Krys Lee - How I Became a North Korean

I was relieved when Grace Lee came up to my table with a small group behind her. She had a sleek skein of hair and an expression as cheerful as a roll of Life Savers. I’d been in awe of her for all seven years of my life in America, and though she was perennially nice to everyone, including me, her sentences directed at me invariably began with “You’re so funny” and was said in a way that suggested “You’re so strange.”

I pulled together my splayed-out, gangly limbs and sat up straight, trying to appear as normal as I could.

She studied me. “That’s the first Noah’s ark T-shirt I’ve ever seen.”

“You can get them silk-screen-printed by mail order, if you sketch it first.” I spread the shirt out wide so she could see it better. “Isn’t it great? It’s got all my favorite animals on it.”

My elbow knocked into my tray, but a guy with lopsided biceps caught it before it fell.

“Hey, chill out there.” He gave me a friendly pat while frantically scanning the room.

What can only be called an awkward silence descended. I had a knack for creating them.

“Plenty of seats.” I patted the spot beside me.

“I promised Kate,” Grace said apologetically, and I saw her friend waving her over to the end table. “You want to join?”

I knew I wasn’t wanted, but I picked up my tray and joined them. That was me, a nutty brown-skinned, elephant-eared guy with God and a collection of finger puppets as companions. A guy more at ease with objects than people. As the others swapped stories and strained to be likable to one another, I spooned up some of the rubbery lasagna. I reminded myself that God was with me and that I was never alone, but I felt like Robinson Crusoe on a deserted island surrounded by bright, chirping parrots.

• • •

There were certain myths that I lived by. One of them was that I was fearless. I believed I wasn’t afraid of pain or being socially ostracized — that is, until we walked down to the lake the next day. To someone who can’t swim, Big Bear Lake might as well have been the Pacific Ocean.

I didn’t even like bathtubs, maybe because my father’s idea of teaching me to swim was to toss me into the local pool when I was five years old and watch me promptly sink to the bottom. I excelled at all the other survival skills I’d picked up from years of Boy Scouts, but despite a whale’s weight of effort I could only paddle for about two minutes before sputtering downward.

The ground on the way to the lake was as hard as an overbaked brownie and crackly with pine needles. I walked behind everyone else, wishing I was heading in the opposite direction, deep into the mountains, past deer tracks and dried-up creek beds, to retreat like Moses and become renewed. I craved the courage to walk away from my life, from Monday, when I would have to face Adam and his friends and find a new map to live by. At the very least, I wanted to return to China, where my life had made more sense to me. As we approached the water, I listened for the omnipresence of God in the dim roar of the motorboats and the water lapping at the lake’s shore. I almost heard it.

A blond kayaking instructor straight out of a Scandinavian magazine dumped a set of life jackets near my feet, as if he somehow knew that I needed one the most. The others, who had stepped straight out of a J.Crew catalog in their polo shirts and shorts, talked nonstop to one another without receiving strange looks or offending anyone. These people born with a social finesse I lacked started partnering up, grabbing paddles, and helping each other with their life jackets.

“Okay, kids!” said one of the older youth leaders with a tug to his ginger-colored mustache. He extended his large hands out to each side like race car flags. “Don’t be stupid out there — God’s always watching.”

There were already people rowing out into the lake’s endless silver gray, bobbing up and down with each slap of water, no bigger than twigs. The kids ahead of me waded in and pushed off in double kayaks until it was my turn. My hands felt as thick as winter gloves. Finally my single kayak’s plastic belly scraped against the sandy bottom and I floated away from the shore.

The other kayaks paddled ahead. I watched a blue heron dip low, thrust its needlepoint beak into the green water, and burst back up with a tiny fish. My fear magnified everything on the lake. A bird’s shadow was the size of a baseball field, the murmuring water around me resembled the voices of people. Entire civilizations seemed to be speaking, but not to me. There was a disturbed motion from deep down in the water, and I thought of the Loch Ness monster, of Grendel’s lair. I felt a desperate hope that the bright cerulean sky would split apart like a badly stitched bedspread as the Lord and his procession of trumpeting angels marched through, with Michael the archangel in the lead, making his stunning entry. They would clarify my life.

I was leaning over when a motorboat zipped by, the kayak’s bow jumped, and I was pitched out. Water plunged up my nose and into my mouth and lungs. I flapped my arms and clung to the straps of the life vest.

“Isn’t that Danny?” said some faraway voice. “What’s he doing this time?”

Air bubbles rose in front of my stinging eyes. The sun became a distant spot. My arms flailed for the paddle, but it was already floating away. I descended into the dark. All sound was sucked down deep into the lake, and I was seized with the certainty that someone was waiting for me. It became silent.

Only then I blinked, astonished to find myself conscious again. Fish were investigating my dream legs, my dream body that had landed in their watery garden. I bounced in slow motion across a bedrock littered with broken glass and cigarette butts. I vaulted across a path — if a moving mass of dead and living matter can be called a path. I wondered if this was the path to heaven, and I leaped buoyantly from a bed of waterweed that was kissing the bottoms of my feet.

My delusions grew. The algae gave way to a podium and a man behind it barely visible in the murkiness. Someone was waiting. The plants hushed, the fish arced away. The shadow closed in on me. Tiny pieces of coral scraped against the soles of my feet. I was fearful, ecstatic, and reached for the hand of salvation, but suddenly there was no shadow, no water, no peace. Only rough human hands came pumping down on my chest and a mouth over my mouth, in a long, unwelcome kiss.

In late February or early March, I walked across the frozen Tumen River toward a man from China, ready to give my unborn child a different life. Of course my crossing had actually started much earlier, maybe with the Great Hunger or even before I was born. The China beyond the river that day was as dried up and brown as my country. I walked with the eyes of men and women following me from both sides of the shore. I remember being hopeful though the riverbanks were still hoary with the remaining snow.

A border patrol who the man from China had bribed followed me across. There were broad, dark patches where the ice looked as thin as glass, but I was from a border town. I had smuggled goods in and out since I was fourteen and knew how to read the river. I looped around where the ice became dangerously clear until I was standing in the center of the frozen river and facing the man from China: a Joseon- jok, so he spoke our language. He had an eager smile and a small head — he was small everywhere, it seemed — and he limped slowly forward as if needing my permission to come closer. With every step his left leg swung out rigidly in a semicircle until we faced each other. He was nervous; his right foot kept making circles on the ice behind him like a ballerina.