Stars Between the Sun and Moon (10 page)

Part Two

Chapter Fifteen

For several days
after Sungmin was taken, I was bedridden at my parents' house, unable to lift a spoon of rice to my mouth or even a cup of water to quench my thirst. I spent hours, as I had as a child, watching the dust dance in the beams of sunlight streaming in through the window. But unlike when I was young, my mind wasn't filled with my mother's stories of children escaping tigers. This time, my mind, body and spirit were shutting down.

Whenever I slept, I dreamt of Sungmin. I would wake gasping for air, my body soaked with sweat. Feeling as if an insect had crawled inside my head, I'd rise and go outside. I'd pace endlessly back and forth, as if the motion could banish what had taken possession of me.

I was receiving no rations, though, so after a week I had to return to work. My mother had found me a job in construction. Every morning, she forced me to drag myself out of bed. My job was to mix and then carry cement to be used in the foundation of a building. My muscles ached, but I didn't mind. The discomfort was nothing compared to the hole inside of me.

Food rations for everyone had become more scarce. Once a month, which became once in two, then three months, we were given only a bit of corn rice, some root vegetables and some cooking oil. My siblings were still finishing school, so on the days I wasn't working, I would go to the mountains with a backpack I'd made from old pants sewn together to collect herbs and grasses to supplement our meals.

“Daughter,” my mother said quietly one night in early winter, as the chill from outside made its way under the doors. “These are for you.” She passed me a wad of won tied with white string and two bars of soap.

“What is this for?” I asked. But I already knew. I recognized the pile of money and the soap.

“For Sungmin,” my mother said, her eyes fixed on the floor. “You should at least have these things. There is a woman in town who helped me find the couple who adopted Sungmin. If you ever want to know about his health or his schooling, she will find out for you.”

I counted the money, three hundred
won
, and drew in the scent of the soap. Eventually I tucked the items into my newest grey sock and placed everything in a chest I kept in the corner.

I existed for
two years in this way. I was dizzy by the end of each work day due to the lack of food, and I slept all evening. I had no social life, despite men coming to the house and asking my mother if they could meet with me. I didn't want another man. I wanted Sungmin. I clutched one of his tiny wool socks to my chest all night.

My dreams of my son had become less frequent, but I didn't want them to end. I would often lie half-awake on my mat, remembering everything I could about him, every detail of our brief life together. Sometimes, when I awoke, I would think I felt Sungmin on top of me, lying on my chest. I would sob uncontrollably when I realized he was not there. In my mind's eye, I saw him getting bigger, muscles forming on his little arms, his eyes lighting up when he was given some porridge or his hair was stroked.

One day, I gathered my courage and asked my mother for the address of the woman who had organized the adoption.

Over those two years, my mother had slowly broken down. Hunger was the cause, I believed. Her back was hunched, her eyes sunken with fatigue. Every member of our family, from youngest to oldest, had ribs that poked out, showing through our cotton shirts in summer. Our cheekbones stood out like sticks. We survived mainly on dandelion stems and grass sautéed in soy sauce. And we weren't alone. Hunger was sweeping the neighbourhood.

I walked across
town to the address my mother had given me, arriving with rain dripping down my face. I knocked on the woman's door as I rehearsed what I wanted to say: “I'm Sunhwa. Two years ago, you gave my child away. I would like to know how he is doing? Where he went and in what kind of home he is being raised?”

The woman opened the door and squinted at me. I stood silent, too afraid to speak, but her face softened after a minute. “I remember you,” she said pulling me inside.

The woman had me sit while she heated some water. When she was done, we sipped tea made with herbs from the mountains as I asked about Sungmin. She knew little about the couple, other than that they had no children at the time they adopted Sungmin. “When your child is a bit older, they want to adopt a second child, a girl,” she said. “Sungmin will have a sister?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, one day,” replied the woman. “Though he will not be Sungmin anymore. I'm sure they gave your son a new name. They were a good family. Be happy for your son. No doubt he is well cared for.”

“Where . . . where . . . ” I stammered, not wanting to give my true intentions away.

“They live somewhere in Wonsan,” she said. “The father works in the navy.”

The naval base in Wonsan, I knew, patrolled the waters off the eastern coast, in case the south tried to invade Chosun.

As I walked away from the woman's home, I touched the money tied with the string and the soap I carried in my pocket. I had wrapped them in a plastic bag to protect them from the rain. With my socks soaking wet from the holes in my boots, I headed straight home to talk to my brother Hyungchul.

“I have the information we need,” I told him when he arrived home from school. Over the past few days, while my mother slept, we had come up with a plan. My brother and I were going to find Sungmin and buy him back. We didn't tell anyone, because we knew they would protest against our plan. I knew when Sungmin was in my arms again, no one could refuse him.

My sister was preparing to get married. But she and her future husband were happy. He was a kind man, and despite having to forgo many wedding traditions because of my family's poverty, he accepted and loved my sister. That afternoon, Hyungchul and I told my mother, my sister and her fiancé that we would be leaving for a few days.

“Where are you going?” my sister asked.

My brother jumped in. “To a place in the mountains to find food.”

On our way out after packing a few things, we found my mother in the garden. As I stood before her to say goodbye, a flood of guilt washed over me. I couldn't lie anymore: I told her that we were going to find Sungmin. “I am going to buy him back,” I said. I spoke in the most confident tone I could muster, though I knew I was defying my parents by my actions.

I thought my mother would be angry at the news, so I turned away quickly. But her response was not what I expected. “I will support you,” she said in a quiet voice. I turned back and looked into her tired face. I wanted to thank her, but I also couldn't forget what she had done. I shook my head in confusion.

When my brother
and I arrived in Wonsan, the capital city of Gangwon province, the sun was setting, casting long shadows across the cement apartment buildings. We spent the night on the floor of the train station.

The next morning, we went straight to the naval headquarters. But the iron gate across the front was closed, and the guards would not let me in. I walked around the large compound trying to find another way in. There was none. I went back to the front gate three times that day, my face flushed with anxiety and the anticipation of finding the man who called my child his son. I pleaded with the guards to let me enter. But I didn't know the man's name. His place of work was the only information I had.

Hyungchul and I got to the naval base as early as we could the next morning. We stood outside, searching the faces of the men arriving there to work. When that proved fruitless, we began going from one neighbourhood to another, searching desperately for the couple. I asked every person we saw if they knew a man who worked at the naval base and was father to an adopted four-year-old boy. After a while, our feet were covered in blisters, our clothes stained with perspiration and dust.

“We'll ask the people in other neighbourhoods on our next visit to Wonsan,” Hyungchul consoled me at the end of the fourth day. I was distraught as I pulled my bottari in close to my body, testing with my fingers to make sure that the soap and money were still on top. Hyungchul lit a cigarette as we walked slowly back to the train station. Our search had been unsuccessful but we could not stay away from work any longer.

Our father scolded
us harshly when we got back to our family home. “The reason why so much bad luck has come to you, Sunhwa, is because you don't pay your respects to the dead,” he snapped. “When we go to the tombs of your ancestors in the mountain, all you do is eat the food we bring to honour them.”

Every spring, on Kim Il-sung's birthday and in the fall, during
Chuseok
, the harvest festival and Ancestor Day, my family headed along with many others to the mountain, where our ancestors were buried under big mounds of earth. We would stand in a line facing their tomb, bowing and paying our respects in a ceremony. But my father was right. I was always more interested in the feast that the women who had made the journey prepared together.

“The ghosts of your ancestors are upset,” my father continued in a piercing voice, “because you do not visit them.”

I was despondent. “Can I do anything to change my fate?” I asked, sliding onto my knees and clutching my hands in front of me.

My father waved me away as he turned toward his room. Once he had shut his door, my mother spoke up. “I know a fortune teller. I will give you the money to see her.”

“No, no,” I protested, thinking of the money my mother earned selling the tofu she made at home. It was all she and my father had to buy the extra food they needed.

“It's fine,” she assured me, slipping ten won into my pocket from her own. “Rations will be coming soon. You need to see this woman. She will tell you what ghosts are haunting you.”

I told only
one other person about my impending visit to the fortune teller: my friend Gilok, a neighbour who lived not far from our house. She was younger than I was, and struggling too. Her first child, a son, had died within two days of his birth. Gilok was pregnant with her second child now, but fearful she would lose it as well.

“Why should I go with you?” she asked, playing with a piece of a grass. We were sitting outside by the river, away from anyone who might overhear.

“Umma says the fortune teller will tell me which ghosts are with me,” I explained. “Maybe she can do that for you too, so your second baby will be born healthy.”

All my mother knew about this fortune teller was that she was old and that she lived in a village located a half day's walk from our own. In case we couldn't find the old woman immediately, Gilok and I planned to spend the night in the train station. We each packed food in a bottari, and, not wanting to leave it behind, I tucked in the money and the soap from Sungmin's adoption. After taking two trains, we walked along mud paths through the hills to the village. By the time we arrived, our faces were streaked with dirt.

Suddenly I felt someone breathing close behind me as we walked along the main road. I turned to face a large woman whose wrinkled face and sunken eyes put her age at well over ninety.

“You are looking for me,” she said in a deep voice that reminded me of frogs croaking.

“I . . . I . . . ” My lips and throat were dry from nervousness. “How did you know?”

“The spirit told me poor people were coming to see me,” she replied. “The spirit also told me I needed to come and greet you.”

The woman wobbled on legs that bowed like my cousin Heeok's had as a child. She led us through a town of white cement houses with brown tile roofs and patched windows. When we reached her home, she had us sit in a darkened room. The only furniture was a set of drawers, a mat and a small round wooden table.

The woman used a crooked stick to help lower her body into a seated position. Once she was settled, she stared for a long time at Gilok.

“Before you were married, your husband dated another woman,” she eventually said. “She is the reason you are having problems with your babies.”

Gilok's sadness poured out, tears streaming down her face. “How do you know this?” she cried.

“The spirits. Always the spirits,” the fortune teller replied. “But your husband married you instead. The other woman died from grief, and her ghost has cursed any child that comes from you, including the one inside you now.” She pointed to Gilok's stomach. “By the time your next son recognizes your face, he will die, too.”

“No,” Gilok yelled, her fists pounding the small table in front of us.

The fortune teller turned next to me.

“You,” she said, “the child you seek is happy. He calls another woman mother and another man father. They love him. He loves them. He is precious to those parents. Don't look for him anymore.” She spoke forcefully, shaking her head. “When he is military age, he might come to look for you.”

“How can my friend and I change our futures?” I pleaded. I reached for the woman's hand, but she quickly drew back.

“You will take your shoes off three times,” she continued, ignoring my question, “and you will get married three times.”

“Please tell us how we can avoid our fates,” Gilok choked out.

“I can do a spell for you, a
boojeok
,” the woman said, looking at Gilok. “But it will cost you each three hundred won.”

“I will do it. I will do it,” Gilok cried, pulling a sock out of her bottari. Inside was some won, which she threw across the table. “Do whatever you have to do.”

“And you?” the fortune teller asked me.

I felt as if the breath had been knocked out of my body. The money I carried was Sungmin's adoption money. If I gave it to the fortune teller, I would have no chance of buying Sungmin back. “I need to get the won from home,” I replied, my mind imagining Sungmin in the arms of another mother. “May I have some time to think about this?”