Chosen

DAUGHTER OF TRUTH

DAUGHTER OF TRUTH

“If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it … But it is you … my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship …” Psalm 55:12-14

Through the rest of the spring and into the summer, Mee-Kyong never mentioned her pregnancy. Apparently, Agent Pang didn’t suspect that Mee-Kyong carried his bastard child in her womb even as the leaves changed color and an early autumn chill settled in the camp. I didn’t know how Mee-Kyong managed to keep her secret from him for so many months, but I never asked for detailed accounts of her lunch breaks in the back office.

In some way, I secretly envied Mee-Kyong and the relationship she shared with Agent Pang.

Of course, it was miserable being used by any camp officer, no matter how many extra rations you received. But at least Agent Pang cared about Mee-Kyong, even if he was violent and possessive in his passion. Because Agent Pang and my employer, Officer Yeong, worked in the same part of the factory with only a small partition separating their workspaces, I could usually hear what was happening between Mee-Kyong and her lover. They fought fairly often, Mee-Kyong daring to raise her voice and Agent Pang accusing her of falsehood and working himself into a fit until he beat her. He would then spend the next half an hour apologizing to Mee-Kyong and telling her how much he loved her. Then other times I heard sweet whispers, moans of pleasure, even laughter coming from Agent Pang’s office in the back hallway.

How different were my lunch breaks spent with Officer Yeong. When Matron Sung blew her whistle, those of us girls who served as office maids in the factory went to the rooms of our respective guards, usually to the hostile stares of the other prisoners. When I entered Officer Yeong’s work space, I didn’t distract him from his business but applied myself quietly, fulfilling some of the basic cleaning duties that he assigned me my first day on the job.

When Officer Yeong finished whatever he was doing, he summoned me over, sometimes with nothing more than a grunt or a nod. For the rest of my lunch break, I did whatever I could to find something to occupy my thoughts, to deaden my senses, to remind myself that I was lucky to be here with Officer Yeong because, after all, I needed food to survive.

While thus engaged, I would hear the laughter of Mee-Kyong next door with Agent Pang and inwardly regret that my afternoons with Officer Yeong were the closest I had ever come to experiencing true love or romance. Unlike my naïve friend, however, I had no delusions about my employer. I knew that in a matter of weeks or months, Officer Yeong would tire of me and find his next replacement.

Mee-Kyong, on the other hand, clung to the desperate notion that somehow she and her agent would break free from their political destinies. Mee-Kyong was convinced that Agent Pang loved her as much as she loved him, and she imagined that their devotion to one another would somehow enable them to forge a future together. Her passion made Mee-Kyong so blind that she couldn’t even see the high-voltage fence that surrounded Camp 22. As much as I envied my friend’s idealism, as much as I fantasized about the kind of passion she and Agent Pang shared, I pitied her blind lack of reason. For her own sake, I dreaded the day when Mee-Kyong would find out once and for all what the cruel and unsympathetic world was really like.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize soon enough that Mee-Kyong’s need to cling to Agent Pang would not only cost us our friendship, but jeopardize my very life.

***

On a cold September afternoon, I was in Officer Yeong’s office, polishing his framed photographs of various higher-up officials from Pyongyang. Officer Yeong was an ambitious, not yet middle-aged politician, who looked toward a future in Pyongyang as a high-ranking government executive. I learned from Mee-Kyong that our respective employers were political rivals, both competing for the same position as Camp 22’s Chief Officer of Productivity, an obvious catalyst into a Pyongyang career. I knew nothing of Officer Yeong’s family life, though I guessed he was probably married. While Mee-Kyong’s Agent Pang was charming and flirtatious, my Officer Yeong rarely displayed any emotion whatsoever. If he did have a wife, I imagined she must be bored married to a man whose only passion was for the Party and his own career advancement. Due to the nature of my relationship with Officer Yeong, however, I tried to avoid thinking about his wife at all if I could help it.

During one lunch break, Officer Yeong brooded over a thick file. The autumn rain beat against the garment factory’s steel ceiling, partially drowning out the conversation between Mee-Kyong and Agent Pang in the next room. I polished Officer Yeong’s portrait of the Dear Leader, wondering if I might be fortunate enough to make it through the entire lunch break without having to interact with my employer. On the other side of the partition, I heard Mee-Kyong scream.

“You filthy w***e!” roared Agent Pang. I forced myself to wipe my rag across Kim Jong-Il’s portrait, as if my sole purpose in life was to rid the Dear Leader’s face from dust specks and fingerprints. “How long were you going to wait before telling me?” Agent Pang’s voice exploded from the other side of the partition. “The whole blasted nine months?”

“It’s not my fault!” Mee-Kyong cried out. I winced when I heard the sound of something crash.

“You lying dog!” Agent Pang snarled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Officer Yeong raise an eyebrow slightly as he studied his notes. “When did you stop taking your pills?” Mee-Kyong was crying. “When did you stop?” Until then, I didn’t know Mee-Kyong was taking contraceptives. Agent Pang must have been supplying them to her surreptitiously. I couldn’t hear Mee-Kyong’s answer, only her sobs.

“You disgusting prisoner! How long have you known?”

“Two months,” Mee-Kyong lied. Another thud was followed by Mee-Kyong’s groan.

“You refuse to take care of things with pills?” Agent Pang questioned. “That’s fine with me. There are other ways to prevent problems like this.” His voice now sounded disturbingly calm. Mee-Kyong’s grunts came at regular intervals. With trembling hands, I dusted the ornate frame that held yet another copy of the Dear Leader’s adipose profile, but I froze immediately when Mee-Kyong mentioned me by name.

“It’s prisoner Song Chung-Cha’s fault.” I was so startled by Mee-Kyong’s words that it didn’t occur to me just how scared I should be. “She’s scheming with Officer Yeong. They’re plotting together to make sure that he becomes the next Chief Officer of Productivity.”

I didn’t dare look at my employer, but I felt his body tense as he heard the lies meant to incriminate us both. I knew Mee-Kyong well enough to guess what she was doing. If she could turn Agent Pang’s anger on to someone else, it would only be a matter of minutes or hours before her lover soothed the wounds that he himself inflicted, all the while proclaiming his eternal love for her.

Agent Pang was silent for a moment, and then he declared, “You’re a lying whore.”

“I swear it,” Mee-Kyong insisted. “Chung-Cha found out about the pills. She was already pregnant by Officer Yeong, so she forced me to give them to her. She took them all so that she miscarried. I swear it’s the truth. She told me that if I said anything or did anything about it, she’d report you to the Camp Director for the pills you gave me. It’s all Chung-Cha’s fault. She wanted to find a way to help Officer Yeong advance while discrediting you.”

I felt Officer Yeong’s glare heating up the back of my neck. I forced myself to continue dusting.

Mee-Kyong succeeded in averting her lover’s wrath, but she still continued to spew out incriminations against me. “Prisoner Song Chung-Cha is a Christian pig.” It wasn’t until then that dread first hooked its talons into my spine. I had told Mee-Kyong that my father was arrested for Christian activity, but that’s the most she and I ever talked about matters of faith and religion.

“She sings hymns under her breath,” Mee-Kyong charged. It was a serious offense for a prisoner to hum even simple children’s songs. Singing hymns was a felony, comparable to spitting on the face of the Dear Leader himself. In Hasambong, Mother wouldn’t let Father teach me any religious songs for fear that I might whistle the tune in public and incriminate us all. I knew Mee-Kyong was lying to protect herself, but when the guards searched my record and discovered my parentage, the National Security Agency would have no reason to doubt Mee-Kyong’s words. “Chung-Cha quotes verses to the other prisoners from that Western book of lies. She even tells her dorm mates to convert and become Christian pigs like herself.”

Overcome with dizziness, I wanted to sit down but stood frozen in my place. I saw my employer reflected in the glass from one of his frames. Officer Yeong’s body was rigid, his jaw clenched. My reported sins, which were about as serious as a prisoner at Camp 22 could commit, would cast a poor reflection on him as well. I was certain Officer Yeong was thinking about the Chief Officer of Productivity position, and I hated him for having used me the past eight months only to now regret the way my alleged crimes would harm his reputation.

I heard heavy boots march out of Agent Pang’s room. I clenched my jaw and braced myself. Like a trapped animal I waited. The offenses my friend had just accused me of were weighty enough to land me back in the detainment center where another guard like my father’s tormentor Agent Lee would break me down until I confessed to these crimes and countless others. If I were ever released back into the main camp, my body would be so broken and decrepit from my punishment that I would never find a position as an office maid again.

As much as I despised the time I spent with Officer Yeong, I regretted that I would have no other way to earn extra rations if I survived the cruel torture that I knew awaited me.