A Small Revolution Read online

  I’M DOING THIS TO STOP WORLD WAR THREE. TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT.

  “While we’re waiting for the president, why don’t you tell me if there’s anything else you want? Maybe we can arrange for you to go to DC instead of him coming to you.”

  THAT’S BULLSHIT.

  “I’ve been straight with you, Lloyd. I’m just a local cop trying to reach the president of the United States for you. Let me help you while we wait.”

  I TOLD YOU AN HOUR. IT’S BEEN THIRTY MINUTES. IF ANYONE COMES THROUGH THAT DOOR, I’LL START SHOOTING. ALL IN A ROW. ALL IN FRONT OF ME. DON’T MAKE ME DO IT.

  His voice is rising, and any minute now he’ll do it, he’ll kill all of us. Could we pile on top of him, kick the gun away? He’s close enough to me for me to pound him with my hands tied together like a hammer. I look to Heather, and she nods. But then Lloyd lurches up suddenly and grabs Heather, yanks her, and she falls sideways, hard, to the floor. She cries out.

  30

  My first instinct when I met Lloyd on the bus in Korea was to be wary. I didn’t know why. You didn’t suspect anything, or maybe you already knew and understood him better than I did. You might have seen the signs from Lloyd that this was coming. You tried to tell me things.

  The student tour took us around the country in a caravan of buses, with flags waving. We were escorted by government vehicles, cars, and motorcycles. We went through red lights. Cars, buses, and other police vehicles stopped for us. They saluted us. Us. Americans touring Korea. We looked out the windows and complained that the air-conditioning wasn’t on high enough in our luxury buses with their plush, clean upholstered seats and scented restroom (even if it was an awful, flowery scent), weaving through the streets of Seoul. We, the privileged young people from abroad, spoiled with the conveniences of modern life in America. You and I rolled our eyes at the entitlement we heard throughout the bus. You and I knew better, and I guess Lloyd did too, but he was angrier about it. He slammed the heel of his hand onto the back of our seats when he pointed out the injustices. I saw this early on, the peripheries of his rage.

  You were tender in contrast. I never saw you rage out of control about anything. Like the tip of your shortened finger, your fury was born missing. And you were always giving money away, even though I found out eventually you hardly had any yourself. Your parents were professors at a community college in North Dakota, and their salaries were not high. You said you wished you liked biology so you could share your father’s passion with him, but you leaned more toward your mother’s expertise in ancient history.

  We were taken to the Seokguram Buddha on one of the first afternoons on the Korea tour. After that first conversation on the bus, it had been harder to be alone with you. Lloyd and others were always there talking to you about what was in the news. They pointed out political demonstrations that were taking place throughout Korea. Remember Jerry with the Yankees cap who sat behind you and the girl from Michigan who disagreed with both of you about the aim of the protesters? I listened and asked questions, but they drowned me out. When we arrived at the Seokguram Buddha, I decided to explore by myself, and to be honest, I didn’t trust this sudden onset of whatever I was feeling toward you. It felt like the beginning of obsession or addiction or love.

  I went ahead with the crowd and left you and Lloyd and Jerry to debate the merits of one political party over the other. When I saw it, I stopped in my tracks. Before me was a gigantic solid-gold Buddha, sitting on a lotus pedestal. A dozen feet tall on a pedestal half his size, he sat cross-legged in his classic pose, palms open, back of his hands resting on his knees. The massive, serene face. A labor of love and more—devotion, fervor, desperation?

  “The great accomplishments of the Korean people,” Miss Ahn, the tour guide, said.

  “What are you smiling at?” You joined me on the periphery of the crowd.

  “Why do you care?” I said.

  “You’re mad at me.”

  “I’m just looking like everyone else. Why ask me? Ask her,” I said and pointed to a girl in a clump of boys and girls a few feet away from me.

  “Why can’t I ask you?”

  “I’m trying to listen to Miss Ahn,” I said and moved away.

  “I can tell you more about this place than she can,” you said, following me.

  “No, you can’t.”

  “I can.”

  “I want to hear what she has to say.”

  “I have something better to show you.”

  “Not interested.”

  “But you don’t even know what it is.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Okay, sorry,” you said. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” you said and walked away, walked away to Lloyd.

  My cheeks felt hot. I wanted to cover them and run off, but there was no place to go. I tried to pay attention to Miss Ahn, but all I could hear in my ears was your voice. I have something better to show you.

  My cheeks were still flushed when you returned a few minutes later. “I’m sorry, okay? Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

  I was thrilled to see you, but I didn’t want to show it. I looked up at the Buddha instead. “Can’t believe human beings actually made something like this. It’s incredible.”

  “Ridiculous waste of human energy and monument to human enslavement, you mean.”

  “Enslavement?” I raised my eyebrows at you.

  You had a beautifully earnest face. “Lloyd said this was built by slaves in the Silla Dynasty—even up through the Joseon Dynasty, they had slavery.”

  “But they don’t mention that anywhere.”

  “Let me show you,” you said and took my hand. A small current shot up my arm at your touch and calmed itself as we walked. I loved the nearness of you. You said, “If you think this is fascinating, wait until you see this.”

  “You’re so sure of yourself,” I said, keeping my voice light in case you thought I was mocking you.

  “Lloyd says he hated me when he first met me. I can be annoying. It’s true.”

  “You’re not annoying.”

  “Yeah, I am. I know it.”

  “Lloyd doesn’t know everything.”

  You thought about that for a second and nodded. “He’s a good guy.”

  We escaped from the group. It seemed that way. An escape. In a few minutes, we were back out in the giant plaza surrounding the temple. It was breathtaking. How many people must have filled this plaza at one time?

  “Better, right?” you said. I couldn’t disagree.

  You pointed to a group of women on their hands and knees scrubbing the flagstones. They wore maroon kerchiefs on their heads, matching maroon-colored skirts, and light-gray blouses. Over their mouths and noses were white masks, the kind surgeons wear, only these were made of cloth. There were dozens of these women spread throughout the plaza on that hot summer morning, without relief from the sun. I’d seen them as we’d walked up from the bus and thought how quaint they were in their colorful clothing, how they looked as though they belonged in that expansive plaza as if frozen in time. I’d seen them as props, like I’d seen pilgrims at Plimoth Plantation on a field trip once. As we approached the group closest to us, I could see that they were using rags to scrub the stone. They were actually working, and working hard. I could see sweat on their faces as we drew closer, sweat and deep grooves in their leathered faces.

  I stopped when it seemed we were impolitely close, but you kept going and knelt beside one of them. You whispered something to her, and she laughed and playfully hit your leg in admonishment, then pulled down her mask. I saw you slip something into her hand, and she looked at it and hit you some more. In that moment, I saw the gray-green of an American bill. “Chamna, cham,” she said in exasperation. I heard another woman call out to her, and she answered in Korean, “This fool boy thinks we need whiskey.”

  All of them laughed. She shook her head, stood up, and started to chase after you to give the bill back to you, but y
ou dodged her like a dancer. Red-faced and toothlessly smiling, she folded the bill into her blouse. “Take care of yourself, eh, auntie?” you said in perfect Korean. Then you went around and proceeded to give all of them a bill here and there until you turned your pockets inside out to show them you had no more.

  “Hey,” you said to me. “Come on.” And you took my hand again and started walking backward, eyes on me again. The women were still shaking their heads as we left that large plaza, back on their knees, shaking their heads and watching us walk away.

  “They’re laughing at you,” I said.

  “So? Is that so bad?”

  “What you gave them isn’t going to change anything for them. They’ll still be scrubbing rocks for tourists.”

  “Every bit helps.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You’re going to trip,” I said, but you grinned and kept backing up.

  “You’ll hold me up,” you said.

  “Or you’ll pull me down with you when you fall.”

  “Would that be so bad?” You winced.

  I thought you were leading me to something, something for which we’d get into trouble. Maybe I wanted to get into some sort of trouble even then. With you, Jaesung, the boy with the empty pockets who walked backward into the future.

  “Hey, watch out, a step,” I said, and you stopped suddenly and tugged me to you. I was too close to your face, and we were on a step, and we could lose our balance, and that’s when you kissed me, and when you pulled away I leaned forward and kissed you back. We tottered on the edge of that step, and then you braced yourself on the next step, and what they say about kissing is true. I gave in to a magnetic, delicious force that pressed our mouths together.

  31

  I never saw my parents kiss, never saw them embrace. My father patted my mother’s arm with tenderness, I could admit that. And she handed him things, like his coat when it was snowing outside or a glass of iced tea on a hot day. And in the transfer, I saw love. She loved him. I saw Willa kiss boys, plenty of boys, at our front door or on the porch swing. And now I understood the attraction. But unlike my sister, I only wanted to kiss one person—and that person was you. And I was afraid I was more like my mother in that way than my sister, and I was afraid love was a trap.

  32

  You weren’t afraid of getting lost. You ran toward it. A new adventure, a surprise around every corner. “I heard there’s a town nearby,” you said.

  We were standing near the gate of the camp in Korea. That morning we’d gone to another Buddhist temple, and it was the first afternoon we had free time. Some on the tour lined up to call their parents in the States on the landline; others lazed around in the range of tall fans. It was hot. There wasn’t much relief in the shade. You kicked at the ground. The humidity felt ten times thicker than the mosquito nets we slept under each night. We swatted at flies.

  “Right now? Just walk out?” I said, wiping sweat off my neck with a bandana.

  “There’s a bus,” you said.

  “It’s against the rules,” Lloyd said. “They’re showing a movie up in the big hall—let’s go to that.”

  “Rules? This isn’t school or jail,” you laughed. “I’m tired of the propaganda-machine tour. Come on.” You held out your hand. “No one will even know we’re gone.” I took it but stood still, uncertain.

  “I can’t get into trouble,” Lloyd said.

  “What can they do to us?” I said.

  “Exactly,” you laughed. “What can they do?”

  I had asked the question in all seriousness, but you gave me such a conspiratorial smile, as if it was the two of us against the world.

  “What if we get lost? We don’t have a map,” Lloyd said, kicking at pebbles.

  “How do you think the people who work here come every day?” you replied. “You talk about all this fake stuff they’re showing us, this camp that’s like a prison, but you don’t go out into the real world when you’ve got the chance? Out there is the real thing. What are you really afraid of, Lloyd?”

  Lloyd squirmed, looking at the gate and then back at the Great Hall. He looked miserable. I squeezed your hand. “We should get going if we’re going to go,” I said. As long as I was with you, everything would be fine. I didn’t care about Lloyd, and maybe to be truthful I preferred being alone with you anyway. But you threw him one more plea. “Trust me, it’s going to be all right.” Lloyd let out a loud breath and started for the gate. I rolled my eyes at him, but you grinned and put your arm around me, and your step was light. You clapped Lloyd on the shoulder when we caught up to him, and I felt him lean into us.

  You were right, of course. At the end of the road, we came upon an old bus creaking along, looking as if it would break down. It looked like a model of a bus we had in the States in the 1960s, and I wondered if it wouldn’t be faster for us to walk, but you waved it down and we boarded. Lloyd pulled out a few Korean bills from his pocket, to which I added a couple more, and we held them up to the driver. He took the money without counting. I pulled my bandana up over my nose and mouth. The bus smelled like fertilized dirt and garlic and pipe smoke. People stared at us with open mouths, some of them with gaps between their teeth, young and old alike. We pushed our way to the back, where there was an empty spot on the bench seat. I sat in your lap while you and Lloyd squished together. Even though we weren’t going any faster than when we’d walked, I was glad to be out of the sun. Your arms were around my waist, and I thought how I shouldn’t worry. You were grinning the widest grin I’d ever seen. Our adventure, I thought.

  The bus took us into a large town. We got off when everyone got off, at what seemed to be the busiest street. You were right about the tour not showing us this town. I hadn’t known it existed. People stared at us, and you smiled at them, said a few words in greeting. Lloyd shook his head. “Jaesung loves being a celebrity. Everywhere we go he has to greet his fans,” he said to me. I moved away. You’d never criticized Lloyd, and here he was trying to get me to side with him against you. I pretended I hadn’t heard him.

  I remembered the women cleaning the plaza. You were interested in people, in their everyday lives. You knew they were staring because we wore American clothes, because we were different from them, and you wanted to let them know you saw them. I remembered you and Lloyd at the airport. Lloyd hadn’t seemed to dislike the attention back then.

  There was a restaurant across the street. I caught up to you and pointed it out. Lloyd followed, and I wished we could have ducked inside without him, but you held the door and tried to cheer him up by making a joke about eating better here than anywhere else so far and how much Lloyd appreciated good food. Lloyd refused to smile.

  Inside a fog of cigarette smoke hovered just above eye level. A woman at a table was spooning filling into dumpling wrappers to make mandu. Her full skirt was wrapped between her legs into temporary pants, her knees drawn up so that even though she sat in a chair, crouching, her feet were beneath her on the seat. She waved us toward the back and then returned to making mandu. People from other tables stared at us but then went back to their conversations. We found an empty table in the corner near a large table with a ring of young men who looked to be our age. They studied us as we took our seats, then resumed talking loudly. As the waitress neared, one of the men caught her arm. I saw her roll her eyes with exasperation at him, but she took down his order before sliding short ceramic cups of barley tea on the table toward us.

  “Service is too slow here. We should find another place,” Lloyd said, staring at the waitress while she wrote down an order from another table nearby.

  “Go ahead if you want,” I said, hoping he would. His staring at the waitress like that made me uneasy. “We’ll meet you back at the bus stop in an hour.”

  “We’ve got to stick together,” you said. “We’ll get something fast, like the mandu that woman up front is making. It looks good.” You had your arm around me and moved me closer
to you and away from the table with the men, but I could sense that you were focused on their conversation. Their voices became louder; they were arguing. I heard one of them say in Korean, “They’ll stop at nothing. Those fishermen disappeared.”

  “That’s straight kidnapping. That’s the kind of thing North Korea is going to do,” another replied.

  “This is taking too long,” Lloyd grumbled, farthest away from those men.

  Someone pushed back his chair at the table next to us and scraped the rough-hewn wooden floor. I winced and counted six men, all with the same haircut and open-necked button-down white shirts. They were in a heated debate, cutting each other off. Some leaned forward, and others held them back. “That’s why his brother joined the student movement,” a man said. “Mine too. My brother too.”

  Someone knocked a teacup on its side, but it was ignored, and a puddle formed on the table. One man’s sleeve was soaking in it, but he was oblivious. Their voices rose in a crescendo of disagreement. “Yah,” he yelled and then said something in Korean I didn’t catch because you pulled me even closer to you, away from them. Then the tension eased. I heard a few men laugh. But the one who had spoken about his brother wasn’t smiling.

  “I’d be upset too if my brother died that way,” Lloyd said. I didn’t realize he’d overheard them until then.

  “He’s not upset about that,” you said.

  “He just said his brother set himself on fire.” Lloyd’s eyes were narrowed, and he shook his head. “They jumped out of a building that way.”

  “The media didn’t cover it, so it was wasted. That’s what he’s talking about.” Your arm tightened around me.

  “That’s what the other guy is talking about, but look at him, Jaesung. He said, ‘Dongsaeng.’ It was his little brother, and he couldn’t stop him.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “What happened?” You removed your arm from my shoulders and leaned toward Lloyd.

  “It’s a protest for the world to see,” you said, and I could tell you admired them for it. I felt nervous. It was warm in the restaurant, but a coldness clawed at me.