Stars Between the Sun and Moon (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

I sent a
note to the army barracks where Chulnahm's mother told me he was stationed.

Dear Chulnahm,

I will wait for you until you come back. If you don't want me to wait, tell me, and I won't. Can you give me a response?

Sunhwa

After that, I waited. I worked alternating shifts at my job. One week I would start at 8 a.m. and work until 4 p.m. The following week, I worked from 4 p.m. until midnight. The week after that, I would work the night shift, from midnight until 8 a.m. Every Saturday morning, I took part in the total life retrospective with my co-workers.

The factory where I worked removed impure materials from metals mined in other places of the country. I was soon put in charge of depositing the waste materials on a conveyer belt, which took the substances to a truck. The truck disposed of the garbage in an open valley in a rural area.

As I performed my duties, I imagined what Chulnahm would look like in his pressed green military uniform. I envisioned his sleek black hair, picturing him as he learned to use guns to fight our enemies. During work breaks, I would close my eyes and think of Chulnahm as my saviour, like the flower girl's brother. Chulnahm would protect me from the Chinese on the other side of the river and the Russians with their rough language that sounded like dogs barking. He would protect me from the capitalists and landlords in the south, who were disloyal to our great father.

When months passed and I heard nothing from him, my heart grew heavy. One day I confided in some of the older women who worked in the factory with me. Unni, a woman with wide swaying hips who reminded me of Pumpkin, wagged her finger and berated me for not coming to her sooner. “I would have told you to send the letter to his residential complex, not the barracks,” she scolded. “I'm sure he never got it.”

“Sister, what should I do?” I asked her. “Should I write him again?”

“I don't think he got it,” interjected a petite woman whose first baby was nursing at her breast. While the woman worked, her baby remained in the nursery. “Yes, you need to write again. But this time do as Unni says. Mail it directly to your man.”

Unni sighed. “Don't be foolish. It is too late. He's moved on. You had your chance. He's going to be in the army now for ten years. He'll find someone near where he is stationed, someone less difficult.”

“No!” I cried out in sorrow.

“Don't worry,” Unni said. “You will have other prospects. You just need to, hmm . . . ” She ran her eyes up and down my body. “Can you come to my house on Sunday?”

That weekend, Unni
plopped me down on some plastic sheets in the kitchen of her home. She put my hair in curlers and squeezed some chemicals from a bottle over my head. “Once I fix you up,” she said as she kneaded my scalp, “you'll get another man.” While I waited for my hair to set, she showed me how to put on white powder and red lipstick. I let Unni do whatever she wanted, wishing that Chulnahm would be able to see me.

But when she was finished and I looked at myself in a cracked mirror, I shuddered. My hair was not curly but frizzy, like the feathers of a dead sparrow. My face didn't look grown-up and beautiful, but rather like a painting done by a child unable to colour in between the lines. I was so dismayed, I wrapped a towel around my head for the walk home. As soon as I arrived, I ducked into the outhouse and used the cold water in the pail to scrub my face with soap. I then snuck into the pantry and tried to flatten my hair using sesame oil.

After several more months had passed, my manager approached me to take a job in the country. A tunnel was being drilled through a mountain near the coast for use as a military base if the south invaded, and I would be helping operate the drilling machines.

“Is anyone else coming from the factory?” I asked him.

“No, just you. They are all mothers. They cannot leave their babies.”

“How long will I be gone?” I asked.

“As long as a year,” he said.

One word stood out in my mind from our conversation: “military.” I washed my hair four times to get the oil out and curled it with rags in an attempt to remove the frizz. I put white powder on my cheeks and started dabbing red lipstick on my lips every morning, at midday and again in the evening. If Chulnahm was not going to be a part of my life, then I would find another military man at the mountain who would marry me. When Chulnahm learned of that, it would be his punishment.

About forty people
from different factories across Chosun met at the coast. There were only five women, and we slept together in the small wooden house built nearest the urinals. I started work the day after arriving, overseeing the machines that were digging out the mountain. Whenever I could, I would look out at the green sea with its frothy waves and winds that tossed my curls. The ocean stretched to the east as far as my eyes could strain. I imagined one of my father's ships coming over the horizon. He hadn't even said goodbye. My mother had been stern, as if she knew the real reason behind my excitement at leaving. “Don't meet a boy,” she had warned me. “You'll get pregnant. Just keep to yourself. Do your job, and when you return, your father and I will find you a husband.”

But I didn't want their husband, unless it was Chulnahm. I vowed to find one myself over the course of the year. And I did. Myungin was tall, with broad shoulders, and a toothy smile like the men in the magazines my father hid in his chest and forbade me to read. His black eyes sparkled when he looked at me. Of course, I looked down when that happened. But as I did, in my mind's eye I saw the two of us walking in tandem.

Every morning as we rose in our house to get ready before the morning meal, Myungin would walk past the women's dormitory and knock. I would rush wide-eyed to the door. By the time I flung it open, he had left. I could see only his back as he made his way to the cafeteria. But I breathed in his scent, which floated in the air: a scent of soap and manly sweat, since he was a labourer, mixed with sea salt and fresh green grass. I knew a man must approach the woman first, so I dared not speak to him. At first, I didn't even know his name or whether or not he already had a wife.

Every morning after his knock, I changed quickly into my work outfit, dabbed some powder on my face, applied lipstick and smoothed down my hair, which was made more frizzy than ever by the humid air so close to the sea. I would then get my shaking body over to the cafeteria and sit at the back, at a table facing his.

“His name is Myungin,” said one of my co-workers one morning. She was a middle-aged woman whose eldest son and his wife had just had a son of their own, making her a proud halmuni. That evening, just before we went to bed, the woman had some exciting news. “Myungin has asked me to accompany you to breakfast tomorrow,” she explained as my heart began to beat wildly. “He wants you to sit beside him.”

“Chulnahm,” I mused as I dozed off that night, “I don't even know what I liked about you. Now I have Myungin.”

At breakfast the next morning, Myungin held a chair out for me to sit, his eyes dancing. He reminded me of a movie star, his muscles flexing under his khaki work shirt, his movements liquid and full of confidence. He asked me simple questions, including my name, hometown and age.

“Tell me about your family?” he asked. I twirled my rice in the tin bowl with my chopstick, unable to eat, unable to think, unable to feel anything except an electricity blowing through me like the sea winds outside. When Myungin smiled, his front left tooth, capped in gold, twinkled in the morning light.

In the weeks that followed, we ate our meals together morning and night, saying little to each other as our bodies moved in unison. One day, my new manager announced that I was being promoted. I would now be on the same team as Myungin, overseeing a different group of labourers. “We believe that a single woman and a single man working together will make each of you work harder,” the manager said, “to show each other what good comrades you are.”

“So he is single,” I thought, sighing.

Sometimes at night, one of the women in my bunker would turn on the radio. There was a Russian song that often was played in between Chunbok and Manghil. After we'd been working together for a few weeks, Myungin sang me a line from that same song: “I do not love you, I adore you . . . ”

“Sister,” I asked the woman with the radio that evening. “What does
adore
mean?”

“It means love,” she smiled.

“And what does love mean?” I asked.

“What you are feeling for Myungin.”

On a snowy
day in the first month of the new year, my foot got stuck under a cart carrying some rocks. Myungin, who was by my side, yelled for help, then lifted the heavy cart off my foot. He slipped off my shoe, and while we waited for a stretcher, he cradled my injured foot in his hands. When no assistance came, he finally swung me onto his broad back and carried me down the mountain to the health clinic. He paced outside the window as the nurse bandaged my foot, then carried me to the wooden house where I slept. He tucked me in and left before anyone saw him, since men were forbidden entry to our quarters. I still knew little about this man, other than that his strength made me feel weak. When my foot was healed and winter had fled to make room for planting season, Myungin and I began walking hand in hand in the fields, watching the sun rise in the early morning and set in the evenings. I didn't think any longer about my plan to find a husband or to punish Chulnahm. I was simply in love.

Our work term in the mountain ended that autumn on a dark day when rain created waves in the gutter. I ate my last meal sitting beside Myungin and we sat side by side on the train in silence as we returned to our homes.

My stop was first, and I knew my mother was waiting. As I got up to go, Myungin pulled me quickly into his arms and whispered, “I adore you. Come to my train station in two days. I will wait for you.”

He slipped a piece of paper into my pocket. The name of his train station and a time to meet were written on it; I couldn't help but be struck that the words I had sent to Chulnahm, Myungin now said to me.

Two days later, on an evening so still you could hear the owls hoot, I told my mother I had to go to a meeting at my factory. Instead, I made my way to the train station. I was wearing my only dress, which I had bought with the savings from my job. It was navy blue with tiny black dots on the smooth, silky fabric, and it drew in at the waist, shaping my figure into an hourglass. My face was white, the powder perfectly smooth and blended. My lips felt plump and full under the lipstick I had applied.

“I adore you,” Myungin said again when I disembarked from the train to find him on the platform. We walked without many words to his parents' house, where the first thing he did was give me a bowl of sugar: a sign of his intent to marry me.

Myungin's father had worked in Pyongyang, he told me, and that is why his mother could serve me candy powder and
bbang
, the special Korean sweet bread—pricey items rationed for the elite. For our meal, we had potatoes instead of rice. Myungin's mother explained that her husband owned a company that sold clothes and furniture the Chinese left behind when they came to Chosun to sell their wares.

“A petty salesman,” I said confidently, wanting to impress her with my knowledge. Instead of praising, though, she became defensive.

“No. He distributes the items to markets in the bigger cities. We are Party members,” she said, as Myungin and his father nodded proudly.

I had heard that only people who had lost their positions in the Party departed the city. All of the older people I knew had harboured dreams at one point in their lives of doing so well that the Party would ask them to move to Pyongyang. It never was the other way around. No one ever wanted to leave. But I didn't ask Myungin's mother or father about that.

A month and a half later, Myungin sent a message through a friend to my factory, where I was back at my old job. This time I ate a meal of noodles with turnip with his mother while the men smoked cigarettes outside. She asked me questions about my family, starting with my father. I explained that he was the vice-manager of a factory and a Party member. She smiled, pleased with my answer. I trembled as we spoke, terrified she would ask about my mother. But just then, the men returned. Would I come with him now to visit his sister, who lived a few houses away, Myungin asked.

That was it. My palms started to perspire. Myungin was going to ask me to marry him.

Chapter Twelve

As we entered
his sister's small home, the warmth from the fire in the kitchen hit my cheeks, making me blush. Myungin's brother-in-law was sitting cross-legged on the floor drinking
nongtaegi
, a popular alcohol. Myungin motioned for me to sit, too, explaining that his sister was visiting some friends but would be back soon.

The brother-in-law spoke for a while about his job in the factory, then stood up and said he'd go get his wife. After he left, Myungin pulled a guitar from one of the cupboards and began playing the Russian song I had heard on the radio. My body swayed as he sang the lyrics. I closed my eyes dreamily, but when I opened them, I saw that Myungin had inched his way toward me, his feet nearly touching my own. I pulled my legs away, my heart racing. He moved closer, then put down the guitar and started hugging me.

I leapt up and stammered that I had to go to the outhouse. But when I tried the doors, they were locked. I turned toward Myungin and, in a quavering voice, asked him to let me leave.

“After,” he said, taking my arm.

I pulled myself loose and yanked on the doorknob. It wouldn't budge, so I raced to the other door and banged on it. I did this over and over again, Myungin grinning the entire time. Finally, exhausted, I gave in and sat down. Myungin moved in behind me and started unbuttoning my cotton shirt.

“No,” I said, barely audible. “I . . . I . . . could get pregnant.” I closed my eyes, knowing I was trapped. “I have never been with a man before,” I lamented.

I didn't struggle or cry out as I felt Myungin on top of me and then inside me, his scent of perspiration, soap and breath that smelled of powder candy making me choke.

I was in a daze as Myungin walked me to the train station. He didn't squeeze my hand like he usually did when I stepped away from him and onto the train. For my part, I didn't turn to wave. I sank into the vinyl seat and drifted into a thick fog, exhausted by the heavy burden of knowing someone I trusted had betrayed me.

After that night,
I didn't hear anything from Myungin for weeks. I didn't dare tell my mother what had happened. She had predicted this, after all. I became aloof, somber and quiet. I hid myself away, coming out only when I had to work. Then when my shifts were finished, I disappeared again, too ashamed to face my life. I told everyone who asked that I was not feeling well.

After three months had passed, I set off for the factory where Myungin worked. I waited outside the building until his shift ended. As I saw him come toward me, lighting up a cigarette, I shivered. He looked different, his body hard, his eyes cold. When he walked right past me as if I were a stranger, I followed him.

“Why are you avoiding me?” I called out at one point. He stopped and turned.

“You lied to me,” he said in a low voice, so his colleagues heading to the train wouldn't hear. “You teased me. You forced me to do those things to you.” He spat, then took a long drag on his cigarette. Blowing smoke into the air, he rolled his eyes at me. “You said you had never been with a man before. You lied. You are not a virgin.”

For a moment, I was speechless. “Why would you say this?” I finally managed to get out.

He stepped toward me so swiftly I worried he was about to knock me over. “When we were up on the mountain, there were soldiers guarding us,” he hissed. “I saw you talking to them. Your co-workers saw you talking to them. You were with one of them.” He stomped his cigarette out on the pavement with his black boot and walked away.

I swallowed my tears as I rode back on the train. For the rest of the week, I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned on the mat where I lay. I told my mother I was sick with the flu. Somehow I had to reach Myungin. I had to speak to him, get him to listen.

The following Sunday, curled up on my sleeping mat, I wrote Myungin a letter, using my father's fountain pen. “Why do you listen to other people? I am a virgin, or I was. I adore you,” I ended the letter.

Just as I had folded the paper into three, my mother walked up behind me and grabbed it. I looked at her fearfully as she read.

“Who is this man?” she demanded. I started sobbing, hiding my face in the duvet. “Who is he?” she shouted again. I was crying too hard to answer.

When my father came home that night, my mother showed him the letter. He frowned as he read, his brow pinched, his nostrils flared. When he was finished, he ordered me to tell him everything about Myungin.

When I returned
from work the next day, my parents were waiting. My father had left work early, something he seldom did. I lowered my head to avoid their eyes.

“I went to Myungin's factory today,” my mother began.

I started to shake, fearing what was to come.

“I met with the Party secretary at his office. Sunhwa, do you know anything about this man, Myungin?” my mother continued.

I remained silent.

“Do you know anything?” my father repeated angrily, slapping his thigh with his hand.

“No,” I said under my breath.

“He has been in prison,” my mother said.

“A year,” my father added. “He spent a year in prison.”

I looked up and searched their faces. I could see they were telling the truth and I was horrified. “What for?” I stammered.

“His father held a high position in the foreign currency division in Pyongyang,” my father said. “The Party secretary would not tell your mother what, but the father did something wrong, and the entire family was sent away. The father and Myungin had to work in the construction unit. While there, Myungin got drunk on nongtaegi and beat up a co-worker. The man he beat up was a
chomoseng
, a good person. He was from a very good family, well respected in the Party. Myungin was sent to jail, where he had to do hard labour. When you met him on the mountain, he had just finished his prison term.”

I stood speechless, my stomach churning.

“You're never to see him again,” my mother ordered.

My father exploded when I did not reply. “Did you hear?”

“Yes,” I whispered. The house was filled with the silence of my broken dreams. “I understand. I won't ever see him again.”

My parents' wrath
did little to heal my broken heart. Worse, I soon realized that I was pregnant. I was terrified, and I didn't know what to do.

For the next few weeks, I did very little other than work at the factory and help my mother cook and tend to the farm. We occasionally watched a film together. One evening, I went alone to a repeat showing of
The Flower Girl
. As I walked home, singing the flower girl's songs to myself, Myungin approached suddenly out of the darkness. For a moment, we stared at each other. I could not move. My body shook with fear.

He fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands. “I am so sorry,” he sobbed. “I was such a fool to believe those things about you. I was wrong. You are a good person, and I am bad.”

I had imagined this apology many times, and I bit my trembling lip to conceal my tears. “My family won't let me see you ever again,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. The truth, though, was that I wanted to see this man. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted him to tell me I would be safe.

The light from the full moon lit Myungin's face. “If you can forgive me, I promise to never make you cry again. I am sorry,” he continued as I stared at this man, whose face had haunted my dreams. “Please, please, please forgive me.”

I swallowed hard, my throat dry and sore.

Myungin and I talked until the morning sun cast a dull light on the field where we sat together. Myungin explained about his past and his family and told me how he had turned his life around. He had a stable job in the factory and he wanted a family. He said he wanted me. He begged me for a second chance, even when I whispered to him that I was pregnant.

As I rose to go home, hoping to slip into bed before my parents woke, I agreed to marry Myungin.

What I dared not tell him was that I wasn't sure what would be worse: being an unwed woman raising a child alone, or being married to him. I picked what I believed to be the lesser of two evils.