by Alana Terry
We made out all right that way, and I went from being near as high as you get on the starving scale to back down somewhere between high and middle. I was eating about every day now. And Hawk did such a good job finding us the right houses, the meals were bigger too, even if we did have to split them five ways. And then sometimes we’d split six ways on account of us sleeping at Min-Ho’s house when it got real cold, and then we’d feel like the only right thing to do was let his dad have some of our pay, too. That’s what we called it, by the way, our pay, just as if we had real jobs.
It was the best job I figure I’ve ever had. At home, Miss Sandy asks me to help with the dishes, and I vacuum too after her grandson Tyson comes and leaves a mess all over. But even though I got jobs to do here in Medford, it’s nothing like working with the gang. And that’s partly why I miss it sometimes, ’cause I’m not doing the real important kinda work no more. And when I say important, I’m not talking about practicing math or whatnot, ’cause you and Pastor and Miss Sandy and near everybody tells me I need to take my learning more serious, but when I talk about important work like I did back in the gang days, I mean the others couldn’t do their jobs good without me. And I got to really believing Min-Ho when he said I was the most valuable gangster of them all, on account of me getting sick once and them letting me stay home and rest in Min-Ho’s bed, and all they came home with that night was a half bowl of gruel we had to share.
A few months ago, I had to start listening in on Pastor’s sermons once the Sunday school attendant said I’d grown too big for children’s church, and before he got on preaching about Christmas every Sunday, Pastor talked once about the church being like a body and how each part has a different job. Maybe one’s an eye that does a lot of watching over things, and one’s a hand that does a lot of helping others out, and one’s a liver or stuff and nonsense like that and you keep it on the inside where nobody sees it but without it you’d die. I can tell you now, Teacher, it was one of the only sermons Pastor preached that made sense to me right from the start. And I figure the reason I could understand it so good was on account of me living with the gang, and then Pastor went on to talk about jealousy or stuff and nonsense like that, but I kept on thinking about my friends from the gang. And I figured if we was a big body, Hawk woulda been the eyes (that was the easiest to come up with), and Snake woulda been the mouth on account of him being the one who got to boss the rest of us around. Min-Ho was harder to place, but I finally done it by figuring he’d be the skin. He let us live in his house, see, and that’s kinda like skin does for your inside parts, and also he’d like to put his arm around me sometimes, and it wasn’t nothing more than a few seconds, but it always left me feeling warm-like, and that’s what your skin does, too. And Donkey, I swear on the Dear Leader I still don’t know what Donkey was good for other than making us laugh and keeping us from getting grumpy. By the time Pastor was finishing up the sermon and the guitar player was getting worked up for some chorus or other, I figured maybe that was reason enough for Donkey to be part of the gang too, only I couldn’t ever decide what body part he’d make unless it was that little do-dad in the back of your throat that don’t do much other than look goofy on cartoons.
Anyway, that year I spent with the gang was one of the best parts of being a flower swallow. It probably coulda been my happiest time of the entire famine, except it weren’t on account of what happened next.
CHAPTER 13
So like I said, I spent a whole year with that gang, and we got along great except for the times when Hawk thought Snake didn’t give him his fair share of the pay, and that’s another thing Donkey was useful for on account of him splitting things up a second time and everyone agreeing he was the most fair-like.
Min-Ho was always nice to me, and if we got a lot of food or whatnot from a particular target, he always made sure to tell me good work, and if we got to a house where the man or woman living there wouldn’t believe my story or didn’t want to come out and help me look for my lost sister, he’d say that’s ok, Squirrel, we’ll have better luck next time. I got my gang name Squirrel a few weeks after I joined on account of how little I was and how fast I once ran from this man who chased me near all the way back to Min-Ho’s house.
That was probably the biggest mistake I made early on ’cause I told the targets I was looking for this lost sister, and sometimes I’d say she was twelve and sometimes fifteen, and sometimes I’d say we’d been looking for firewood and other times searching for roots to make stew for our grandma. At first, it was fun making up different versions on account of it getting kinda boring otherwise, but this man — the one who made me run so fast that the gang named me Squirrel — he kept asking me more and more questions while we was outside looking ’til I couldn’t remember if my sister was ten or sixteen, if she had long hair or short, if she was this tall or that. Then he seen Donkey sneaking out of his house, and Donkey was too far away to do much about so he chased me instead all the way back near Min-Ho’s place like I already said.
The rest of the gang was angry on account of that being the last target we was gonna try that day, but Min-Ho told them it wasn’t my fault, just bad luck, so nobody yelled too much once we all got back home. After that, I decided to tell the targets about my own sister ’cause even though I didn’t remember everything Pyongyang-perfect about her, I remembered most things good enough. And sometimes the targets would come outside with me and help me look, especially if I started to cry. I could do that on purpose by that point, make myself look as if I was crying, and I figure I was pretty convincing on account of all the times I’d get the targets outside. It wasn’t perfect, though, but sometimes when I couldn’t get them to leave the house, if they was feeling real sorry, they’d give me a bite to eat. I always took it back to share with the others, and more often than not it was Donkey who did the splitting up part, and we already knowed by then that a bite of something cut five ways is still better than nothing at all. Miss Sandy, she sometimes goes on those silly things where you don’t eat as much as you want on account of hoping to get skinnier, and she says if she skips breakfast it helps ’cause she don’t get hungry ’til later in the day. But that just goes to show she’s just regular-hungry and not famine-hungry, ’cause in a famine, it don’t matter if a tiny bite makes you feel emptier afterwards or not, you take what you can get.
So I went from being Woong to Chong-Su to Squirrel, and I figured if I was gonna be in a famine, I’d rather be Squirrel than any of the others. So things was good, ’least as good as you can expect when you’re that hungry, and now another winter was coming on. Do you remember that angel I met who said I’d meet a healer the coldest day of the year? Well, that first winter came and went, and I spent it with the gang, and the following summer too, but I never needed no healer. The nights didn’t get too unbearable neither on account of us sleeping at Min-Ho’s house whenever it got too cold. So I stopped thinking about the blind lady and the healer she promised, and I even stopped thinking about the mudang and her curse on account of how well things was going.
Min-Ho was in and out by then, sometimes sneaking away for a few days, and that was good and bad as far as I figured. The bad part was the rest of the gang weren’t quite so nice to me when Min-Ho went missing, and when I say that I don’t mean they was nasty-like. They just wasn’t as kind to me as Min-Ho, like none of them ever put their arms around me or stuff and nonsense like that. But the good part was way better ’cause when Min-Ho’d come home, he’d have a whole bag full of stuff — cash plus things for selling and things for trading and a whole mess of food, too, and I knowed he was going over the border to China ’cause that’s where all those fancy things come from, except he never said so. Sometimes I wanted to feel scared for him on account of so many people who went sneaking acrost the river getting arrested, except Min-Ho never did. I figure that’s why the gang called him Fox ’cause he was so smart he could outwit the border police, and even if he couldn’t manage that, we all knew he could outrun ne
ar anybody.
Pretty soon, Min-Ho gave me a new job in addition to my old one. Hawk’d found a lot of houses where teenage girls lived, and I was supposed to ask them to help me look for my sister same as always, except instead of everyone going to steal her food while she was out, I was supposed to take her to Min-Ho and act like we met him by accident. Then he’d talk to her about going to China where she could get a job and earn money for her family. I thought this was real generous of Min-Ho on account of him never getting paid none for helping out, but he said he felt sorry for the girls who should be able to afford pretty things, so he was doing them a favor. And I guess in that sense it wasn’t really a job but kinda like what Miss Sandy does at that center for pregnant moms who might need free diapers or stuff and nonsense like that, and Miss Sandy works there except she don’t get paid none. That’s why she’s called a volunteer, and I figure that’s what me and Min-Ho were doing when we’d help the poor girls, and I still think that was awful good of him to come up with that idea in the first place, don’t you?
Well, pretty soon there got to be more and more poor girls wanting Min-Ho to help them get jobs in China, so he was spending lots of time over the border. And that woulda been all right, except it weren’t. He’d still come home with his bag full of goodies to sell or trade or eat, but Snake started saying he weren’t sharing everything fair-like, and pretty soon him and Hawk were grumbling whenever Min-Ho was gone until soon it was only me and Donkey who said Min-Ho wouldn’t cheat.
I asked Min-Ho about it once ’cause I seen him coming home with two bags and when the gang came by he only pulled out one bag to split, but he said he was saving the rest up as a surprise to buy the gang a real house soon. That way, we wouldn’t have to keep sharing our pay with his dad whenever it got too cold to spend the nights outside. I thought it was a great idea and real nice of Min-Ho, but he made me swear on the Dear Leader not to tell nobody. And then he was back over the border again, and since I couldn’t say nothing about his plans, the gang kept arguing about Min-Ho stealing from them and not sharing everything until one night even Donkey said they was probably right. And have you ever been the littlest in a gang of teenagers, trying to stand up for your friend who ain’t even around?
So I told those others — Snake and Hawk and Donkey who’d just recently switched sides — that Min-Ho weren’t stealing from them, he was saving up to buy a house for us all to live in. Soon as I said it, I felt pretty wretched on account of breaking my promise to Min-Ho, who probably treated me the nicest of everybody in Chongjin except Granny. And so everyone got real quiet-like except it was the kind of quiet where you know they’re still angry. They said they’d talk to Min-Ho about it next time he got home, which he did a few days later.
Well, I figured out soon enough that Min-Ho’d told me to keep the extra bag a secret for a real important reason. When the rest of the gang asked him about the stuff he hadn’t shared, Min-Ho looked at me like he knowed I was the one who squealed, and his eyes were saying, “What’d you do that for, Squirrel?” And Snake said I said he was holding stuff back, and I said he was only doing it to do the gang a favor, and Donkey said, “Let’s see that extra bag, then,” except the way he said it, he didn’t sound like he was trying to keep peace like usual. Min-Ho tried to explain something about interest or stuff and nonsense like that, which I took to mean he didn’t have the bag with him right then, but he’d kept it in a safe place where he’d get even more money back for it in the future, which sounded to me like a good idea, except that’s not what the gang thunk, not even close.
And they yelled, even Donkey, which was really weird, and Min-Ho and Snake both roughed each other up a bit, and then the three of them told Min-Ho to get out, which was funny on account of it being his house to begin with, or at least his dad’s. But Min-Ho left and slammed the door shut, and I wasn’t sure if I should follow him or try to stay and explain things better to the others. They was looking at me angry-like too, like they figured I shoulda done something different once I learnt about that extra bag in the first place. So I went out and catched up to Min-Ho so I could cheer him up. At first he walked real fast, and I had to sorta jog a little to keep up ’til finally he stopped and looked at me real angry-like and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” And he never sounded that mean before, so at first I didn’t know what to say, but finally I told him I just wanted to see where he was going, and he said, “Go home, Squirrel.” I told him I didn’t want to stay with the gang, not after even Donkey took up sides against him, and I thought maybe me being loyal would make him feel better, except it didn’t. Then he said it was all my fault for breaking up the gang, except I didn’t know what breaking up meant, which I learnt about once I got to Medford.
That happened one night when Pastor and Miss Sandy had a fancy dinner raising funds for the pregnancy center or whatnot, and Kennedy came over to keep me company. This was before I could speak English good, so I liked having her stop by on account of us being able to talk Korean. So we colored some and listened to music, except Kennedy doesn’t only listen to Jesus music like Miss Sandy. She listens to other music too, and one song sounded so sad-like I asked her what it was saying. She said it was a song about breaking up, which she told me meant when a boy and a girl fall in love for a little bit, but then they change their minds and stop, and then they go on feeling sorry about it for a while. And maybe that’s why the song made me feel so lonely and quiet-like, on account of me wishing the gang was still together, even if the famine was over and we didn’t need to steal no more. ’Cause there’d be lots of other things we’d be good at besides stealing, and Min-Ho would always have his volunteer work helping them poor girls get jobs in China, and we could all help out with that or maybe find something else worthwhile to do as long as we were together.
But when Min-Ho said the gang was breaking up on account of me, I hadn’t met Kennedy or heard that sad song yet, so I didn’t understand. I figured Min-Ho would go to China as usual and come back, and maybe this time he’d share both his bags or maybe just one, and things would go just like normal, except they didn’t.
Min-Ho yelled me off again, so I went back to the house, but the gang weren’t there, and they didn’t come back that night or the next. And I was getting hungrier too and a little worried of going back to being a flower swallow by myself on account of a new winter coming up soon.
By the third day, I come to realize the gang weren’t coming back, and Min-Ho’s dad said I had to leave. So I went to that train station, except this time I was a little bigger, so I found a spot ’least partly near the fires. And sometimes I’d think I seen Hawk or Snake or Donkey, except I never did, and I’d go to Min-Ho’s house every day to see if he’d come back. About a week later he did and said he was gonna move, and no, I couldn’t go with him, and why couldn’t I have kept my ugly mouth shut? And I knowed it was all my fault he was still angry on account of me telling the others about his extra bag before he could surprise them with the house, and that’s why he had to leave. I didn’t see him no more after that, neither.
And maybe that’s why when I heard Kennedy’s break-up music, it made me feel more lonesome than I had in years, and that’s saying a lot. And maybe you’re thinking it’s about time I got a dose of good luck, which I eventually did, but things had to get a lot worst first.
CHAPTER 14
Pastor says whenever a bad thing happens to you, you should think about all the other bad things that didn’t happen to you and thank God for those. Even though by this time I was about as low as I’d gotten so far, I figure there were some good parts too. Like when the gang broke up and Min-Ho moved, it was only the beginning of winter, not the middle of it. A few kids was dying in the train stations, but not every day. Not even every week, ’least not at first. I was older, too, like I already said, which meant I got a place closer to the fire and stayed warmer than I woulda been sleeping outdoors.
The train station was an interesting place to live, with people comin
g and going but mostly going and the trains getting so full sometimes people even jumped on the tops and traveled that way. You never knowed when a train was coming neither. Sometimes it’d be every other day real regular-like, but then it could go a week or longer of nothing, and those were the worst times on account of the crowds growing with more and more people waiting to get out of Chongjin. Sometimes I liked to sit and watch them when there weren’t nothing better to do, and I imagined stories about their lives if I had the energy. Like if I saw a man holding hands with a little girl, I got to thinking maybe there was a mama waiting for them in another city, and she’d been making food for a week just for their visit. Or maybe I’d see a woman looking lonesome all by herself, and I’d think that maybe she had a little boy in another village with a relative who agreed to feed him, and she was about to go visit him for the first time since he moved away.
Pastor says there’s some places in America where folks don’t get no seasons at all. It just stays warm-like all year round. And as nice as it sounds on the one hand, especially if you’re a flower swallow and hafta live on the streets, I think it’d be real hard on account of not knowing how many months had passed or what year it was. It was hard enough trying to figure how many years I spent in Chongjin altogether, and that’s even with all them winters to count. Miss Sandy says I’m lucky, and if she could forget her age and come up with a new one, she’d go and make herself ten years younger. Only that doesn’t make much sense to me on account of her having kids so old and already being a grandma, but I think she was teasing anyway.
One of the hard parts of living in the train station was there were so many flower swallows looking for food I had to go back to eating just every couple days. That’s when I missed the gang the most, plus at night when you hear all kinds of strange sounds and don’t know how much longer you have ’til morning on account of the moon being outside and you being shut up inside. But at least there was the fire, and I won’t never complain about that.