Flower Swallow

by Alana Terry

  Well my first night as a flower swallow, I started out at the school in this little area next to the back wall, and it was blocking the wind so I wouldn’t get so cold. But that same wall was keeping out the moonlight, too, and that made me nervous of the dark and whatnot. And I wished again Ji-Hoon was there and decided if I seen him again, I’d let him share a bug with me if he asked, and maybe we’d talk about our families ’cause I didn’t know nothing about his. When it’s cold and dark and you’ve just gotten kicked out of the only home you’ve had in years, you don’t mind if it’s a bully you’re talking to as long as there’s someone else there saying something. He coulda told me my daddy was an ugly ’Pansie, and I probably wouldn’t even try to bust him for it, but if he said something nasty like that about Granny I would, even if it meant going back to being lonesome.

  Anyway, Ji-Hoon weren’t there, and my only company was a statue of the Dear Leader in the front of our school, and the moonlight was shining on him just so, and it was awful pretty. Looking back, it reminds me of the Easter play I seen last spring at Pastor’s church where Jesus comes up out of the grave and there’s lights shining all over him and fancy music playing loud enough to give you shivers. I was in the front row on account of Miss Sandy helping with the choir, and so I seen the man playing Jesus up close. He still had a little pretend blood on his face, and I figure he shoulda been more careful to wash it off ’cause Pastor never said so but I knowed Jesus wouldn’t have been bloody anymore when he came out of the tomb.

  The statue of the Dear Leader weren’t smiling or nothing, but he still came acrost as kind. Kind but powerful, too, and I guess that’s what I mean when I say he reminded me of that Jesus play. And I remember thinking the Dear Leader looked exactly like Granny always said, like a shepherd or maybe a really nice father that just wanted to do what was best for his family, including me. And his eyes were only stone or whatever it is they make those big statues out of, but I coulda swore he was looking at me, and his arm was stretched out. Not high up like that green statue in New York we seen in our history book about all them immigrants, but more like this picture Miss Sandy has up of Jesus reaching out for Peter when Peter’s drowning on account of him forgetting he couldn’t walk on the water like the Son of God. And it looked like the Dear Leader was calling me, like he was saying, “Come to me, Woong.”

  And he looked so fatherly and inviting that I left that place out of the wind, and I walked over and wouldn’t have been surprised if the statue actually said something to me ’cause I knowed his eyes had been telling me, “Come to me, Woong.” I sorta hoped he had more to say, maybe something helpful like where I could find another old lady who liked young boys and still had food to spare. He didn’t say no more, only it was comforting being there so close to him, even better than it woulda been having Ji-Hoon by me I figured.

  So I curled up at the Dear Leader’s feet, not in the front part where people would notice me when they come to school but behind on a little platform I hadn’t ever seen before on account of us kids never being allowed to play around the statues of the Dear Leader or his dad neither. And I bet Pastor would say that’s a dumb superstition ’cause they’re only stone or whatever you call that stuff they carve it from, and why in the world shouldn’t a kid play nearby? But then Miss Sandy goes and says I shouldn’t put my dirty dishes on top of the Bible on account of it being disrespectful, and I don’t see much difference, do you? Except one’s a book and one’s a statue that’s even taller than a man.

  And that reminds me of something kinda funny ’cause before I moved here, I growed up thinking the Dear Leader was really as tall as he was in all them statues. No one ever told me he was just normal height or maybe even shorter than normal if you account for all them Americans like Pastor who are so tall they hafta duck down to walk beneath the chandelier in the dining room. There’s another funny thing they teached us about the Dear Leader, only I’m not sure I’m supposed to talk about it here, so if someone asks, I’m not trying to use rude humor or nothing. But once when I was in school in Chongjin, we were looking at pictures of the Dear Leader’s house, and my teacher was saying, “See, he’s so benevolent” — this was the teacher that liked to use lots of fancy words before she disappeared — “that he created this sanctuary to welcome leaders from all over the world who make pilgrimages to pay him homage.” And then one of the boys asked where the outhouse was, and our teacher got real mad and thought he was making a rude joke and said, “Don’t you know the Dear Leader never ...” and then she used this big sciencey term that means the same thing as using the bathroom, only I don’t remember it no more. She was so mad at that boy for not knowing the Dear Leader didn’t poop that she marched him to the front of the class and slapped him four times (which was a lot for her but not so much as the other teachers woulda done). But I was glad he’d been the one to ask ’cause nobody ever teached me that about the Dear Leader before, and Pastor laughed when I told him and said it was stuff and nonsense, only why would my teacher have lied about something like that?

  Pastor says it’s evil the way we North Koreans were trained to bow to Kim Jong-Il and his dad all the time, and he says that’s idol worship, which I figure is the next worst thing to devil worship, only I didn’t see it that way in the old days. The way I seen it, we weren’t worshipping them the same way you might think of it, but we knowed the only way to get out of the famine and bring an end to the hunger was if the Dear Leader helped us out. And some people like Granny said the Dear Leader was eating only plain rice for dinner, but then people like Uncle said that wasn’t true and if it was, then why was he still so fat? And Granny told him that even if the Dear Leader chose to eat lobster every day, it was his right, but he knew we were suffering so bad up north that he couldn’t bring himself to eat more than rice. I remember thinking that plain rice sure was better than tree bark, even though it had been so long since I tasted rice, I sorta forgot the feel of it in my mouth.

  So I spent that night under the stars with the Dear Leader standing guard over me, except it didn’t seem like he was watching me no more on account of me being beneath him and his eyes still going straight out, but it was comforting all the same. And maybe that don’t make sense to you if you never growed up with the Dear Leader’s picture everywhere and all your teachers and your granny calling him the good shepherd. But do you remember how you invited them grown-ups to talk to us about when bad guys flew the airplanes into those tall buildings, and Becky Linklater’s mom said she felt so scared she slept with the American flag for a whole week afterwards and most of the class kinda giggled about that? Well I didn’t giggle, ’cause I remember that night under the stars and the Dear Leader and how even though I wasn’t out of the wind, I still felt ’least twenty degrees warmer than I had before.

  CHAPTER 10

  Well, when I woke up the next morning, I figured everything’d be all right. I’d go to school, and usually around lunchtime the teacher’d let us take a break to go look for bark or roots or bugs or a rat if we were really lucky, and then we’d finish class in the afternoon. So that would at least get me a little bit of food, and maybe someone would remember how I’d always share snacks and then they’d do the same for me. I figured I could go on like that, having school in the day and then spending the nights with the Dear Leader on account of him making me feel all cozy, sorta like I had when me and my sister shared a bed in the old days, except even better ’cause I never had to worry about him kicking me if my feet were too cold or stuff and nonsense like that.

  Well, it sounded like an ok plan, and that’s why I went to school pretty happy-like, ’least as happy as you can be when you haven’t ate nothing for twenty-four hours or more. The only problem was I thought I waked up way before the kids started coming, except I didn’t on account of it being so close to winter and the sun forgetting to rise until later and later in the day. And two of the bigger kids — they were never ones I invited over to share Granny’s snacks with — they started teasing m
e, calling me flower swallow on account of me having spent the night outside. And they asked if my Granny died and said mean things about her that woulda made me punch them both if I hadn’t still been sleepy-like on account of being so hungry. So I just said no, I didn’t spend the night outside, I just got to school early, that’s all. But they didn’t believe me, and then Ji-Hoon come up, and he said oh, yes, I did sleep here, and he seen me with his own eyes. Looking back, there were lots of things I coulda said to him after that, like how could he notice anything with his eyes being so crossed? I know it wouldn’t have been nice of me, but it woulda served him right after pretending to wanna be friends and then tattling on me like that. And besides, he had been at the school late too and not at home, so why didn’t those two big boys beat him up instead of me?

  So anyway, the day started off pretty poor on account of me getting pounded, but there was two of them, and they were bigger, so I’m not embarrassed by it. I’m still pretty angry though, mostly at Ji-Hoon ’cause I was already planning to make friends with him except that’s not what happened. So I waited around, plotting to get even, and when we took a break to go hunt for food, I seen Ji-Hoon take out a piece of cornbread, and there weren’t no one around, and I wailed him pretty good for it. And I know I can’t do that at school here, but you gotta admit he deserved it. Besides, that piece of cornbread was the only thing I’d had since breakfast the day before or maybe even dinner two days ago. And when I say cornbread, I’m not talking about the kind you guys eat in America neither. I’m talking about this kinda slab where you take husks from old corn and sometimes even the cob if you still got it, and you grind it all up and add water and cook it into a little disc. It tastes near awful but not quite so gross as tree bark soup. It’s about as bad as them little golden flowers that have one sweet spot right in the middle but the stems and leaves and whatnot are so sour you can’t eat it without making a face so you try to only have those when no one’s looking.

  The other night, Miss Sandy made chili, and she said the best thing to go with a big pot of chili is honey cornbread. I’d had enough of the North Korea kind of cornbread to know I hated it. I figured even if you got a whole bee-hive full of honey and added it in, that wouldn’t be enough to make it taste any better. But Miss Sandy said she wished I’d try it anyway, and I wanted to be good for her, so I did. Except it was way better than I expected. Miss Sandy asked how we made cornbread back home, and when I told her she said hers tasted better on account of her using real corn flour and not the husks and cobs and stuff and nonsense like that. And I got a little embarrassed for not knowing regular folks don’t eat that way in other parts of the world.

  Anyway, once I stolen Ji-Hoon’s cornbread, I figured there weren’t much reason to stick around school no more. I already told you how I didn’t like the learning part none, and all my friends had forgotten about me once Granny run out of free food for everyone, so there weren’t no point for me to stay, not if I was gonna get teased for spending the night with the Dear Leader. And it’s funny ’cause I got so mad at them two boys when they called me flower swallow, even though that’s just what I’d become.

  Kennedy — she’s the one I mentioned who goes to college and helps Pastor or Miss Sandy if they need her to speak something from Korean to English or the other way around — she says one day when I’m a better reader, she’s gonna give me her fancy copy of a book called Oliver Twist about a boy who I guess you could say is an English version of a flower swallow. And she’s already told me little bits of the story, so I know I’ll like it, but then she showed me how long it was, and I think I’ll be thirty or older before I’m ready to take on something that big. But it seems most people here, the sort that read books like Kennedy’s, they think of street children, and they get kinda sad and mopey, like “Isn’t it too bad they don’t have anyone to take care of them?” And you wouldn’t expect it, but there were parts about being a flower swallow I actually liked. The part about having no school, for example, that’s the most obvious one, but there was others, too.

  ’Course, being a flower swallow’s like most other things, I figure, ’cause you hafta get used to it before you start doing it right. That first winter was hard, and that’s the Pyongyang-perfect truth, but most of that was on account of me not knowing the way to do things. You don’t get born knowing how to do it right, ’course, so you make a lot of mistakes and end up hungry and cold more often than you woulda if someone teached you how to do it proper-like from the start.

  Well, if you was a young boy and didn’t have no place to go but you knowed enough to figure you couldn’t stay awake much longer without a real meal, or even some tree bark or whatnot, you’d hafta go and decide what to do, and you couldn’t waste your time guessing if it was right. So what I did — and looking back, I figure it was the best I coulda done given what I knowed at the time — was I went to the busiest neighborhoods and knocked on doors asking for something.

  It might sound like an ok plan to you if you never lived in a famine, ’cause you’d probably figure that folks would see a boy hungry and most of them would give him at least a little something to eat even if they didn’t invite him in, except that’s not what happened. Most of the people wouldn’t open the door for me, even the ones that had smoke coming out of the tops of their houses, and I guess if you figure they was just as hungry as me then it sorta makes sense, except I wasn’t thinking about that right then. All I was thinking about was needing to get something in my belly.

  I probably tried at least ten or eleven houses before one of them opened the door for me, and I was so relieved I just knowed I was gonna get something. And I got something, all right, only it weren’t food, and I left all stiff and sore and scared to try any more houses, only I had to on account of not wanting to fall asleep that night and then never wake up. I was still young, you know, but not so young I hadn’t learnt about those things happening, especially to littler kids like me.

  Sometimes you hafta do things, and you know you’re gonna hate it and you’re scared, but you gotta get through it anyway. That’s how I felt on my second day at Medford Academy when Pastor said I had to go back even though Chuckie Mansfield said he’d beat me good if he ever seen my slanty eyes and tore ear again. And going from house to house after getting thrashed on my first full day of being a flower swallow was kinda like that. I was scared to do it, but I had to, except it weren’t Pastor or Miss Sandy making me do it. It was on account of me being so hungry that I was worried about getting so tired I’d just sorta lay down and not ever rise up again.

  It got so I felt relieved when nobody opened the door for me, but still a few did, and even though I never got beat as bad as that first time, I had some people say some pretty mean things to me, so mean you’d think Chuckie Mansfield couldn’t hurt my feelings no more on account of me being used to stuff and nonsense like that. And that’s why I got kinda sad and thoughtful when Miss Sandy told me flower swallow was such a pretty word in her mind, only she never heard it used the way I done, and it’s not a curse word but it may as well be the way them folks said it against me.

  Still, I got to one place that gave me one of them cornbread discs I told you about, so now I had two of those in my body, the one I stole after whooping Ji-Hoon and the one I got throwed at me by a scared-looking woman. And when I say she throwed it at me, that makes it sound like she was angry and wanted to hurt me with it, except that’s not what happened. See, she opened the door a little when I come knocking on it, and I didn’t even hafta ask her for food. She just put her finger to her lips and shut the door again, so I figured she weren’t going to share nothing. And after you’ve had a day like mine and something like that happened, you’d be grateful she hadn’t pounded you or called you awful names that you’re not even allowed to write out later on when you’re remembering it all. So I turned to go, only then the door opened again, and all of a sudden there was this disc flying towards me. So I ate that, only I felt kinda scared, like maybe she wasn’t suppo
sed to give it to me and that’s why it was so secret-like, and then if that was the case someone might come after me and give me an even bigger whooping than Uncle had. Except that’s not what happened, and I was glad for that.

  I told Miss Sandy a little about people not wanting to share, even with a growing boy like me, and she said it was a shame people could be so selfish, except I’m not sure she really understood. When I was living with Granny, for example, Uncle yelled off flower swallows all the time, and if he hadn’t, I figure that woulda meant even less food for me and Granny. And if they came knocking and Uncle wasn’t home, I sometimes wished Granny wouldn’t open the door on account of her always wanting to share and I knowed there weren’t enough for that. And doesn’t even the Bible say you hafta look out for yourself and your family first? ’Cause I’m pretty sure I remember Pastor saying something about that once, and it’s one of those things that just makes sense too, even if the Bible don’t spell it out exact.

  I didn’t get more than the cornbread disc that night, but it was enough that once I fell asleep, I still woke up again in the morning, and I was thankful for that. It got to be one of the hardest parts of my day during the winter, falling asleep each night on account of always being scared I’d die in my dreams like Grandmother had, only Mama said she probably died of old age or whatnot instead of hunger. And sometimes I wonder if the famine was part of the mudang’s curse, or maybe she weren’t that powerful, and only the bad things that happened to me during the famine was part of it. But I thought about her sometimes at night, which didn’t make me any less scared of sleeping. I always did wake up, by the way, but you musta figured that on account of me sitting here writing this all out for you.