swum across, I’ve sailed across—”
“Did you also walk on water?” mocked Kim.
Jesus ignored him. “I even went through Altar. I walked through the desert for ten days with a Honduran family of five!”
“You expect us to believe that?” Kim retorted.
“That’s entirely up to you. But if you want to get there, just shut up and wait.”
Kim rubbed his beard sullenly.
“Is it hard to cross the desert?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?” Jesus pushed his sunglasses on the top of his head. “Everyone thought I was crazy for trying. God doesn’t open doors for those who fear, you know. You have to knock. I knocked, and, even though we almost died, the door opened.”
“How?”
“You have to keep three things in mind when you cross the desert. You have to throw away your map and follow the stars. The desert geography changes every few hours because of dust storms, so maps are useless. You just follow the North Star. The second is that you have to believe that you’re not alone, even when you are. As soon as you begin thinking you’re alone, you lose the will to continue. Finally, you have to rest along the way, no matter what. If you don’t rest, you can’t keep going. These three things can help you cross any desert in the world.” Jesus pulled the sunglasses down back over his eyes.
“Don’t tease the kid,” Kim snapped. “If you can cross that easily, we’d have become American citizens a long time ago.”
Jesus glared at him and stormed out.
“Fucking piece of shit. He’s full of it!”
Good news didn’t come, only bad. Two boys crossing the river in the middle of the night got swept away by high water. The Americans doubled their border patrol. A seventeen-year-old Honduran boy lost all his money to a coyote. A twenty-two-year-old Nicaraguan girl was shot by a gang member. Coyotes had the ability to pluck out those with money. If someone didn’t have money, they took whatever you had that might make them money. They would tell you they’d help you cross the river for 200 pesos, then take all your cash and clothes once you were on the riverbank. Competition between groups of coyotes was fierce. People were beaten and stolen from, but they couldn’t complain. Police were paid off to look the other way. The desperate swam recklessly across the Rio Bravo and drowned, or they ended up staying in Mexico and living in a haze of drugs.
I counted my blessings that Jesus was looking out for us; he seemed trustworthy and catered to South and North Koreans, Chinese, and Filipinos. But the waiting dragged on and people kept getting caught. Local papers reported the list of people who were caught attempting to cross the border as if it were the daily weather forecast. We huddled over the paper and I read out loud, detailing how underground tunnels and sewers under the border were discovered by American authorities. “Look here,” Kim addressed Jesus. “The U.S. Border Patrol is catching hundreds of illegal immigrants every day. They’re pouring in surveillance equipment and thousands of soldiers. What are you doing to get us across?”
“You have to read between the lines,” Jesus said placidly. “Sure, seventeen were caught. But that means nearly 1,200 made it. That means nine out of ten succeeded. Why else do you think Bush is sending troops and money to the border?”
Kim glared at him.
“When all the conditions are perfect, we’ll cross. It’ll have to be when the pa
trol is a bit lax, when the moon isn’t so bright, when you’re at your peak physical state. My partner on the other side is going to tell me when the searchlight or surveillance equipment is down, okay? And then, when you cross, it’s done. You’ll get in a limo my partner hired and you’ll sail through the checkpoints. They never check the expensive cars. You’ll unpack your things in a fancy hotel and take a hot shower. And your American dream will have come true.” He laughed, and we couldn’t help but laugh along.
One day, Jesus barged in and took me out in his truck. Kim and Jang demanded why they weren’t being taken and where we were going, but he ignored them. He told me he would show me America. “Do you know who ends up getting to America? People who believe they can. I can tell you do. I’m going to show you America. Don’t worry about getting caught. We’ll be quick.”
We arrived at the river. I looked across at America. I was so close.
THE SONG OF STARS, SAND, AND BONES
One early morning two weeks later, Jang ran into the room, looking pale.
Kim woke and looked groggily up at him. “Where did you go? We’re supposed to stay inside, remember?”
“That asshole Jesus!” Jang said, his voice hoarse. “I should have known when he shoved us into this pigpen. We haven’t seen him in the past few days, so I went out to see if I could find him. That asshole left! All that shit he told us about the limo and showers, all of that was a lie!”
Jang had discovered that the border patrol along the Rio Bravo had strengthened, and the police department of Ciudad Juarez and Mexican immigration authorities were planning a joint crackdown. Jesus’s colleagues had been arrested, but he had kept us in the dark, then fled.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Kim asked slowly. “How are we going to get our money back?”
“The money isn’t the problem,” hissed Jang. “The authorities might be kicking the door in any second! We have to get out of here.”