A Thousand Miles to Freedom (12 page)

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During the winter of 2002, six months after she left for the city, Keumsun asked me whether I wanted to come join her. She had found a job for me in a bakery in Won Chin, a city next to where she lived. I was sixteen, and I was nervous about leaving my mom for the first time, but I had to learn how to take care of myself. And so I accepted her offer.

There, I learned about the harsh reality of working in a business. I slept no more than five hours a night, in a little dorm situated on the fourth floor above the bakery. I helped bake the cakes very early in the morning. The bakery opened at eight a.m. each morning, but my workday began at five every morning with the others. My primary task was to break open the eggs and separate the yolks from the whites, and to supervise the baking. After the bakery closed, we had to clean the shop until late into the night. I didn't get to see sunlight in that workshop, and I was exhausted from the sleep deprivation. Several times, I fell asleep on the job, forgetting the cakes in the oven and causing them to burn. I began setting an alarm to ensure that I would wake up before the cakes were done baking, thereby avoiding catastrophe.

This lifestyle was even harder on me because I was so far from my mom, but I held on. And at least I got to eat a lot of cakes. I quickly gained a lot of weight and actually became quite chubby. I weighed in at around 115 pounds—a record for me. Especially when you consider that more than once, I had nearly died of hunger. But I wasn't happy. Koreans think that you have to be thin if you want to be pretty. I didn't feel pretty anymore; I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin.

At the bakery, no one knew that I was a North Korean living in China illegally, and owing to my ability to speak Chinese, I was able to hide my true identity. My boss might have suspected something, but he never said anything and had no problem paying me each month in cash. He never asked me for a residency permit. The first month, I made about three hundred yuan (about thirty-five dollars). My salary may have been modest, but at least I finally had a real job. I was so proud of myself. What's more, for each of the following months, I received a raise of fifty yuan each month. At the end of six months, I had a monthly salary of six hundred yuan (about seventy dollars). But my employer took fifty yuan each month from my salary as a deposit that he said he'd give back to me in a year, if I were still working there. He didn't want his employees to quit and work for one of his competitors after just a few months, after having been trained by him, which happens quite often in China.

During that time, my mom didn't leave the farm for fear of being arrested. She often slept on the roof or in the mountains from fear of a denunciation. Worse, her relationship with our “in-laws” deteriorated, and the disputes flared up again. Her “husband” always suspected that my mom would try to flee with my little brother, and so he watched her constantly. Whenever I came to visit the farm, he forbade us from sleeping in the same room as my little brother. But my mom hung on. She wanted to stay near her son, despite the fighting and her constant fear of getting arrested.

*   *   *

Throughout the course of several months, I began to feel more and more comfortable at the bakery. But at the start of summer 2003, a new turn of events derailed the life I was building. One day, I was told to go to the counter in the bakery. There was a phone call for me. My heart started pounding in worry.

“I couldn't take it anymore. I left the farm. I couldn't stand that life anymore,” my mother informed me, with a hint of guilt in her voice.

She had had to leave her son behind her. She couldn't handle the increasing number of police raids anymore. Each time, she had to crawl on all four limbs to the hills. She had to spend many nights alone on the roof, fighting off insects. She told me that her back was completely red, after having been bitten by so many bugs. And so one day she fled the farm without revealing her plan to anyone. She left on foot and then took a bus. She had since started working on another farm as a housemaid. She cooked and worked in the fields. She wasn't paid, but in exchange she was given housing by this new family, who treated her much better than her “husband” ever had.

I was very surprised by her call and could not help but let my thoughts drift to my little brother, still alone at the farm, under the cruel hands of his father. But at the same time, I felt sympathy for my mother, and I completely understood her decision.

*   *   *

A few days after this call, my boss came to find me in the shop.

“You have a visitor. Your stepfather is looking for you at the counter.”

I was petrified. Trying to remain calmer than I felt, I asked my boss to tell him that I wasn't here today. He agreed, without asking me any questions.

But three or four days later, the farmer came back again. He was undoubtedly trying to find my mother through any means he could. I managed to avoid him again, but I knew that he would not leave me alone and that he was ready to do whatever was necessary to get his hands on me. I knew that I was in danger. And so I left. I couldn't stay there. I had to change my location. Without giving him any details, I told my boss that I had to quit. I had worked less than a year at the bakery, so I wasn't able to get back the fifty monthly yuan that had been taken as a deposit during my training. But in any case, I didn't have a choice. Luckily, my boss still let me stay on the fourth floor while I looked for other options.

My decision was well-timed, too, because the farmer never stopped trying to get ahold of me. Near the end of September, I received a panicked call from Keumsun. She told me that she had been taken hostage by our “stepfather.” The day was September 21, my mom's birthday. Keumsun still worked as a waitress in Yongil, but without a phone number where we could reach her, we had not yet been able to update her on Mom's recent escape. And so Keumsun had wanted to surprise our mother by returning to the farm to celebrate her birthday. When she got there, the man immediately saw an opportunity for blackmail, or at least a way to find my mother, and so he held her there. She had to wait for night to fall before she could escape.

My sister was at a loss and didn't want to go back to her job at Yongil. Her objective was to get as far away as possible from this accursed farmer as quickly as possible, and to leave the countryside and this border region where the police swarmed in search of North Koreans.

“Let's go to Dalian. It's a large city, and we'll have more opportunities to find work and less risk of getting arrested,” Keumsun said.

I got into contact with my mom again, and we persuaded her to leave with us to head south, to Dalian. It's the largest metropolis in the region, and an entirely different environment waited for us there. I was hoping that this new environment would be a change for the better.

*   *   *

At the end of September, the three of us were finally reunited in Yongil, and we took the bus toward Dalian and its six million residents. We didn't know anyone there. When we arrived, we spent two nights in a shabby hotel near the bus station. And then we discovered a help center for the unemployed where we stayed, and we started looking for work right away.

For four months, I would take up little jobs: handing out flyers, cleaning, cooking. Keumsun found a job as a waitress in a Korean restaurant. Mom was hired by an old, bedridden couple. The old man was essentially unable to leave his bed, so she had to take care of him all the time, washing him and caring for his needs. But it was a stable, full-time job. All of this let us save up money. At the beginning of 2004, I had made three thousand yuan (about three hundred and fifty dollars). While we were working hard, we felt safer and more secure. We could, once again, start planning for our future.

Keumsun, as usual, had grand ideas in mind, including some very specific plans. She proposed that we go farther south, to Shanghai, the economic capital of the country. She was bored at the restaurant and thought that there were few opportunities for her in Dalian. She was ambitious and wanted to try her luck in that immense, rapidly developing metropolis. And when Keumsun has an idea, it's impossible to change her mind.

My mother was not quite ready to leave Dalian. But Keumsun had no qualms, and she decided to go alone. I wanted to stay near my mom. Moreover, I didn't feel ready to take that step yet. I gave eighty yuan to my sister to help finance her journey, and we let her go to Shanghai. Maybe we would join her later.

The real reason my mom didn't want to travel too much farther was because she wanted to see her son again. The Chinese New Year was coming up soon, and she dreamed of returning to the farm to make a surprise visit. We had accumulated a decent amount of money working in Dalian: more than three thousand yuan. It was a lot for us. It boosted our morale and gave us the idea that celebrating New Year's “as a family” might be possible. A crazy idea, perhaps, but I really wanted to see my little brother. Mom thought that with this money, we would be able to buy groceries and even patch together a little party at the farm. As for me, I just wanted to spend a few days spoiling my little brother.

This idea would soon show itself to be one of the worst mistakes we made during our journey. We acted from the heart rather than from the head.

*   *   *

Two days before the Chinese New Year, we traveled unannounced to the farm, surprising the farmer and his family. We explained that we had made some money and come back to celebrate New Year's with them. We were sincere: despite all the abuse and the drama we had suffered at their hands, the people on this farm were the closest thing to family we had in this country. And at any rate, there was now a baby that tied us all together forever.

But in the main room where everyone was reunited, my little brother was nowhere to be found.

The farmer was surprised to see us; he didn't know what to say. He seemed to waffle between relief and anger. He didn't turn us down, but right next to him, there was a man who was going to ruin everything. It was one of the farmer's younger brothers, a delinquent whom we had rarely seen at the farm. Because he was a thief, he often had run-ins with the police. And now he immediately saw an opportunity to exploit this situation. He told us that we would not see our baby unless we first handed over some of our money to him. It was blatant blackmail.

We were crushed. We had come here with good intentions, to spend some happy times together, to reconcile. But there was no way we would give in to this blackmail. The first night, we tried to stay calm, hoping that the atmosphere at the farm would improve after a few hours. We slept in the big room. The next morning, my mom tried to take the lead and asked her “husband” directly about the reasons behind the blackmail. His defense was weak at best. And just when it seemed like he was about to lower his guard, his younger brother appeared and showed himself to be unrelenting.

Hours went by, and my little brother was still nowhere to be seen. We became angrier and angrier. We felt betrayed.

And that's when the storm broke. There was yelling everywhere. Mom decided that enough was enough. We would be better off leaving immediately. We would have to miss our chance to see the child; they had left us no choice. Unhesitatingly, she stood up and pulled me toward the front door. It was already dark outside. We walked through the night along the esplanade, with no intention of returning. But suddenly, our “uncle” caught up to us and tried to block us from leaving. The farmer seized our backpacks and carried them back to his house. He wanted our money; it was all they cared about. We fought and fought and argued until we finally managed to escape again. The farmer didn't follow us. He was convinced that by snatching our backpacks, he had taken possession of our money. What he didn't know was that my mom had hidden the money behind her belt. There was no going back for us now.

We ran as fast as we could along the road that led toward the village. The ground was slippery because of all the snow and ice. It was the middle of January, bitterly cold out, and the ground was covered in a thick blanket of snow. But no matter, we did not have a minute to lose. As soon as the farmer and his brother realized our bags held no money, they would come chasing after us. We had to get off the road so that we could obscure our path. And so we ran across the fields, through the pitch-blackness of the night. Even though the snow was up to my knees, I continued at a dead run until I could no longer breathe. We had left in such a rush that I didn't even have the time to put on my shoes. I was still wearing my slippers. But there was not a moment to lose. We had to get as far away as possible from that godforsaken farm. We forced ourselves to move forward, right up until dawn.

This is how we celebrated Chinese New Year 2004. What a nightmare. At that time, I didn't yet know that I had set foot on the farm for the last time in my life.

In the early morning, after our mad dash through the white countryside, we finally found a bus stop next to the road. We headed toward the village where the bakery I used to work at was located. There, I bought some warm clothes and shoes. We found a run-down hotel, which cost five yuan (less than a dollar) per night, where we could rest a little.

It was the worst New Year's of my life.

 

13

I felt more depressed than ever before. In line with Chinese tradition, firecrackers flared all around us. The whole village was celebrating. We felt lonely and discouraged. It had been six and a half years since I stopped going to school. I had neither prospects for the future nor a house to live in. Worst of all, we had left my little brother behind, possibly forever. I missed him terribly and thought of him often. It was during those instants where I felt a pure hatred toward my “stepdad.” Sometimes he made me hate him so much that I just wanted to kill him with my own two hands.

*   *   *

The next day, we took the bus toward Dalian. Mom returned right away to the old couple she had worked for. They still needed her help, since the old man's condition was deteriorating. And so she got back to work immediately. But I had already had enough of this city. I wanted to get as far away as possible, I felt stifled there. Keumsun had left us a cell phone number. I called her from a phone booth.