CHAPTER 13
1419 Words
CHAPTER 13
She never knew what complete silence was until now. Her ears rang with it. Her mind waited for something — a shout, a yell, the horrifying pop of gunfire.
Nothing.
She reached up and touched her blindfold again, half expecting somebody to grab her wrist and stop her.
No one.
“Hello?” The sound of her own whisper sent goose bumps shivering up her spine. She thought of her high school psychology class, about how people could actually go crazy from sensory deprivation. Was that what this was?
She took off the blindfold with her free hand, but it was as dark as it had been. She couldn’t see her own fingers and wished she had it back on again. Somehow knowing for certain she was in utter darkness was ten times more frightening than being blindfolded and only suspecting it.
Think. She had to think. Calm her mind and look at her situation rationally. Like her dad would. She thought about the advice he gave the Secret Seminary students for handling solitary confinement. Develop a schedule. Keep a routine. Find some way to track the time. And pray.
Pray.
She thought about the refugees her parents had taken in back home. How many of them experienced darkness like this? What did they do? She thought of Hannah, the only girl who completed the whole Secret Seminary program. When Kennedy flew out to Massachusetts for college, Hannah was only a week or two away from returning to North Korea. Where was she now? Kennedy pictured Hannah’s serene face. If Hannah were here, she would find a way to kneel in spite of the handcuff and spend the whole night in prayer — prayers for others probably, not even herself.
But Kennedy wasn’t like that. She could never be as spiritually mature as Hannah or the other Secret Seminary students. She had never been asked to sneak into a closed nation where the penalty for evangelism was torture and death. She had never risked her life to share a Bible verse with someone else. At the All American Girls’ High School, with all those preppy daughters of wealthy businessmen, Kennedy hadn’t really shared her faith at all. That wasn’t who she was. She liked watching action movies. She liked reading mysteries and shopping for clothes. She liked spending time with her friends. What was the crime in that? She still loved God, still believed in the Bible. She even had a vague notion of considering full- or part-time missions once she graduated from medical school in eight years. So why did it always feel like she wasn’t doing enough?
She shivered from the cold and hugged her free arm around herself for extra warmth. Couldn’t they have given her a blanket or something? Why had she been so stubborn and refused to tell them what she needed? She made a mental list of things to ask for when the men returned. Something hot to drink. A blanket. A pillow. She wondered how she was supposed to use the bathroom and thought again of how many others might have been chained all night to this very couch. Better ask for a sheet, too.
Her own materialism stared her accusingly in the face when she thought again about the members of her parents’ Secret Seminary. What would they have requested? A Bible, no doubt. Well, she’d be surprised to find one of those here. This didn’t seem like the kind of establishment the Gideons would keep stocked. This was definitely no hotel. If it was, she would order up room service, eat a big, fattening dinner, and lie down on a clean, puffy pillow ...
Why was she always so focused on her own needs, anyway? Why can’t you be more like Hannah? She could almost hear her mother’s accusing voice. Kennedy’s mom spent hours each day with the Secret Seminary students, training, teaching, praying. Kennedy would come home from school and her mother would look shocked, surprised so much time had passed, surprised her own daughter was home and already interrupting their meeting.
Kennedy still spent time with her mom in Yanji, but it wasn’t the same. It was always at night after her homework was done. Her mom would invite her to eat chocolate and watch old black and white movies in the bedroom. Kennedy wasn’t part of the Secret Seminary, so nobody expected her to spend an hour on her knees praying. Nobody expected her to copy Scripture every day or memorize huge chunks of the Bible. Even when the North Korean students fasted, her mom still got up and fixed Kennedy breakfast each morning and gave her enough money to buy her lunch at school.
Why can’t you be more like Hannah?
Kennedy gritted her teeth. She wasn’t Hannah, and frankly, she didn’t want to be. Why couldn’t she be herself? She loved God. She prayed during the day and almost never ate a meal without thanking him for it first. So what was she missing? Why did it feel like she was never going to meet anybody’s expectations?
When the first hot tear splashed onto Kennedy’s arm, she tried to sniff all those negative emotions away. Sometimes she hated the Secret Seminary students, their courage, their commitment. She resented all the time her mom spent fussing over them, resented all the pride her mom lavished on them. Her mom was more impressed with the students for copying a book of the Bible than she was with Kennedy for being named valedictorian of her high school class. Her mom threw a lavish feast whenever a new refugee was baptized, and the whole household spent the day as if it were Christmas. What about when Kennedy got accepted into Harvard’s early-admission medical school program fresh out of high school? She didn’t get a feast or a new Bible or an impromptu worship service to thank God for her achievements. Instead, she got a few extra hugs, a whole backpack full of mystery novels for her summer reading, and a two-hundred-dollar gift certificate to her favorite online clothes store.
Even her dad babied her when he made her sit through the crisis training part of the Secret Seminary. The North Koreans would likely face interrogation at some point after returning home. He spoke about it as if it were a fact, and he gave them the practice and encouragement they’d need to endure. But even though he made Kennedy suffer through the exact same lectures and participate in the same role playing as the others, he didn’t really think she could make it. That’s why he made her watch those extra hours of self-defense videos before she left for college. With the Secret Seminary students, it was all about turn the other cheek and love your enemies. With Kennedy, it was kick him in the groin and make a scene ’til someone comes to rescue you.
Why? Because she wasn’t cut from the same mold as the rest of them. She wasn’t ever going to risk her life for Jesus. She wasn’t ever going to be anything more than a Sunday-morning pew warmer. Her parents smothered her with gifts, let her go to dances and parties that no pastor’s kid in the States would be allowed to attend, and only expected her to go to “church” in the den one morning a week. Maybe she was ready for more. Maybe her soul had been crying out for more, but her parents were too busy with their precious, anointed missionaries-in-training to notice.
And where was God? Where was he when she listened to her housemates in Yanji praying and asked him to make her as bold as they were? Where was he when she sat bored in church and begged God to fill her with the passion she saw in the refugees? When she was packing her things to move to Harvard, she prayed for Christian friends to meet her there. And God answered with Willow, the least likely student on campus to ever accept Christ, and Reuben, who claimed to be a Christian but refused to set foot in church.
Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, a howl threatened to rise. She kept it trapped in there for as long as she could. She clenched her jaw and tried to swallow it back down, but still it welled up from deep within her core, gathering strength and volume as it rose. It echoed against the walls, stinging her ears, chilling her marrow. She had never heard anything like it, not even in the movies. Almost animalistic, utterly hopeless, the sound of a spirit condemned to death.
By the time her tears ran dry, her ears still rang with its hollow echoes.
- Writer
