The Beloved Daughter (11 page)

Shin cleared his throat. “You do know one story.” From where I sat, I tried to make out Shin’s face in the early light of dawn.

“Song Chung-Cha,” Shin implored, although I never told him my family name, “will you tell me who Jesus Christ is, and how it was that eight months ago my daughter was healed by his power?”

Haunted

“To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?” Lamentations 2:13

For some time, the only sound was the loud droning of the train’s engine and the protest of its heavy wheels over the tracks. Finally, I found my voice.

“That was you?” I squeaked, remembering the Old Woman’s nervous visitor the night before she died.

Shin nodded. His face, still covered in soot from the train depot fire, was now visible in the dim morning light. He took my hand in his. I recoiled from his touch.

“When did you become a prisoner?”

Shin lowered his gaze. “I never was a prisoner.” He spoke to the floor.

I stared at the detention guard, trying to understand his words. Little by little, what was at first enshrouded in mystery became clear: Shin’s relative health and strength, his familiarity with the mining depot, his knowledge of the train schedule.

“And the fire?” I didn’t mean for my voice to quiver as much as it did.

“I needed a distraction if we were to escape,” Shin admitted. “It was for my daughter.”

My empty stomach churned. “But those people …” I thought about the young girl whose body was probably still buried underneath a pile of burnt rubble.

Shin stared at me. I was shocked that he could raise his eyes to meet mine. He didn’t flinch or blanch. My body grew rigid in fear as I understood exactly who Shin was and at what price he bought our freedom.

“How could you?” I felt dizzy. Even though I was sitting, I reached out and held onto a crate of coal to steady myself.

“You don’t have a child,” Shin explained. Perhaps if I met Shin three years later, I would have understood his words. But that day, when the idea of having a daughter of my own to love and protect was as distant as the Chinese border itself, I found no sympathy to offer this blood-stained detention guard.

“You sacrificed dozens of innocent lives just so you could escape!” I protested.

Shin winced and swallowed so hard I could hear his throat working. “Please understand.” He reached his hand out toward me.

I slapped Shin away and tried to push my body as far from him as possible. “Don’t touch me!”

“Please,” Shin implored. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there that day. I had no part of it.” The fact that Shin even knew the reason for my violent reaction only increased my panic.
I began trembling as memories of bodies – so many bodies, all of them sweaty and filthy and defiling – reached out from my past and grabbed hold of me once again.

“I wasn’t there,” Shin insisted. “I was at home that day with my little girl.”

I knew what Shin was trying to do. He was trying to tell me that he wasn’t really one of
them
, that although he wore the officer’s uniform, he didn’t belong to that group of beasts in the detention center who mocked God, heaven, and everything holy the day the Old Woman died. Shin wasn’t the kind of officer who would defile a corpse just hours after death, tempting the Almighty to avenge himself on all of humankind right then. While Shin’s comrades swarmed and tormented me, Shin was at home, thanking an unknown deity for his daughter’s miraculous healing.

Trapped with Shin in the speeding coal car, I never felt so abandoned: by the Old Woman whose unexpected death left me alone and defenseless at the hands of boorish beasts, and by God who took her away and did nothing as I was mistreated in the same cell where I once found such refuge. I even felt betrayed by Shin, the man I imagined was my deliverer but who turned out to be no different than those creatures who abused me the day the Old Woman died.

I feared I might either kill Shin or die of panic before we ever reached Kimchaek. Shin’s hands that were trying to comfort and calm me were no different than the hands of the many officers who misused me one after another following the Old Woman’s death. I tried to push him away, scratching at his face, no longer able to separate the present from that morning eight months ago.

When the Old Woman died, a stagnant dread fell upon the entire detention center. Everyone, including myself, waited in silence for some supernatural display of power and vengeance. The Old Woman’s body was left untouched, and officers gathered around the door to our cell in rapt attention. I wondered if an earthquake would split the ground to swallow them alive or if lightning and heavenly fire might find its way to the bottom floor of the concrete structure.

Atheist guards, suddenly superstitious, did whatever they could to appease the Old Woman’s God. Many agents laid offerings outside our cell: rations of bread and grain, a cup of tea, even some dried meat. A few of the men called on the name of Jesus Christ, not knowing who or what he was, but apparently hoping that if they showed him enough reverence he would refrain from unleashing his fury and wrath upon us all.

I sat and waited, wondering if the Old Woman’s prophesy regarding my freedom was about to be fulfilled. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see my father’s friend Moses, the legendary hero of my childhood, come marching down the stairs to escort me to my safe haven in front of dozens of National Security officers.

Instead … silence. An hour passed. I kept watching, expecting to see some semblance of life or beauty in the Old Woman’s body that her spirit so recently abandoned. There was only the stillness and finality of death. The Old Woman’s mouth hung open with an empty, almost senile, gaze. Her eyes, which I expected to be shining with joy at her long-awaited homecoming, were cross, and her brow was furrowed.

After a few hours, the guards grew tired of their fearful and reverent wake. One or two began to chuckle, making jokes and mimicking the Old Woman’s imbecilic, open-mouthed expression. I sucked in my breath when one of the men unlocked the door to our cell. While a few guards lingered in the hallway, most entered and stood around the corpse, some laughing, some cursing the memory of my friend.

I sat in the corner, hoping to stay unnoticed. A bottle of soju was passed around, and the soldiers increased their jocular irreverence. The fear of the Old Woman, which held every single one of her guards captive for as long as I knew her, was suddenly lifted. The mood turned celebratory.

“Here’s to you, old hag!” exclaimed a guard, splashing his repugnant liquor on the Old Woman’s face and chest. While I huddled in the corner, begging the shadows to conceal me, the Old Woman’s body and memory were defiled in every way imaginable. Then all too quickly, her abusers turned on me.

“Here’s the witch’s little pupil,” exclaimed one guard who was already slurring his words.

“Perhaps the Old Woman taught her how to cast a spell on us.”

“She can put a hex on me. I don’t mind.”

“Come here, girl-witch. Let’s see if the Old Woman or her God have any power left to protect you.”

I shielded my face and shrieked, unaware that I was in a coal car next to Shin and not back in the Old Woman’s cell at the merciless treatment of godless creatures.

“Please! Stop screaming.” Shin begged. “Someone might hear you. We could be caught.
Please!
”

I opened my eyes and saw Shin, bloody claw-marks etched across his sooty cheeks. “You’re safe now,” Shin promised. “It’s just me.”

Shin didn’t touch me as I whimpered softly into my palms. My teeth chattered in rhythm with the train’s lurching.

“I had no part in what those guards did to you that day.” I hated Shin for his pitiful attempts to comfort me. How did he expect me to react when I found out what he was? With joyful gratitude? I might have accused him to his face, but instead I wanted even more to forget that he was in the coal car beside me, as if by my sheer will power I could make him disappear and free myself from these haunting memories.

“You need to rest.” I didn’t want to acknowledge Shin’s presence by arguing with him. At least asleep, I could try to forget he was there. A moment later I was unconscious, while dreamless slumber offered only partial relief from the ghosts of my past.

JOURNEY

“I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from?”

Psalm 121:1

“Wake up,” a man whispered, shaking me out of my fitful and troubled sleep. I blinked in confusion, wondering why my shirt was soaked with sweat and why my body was rushing through space.

“Hurry,” the man urged. “We don’t have much time.”

I was not awake enough to remember why I was crouched beside crates of coal. My mind felt foggy, and my body still trembled slightly from some trauma I couldn’t recall. The man opened the door to the train car, letting in a blast of salty air. I had never been to the coast before. The smell startled me awake.

“We have to jump,” Shin explained above the roaring of the train. He reached out for my hand, and when I took it I recoiled at his touch as if by some latent instinct. Suddenly remembering who this man was, I looked around for any other means of escape. The detainment guard looked at me with wide eyes. “It’s the only way. Please, come with me.”

There was no choice. I could feel the train slowing down on the tracks, and I needed to be out of the car before we reached the steel mill. As much as I loathed Shin, I decided that being trapped with a detention guard was still better than being sent back to prison camp and punished for my escape. I held my breath and watched the ground racing by beneath my feet.

“Jump!” Shin shouted. Still holding my arm, he leapt off the platform. I hesitated a moment too long so that it was the weight of Shin’s body being jerked downward that yanked me out of the coal car, causing us both to roll and land dangerously close to the tracks.