Flower Swallow

by Alana Terry

  And maybe you’d think it’d be exciting to have all kinds of interviews like that and to have so many people in fancy suits wanting to know all about you, except it weren’t. Sometimes the questions were boring, like what was your name back home, and I learnt really quick they didn’t care about me being Chong-Su or Squirrel or Ginkgo or stuff and nonsense like that. I could just say Woong, and they’d go on to the next question. That one was usually, “How old are you?” and no matter how many different folks asked me that, I’d hafta explain all over again how I couldn’t be exactly sure. And every once in a while, one of them would throw in a funny question like, “Have you ever been married?” or, “Have you ever killed somebody?” except the way they asked it, you’d think they didn’t even know it was a joke. Whenever I laughed, Miss Sandy would touch my hand real gentle and say, “Now answer their question, darling,” so I did.

  It got to where I had to tell the same thing to five different people over five different interviews. And the folks were always interrupting with questions of their own, like did Uncle ever belong to any revolutionary organizations, and ’course I didn’t understand words like that, even in Korean. So when those didn’t work, Miss Sandy would ask me the question in a different way that was easier to follow. I got so used to talking about the old days, I probably coulda done it in my sleep, and that woulda been a lot less boring, too, except they needed me to stay awake through it all, so I’m glad they gave me them muffins or whatnot or else it woulda been even worst.

  Well, the one part I never told nobody at them interviews was about meeting the American and picking up his stupid can of film. And once, at this one particular interview, a guy in thick, ugly glasses asked me if I’d ever met Kim Jong-Il or any of his helpers. The next thing he wanted to know was if I’d ever been arrested back home, but I didn’t answer. He asked the question a few more times, and then he tried asking in different ways, like, “Did you ever get in trouble with the police?” And I still wouldn’t say nothing, but when Miss Sandy reached out to touch my hand, I grabbed hers so tight both of our knuckles started turning white. She said, “Pumpkin, do you have something to tell him?” And I shook my head so hard I think I mighta jostled my brain on account of the headache I got later on, and then Miss Sandy asked, “Are you sure?” And that’s when I started to cry, and she sorta straightened up in her chair and stared at the interviewer with his red, white, and blue tie with his little American flag pinned to that folded part of his suit, and she said, “We can come back to that part later.” Then she gave my hand another squeeze, which I took to mean she was only telling the interviewer what he needed to hear to move on with the next question, and he never did ask me that one again.

  On the way home from that meeting when we was in the car, Miss Sandy turned off her Jesus music and said, “Baby.” That’s one of the things she likes to call me when it’s only the two of us, only if Chuckie Mansfield ever learns that, I know he’d follow me around at recess saying baby, baby in a real mean-sounding way, so it’ll have to stay a secret. Well, Miss Sandy said to me, “Baby, these workers are just doing their job, and that sometimes means you’ll get questions you might not want to answer. If it’s something that you really, truly can’t talk about, none of these folks can make you do it. And if they try, I want you to squeeze my hand two times just like this, and I’ll explain to them that particular subject is off-limits.” Then she went on to say I couldn’t use the hand squeeze all the time, and most of the questions I had to answer respectfully and honestly no matter how bored I got. But if there was one particular part of the old days that was too sad or scary to talk about, she wasn’t going to make me do it.

  Have you ever had that feeling in your heart like it’s getting squeezed and that’s keeping all of the good things from getting in? Well that’s sorta how I’d begun to feel in the middle of the interview, only when Miss Sandy told me I wouldn’t hafta talk about The Nightmare, it was like that squeezing stopped, and all the good feelings that hadn’t been able to get in came rushing through all at once, so I could barely even say thank you on account of my throat tightening up. And she was still holding my hand in the car, and she said, “I love you, Baby,” and I told her I loved her back, and I called her Mom for the first time. I think she liked that ’cause she didn’t say nothing else, but she put her Jesus music back on and we rode home both happy and quiet-like, and sometimes I’d look over and see a little tear in the corner of her eye, but I’d swear on the Dear Leader it was the happy kind.

  CHAPTER 21

  Well, what happened was when the police found me with that little roll of film from the American, they figured I was a spy. They thought the cameraman was using me to pass secret messages back and forth or stuff and nonsense like that. That’s why out of all the people who’s ever done me wrong, the one that’s hardest to forgive is him, even though he might not even know he done it since I already told you I never saw him again. And I’ve thunk on it since, and maybe it was an accident on his part, because why would he drop his little can if all he wanted to do was have me pick it up and get me in trouble? It don’t make sense if you think on it that way, so I know it’s wrong for me to hate him, except I do. And I wouldn’t hate him if The Nightmare weren’t so horrible, except it was, and that’s why I already told you I’m not gonna write any more about it, at least nothing but the part about how I got out.

  You remember toward the beginning of the school year when you asked grown-ups to come talk to the class about what happened when the bad men crashed their planes into those two buildings? Miss Sandy couldn’t come on account of her visiting that daughter who’d had the baby who came born too little. But we were on the phone that night, and when I told her what we’d done at school, she decided we’d talk about it together so it wouldn’t be like I missed out. And she said something that I’ve thunk a lot about lately, and that’s the part where she said when something horrible happens, it’s our job to focus on the good parts of it. Then she went on to talk about some of the heroes in New York City, the men and women who acted so brave and helped save a bunch of people who otherwise woulda died. And she used this chaplain as an example, and she explained that a chaplain’s kinda like a pastor, and she talked about this particular one who stood inside the building shouting encouraging things to the folks who was getting out, except then something real bad happened and he ended up being one of the first ones killed. And Miss Sandy talked about how we shouldn’t focus so much on the bad guys as on the heroes like him, and how he gave his life helping all them scared men and women. I remember wondering why he couldn’t have stood outside the building and shouted nice things from there, but I didn’t want to ask Miss Sandy that on account of me maybe not understanding proper-like what he was really doing in the first place. But anyway, I took her advice about trying to focus on heroes whenever I got to thinking too much on The Nightmare, and there’s only one hero that jumps to mind right away, except I don’t know if he was an angel-hero or just the regular kind.

  Back then, there weren’t no way a person could escape something like The Nightmare. There was metal bars like you’d see in a jail, plus they had doors that locked so you’d need a special card if you wanted to get in or out. Of course you didn’t have a card unless you were one of the workers there, so you couldn’t get out that way. And it was in this building that wasn’t even wood either, like you might expect, but the walls and everything else was made of that same stuff you see in sidewalks, so it’s not like you could find a shovel or whatnot and bust your way through like I seen an outlaw do in one of Pastor’s cowboy movies. So that’s what I mean when I say a guy couldn’t get out, not without someone like an angel breaking him out, so that gets me thinking that this hero I was gonna mention wasn’t a man after all. But that was another weird part because up until I started paying attention to Pastor and his sermons about Christmas, I didn’t even know there were men angels. I thought they were all ladies. And of course I hadn’t met Pastor yet back then, so I gues
sed maybe this rescuer of mine was a human after all, since I didn’t know angels could make themselves look like a man as easy as a woman. Besides, if you listen close to the Christmas story, it sounds like more of them are men than the other way around.

  And the other clue about him being an angel was that he knowed my name, my first name, Woong. But when you’re in the kind of place I had to go to on account of them thinking I was a spy, nobody there uses your name at all, so you nearly forget it. Besides, if they’d bothered asking me my name back there, I would just as likely have said Chong-Su as Woong, or maybe I woulda even said Gingko. So how could that guy have known I was Woong unless he was an angel and God sent him to get me out of there and told him my name beforehand? And that’s probably the most convincing clue, but it gets even more confusing than that on account of what happened next. He had a fancy card that opened all the doors, and wouldn’t you think an angel could get by without one of them just fine by waving his hand or maybe saying a fancy word or stuff and nonsense like that? Then next, he carried me all the way outside and handed me a whole bunch of money and said, “Find the train station, head north, and take yourself to China.” I wouldn’t have thought an angel would even use real money, know what I mean?

  So that’s why it’s still confusing, even now. Like once, we were talking about angels at dinner, and that’s when I realized Pastor and Miss Sandy aren’t so smart as you might guess. It came up when I told them about me showing Becky Linklater how fast I could go on the monkey bars, except my hand slipped and the way I fell, the lunch lady said I was lucky I didn’t break my elbow. And Miss Sandy didn’t say, “Honey, you need to be more careful,” like a lot of adult folks mighta done. She just said, “Goodness me, your guardian angel must get a workout every day,” which she explained to mean that he had to race to keep up with me. And that got me thinking on angels, so I told her and Pastor about all the times angels helped me back in the old days, from landing me on Granny’s porch to the blind lady that gave me her blessing and whatnot. Once I finished telling about that, Pastor said maybe all those things weren’t angels. Maybe God knew I needed something special so he sent a person to help out, but then again maybe they were angels because God can do whatever he wants. And he told me the Bible doesn’t even say there’s such thing as a guardian angel, but it doesn’t say there isn’t neither. So maybe we each have our own private angel following us, which is a comforting thought on the one hand unless you get stuck with one that’s lazy or sick or whatnot. But then Pastor said maybe angels are just sent to different people at different times instead of following one person around his whole life. And I figured that if even Pastor doesn’t know something like that, it’s not worth spending too much time worrying over on account of him being the expert and still not having a clue.

  Anyway, our talk about angels that night got me thinking about the hero who rescued me from The Nightmare. And whatever he was, he got me out of that place and he gave me that money, which ended up being quite a lot. And he only said a few things to me, but if he were to call me on the telephone today, it’d only take me half a second to recognize his voice on account of me hearing it in my mind so often after that. Sometimes I look back at all the most important things people ever said — the good ones on top of the bad ones — like the mudang’s curse and the blind lady’s blessing, or Pastor and Miss Sandy when they said out of all the kids they might have chosen to take care of, they picked me. But out of everything everyone’s ever told me, if you were to ask me what was the most important of them all, I’d say it’s what that hero told me to do. “Find the train station, head north, and take yourself to China.” If words were like a rag doll that you could grasp onto real tight when you’re scared, if words were something like that, those things he spoke woulda been what I carried around with me from that point all the way to when I met Pastor and Miss Sandy. I didn’t even have to think on them on purpose. They just repeated themselves in my mind over and over once I ran away from The Nightmare and then over the following weeks. “Find the train station, head north, and take yourself to China.” That’s what the man said, and whether he was a brand-new angel God sent to save me, or whether he was the same guardian one that had been looking after me my whole life, or whether he was just a regular person who found out my real name and for some reason felt like giving me all his money and sending me off to someplace safe, it don’t matter so much who he was as what he said I should do.

  “Find the train station, head north, and take yourself to China.”

  And you know what, Teacher? That’s exactly what I did.

  CHAPTER 22

  Once I got to China, maybe you’d get to thinking my problems would be over. And The Nightmare was over for sure, and there’s no way I’m gonna ever stop being grateful on that account, but even when I go a week or maybe more without thinking about it, that don’t mean I’ve ever really forgotten, much as I’ve prayed to.

  China, well, it wasn’t like I growed up believing, where there was food you could just pick off of trees or stuff and nonsense like that. Far as I could tell, it was a lot like back home. There weren’t no famine, but that didn’t mean everybody you met was gonna share with you. And I was older by then, and I already told you how it’s harder to make grown-ups feel sorry for you the older you get, unless you’re a girl, ’cause I figure they have an easier time on account of looking more sad-like or whatnot. And now that I think about it, I don’t remember seeing no girl runaways like me living on the streets in China, so maybe they all found nice folks to take them in.

  Anyway, I guess if I hadn’t gone through The Nightmare, I probably woulda been pretty down. But it’s kinda like going to them doctors who fix up your teeth. It’s plenty uncomfortable sitting in that chair while they’re scraping all the bad germs off, especially the ones further back. But then if they have to use the drill once, and you go back the next time and they don’t, you’re not gonna complain. That’s kinda what happened to me in China. It wasn’t easy, but it was better than where I’d been. Still, sometimes I’d fall asleep so scared to wake up back in the Nightmare, except that never happened, thank God.

  One of the things that surprised me about China was how many Koreans was living there. And I don’t mean runaways like me who sneaked over the border. There was them kinds too, but even if we did see each other, we didn’t do much talking together on account of us not wanting to get in trouble. In China, the police will send you back home if they catch you, and by home I don’t mean to whatever village you come from, I mean places like The Nightmare. ’Cause if they do bad things to you like that just for picking up a little black can of film, you can swear on the Dear Leader they’d do it to you if they catched you running all the way off to China.

  So at first, I spent all my time hiding from the police and searching for food. There was more of that over there, like I told you, but that didn’t mean it was easy to get. I did all right, though, like sometimes someone would give me half their lunch leftover from a restaurant, and you don’t ever see that happening back home. And it wasn’t winter, so that was another good thing, since finding a place to live didn’t sound quite so pressing. One of the saddest parts was on account of missing Auntie so much. And one of my worst regrets — aside from having to live at The Nightmare to start with — was I never got to say good-bye to Auntie, and sometimes I get scared that she thinks I ran away. But I loved her, and that’s the Pyongyang-perfect truth, and she was the only person in Chongjin I can say that about. ’Course I’m not talking about the kinda love in those movies Pastor likes to watch where there’s a cowboy and a curly-haired lady in a checkered dress or stuff and nonsense like that. It weren’t that kinda love at all, ’cause Auntie was already a teenager and probably my best friend I’ve ever had, so that woulda been gross. But I didn’t love her the same way I loved Mama or Papa from the old days neither, ’cause with them it was more like I needed them to take care of me. I guess I needed Auntie to take care of me too, but it was different o
n account of her never yelling at me or bossing me around none. Even when she asked me to tell the other blossoms a story or go get those herbs for breakfast, she always asked, and it was always real polite-like. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever meet someone I’ll love as much as Auntie, and I’m not talking about Pastor and Miss Sandy neither, ’cause I love them too, but that hardly counts.

  So I had enough to eat — it wasn’t loads but it was enough — and I didn’t hafta worry about the cold, so I figure China started off all right. And you know how I said it took time to learn how to be a flower swallow? It was like that in China too, except there was new rules now, like the one I already told you about not letting the police catch you. And pretty soon I learnt the police wouldn’t only get you in trouble for being a runaway, they’d get you in trouble if you helped a runaway, even if all you did was give him a little bit of food.

  Well, I didn’t have any more of that angel’s money on account of having to use it all up on the trains and then on paying a man to help me get into China without too much fuss, but I got to figuring later on that the money was different over the river anyway, so I’m not even sure mine woulda worked anymore. But you know what’s surprising, Teacher? Even if the money’s not all the same, the language was, ’least in that part of China. It made it easier for me on account of most people there understanding what I was saying, even if some of them were too scared to help me on account of those police I already told you about. And some were mean and some weren’t, but with the mean ones I didn’t feel sad afterwards, and with the nice ones I never felt that happy, neither, and I figure after you go through something like The Nightmare, it just takes a little while ’til you start feeling things proper-like again, except I didn’t know that at the time.