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

cement roads outside Pyongyang and my Pothong River and the red splash of flags had long turned into a stretch of solitary villages and sentry posts, where Mr. Rhee prepared to flash what must have been forged travel documents. He never had to, because of his special license plate. We passed a group of prisoners relieving themselves by the road, mountain after denuded mountain. The countryside frightened me; it always had. The landscape was another country; not my Pyongyang of tree-lined boulevards, a world apart from my youth spent playing sports with the other children at the chandeliered Children’s Palace. I tried not to think about my
abeoji,
though my mind was filled with him, or about this man risking his life to save ours. Years later I would hear other stories of people like him.
    After a private farewell that I tried painfully to ignore, we got out of the car, and the man spoke to the burly driver of a battered white truck before disappearing into the darkness. It was one ofthe many private buses that plied the country, one emblazoned with red lines that I would learn was an old Red Cross ambulance. Such symbols meant nothing to me yet. From the back of the truck where only hinges were left of its doors, crouched figures stared out at us. I shrank from their stares, their canvas coats and coarse scarves and, especially, from my growing fear that the differences between us were becoming less important. I’d traveled through the countryside on trips to visit less fortunate relatives, but I hadn’t really seen it.
    â€œWe’re lucky to be here at all.” Eomeoni sent me a warning glance from under the scarf and hood veiling her. “Don’t forget that.”
    â€œOnce you wake up, we’ll be in China,” I whispered to my
dongsaeng,
though saying those words made it too real for me. Smoke exploded from the truck’s exhaust pipe, and its engine grunted into the barren rice fields.
    â€œWill we really?” she said, and held on tighter to my hand.
    My
dongsaeng
heaved with dry sobs. She had no more tears left—she had wept all night in the security van and the man’s sedan that had intercepted it. I kept an arm around her, angry that I could do no more for her. She watched the men who jumped on and off after slipping the driver payments of cigarettes or liquor, and sucked in her breath each time the monotony of the pothole-filled road behind us suddenly revealed a boy shouldering squirming chickens in a sack or women traveling with A-frames on their backs. Shriveled objects in the landscape of harrowed farmland. At each sentry post we flashed our forged papers.
    When the truck suddenly lurched and sagged backward to astop, the driver got out and slunk over, a cigarette hanging from his lips. “Men push, women out.”
    It was just a pothole, but my spirits lifted. The organizing, the discarding of my coat, all of me focused on pushing against the hard metal back of the truck. The joints of my fingers popped dangerously, my shoulders made a cracking music, and the fact of the body helped me forget the body.
    â€œA bit of the old back-and-forth,” a man said once the truck was on firm ground, and he thrust his hips in and out, laughing with the other older men.
    â€œThere are women present,” I said, so quietly that no one but my sister could hear.
    My sister might have grown into a lovely woman. She might be tall and graceful like my mother but with a sweetness all her own. Even then she was like a deer, quick and easily spooked and so sensitive to others, always knowing when you longed for a book or a Choco Pie and hurrying up to you with her offering. But when Eomeoni handed each of us a sweet potato and said, “I’m so ashamed of myself, but this is all I have to give you for dinner. We need to ration our supply,” my sister squeezed her face into a tight ball and refused to accept hers.
    Our
eomeoni
turned away. Look at me, her posture