Chosen

The Test

The Test

“But Peter insisted emphatically, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.’” Mark 14:31

Inspectors stormed into our cabin less than an hour later.

“Get up!” a raspy voice demanded as several men crashed the door in. Snow blew all the way to my bedside. Partially blinded by the flashlights, I was too stunned to even tremble.

Is this part of the inspection? I wondered. Are they going to interrogate us here? Mother moaned. I peeked from under the blanket to see her wrapping Father’s coat around his shoulders. Where does she think he’ll be going on a night like this?

A man with dozens of pock-mark scars on his face stomped toward my parents’ bed. He wore the badge of the People’s Safety Agency on his dark green overcoat. His heavy boots shook the floor with each stride. When he grabbed Father by the neck and yanked him out of bed, I yelped like a wounded animal.

The scar-faced man turned on his heel without letting go of my father and pointed at me. “The girl,” Pock-Marks ordered in a hoarse rasp, and immediately two officers towered over me. I bit my lip to keep from crying when I saw the guns swinging from their hips. I covered my face with my hands, trying to disappear by sheer force of will. I squeaked my protests as the younger of the two officers lifted me up and swung me over his shoulder so that I was hanging down over his back. Mother ran toward them with my coat, but they ignored both her pathetic pleading and my frantic kicking.

“Take her to the precinct building,” instructed the scar-faced leader, and before I had time to call out again, my abductor carried me outside into the snowy darkness. Still in my nightgown, with no shoes or coat or blanket to ward off the biting cold, I hung over the young officer’s shoulder.

I strained my neck and saw Father standing in the doorway as soldiers roughly shoved him forward. He winced as the inspectors fastened his wrists, and then he turned to see me watching him. Weakly, Father smiled at me, nodding his head in my direction. As the officer carrying me rounded a sharp corner, I clung desperately to that last image of Father.

In spite of my fears, I was relieved when we entered the precinct building. It wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but at least it was protected from the wind and snow. My heart sank just as quickly, however, when I saw that there was no one else there. When the People’s Safety agents first entered into our home, I forced myself to believe that their visit was all a routine part of the inspection. As I was being carried to the precinct building, I told myself that once we got there I would see other children like myself, all huddled and waiting together for some mass demonstration.

Instead I was alone in the dark building with no parents, no familiar faces, only my two captors. My family was being singled out. Is this why Mother begged Father not to draw attention to us? What other reason could there be – besides Father’s faith – to explain why I was here right now, wet from the snow and shivering in a dark and unheated room?

My abductor dropped me onto the hard floor in a corner and talked in a whisper to his partner. After a moment, the older officer rubbed his hands together and stepped back out into the snow, leaving me and the other guard alone. The young inspection officer stood for a while at attention and then finally sat down in a chair by the door and fidgeted with a pocketknife.

I waited for something to happen: for my parents to join me, for the guard to say something. Nothing. There was only quietness and darkness and fear. I knew what Father would do in my place; he would pray. But I never could pray like Father, and I didn’t have any proof that God listened to me or felt like intervening on my behalf anyway.

When I was twelve, you see, my father’s faith was so strong that it seemed completely unattainable. I could never be as steadfast or as bold as he, not while I was still so young. Fervent faith was reserved for adults like my father – a grown man who had over half of the New Testament memorized – or like the Bible smuggler who risked his own life to give Father his illegal copy of Scripture.

Huddled in the dark corner of the precinct building, I thought about the stories I knew about this Christian worker. He was known only by his alias, Moses. A Chinese citizen of Korean ethnicity, Moses was wanted at great price by both the Chinese and North Korean police. In addition to smuggling Bibles into our starving land, Moses had also helped dozens of Koreans find safe passage into China. According to rumors, he could even warn Christian leaders of imminent arrests and somehow usher them to safety across the border.

Moses’ very existence was enigmatic. How did a Chinese citizen know enough about the inner workings of Pyongyang that he could save Christians from impending raids? How could a foreigner orchestrate the release of condemned Korean church leaders? How could a mortal man slip from country to country without getting caught by either the Koreans or Chinese?

I probably wouldn’t have believed half of these legends at all if Father didn’t know Moses personally. As I squatted on the floor in the precinct building, I wondered what Moses was doing right now. Did he remember Father, the man from Hasambong he gave a Bible to so many years ago? Did Moses know about me at all? Did Moses pray for Hyun-Ki’s only child, Chung-Cha? Most importantly, did Moses have a plan to rescue our family?

In spite of my hopeless circumstances, my heart raced in excitement. Was this entire abduction one of Moses’ feats of deliverance? Would the Bible smuggler himself show up and whisk my parents and me away to safety? To freedom?

From the corner of my eye, I studied the young agent who sat by the door guarding me. Face taut, body slouched in his chair, he twiddled his pocketknife with a bored expression. He caught me staring at him and spat at the spot on the floor where I crouched. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t believe that he was an undercover Christian worker. He was a guard from the inspection unit of the People’s Safety Agency. Nothing more. And my detainment here was not a regular aspect of the inspection rounds either.

My teeth were clicking from the cold, but I didn’t ask my captor for a blanket. The metal stove in the middle of the room remained unlit. I sat against the wall and hugged my legs, waiting for Mother and Father to arrive, trying against all logic to hold on to my quickly fading dreams of Moses and freedom.

I don’t know how long I sat there in the cold and the dark, but eventually I heard footsteps marching down the outer hallway. The guard who was supposed to be watching me was dozing in his chair. As the footsteps grew louder, he jumped up and straightened his hat and his uniform. He barely managed to get upright at attention before the heavy door swung open, letting in a gust of icy wind.

The pock-marked officer was the first to enter, followed by several other inspectors. One of the guards carried a lantern, and he placed it on a desk in the middle of the room. The flames flickered and danced. I shuddered and stared at the six pairs of snowy boots in front of me.

“Bring the woman here!” shouted Pock-Marks who wheezed when he spoke as if unseen hands were wrapping ghoulish fingers around his throat. I looked up and saw Mother standing in the shadows. At first I wanted to jump up and run to her, but I stopped and sucked in my breath when I saw her face. Her eyes were downcast, her expression vacant. The guard leading her pushed her through the door. Crude wire bound her wrists.

The guard shoved Mother before the scar-faced official. Her threadbare coat remained only halfway buttoned over her nightclothes, and her graying hair was disheveled and tangled from the wind. She didn’t look at me even once but stared down at the officer’s feet.

“Name!” Pock-Marks demanded, his voice so hoarse that I wished to cough for him.

“Lyang Choon-Hee,” Mother answered.

I’m down here, Mother! I willed my thoughts to reach her, but she didn’t look my way.

“Religion?” Pock-Marks inquired. He towered at least a head higher than Mother who stood before him with her shoulders slumped down.

“Religion!” he boomed once more, holding his pistol as if he was about to strike her with it. I turned my face away so that I wouldn’t see the blow.

“I am a daughter of the Party,” Mother answered, never raising her gaze. Pock-Marks lowered his weapon. Before returning it to its holster, however, he hesitated. Through the flickering lamplight I saw the corners of his lips turn upward into a twisted grin. He gestured to one of his companions and jerked his chin toward me. The man lifted me up and shoved me forward. Pock-Marks grabbed me by the shoulder and positioned me in front of my mother.

“Are the members of your family Christian pigs?” Pock-Marks asked, digging his fingernails into my neck.

“We are children of the Party,” Mother replied.

Pock-Marks raised his hand again and hit her cheek with the butt of his pistol. I jumped and bit my lip to keep from crying out.

“Give me the truth,” Pock-Marks ordered, “or else I’ll crack open your daughter’s skull.” Mother tilted her head to the side and looked at me for the first time. She raised her eyebrows. When Pock-Marks lifted his gun over my head, Mother squared her shoulders and tilted her chin up.

“We are not Christians. We do not follow the ways of the Western deceiver Jesus.”

“Do you swear it?”

Mother’s voice was resolute, and she looked straight into the interrogator’s eyes. “I swear it.”

I gasped, terrified that God Almighty himself might smite my mother for her betrayal. I looked around for some sign of help but saw only the faces of half a dozen officers nodding at these words of apostasy.

Pock-Marks bent down so that his pitted face was only a few centimeters away from Mother’s. Stuck between my mother and her interrogator, I had no way to fight the waves of horror that penetrated my very soul as he leaned against me. His uniform pressed into my back, and I could scarcely breathe.

“And what do you think of Christians?” The sweetness in Pock-Marks’ voice made my head swirl.

Mother didn’t pause for even a second. “They are pigs. They are illiterate, unintelligent swine who spit in the face of the Dear Leader in spite of all his goodness toward us. They don’t deserve to be a part of this great nation, and the revolution would be better off if they were all drowned in the bottom of the sea.”

I had never heard such words of blasphemy come from anyone’s mouth, much less my own mother’s. In my horror, I was certain I could now see demons dancing in the flickering lamplight. Pock-Marks grabbed my shoulders and spun me around to face him. His eyes were dark. I tried to turn away but couldn’t. I stared into the officer’s black irises, too petrified to move.

“Remember this night,” the wheezing officer instructed me, leaning so close to my face I could taste his putrid breath. I tried to break free from his stare, but I was paralyzed, whether from my own twelve-year-old fears or by the evil force that seemed to have grown exponentially at Mother’s words of unfaithfulness.

Eventually, Pock-Marks released his hold on me and straightened up. “Take her away,” Pock-Marks ordered a junior guard, who was only a few years older than I. The young man shoved Mother forward with a jerk and pushed her out of the room. She didn’t even look back at me.

Pock-Marks turned toward his comrades. “The people of Hasambong told us she wouldn’t be a problem.” He shrugged. “It’s the male that will require some extra persuasion.” He looked at me and winked. I wanted to clasp my hands over my ears to try to block out the dark laughter that followed from his colleagues, but my limbs still refused to obey me.

“Bring in the traitor!” Pock-Marks shouted.