Under the Same Sky (8 page)

But as the second week began, my mood sensor felt the welcome leave the air like a fading scent. By then, we were having soup at almost every meal; the rice had disappeared. My aunt worked on a farm and my uncle worked for a coal company, and they received food as their wages, but the government didn’t increase your portion because you had three relatives staying with you.

It always began at the dinner table. My aunt would snap at her older daughter, “Why are you eating so much?” Bong Sook and I bowed our heads when she said this. We knew she was really talking to us:
Why are you here? Can’t you see I can barely feed my own children?
It was hard to get the food down after hearing those words.

My mom grew more tense with every passing day. So much was piled on her shoulders. Why were we here? Why couldn’t she provide for her own children? Her face grew strained and pale. It seemed that my old mother—the one I knew before she went to Kang Suh—had returned.

I was getting hungrier. The pain scraped the lining of my stomach. It felt like there was no fat left for my body to consume, and the hunger was attacking muscle, which made the pain worse.

One morning, when my aunt and uncle went to work and my cousins were at school, I was alone in the big house with Bong Sook. After an hour, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I looked at the clay pot that held the soup we would have for dinner with the family.

“I’m just going to have a few spoonfuls,” I said to Bong Sook.

“No, Kwang Jin. You know you can’t do that.”

“One, then. Only one.”

Bong Sook shook her head sadly at me. “You can’t. Auntie will find out.”

“But Bong Sook!” I whined. She was adamant. So I waited for her to close her eyes—we drifted in and out of sleep like old people—and then went to the kitchen. There was a plate over the soup pot. I lifted it and dipped the ladle in and quickly sucked in a spoonful of soup. Then two more.

My body seemed to bloom. A feeling of contentment, of sweetness in my bones, came over me. I wanted desperately to keep eating, but I knew that would court disaster. I put the ladle down and replaced the top plate.

At lunchtime, my aunt came home from work and went straight to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner. A few seconds later, I saw her standing in the doorway to the main room, staring at me. Her face was flushed, her eyes big and wet. She shot me a poisonous look, a look that said, “No better than a thief!” I dropped my eyes. And yet I was still hungry.

My aunt couldn’t say anything. It was as if we were all choking on these unsaid words. The next day, my uncle came to me and said, “What is your mother’s plan?”

“Uncle, I don’t know.”

“What is she going to do? Is your father getting money together while you’re away? Kwang Jin, what is their plan?”

Why was he speaking to me? My parents had barely told me we were getting on the train to Grandmother’s the day before we left! Did he think we were all in cahoots?

“I really don’t understand,” he said, his eyes bulging. “I feel I am suffocating.”

Finally Mother couldn’t take it anymore. She went out and found a job. It wasn’t a real job; it was another of her crazy schemes to feed us. She would go out and buy corn powder at the factory and then sell it on the street—not even making it into noodles—hoping to make one
won
for every sale. When she’d made enough money, she would buy corn noodles and bring them home to us.

But there were very few people in the market who could afford corn powder, and many days she would come home with nothing. When this happened, her face was like a clay mask, frozen in the expression of a hopeful person. She was trying hard to convey confidence in our future. But she needn’t have bothered; I felt the strain growing within her. She talked to Bong Sook about her troubles, and then both of them would wear the clay face. I felt sad that they couldn’t tell me what was happening, but part of me didn’t want to know.

There was one day when we felt the sting of our poverty especially deeply. My mom had four sisters and three brothers. Her second-oldest sister, whom we called Great-Aunt, was doing well even in the famine. Her son had joined the police department, and the police always found a way to survive—either through bribery or corruption. One day my mom and my small aunt (my mother’s younger sister) were invited to a birthday party for Great-Aunt’s son, the policeman. They were excited to go; they hadn’t seen my great-aunt in many months, and it would be a day they didn’t need to worry about feeding their children. The party givers would provide plenty of food.

When you go to someone’s house, even a relative’s, you can’t go with empty hands. So my mom worked hard to make my favorite meal: a single corn pancake. She went to the market with her last few
won
and bargained until she got the most corn powder for the money, then brought it home and pounded it into a pancake shape and steamed it. A single pancake was all she could afford. She wrapped it up in waxy paper and we headed to the birthday party, an hour away.

When we got there, I was dazzled by the large crowd. So many people, so nicely dressed! Police officials wore suits of rich wool with sharp creases down the legs. The wives of government managers wore lipstick and beautiful light clothing. We walked into the house, me in my stained white shirt and dark pants, and my mother and Small Aunt in their scuffed shoes and country clothes.

When my mother handed the corn cake to my great-aunt, our hostess wouldn’t so much as look at it. Usually the host smiles and thanks you for whatever you bring, but Great-Aunt didn’t even open the waxy paper to see what we’d brought. Her face never changed—she gave us a look of frozen indifference—as she handed the pancake to one of her children. I saw in her face that she was embarrassed by us, embarrassed to have such poorly dressed relatives in their drab work clothes among this glittering array of local government officials. We watched as they put our pancake in the kitchen, apart from the other gifts and dishes brought by the other guests. I saw the back of my mother’s neck flush red. She turned quickly away, her eyes on the floor.

One part of the party lived up to expectations: there was plenty to eat. We found a corner of the room to sit in and tried not to make a spectacle of ourselves as we tasted things we hadn’t eaten in months, if not years. Tasty, well-marinated kimchi with spices and fish! Fried pork! Beef ribs! We cleaned our plates and waited for a few minutes before going back for more, so as to look like we were perfectly capable of stopping at any time.

My small aunt sat with us, watching the guests. She was on the verge of tears. “How could you treat us like this?” she whispered, addressing her older sister across the room, more in sorrow than in anger. No one came to our corner to ask us how we were and if we were enjoying the food. Great-Aunt and her family carefully avoided us, though we saw them circulating and chatting with the more glamorous people. I was mostly unfazed—the food and its enticing aromas had given me a jolt of happiness, and I didn’t care what people thought of us—but my mother and my small aunt were inconsolable. Awkwardly, I chewed on spare-rib bones and waited for the next dish to be served. To make my mother’s misery complete, as we left the party, Great-Aunt handed us back the single corn pancake we’d brought, along with some leftovers.

My mother accepted it, bowed, and turned wordlessly toward the door. On the way home, Small Aunt’s sorrow had turned to rage. “How dare they!” she cried. By now, Bong Sook and I were embarrassed, too.

The night was cold and I didn’t have a warm enough jacket. My mother put me on her back and Bong Sook walked beside us. I could feel my mother crying, her throat working to stifle the sobs, my head resting on the back of her neck.

Years later, Small Aunt’s family grew quite rich. Her husband had relatives in China, and after many attempts, he got a visa to see them. This allowed him to bring back Chinese goods, which he sold at a large markup. Their income shot up. Soon Great-Aunt went to their house looking for handouts, saying nothing of the time she’d humiliated us.

Great-Aunt was a shameless person. She wouldn’t be the last one I’d meet.

Chapter

A
S MY SEVENTH
birthday approached, I saw my mother grow more depressed. I was still a boy and hoped for nice things on my special day: a small gift, perhaps, or something good to eat. I dreamed of boiled eggs, fluffy rice, sizzling pork dishes. Surely my mother would find something.

But when the day came, it was just like any other. There was the usual watery gruel for breakfast and no hint that something better was on the way. My mother didn’t cry out “Save some room!” Nothing to let me know a treat had been stashed away for me. I tried to hide it, but I was disappointed that there wasn’t the tiniest gift to celebrate my day. I laid my head on the sleeping mat and tried to sink into sleep.

Bong Sook was upset, I could see; her face was troubled and she spent long periods staring at the tile floor. Finally, without saying a word, she got up and ran out the door. I thought she’d gone for a walk, though there wasn’t much to see around Grandma’s, just fields echoing with the sound of peasants chopping wood. But an hour and a half later, the door opened and Bong Sook rushed in, holding something behind her back.

I sat up cross-legged on my sleeping mat as she approached, bringing her hands forward. In each hand Bong Sook had a rice cake. My mouth began to water.

Bong Sook thrust the cakes into my hand. “Happy birthday, Kwang Jin!”

I delayed devouring the cakes long enough to ask her one question.

“But how?”

Bong Sook shook her head happily, her black hair swinging. “Don’t worry about that.”

Did I offer Bong Sook a bite of the cakes? I’m not sure; my memory is filled only with the joyful, drug-like recall of the sweetened rice hitting my taste buds. I was so happy. The taste, for me, literally equaled love. It meant that my birthday was still special to someone besides me. I gobbled up those cakes and pressed my fingers on the crumbs that had fallen into my lap and ate them too.

I had two or three moments of happiness before the storm broke over Bong Sook’s head. When you produce unexpected food during a famine, everyone immediately becomes suspicious. Where have you been hiding it? Or what did you sell to get it, when we have nothing?

Bong Sook, it turned out, had done something rash. She’d run out to the yard and dug up some of Grandma’s potatoes, the ones that were to sustain the family through the winter. Then she marched off to the market, exchanged the potatoes for some saccharin, and with part of the saccharin bought the two rice cakes.

In other words, my gift had been stolen. Worse still, my birthday would cost us precious calories in the future.

Grandma berated Bong Sook. It was the first time I’d ever seen my sister disobey her elders. But she was unrepentant. As Grandma yelled at her, and my mother watched with a wretched expression on her face, my sister stared at me. Her eyes said,
I’m happy I did it. I am.

My mother, already depressed, had grown paranoid about the possibility of someone kidnapping Bong Sook and me. The cannibal story had burrowed itself deep in her brain. “Kwang Jin, if someone offers you candy, don’t go with them. Hear me? People will offer you food if you go with them to their houses, but I forbid you!” She repeated this every couple of days, and she wouldn’t allow us to go into town alone.

I just looked at her and nodded. “OK, Mom,” I said. She needn’t have bothered. We were hearing scary stories from our relatives, who seemed to relish telling us the grisly tales. One was about the women in the market who sold their own children. They would arrive with four kids and sell one, usually the oldest. The money they earned they immediately spent on corn, which they stuffed into the mouths of their remaining children while screaming out “I’m sorry!” as the buyer led away the unfortunate boy or girl.

I didn’t believe those stories then, though many people swore they were true (and I now believe such things did happen). I didn’t doubt people would sell their own children. My question was, who on earth would buy them?

This was not the only story that turned out to be true. “Did you hear about the ax man?” my older cousin asked me. “Homeless children had been disappearing from the market—to where, nobody knew. Then one boy escaped and told people a local man was offering
Kkotjebi
food if they returned home with him. The children who went into his house never came out. So many of them! The local people broke into his house to investigate. Do you know what they saw?”

I shook my head.

“Heads. And feet. The heads had rags stuffed in their mouths. And in the corner they found an ax with blood and brains on it.”

I tried to look nonchalant, like this was old news to me, but my body began to tremble. I was very scared. Bong Sook and I weren’t homeless yet, but we were just one step away. All it would take would be to lose my mother and we’d be out on the street. I already knew that my relatives were too stressed to be able to take us in.

“Why only homeless kids?” I asked.

My cousin made a face.

“Because they have no parents to go look for them!”

Some days, Bong Sook and I would lie on our mats and stare at the ceiling, daydreaming of meals we’d had: creamy corn pancakes, this or that kimchi, sizzling marinated pork. I enjoyed this immensely. I believed I could taste the corn pancakes more deeply and fully than when I’d actually eaten them, because I slowed each bite down so that it took two or three minutes to finish. But when the daydream was over, I felt hungrier than before.

My aunt came home and made those very same corn pancakes, just like my mom’s. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough to go around. With a heavy heart, she gave the pancakes to her children in secret, not telling Bong Sook and me about them. But we could smell the corn as she pounded it into powder, and then as the pancakes were being steamed to perfection. What torture! And our cousins, being children, would come in after eating it all up, their eyes alight, and say, “Oh, how delicious the pancakes were today! Don’t you love them?”