Stars Between the Sun and Moon (9 page)

Chapter Thirteen

I was twenty-two
when I married Myungin. Snow fell on my wedding day, the twenty-fourth day of the last month of 1990. That should have been an omen for me; couples never wed at that time of year. But I refused to listen to my father's laments that day, as I had earlier. “Why does Myungin want to be married so fast? I do not understand what he is up to,” he fretted, pacing the room as my mother pinned an apricot flower made of pink paper on to the bun she had made of my hair.

It was true that Myungin had chosen the day but I hadn't complained. At least this way I wouldn't have to tell my parents about my pregnancy. When the child was born, I would tell them the baby was conceived on our wedding night and arrived early. I wasn't showing yet, even though four months had passed. I just looked as if I'd been eating a bit more.

“I will ask my brother to see what is going on when he takes you to Myungin's house,” my father continued. “I don't approve of this wedding.”

“Stop,” my mother hissed. “It is done now. Let her have a happy day.”

My father and brothers left the room as my mother helped me dress in a pink traditional skirt and top. She had spent nearly half of our family's savings on fabric for the outfit. As she admired my appearance, my relatives started to arrive, including my aunt Youngrahn, who was festively made up for the occasion. She had outlined her lips in a darker shade of red than her lipstick and powdered her face perfectly white.

Soon one of my father's brothers showed up with two chickens. Chickens were hard to find and expensive to buy, but very auspicious. My mother cleaned and boiled the birds and then placed them on the table, surrounded by trays of candies made into miniature pagodas and flowers, including a pink lotus with yellow stamens and green leaves. My father and uncle pierced the chickens with sticks so they would sit upright, stuck red chili peppers in their mouth and arranged them facing each other in the traditional way. One chicken, however, kept slumping forward.

“This is not a good sign for a long life of happiness,” Youngrahn scowled. “When the chickens look alive, it means the bride and groom will be in love forever. When one chicken can't do what it is meant to do, it means one member of the couple is not sincere.”

Her words frightened me, and I started to perspire, fearful that Myungin would cancel the ceremony. I wrung my hands as we waited for him to arrive with his father and brothers.

When I heard the knock on the door, I nearly leapt out of my pink slippers. “Don't move,” my mother ordered, as my father and uncle let them in. “A wife must always follow their husband. You should let Myungin lead you. Once you move into his home, you will become the
myuneuri
, the daughter-in-law of the family. You must listen to your husband and all of his family.”

I snuck a look at Myungin in his black suit and white shirt as he took a seat at the head of the table bearing the chicken and the sweets. His brothers sat one to each side. In the traditional way, Myungin was supposed to point to the foods he wanted packed and taken to his house as gifts for his parents. He asked only for the chickens, though, which I didn't like. Of all the food that filled the table he picked the chickens that had kept falling forward. It felt like a further bad omen. My mother had spent money from our meager savings to prepare the table of candies and sweets, in anticipation that most of the food would be taken to Myungin's family as a sign of respect and good fortune. Now her eyes were red as she held back her tears. She too, I felt, saw his only picking the chickens as a very bad sign.

My mother served Myungin and the other men a meal of white rice with three boiled eggs, blood sausages, squid and
samhynagsoo
, a special liquor that had been given to us on the birthday of the great leader, Kim Il-sung, and saved for this occasion. I left the room so the men could eat alone. When Myungin was done, I knew he would twist the neck of one of the chickens. When that happened, my mother beckoned for me to return. She packed up the poultry into a small box for Myungin to take to his mother. Myungin and his father and brother left soon after. My brothers loaded the
hahm
, a wedding chest of dishes, chopsticks, linens, towels and bedding, on top of a car borrowed from my father's factory, securing it to the roof with heavy rope.

By the time I arrived at Myungin's parents' house with my uncle and aunt as escorts, the light snowfall had turned into a blizzard. Myungin's house wasn't much warmer than the temperature outside, and because the electricity had gone out, the rooms were lit with kerosene lamps. Everything was going wrong. “Where is the rope that will lead me to the sky?” I asked myself as Myungin's family greeted my uncle and aunt. My relatives handed Myungin's father the rest of the money my parents were contributing to our new life together.

I took my seat at a small table off to the side, with my aunt to the left of me. The table was completely covered by a tower made of candies. Myungin and his family sat at a large table close by. I gasped when I noticed the chickens in the centre of it. “Those are my mother's chickens,” I protested silently, fighting the urge to cover my mouth in horror. My uncle's gaze was fixed on the chickens as well, and I could see from the lines on his forehead that he was in shock. Nothing could be a greater sign of disrespect to my family than for Myungin's family to reuse the chickens.

Myungin's mother served bowls of white rice with three eggs on top to those seated at the main table. Myungin, smirking, leaned over to speak to me. “Your family's food was all looks and no substance. You'll get our leftovers when we're done.”

In Chosun there is a saying that after a family marries a daughter, there isn't even bedding left for the family. My sister was getting close to marrying age, too. What have I done, I lamented. There was only a little left of our family's savings to pay for her. A bride is supposed to bring three sets of sheets to her new family's home. Since we could only afford two, my mother had used half of the cotton from her own bedding set so I could take a third and not be shamed. My eyes scanned the room, taking in all the strange men standing along the walls of the room, Myungin's father with his crooked grin and rumpled, thinning hair, and Myungin's mother with her lipstick-stained teeth. Myungin smelled to me of betrayal. “Abuji, why did I not listen to you?” I reprimanded myself.

As was the tradition, my uncle bantered back and forth with Myungin's father that his food was not good enough and that he was going to take me away. Each time, Myungin's mother would run to get more food, including tender pork ribs, which I had never tasted before, and octopus that I had only ever seen before as pictures in books. My mouth watered, but the food was for my uncle, who would make a face each time he licked a bowl clean, then frown and exclaim again, “Not good enough! I am taking my niece away.” Eventually the nongtaegi came out and the men began to get drunk.

As the evening wound to a close, my uncle and aunt asked for a few minutes alone with me. “I need to give her some advice about how to treat your son well,” my uncle told Myungin's father to explain their unusual request.

When we were alone in the hallway, my uncle sighed. “I wish I didn't have to tell you this,” he said, his shoulders slumping forward. “There are debts in this family to which you now belong. Those men standing to the side of the room when you came in, they were bill collectors, not relatives. Myungin's father gave them the wedding money in partial payment.”

“How do you know?” I stammered.

“The collectors were fighting in another room about who got what. Myungin's father has been unable to sell many of the items he has purchased from the Chinese.”

“This is why Myungin wanted to marry so fast!” my aunt cried. I looked down at my pink skirt, which was stained from the snow outside.

“What do I do?” I asked my uncle.

“You have to stay,” he said. “There is nothing that can be done.”

During the first
month of our marriage, Myungin's parents were kind to me. His mother made me healthy meals of white rice, kimchi, tofu and pork soup. I had no idea where she got the food, because it was expensive and not part of their rations. It was clear from the bill collectors who came to the house every week that money was still owed. Then one day I discovered the secret. I overheard Myungin's mother boasting to a female neighbour how lucky she was to have a daughter-in-law from such a good family. “The father is an important member of the Party,” Myungin's mother exclaimed. “Can you help show her how fortunate we feel by giving me some food?” she asked the woman.

The neighbour gave Myungin's mother a cucumber she had frozen from last season before.

I wanted to tell Myungin's mother that my father was not such an important member of the Party, and I likely would never be a member. I wanted them to know that I was not a good daughter. But I said nothing.

Myungin was also kind to me at first, stroking my back as I fell asleep beside him on the mat in the room along his parents' room. He gave me portions of his food to eat in the mornings before I headed to my factory job, hoping that the child inside of me was a son who would grow big. One morning, I asked Myungin if he could find me some walleye pollock, which I had eaten once when we worked in the mountains. I had a craving for it, though I knew my request would be difficult to fill. Fishermen caught the pollock near the border with Russia, but most of it was sold to the Chinese for cash, rather than rationed or sold inside Chosun. Myungin grew quiet, then he began to tell me what had happened to his father's business.

“You know that the Chinese come to Chosun to sell clothes, socks, cosmetics, towels and sweaters,” he said. “Many of the things we see on the black market are originally from China. But the Chinese can never stay long before the Boweebu tells them to leave. So whatever is left, they sell to men like my father and his partner, a man he met when we left Pyongyang. The Chinese want payment for the goods up front, so my father and his partner took out a loan. Then his partner ran off with the money. My father took out a second loan to repay the first one, and then another loan to buy more items from the Chinese. But the items didn't sell.”

I had never seen Myungin so distraught. He was whimpering like a baby as he spoke. For the first time since our wedding, I felt as if we belonged together.

“Because we still have debts with contacts from China,” he continued, wiping away his tears, “I can't buy the pollock here. But I will get some for you from a cousin in China.”

And he did. He found me enough to last for several weeks.

But as the
first month of the year turned into the second, Myungin started to stay out late. When he was at home, he gave off an odour of decaying alcohol, his breath sticky and sour. I could not get close to him without vomiting from morning sickness. The foods that had nurtured me, including white rice, grew scarce. Perhaps Myungin's neighbours had nothing more to offer. The hunger pains of my childhood returned.

Myungin's mother brewed her own alcohol, selling it to neighbours who knocked on the door. She gave whatever was left over to Myungin.

I started a letter to my mother. “This house has so many secrets,” I wrote. After a few sentences, I tore the paper into shreds. I didn't want to worry my parents or be disrespectful of my new family. But one day in early spring, when I had not seen Myungin in more than a week, I went to my parents' place when I finished my shift at the factory. My mother embraced me for the first time since I was a small child.

“He's been here,” my father said in a stern tone. “Your husband. He came here in the middle of the night and demanded that your mother give him alcohol.”

I lowered my head and covered my eyes with my hands.

“He's been sleeping in the houses of other women. Other people have seen him and told us. People we trust,” my mother continued.

Tears started to stream down my face.

My father pressed on. “I told him to leave and go back to you the night he came here. Your mother gave him the alcohol because he was so angry, she was scared he was going to do something violent. You don't know this man!” he exclaimed, clenching his fists as if to punch someone.

I rubbed my belly, thinking of the child inside me. “Abuji, what do I do?”

“Go home,” my mother said, setting a steaming bowl of rice in front of me. “Take these when you do.” She pressed three meal tickets from my father's factory into my hand. “You need to go back and speak to him.”

When I got back to my in-laws' house, Myungin was there, so drunk he could barely walk, his feet sliding out from under him, his hands slapping at the wall to prevent him from falling down. When I told him where I had been, he slapped me across the face with such force that I fell to my knees. He hit me again, this time across the back of my head. I fell forward, then quickly I rolled onto my side, worried for the baby. He came at me again, punching my face, my neck and my stomach. I held my hands in front of me for protection.

I howled like the wild wolves as he stood up and began kicking my back and stomach. His mother, in the other room, ignored my screams for help. Myungin was the head of the family now; his father had moved away to try to earn money to pay off their debts. Myungin could do anything he wanted. As he dealt out the blows, I knew I was nothing to him except a pitiful girl whose bride money was needed for his family's debts. He had never adored me. He had never cared. What hurt me most was that I had known this truth from the beginning. I just didn't want to see it.

Chapter Fourteen

After the beating
from Myungin, I could not go to work. I didn't have the energy and I was too humiliated to see a doctor to get a medical note explaining my absence. As a result, for every day I was away, I was docked food rations. Myungin would not be happy when he went to collect our rations. But I could barely get up from my mat. My back was so badly bruised even the weight of the cotton blanket sent waves of pain through my body. But the baby survived. I had no cramps or spotting that indicated the child was in danger.

Myungin had left the house right after the attack, grabbing some bottles of alcohol on his way out. The place was quiet the next day except for Myungin's mother fussing about in the kitchen, making her nongtaegi.

But as dusk came, the house stirred. First I heard the sound of Myungin's voice, which sent shivers down my spine. I pulled my aching body up into a sitting position but was too dizzy to maintain it. I clutched the blanket in my hands and lay back down.

Then I heard my uncle's voice and the voice of my mother. I had forgotten it was Myungin's birthday. Even my father had come since it was tradition for my family to help him celebrate. When I heard my father's brisk greeting to Myungin's mother, I decided to act.

“I'm in here,” I called out. “Help me!” My cry was quiet, though, since my throat was parched. I heard cups being set down on the table and my uncle asking Myungin about his work.

I crawled toward the door. Pain ricocheted through my abdomen but I managed to turn the knob and open the door a crack. “Help me,” I called out again. When my mother saw me, she screamed. I learned later that my face was covered in dark bruises as was the rest of my body.

My mother moved immediately to nurse my wounds. Once she was through, I was lying back down on my mat, the door open so I could hear the conversation.

“Let's get right to business,” said my uncle. “Sunhwa is going home. How can you beat up a pregnant woman? How can you beat up your wife?”

Myungin said nothing as my mother started to wrap up my clothes. She pulled out my wedding chest and opened it. “The sheets are gone,” she screeched in such a loud voice that my father and uncle came running.

“Where did everything go?” my uncle demanded of Myungin.

“We sold it,” Myungin's mother replied.

There was a long silence. “What do you want us to do?” my uncle eventually asked Myungin. “Take her back, or leave her with the promise you will never do such a thing again?”

My heart sank upon hearing these words. I didn't want to stay, but I knew it would also be difficult to leave and face the shame of a failed marriage.

“What do you want, Myungin?” my uncle repeated.

By now, my mother had finished packing and was loading things in the car that would take us back to the train station. I strained my ears to hear Myungin's decision.

“Take her back,” he said finally in a gruff voice. “Just take her away. I don't want her anymore.”

“I don't know what you are going to do,” my mother whispered to me on the train. “Single mothers in this country have no life. No job. Nothing.” She tore at the pockets of her khaki work shirt and started punching her chest. “How did it come to this?” she hissed. “Why?”

A few months
later, at the end of planting season, I gave birth to a son. Myungin's father named him Sungmin. That very day, my mother returned to Myungin's house and begged him to apologize and then take me back. He refused at first, but in the harvest season, when Sungmin was able to hold his head up and reach out his fleshy arms when I held him close, my mother repacked my clothes in my wedding chest and took me to live with my husband again. “Neither you or the baby have a future without Myungin,” she told me.

For the next three months, Myungin barely looked at his son, who had his father's eyes and my round face. And he rarely spoke to me. He was drunk most of the time. “I want another dowry,” he spat one night, his spittle landing on my cheek. “I took you back. I should get compensation for my sacrifice.”

It wasn't long before the beatings started. No matter how much white powder I applied to my face, nothing could conceal the bruises. Myungin hit my face with his fists. He used his belt across my back and beat the palms of my hands and the backs of my legs with a stick. His mother was almost always present, remaining quietly off to the side, refusing to look, to act, even to acknowledge my suffering.

One early morning in January, Myungin arrived home red-eyed and stinking of alcohol. He dragged me from my sleep and threw me outside in my long johns and nightshirt. My feet turned blue as I banged on the side of the house, begging to be let back in. When he finally opened the door, he threw cold water at me.

“Please stop drinking. Please consider your child,” I begged. I knelt in front of him, my eyes wild, hands grasping at his trousers. But he didn't. A few nights later, he picked up Sungmin, asleep and swaddled in his blankets and dragged me by the hair to the front door. He kicked us both out. We spent the night in the neighbour's barn. Sungmin and I went back to Myungin's house, but after that my husband began to give me less and less food. There were days when all I had to eat was some turnip.

In early spring, Myungin started seeing another woman. I spotted them holding hands in the fields when I went to collect water at the well. I felt dirty, low, as if my body was part of the mud into which my torn slippers sunk.

By the time Sungmin was ten months old, I could take no more. My eyes were glassy from malnutrition, my limbs stuck in slow motion. Sungmin had a chronic cough, which I believed was from the lack of nutrients in my breast milk. One morning after Myungin had left for his job and his mother was out selling alcohol, I folded up some clothes for Sungmin, wrapped them in a pale pink bottari, and took the train back to my parents' house. I vowed this time I would never return to Myungin's home.

My mother didn't try to convince me to go back, but my father's downcast expression said it all. Myungin had brought doom to our family, haunting us like the curse of an evil ancestor. “I never believed that these evil spirits existed,” my mother said one afternoon as Sungmin slept between us. “But there has been so much suffering in this family for generations.”

My life since returning home was better than at Myungin's, since I was not being abused. But I could not work since I had to care for Sungmin. My child and I had no rations either. Myungin, as my husband, got our share. My mother gave us what she could but there was no money to buy us extra food.

“You need to consider adoption,” she said hesitantly. “There is no other way.”

I immediately started to cry.

“Your father will soon be forced to retire from the factory,” she continued quietly. “He is getting old. You must return to work. You must get your life back.”

“I can't,” I choked out. Sungmin had just learned to walk, taking his first awkward steps a few days earlier as I helped my mother till the land for planting. His eyes sparkled in the sunlight, and his laughter warmed the dampness inside me. I felt hope deep inside me when I was with him. “Please do not make me give Sungmin away,” I pleaded.

But my mother had rolled over by now, her back to me, her weak snores filling the room.

For the next
two weeks, life went on as usual. Then one Sunday morning, my mother woke me early to ask if I could go to my uncle's house in the other part of town. “It is your cousin's birthday,” she reminded me as I rolled up my mat. “Take her this.” She pushed a fabric-wrapped present into my arms.

“But we have never given gifts before on our cousins' birthdays,” I said, puzzled. The item was hard and heavy. I suspected it was a rice cake.

“Just do as I say,” she ordered, picking up Sungmin. “I'll watch the baby.”

I had to take the train to get to my uncle's house, and when I arrived, my aunt invited me to stay for white rice and kimchi. My cousin, now also a mother, rocked her newborn in her arms.

“Spend the day with me,” my cousin chirped. Her lips were a soft crimson colour that reminded me of Sungmin's cheeks in the wind.

I shook my head, standing up to leave.

“You must stay,” my aunt said, pulling me back down by tugging on my sleeve.

“What is going on?” I demanded. As I caught my cousin's glance darting quickly from her mother to me, a flash ran through me. Suddenly I knew why I was there, why my mother had sent me away.

I ran out the door and all the way to the train station. I paced the platform, anxious for the arrival of the carriage that would take me back to the main station in Yuseon. I thought about Myungin's anger, about my mother and her secrets. A mysterious chain of events finally became clear. My mother had spent several afternoons the week before away from home, supposedly visiting an elderly sick friend. Then, two days ago, a couple had come to our house. My mother introduced them as our new neighbours. The woman wore a wool skirt and matching jacket, her hair rolled into a smooth bun. She looked sophisticated and was dressed neatly, as if she was a high-ranking factory worker in Pyongyang, not a villager in this remote town. She stood close to me, her eyes glued to Sungmin as I fed him his porridge. “How old is he?” the woman asked.

The woman's husband put a hand on her shoulder and smiled. “Let me give you this for the child,” he said to my mother, slipping some won and two bars of soap into her hand.

I had thought the couple was just being kind but now, on the train, I rolled my hand into a tight fist and hit myself hard on the leg. How could I not have figured it out? My mother was giving Sungmin away. My mother had sold him.

Once I got
to Yuseon, I took the first train directly to Myungin's town. My mother could not have sold Sungmin without Myungin's permission, I knew. As the train came to a stop, I raced out onto the platform and incredibly there I saw them: Myungin, my mother, the couple who had visited our home the week before, and a woman I had never seen.

I ran toward them.

“Give him to me,” I screamed, grabbing Sungmin from Myungin's arms.

Myungin stepped forward and slapped me hard across the face. As I fell to my knees, he snatched our son back.

“You can't give my child away,” I sobbed.

With sympathetic eyes, the woman who was buying Sungmin searched my face.

“We will give your child a good life,” her husband said sternly, pulling his wife back by the elbow and taking Sungmin from Myungin's arms. I leapt up, reaching again for my child. But Myungin was quicker and stronger than I was. He grabbed my arms and held them behind my back using his knee to force me to the ground. He held me as still as he could, though I tried to kick, as the couple got onto the train.

“No,” I wailed, my voice echoing in the station.

By the time I had worked myself free from Myungin, kicking and screaming, the train was pulling away.

I grabbed the door handle and tried to hang on, running faster as the train picked up speed. But when I felt a hand grab the back of my shirt, I tumbled onto the platform. My beloved son was gone.