Famous Adopted People

by Alice Stephens

  “That seems an unkind thing to say,” I replied loudly for their benefit. My glass was empty, and I felt an urgent need for more. Spying Ting across the room with a fresh tray of drinks, I moved toward her, an ankle wobbling from its precarious perch atop the ridiculously attenuated four-inch heel, then folding at a sickening angle that made me drop to my knees.

  “Oh, poor dear,” Honey murmured, voice dripping with maternal concern. “Here, hold on to my arm. Let’s get you over to the couch.” She rubbed my back. “Harvey! We could use your help over here.”

  Harvey stopped pretending to be engrossed in conversation with Wendell and hurried over.

  “Help poor Lisa to the couch. She twisted her ankle.”

  Hooking my arm across his shoulders, Harvey half dragged me to a nearby green moiré divan. Honey came twittering after with a few stiff tapestry cushions. Kneeling by my side, her fingers scrabbled ineffectually at the buckles of my shoes, long nails getting in the way of such intricate finger work. “There, there, you’ll feel better in a moment. Aren’t these darling shoes? But oh dear, what tiny buckles.”

  Yolanda came to her rescue, quickly undoing each buckle. With a tender pat to my cheek, Honey murmured, “Put your legs up, baby. We’ll be back soon to check on you.”

  Then she and Yolanda left me to Harvey’s care. “Here you go, young lady,” Harvey bellowed cheerfully, tucking the cushions behind my back. Leaning in close, he gasped sotto voce into my ear, “Every one of us here knows what you’re going through, Lisa. We are your friends, and you’d be wise to let us help you. I came here in 1974, defected really, just crossed the demilitarized zone to the North Korean side and declared my intentions. I had no idea what I was getting into, just wanted to escape from some stupid decisions. At first, I thought I’d made a mistake. Life was hard here, and there were lots of strange things to get used to. But lucky you, you won’t have to go through the things I went through. With Honey, you have nothing but a life of ease ahead of you. Don’t believe all the crazy things you’ve read about North Korea. We’re not like that at all here, as you have seen.”

  “Actually, besides Ting, I haven’t seen a real live North Korean yet,” I muttered, gesturing at Ting, her ridiculous mobcap slipping down her forehead. “Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for me to comprehend that I’m really in North Korea.”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt about it, you’re in North Korea,” he assured me, fussing again with the pillows, the woolen thread scratchy against my neck. “My advice as an old-timer is for you to take it easy on yourself and go with the flow. Honey is a wonderful woman and she only has your best interests at heart. Join our happy family.”

  And then he struggled to his feet, pulling himself up slowly with a low groan.

  Reaching down to massage my ankle, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, the oval face of Harvey’s wife was looming over me, the light burnishing her sable skin with a bronze patina.

  “Are you feeling better then, Lisa?” The opposite of her husband—dark where he was pale, beautiful where he was repulsive, youthful to his decrepitude—she spoke in a vaguely British accent with extremely precise enunciation and a slight shivering of the r’s.

  “Mmm, yes, thank you, Patience,” I murmured with an embarrassed little laugh. “I’m so clumsy.”

  “Oh, no, Lisa, there are no such things as accidents.” She smiled. “Your body is reacting to the shock of the news you’ve received recently.” She arranged the hem of my dress more decorously over my knees and, in that one simple gesture, imparted a motherly care that made my eyes prickle in requital. “I too was taken from my mother at an early age. I never met my mother again, but you have. I can imagine the depth of your emotions.” A little quiver trembled through her wide cheeks. “Then, on top of that, to find yourself in a strange country, far from your homeland.” She grimaced sympathetically. “I am from Zimbabwe, which is faaar away in Africa.”

  “Oh! I know where that is,” I exclaimed, staring at her face because it comforted me. “My father is married to a Motswana woman. Your accent reminds me of hers.”

  “Really?” She was startled by this news, eyes widening to reveal freckles of brown flecking the whites.

  “Yes. I’ve been to Botswana several times. In fact, I’ve been to Zimbabwe, to see Victoria Falls.”

  Her hand went up to her mouth. “Oh,” she gasped, blinking hard once, twice. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for just a glimpse…” she whispered, clutching my hand. “We are sisters, we are African sisters.” Then she shook her head, and raising her voice again, she said, “And North Korean sisters too. I have been a citizen now for five years, after I married Harvey and started working for the propaganda department.”

  “He must be twenty years older than you,” I said sympathetically.

  “Oh, he is a good man, a good man,” she averred. “They are all good here. These people are your friends, all of them. And your mother!” Her smile was wide and trembling, revealing the soft pink inside of her bottom lip. “She is a wonderful woman. You are so fortunate she has brought you here to live.”

  I could see why she worked for the propaganda department, for I almost believed her. “Where do you live, Patience? Nearby?”

  “We live in Pyongyang, in a place not nearly as nice as this. It is always a great treat for us to come here.” Her eyes rolled about as she took in the gilt molding, richly upholstered furniture, and glittering chandeliers. Then, as if remembering herself, she clapped her hands and said, “Now, how does your ankle feel? Better, doesn’t it?”

  I had to admit that it did feel better and allowed her to help me to sit up. Yolanda scurried over to rebuckle my feet into the shoes. “The chef has announced that dinner is served.”

  Perched on the edge of the divan, I tried to maneuver my feet to evade Yolanda’s grasping hands, but she was too quick for me and, gesturing for Patience to help her, managed to get the torturous shoes back on.

  “I’m only going to trip and hurt myself again,” I complained, pouting.

  “Nonsense,” Yolanda said jovially, as if we were best friends. “Most girls would die to own a pair of Jimmy Choos like these. Isn’t that right, Patience?”

  “Ehh.” Patience nodded gravely in agreement. She was wearing a pair of flat sandals, the straps cracked and scuffed, to go with a drab long-sleeved brown sack dress with a Peter Pan collar that was a little frayed at the edges.

  Yolanda grabbed my arm. “Mustn’t keep your mum waiting, now. Up, up.”

  Wedged in between the two of them—Patience round and soft, Yolanda tough and bony—I was escorted into the dining room, where the table was draped in damask, twinkling with crystal, and shining with silver, shallow vases tumbling with roses placed in mathematical precision down the center. Honey sighed and whispered conspiratorially to me, “There are too many girls. Five to three makes for a dreadful imbalance at a dinner table.”

  Wendell, seated across from me, leaned eagerly into view, nodding enthusiastically. “Us guys aren’t complaining!” he asserted, waggling his eyebrows.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Wendell,” Honey said severely, hitting him between the eyes with a laser glare.

  “No, of course not, Honey. Please excuse me.” He shrank back, folding up his long body to take up as little space as possible.

  “How about inviting the cook to dine with us?” I suggested.

  “The chef? He’s not fit for normal society,” Honey assured me.

  Ting came marching into the dining room, followed by another person who looked like her twin, short and slight, with a blunt bowl cut of black hair encircling a round face. But when the other person came around to put a plate in exactly the same place where Ting had just removed one, I saw that she did not look like Ting at all. She was older, with a face like a weathered fence post, stooped shoulders, and a creamy blot over the iris of one eye.

  “A toast!” Honey sang out, holding her glass up. “To our hosts, who treat us with such kindness that
we never want to leave.”

  “Hear, hear,” Wendell and Harvey intoned.

  “Gesondheid,” Yolanda whispered in my ear, tipping her glass toward me.

  Feeling the rush of goodwill that always came just before a drink hit my lips, I clinked the rim of my glass to hers.

  “No, no, Lisa!” Honey screamed. Wendell had just put his glass up to his lips but slowly lowered it, shooting a dark glance first at me and then at Yolanda. “One never, ever touches glasses at a toast. Just raise your glass and extend it slightly in the direction of the person being toasted. Never make contact with another glass.”

  “Why not?” I squeaked, the glass frozen just inches from my lips, still puckered expectantly to receive it.

  “Why not? Because it’s vulgar,” Honey declared, breathy voice suddenly hard and low. She took a deep breath, buoying the already buoyant breasts that strained against the stretchy fabric of her dress, then lifted her wineglass to her lips and drank. Everyone else followed suit. Then she did the same with a spoonful of soup, and again, everyone followed.

  While Honey and Wendell murmured inanities to each other, I muttered to Yolanda, “You could have just told me.”

  “Ah, but one learns best from one’s mum,” Yolanda observed, before delicately sipping from her spoon. “Mmm. Life is not so nice elsewhere. Eat, go on. Eat!”

  I kissed my lips to the spoon. The soup was delicious, creamy with a hint of sherry and shallots. Already buzzed from the champagne, I decided to take Harvey’s advice to take it easy on myself and just go with the flow. I took an appreciative sip of wine and felt the warmth spread from my stomach to my head. “So, Wendell, what’s your story?” I asked, my voice thick with soup. “How did you end up on Gilligan’s Island?”

  He grinned his fat grin. “Like you, I thought I was going on a three-hour tour.”

  “Oh, oh,” Honey interjected in her high-pitched baby voice. “I know that one.” Putting a hand on her bosom, she quavered, “Now sit right back…”

  From down the table, Harvey joined in when Honey got to the part about the mate. And then Wendell piped up for the line about the skipper. What could I do? I joined in at the three-hour tour.

  Patience, Dr. Panzov, Yolanda, and Lahela applauded wildly when we were done. With a triumphant flourish, Honey waved her silver bell in the air, and Ting and not-Ting came through the door.

  “Well?” I prompted Wendell, who was sticking his long nose in his empty glass wistfully.

  “Well? Well, what?” He put the glass down guiltily. “Oh, yes. Well, I was bumming around China and somehow ended up in Liaoyang, married and teaching English at a cram school.”

  Everyone leaned in, as if hearing a favorite campfire tale.

  Noticing he had an audience, Wendell began to play it up, gesturing dramatically and stretching his rubbery face into exaggerated expressions. “I got to be friends with a guy there. My wife didn’t like me hanging around with this guy…”

  “Why didn’t your wife like him?” Harvey prompted.

  “He was, well, to put it plainly, a pimp.” The table laughed appreciatively. “So, one night when the two of us were carousing, she locked me out of the house. I rejoined my friend and told him I was sick of my wife and wanted to divorce her. He suggested killing her instead. We were both fall-down drunk, so I thought he was joking.”

  “But did you really, Wendell?” Yolanda stage-whispered, shaking her head affectionately.

  “I did, Yolanda, I did!” Wendell averred, to giggles all around. “In jest, I replied, ‘Yeah, yeah, let’s kill her,’ and then we drank another bottle of baijiu. Finally, I stumbled home to find my door smashed in and my wife lying in a pool of blood, her throat slit.”

  “I bet that sobered you up,” interjected Honey merrily.

  “It most certainly did, Madam. I went screaming back to my friend, and he had it all figured out. With the ATM password to my bank account as his payment…”

  Fish lipped, Harvey whistled appreciatively. “That friend set you up but good.”

  “…we drove in my car to the Yalu River. I left a suicide note in the car, and then in the wee hours of the night, he rowed me across the river and I defected to the first soldier I could find.”

  The fork wilted from my hand as I stared at him, my mouth stretching and closing like some sort of sea creature’s. Finally, I managed to ask, “Was your wife Chinese?”

  He nodded, one cheek bulging with food. Bringing the napkin up to his greased lips, he wiped them carefully. One loud swallow, and I could practically see the food traveling down his long, thin neck. “Yes. I married her because she said she was pregnant. Also, my visa would soon expire, and I wasn’t ready to go home yet.”

  “Was she?” I nibbled on poached langoustine, tender and succulent, drenched in butter.

  “Was she what?” He was getting annoyed that I was asking all the wrong questions.

  “Pregnant!”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He began to drum with his fingers on the table, as if he were bored with the conversation.

  “So… what about the kid?”

  He shrugged and shot a long arm out to move a candlestick a half a millimeter to the right. “I imagine he lives with his grandparents in their hovel in Liaoyang.”

  “Lisa, dear, don’t hold up the table,” Honey whispered at me.

  “Huh?”

  “Everyone has finished but you.”

  “Wendell’s story made me lose my appetite.”

  “Nonsense,” she trilled. “It’s a happy story. Without Wendell, we would probably die of boredom here. Why, he introduced the whole internet thing to me, for which I am forever grateful!”

  “You guys have internet here?” I asked, probably too quickly.

  “I do, Lisa. But for you”—a small apologetic smile—“you have to earn the privilege. Like you’ll have to earn all privileges. By proving your loyalty.”

  “Proving my loyalty…?” The langoustine flesh turned into a hard mass in my throat. “How does one do that?”

  Harvey chortled. “With years and years of service. I’m still not allowed to go on this internet thing, even though I dedicate myself to Madam’s every wish and command.”

  “Years and years,” I gasped to myself, leaning past not-Ting’s little form as she whisked away my plate.

  “Years and years,” Honey affirmed with finality. Fixing me with a hypnotic stare that sucked me into the cold cobalt whirlpool of her eyes, she proclaimed, “We were separated once, but now that we’ve found each other again, I am never going to let you go.”

  In retrospect, this was the moment that I should have flung myself on the floor with a scream and beat my head against the marble tiles. That I should have smashed my china plate and declared that I was going on a hunger strike until they let me go. That I should have taken one of the knives from the table and sunk it into my heart or into hers. But I didn’t. I finished the rest of the meal, all the way through to the poached pear and the snifter of brandy. Then I followed meekly along with everyone else as we retired to the Versailles room for karaoke and more drinking.

  Sometime deep in the night, while Honey was channeling Rick Astley, singing “Never Gonna Give You Up” while pointing at me as she slithered her hips to the beat, Yolanda leaned toward me, my eyes crossing as I tried to squint away the contours of her face to see what lay underneath, and advised, “The sooner you begin to play Honey’s game, the better it will be for all of us. Take it from me, resistance is useless.”

  Far later, after Honey had sung herself hoarse and Harvey had passed out on the Louis XVI chaise longue, Wendell was assigned to lead me back to my room. We stumbled along the corridor, me holding on to the wall, he reeling ahead as he babbled about what he missed most from home: slutty girls, fast food, cable TV, regular TV, pornography, hot showers, short shorts, reliable electricity, big cars, big breasts, Big Gulps… At one point he wavered in front of a door, trying to get the retina scanner to release the lock, propping his lid
s wide with his fingers for the machine to read his eyeball, evoking a violent red flash. “Fuck!” he shouted, digging the heel of his hand into his eye. “Must be the wrong door.”

  “Don’t you have access to all the doors?” I inquired as we waited for him to recover.

  “Not even Madam has access to all the doors,” he growled. “Jesus Christ, I can’t see a damn thing. Let that be a lesson to you, Lisa. Don’t try to open doors willy-nilly. They say that the locks to the doors that lead outside can permanently blind you if you try to open them without authorization.” Leaning heavily into the wall, he shuffled forward, blinking furiously. “That sure sobered me up.”

  Trailing after him, I lamented, “So there’s absolutely no way to escape this hellhole!” Then I slapped my hand over my mouth, fearing Wendell would report my treasonous statement to Honey. But Wendell continued to grope his way down the hall as if he hadn’t heard me.

  Our progress was so slow that I began to worry that Wendell was lost. It wasn’t inconceivable—we had passed at least two other corridors that spider-legged into dark obscurity—but finally we stopped in front of a door, Wendell peering closely at the scanner to make sure it was labeled for the right room before submitting his naked eyeball. As I stepped past him to push open the door, he clutched my arm and leaned so close toward my face I was scared he was going to kiss me. Instead he whispered, “I can help you.”

  “How?” I squeaked, breath catching in my throat.

  Touching the side of his nose, he winked. “By you helping me. We aren’t all as lucky as you, sitting here in the lap of luxury just stroking Honey’s ego all day. Some of us have to earn a living, you know. But all in good time, my dear. It’s still early days for you. In the meanwhile, get to know your way around. Work on earning Honey’s trust so you can access other rooms. And don’t forget to enjoy yourself. I miss the States, but to be honest, my life there would never be as good as it is here.”