by Alana Terry
Several times during their morning meeting over tea, Mrs. Stern had assured Mee-Kyong there was no need to talk about her history. “Your past is a closed book, and I’m not going to browse through the pages without invitation.” Mee-Kyong suspected behind the catchphrase was the expectation that in time she would invite Mrs. Stern to “browse the pages” of her short, pathetic life story, but for now, she intended to enjoy her well-earned right to privacy.
Mrs. Stern, by contrast, had no problem divulging more information about her own family than anyone would care to digest in a single sitting. Mee-Kyong’s temples throbbed. The food was far richer than what she was accustomed to, and she had to fight the urge to devour every morsel in sight. Even the slightest swelling in her belly put extra pressure on her ribcage. As hard as she tried, she still couldn’t figure out exactly what type of home this was. Who were these do-gooders, and what would they demand in return for room and board?
When Mrs. Stern was halfway through the story of their only daughter’s seventh birthday party, her husband put his hand over hers. “Perhaps our guest would like some more water.” He gestured subtly to Mee-Kyong’s empty cup.
“Of course.” Mrs. Stern stood up, nearly taking the cloth covering the table with her due to her wide girth. Before she made her way to the kitchen, the housekeeper overtook her.
“I’ll get it, ma’am.”
“It’s really no problem,” insisted the American. “Thank you anyway, but I don’t mind.”
Eve put her hand on Mrs. Stern’s shoulder — a bold gesture for a servant, in Mee-Kyong’s opinion. “Please.” There wasn’t a trace of humility or questioning in the housekeeper’s voice. “Allow me.”
***
“So you had a good day, then?” Roger stretched his legs out on the bed and unbuttoned the top of his pants. He sighed and let his stuffed belly expand to a more comfortable diameter.
Juliette swung her head to the side as she brushed her hair, and Roger noticed how long it had grown lately. “Yeah. It was fun to have the kitchen to myself for a change.”
“You know you’ll be having even less time to yourself now that the new girl’s here.”
“Mee-Kyong,” Juliette inserted.
Roger already knew her name but didn’t want to spoil Juliette’s mood by saying so. He hadn’t seen his wife this chipper in months. If it would keep Juliette this content, he was willing to forget all about their late-night spats, their frequent arguing, their accident-prone floundering through the waters of empty-nesting. “She seems like a very nice girl.” Roger didn’t know if he believed the words himself yet, but as he finished dressing for bed, he decided to capitalize on Juliette’s good humor as much as he could.
“She will be.” Juliette put her brush down and joined Roger in bed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Roger asked.
She snuggled herself up against him. “It means she’s been through a lot, but with the right kind of love and direction, I think she’ll end up just fine.” Juliette made their new guest sound like some kind of meringue pie that had to be treated just a certain way in order to turn out right in the end, but Roger didn’t say so. It didn’t matter. Juliette was herself again. She had eaten more than flimsy greens for dinner, she had a new project to invest her time and energy into, and she wasn’t constantly badgering Roger about going back to the hotel district. He breathed in deeply and shut his eyes.
Yes, life was good.
CHAPTER 33
“So your little protégé’s lessons are coming along nicely, I assume?” Roger yanked the blanket off the bed. If he couldn’t find his watch soon, he’d have to leave for work without it.
Juliette groped underneath the pillow. “Yeah. This week more than last. She seems to be picking things up pretty well.”
“I sense there’s a but there.” Roger got down on his hands and knees and rummaged through a small pile of dirty clothes.
“No, she’s doing really well. She can answer back just about anything I ask her now. And she’s even coming up with questions on her own, like she’s really engaging with the material.”
“That must be because she has such a good teacher.” Roger glanced at the clock on his bedside table. He should have been out the door at least fifteen minutes ago.
Juliette fumbled through the dresser drawers, scattering socks and underwear across the carpet. “I’m just excited. She seems like she’s really getting it.”
“Have you talked to her about being baptized yet?” Where was that watch? It’s not like Roger couldn’t make it through his work day without it; he just wanted to know what could have happened to it. He placed it on his end table every single night before bed.
“I mentioned baptism once. She didn’t respond right away, and I didn’t want to rush anything.”
Roger stood up and ran his hands over the top of his head. “You, not rushing anything? What’s happened here? It’s been a few weeks since you took her under your wings. Are you going through chocolate withdrawals from all that dieting?”
Juliette’s reflection in the dresser mirror smiled at him. Man, was she gorgeous. “I just don’t want to push anything on her too fast,” she confessed.
“Too fast? You guys are in there, what? Four, five hours each and every day?”
“It’s not like that. I just want to be careful, you know?”
“Baby Cakes, last time we had a batch of refugees come through our doors, you practically had them baptized before they finished their first meal, and you signed them all up for underground mission work before breakfast the next day. What’s going on?”
Juliette steadied herself on the dresser with both arms and frowned at his reflected image. Suddenly, he noticed the gray in her hair, the wrinkle in her brow, the telling signs of her age. “I don’t want to see her ...” Juliette’s throat constricted once. “I don’t want to worry about her. Like I do with the others.”
It took Roger only three paces to close the distance between him and his wife, but she was trembling by the time he arrived. Roger had been so busy at work, he hadn’t thought much about the Secret Seminary students. Sure, he hoped they were doing all right, but other than at his regular prayer times, he tried not to give them much thought. It was the best way he had found to deal with the uncertainties, the nagging doubts, the guilt that threatened to creep in if left unchecked. He had, after all, sent some of the finest young believers he knew to what could very well be their deaths.
Roger had learned to tune out his emotions. He prayed for the students and knew their destinies were in God’s hands, and God’s alone. Of course, he should have realized his wife could never reach that same degree of detachment. This was Juliette, the woman who choked up at sappy black-and-white romances. He patted her back, feeling pitifully inadequate to address the anxiety, the fear he knew his wife was shouldering alone.
“This isn’t the Secret Seminary anymore.” His whispered assurances sounded weak and formulaic, even to his own ears. “No one’s asking us to send Mee-Kyong anywhere."
***
Eve could hear her employers rummaging in their room, but she didn’t make any move to get out of bed. It was too warm under the heavy quilt. She stretched her legs out and yawned. It had been another late night with Tiger, and she wasn’t looking forward to a full day of cooking, cleaning, and pretending to care about her mistress’s constant prattle. After eating two candy bars, Tiger had whined and moaned about not seeing her enough. Maybe now that Mrs. Stern was so caught up with her new brothel rescue, their visits could pick up again. She knew her relationship with Tiger wasn’t perfect, but their time together helped her forget certain other things.
“You should find a new job,” he suggested when she complained about how boring housekeeping was. He quizzed her again about the Americans, about the “students” who had lived with them until recently, about any cash or valuables her bosses kept around the house. “If you could only find out where all their money’s stored, we could ru
n away and get married.”
They had both laughed at the absurdity of the idea.
***
“I just can’t believe Mee-Kyong would do something like steal a watch.” Juliette pulled out the end table by Roger’s side of the bed and peered behind it again. He was wrong. The watch was around here somewhere. She was certain of it.
Roger rummaged through the shelves in the closet. “You can’t judge what somebody is or isn’t capable of after just a few weeks.”
Juliette banged her head when she straightened up. “I’m telling you, I’ve been spending hours with her every day, and she’s not the kind of person to steal something. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Then who else was it?” Roger dumped a pile of shirts on the bed. He probably wanted them ironed by evening, too. Juliette was glad his back was to her so he couldn’t see her roll her eyes. He continued assaulting the clothes in the closet. “Eve and Benjamin have both been here over a year. If they were the kind to steal, we would have figured it out by now.”
Juliette frowned. Everything had been going so perfectly. Mee-Kyong was learning every day, answering all of Juliette’s questions. She hadn’t complained once about the Scripture copying, a valuable but time-consuming spiritual discipline. She was a model houseguest and eager student. Roger was petty and prejudiced to accuse her of stealing. Juliette only had to make him realize that. “Just because she’s a whore, that doesn’t make her a thief, does it?”
Roger hung up a shirt he was holding, taking time to straighten it out impeccably. “I’m not the one calling Mee-Kyong a whore, am I?”
***
Mee-Kyong kept her eyes on the open book in front of her without focusing on any of the characters in particular. She had lost track of how much time over the past weeks she had already wasted stuck in the den with Mrs. Stern, her overzealous benefactress who was committed to saving her soul in three-hour installments.
“Look here, where it says he’s the light of the world.” Mrs. Stern tapped a line on the page. As she continued to prattle and extol the Western Savior she and her husband were so devoted to, Mee-Kyong shut off her mind and just nodded every once in a while. Mee-Kyong knew all about devotion. Pang had been a disciple of the Party at one point, back when he worked in the same factory where Mee-Kyong’s unit slaved. She knew what it was to follow someone with a zeal that blinded you to reason and sense. She knew what it was to submit so fiercely, so foolishly. Mrs. Stern droned on about sacrifice and commitment, and all Mee-Kyong could think about was the crunching sound the cartilage made the first time Pang broke her nose.
At least she had no self-delusions. Her life as a prostitute began years before she set foot in the Round Robin Inn, back when she was nothing more than a child trying to survive in Camp 22. To get food, you gave a little bit of yourself. It didn’t matter if you liked it or not, if you were terrified, if it was even more painful and humiliating than a teacher’s lash with the whip. All that mattered was at the end of the day, your body didn’t shut down and die. You had enough rations to ward off starvation for another twenty-four hours. If you worked the scenario out right, you ended up with more than just food — clothing, shelter, a warm bath instead of a biannual hose-down in freezing-cold water.
Life at the Sterns’, Mee-Kyong had quickly learned, wasn’t all that different. It wasn’t her body she was selling, but her mind, her time, her feigned adoration. All she had to do was sit through Mrs. Stern’s ritualistic lectures in the den, and she was paid with a soft pillow, a warm blanket, and three hot meals a day. The Sterns never asked Mee-Kyong where she was from or how she arrived in the hotel district. “Your past is a closed book.” Mrs. Stern insisted Mee-Kyong could start a whole new life, as if her time in the gulag and the Round Robin didn’t even matter. What a simpleton. Did this obese American truly believe that a cozy bedroom and full cafeteria service could erase Mee-Kyong’s history and wipe away her past?
Still, there was no physical debasement. There were no nightly callers, no wheezing proprietors telling her who to entertain. She wasn’t locked in a hotel room. At the Round Robin, she had been forced to work six to ten hours at a time, depending on the influx of lazy, middle-aged callers who frequented Mr. Lee’s cheap establishment. Here, all that was required was a few sessions a day, a few hours pretending she cared about Mrs. Stern’s Western deity, a few hours pretending she craved the kind of forgiveness their American Savior offered.
Secretly, Mee-Kyong didn’t care all that much for the idea of free forgiveness. What about Mr. Lee, and those like him — men who sold innocent girls like Sun to be stripped and possessed and violated by the highest bidder? Or the smooth-skinned, angry-eyed brother who cut Sun’s pathetic life so short? What about him? Did he deserve forgiveness? If there was a God of love and grace, as the Sterns always insisted, and if he was willing to overlook the offenses of men such as these, Mee-Kyong would despise him to her dying day.
Mrs. Stern interrupted her thoughts by pointing to a verse on the thin, fragile page. “Here, where it talks about the light of life, it means that we can live in joy. Freedom.” There she went again. Freedom? What freedom was there in this mansion, where food and shelter were earned by accepting their fanatic propaganda? Mee-Kyong couldn’t go out. She had no identity papers, none of the forms she would need to legally move around the city without being troubled by the police. Where was her freedom now? Where was her freedom at the Round Robin, where she was too weak to fight back or protect Sun from being used so mercilessly and murdered so senselessly?
Maybe freedom existed for wealthy, fat Americans, but not for gulag whores like her.
CHAPTER 34
“So I got your last report,” the director stated.
“Agent Chun-Hee is the epitome of thoroughness, I’m sure.” Ko knew the director could detect the bitterness behind the words. He knew better than anyone about Ko’s history with Chun-Hee.
He took a deep breath and ignored the remark. “Ko, I think it’s about time we pulled you out of there.”
Ko froze, and it took several seconds to stammer the expected reply. “I’m ready to go wherever the Dear Leader and the Party lead me next.”
“Of course you are.” The director didn’t sound convinced. “I assume if there’s any more information you glean, you will pass it on to us.”
Ko could almost taste the foreign cigarettes they gave to agents who returned home from successful stints over the border. “Naturally.”
On the other end of the line, the director cleared his throat. “Well, we’ll send word when we’re ready to bring you home.”
“Home?” The word sounded foreign on Ko’s tongue.
“That’s right. You’re coming back to Pyongyang,” he stated. “We’ll need you here soon.”
“It is an honor to serve,” Ko whispered and stared at the cell phone long after the director disconnected the call.
***
Juliette hadn’t entered Eve’s room in at least six months. She tapped gently. “It’s just me,” she called out.
The door creaked open an inch. One of Eve’s eyes peered through the crack. “Do you need something?”
Juliette fingered her eyeglasses back into place. “I’m really sorry to bother you right now, but do you mind if I come in for just a minute?”
Eve opened the door slowly and slid out of the way. Juliette bit her lip to hide her shock. Clothes were strewn across the floor and bed. Several dishes that had been missing from downstairs lay discarded in corners of the room. One blanket hung bunched up over some dirty laundry; the other dangled off the bed in a wrinkled mess. “I’m sorry about the clutter.” Eve gestured to the single chair covered in food wrappers. “I didn’t know you’d be coming.”
“This is your room.” The words were much more dignified than Juliette felt. She sat down carefully once Eve cleaned the junk off the seat. “You can do whatever you want with it.” As much as she tried to act naturally, Juliette found her head turning from side to sid
e as she let her eyes sweep across the room like a panorama camera. Eve didn’t seem to know whether to sit or stand, so eventually Juliette motioned to the corner of the bed. “I’m actually here because Mr. Stern lost his watch. I was wondering if you happened to see it when you were cleaning up yesterday or today.”
“No, ma’am. Is there anywhere in particular you’d like me to go over and look?”
Juliette shook her head. “It’s probably in our room somewhere. He takes it off every night and puts it on his end table.”
“How long has it been missing?”
“Just since this morning.” Juliette continued to study Eve out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t think you’ve been in there since then, have you?”
“No, ma’am. I usually only clean your room on Mondays and Thursdays.”
“That’s what I thought.” Something in the far corner grabbed Juliette’s attention, and she had her answer. She knew exactly where the watch was, but she kept her face expressionless and forced herself to continue chatting for the sake of etiquette. “So, how are you and Mee-Kyong getting along?”
Juliette could tell by Eve’s face that the conversation would be short-lived.
***
Mee-Kyong bent over the table, her shoulders aching from the awkward angle. The kink in her neck made it feel like she was back in the fabric-cutting line at Camp 22. She slammed her pen down and let out an exasperated huff at the sound of approaching footsteps. Did Mrs. Stern seriously expect her to be done by now? She glared at the door.
“She got you copying?” It was Benjamin.
Mee-Kyong didn’t look up. “I’ve had a cramp in my wrist for the past hour.”
Benjamin went to the bookshelf, drawing his pointer finger across each title. “That’s normal. Most students complained.”
“Students?” Mee-Kyong leaned back in her chair and flexed her tired wrists.