The Beloved Daughter (17 page)

So-Young smoothed out her jet-black hair. “I don’t ask him anymore. He just tells me that he doesn’t want to talk about her. Sometimes I wonder if she died giving birth to me. But why wouldn’t Father say so?” An uncharacteristic whine crept into So-Young’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I wasn’t trying to …”

 “I know.” So-Young smiled at me. “With so much work going on at the safe house, I don’t really have time to miss a woman I can’t remember.”

I have to admit, beloved daughter, that as So-Young and I talked, I never thought about becoming a mother myself, about loving a child so dearly, about adoring someone who might never even remember my face …

I knew So-Young was trying to be cheerful, but I still regretted bringing up such a sensitive subject. “And what about your mother?” So-Young asked me.

“I remember her,” I admitted. “I know she loved me, but I have very few fond memories left of her.”

“She is still in prison camp, then?” The baby in So-Young’s arms began to fuss.

I shook my head. “She died just a few weeks after we arrived there.”

“I am sorry to hear that.” So-Young bounced the upset little girl in her arms.

“What will you do with the twins?” I was relieved to change the subject. For a moment, I hoped that So-Young would say we would keep the babies. In all my life, I had never smelled anything so fresh and pure and innocent as the little girl I now cradled in my arms.

“We have a contact in South Korea.” So-Young rubbed the baby’s back. “My father has already notified her. She has an orphanage in Seoul devoted to little ones like these.”

“So this woman will come and pick the girls up?”

“No, not at all.” So-Young understood much better than I that, although these children were born on Chinese soil, they would never be granted the rights of Chinese citizens or the legal ability to move around from country to country. “There is an entire network established to get the babies to South Korea.”

It was only two days later when an old woman arrived at the safe house. She was the first of many links, I gathered, to transport the twins safely to the orphanage in Seoul. I was in my room, and as I had been instructed I did not come out. Still, I couldn’t keep from overhearing the conversation as the baby girls were placed in the woman’s care on the other side of my bedroom door.

“I wish you safety and speed on your journey,” Mr. Kim told the stranger. “May you have ample strength for the road ahead of you.” I never heard Mr. Kim speak so kindly to anyone in the safe house before, and for a moment I wondered if the voice I heard truly belonged to my benefactor.

“The Lord Almighty will tend to my old arthritic bones,” declared the lady. “I’ve made this journey many times.”

“I have not forgotten, Sister,” responded Mr. Kim.

“It is Mrs. Cho that needs your prayers more than I.” The woman wouldn’t know that I was listening behind my closed door, a stranger who shouldn’t have even heard the identity of this South Korean worker. “Caring for almost two dozen children and she nearly eighty. It is too much work for one woman alone.”

“The Lord gives our sister in Seoul remarkable strength,” Mr. Kim observed.

“That he does,” admitted the courier, “but what Mrs. Cho really needs is a strong girl
to help her care for so many babies.”

A few mornings later So-Young shook me awake at dawn.

“Wake up, Sister!” she exclaimed.

“What is it?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t sound as cross as I felt at having been aroused from my sleep.

“Father asked me to talk to you.” So-Young didn’t pause for breath. “Remember the woman I told you about? The one who runs an orphanage in South Korea? She needs help. She needs someone to help look after her babies. Father says he thinks you should consider it.” So-Young prattled on while I tried to open my eyes.

“She can provide you with room and board. Imagine it! You’d be in Seoul. You’d be safe there, and no one could ever send you back to North Korea again. Can you believe it? Mrs. Cho has already offered to provide for your passage. It’s a long journey, of course, but you know, God protected you from so many things in your past. Why wouldn’t he just keep on watching over you now?”

And so it was decided that in a fortnight I would travel to the interior of China with Mrs. Cho’s many anonymous escorts. I would make the journey by car, train, and foot all the way to Vietnam and then take a boat to South Korea. The trek sounded arduous, but I was assured that Mrs. Cho aided so many refugees along that path before that I had very little to worry about. Boredom and exhaustion would probably be the biggest threats to my well-being.

The hardest part about leaving Sanhe would be saying good-bye to So-Young. More than once Mr. Kim came in to my room late at night to send So-Young off to bed. I loved hearing So-Young’s stories about the people she knew in Sanhe. Her life seemed to be so simple, so normal.

“What do you do when you go to the market?” I asked. There were no markets in Hasambong when I was a child. I listened with interest to So-Young’s accounts of bargaining and bartering.

“What happens when you go to your house church?” So-Young and I sat side by side on my bed, swinging our feet over the edge. It took So-Young at least an hour to answer all my questions about Christians in China. Even my father, as far as I knew, had never attended a real church service, although there were many things about my father that I was still learning.

I sometimes worried that my incessant questions were burdensome, but So-Young assured me she was grateful for someone to talk to. “My father doesn’t like to ‘squander words,’ as he puts it.”

“I believe that,” I whispered back.

“It’s nice having another younger person to talk to.”

“Kwan’s young.” I studied my friend to gauge her reaction. So-Young giggled but said nothing.

“The house will seem so empty once you leave for Seoul,” So-Young confessed after she stopped blushing.

“At least your father won’t yell at you for staying up late anymore.” So-Young giggled again. It was a sweet, musical sound, and for a moment I pretended that I was like So-Young: a normal girl living in a normal city, a girl whose body wasn’t scarred from years of torture and mistreatment, a girl who hadn’t spent years of her life without the sound of laughter. I wondered if I would laugh once I was safe in South Korea.

And now, just two days before my voyage, Kwan was sitting on my bed cracking his knuckles, opening his mouth every few moments and then closing it again.

“So-Young will miss you.” Kwan squinted his eyes behind his thick glasses.

“I’ll miss her too.”

Another minute of strained silence passed, then So-Young came into the safe house carrying a small basket full of eggs. “Good-evening!” she sang out, and then stopped when she saw Kwan on my bed. She stared at him in surprise. Kwan cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, and left my room without taking his eyes off of the floor. So-Young watched him retreat then glanced at me. Somehow I felt I owed So-Young an explanation, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

So-Young swallowed. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m going over to Pastor Tong’s house to help him care for his mother. It might be a while.” Before I could think of an appropriate response, So-Young left the safe house once again.

I sat on my bed with my father’s Bible on my lap, fearful that So-Young was hurt, wondering if Kwan would return, thinking about the long journey ahead of me. When half an hour passed and Kwan didn’t come back, I finally stretched out under my blankets. Nightfall was still several hours away, but it wasn’t long before I fell asleep.

The Call

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob … I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6

“Don’t touch me!”

The frantic words woke me up with a start. My door was closed, and I wasn’t allowed to peek into the common living area to see what was happening.

“Get your hands off me!” a woman shrieked. “Don’t come any closer!”

I heard something fall to the ground. “Where is So-Young?” Mr. Kim demanded.

“With Pastor’s mother,” answered Kwan. I sat up in bed.

“I don’t need your help!” shouted the woman.

“We can give you a safe place to stay.”

“Get away from me!” she screamed again. I recognized the terror in her voice and remembered my own panic when I escaped Camp 22 with Shin.

“She won’t listen to us.”

“Do you want me to bring So-Young?” Kwan asked.

“You’ll have to. Tell her we need her here.”

“I am going to find someone who can help you,” Kwan said. I heard intermittent cries, but the woman didn’t appear to be struggling as vigorously as at first.

It was times like these when I hated the rules of the safe house. Who was Mr. Kim to determine when I could or couldn’t help someone in need? If a woman suffered so much at the hands of her male captors, how did Mr. Kim and Kwan expect her to trust any man at all? I was glad when Kwan left to get So-Young, and I hoped So-Young’s feminine grace would help reassure the battered woman.

Several minutes passed in silence. I opened my father’s Bible, and I was startled by the sound of broken glass. “Stay away from me!” I heard a loud thud followed by Mr. Kim’s grunt. I couldn’t stand sitting idly anymore behind my closed doors, so I hurried into the main part of the house. Mr. Kim was lying on the floor, his head bleeding. A haggard woman in prison clothes crouched in the corner with a cracked bowl in her hand.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Kim barked when he saw me. The woman hugged herself, shivering and grunting like a trapped animal. I turned my back to Mr. Kim and addressed her.

“I am Song Chung-Cha.” I figured that this prisoner’s deep scars were more significant than Mr. Kim’s displeasure.

The woman rocked back and forth. My words didn’t calm her in any way. “I came here a few weeks ago,” I explained. “I was a prisoner too.” The woman let out a tiny sigh but still didn’t say anything.

“These people have been good to me. No one here would ever hurt you.” The woman winced. I wondered what else I could say to help her.

“You must be hungry.” The woman nodded. Mr. Kim picked up a bowl of stew that was already on the table, but when the woman saw him approaching with it, she wrapped her arms around her chest and mumbled softly to herself.

I understood the woman’s misery all too well. I took the bowl from Mr. Kim. “You should eat this now.” With my own hand, I brought a spoonful of broth to the woman’s cracked lips. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore. You’re safe here with us.”

The woman reached out for the bowl with trembling hands. “You’re safe,” I whispered to her again.

When I turned around, Kwan and So-Young were standing in the doorway. With a nod of understanding between themselves, Kwan and Mr. Kim left the common room. So-Young came to my side and helped me care for our new guest.

That evening I gave up my own chamber and joined So-Young in her room, which was really just a corner of the common area separated by a bamboo partition. Mr. Kim was far from happy about the arrangement. “It’s the best we can do for now,” he grumbled to So-Young, “but I don’t want you staying up late. You still have to wake up early to tend the chickens.”

“Yes, Father.” So-Young stretched out on her small mattress next to me and sighed with satisfaction. “Now you know why I love my work here,” she remarked once Mr. Kim left. For the first time, I understood the contentment and peace that radiated from So-Young. In all my life, I’m not sure I ever knew greater fulfillment. My joy was matched only by my exhaustion.

“It was a wonderful feeling.” I thought about the woman we just helped. “But don’t you ever get tired?” It seemed like for the past three weeks I did very little but sleep and read my father’s Bible while So-Young was up before dawn. In addition to managing the safe house and weaving baskets to sell, So-Young often went into town on errands of mercy.

“I do grow weary sometimes,” So-Young admitted, “but I know that God has called me to this work, and so I trust him to give me the strength I need each day.”

I grew pensive at So-Young’s comment. Although I feared my question would sound foolish, I ventured, “How do you know that you are called here?”

“At the safe house?” So-Young asked. “Where else would I go? Besides, there’s nothing in the world I would rather be doing than serving here.”

“Honestly?” I turned over to look at So-Young better. “Nothing at all?”

“Well, I hope one day to marry and have a family of my own.” So-Young stifled a giggle. “But that’s still several years away.” I relished So-Young’s youthful naiveté, yet envied her spiritual maturity.

“Have you been thinking about Mrs. Cho’s orphanage?” So-Young asked perceptively.

I nodded.

“Do you feel like God might be calling you somewhere else to minister?”

“I don’t know. I’ve read so much in my father’s Bible about God’s love for children, that true religion is to take care of orphans. It even says that God Himself is the Father of the fatherless. But I’m not sure I would be able to do that sort of work. I barely had a childhood of my own, and I’ve never cared for kids before in my life. What could I possibly do to help them?”