Chosen

DAUGHTER OF PURITY

DAUGHTER OF PURITY

“Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her.” Lamentations 1:2

“Wake up!” Mee-Kyong hissed in my ear.

Disoriented and exhausted, I turned toward my friend. She held her finger over her lips and nodded toward the prisoner on night duty. As my blurry vision began to focus, I saw that the young girl who was assigned to keep watch was asleep in her chair. Prisoners in the dorm were required to serve one night shift each month. They had to stay awake and report everything that happened: which prisoners slept, which prisoners stayed awake, which prisoners complained before going to bed. They even reported sleep-talking, so every night I begged myself not to utter something incriminating while I slept.

The fact that the prisoner on night duty was asleep meant two things: that she would get a beating if another prisoner reported her, and that I could talk to Mee-Kyong about her sudden change of mood. A month ago, as if overnight, Mee-Kyong’s effervescent smile gave way to a constant moody pout. I suspected Agent Pang was somehow responsible for Mee-Kyong’s sullenness, but our twelve-hour shifts in the cutting line and nightly self-criticism sessions that could last for hours left little time for conversation.

“What is it?” I asked Mee-Kyong in a hush, trying not to wake up any of the other girls nearby.

Mee-Kyong rubbed her hand in a circle over her abdomen and widened her eyes.

“Pregnant?” I mouthed, trying to conceal my surprise. I never thought that Mee-Kyong might one day conceive, probably because I didn’t want to admit that I might find myself in the same situation one day. How could a starving teenager possibly bear a child in the squalor of our prison camp? Mee-Kyong nodded and bit her lip.

“Does he know?” I inquired, wondering what fate might befall Mee-Kyong if Agent Pang found out about her condition.

Mee-Kyong shook her head. “What should I do?” Her question surprised me. Mee-Kyong was my teacher and guide in the camp. She never asked me for advice about anything. I wanted to repay my friend for her years of kindness toward me, so I forced my foggy mind to think through Mee-Kyong’s options.

She could tell Agent Pang about the pregnancy and trust that he would keep her out of trouble. Yet Agent Pang was so volatile there was no way to guess how he might react. The camp administrators generally ignored what went on at lunch breaks between the factory guards and their office maids, but Mee-Kyong explained to me that an officer who became too indiscreet in his relationship with one of the prisoners risked a shameful demotion. Agent Pang might assess the situation calmly and bribe a comrade in exchange for a pill Mee-Kyong could take, no questions asked. Or he might explode and take out his wrath on Mee-Kyong herself. I’m sure Mee-Kyong keenly remembered our fellow prisoner who vanished a year ago when she was discovered to be pregnant by a camp guard.

With Agent Pang’s assistance, Mee-Kyong might receive permission from the National Security Agency to marry another prisoner. Then at least her pregnancy would appear legitimate. After a one-month maternity leave from the garment factory, Mee-Kyong could continue working with Agent Pang’s baby strapped to her back. But there was no way to arrange a wedding for Mee-Kyong soon enough since prisoners were only allowed to marry on major holidays. We just celebrated the birthday of the Dear Leader’s father in April, and the next possible wedding day wouldn’t come until New Year’s, which would be much too late into the pregnancy to protect Mee-Kyong at all. Besides, I doubted that Agent Pang would agree to let Mee-Kyong marry someone else. It was more likely that any prisoner who wed Mee-Kyong would find himself at the other end of Agent Pang’s revolver before the bridal days were over.

I thought about Officer Yeong who hired me as his office maid last winter. Our relationship, though mutually beneficial, didn’t involve anything of the intimacy and passion that Mee-Kyong shared with Agent Pang. I didn’t dare broach the subject with him. In the four months I served as Officer Yeong’s office maid, he didn’t even take the time to learn my name.

Another prisoner in Mee-Kyong’s situation once tried to sneak into the medical clinic to find an abortive pill but was caught and publically executed as a warning to all of the young women. I was still in middle school at the time. It had been one of my first lessons about the origins of pregnancy.

Every option I thought through seemed equally impossible. Mee-Kyong never shied away from any trial or hardship, especially if it involved the dramatic. I watched her hugging her knees and realized I couldn’t help my friend. I shrugged and offered a weak smile. “I’m sorry.” I hated myself for not having any advice to offer.

Instead of deflating like I expected, Mee-Kyong raised her chin. She shook her long hair and opened her mouth in a melodramatic yawn. “It’ll be all right.”

“What are you going to do?” I wondered.

“Do?” Mee-Kyong pretended to laugh under her breath, but ended up coughing instead. We held our breaths for several minutes to make sure none of our neighbors woke up. The prisoner on night duty remained slouched in her chair. Finally Mee-Kyong scooted closer to me. “I have time. It’s not like I’ll be gaining any weight the way they feed us here,” she joked. “I’ll make sure Agent Pang doesn’t get suspicious. It’ll work out.”

I wanted to believe that Mee-Kyong was so resourceful she could find a way out of this dilemma, but I had seen too much in the past four years at Camp 22 to have any hope left for my friend. Even if Mee-Kyong managed to conceal her pregnancy for the entire gestation, that still didn’t solve the more difficult problem.

“What will you do when the baby’s born?”

Mee-Kyong shrugged her shoulders again. “I’ll let you know next winter,” she promised.

Playing off of Mee-Kyong’s forced confidence, I smiled. Then for the first time in several years, I prayed.

As I asked God to watch over Mee-Kyong, it never occurred to me that I should be begging the Divine to protect me as well.