Read Online How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee - Free Book Online Page B

the past.
    After asking for directions from a few people, sometimes in Mandarin and sometimes in Korean, I arrived exhausted at my mother’s building.
    The low-rise apartment building was covered in dirty yellow tiles and laid out in a Soviet-style grid. I walked past men playing mahjong in the lobby, their syllables like music to me, up to the fourth floor until I was standing at her door that was covered with bright scarlet and gold ads. All my rehearsed speeches morphed into uncertainty. Chances were high that my mom wouldn’t be happy with me. After all, I was half the reason they’d left for America in the first place. I pressed the buzzer and waited. I was desperate for simple solutions. My mom, keeper of the family flame, our rainmaker and solution seeker, chair of all committees, would diagnose what was wrong with me.
    She called out from the apartment, “Who is it?”
    I called back, “A hundred-and-fifty-pound surprise in his favorite military fatigues!”
    Feet battered the floor behind the front door, other doors opened and slammed, as if a dozen people were moving under my mom’s orders. When the door finally opened and I presented myself to her like a birthday present, my mom squinted through the gap in the door as if trying to decide who I was.
    She still looked as old-fashioned as an apple but had changed somehow. It was as if the geography had renewed her. Her short hair had grown out long and feminine, her nails were polished, and the perfume of honeysuckle instead of rice crackers wafted from her. I became worried as frown lines deepened between her eyes. Only when she threw her arms open wide did her mom face—there were no other words for it—finally assert itself.
    â€œMy Dumbo! My Daehan!” Her smile was bright, her voice loud enough to wake up statues. “
Naeh ahdeul!
”
    Naeh ahdeul.
My son. Those words made me ache. She tugged at my ears. “My wonderful Dumbo, you must be a ghost because my
ahdeul
is in America. How did you get here? How did you ever find me?”
    â€œThe miracle of technology and a little tenacity,” I said. It was clear that Dad hadn’t been able to reach her yet.
    As we walked inside, words came tumbling out of me. I rattled on about the horrific airplane food, how I’d learned to make four new sailing knots on the flight over, how I’d lost my map and didn’t know what to do with myself anymore. I told her about my epic journey to her door and that I couldn’t bear the inanity of school anymore and wanted to figure things out. I saidthat Dad kept forgetting to water the plants so even the cacti would have died without my intervention, that I was sorry but I’d stopped practicing the violin the day she left for the airport.
    â€œLots of high schoolers are still stuck at the id stage of development,” I said. “The word
cool
should be banned from the dictionary.” I told her I missed her.
    She gave my ear a hard, loving tug. “Did you eat? You need some stew, or dumplings. There’s nothing good here. But your favorite eatery—Songbokui’s—is still open. And the same woman’s there, the one with the dyed red hair you were always trying to learn recipes from when you were too small to reach the stove.”
    â€œAll I’ve been doing today is eating,” I said. “But I’d give up a kingdom for some juice or milk.”
    I didn’t add it up, her quick, nervous speech, the way she’d blocked the door until I squeezed in past her, and the jittery way she steered me into the kitchen, rushed me through a glass of orange juice, then steered me right back to the common room. Not yet. I was too busy taking in her pale pink slippers, the table with cat claws for legs, a purple vase on top of it. The space with its feminine airs was so different from the darkness that I’d left behind. I was happy to see her well settled and devoted to her