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

selling the flowers. I slid forward in my chair.
    â€œYou,” said an old man with a long white beard to the flower girl, “will meet a nobleman.”
    But the film was not so happy. The flower girl’s little sister, no older than Sunyoung, wanted to look at something that was burning in a long rectangular box. The landlady slapped the tiny girl so hard she fell backwards, hitting a boiling pot of water. The water splattered into her eyes, blinding her.
    I jumped up and screamed. My mother told me to shush and urged me back into my seat. But I continued to sob.
    The film was set just before the revolution. The flower girl’s family was very poor, and they lived in a shed that belonged to their landlord.
    â€œWhat is a nobleman?” the flower girl eventually asked her mother.
    â€œThey say a nobleman helps the poor like us, to make us rich,” her mother replied. “If only such a man were to appear to you, as if in a fairy tale.”
    At one point in the film, the flower girl sang:
    â€œEvery spring the hills and fields bloom with beautiful flowers, but we have no country, no spring. When will flowers bloom in our hearts, on the hill path Brother was dragged along? Spring comes and flowers bloom every year.”
    The flower girl’s mother died following that, and her blind sister nearly did, too. But her brother, who had been imprisoned seeking revenge against the landlord and his family for blinding their sister, escaped and became part of the revolution. In the end, the flower girl’s nobleman is her brother, who helps to liberate Chosun from the Japanese.
    I cheered and cheered, my joy filling the theatre, when the peasants overtook the landlords.
    On Saturday mornings, just as my parents did at their work places, I went to school to take part in saenghwalchonghwa. I had a Life Reflection Journal, and, in it I had to record all of my transgressions for the week. I would flip through my book of Kim Il-sung’s quotes, choose one to copy out and then write my life for that week in review like this:
    Great Leader Kim Il-sung said as follows : Study is a battle. To a student, studying is the foremost duty and is a matter of life and death.
    This week, my uniform was wrinkled. I didn’t have time in the morning to use the big iron to smooth down my pleats. I was late for school twice. I kicked the goat when she kicked me. I didn’t play with Sunyoung or tell her a story. I must try harder to be a better person.
    Great Leader Kim Il-sung said as follows : The oppressed people can only liberate themselves through struggle. This is a simple and clear truth, as confirmed by history .
    My little baby brother, Hyungwoo, who was born in the first month instead of the twelfth when he was scheduled to come, was crying. But instead of rocking him, or trying to get him to stop, I put my hands over my ears and continued what I was doing, rewriting a poem. I was not a good daughter. I did not help my mother.
    I faithfully recorded all my transgressions each week for the saenghwalchonghwa with one exception. My greatest travesty was never divulged, not even by classmates who knew of my secret. Since watching my first movie, The Flower Girl , I had been consumed by the images I saw on the screen. At first, in my dreams, I saw the flower girl as she walked in the snow in her shoes made of straw. Even at school, when I should have been focusing on my studies, I imagined the work camps where prisoners were forced to carry big blocks of wood on their backs, blocks so heavy that blood flowed down their faces.
    Children were not allowed to go to the cinema without an adult. But I soon learned to sneak in through the back, when the theatre was dark and the guards were not looking. The first movie I saw on my own was the love story Chunhyangjeon . I sat in the second row, my body hunched down in my seat, glancing around the theatre after every scene to make sure the guards hadn’t seen me. As