Her mother did not answer. As always.
They were not all that dissimilar in size and weight. She’d grown and her mother had shrunk. No affection at all existed inside her for this person who’d given her life. In fact, she hated that such a thing had ever happened. And not because of what she might be missing outside the fence, but solely because of what was happening within. Sun Hi was gone. And she’d only now realized what that loss meant to her. A strange feeling of fear had swelled inside her since yesterday, watching Sun Hi die on the floor, and for the first time in her life she felt entirely alone.
A shovel stood propped against the block wall. Her mother carried it to and from the fields each day. She gripped its wooden handle and swung the blade in a wide arc, catching her mother square in the stomach. Intentionally, she’d made sure the rounded flat side made first contact. Her mother slumped forward, grabbing her midsection. A second crashing blow with the rounded end sent her mother to the floor.
She tossed the shovel aside and pounced, yanking back her mother’s head. “You will never beat me again.” And she meant it. “I asked why am I here? Answer me.”
Violence seemed the only thing that worked inside the camp. The guards routinely meted it out. Teacher seemed to have enjoyed killing Sun Hi. The older children abused the younger. And once, not all that long ago, she’d been forced to watch as her mother pleasured one of the guards, not an ounce of emotion seeping from either of them. After he finished, the guard had slapped and kicked until his conquest managed to crawl away.
Her mother’s gasping breathes eased. The eyes were alight, not with fear, but with something else. Something new.
“You … are a … Kim.”
“What is that?”
“It is what … you are.”
“Explain or I’ll beat you again.”
Her mother smiled.
“That … is a Kim.”
She hadn’t understood any of that at the time.
Then everything changed.
Unlike her mother she’d only spent a short time in the fields and had never been sent to the mines. Instead she’d worked in one of the factories, making glassware. Other sites produced cement, pottery, and uniforms. Her life should have been as meaningless as her mother’s. But a week after Sun Hi died, as she walked home from the factory, the guards cuffed her hands behind her back and blindfolded her. She was tossed into a jeep and driven a long way on a bumpy road. Then she was led inside a building, where the blindfold was removed. The room was windowless and empty, except for a chair where she sat. She’d heard stories of places like this and wondered if today the guards would finally have their way with her. The door opened and a short, stout man with a pudgy face wearing plain, dark, uniform-like clothing entered. His hair was cut short, like the guards, with no sideburns. But instead of the emotionless features she’d seen on those around her all her life, this man smiled.
“I am your father,” he said.
She stared at him, unsure how to reply. Was this a trick?
“Your mother and I once knew each other. We were in love. But my father sent her here. I never knew that, until recently. I never knew you existed, either.”
She was confused.
“I asked that you be brought to me,” he said. “What is your name?”
“Hana Sung.”
He smiled. “Did your mother name you?”
“Someone else chose it. But I like it.”
“Than you shall be Hana Sung.”
“You knew my mother?”
He nodded. “She and I were close. But that was many years ago.”
“I was born here.”
“I know that. But you will live here no longer.”
“Who are you?”
“Kim Yong Jin.”
And she knew then what her mother had meant.
She truly was a Kim.
That day her father saved her from the camp, but any concept of gratefulness remained foreign to her, both then and now. At that first encounter all that had raced through her mind was that maybe, just maybe, she would eat no more spoiled cabbage or rotten corn. No more grasshoppers, locusts, or dragonflies. Even worse, no more regurgitating what had been eaten, then eating it again, as a way to fool her hunger. The grapes, gooseberries, and raspberries found sometimes in the forest she would miss, but not the rats, frogs, and snakes that she’d also hunted down.
“What of my mother?” she asked him.
“I cannot help her.”
Which had actually pleased her. After the shovel attack they hadn’t spoken a word, though they continued to live together. Each went her own way and, surely, if the opportunity presented itself, one would turn on the other to the guards, so they both stayed wary.
“I am an important man,” her father said.
“Can you give orders?” she asked. “Like the guards?”
He nodded. “No one here will question a thing I say.”
“Then I want you to do something for me.”
He seemed pleased that she’d made a request.
“I want someone punished for hurting my friend.”
“What did he do?”
She told him about Sun Hi, then said, “I want him punished for that. If you are important, then you can do that.”
Two hours later she was led into another windowless room. Teacher hung upside down, his ankles in shackles, the body just high enough from the floor that his outstretched arms could not touch. His head was flushed with blood, his clothes stank of urine.
“What would you have me to do with him?” her father asked her.
“Kill him, as he did Sun Hi.”
“I thought that might be what you’d say, so I had this brought with him.”