The Beloved Daughter (28 page)

“Hurry!” hissed a man. The inside of the house was so dark that I could hardly see the figure in front of me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Don’t you recognize me?” Once the door was closed, the man struck a match. The small flame flickered across a familiar face.

“Moses?”

He put his finger to his lips and scowled. “Shh.” He touched the match to the wick of a candle. “No one is supposed to know who I am.”

Ae-Cha woke up in my backpack and began to fuss.

“If you’ll allow me.” Moses lifted Ae-Cha out of my sling. With surprising gentleness, he cradled her in his arm.

“She looks so much like her father.” Moses wiggled his finger in front of Ae-Cha’s face and made cooing sounds.

“Where is Kwan?” I asked, keeping a close watch on my daughter, who smiled at her new friend.

Ignoring my question, Moses turned his back to me and carried Ae-Cha into the other room. “I’ll go fix her a bottle.”

“I want to see my husband,” I called after him.

“Very soon.” Moses’ cheerful voice seemed far too loud for a man who was hiding. A moment later he returned without Ae-Cha.

“Where is my daughter?” My entire body tensed in fear. “What did you do with her?”

Moses narrowed his eyes, his carefree manner replaced with the brusque callousness that came so easily to him as a prison guard. “Did you tell them?”

“Tell who?”

“The world. Or did you forget as soon as you were out of harm’s reach?”

“Where is my daughter?” I repeated as Ae-Cha whimpered in the other room.

“A child only gets in the way.” Moses blocked the path to my baby.

“She needs me.” I struggled to get by.

“You can’t go to her.” Moses grabbed my shoulders and wouldn’t let me go. “There is too much work for you to do here. The underground church needs you.”

“I didn’t come to save the church,” I insisted. “I only came to find out about my husband.”

“Kwan is dead.” Moses’ voice was lifeless and flat. “And we will all die as well if you don’t stop playing house and help us.”

From the other room Ae-Cha’s cries grew louder. I tried again to go toward her. “You must know that you can’t take a child with you to serve our people.” Moses squeezed my shoulder so hard it forced me to the ground. I cried out in surprise as much as in pain. “Why did you bring her here?” I gasped when I saw the revolver in Moses’ hand. Ae-Cha was now wailing, her high-pitched shrieks making even Moses wince. He shook his head. “You should have never brought her here.”

“Please.” I wondered what bribe I could possibly offer. “Ae-Cha needs me.”

“She needs you?” Moses raised a thick black eyebrow. “Or do you need her?”

I tried to push the National Security agent aside, but he caught my shirt and spun me around. “Let me go!” Moses held my wrists in front of me while I tried to claw at his chest and screamed Ae-Cha’s name. Candlelight flickered across the room, making our struggling shadows dance across the wall.

“I can’t have the two of you going on like this.” Moses clucked his tongue. “It is a pity, really. She might have grown up to make a good agent for the underground church one day.”

“Let me go!” I pleaded as Moses handcuffed my wrists to a table leg. “I’ll do anything.”

Moses looked at me sadly and shook his head.

“I know, righteous daughter.” Moses loaded his gun and pointed it toward the direction of my daughter’s terrified screams. “That’s why you should have never had a child.” With a shrug of his shoulders, Moses pulled the trigger.

The back of my nightgown was soaked with sweat. It clung to my clammy skin. I heard Ae-Cha crying next to me, but I couldn’t move, as if I were still restrained by the handcuffs from my nightmare.

A moment later Mrs. Cho rushed into my room wearing her nightclothes and carrying a bottle. She flung on the light and then swooped up my daughter. Ae-Cha smacked loudly at her formula. I wiped the sweat-drenched hair out of my eyes.

“I’m still in Seoul?”

Mrs. Cho frowned while she studied me. “A dream?”

I nodded my head, staring at the wet spot on my pillow where I had been lying.

“An omen, perhaps?” Mrs. Cho pressed. “Something about your husband?”

I shook my head and reached out to take my daughter, whose eyelids already started to droop as the warm milk filled her stomach.

“No.” I stroked Ae-Cha’s flawless face and kissed her forehead. “It was just a dream.” I forced conviction into my voice where there was none. “A silly nightmare, and nothing more.”

Messenger

“By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants?” Isaiah 53:8

Mrs. Cho stood at the entrance to my room. For a moment she watched with a half-smile as Ae-Cha batted at a blue baby rattle in my hand. Ae-Cha was growing plump now that she was taking a bottle, and her strong legs kicked happily as she sat in my lap. After a short silence, Mrs. Cho cleared her throat. “There is a visitor for you. From Sanhe.”

I stood up and swept my hair behind my ears. I cradled Ae-Cha in front of me, not quite certain if I was protecting her or if she was shielding me. Mrs. Cho herded all the other children toward the upstairs playroom. I took a deep breath, surprisingly composed. Even if the messenger brought bad news about Kwan, at least the dreadful uncertainty and waiting would be over.

As Mrs. Cho receded to the back stairway with the last of the children, I stared at the messenger who came to bring me word from Sanhe. The gray-haired man was even more bent than when I last saw him. He stared at the carpet in front of my feet.

“Mr. Kim?” Alone with my betrayer, with Mrs. Cho and the other children upstairs and out of hearing range, I wished for somewhere to hide. Even though I never yet let her out of my sight, I regretted not sending my daughter to the playroom with the others, as if Mr. Kim’s very presence had the power to harm her.

Mr. Kim refused to sit down or enter into the living room but stood at the threshold boring holes into the floor with his eyes. He shuffled his feet once, cleared his throat, and remained silent.

“Why did you come here?” I asked, more out of surprise than rudeness. Mr. Kim clasped, opened, and re-clasped his hands in front of him.

“Do you have news of Kwan?” I finally demanded, unable to endure the silence.

“Dead.” Mr. Kim’s voice was barely audible. “Last month in the Longjing jail.” He sniffed and coughed, and I realized that his words only confirmed what my heart already knew with certainty.

I waited for Mr. Kim to offer some word of sympathy or remorse as I ran my hand repeatedly over my daughter’s ears, as if I might forever shield her from this news. “There is more.” Mr. Kim shifted his weight.

“What else could there be?” Ae-Cha was heavy in my arms. Overwhelmed with weariness. I longed to take Ae-Cha to bed with me and sleep for days.

Mr. Kim squinted his eyes, as if the light in the room was painful to him. “Moses was arrested.”

The words hung in the air between us. Reminding myself to continue inhaling and exhaling, I willed away the image of Kwan’s broken body finally giving in to the maltreatment of the Longjing jail.

“Arrested?” I repeated. “By whom?” I couldn’t fathom the implications of Moses’ capture and wished even more that Mr. Kim would leave me and my daughter alone.

“National Security Agency.” My exhausted mind was spinning. If Moses was caught by the Chinese, perhaps he could continue to hide his identity as a Korean official. Since Pyongyang had him instead, I didn’t want to imagine the horrors that would befall him.

“Why are you telling me?” I remembered how strictly Mr. Kim guarded safe-house secrets in Sanhe.

“I saw Moses in January.” Ae-Cha made gurgling noises and tugged at the hair that hung down in my eye. “He knew he was under suspicion. He told me that if I heard of his arrest, I was to find you.” For the first time, Mr. Kim looked up, not at my face, but at the smiling baby I held in my arms.

“You know his identity.” Mr. Kim whispered, as if Mrs. Cho or even the orphans upstairs might one day be interrogated by the National Security Agency and forced to confess what they overheard in the drawing room. “And so you’re the only one who could save Moses now.”

“What can I do?” I regretted that Moses ever told me who he was. Didn’t I already know enough of torture and raids and prison cells?

“There is a high-ranking Party official, a secret Christian worker. He’s the only man with the power to save Moses.” I was glad at least to hear there was some hope for my father’s friend. “But he cannot help a man who remains nameless.”

“You want me to tell you Moses’ identity?” After what took place in the mountains of Jilin Province, I could never trust Mr. Kim with such information.

Mr. Kim shook his head. “I would not accept that burden for all the yuan in Asia.” Mr. Kim stared back down at the floor. Did he realize how his allusion to bribery sounded in my ears?

“Then I still don’t understand. How can I help Moses from here in Seoul?”

Mr. Kim stared unsmiling at Ae-Cha. “You can do nothing from Seoul,” he declared.

Surrogate

“Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers.” Isaiah 49:23

“And so you must return to Sanhe?” Mrs. Cho crossed her arms against her chest and gazed at me over her spectacles.

“This man has saved hundreds of believers.” I recited the argument I rehearsed so often over the past two days.

Mrs. Cho stared at Ae-Cha who had fallen asleep just a moment earlier in my arms, a pacifier dangling precariously from her open mouth.

“If you were returning to Jilin Province to find your husband, I would perhaps understand.” Mrs. Cho had been separated from her husband decades earlier during the Peninsula War. She gazed at a photograph of a young man on the bookshelf behind us. “But for a man you hardly know? To put yourself in such danger …”

I couldn’t explain to Mrs. Cho why I had to go back to help Moses, the hero of my childhood fantasies, the friend of my father, the son of one of my dearest companions.

“I have no choice,” I concluded. “Fate’s already made this decision for me.”

“Not fate perhaps,” Mrs. Cho reminded me and looked out the window at the setting sun. Faint wisps of pink and pale orange outlined the early spring clouds. I didn’t tell my benefactress that I was not only planning to return to Sanhe but would have to cross the border into North Korea one last time. Mrs. Cho pursed her thin lips.

“You know I can’t take Ae-Cha with me.”

As soon as I spoke the words, Mrs. Cho’s sighed loudly. She studied my face. “A difficult decision.” Suddenly self-conscious, I wondered if Mrs. Cho heard my cries these past two nights. “But perhaps a wise one,” the elderly woman reassured me. I tried to think of something other than the perfect, angelic form cradled against my chest, her cheek wet from drool, her lips open in a contented half-smile.