Stars Between the Sun and Moon (13 page)

To my shock, the pants were as short as my underpants. I let out a small scream. I'd never shown so much of my legs in public before. Even as a young schoolgirl, the shortest my skirt had ever come was to my knees.

“There must be some mistake,” I mumbled. “Where is the rest of the outfit?”

“There is no more,” the young woman said laughing. “This is what women wear in China. Tomorrow he will come. You will wear this outfit when you meet him.”

I gasped, wondering how could the homeowner have arranged my marriage so quickly. And how could I let my new husband see me wearing these pants? He would think I was a loose woman. I began to panic.

“Gwangwon is the middleman,” the woman explained, seeing my distress. “He is the one who will take you to Beijing. We are selling you to him, and he will then sell you to your husband.”

Chapter Nineteen

Gwangwon was a
slim man, tall in stature with jittery movements. He was dressed in a yellow shirt and form-fitting white pants that accentuated his thin legs. He licked his lips as he inspected me, then paid the owner of the house some Chinese
yuan
. I wanted to ask them how much. How much was I worth? But I dared not speak as I stood shivering in my skimpy outfit.

We set off that morning in Gwangwon's compact car. The stone houses of Adong were soon swallowed up by the tall pine trees and sloping hills of China's forests. Sitting in the passenger seat, I hugged my knees, self-conscious about Gwangwon seeing my bare legs. With every turn in the road, my body slid toward him.

We said nothing to each other. Gwangwon grunted as he passed me some tofu to eat, and then, later in the day, some rice and chicken. We drove for hours in the lonely countryside dotted with rice fields. I finally fell asleep, waking only when Gwangwon tapped my shoulder and announced: “We're near Beijing.” The roads were full of cars. I gasped at them. I had never seen so many automobiles. In Chosun, no one drove anymore. There wasn't any gas.

“Are we near Hadong Orchard?” I asked.

“How do you know of such a place?” he replied, scrunching up his forehead.

“I have family there,” I replied, hanging on to my dream of finding my father's family.

“I bet you don't know their names?” he asked sourly. When I didn't reply, he laughed. “Foolish girl, I've met lots like you searching for relatives you don't know. If you have family in Hadong Orchard you will never find them.”

My heart was sinking and my eyes grew cloudy with tears as I looked out the window. The sky over Beijing was dark by the time we arrived, but the streets were bright. Red, green, blue and yellow lights hung overhead from large buildings that stretched toward the moon. I tried to stay calm, to show Gwangwon that I was not afraid. People on bikes with engines attached zoomed in and out of the traffic. A few times, a rider with a long-haired woman holding onto him swerved so close to the car I covered my eyes, thinking we would collide. But we didn't.

There were so many brightly dressed people walking and talking in the streets that it reminded me of the days when azaleas would bloom in Hoeryong. Some of the women here wore skirts just as short as my pants, their legs thrust toward the men who circled them. I felt uncomfortable due to their lack of modesty, but also relaxed, since they were dressed like me. Gwangwon opened his window as we drove slowly by.

Eventually he turned down a quiet street full of weeping willow trees and parked outside a cement house. The house was his, he told me as we walked up to the front door.

His wife, also Korean, opened the door before we knocked, bowing and gesturing for me to come in. She wore a tight pale-pink silk dress with red flowers on it.

The house was low and narrow. I could nearly touch the ceilings. I was led into a room and told to sit. Gwangwon's wife brought me a bowl of noodles with pork. The meat was salty and stung my dry lips.

A straw mat and a thin white cotton shirt and pants were already laid out on the floor. I would sleep here, Gwangwon informed me. “We have three men and their families coming tomorrow to look at you,” he said. “When you wake in the morning, change back into the outfit you are wearing.”

He stepped toward me, alcohol on his breath. He must have been drinking in one of the other rooms while I ate my meal. “Before you leave this house, you will be sleeping with me,” he whispered in my ear, his hand moving up to touch my breast. I grimaced and pushed him away. But I knew he might be right. I had no power. He left the room, and I choked back tears as I changed into the loose cotton garments.

I spent a
sleepless night, and in the morning Gwangwon's wife directed me to the washing room out back. After I had dressed in the short green pants and matching top, she brushed my hair and applied cream and powder to my face. The make-up was a pink colour that matched my skin tone, not white like we wore in Chosun. She used a black pencil around my eyes. “Much better,” she said, stepping back to take a look at my dolled-up face. The final touch was pink lipstick, which she applied after first outlining my lips in red pencil.

She held up a mirror to my face when she was done. What I saw startled me. I didn't recognize myself. I had become one of the women I'd seen on the Beijing streets.

The first man to whom I was introduced was old, the age my grandfather would have been if he was still alive. The man arrived with an even older sister, who wore a long flowery gown and a feather in her hair. She sat across from me at a red lacquer table while the old man moved in beside me. One of his legs was so stiff he could not bend it. He stuck it out underneath the table, like a log stretching across the river.

The man started speaking to me in Mandarin. His voice was deep, reminding me of gurgling water. Gwangwon and his wife took turns translating. They told me the man was seventy, with grown children and grandchildren. He owned a factory. He was rich. He would care for me. Soon the old man began a conversation with Gwangwon, who kept shaking his head. The old man eventually pulled himself up using his cane and left with a huff.

I sat quietly waiting for my next suitor. I could hear the wind rattling the shutters and the sound of laughing children outside. Freedom, I thought longingly. Freedom to go home. But then I reminded myself that only starvation waited for me there.

The next man was younger. He was handsome, with a solid build and big round eyes. He smelled of fall leaves and rain. When he turned to me, bowed his head and said something in Mandarin, I nodded, wanting to please him. He seemed kind, sitting with his hands folded peacefully on his knees. This man also owned a factory. He too was rich. But before Gwangwon could finish translating, the man interrupted. He turned to me again and began to speak in Mandarin. This time, his voice sounded like claps of thunder, startling me.

“He will not take you,” Gwangwon translated as the man stood up and left. “You don't even know how to say mother or father in Mandarin. He wants someone he can talk to.”

Four days passed like this, man after man. I must have seen ten future husbands, all of whom owned factories. Most showed up for our meeting with a female relative: a sister, an aunt, even a mother. But none of them wanted to marry me. Every night, Gwangwon would come to my room begging me to take him into my bed. Every night I sent him away cursing. But I knew if I was not sold soon, the night would come when I would no longer be able to hold him off.

On day five, Gwangwon told me there was only one man left. His name was Wangxiung. Wangxiung sat down close beside me. He slipped his hand underneath the table and started rubbing my bare legs. I tried to pull away, but Gwangwon's wife sat on the other side of me, the weight of her body forcing me to stay in place.

Very little was translated for me this time, other than that this man owned an explosives factory that made fireworks for festivals. “He's very rich,” said Gwangwon. He winked. “Very rich.”

This time, the bickering back and forth in Mandarin over my price was quick. Wangxiung seemed to agree to Gwangwon's terms. As tea was served, Wangxiung's hand moved farther up my thigh, and he was soon stroking the skin underneath my shorts. I flinched. Frightened, I started to plead with Gwangwon not to go through with the deal. His wife took my hands and folded them on my lap. “Go to this man's house and then run away. That is all you can do,” she said to me in Korean, smiling so that my new husband didn't get suspicious. “My husband paid a lot for you. We need the money back from the sale.”

I turned and looked coyly at Wangxiung, as Gwangwon's wife had instructed me to do. Then I leaned over the table and whispered to Gwangwon, “If you touch me tonight, I will not go tomorrow.” His face twitched, and I waited for an explosion. Instead, he agreed. I discovered that day I did have power. Not a lot, but enough to keep me alive.

The next day,
Wangxiung returned to the house with a minivan and driver. I was dressed in a floor-length, white silk dress with tiny flowers on it that Gwangwon's wife had laid out for me that morning. I watched as Wangxiung counted out the money, large bills he unfolded from a small leather wallet and passed to Gwangwon.

It took a full day of travel to get to his home. We stopped only once, for a few hours, so the driver could sleep. Wangxiung sat close to me and fondled me as if I was my niece's doll. I let him touch me, vowing to myself that I would run away after stealing this man's money. Until I could plot my escape, I would be quiet and subservient. Eventually, he fell asleep and I could relax a little.

When we arrived at Wangxiung's village, a collection of brick buildings in a rural setting, my heart sank. People had lined up to meet me. I was on display. As the van stopped, Wangxiung guided me out of the vehicle. People stared at me, some laughing, some curious. No one bowed or greeted me.

Wangxiung's house was small. A long, dark corridor connected a series of rooms. Another woman my age was there. She was Chinese, so I couldn't understand what she said, but we began to communicate right away with our hands, drawing pictures in the air and accentuating them with our facial expressions.

The woman pointed to another man who looked just like Wangxiung, only thinner. A twin brother, I thought. She was his wife, she indicated by crossing her fingers and putting them to her lips. Then she made a sad face. She pointed to her stomach and put her hair up as if in pigtails. A child, I thought. She has a daughter she has left behind.

That night, Wangxiung made me strip naked in front of him. He took my dress and the small bag containing my green outfit and put them away in a cupboard secured with a padlock. I was trapped. A caged animal, I thought to myself.

I pushed all emotion out of my mind so that I was numb. Wangxiung pulled me into his arms so tightly I could barely breathe. His hands touched every place on my body. His foul scent repulsed me. But he didn't try to penetrate me. I realized he couldn't.

Each morning after that, I woke to a house that smelled of chopped onions, peppers and fresh flowers. Wangxiung would choose the dress he wanted me to wear, either a red silk Chinese outfit or one that was navy blue with white flowers painted on the fabric. Both reeked of another woman's perspiration. Wangxiung's brother and wife lived with us, along with the brothers' mother and father. I developed a mantra. “If I do not find a way to escape today, then tomorrow.”

Wangxiung didn't own a factory after all. His brother made firecrackers, as Gwangwon had translated, but in their kitchen, with the chemicals stored on the shelves beside the noodles, herbs and spices that were kept in small glass jars. Wangxiung spent his days following me around the house, his arm slung over my shoulder. I couldn't even go to the bathroom without his sister-in-law or mother accompanying me. They would wait outside the outhouse, which was nothing but four slabs of wood over a hole in the ground. Half of the hole was inside the house, the other half outside, so that the pigs on the other side of the wooden planks could eat our feces. The stench was so overwhelming I covered my face with my hands. In Chosun, we would have reported such vulgarity to the Party. But here in this rural village, where the call of a rooster woke me in the morning and the howl of dogs put me to sleep, that was life.

One day after Wangxiung had left the room, his brother's wife, whose name I had learned was Zhiying Huang, pointed to her temple and rolled her eyes. She stuck out her tongue. “The village idiot,” I thought. “That is my husband. No wonder everyone came to see me arrive. They wanted to see who would marry such a person!”

Zhiying nodded when she saw that I understood.

Whenever I managed to be alone in the room I shared with Wangxiung, I wept. I was suffocating in this prison. I felt so far away from my goal of finding my family's relatives and then reclaiming Sungmin. One morning when my eyes were puffy from crying and my arms and legs were trembling, Zhiying thought I was sick and served me tea with herbs.

I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a fountain pen and a piece of the rice paper Wangxiung's brother used for his firecrackers. “I can't live in this house anymore,” I wrote in Korean. “Please talk to the people of this house. Please help me get back to where I came from.”

Zhiying gave my letter to Wangxiung and his brother. They couldn't read it. But they seemed concerned. They took my note and left the house.

Zhiying followed me to the washhouse out back. After she had closed the door, light streaming in through small holes in the wall, she pulled some more rice paper and the fountain pen from the waist of her skirt. For the next hour, we drew stick people to learn each other's stories. It seemed she had been married before and had two children: a girl with pigtails and a boy. I pointed to my chest. “Me too,” I said. Next she wrote down some numbers and pointed to me. Three thousand yuan, I eventually figured out. I had been sold to Wangxiung for 3,000 Chinese yuan—350 Canadian dollars. My mouth went dry. That was how much the pig was worth that Myungin had stolen.