Hyejin Kim - Jia - A Novel of North Korea

“I spent the days lost, with nothing to do. All I had to do was feed my baby, but we had nothing. Sometimes, my sister-in-law brought corn and rice, but eventually she stopped, and I couldn’t blame her. She had three children of her own, and my brother didn’t return from China for several months. My baby and I barely managed to live by eating cake flavored with pine bark. It eased the hunger, but it brought horrible physical pain. We were constipated; my baby was crying from pain all day and night. I even put soapy water into her anus with a rubber hose. I heard that some of my village people who couldn’t go relieve themselves died because of it. I knew what the food did to us, but we ate it again and again. I couldn’t stand my baby’s screams. I decided to cross the river to save her.”

Mija paused for a moment. I could hear her breathing heavily, trying to hold back her tears.

“I didn’t know you were in the car until I got in,” she said quietly. “When I asked them to take me, they told me to be at the mouth of the cave in three hours. When I saw you, I was surprised. They just said, ‘She’s not as smart as you are. We are trying to help her.’ I didn’t care about you, I even thought it would be better for me—at least I would see one familiar face when I got wherever they were taking me.”

She turned away and sniveled quietly. I watched the ceiling in silence for a while and then slid into sleep.

Across the busy street, a hair salon was our destination. The hairdresser spoke Korean. She didn’t ask me what I wanted; she just looked at me this way and that and then poured some chemicals onto my hair. My scalp burned, but when I tried to touch my head, she warned me, “You need this for your untamed hair.”

While I suffered from whatever was in my hair, our warden teased me as though I was an animal in the zoo, and chatted gaily with his girlfriend on his cellular phone. He didn’t leave my side for several hours. Occasionally, he threw some magazines onto my knee, saying, “You can kill time with those.”

The magazines were colorful, showcasing many pretty women, but I couldn’t concentrate. I looked out through the front door of the salon; so many people in the busy street. As darkness fell, the neon signs became brighter. Among them, one written in red letters caught my attention: Pyongyang Restaurant. It was a glowing three-story building, all glass. Women dressed in hanbok and men in bow ties seemed to flicker inside. All I could think of was how I could escape from this torture.

Several hours later, my hair had turned reddish-brown.

I didn’t see the owner of the karaoke bar for days; it seemed she had completely forgotten about me. The women slept all day. At dawn, the smell of alcohol overpowered their cheap perfume; some women came back singing softly, while others came in frowning and swore themselves to sleep. Occasionally they would be riled up, and their loud laughter kept me up through the wee hours, until the men in the hall forced them to be quiet. When they woke up in the late afternoon, the women had returned to their reticent selves and quietly began preparations for another day at the karaoke bar.

When I first encountered the nightly routine, I was frightened by the drunken women. In the mornings they had hollow eyes and complained of headaches; at night their eyes were wild and out of focus. That will be you soon, someone seemed to whisper in my ear.

One evening, after most of the women had left for the evening, Mija and I cleaned up. We had opened the window completely to let some fresh air in when the owner came in and looked around the room.

Finding us, she commanded the eyebrowless woman, “Hey, help them make up.”

“Will they start working tonight?” the woman asked, checking her curls in the mirror.

“Right. Hurry. It’s time for the guests,” the owner snapped.

“You should have said so before. I’m busy right now. And I’m not here to take care of novices.”

“Stop whining. Since when are you busy? Nobody is interested in you, as usual.”

The eyebrowless woman glared into her mirror for a moment, trying to find a word to spit back. Instead, she spun around to me. “Come here,” she said without emotion.

Seeing the eyebrowless woman grab a cosmetic case, the boss departed. “Hurry,” she said on her way out. “Make her hair smoother, too. The first impression is the most important—for her and for me.”

The woman sneered, “That cross-eyed bitch is giving up on me. She’s getting worse.” She took a strong-smelling lotion out of the case and rubbed it on my face. “This means you’ll start a new life tonight.” She watched my eyes for a moment and took out another bottle of lotion. “Just smile at the guests and serve them nicely. It’s okay—after the first time, you’ll think it’s nothing.”

“I’ll think what’s nothing? Are we singing and dancing for them? Or just serving food? Do we have to drink a lot?” Considering what I had seen, the job couldn’t be that pleasant.

She didn’t stop applying the lotion to my face. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t understand this place and the people here. I didn’t risk my life for this,” I complained.

Instantly, she lifted my face and powdered it from my forehead to my chin. Shutting my eyes to protect them from the powder, I heard her husky voice say, “Grow up and open your eyes. I’m satisfied with this life now. If you stop thinking about life, everything becomes simpler. When you open your eyes, a day starts. When you close your eyes, your day is over. What you eat and what you can buy will be the most important things to you sooner or later.”

Having applied makeup to my face, the eyebrowless woman had me put on a shiny blue dress embroidered with silver, with holes that left my arms, my neck, chest, and thighs exposed. It felt like nothing more than a tiny towel, and my face grew hot. Once I was dressed, the owner took me to the first floor.

The lights in the hall were all on, and the building was alive. The owner stopped in front of a red door. “The better you serve the customers, the sooner you can get out of here and see your kid,” she said, with menace in her voice.

She opened the door, and I saw a wall dominated by a giant TV screen surrounded by several smaller screens. Ruddy faces turned toward me. The room was filled with cigarette smoke. The smell of alcohol was in the air, and the music and the spinning lights were mesmerizing.

The owner pushed me into the room. “She’s new.”

I lowered my head instinctively, and a stout man rose to his feet and approached us. He rubbed the owner’s back. “That’s why I like you. How did you know we brought a really important guest tonight?” He leered at the owner, then at me.

“I read you better than your wife, right?” the owner said with a laugh. Patting the stout man’s stomach, she said, “It’s her first time here. She may not serve you so well, but look after her. Okay?” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, overflowing with smiles as she spoke into my ear, but never taking her eyes off the others. “Do your best to serve these guests. They are my top customers.” Her eyes glittered, but her mouth didn’t smile.

All eyes seemed to be on me. I didn’t raise my head or move a finger after the owner left. The gleaming lights were moving overhead as the stout man addressed his table, switching to Chinese from Korean. His voice was high and thin compared to his body.

Speaking into my ear, he said in Korean, “You’ll have a good time here. We’ll take such good care of you.”

He sat me down on a sofa. The short dress made me uncomfortable, and I tried to cover my bare thighs, folding my arms in my lap. I counted seven pairs of legs under the table. Men and women’s legs next to each other.