Chosen

DAUGHTER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS-2

Soon, Mother stopped waiting in the food line for our mealtime rations. To keep us both from starving, I had to take over that responsibility in addition to my schoolwork and camp chores. It was in the queue for our meager daily meal when I first spoke with Mrs. Kan. She and I exchanged smiles or sympathetic glances on occasion, and I knew that she was one of the members of Mother’s fifty-worker unit in the furniture factory. I never learned why Mrs. Kan was imprisoned with us, or how it was that she lived in one of the family units when I never saw a husband or children with her.

That night when I got to the food line, Mrs. Kan was already there, standing apart from the other prisoners and holding some small twigs that prisoners sometimes picked for firewood. As soon as I reached my place in line, she slipped in behind me. After clearing her throat, Mrs. Kan stumbled and dropped the pile of sticks. I knelt down and helped Mrs. Kan pick them up.

“Your mother is sick,” Mrs. Kan whispered as we both crouched in the dirt. I looked around, wondering at first if these morbid words were indeed intended for me.

Mrs. Kan grabbed the firewood from me, and while we continued to kneel by the other prisoners in the food line, she told me in a hushed voice what the guards had been doing to Mother for the past several weeks. It shames me, beloved daughter, to tell you that instead of pitying Mother, I felt embarrassed that she would endure such torment silently. I was ashamed and angry that she didn’t fight back.

“She won’t live long like this,” Mrs. Kan concluded.

“What should I do?” I pressed, but Mrs. Kan shook her head and stood up, wiping the dirt from her prison uniform. Perhaps Mrs. Kan already risked enough for me and my mother. If anyone saw us speaking together, Mrs. Kan would be reported at that evening’s self-criticism session. Secret conversations between prisoners were forbidden almost as vehemently as s****l relations between the men and women. It was the only way the National Security agents could protect themselves against us prisoners. We outnumbered our captors fifty to one, but where there is no opportunity to communicate, there is no chance to revolt.

I returned from the food line that night, set Mother’s ration before her, and tried to make her eat. Mother didn’t even glance at her bowl of grains before she left for her self-criticism session. When her food remained untouched after she crawled back to our hut and went to bed, I snuck by her mat and ate her meal surreptitiously in the far corner of our cabin. The gruel made my stomach churn. I knew Mother needed the nourishment, but if she refused to eat it, should I let it go to waste when I was starving as well?

In my heart, I knew that Mrs. Kan was right. Mother hadn’t touched her food in several days, and although she presented herself to her mandatory shift at the furniture factory and dragged herself to her nightly self-criticism sessions, she was already more dead than alive. The past six weeks had been so full of chaos and horror that I couldn’t articulate when the last flicker of light from Mother’s soul was finally snuffed out. Was it the night the soldiers burst in our cabin and carried me away, or just a few hours later when Mother denied her faith before the scar-faced interrogator? Or could it be when Mother learned about Father’s final undoing once I was released from the underground detainment center at Camp 22?

The day after my conversation with Mrs. Kan, I woke up for school and couldn’t make Mother get off the floor. I probably would have left her there if I hadn’t been so terrified that I might also be punished for her tardiness at the factory. I pleaded with Mother and even tried to physically pull her up from her straw mat, but she wouldn’t move. She stared unblinking at the wall and refused to respond to my protests. I had to go to school, so I left Mother, certain that the guards would come after her and take her away. I was living in such a primitive state of survival by then that my biggest fear was being punished for Mother’s truancy. After class, I hurried home, holding my breath when I stepped into our hut. Mother was still there, in the exact position she was in when I left her. She hadn’t even gotten up to relieve herself but instead urinated on the straw mat where she was lying.

I was so humiliated to see my mother in such a condition that I wanted to shake her until some spark of life or recognition lit up her void expression. I confess to you, beloved daughter, that I was more angry at Mother and scared that I might be punished for her laziness than I was hurt to see her so broken. There were no doctors I could take her to, or even a neighbor who might help. Mrs. Kan was probably the closest thing Mother had to a friend, and Mrs. Kan already took a great risk by speaking to me in the food line. I couldn’t expect any further help from her. Mother was completely alone. Even I couldn’t do anything for her.

The next morning I begged Mother to get up again. I screamed in frustration when she wouldn’t even open her lips to drink the water I tried to drip into her mouth. But then again, like the previous day, the time came for me to leave for school, and this morning I was certain the guards wouldn’t ignore Mother’s absence in the factory line.

Just as I suspected, when I came home that afternoon, Mother was gone. I waited all evening in our dark hut, wondering what happened to children in the camp whose parents were too sick to work. I stayed awake most of the night, blaming myself for Mother’s condition. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her the full truth about Father. Wouldn’t a lie be more merciful than reality? I didn’t know where Mother was, but if she survived, she would probably remain unable to work. What could be expected from a woman who refuses to eat or drink or even roll off of her makeshift bed to relieve herself?

The following morning, my teacher announced in front of my entire middle-school class, “Song Chung-Cha is the daughter of a stupid, slothful prisoner who was too lazy to get up and complete her duties for two days in a row.” I was made to stand exposed in front of the class while my teacher repeatedly struck my bare bottom with a wooden plank. After this humiliation to punish me for my mother’s grave misdeeds, my teacher announced, “Your mother is dead.” I never learned if Mother was taken to the camp hospital to die, or if the guards somehow sped up the inevitable process. I was not surprised, nor do I remember feeling a great sense of loss. Mother had given up living a lot earlier.

From that day on, I stayed in the dorms, where girls ranging in age from eight to about nineteen all slept on the floor, head to toe, toe to head, shoulder to shoulder. Because we were only allowed to use the toilets twice a day, the dorm always smelled like urine and waste. Even though I was exhausted by the end of the day, it was hard to sleep on account of the stench. The older girls were not allowed the luxury of sanitary rags, and so their flow spilled onto the floor below us, dried on their legs, and added to the filth and squalor.

Mee-Kyong, who had lived in the dorms for a while by then, readily shared with me all of her survival secrets accumulated during her years of camp life. Always careful to ensure that nobody else was looking, Mee-Kyong demonstrated how to hunt for frogs, how to swallow a live cricket, and how to eat the meat from a raw rat. Prisoners were brutally beaten or even killed for consuming anything other than the allotted camp rations, but we would die if we didn’t somehow supplement our daily handful of gruel. Many a fight broke out, even amongst us young girls, over who was the first to spot one of the scarce insects or rodents that were hunted illegally in the camp.

During my survival education as a prisoner at Camp 22, I also learned about some other ways to get by as a female prisoner. In the camp, there were favors girls could offer the guards that would ensure relative peace and comfort, including some extra food. By the time I graduated from the Camp 22 middle school, I was acutely aware of the forbidden liaisons that existed between the young female prisoners and our male captors. This overly sensual atmosphere, in spite of our squalid and primitive lifestyle, was especially noticeable in the garment factory where the prettiest girls and the most vigorous guards were sent by some unspoken rule of the camp. I was not all that surprised to find that it was the girls who were often the aggressors, practically forcing the guards to sleep with them and then demanding an extra ration of food or a blanket to cover with on the cold winter nights.

I managed until now to get through my torture under Agent Lee in the detainment center and my first two years working in the garment factory with my purity intact. But that didn’t blind me to the illicit activities that went on in the guards’ offices in back of the factory. I had known for a while about my friend Mee-Kyong’s association with a fiery-tempered Agent Pang. I once tried warning Mee-Kyong about him, but my unsolicited advice only made her angry. She refused to talk to me for a week. And now, as we worked side by side in the fabric-cutting line, Mee-Kyong whispered in my ear about the comrade who shared an office in the back corridor with her lover.

“Officer Yeong told Agent Pang that he wanted to find a nice young prisoner to take his old office maid’s place.” The role of office maid in the garment factory was a legitimate title for a few select female prisoners, but in reality the job description was hardly any different than that of a prostitute.

“You can’t get involved with Officer Yeong. Agent Pang would kill you both,” I added, with more seriousness than jest. I knew that if another man even walked by Mee-Kyong in the cutting line, she had to spend her entire lunch break appeasing Agent Pang’s jealous wrath with every ounce of feminine charm she could muster. Even so, Mee-Kyong usually ended up with a new bruise or two after the encounter was over.

Mee-Kyong pretended to smile, but her eyes wandered to the back hallway where her lover worked. “Actually,” Mee-Kyong admitted, her voice barely above a whisper, “I was thinking about recommending you.”

I pretended to act surprised. “Me?” As a matter of fact, I kept trying to work up the nerve to ask Mee-Kyong to show me how to get the attention of a young guard. I was nearly seventeen years old, with no hope of ever leaving Camp 22. In the dorms I could easily point out the girls who were sleeping with the guards because their ribs didn’t protrude quite as much from their sides, and their cheekbones were not quite as hollow as the rest of ours. Often they had blankets, and some wore new underclothes. One brazen prisoner even boasted of the bath she took with her lover. For those of us who were only allowed to shower twice a year, her lifestyle seemed luxurious indeed. Unfortunately, a few weeks later she disappeared, two days after she confided in a fellow prisoner that she was pregnant.

When I thought about Mee-Kyong’s proposal, however, the risks of sleeping with an officer paled next to the promise of a few extra calories. Starving to death on the meager camp rations, I didn’t bother to question my conscience. I didn’t wonder what Father might have said either. Father was no longer a part of my life, nor was the powerless deity he so faithfully served. It was years since I called on God’s name, asked for his help, or submitted to his will.

Standing next to Mee-Kyong in the cutting line in this state of spiritual hardness, I made up my mind. My famished belly didn’t allow me a hint of remorse. At sixteen, I had survived four years in Camp 22 with no one to thank other than Mee-Kyong and myself. In ten more years, if I was still alive, I would look as haggard and as ancient as the majority of the other prisoners. If I wanted to buy myself some comfort and extra privileges, now was the opportune time.

“That’s a good idea, Mee-Kyong,” I whispered back when I was certain the prison matron wasn’t watching. “Please ask Agent Pang to recommend me to Officer Yeong as his office maid. I would be honored.”