Chapter One – Escape or Die

On the outskirts of Sinuiju, Chosun (North Korea), 1995

Grandfather and I walked to the edge of our world and stood.

Behind us, darkness and hunger waited. Ahead of us, the unknown lay. Lights across the Amnok River called. The lamps of our city, when we had electric power at all, went out every evening.

Perhaps a slice of the sun watched over China on the far bank all night.

Between our dark home and the illuminated place, the bloated river roared.

We couldn’t cross. We’d have to turn back or die in the water.

Under this night’s moonlight, soldiers would see us if we tried to go home.

Death through capture and hunger if we returned. Death in the water if we went forward.

Which death to choose?

Just when I thought he would turn back, Grandfather pulled me with him down the slippery hillside. Twigs grabbed at the blanket around me as if Chosun itself would not let us go without a struggle. Icy mud seeped through my pants. We fell until our feet sank into the edges of black water so cold it felt like a thousand needles stabbing me.

“Grandfather, the river is too high, too fast, too cold.”

He scooted forward as if I’d said nothing. Standing, he pulled me up beside him, stepped forward, and pulled me with him, I thought to our deaths.

Perhaps dying in cold water was better than suffering starvation any longer.

But our feet landed on something solid.

An invisible bridge?

I could see only the rushing water, the moon, and a million stars lit from above.

“Grandfather, how?”

But Grandfather did not always answer questions, and it did no good to ask again.

Clinging to each other, we inched over the span of spewing rapids. Chilling mist from the river seeped through my blanket, biting my skin through my clothes.

The Chinese side lay just a few steps away when Grandfather stumbled. He held tight to me and recovered his balance.

Together we stepped onto soft ground and rested. I rubbed my palms together, my habit when I’m nervous. Grandfather pulled my hands apart and wrapped his arms around me to keep me warm.

After a few clouds dimmed the moon and stars, we climbed the bank to wait, I didn’t know for what.

What had caused us to put our lives on this knife’s edge? Was it just hunger that pushed Grandfather to this insane choice? Or did something else cry out from inside him?

A hunger beyond food lives deep within us.

The language of Chosun contains no word for freedom.

The Chinese city that had glittered before we leaped toward the river slept within a dim glow from streetlights and a now-clouded moon.

Grandfather studied the nearby row of houses and shut his eyes. As he opened them, a candle appeared in the window of the nearest one.

“There. We go there.”

Chapter Two: The Underground Railroad

The other side of the Amnok River in Dandong, China

When Grandfather tapped on the door, it opened as if the woman inside had been waiting for us.

“Quickly. Come in.” Her murmured welcome melded with wonderful, sweet and salty smells.

The aromas and warmth of the fireplace took me to a time when we had food and heat in our house across the river—and Father and Mother too.

My parents had grown rice, then potatoes, then corn. Crop after crop failed. Flooding cemented the famine in place.

Life seemed so different here in China, at least in this part of China.

“First, sit to eat.” The woman gestured toward her table. “Then there’s a bath and a warm place to sleep for each of you.”

Did we die in the water? Did the heaven I’d once heard about really exist?

Eating, bathing, and sleeping sounded too wonderful to dream of. I pulled my hat off.

She eyed my long hair. “And haircuts.”

“Haircuts?” I stepped back.

Grandfather moved toward me. “Hana! Respect!”

She smiled despite my question. “You’ll be safer traveling as a boy.”

“A boy? What? Why?”

“Hana.” Grandfather stepped toward me and whispered. “Don’t ask questions.”

“Yes, Grandfather. I’m sorry.”

The woman set a bowl of rice before Grandfather and another one in front of me.

“You eat and rest. The guide will come tonight to take you to the next safe place.”

The guide? The next safe place? How long would this strange adventure last?

She fed us broth along with the rice, and almond cookies. I rolled the rice around in my mouth and sucked on the cookies, lingering in their sweetness. I’d forgotten what sweet tasted like.

The last sweet treat I had eaten came from An-Bi, the Chinese woman who lived at the edge of our village when I was young. A nurse for our army during our victorious war with the South, she opened her home to me after school when my parents worked late.

Before the famine, An-Bi fed me rice, cookies, and tea and taught me words from her language. Colors, numbers, and random words: man, woman, bird, donkey, rice.

“How did you cut your hand?” Her finger had followed the line of the wound at the base of my thumb.

“Mother broke a rice bowl. I helped her clean up.”

That’s how I came to know the Chinese word for scar, bānhén.

“Useless knowledge!” Mother said when I told her what I learned. But I liked knowing something others didn’t. The words, our shared secrets, tied me to An-Bi.

When the famine came, she led the parade of departures from town.

“Eat slowly, Hana,” Grandfather said now. “You’re not used to having much.” He seemed to talk, not just to me, but to himself. He worked to hold the broth in his mouth, to chew and savor his rice.

The woman refilled my rice bowl. “You’ll need to be very careful.” She sat down with us and pushed her chopsticks into her rice. “Chinese soldiers send most Koreans back if they can’t pay a bribe. Just because you made it across the river doesn’t mean you’re out of danger. But your guide is the best. You can trust him.”

Danger? Guide? Trust him? That would mean letting our guard down, a wall of caution we had built around every word we spoke since we began to talk. Everyone could report anyone in Chosun for criticizing the leader or the government. Trust had become scarcer than the sugar in the cookies the woman had given us.

Later, a tear dripped off my nose as I watched my hair, dull as straw, piling up on the floor in clumps. As a little child, I loved running my fingers through my mother’s long, shiny hair.

“A time will come when you can let it grow back.” The woman’s voice soothed my heart like a song. “And with decent food, it will grow back better. A new day will come for you.”

Before we bathed, the woman handed us new clothes. “These will help you fit in better, avoid notice.” She handed me brown socks and pants, and a tan shirt, not the dark blue we always wore to school.

Grandfather and I both said, “Thank you.”

Even though I hated my haircut and didn’t want to wear boys’ clothes, I appreciated the woman’s kindness.

The soap she gave us for our baths had a fruity smell to it. For our hair, she gave us bottles of a liquid with a chemical odor.

“Here is a special shampoo to get rid of head lice. Keep it on for ten minutes. You can take it with you to use again in a few days. Don’t forget.” She handed us each a comb that looked like it belonged to a baby. “Use this comb after you wash your hair now and next time. It will keep the bugs from coming back.”

In the hot water of my bath, my mind reeled at all that happened in the last few days.

Three days earlier, Grandfather and I had shared one potato boiled with bits of grass, our first meal in days.

Right before we went to the riverbank, Grandfather brought home three eggs. He watched me stare at the brown ovals sitting in a cracked yellow bowl. I had not seen eggs for a long time.

I looked up at him. “How did you get them?”

“We’ll eat. Then go.” Grandfather didn’t always answer questions. Asking again would do no good.

My mind burned with curiosity and fear.

Why did we have to leave? What if Father and Mother have found work and food? What if they came back?

Grandfather’s eyes softened as he wiped a tear from my cheek. “It’s not safe for you here, and food is too hard to come by.”

For many days after my parents left, he would go to the river’s edge to watch. For my parents? For someone or something else? Every day, he returned and said nothing.

As he placed the eggs in a pan of cold water, he said, “We leave after dark. When we’re done eating, push your hair up inside your hat. Wrap your blanket around yourself. If we meet anyone along the way, do not speak.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

Why did he care whether my hair hung down or fit under my hat?

“And take nothing.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

Take nothing? We had little left to take. We’d leave behind a few dishes, a couple of chairs, the worn wooden table, our sleeping pads. All else, including my few treasured books, we had traded for food when we could.

The eggs we shared had no flavor for me. The journey we were about to take set my stomach off on a game of Neolttwigi, a teeter-totter game with two girls jumping higher and higher.

As we prepared to leave Chosun, Grandfather placed two bowls, chopsticks, and his terracotta teapot in the green cloth bag he carried over his shoulder. We had no tea to brew. Yet I knew he would never trade the pot or leave it behind. It had passed from fathers to sons for many generations until it came to him.

I found my hat. Hair up, hat on, blanket around me. We sat at the table and waited, wordless. I rubbed one hand on the other while the sky turned gray with pink edges. When the light disappeared, we stepped into darkness and walked to the edge of the river.

Wondering now at Grandfather’s courage, I fell asleep in the hot bath water.

The woman’s knock woke me up.

“Hana? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I—I’ll be out in a few minutes. Thank you.”

I don’t know how long I’d slept, but the bath water had cooled to lukewarm. I rinsed the shampoo out of what was left of my hair, dried off, and dressed. We would sleep in our new clothes.

Out in the main room, I sat in a hard chair as she sprayed something on my head and combed my hair. She stopped after I dozed off sitting up.

I crawled under a soft green blanket on a pad the woman had laid beside her glowing stove. Grandfather already slept on the floor near the door. She covered him with a quilt. Humming a lullaby Mother used to sing to me, she turned out the lights and took her place in the chair by the window.

Mother and Father. Did they also have our good fortune? Where did they go? Were they safe?

Our mysterious river crossing rolled through my mind again.

The woman continued her wordless song. Tears stung my eyes, but a strange comfort grew in my heart.

Had I only imagined this night?

No, my full belly told me the hot rice, broth, and cookies were real. I ran my fingers through my hair. I didn’t like having short, boy hair, but I loved that it felt so clean. My head didn’t itch anymore. I couldn’t remember a time when it didn’t.

As the sun came up, the idea that this house might be heaven rolled through my brain again. Rain beating on the roof and wind whipping the house dulled the edge of that idea.

Soldiers could come at any moment.

I fell into a broken sleep.

I dreamed I was back in Chosun, lined up with my classmates as Teacher checked that our uniforms were complete. To show our devotion to the great leaders of our nation, we wore neck scarves and lapel pins.

When she saw I had forgotten my pin, Teacher yanked my hair, grabbed my arm, and marched me outside. I stumbled along as she strode across the cracked concrete sidewalk and bare dirt schoolyard into the boys’ building.

I stood in front of their oldest class.

They raised their fists. “Disloyal! Traitor! If you forget again, we’ll kick you with our boots.”

Then the dream turned strange. A man from our village, Do Dug, stood at the back of the room smirking and watching the boys yell. While the rest of us were hungry, Do Dug never lost weight. We became skinny while he stayed the same.

Tapping on the door woke Grandfather and me. I heard the woman springing from her seat and held my breath before I opened my eyes. The lit candle sat on the windowsill where the night before it had told Grandfather this house was safe.

But how could he have known that?

Beyond the candlelight, darkness enveloped the house. We had slept the day away. When the woman opened the door, a man stepped inside. A man in regular clothes, not a uniform.

I exhaled, stood and bowed.

The woman walked over to me smiling but looking into my eyes. “No bowing in China. Just nod. A bow gives you away as Korean.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The man smiled too. “So these are our traveling birds?”

The woman turned her attention to him. “It’s good to see you well.”

The man took off his puffy gray jacket, revealing an enormous scar stretching across his neck to his breastbone. How could anyone have such a wound and survive?

“It’s good to see you too,” he said. “We’ll eat before we go.”

Like everything else that happened since we left home, what came next was strange. The woman didn’t give us more rice and broth. She sat waiting for the man to serve us. Never had I seen a woman sit while a man served.

From his leather satchel, he pulled out a paper bag and a glass bottle. He took flat bread out of the bag and broke it into pieces for each of us. A cup of milk sat in front of me. But the cups in front of the grownups were empty until the man filled them with what seemed like plain water from his bottle. I’d expected all of us to drink tea or water.

That’s when the impossible happened.

The water in the grownups’ cups turned purple.

“What is that?” Grandfather’s mouth hung open in astonishment.

The man and the woman just smiled at each other. Again, I thought such things only happened in dreams. The bread in my mouth told me I was awake.

But what just happened?

“Drink.” The woman nodded to Grandfather and drank from her cup.

Grandfather hesitated, picked up his cup, tasted, and tasted again. He looked at the man then at the woman. “How?”

“Drink and eat,” the man said. “We must leave soon.”

“But how? I’ve never tasted anything like this.”

I learned that Grandfather wasn’t the only one who didn’t always answer questions, and it did no good to ask again.