Free How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee Page A

or in which exact moment I understood that the read-a-book-in-bed companionship that my dad offered wasn’t enough for my mom. I remember Deacon Shin immobile in the closet, his lips kissing his knees, how my mother’s voice cracked as she called out my name. I remember how the walls and door of my mom’s bedroom seemed to part for me but not how my hiking boots magically appeared on my feet.
    She reached for me, saying my name. I fled down the stairs, skipping steps as the patter of my mom’s feet followed me down.

7
Yongju
    E ven back then I had a vague understanding that our country was no stranger to hunger. I knew that some hungered for what was known: noodles in steaming anchovy broth, the food rations that had stopped for most people years ago, the security of orderly routines. Others hungered for things they’d seen in bootlegged South Korean television shows: heating in winter, glamour, chocolate cream pies that came individually wrapped like birthday presents. Then there were hungers that I hadn’t dared to hunger for. Freedom to travel. Freedom from surveillance, from fearing that what you said and did was being watched and that someday you would be questioned about it. Now a strange new hunger invaded me. Where, I wondered, as we drove past bare blue mountains in the Toyota truck that picked us up outside the city, where was Abeoji?
    â€œMr. Rhee is going on a business trip north, and he is kind enough to take us where we need to go,” Eomeoni said, as if it wasn’t four in the morning.
    My
dongsaeng
’s teeth chattered so violently she couldn’t speak. Her face matted with dried tears made me feel even more helpless; I could do nothing for her. Instead of our
abeoji,
the stranger I had found in our apartment was driving us up as far north as he was able, where, I guessed, we would be met by another car. This man, who had swiftly arranged this late-night disappearance over the last few hours, was more powerful, more resourceful than I’d thought.
    I knew and Eomeoni knew and the man knew that his name wasn’t Mr. Rhee and that this business trip was a lie so extravagant it wasn’t worth telling. I wondered who had been paid off and what fortune exchanged for our escape, and how the man had managed to extricate Eomeoni from wherever she was being held. Most of all, I wondered what had happened to our
abeoji
.
    The man didn’t turn to glance at us, either so intent on the dirt road ahead or afraid to let us see his face, as if his expression would betray too much. But to my
eomeoni
he said, “Are you warm enough?” with such tenderness, it was as if his voice were stroking her hand and trying to calm her. It didn’t matter to me that she responded to his quiet anguish with distant, measured gratitude. I knew then that they cared about each other.
    It was too much: the sudden flight, the amorphous shape of the future, the revelation of my mother’s lover. Or at least a man who loved her enough to pay enormous bribes and put himself in danger, a man she might have loved back if she weren’t a married woman.
    I leaned over the passenger seat up front. “How do you know each other?”
    Eomeoni turned back to me, her face hidden beneath a rough woolen hood I’d never seen before. “We were childhood friends,” she said. “You shouldn’t even know that much.”
    â€œDoes that mean you’ve been in contact all this time?”
    â€œHe’s helping us at great risk when no one else can! Don’t ask an older person such questions. I didn’t raise you that way.”
    â€œIt’s all right,” he said. “The poor kids.”
    And just as I was about to ask what I really wanted to know, her voice broke as she said, “Ask the Great General about your
abeoji,
not me. I can’t answer your questions.”
    I became afraid, and withdrew into silence.
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