Krys Lee - How I Became a North Korean

But all I saw were the constellations of goose bumps across Yongju’s exposed neck.

The half-moon highlighted the fine hairs standing up on his neck and the triangle of his back hunched through the padded coat. He had been feverish since the night before, his upper lip beaded with sweat, and I had to resist reaching out and touching that vulnerable arch of his back.

“Careful.” He tilted his head my way, though I was taking every precaution and gripping the cold stair rail with both hands.

“Stay still, hyeong .” I wrapped my striped scarf around his neck as he had once done for me, then tugged my ski hat over his head. Only this much. I was still innocent. “We lose nearly ten percent of our heat from our head.”

From behind me, Cheolmin muttered, “Ten percent, my ass.”

It was no secret that only Cheolmin had his reservations about me. You had to push back with people like that, I’d learned, so I said, “We can test it out on you, if you like.”

Missionary Kwon said in a warning voice, “Boys, keep your voices down.” He opened the trunk of the car parked in the yard.

He could have bellowed out if he wanted to; no one was around to hear us for at least a mile. There was a charisma about his quiet confidence, which was the way I imagined Jesus addressing his fishers of men, and I found my voice dropping to the decibel of moving grass. He awed me, from his old-fashioned three-piece suit to his hair parted in the middle that made him look like an itinerant nineteenth-century Methodist pastor.

We knew the weekly routine by now. Without further instruction we carried the boxes of food and sacks of ice up to our supply room and half the plastic containers of water to the first floor. The others moved slowly, gazing at the moon, the clouds and trees, the outlines of hills, as if they’d forgotten what the world looked like. Yongju and I, who Missionary Kwon had decided were the most detail-oriented of the group, carried the burners and the largest steel pots downstairs to the first floor. We heated up our precious water supply for the bath, using equally precious gas canisters.

I insisted, as I had the time before, on being the last to wash. I knew they appreciated it. Naturally the water wasn’t changed, so by the time my turn came the bath was a muddy soup that was at best lukewarm. I, a self-declared clean freak, skimmed off the film of dead skin and dirt floating on the surface, then immersed myself in the swampy water, curled up knees to nipples. I found myself thinking of my mom and how she scrubbed my back when I was a kid, still only a mom to me then and not a woman. My stomach cramped up as I thought about my parents, though I’d called my dad to tell him about my general plans before following Missionary Kwon. I should have returned home, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.

How could I when Yongju squatted beside the tub and began wordlessly scrubbing my back with a sandpapery ttaeh sugeon, stripping off layers of dead skin?

• • •

That morning when we sat for sunrise prayer with Missionary Lee, I was at my customary spot on the floor beside Yongju. We had become an inseparable pair at the two lacquered saang that were our only tables, like Batman and Robin. The Monkey King and Monk Xuanzang. I played the sidekick perfectly, and no one suspected anything. I tried my mightiest to focus on the posters of Noah’s paired-up zebras and giraffes, Jesus feeding bread and fish to hundreds. Even the plastic dotjari that covered up our cement floors, usually used on picnics, was printed with an image of David and Goliath. I should have been at ease, surrounded by familiar stories and knowing I was the only one who would truly be safe if the police discovered us. Even Missionary Lee, who risked a long prison sentence if he was caught harboring North Koreans, grabbed the arm nearest him and dug in with his fingernails whenever Missionary Kwon opened the front door. But all I felt was turbulence.

Immediately after prayer, Missionary Lee set his hands on the shelf of his belly, his eyes open so wide that the cholesterol deposits in his sclera bugged out. “Why didn’t Missionary Kwon wake me up? Why didn’t any of you tell me he was here? There are important things we have to discuss.”

His multiple chins tucked into his chest. The shaggy-haired sheepdog of a man who looked as old as Abraham was appallingly bad at hiding his hurt feelings. There was also something ancient and severely good about this retired schoolteacher from South Korea, the kind of man I imagined God would entrust with a tablet of commandments. He could have lived comfortably on his pension, cycling and fishing with his family and doing whatever else retired people do, but his faith had brought him to this hazardous work. I longed for a simple, if arduous, map of life like the one he followed.

“Apparently Missionary Kwon didn’t want to disturb your sleep.” I found myself checking for Yongju’s reaction. I added, “He knows how hard you’ve been working.”

Cheolmin drummed his chest with his fingers and snorted, but Yongju nodded, approving of behavior that might improve our standing. Missionary Kwon had promised to send them to true safety in a third country within a few months, as soon as funding became available.

The missionary flushed and thumped the saang’ s enameled cranes. “God is watching us, so you should keep your backs straight”—meaning a respectful ramrod—“your legs crossed and tucked”—under our numb thighs—“and your hands flat on the saang as we start our lesson.” He was full of empty threats.

We weren’t twenty minutes into the lesson when Cheolmin slumped onto the table and erupted into snores. I wasn’t surprised when the missionary said gently, “Let him sleep.” He patted Cheolmin’s buzzed hair, recently doused with lice-killing chemicals like all of ours. “He probably didn’t get any rest last night.”

“I don’t understand.” Namil flicked away a balled-up gray mass he had picked out of his navel. “Where’s this God? Where’s he live now?”

“Live?” Missionary Lee blinked rapidly, his window dressing of eyelashes almost white in the light.

I felt a little sorry for him.

He continued with the lesson without answering. His voice was as dry as a communion wafer, and his teaching style could turn Daniel and the lion into a run-in with a kitten; it wasn’t the most impressive of sailings. But I admired his unwavering sincerity.

Me, I was wavering. I made monkey faces whenever Yongju caught me looking at him, slipped on the dotjari and fell at his feet so that he would pull me up, and made shadow puppets with my hand in front of the candlelight before bed. I turned myself into a fool. Anything at all to stay close to him.

Other times, I dangled facts and names off a fishing pole and waited for him to take the bait. My one reliable strength was the computer chip of my head. He would ask me throughout the day, “What’s the Pentecost?” or “Who is this Steven Pinker?” and most recently, “What’s string theory? You don’t need to tell me where you learned these things — you don’t need to tell me anything about yourself you don’t want me to know, but I need to know the world we weren’t allowed to know… just in case.” He swallowed, the diamond of his Adam’s apple dancing.

At lunch the next day, I raced between the kitchen and the common room and, being twice as fast as the others, ended up doing over a quarter of the prep duties. “You’re a rocket!” Yongju said, which made me sprint even faster.

The two saang were heavy with vegetable dishes that we had seasoned the day before, a pot of steaming white rice, an equally large pot of dwenjang stew with soybeans and tofu bobbing at the top, and spicy pork that had been kept on ice. The boys couldn’t take their eyes off the fatty curls of pork. Their swallows made hard punctuation marks during the grace.