In the Shadow of the Sun

by Anne Sibley O'Brien

  The Decider had spoken. Mia considered reminding him that they were a team, that she had a say in their route as well. But it did sound better, traveling on a smooth road they didn’t have to search for.

  12:37. All that activity and not even two hours had passed. Five or six hours left before dark. It had been easier in the forest when they were free to move around and do things. When they hadn’t been scared they’d get caught.

  Being busy had also given her something to think about other than how hungry she was. She couldn’t even imagine where food would come from now.

  She sat up and pulled out the guidebook. She read a few passages in the section on Sinuiju and the area north of it.

  “Hey, listen to this. There’s a section of the river that’s so narrow and shallow that you can actually walk across the border. It’s called ‘One-Step Crossing.’ ” Dad had said the guidebook was maybe ten years old, but rivers didn’t change that much. “Nearby, there’s a part of the actual Great Wall of China. It’s called Tiger Mountain. Maybe we should try going that way, instead of across the bridge in Sinuiju. It might be easier.”

  Mia pointed to the spot on the map. Simon barely glanced at it.

  “I still say we go for the bridge,” he said. “It’s a direct route, the road goes there, the train goes across it. If there’s a way to get across the bridge, it will be the easiest way by far, and we’ll be safer there because they’re used to seeing tourists. If we get there and see it isn’t going to work, we can maybe try this other place.”

  Mia put the guidebook away. She sighed. “Simon, I can’t stand it anymore. We still have at least five hours till it’s dark enough to start walking!”

  “Squeak, just chill. There’s nothing we can do till then.”

  “I’m trying! But I can’t wait five more hours, I just can’t!” She knew she sounded like a pouting, whining six-year-old. Simon, play with me.

  “It’s not that hard. Just … I dunno, write in your journal or something.”

  “I already did that.”

  “Well, write some more, then.” He turned on his side away from her. As if she was a pest he wanted to shoo away.

  “Simon.” She made her voice strong. Mia, not Squeak.

  “What?”

  “This is not working. I’m just trying to get you to help me. But you’re using that tone. Like I’m bothering you. I just spent the last three days working my butt off for you. So could you give me a little hand here?”

  He rolled onto his other side, facing her. He looked surprised. Mia was kind of surprised too. It sounded like the voice of a girl who could lift rocks. Treat wounds. Kill snakes.

  Simon pulled the buds out of his ears and sat up. “So, teach me something.”

  “What?”

  “Like something you learned in Korean school, something that might come in handy.”

  Mia stared at him. “Seriously?” She couldn’t remember ever having taught Simon anything.

  “Sure. What else are we going to do for five or so hours?”

  “Okaaay …” She thought. What had she learned at Korean school that she could remember well enough to teach? “The alphabet. I’ll teach you han-gul. Then you’ll be able to read the signs.”

  “Cool. You’re on.”

  “You won’t know what they mean. But you’ll be able to sound them out.”

  “So let’s do it.”

  “Okay.” Mia picked up a colored pen and opened to a blank page in her journal. She drew an upside-down L. “Start with the consonants. That’s the first one. It’s a k, but softer, like between a k and a g.”

  She drew a right-side-up L shape next. “This is the second one. It’s an n sound.” She wrote all fourteen consonants in a row.

  “They’re so simple.”

  “It’s the most scientific alphabet in the world.” Mia smiled. “I sound like my teacher. But it is pretty amazing. Mrs. Ahn said that to invent the alphabet, King Sejong and his scholars studied the way the tongue is placed in the mouth for each sound. They designed the letter based on that.”

  “Really cool.”

  “Now the vowels. The first one is ah.” She wrote all ten. Simon repeated the sounds after her.

  “Okay, now here’s how to put them together. First consonant, plus the first vowel.” She drew them beside each other. “So what’s that say?”

  Simon studied the rows of letters and sounds. “Ka?”

  “Yeah! See, you can do it!” She felt like a real teacher, with a prize student. She showed him a few other combinations. “If the vowel has a vertical line, it goes to the side of the consonant. If it has a horizontal line, it goes underneath. Now you have to memorize them. I’ll make flash cards.”

  After a half hour or so of practice, Simon could recognize most of the letters.

  “So now, if there’s a sign for a town, you’ll be able to read it.”

  “Awesome. I’ll practice more later, but right now my brain is stuffed. Anyway, we should get some sleep. It’s gonna be a long night.”

  Mia dutifully lay back in the grass and closed her eyes. She lay there for a long time, but she didn’t get sleepy. There was too much tension running through her body, waiting for dark so they could move.

  Opening her eyes, she couldn’t believe how light it still was. 3:28. At least another couple of hours to go, she figured. Her stomach was getting more insistent, demanding food.

  Time crawled by.

  “Simon? What do you think is happening to Dad?”

  He was lying flat on his back in the grass. She might have woken him up. Too bad. He’d slept for most of three days, while she had been working.

  “I dunno, Squeak. Since we don’t know why they arrested him in the first place, whether or not someone knew about his secret meeting, it’s kind of hard to guess.”

  “I keep wondering if he’s getting treated okay. If he’s getting enough to eat. They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?”

  “Mia, I don’t know, okay? There isn’t anything else to say. Let it be. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Get some sleep.” He turned on his side, his back to her.

  And here we go again. Well, he could shut the door all he liked. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t keep knocking till he opened it.

  “How come you’re getting angry just because I want to talk about Dad? Don’t you even care what’s happening to him?”

  “What kind of crazy question is that? Of course I care.”

  “Then how come you don’t want to talk about it? C’mon, Simon. If we’re going to survive this whole thing together, we can’t shut down like this. We have to share stuff.”

  He sat up quickly, crossed his legs, and faced her. His expression was fierce. “You really want to know what’s going on for me? I’ll tell you. The last couple of years, I’ve had this whole list of stuff about Dad that bugs me: He’s never around. He’s missed most of my games and my debates. Starving kids seem to come first, before us. But then he comes home from North Korea and other places where terrible things are happening and he just gets on with everyday life in suburban Connecticut, as if what he saw in those places doesn’t even affect him. He pretends that stuff is okay when it’s not. He keeps on giving food aid to the North Korean government, making it possible for them to stay in power, starving and torturing their own people. Here on the trip, he was just going along with the program.” He took a breath, huffed it out. “I was so superior about it, throwing that stuff at him.”

  He paused and raised his eyes to the sky. “Of course, now it looks as if he wasn’t just going along with things. Maybe that was his cover, and in reality he was supporting people who are trying to change the government, to keep people from going hungry. Who knows how deeply he’s involved and how long this has been going on?” He met her eyes.

  “So now you keep pestering me, ‘Where is Dad?’ ” He pitched his voice higher, mimicking her. “ ‘What’s happening to him?’ It just reminds me that the last days I spent with Dad I was mad at
him the whole time. What if that’s it? What if I never see him again?” Simon’s voice cracked and he turned his face away. But not before Mia saw his eyes glistening.

  She waited, holding her breath. He cleared his throat.

  “So, I’m incredibly angry at myself for being so, so … stupid. Thinking I knew so much. It just makes me sick.” He spit the word out. “And it reminds me that Dad’s probably still in a North Korean prison and I can’t figure out any way to help him, except maybe getting those photos — and you — out of this country.”

  He turned to her. There was pain in his eyes. “But it’s even more complicated than that. Because I’m still mad at Dad too. For taking such risks, for involving his own kids, for endangering us. ’Cause it feels as if I got one thing right about Dad: He seems a lot more concerned about starving North Koreans than about us.” He looked away, then let himself back down on the grass and stretched out.

  Mia stared at Simon, speechless. Everything in her wanted to protest: Nooo, Dad loved his kids! He would never —

  But a door was opening in her mind. If Dad had been sneaking out to meet someone that night, it seemed almost as if he had been using them as cover. They would never be in this desperate situation if he hadn’t decided to bring them on this trip.

  One thing Simon said was right: It was really complicated. In a way, they were all to blame for something. What about Mom? It was hard to imagine her knowing what Dad was up to and letting him risk their lives. She wouldn’t have allowed them to come along on the trip. But Mom was always looking for things to fix. Maybe she was in on the secret with Dad.

  Mia wished she had a map showing the path for their family to find their way. Like a Parcheesi board, with Mom and Dad and Simon and herself as game pieces, and all they had to do was eventually roll the right numbers and all of them would end up back home, together again.

  She turned away and closed her eyes.

  “Ready or not, here we go,” Simon said a few hours later.

  They moved down the hill in the cover of dark, through the tall grass to the road. No lights anywhere. The half moon dimly lit the pavement. They slipped through the night like shadows.

  We’re on our way, Dad.

  It felt so good to be moving, as if she could walk all the way to the border in one night. The quiet and the rhythmic movement calmed her mind.

  “Simon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you really think Dad cares more about starving people than he does about us?”

  There was a long silence, the only sound their feet scuffing on the road. Simon sighed.

  “No, of course not, not really. I guess … well, I think Dad thinks we’re fine, you know, that we don’t really need him? But the starving North Korean kids aren’t okay at all. They need him desperately.

  “The thing is,” Simon continued, “I just would’ve liked it if Dad had talked to me about it. Like, acknowledged that missing my games and my debates and all mattered — to me, maybe to him too. But instead, it was always clear that when it came to needs, starving children in other countries were always going to win.”

  She held that idea, turning it over and examining it. She knew the story of her adoption so well, she could practically recite it: how Dad and Mom had always planned to adopt their second child, how they’d wanted a daughter after Simon was born, how they’d chosen Korea because of Jae Kim — a Korean exchange student who’d been one of Dad’s best friends in college, how long they’d waited for her, how excited they’d been when they got the referral photo…. But she didn’t know how all that connected with Dad getting so passionate about the North Korean situation. Had that happened before or after her adoption? If it was before, then maybe adopting her was part of his wanting to save the world. Like Mia sometimes felt she was for Mom: a fix-it project. But if it was after her adoption, maybe he felt this emotional bond to all Korean children. Because of Mia. Or maybe all of it was about a father wanting the world to be a better place for his children, or all children. So maybe caring about North Koreans wasn’t separate from caring about her and Simon. Maybe it was all connected.

  That was a conversation to have with Dad. When — if — she ever got to talk to him again.

  She followed Simon’s silhouette along the road. The world around them was dark against darker against darkest. The dim moon dropped slowly toward the line of hills to their left. Her nose was cold.

  “You know, Dad’s grandparents — Nona’s parents — left Germany because they didn’t like what was happening as Hitler was coming into power.” Simon was talking again. She thought he’d shared more with her since he’d recovered than in their whole life together up to this point. “Even though they weren’t Jewish, when they got to America, they started sponsoring Jewish families, helping them to escape. So that save-the-world thing is sort of in our blood” — Simon caught himself — “well, our heritage. Definitely not blood; you’ve got it worse than I do.” In the dark, Mia could hear the smile in his voice.

  “When you were little you were always wanting to save the whales,” he went on, “or the dolphins … or the polar bears. Remember that birthday when you said you didn’t want presents, you just wanted pet food to give to the animal shelter?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You always were the good kid. Me, not so much. There was always this pressure that I was supposed to care. It’s not that I don’t care, but that I don’t want to have to. I want to decide myself what I want to care about. A lot of the time I feel like, do I have to want to change the world all the time? What if I like it the way it is?”

  Mia noticed that Simon’s anger and criticism of Dad, of their family, wasn’t freaking her out the way she knew it would have just a week ago. Before, watching Simon and Dad fighting, she couldn’t bear it. Like something terrible would happen if they didn’t stop. Maybe Simon was right that the fear came from having already lost one set of parents. From knowing that families could break.

  Now, it didn’t bother her that Simon was mad at their parents. In fact, she was discovering she might be mad at them too. The way they handled her being Korean, for instance. Mom especially had always done a lot to bring Korean stuff into Mia’s life, but there was something about it that didn’t feel right. Mia couldn’t quite figure it out yet — this was all so new, even admitting she had these feelings. But somehow the way her family acknowledged her Koreanness had always focused on the outside, the surface, in a way that made Korea seem like a foreign culture, and made Mia feel different from her family. It always drew attention to the fact that Korea was hers and not theirs.

  There was so much here she wanted to keep thinking about, like a complex puzzle to solve. In a peculiar way, this journey was freeing her up to see her family as they really were. It no longer felt dangerous to notice that they messed up.

  They had fights. They kept secrets from each other. They could make bad choices. None of it had to mean they were losing each other. Or that they had stopped loving each other. It was nothing compared to someone really getting taken away. Like Dad getting arrested. Or Simon getting sick. Being afraid one of them would die.

  Then you saw that all you wanted was to get them back, exactly as they were. So you could go on loving them. No matter how much they annoyed you.

  So maybe they could all find their way back to each other, if only they could all get out of North Korea alive.

  The night got darker and colder. Mia’s legs grew heavy. She put one foot in front of the other, endlessly. After a while she moved into a trance state. The fatigue and cold were just how things were. She had no energy left for thinking.

  Every two hours, Simon called a rest break. They crawled into the tall grass by the side of the road to sleep. Each time he set his alarm to wake them after just half an hour.

  “That gives us five or ten minutes to fall asleep, twenty minutes to sleep. I learned about this at wilderness camp. It’s been scientifically proven that you get the most benefit and remain the most ale
rt from twenty-minute naps.” He seemed energized by the exercise and the cold. “If you sleep longer, unless you can get at least ninety minutes, you actually feel more tired.”

  It was all she could do to just follow Simon’s lead. Each time she got pulled from sleep, she felt more and more disoriented. She trudged along the road in the pitch black. When they stopped she fell instantly into a dream state, in which she was also walking endlessly in the dark. Time disappeared.

  Somewhere in the endless night they came to a signpost with white letters. Ahead was a cluster of dark shapes.

  “Hey,” Simon said. “That’s the s sound, like a roof? So — Son. Then ch — right? Sonchon! We made it to Sonchon. And I can read the sign!”

  Mia nodded. She felt as if she were wrapped in a gauzy web. They walked through silent streets. The outlines of the town were black against the dark sky. Tall blocks of apartment buildings. Low tile roofs and walls of single homes. Some of them had small garden patches surrounded by wooden screen fencing, but it was too late in the year for any vegetables to be left for her and Simon to steal. They must have stores here, with food for sale, but she and Simon couldn’t risk being seen in the daytime in an off-the-beaten-path town where a foreigner would never be expected to visit.

  They trudged on, back out into the countryside. By the time the sky started lightening toward dawn, Mia no longer had the energy to lift her feet. She shuffled along, following Simon.

  Endless hours later, he turned off the pavement, along a path beside dry rice paddies and up a rise into a thicket of bushes and small trees.

  “Wait here.” Mia slumped to the ground as Simon pushed through the brush. Twigs snapped and branches rustled. Then he was beside her again.

  “Okay, c’mon. There’s a patch of grass.”

  She felt the ground, hard beneath her body, then sleep taking her as if she were drowning.

  OCTOBER 9

  When she woke, Mia’s belly screamed: Food!