by Alana Terry
When I first moved to Medford to live with Pastor and I seen the houses with trees in front, I figured they did that so if they ran out of wood they could just chop down their front-yard trees and have enough fuel to last quite a good while. But Pastor explained to me how most people use other things than trees to heat their homes in America and how much safer it is that way. At first, I thought it’d be hard to get used to, except it weren’t, probably on account of Pastor or Miss Sandy taking care of it automatic-like so none of us have to worry about things like chopping wood or adding fuel to fires like we did in Chongjin.
I never joined no gang at the train station, even though I probably coulda if I really tried for it. I did get to talking to some of the other flower swallows like me. None of us ever became friends or shared our food like me and Ji-Hoon done, but it made it less lonesome than if I’d lived there all by myself. The boys who’d been there longest sometimes gave advice to the new ones like me. Like one day, this bow-legged man set up a little stall to sell soup to the travelers, and at the end of the day he had a little left over, and he came up to where a group of us were sitting and said, “You want some soup? It’s healthy for your bones.” And the way he talked showed off that he got no teeth, and I got to thinking maybe that’s why he was selling the rest of the soup instead of eating it all himself on account of it being too hard for him to chew. But I could smell it had meat in it, and it’d probably been a few months since the last time I tasted any of that. I was gonna ask him how much it cost ’cause even though I didn’t have no money, I found sometimes if you asked real polite-like, people’d offer you a little taste for free on account of feeling sorry for you. And that was one of the other bad parts about me going back to the train station, ’cause I was bigger then, so it was harder to get people to feel bad enough for me to share. Still, I figured it was worth a try, but the boy sitting next to me, he hissed in my ear, “Are you mad? That’s Crazy Wu. Do you know what he puts in there?”
And one of the other boys started teasing me, and another told that one to shut up. By then Crazy Wu was gone anyway, laughing to himself as he went over and pestered another bunch of kids, only none of them took his soup neither. So I asked the boy next to me why not, and that’s when he told me what Crazy Wu put in his soup, and I felt sick and pretty scared too how that sorta thing could really happen right here in Chongjin.
So even though I didn’t have no more gang, I still learnt from some of the other flower swallows things like why I shouldn’t eat Crazy Wu’s soup. Another thing I found out is you could make your energy last a lot longer if you stayed awake at night by the fire and slept in the train station during the day. And it weren’t so bad waiting up all night as you might think ’cause lots of other flower swallows stayed awake with you, and we didn’t talk much, but it made it so you weren’t so scared of the nighttime if you had a fire and a bunch of other boys around. I guess I should say there was girls too, and it weren’t like school where the boys all played by themselves, and the girls kept to themselves. We all just sorta mingled together, except it was usually the boys who got the spots closest to the fire on account of them being bigger. But even that had its disadvantages, and I was glad I weren’t one of the ones who slept right next to it on account to me always being scared I would roll too close and get burnt. That’s what happened to one kid, only it weren’t the fire that done him. It was this thing called a transformer, which is a kind of huge electrical something or other that lets the trains run better. The train people kept it in this shed where one gang controlled it and wouldn’t let nobody else sleep there, because that transformer do-dad kept things plenty warm. Then one evening I heard some awful scream, and then a bunch of yelling, and two seconds later, everyone’s talking about a boy who rolled over onto the transformer in his sleep and fried himself to death, but thankfully the curious ones made a big crowd right away that blocked the view so I didn’t have to see it when they carried his body out. And for the rest of the week, the kids was all wondering if the boy who got himself killed would end up in one of Crazy Wu’s soups, and some said yeah that’s why Crazy Wu offered to help carry the body outside, but others said no on account of it being too burnt for eating. But for the next few days when Crazy Wu set up his stand of soup to sell, I did notice a kinda burning smell that made my stomach roll around like a little kid trying to learn to summersault.
Other things I learnt at the train station without nobody teaching me but just by watching instead. Like one day, a lady had a bread roll in a plastic bag, and she took it out and ate it. We all looked at her, and the funny thing is when you get that hungry and someone else is eating in front of you, your mouth sometimes makes the motions like it’s pretending you’re tasting the food, too. When she was done, she just tossed the plastic bag to the ground, and she weren’t even two steps away before a bunch of boys jumped for it. Two of them got kicked out of the fight pretty quick, and the last two went at it for quite a while until the winner took the bag — it was a little torn but it still worked — and he wrapped it around one foot, and we all were jealous for the rest of the night because most of us had bare feet by then. In the middle of winter, a plastic bag for a boot is about a thousand times better than going bare. It’s funny, Teacher, because you know how the school made us go to that assembly last month on the 3 Rs, and it was all about reduce, reuse, and recycle? You’d never see an assembly like that back home, ’least not during the famine, on account of there being so little left to recycle anyway, and then we’d know to reuse it without being teached, like how if someone gave you a plastic bag you could pretend was a shoe.
I already told you how there was so many people at that station, but after a little while it got like it does at school, where you got to recognize people’s faces even if you’d never talked to them and didn’t know their names or stuff and nonsense like that. Some of them were fun to watch, like a little boy with only one arm who was near as small as I’d been when I got to Chongjin, and he’d run after travelers waving his good hand. You might think people’d be scared of that, but he was the best beggar of all of us and his stomach never did that thing where it pops out like a balloon on account of being full of nothing but air. Other folks you learnt to stay away from, like I already mentioned Crazy Wu and the soup he sold. And there was another too, except I had to ask Kennedy on this next part on account of the word being so strange and not making much sense when you try to tell it in English. But there was a lady there at the station we saw nearly every day, and we called her a kokemi, only I didn’t know how you’d say that here, which is why I needed to ask Kennedy.
Well, she said the closest thing in English would be boogeyman, but then I explained to her it was a lady and not a man. She said she didn’t think there was a good English word to describe that, which is why I’m gonna go back to using the Korean.
Anyway, back home, no matter where you growed up, old folks would tell you stories about the kokemi and how they’d come and put you in sacks if you was misbehaving. Whenever I used to think of kokemi, I figured they were old and wrinkly and so ugly you couldn’t really be certain if it was a man or a woman, except the one at the station was a teenage girl and didn’t have a single wrinkle on her face. But we knowed she was a kokemi on account of the other flower swallows saying so. They told us all about how she’d search out the weakest and the littlest flower swallows and take them away with her, only she didn’t put them in no bags like the old kind of kokemi would. A little boy once asked someone what she did with them, and the older one said, “Are you stupid? She sells them to Crazy Wu, of course,” and we all knowed what that meant. And I got to thinking she was awful pretty looking for being so evil, but maybe that’s why it worked out so well ’cause what kid with half his brain would willingly go with an old man or old woman with a wrinkly face and a bag over their shoulder like the regular sort of a kokemi? And I figured she must be smart to disguise herself that way, but then something didn’t make sense.
“How c
ome she picks the little ones?” I asked once, since a bigger kid would have a lot more of him to go around, and a boy said, “The meat’s juicier, dumb head,” and we didn’t talk no more after that.
CHAPTER 15
You might think after reading this so far that I spent all day sleeping in the train station and all night staying warm by the fire, except there was more to it than that. I went outside, too, because even when it’s cold, you gotta have quiet time to yourself with just your own thoughts, and you don’t get much noisier than that train station unless you’re in the back of the bus going on a field trip like we did to the art museum last fall. So I’d take myself on walks if I weren’t too hungry-weak, and sometimes I’d go visit the statue of the Dear Leader at the school just to see if he’d ever look at me like he done that one night and make me feel so cozy, except he didn’t.
Sometimes I’d walk toward the part of Chongjin where Granny lived, and if I felt really brave, I’d go right up to her street and peek down to see if maybe she was feeling better now and taking a walk out in the cold, except she weren’t. I never got the nerve to go all the way up to the house, though, on account of Uncle threatening to murder me if he ever seen me again. And that’s a funny difference between a threat like his and the curse the mudang put on me, ’cause you might think the threat is scarier on account of it coming from someone who’s yelling and saying he’s gonna kill you. Except the good part about a threat is if you keep your side of it, you don’t have to worry none, which is why I never went up to Granny’s house to see if she was there. But even today I like to imagine what she’s doing. I figure she’s probably got plenty of food again, and she don’t hurt no more from that table falling on her, and she can get around just fine. And maybe Uncle married himself a really nice daughter-in-law to take care of Granny, and then Uncle got sick and died, so now it’s Granny and her daughter-in-law both living together. Oh, and all them pretty things she had to sell, she got them all back once the famine ended, so now the house is just as fancy as ever.
Anyway, I figure I got a better education living at the train station than I ever woulda at the Chongjin school. I was a fast learner, too, on account of you dying if you didn’t catch on quick enough. I once heard a man in America say it don’t matter what you learn so long as you learn something, but I’d say that’s all stuff and nonsense. Here’s what I mean. Let’s pretend you had a boy of your own and you wanted him to be real smart, so you told him to go out and learn as much as he could. So he went to that train station in Chongjin and lived with us flower swallows a while. He’d be sure to get a whole lot smarter, but some of the things he learnt, he’d probably wish he could unlearn, except that’s not the way it works. Like one of the things I got real good at was how to tell if someone catched the sickness. We didn’t have no other name for it, but we all knew what it meant, and we was all scared of it, especially in the winter on account of that being when it hit the worst. Sometimes you’d get to feeling poorly, but then you’d get better after a few days, so you’d know it weren’t the sickness. But if the whole week went by, and you went from regular-sick to really-sick, the people around you would start to worry, and if they were smart they wouldn’t sit by you none or offer to share none of their food. And you wouldn’t mind on account of being too weak to think on food or stuff and nonsense like that anyway. It’d take several weeks start to finish, but you’d finally end up with what we called The Stare, and you’d sit there with your eyes half open, and folks could come right up to you and say, “Watch out, your foot’s on fire,” or whatnot, only you wouldn’t budge. And you wouldn’t move even if folks got to poking and prodding you, and you wouldn’t never open your eyes more than half ever again ’cause in another day or two after that you’re dead.
See, I could tell you all about the sickness on account of me learning so much about it, but it’s not the kinda thing that makes you a better person knowing, and sometimes I think one of the reasons most kids in America look so happy is they never learnt that sorta stuff and nonsense, so they don’t have as much to worry over. ’Cause if I get a little sniffle, even if Miss Sandy tells me it’s just a cold and I hafta go to school, I worry it might be the sickness. Kennedy told me them kinda diseases are less common here, and even if you do get them, you could just get yourself to the hospital and they’d give you medicine to make it go away, and she’s studying to be a doctor so of course she knows all about these things. But I still worry. At first Miss Sandy thought I was just wanting to get out of going to school, but then I explained things to her more proper-like, and so now she takes me to the doctor if I’ve been sick for over two or three days just to proof to me it ain’t the sickness, and it never is thankfully.
But I got it once, and that’s probably why I’m even more scared of it than normal. Some things you only know you’re supposed to be afraid of, like maybe you’re always forgetting to buckle your seatbelt in the car and Miss Sandy gets a little angry on account of having to remind you so much (except it’s not mad-angry, it’s more like she’s tired from you being so forgetful), but then if you was ever in an accident like Pastor was, he said he won’t never forget his seatbelt on account of it saving his life once. And I don’t want to get in no accident neither, but when I get in the car I’m not thinking about that, probably on account of it never happening to me. I figure that’s what it’s like with the sickness. Like once, Becky Linklater was gone for three whole days, and when she came back to school she told me she’d been sick, so I asked if she’d gone to the hospital for medicine, and she said no, she just had a stomach bug. And then I asked weren’t you scared, and she gave me a funny look (but not mean-like) and said no, she just stayed home with her grandma and watched movies all day.
Anyway, I got through my first few days feeling poor, and back then you just had to wait to see if you’d get better all by yourself or if you’d get worst, and that’s how you’d know it was the sickness. And that’s what happened to me, only one of the harder things is when you’re feverish or whatnot the other kids don’t want you near their fires, so you’re cold as you’ve ever been in your life, but they don’t let you warm up. And it’s not their fault, not really, they just don’t want to catch the sickness neither. And I know Kennedy says they’ve got fancy medicines and stuff and nonsense like that in America, but back home if you catched it, there weren’t much for you to do except wait for it to get worst and finally The Stare would take over and that’s how you’d know you was about to die.
I’ve gone through lots of scary things, some I don’t even think on no more, but that sickness was close to the worst. You know some people are real brave, like Pastor, and I figure I’ll be braver too once I’ve lived as long as him ’cause he’s already a grandpa and whatnot. And Pastor says when he dies, everyone’s gonna know it’s his time and there ain’t gonna be no reason to try to keep him from flying off to heaven, and that’s why he’s not scared of it none. And he knows what it’s like to nearly die ’cause did you know Pastor’s been shot before? I swear on the Dear Leader. It happened a little before I came here, and when he told me about it, first I thought he was joking. Then he told me to ask Miss Sandy and she said it was true. And I don’t think she knows how to lie on account of her never learning when she was littler. He still has a scar from the bullet and everything. And that’s not all. A long time ago when he and Miss Sandy first married, folks would threaten to beat him up or maybe even kill him on account of him having brown skin and Miss Sandy peachy ’cause did you know way back a long time ago Americans didn’t tolerate that sorta thing? So anyway, Pastor’s gone through all those times of nearly getting himself killed, and then he was in the car accident I told you about, too, only he says he’s not one bit scared of dying. And I believe him on account of the way he talks about heaven, and it’s almost like he’s already seen it and he’s just waiting for all of us to get there together.
So there are people like Pastor who talk about dying just as if it’s like walking next door to v
isit a friend, except you don’t never come back and your friend’s house is a castle with everything you could want for the rest of your life. But back in the old days, I didn’t know all that much about heaven ’cause the grown-ups all said different things. Like sometimes if Papa was out later than normal and the sea was all choppy, I’d ask Mama what would happen to him if he died, and all she’d say was, “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to talk like that?” So I’d ask my sister, only she didn’t know about that sorta stuff and nonsense neither. And I guess the first I heard about heaven in the old days was when I asked Grandmother what happens when you die, and she said your spirit joins all the others and you get to be with your ancestors, which sounded boring to me at the time on account of them being so old and dead.
And then once I got to Chongjin, Granny was different. She’d talk about heaven as if it was gonna happen right here on earth, and we just had to wait for the Dear Leader (and the Great Leader, too, on account of him already being dead but her not remembering that most days). And them Leaders, well, they were gonna do things like give food to all the hungry and build beautiful buildings, and there’d be public singing and dancing and whatnot, and they’d even make winter shorter and more tolerable for us all. And the thing I liked about Granny’s version of heaven was you didn’t even hafta die to get there. You just had to be patient and wait on the Dear Leader, only she never said how long the waiting would take, and I don’t suspect she knew there’d be a famine so bad during the in-between time neither.
So anyway, when I first come down feeling poor, I waited and didn’t get better none. That’s when I had to admit it was probably the sickness, which meant I was gonna die in another few weeks. And you might think it made me feel sorry for myself on account of me being so young, but being young never stopped nobody from dying in the famine, so I was used to that idea already. Once I became a flower swallow, I figured I’d die eventually, and it was just a question of whether it’d be the hunger or the cold that’d do me in first, only I hoped it weren’t the sickness on account of people with The Stare looking so spooky, like they was already dead except their bodies didn’t know it yet.