Free Stars Between the Sun and Moon by Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland

softly, her eyes darting back and forth, her body trembling.
    â€œBut you never lost a child,” I stammered.
    â€œYes,” she said, her eyes staring out at nothing. “The house burned. The baby died. I am a bad mother.”
    It was hard to leave Hoeryong and my grandparents after that golden summer. As we drew close to Yuseon on our train ride home—the cement houses, the streets upon streets of apartment buildings in which Party officials lived, the rows of factories with their black metal gates, the endless low-rise homes in the suburbs—my world turned grey, even though the sun shone.

Chapter Eight
    â€œDaechul and his father have been taken away by the Boweebu,” my friend Sumi told me, pulling me aside in the schoolyard as I arrived for the first day of classes.
    â€œNo,” I exclaimed, placing my hand on my chest. I wondered what the Boweebu, the state secret department, would do to a child not much bigger than me. “What for?”
    â€œDaechul’s mother was a spy. She was put in prison last summer. Didn’t you know?”
    I sighed with relief. “I heard some men talking, but I didn’t know who they meant. I feel better now. We’re safe.”
    By now another friend, Mihwa, had joined us. “She betrayed the revolution and our great father, Kim Il-sung. She got what was coming to her.”
    â€œWhat do you think the Boweebu will do to them?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Sumi said. “It’s a bad family.”
    â€œI saw a movie once about prison,” Mihwa said. “The cells were dark, and the people were hung upside down by their feet and tortured.”
    â€œHow were they tortured?” Sumi asked, her eyes wide, eager to learn the details.
    â€œThe guards used whips and chains to beat them on their backs and their legs.”
    I shook my head to drive away the image. On noodle nights, Daechul would smile and run faster on his stocky muscled legs than children twice his size. Earlier that summer, though, his face had become sullen, his eyes surrounded by dark circles. His movements had slowed. He had lost so much weight that his ribs poked out underneath his sweaters. I should have realized, I chastised myself, that Daechul was the boy about whom the men had been speaking.
    I had felt safe earlier, but my relief was short-lived. “Anyone could be a spy,” I thought, looking around the playground.
    My anxieties grew as the days went by, and I started to get headaches from worrying so much. I was constantly tired, and I became slower at everything I did, including my homework and my chores. A few times the goat kicked me for falling into her or nicking her skin with the edge of the can as I was milking her. Once, I stood up and kicked her back, spilling the milk I had collected. I fell behind in completing my math exercises and copying out phrases in Korean to help me with my penmanship. As I struggled to finish my homework in the mornings, my mother would leave for work, not wanting to be late herself. I was left alone, often arriving at school after lessons had already begun.
    I tried to listen to the teacher once I got there, but her words all ran together. All I could think about was sleep, spies and prison.
    â€œI hope this cheers you up,” Umma said as we settled onto hard metal chairs about halfway down the aisle of the movie theatre. It was the first time I had ever been to the cinema. It was an overcast late afternoon, and my mother had said she could not take any more of me walking around the house under a dark cloud.
    The film was The Flower Girl , written, my mother whispered as the lights dimmed and a beam of light hit the wall in front of me, by our eternal father Kim Il-sung.
    The screen came alive with moving pictures of a young woman, wearing a traditional chima and jeogori with a bow, walking through the mountains and picking purple and pink azaleas. All of a sudden, she was in a city,