In the Shadow of the Sun Read online

  Once inside, she slid the door closed, quietly, quietly, and leaned against it, panting. She’d done it. Now she just had to stand here until she could breathe again, and wait for Dad’s door to close.

  Mia reached over automatically to flip the wall switch. Everything was weirdly vintage in her room, like a set from one of those ’70s sitcom reruns Mom liked to watch. But instead of Brady Bunch innocent, it all looked kind of sinister. Especially in the middle of the night with Dad acting strange.

  She thought of the portraits in the lobby, her feeling of being watched. Could there be cameras behind the pictures? Perhaps there were cameras in the rooms too. The tour group pamphlet had mentioned it as a rumor. She sat heavily on the edge of the bed, trying to look as if it was just jet lag that had woken her to leave her room for a stroll. She kicked off her sneakers and collapsed back on the bedspread, pulling the chain holding her locket out from under her sweatshirt, rubbing the pendant between her thumb and finger. With her other hand she picked up her guidebook. But none of what she needed now would be found in its maps and instructions.

  She tossed the book next to her on the bed and picked up her phone, which was useless. Dad said they could survive without their phone connections for five days — one more reason Simon was mad. But even if she could text Alicia and Jess, they were on the other side of the planet, where it was still yesterday.

  Ages later, there was another scrape. She sat up, straining to hear. Definitely Dad and Simon’s door. Then the reassuring click. So Dad — It had to be Dad, didn’t it? — was safe. For now.

  But they were still in North Korea, and she had no idea what was going on with her father, or her brother, or this crazy country. She switched off the lamp and burrowed under the covers.

  Soo-yun woke in the predawn, happy, thinking of the fish. Squatting on the concrete floor of the apartment bathroom, she bent over the metal basin to scrub her face until her skin tingled and glowed, as if she were scouring herself clean of faults and failings as well.

  Glancing at her reflection in the mirror, she combed and arranged the waves of her permed hair, feeling as always the pang of her not-quite-prettiness, her insufficient offering. It had been a miracle — of course, only by the grace of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il — that she’d been selected for the training program as a guide for foreign tourists. The Dear Leader had recommended prioritizing language skills in addition to appearance, so her excellence in English studies had balanced out her too-big teeth and too-weak chin. It still stung a bit, that she wasn’t as pleasing to look at as the other young women in her program, as if she were a slightly stunted flower in an otherwise beautiful bouquet. She longed to shine, to reflect the light of the Great Leader, the Sun.

  In the tiny kitchen, she moved with quiet efficiency, granting her mother and brother a few more moments of sleep as she prepared their breakfast. She scooped a careful measure of corn-rice from the Public Distribution sack into a small pot. She rinsed the grains under running water, drained them, laid her hand on top and let the water fill to cover it, then set the pot to boil on a burner. She turned to the side dishes with extra pleasure, thinking of the fish and how it would make the meal special.

  Returning home the previous evening as the market was closing, she’d seen an old woman seated behind a plastic bucket with two small fish swimming in it. A bit of fortune; they would be fresh. And another bit of luck: She had a few bills, from the neighbors whose children she tutored in English.

  The old woman had kindly cut off the heads, scaled, and gutted the fish on the spot. Climbing the dark stairwell to their apartment — once again the elevator was broken — Soo-yun had decided to save the fish for the morning. Salted, they’d last overnight. A treat for her mother and brother, and a way to celebrate her own new opportunity.

  She rinsed the fish now and began to prepare it, sautéing it in a bit of oil before adding green onions and garlic. The oil in the jar was low, she noticed, and as the monthly rationed supplies were now coming once every two months, there wouldn’t be more until the first of next month. She’d have to be vigilant; she was the only wage-earner in the family.

  When everything was ready, she arranged the bowls of steaming corn-rice, the small dishes of vegetables, and the plate of fish on the low wooden table and carried it to the main room. She set it on the floor, next to the mats where her mother and brother slept. Her gaze moved from the spread to the smiling portraits high on the wall above her. She felt the care emanating from their images, particularly the warm eyes of the Great Leader, who had become even more of a father figure to her since the loss of her own father ten years before. Her eyes pricked with tears as gratitude rose in her chest, for this food that would give her brother energy for the long school day, her mother strength to heal, and for herself, courage in her new job. So much goodness could come from this opportunity, if only she could continue to excel.

  The martial music began to swell from the speaker on the wall. Behind her, she heard her brother stir. She turned to greet her family with a smile.

  When Mia walked into the dining room, Dad waved from one of the tables, his face lighting up at the sight of her. No sign of Simon.

  “How’s my girl?” Dad asked, kissing her forehead.

  “Fine,” she lied.

  The breakfast offerings filled a long table. Rice, kimchi, small bowls of meats and vegetables. A steaming pot of some kind of soup. Mia liked the Korean food they served for holidays at Saturday language school, or at restaurants her parents took her to in Stamford or a couple times in New York, but she’d never had it for breakfast. At the other end of the table, a tray full of sliced white bread sat next to a toaster, with little pots of butter and jam. Two hooded silver containers with fires under them held fried eggs and some kind of processed meat. She toasted bread, poured a glass of juice from a can that had a picture of a peach on it, and scooped a fried egg onto her plate.

  She looked Dad over as she moved to their table. Same scruffy corduroy jacket with the leather elbow patches. Same stray bits of hair sticking out. Same gray eyes peering over his glasses at the tour schedule. The least likely spy in the world. She wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing.

  As Mia picked up her fork, Simon slouched in through the doorway, heading for the buffet table. She took a bite of egg. It was rubbery and tough from sitting too long. The bread was just barely toasted, not crunchy the way she liked it, even though she’d put it through the toaster twice.

  She glanced at Dad as she chewed, rehearsing ways to bring up the subject of last night. How’d you sleep, Dad? Or, Funny, I thought I heard your room door open just after midnight. Or point-blank: Dad, what were you doing sneaking around the hotel in the middle of the night?

  There must be a simple, ordinary explanation for what he had been doing. Or he really had been doing something secret, in which case he wouldn’t want her to know. If she brought it up, she could be making things dangerous for him. Especially in public, where someone could overhear. Even worse, in front of Simon.

  Her brother plunked his plate down and slumped into his chair, avoiding eye contact. His earbuds were already in place, wires stretching to his MP3 player stashed in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Mia felt a little collapse within, a sinking sadness. Her brother was right here across the table, yet completely unreachable, like he’d been ever since the Trouble in August.

  Simon had made the same choices of toast and egg. This was not likely to go well.

  She continued the dutiful business of chewing and swallowing. She wasn’t about to waste food, not in this country where floods, droughts, lack of farmland, and the government’s bad policies meant that there were always hungry people. Without aid from other countries, the kind her father’s organization brought in, the people would starve to death. An image flashed in her mind from one of the stories he’d told from his last trip, about a little boy in an orphanage, lying on his bed with his ribs sticking out. He was so weak he couldn’t even lift his head, but h
is face lit up with a big grin when he saw the strange foreign man.

  Mia pressed her lips together and shook her head to clear it. At least they wouldn’t encounter any starving people on this tour. The government and their guides would make certain of that.

  “They’re still working out the Western food thing,” Dad said at the look of distaste on Simon’s face as he took a bite. Their father slurped from his white coffee mug, considered the taste, swallowed. “I’ve had worse.” He smiled at his son and daughter and held up the schedule. “So, let’s see, what’s in store for this band of intrepid travelers today? First up, the statues at Mansu Hill.”

  Mia glanced across the table at her brother, leaning back in his chair, far away in his alternative musical universe. She reached for her backpack, pulled out her guidebook, and opened to the map of Pyongyang. “Here,” she said, placing her finger on the site.

  Dad’s face bloomed with delight. “Mia! That’s terrific! I didn’t realize you had a guidebook.”

  “I found it on your bookshelf. It’s got cool maps.”

  “Oh, that one. It’s probably more than ten years old. But most of the maps should still be good.” He peered at the page. “That’s the place. Mansu Hill. It’s the first stop on every tour. Every visitor has to pay proper respect to the Great Leader and the Dear Leader. Even when we’re here on humanitarian missions.”

  “How many times have you been there?” Mia asked.

  “I’ve lost count. But everything else is new to me. I’ve never been just a tourist here.” He returned to the schedule. “Second stop, Juche Tower. Which, it says here, ‘honors Kim Il-sung’s concept of self-reliance.’ ” He looked up at Mia, then at Simon, whose eyes were on the tablecloth, fingers drumming to a beat only he could hear. “That’s what ju-che means, self-reliance. And from the top you get a panoramic view of the city.”

  Simon slapped the table. Mia jumped, but her brother was glaring at their father. “I don’t get why you’re acting like this is a normal thing to do,” he hissed, “going sightseeing in this messed-up country. How can you just go along with the program? You of all people, with all the stuff you’ve seen?”

  Beyond cramming facts for his debate team competitions, Mia hadn’t noticed that international politics had ever been Simon’s thing. He was just grabbing any ammunition he could find against Dad for making him come on this trip.

  As usual, Dad didn’t bite. “You know what I always say: Giving your attention to something doesn’t mean agreeing with it.” His tone was mild, as if he and Simon were having a perfectly reasonable conversation. He took another sip of coffee. “I think there’s a benefit to having foreign visitors in North Korea, learning about what it’s really like, making contact with people, showing them that not all Americans are imperialist warmongers.” He raised an eyebrow at Simon. Then his expression got more serious. “And of course there’s the agency work. Showing respect seems a small price to pay to be allowed to help alleviate the suffering of hungry people. And I have to be particularly careful, because there’s no American embassy here to rescue me if I mess up.”

  Simon huffed out a breath and turned away, but not before zapping his sister with a laser glance, though she hadn’t said or done a thing. She was guilty by association, just for going along with Dad.

  Mia could remember when Simon didn’t look at her like she was his enemy. The last time had probably been late spring, before Randi broke up with him, before he ran off to New York. That escapade was one of the reasons they were on this crazy tour — the last thing in the world that Simon wanted to be doing. Randi was back home this week, and he’d been planning to see her. Instead, here they were.

  A white-clad waiter approached their table, carrying a silver pot. He gestured toward Dad’s cup. Dad nodded, thanking the waiter in badly pronounced Korean as he poured. Another waiter came by and picked up Dad’s plate, then Mia’s. He came to Simon’s place but hesitated, his eyes on the food on the plate.

  The waiter was lean. Mia wondered if he was hungry. Dad said that during the famines, it had sometimes been even worse for people in the cities, because there weren’t any wild plants or things they could forage. How awful if the waiters had to serve all this food and didn’t have enough to eat themselves.

  Simon sighed heavily and shook his head. He placed the cold egg on the cold toast, folded it over, and crammed the whole thing in his mouth. After a moment, the waiter removed the plate.

  Mia let out her breath.

  The three guides who’d met them at the airport — Mr. Kim, Mr. Lee, and Miss Cho — were waiting outside the hotel. They herded their group into line to wait for the tour bus. Mia turned her head to watch the people passing on the sidewalk. The night before, it had already been dark when they’d driven into the city, so this was her first real glimpse of North Korea.

  A couple of men in dark business suits passed by, one talking on a cell phone, both smoking cigarettes. A young woman in a stylish gray trench coat clicked purposefully along in high heels, carrying a designer bag. A mother held the hand of a cute little girl in a bright red jacket, her hair pulled into two ponytails. All appeared to be perfectly ordinary people going about their morning business, except that every single adult wore a small red badge near their heart, a waving flag or a circle, each with a picture of a smiling Kim Il-sung. Nobody looked brainwashed or robotic or starving. They just looked Korean.

  That was by far the strangest thing to Mia: Here, everyone was Korean. In her Connecticut town, only a handful of people weren’t white, and even fewer were Asian. Being surrounded by Korean people was surreal, like when she woke up out of a vivid dream and didn’t know where she was for a bit. There’d been tons of Asian people in Beijing, obviously, but she and Dad and Simon had mostly been in the hotel recovering from jet lag or in the orientation meetings with the tour group, so she hadn’t really been hit by it. And the people there had been Chinese. These people were Korean. Like she was. And no one noticed her. That was another strangeness. Their glances glided right past her, halting as they came to Simon and Dad and the other white Americans standing in line. She was used to having people’s eyes stop when they came to her, to being the piece that didn’t fit. Their family would be out together in a restaurant or a movie, and suddenly a stranger’s look would remind her of the old Sesame Street song about one thing being not like the others, one thing not belonging.

  The only other place she’d ever been surrounded by people who looked like her was at Korean language school on Saturdays in Stamford. But there she still stood out: The only one whose parents were white. The only one who didn’t speak Korean at home. Here, she felt as if she could disappear. Just take a step away from the tour group and blend into the flow of people on the sidewalk. And as long as people were distracted by the white foreigners, no one would notice.

  One older lady tilted her head toward her companion, talking animatedly, gesturing to her own black hair. Her eyes never left Simon’s face. To a North Korean, he must look like a blond creature from outer space. But he was too busy complaining about having to line up to notice he was being stared at. His fists were jammed into the pouch of his navy hoodie. White wires still dangled from his ears.

  “What the hell are we doing on this tour, looking at stupid sights?” he muttered under his breath.

  Mia stiffened. He couldn’t say things like that here. What was wrong with him that he couldn’t go along with the simplest instructions? Simon in a place like North Korea felt like a dangerous chemistry experiment. Sooner or later something was going to explode.

  The thing was, she had to admit that on this one point she actually agreed with him: It was crazy that they were here. As her brother had phrased it when Dad first brought up the idea: “Who in their right mind tries to bond with their kids by taking them on a tour of North Korea?”

  Mia guessed that the real reason for the trip was to somehow make them a family again. But they could have come later when they had all figured out how to ge
t along, especially since Mom had to cancel at the last minute, after Nona broke her hip. Instead, Dad, Simon, and Mia brought their problems overseas. At one point Dad mentioned that the trip would be an opportunity for Mia to connect with her heritage. But if it was for her benefit, they should be visiting South Korea, where she had actually been born.

  Dad had looked odd after he said that, like maybe he regretted his words. But as usual, she hadn’t voiced any of her questions or doubts. Simon had been making enough noise for both of them.

  The bus pulled up and the line began to move. Dad turned back with a Here we go! grin, as if they were all just having a swell time.

  Mia took a window seat halfway back. Dad slipped in next to her. Simon flung himself into the seat across from them, turning his scowling face away, toward the window. His expression reminded her of Stone Warrior, one of the villains from their childhood games of Knights and Castles. Simon would play the part with his body stiff, clomping around the backyard and uttering deep, hollow moans. Mia and the other little kids would run shrieking. Now her brother seemed to have gotten stuck in the role, anger running through his veins instead of blood.

  The bus rattled along the city street, sounding as if something inside the motor had come loose. Mia pulled out the tour schedule and her guidebook, opening to the map of Pyongyang. With a finger, she touched the location of their hotel, then Mansu Hill.

  “You always have been the family navigator,” Dad said, leaning toward her. “I remember when we first noticed — I think you were three. We took a different route to the grocery store, and you piped up from your car seat, ‘No, Daddy, turn left!’ ”

  The bus turned. Mia searched for signs, trying to pinpoint their route. The broad streets seemed strangely empty, with only a handful of black cars, a few buses and electric trolleys. Pedestrians alone or in small groups looked tiny on the wide sidewalks, like people left behind when everyone else had gone somewhere more interesting. It made her feel sorry for Pyongyang, the city, as if it were one of those unpopular middle school kids that nobody wanted to hang out with.