Stars Between the Sun and Moon (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

In the early
afternoon another woman joined us, an elderly lady with grey hair. The trafficker informed the three of us we would be heading out soon. She pointed to a pile of used clothes and told us to pick out whatever we wanted. I took three sweaters full of moth holes and some extra pairs of torn socks. We stuffed the extra clothes and some rice and cabbage in bags made from old shirts and pants.

“If we're caught, do not tell the guards that I am selling you,” the trafficker ordered. “All of us could die.”

We walked down the main road chatting with one another as if we were old friends on our way to sell items in the local villages. Our conversations were full of make-believe. The trafficker mentioned grandchildren I suspected she was not old enough to have. The older woman seemed to speak honestly about missing her family.

We spoke to one another loudly, boldly, so that anyone could hear. We hoped to throw off any guards we passed by our brazenness. The intimate details of our real lives, we whispered to one another. The elderly woman had two daughters already living in China, she confided, married to Chinese men. As we passed various security posts, the guards walked out to look at us, hands on their rifles. “Hello,” we called to them in loud voices as we waved. They shook their heads and sighed. Our ruse was working. They thought us to be dotty.

We had a long walk to reach the part of the river where the trafficker wanted us to cross. Since I had made so many crossings in the past, I gauged that on the other side we would have another long walk to Adong or a similar town. The trafficker planned for us to cross the river at dinnertime, when the guards on both sides would be taking a break. “It will still be daylight,” she told us. “But I think we can make it.”

My heart beat wildly as we continued along. When we could think of nothing else to gossip about, we sang revolutionary songs and then played a game of tag.

“There will be a valley before we reach the river,” the trafficker explained at one point where mountains protected us on both sides. “When we reach that valley, we must walk through it slowly. If we hurry, we could be shot from the mountains by the patrol guards.”

The three of us did as she said. I expected with every footstep to hear gunshots and to feel a bullet pierce my back, but we reached the riverbank safely. We removed our shoes, then crept down toward the water.

It was a calm day, and the wind had settled. But while there were no waves, the water was high, coming up to our thighs when we first stepped in. I had never crossed at a place where the river was so deep. We hung on tight to each other's hands as the water reached our armpits. I curled my toes into the slippery earth on the river bottom for added security.

“Send me a rope,” I said under my breath. “Send me a rope to take me to the stars.” The water rose no higher, as if something was answering my plea.

Within five minutes we had reached the other side. We scurried into some bushes where we lay panting.

I was looking out through the bushes, searching for snipers in the mountain ridges on the Chinese side, when my gaze rested on the trafficker's face. She looked lost.

“You don't know what to do next!” I accused her. “You didn't believe all of us would make it.”

The human trafficker averted her eyes. “I've never done this before,” she admitted. “The man you met at my house is my husband. He used to take women across. But on his last trip, the women were caught on the Chosun side. He managed to escape but he felt it was too risky for him to make the trip again.”

With a confidence I would not have expected, the elderly woman took charge. She led us silently along a path that wove its way through the forest until darkness engulfed us. We crouched low, huddled together and settled into sleep for the next few hours.

Chapter Twenty-nine

After our rest,
we walked along dirt paths through the forest, slowly finding our way in the dark. When dawn came, we took a break to eat some of our provisions. We bathed and cleaned ourselves as best we could near a stream then we combed out each others' hair. We tried to look as if we were ethnic Koreans who had been born in China. But we knew if we were stopped, we would be in trouble. I was the only one of the group who knew any Mandarin, from my years living in China with Jungsoo.

By the time we reached the nearest bus station, it was about midday. According to the trafficker, we needed to meet our buyer in Helong but an ethnic Korean woman told us the bus had already left. I started to panic.

“We have nowhere to stay here,” I said angrily, pulling the trafficker off to the side. “What have you done? You didn't plan properly. You've sentenced us all to death.”

“Don't lose yourself.” The elderly woman stepped in to calm me, pinching the flesh on the back of my arms.

“I only have enough money for our bus fare, but I have a relative in Helong,” the trafficker stammered. “An aunt. We'll take a taxi there. She can pay the taxi when we arrive.”

There were taxis all around us. The vehicles were bright yellow on top and green below. Even the cars in China are bright, I thought.

“How much to Helong?” I asked in Mandarin, poking my head inside one of the taxis stopped alongside.

“Two hundred yuan.”

“Okay. The person we're meeting in Helong will pay you,” I said. I waved for the others to come.

When we reached the outskirts of Helong I shuddered as memories of the night I had been taken from Jungsoo's home came flooding back. I shook my feelings away and focused on watching where we were going. We took a few sides streets, then parked in front of an old concrete building in the centre of town.

The trafficker got out of the car and knocked on a midnight-black door. There was no answer. “Tell the taxi driver that we will have to wait for my aunt to return,” she said to me. My chest grew tight. We were sitting out in the open in the midday sun, light shining on us like a patrol guard's torch.

“No,” I replied. “Find the money now. We need to hide. Can we go to the buyer and pay the taxi driver with the money you get for us?”

Tears started rolling down the trafficker's cheeks. “I don't have a buyer yet,” she admitted. “My husband told me to go to the train station in Helong and said I would find a buyer there. Please tell the taxi driver to wait.”

I translated into Mandarin. The driver's already puffy face turned red. He pounded his fat fists on the dashboard. “You pay for this,” he screamed at me.

“Yes, yes, yes,” I said, bowing my head to show compliance. “Whatever you need, whatever money, we will give you when the aunt comes home.”

I relayed the taxi driver's conditions: he wanted more money if he had to wait. The trafficker was sobbing by now and I knew if I stayed any longer with her I risked being caught. I settled my eyes on the woman who had given up her children. She had healthy hair and all her teeth. If she managed to find a nice husband, she would be safe. I suspected the elderly woman's intentions were to run away before she was sold and join her children already in China.

I watched the wind pick up some discarded newspaper from the street. The road was dirty, the gutters full of rotting food and papers. While Chosun was dark from the decay of our own bodies, there was no litter. Everything there was used. Here, people had the luxury to discard things they no longer needed.

“I have to go to the toilet,” I told the others.

I headed toward the back of the trafficker's aunt's house, where I suspected there would be an outhouse. After a moment, I felt the light touch of a hand on my shoulder. I stifled a scream as I turned and found myself looking into the desperate eyes of the woman who had lost her children.

“I know what you are doing,” she said in a low voice. “I knew if I followed you, you would lead me to safety. I can't go to prison. I will never see my children again.”

“I know China,” I said hesitantly. “In Chosun, you must pretend you are stupid to survive. In China, it is the opposite. You have to be smart. You have to act as if you have power. You must make choices, and quickly. If you show weakness, you're dead. Come with me if you like, as long as you understand this.”

The two of us began zigzagging through the streets, acting like friends. I was afraid the trafficker or the taxi driver might come looking for us, so we stayed off the main streets, ducking behind buildings whenever we saw a yellow and green car coming our way.

“I am Yunhee,” the woman told me when we stopped to eat some rice and tofu we found in a garbage dumpster.

“I won't tell you my name,” I said. “If you're caught, you may be tortured and forced to reveal it. From now on, don't tell anyone your real name, either.”

As dusk settled, I spotted a cross atop the door of a long stone house and pointed it out to Yunhee. “This is where we will stay tonight.”

While I was in prison, I had heard some female prisoners talking about the kindness of the Christians they'd met in China. Several had received help from Christian groups. Now my companion and I would find out for ourselves.

Yunhee looked apprehensive. “At school, our teacher taught us that the American missionaries carried crosses like that,” she said. “My teacher told us the story of a hospital the Americans had built in another country. On the grounds was an apple orchard. A young boy, a patient at the hospital, crept into the orchard and picked one of the apples. The American missionary who caught him tied the boy to a tree and then burned the word ‘thief' into his forehead.”

“I've heard stories like that, too,” I said. “In one, a boy went to a missionary hospital because he was sick. The hospital removed the child's organs and sold them.” I paused, looking into her eyes. “But I don't think that all of what we've been told in Chosun is true.”

An older ethnic Korean woman opened the door when we knocked. I didn't need to explain why we were there. She could tell by our appearance. She whisked us inside, leading us along a corridor that smelled of lavender incense and burning candles. In the kitchen, she set some pork and rice in front of us.

“When did you arrive?” she asked as we devoured the food.

“Yesterday,” I said, not wanting to give her the entire story.

The woman sat down at the table with us. “What are you going to do in China?”

“We thought we could beg at restaurants for food,” I replied quickly, hoping to solicit the woman's pity.

A man entered the room. He stopped when he saw us, then started speaking to me in Korean, asking in a kind voice what we needed. I paused before answering, reflecting on his accent. His sentences were smooth. There were no ups and downs in his inflection as there were in my accent or the accent of ethnic Koreans. I studied his appearance. He had a soft stomach and wore clothes that were tailored, but not close-fitting or colourful. With a start, I realized he must be from South Korea.

As the man sat down with us, I could smell musk. “I'm glad you turned to us for help,” he said.

“Look for the
cross,” a female prisoner had whispered to me in one of the prisons. “You can trust these people.”

Maybe, I thought to myself now, but it would take more than this man's calming manner to get me to open up. A part of me wondered if he too was already planning to sell us.

“We need money,” I told the man.

“I can't give you any money,” he said, shaking his head. “But you can stay here for now, and eventually I can help you leave China for a safe place.”

I felt my heart race. When the man and woman left to get us some clean clothes, I turned to Yunhee.

“I want you to stay here,” I said. “I don't know what this man plans on doing. If you want to trust him, trust him. If your instinct later says to run, then run. But I am going to leave here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere I cannot take you.”

“Why?” she cried.

“You're young,” I said, “and still have a future. You can take the risk that this man will get you into South Korea. Once you are there, you can never return to Chosun, but maybe you can find a way to smuggle your children out. I can't go far from Chosun. I have something there that will always take me back.”

That night, after the Christian man and the woman had turned down the oil lamps and left Yunhee and me to sleep on mats on the floor of the main room, I snuck into the kitchen and stole some fruit and rice. I left quietly through the back door, following a stream until I detoured into some fields. I knew where I was by now. I set off to walk through the mud back to Jungsoo's house.

Chapter Thirty

Once I arrived
at the farm, I hid in the barn with the pigs I had once fed. I tried to nap, but I kept being awakened by the animals' snores and movements. Eventually I gave up and lay waiting for dawn. I was cold, but I was wearing all three sweaters I had taken from the trafficker's house and I buried myself as best I could in the straw. As the sun broke through the mist, I emerged and knocked on Jungsoo's door.

When I heard stirring inside, I knocked again, this time a little louder.

A woman answered. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun, and she was wearing red lipstick, even at this early hour. I jumped back in shock.

“Who are you?” she yelled, grabbing a broom and pointing the handle at me. I took a nervous step backwards and tripped. I fell to the soggy ground, mud seeping in through my pants.

Jungsoo came running, tripping himself as he pulled on his shoes with one hand. He grabbed a hoe from the porch and raised it as if to hit me, then stopped, recognizing who I was. Moonjae, who had come to the door and now stood between the woman and his father, smiled when he saw me. “Umma!” he called out. “Umma, you came back!”

The woman slapped the child on the back of the head, knocking him to his knees. From that action, I knew who she was. Jungsoo's wife had returned.

Reluctantly, after a signal from her husband, Jungsoo's wife let me inside. “That woman is not your mother,” she scolded her son once we were seated on the floor. I shivered in my muddy clothes, avoiding Moonjae's eyes. Jungsoo's wife tapped her long painted fingernails. “That woman is not your mother,” she repeated.

“Call me auntie,” I whispered to the boy. “Just call me auntie instead.”

“You will live with my parents,” Jungsoo said finally. He shocked me, for he was looking at his wife as he spoke. He turned to me. “You can live here,” he said.

His wife opened her mouth to protest, but Jungsoo put his hand in the air indicating for her to stop.

Jungsoo's mother and
father treated his wife like a daughter. It was harvest time, and they fed her large portions of food. She didn't have to work on the farm the way I did. Moonjae continued to call me mother. When he did, his real mother would get angry in front of everyone and slap him hard across the face. Jungsoo and his parents did nothing to stop her. I was a servant on the farm. Nothing more. My former relationship with Jungsoo seemed gone.

That winter, Jungsoo's wife went back to Beijing, vowing she would never return. The family's sow gave birth to twelve piglets. Five froze to death in the chilly frosts of morning but Jungsoo's mother said I could keep the rest for myself if they survived. I moved into the barn to care for them. With numb fingers, I guided the piglets to the sow's nipples to make sure they got their milk. I slept beside them so they were warm at night, keeping them covered in hay. All of the piglets survived.

When spring came, I looked after the twelve ducks Jungsoo owned along with twenty chickens. I planted and watered the tomato plants in the front yard.

I sold the piglets that summer for a high price, and I paid someone to take white rice, vegetables and soybean oil back to my mother. I had returned to sharing Jungsoo's bed and it felt safe to be with him. When the tomatoes were ready, I plucked them off their stems and fed them to Jungsoo and his friends and cousins when they came to visit. Life was good.

One afternoon in December, while Jungsoo was out and Moonjae was doodling on some papers, someone knocked at the door. A policeman, I could see through the window. At first I didn't answer. But he knocked again. He wasn't leaving. I opened the door fearfully. We only exchanged happy holiday greetings in Mandarin as the policeman handed me a calendar. When I closed the door and I heard his footsteps moving away, I said the first prayer of my life. I thanked the heavens I had taken the time to learn Mandarin.

Since Jungsoo was a Chinese citizen, I would never be able to legally marry him. Even if he was no longer with his first wife, China would never recognize our nuptials unless I bought someone else's identity or bribed an official, which his family would not be able to afford or be willing to do for me. Thoughts of my deportation to Chosun loomed large, so I rarely left the farm, and I hid whenever any of Jungsoo's friends came to visit. Then, as the Chinese New Year approached, something changed. I realized that I was pregnant.

“You cannot keep
this baby,” Jungsoo's mother said to me, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. My mouth was so dry I was unable to speak. All I could think about was Sungmin.

“How far along are you?” asked Eunhee. She had aged since we first met on the train. Her son's eyesight had never returned, and her own spirit had seemed to die.

“I don't know.” My mind raced as I considered my options.

“It costs many yuan to get rid of a young fetus,” spat Jungsoo's mother. “More if the baby is further along.”

“You must not give birth to that child,” Eunhee said, echoing her mother. “You cannot stay in China forever, and when you go, you will have to leave the child here. Jungsoo can't care for him. He has Moonjae already. There are so many abandoned children in China with mothers from over there,” she said, tilting her head in the direction of Chosun. “We're not going to be one of those families.”

I felt my knees giving out from underneath me. I was about to lose a second child.

“Listen to me,” Jungsoo's mother said, grasping my elbow. “You have a good life here. You send food back to your umma. You make Moonjae and Jungsoo happy. We accept you, even though we don't want you. But we will not accept your child. You can leave here tonight and give birth somewhere else. Never come back if you do. Or you can do what we say and abort the baby.”

I tossed and turned through the nights that followed, listening to the wind whistling against the windowpanes. By the time I awoke in the mornings, crystal designs adorned the glass. Jungsoo did not speak to me. He didn't want the child either.

“Have you decided?” he asked, breaking his silence on the third day. Before I could answer, he continued, “I had a dream. An ox came into the house—a light brown ox.”

I felt tears rise. The ox, I knew, was symbolic of the son I carried inside me, strong, reliable, sturdy.

“But he left. The brown ox came into the house and then left,” Jungsoo concluded. “That ox, he was not meant to be.”

“I can't do it,” I cried, falling to the floor. “I want to keep this baby.”

Jungsoo became less
and less friendly as his family pressured him to get rid of me. He stopped telling me about his conversations with them, as he once had. “You are not one of us,” he said. “You have no right to know.”

“I will leave. I will go,” I cried one night. I had taken my bedding and crept to the far side of the room, away from him. “You've changed,” I sobbed, shaking my head. “You scare me now.”

Two days later he apologized, but his bad behaviour returned after a visit with his mother and sister. I had lost my place with him. But he didn't do what his parents said. He couldn't kick me out. Instead, when I was about seven months along, he told me he was going to South Korea to find work.

“How long will you be gone?” I asked.

“Maybe for as long as a year. What will you do?” he asked.

I didn't know how to answer. I wanted Jungsoo to take me with him, but I had no paperwork and no way of leaving China without being caught by the police. “I'll leave here,” I said, knowing this was what he wanted to hear. “I won't be a burden to your family.”

In the light of the oil lamp, I watched Jungsoo's expressionless face. “I'll give you some yuan,” he said. “Whatever you want, as long as you leave.”

Jungsoo came into the kitchen the next morning, his hair messy and sleep still in his half-opened eyes. “I had another dream,” he said. “I went to the Tumen River fishing. I caught a salmon.” He held his shaking hands out in front of him, about two feet apart. “It was so big, the biggest salmon I had ever seen.”

“I'm carrying a girl,” I said in a hushed tone. Water meant women. The fish was a girl child.

“But I had another dream right afterwards,” he said. “Moonjae was playing with a huge snake, a boa constrictor.”

I gasped. A small snake meant a girl. A large snake meant a boy. And a boa meant the child would be in danger.

That next morning, in the space between full sleep and being awake, I had a dream of my own. In it, I gave birth to a daughter, and Jungsoo welcomed me back. In my dream Jungsoo married me, because a daughter would not be so much of a burden to him.

I set off after eating some rice and pork. It was nearing the end of winter but still cold out, so I concealed my pregnancy under stretched wool sweaters, baggy pants and a coat that belonged to Jungsoo.

He gave me five hundred yuan and said goodbye at the door. After leaving the farm, I hid in an alley for most of the day. At mealtime, when I knew the patrol guards would be eating, I retraced my steps through the town to the river. At the river's edge, I stripped down to my underwear. I took one step into the water, and then stopped to listen. I felt as if something was wrong but all I could hear was an owl hooting. “Your mind is playing tricks on you,” I told myself.

I waded in farther, clenching my teeth, hoping that the water would remain shallow all the way across.

Eventually, I clawed my way up onto the shore. But as soon as I got my bearings, my scream pierced the night air. I curled up on the rocky ground in a fetal position and sobbed. I was back in Chosun, welcomed by the dim light of a guardhouse casting me in its long shadow. Off to the side was a sentry, smoking a cigarette and waiting for me.

I had been caught.