A Small Revolution Read online

  “They actually think this crazy dictator who’s already killed thousands of his own people gives two shits about kids wrapping themselves in kerosene-soaked sheets, setting themselves on fire, and jumping out of buildings? He’s laughing at them. Fewer people to deal with.” Lloyd’s voice was grim.

  “At least they died for something,” you said in a quiet voice, looking calmly at him.

  “But look at his brother, Jaesung,” I said because I was beginning to agree with Lloyd. What good did being a martyr do for the ones who loved you?

  The man at the table who had been speaking had his head in his hands. The men around him were still arguing, but he was shaking his head now, and the chill expanded in my chest.

  You refused to look. “Extreme situations call for extreme responses.”

  “You can’t change anything if you’re dead. Who’s going to be left?” Lloyd said.

  “Lloyd’s right,” I said. “It’s harder to stay in the fight and keep trying to make changes than to quit.”

  “Harder?” you said in disbelief. “Quit? You think it’s easy to die that way?”

  “No, I don’t mean it’s harder.” I tried to explain, but the way you looked at me, the look that said I’d betrayed you, made it harder to find the right words. Maybe I did mean “quit,” because I related more to the man whose brother had died than to the man who had killed himself. I stumbled, stammering, “I don’t mean that. Wait, I mean,” and then I found my stride. “I mean you said yourself there’s so much to be done. Chun is a dictator. I mean we can go back to the States and get the word out so our government puts pressure on Chun to change. The Olympics are going to be here in three years. If people knew back in the States what was happening here . . .” I threw back at you all the things you’d said to me.

  “But people are dying right now. It takes something big to make big changes, or it’s more of the same bullshit,” you insisted. “Thousands were massacred in Gwangju, and the US, our government, did nothing. They helped Chun to do whatever he wanted so it could be business as usual in Korea. His men are armed with US weapons.”

  “Because they don’t want Korea to become communist like North Korea,” Lloyd said.

  “Chun can do anything as long as he’s America’s puppet, and people will continue to suffer here. No workers’ rights, no rights for anyone here,” you said.

  “But how’s being a martyr going to change that?” I said.

  “It’s going to show people how bad it is. The world needs to see, and how else will they see?” You were adamant. Your face was flushed, and I thought this was our first fight, and I wouldn’t lose you to something like this. I could see you in a shroud of white, and I felt you were telling me you would do this no matter what I said.

  “But the media isn’t paying attention, because the media is controlled by Chun’s government,” I said. “You just said that man’s brother died for nothing.”

  “That’s what he said.” Your voice was calm again. “Doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “Yoona’s right, you’ve said so yourself. Why are you getting all suicidal on us now?” Lloyd said, using a different tack. Scorn was in his voice. It broke through something in you.

  “What do you think should be done, then?” you said to Lloyd. Your hands were flat on the table on either side of your teacup. I wanted to stroke your imperfect finger, hold it to my heart, and beg you to promise you wouldn’t ever do what that man’s brother had done, for me, promise.

  “Work with Tongsu Cho,” Lloyd was saying. “Go to the meetings he talked about when we get back to Seoul. There are many paths to revolution, remember he said that.” Lloyd sounded reasonable.

  I hadn’t heard the name before. “Who’s Tongsu?” I said.

  “Cook at the camp. I’ll introduce you to him,” Lloyd said to me. Our eyes met. I saw in them the same fear I had in mine. We loved you. I wondered why I’d ever disliked him.

  “I like that. ‘There are many paths to revolution,’” I said. I felt your eyes on me, taking in the way Lloyd spoke to me and my reply.

  “Big and small paths,” Lloyd said.

  “For people who have all the time in the world.” You scoffed.

  Lloyd let out a halfhearted laugh. “Whatever, Jaesung. Revolutions take time. You’ve said so yourself.”

  You pushed back in your chair as if you had to put some distance between us, as if Lloyd and I had ganged up on you. Not angry, just resigned and maybe resentful.

  “Come on,” Lloyd said, and I was relieved. “We should go back. That bus took forever, man, and they’ll start looking for us.” I looked around for our waitress. How much did our tea cost?

  But you weren’t ready to let it go. “Always following the rules. What the hell are you afraid of?” you said in our direction. There was an edge to your voice, and Lloyd jumped on it. And we were back to arguing again.

  “Afraid? I’m not afraid. Just because I don’t want to burn myself up, you think I’m afraid? Because I disagree?” He stood up and leaned toward you, his hands on the table. “I’m not allowed to disagree with you? You don’t know what it’s like to really take a stand on anything. You and all these fucking people don’t have a fucking clue.”

  The hum of voices in the mandu shop suddenly stopped. The ring of men at the table beside ours and the people at the other tables were looking at us now.

  You were looking into your cup and turning it round and round with your hands. I could see then that you were determined to jump like that man’s brother had jumped, and nothing Lloyd or I could say would change your mind.

  Lloyd’s face contorted as if he were holding back a flood of words. It was barely a second, but time seemed to stop. I took a sharp intake of breath.

  I thought for a second that he was going to punch you. Instead, Lloyd jumped up, his chair overturning on the floor behind him. And then his arm swung out, and he snatched up your cup and threw it on the stone floor at your feet. It shattered into pieces. I saw from the look on Lloyd’s face that he had startled himself with what he had done. And then he was gone. You called to him to come back and went after him. I apologized to the waitress, who was suddenly beside me, righted the chair, gave her money for the tea, and then excused myself.

  My heart was in my throat. That’s a saying, and that would be the accurate feeling. I didn’t know what I’d find outside. In the early evening sunlight, Lloyd had his back to the low stone wall of the building that housed the restaurant, the curled tiles of the roof above him, and you were in front of him. You had your hand on Lloyd’s shoulder, and you talked to him in a low voice. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right,” you said. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking when I said that.”

  Lloyd’s hands were fisted in front of his eyes. At the time I thought he was as upset as I was at the thought that you wanted to be a martyr. I thought he’d succeeded in convincing you to discard that option, and I thought his outrage had made all the difference, because you didn’t mention it again. I saw Lloyd differently after that. I saw him as a friend.

  33

  I didn’t know how lonely I was until I met you. Isn’t that the way of love? Don’t all lovers say the same thing? Everything changed after they met, the sun was brighter, the sky suddenly announced itself: I’m here, I’m here. Everything suddenly mattered, I came into existence, no longer running between my mother and father, no longer Willa’s sister who cleans up the mess in the kitchen after a fight, I was seen all on my own. You looked at me, and I suddenly materialized into a physical being, all of me. Your hands on my skin reminded me I was alive. And even when we argued, you allowed me space to argue, and you were never loud. You said, “Let’s talk about it. Do you want to talk about it?” And you said afterward, no matter what I’d said or done, “I’ll always forgive you.” No one had forgiven me before or asked me to forgive them.

  34

  My promise to myself before I met you was that I would never be in love with anyone. In love, as in
at the mercy of emotion. In love, as in unable to leave you if I had to, even if you turned out to be abusive like my father. In love, as in unable to think about anything else when you’re not with me. In love, as in making a fool of myself and telling you everything, even if you’d think I was the worst person in the world. The wishing-I-weren’t-in-love kind of love; the desperate kind; the hook, line, and sinker sort of love; the out-of-control kind.

  I told you we should break up. I told you to keep your distance. There were plenty of people on this tour, so we didn’t have to be beside each other. I told you we should do it now while it was still possible. And you looked at me and said, “Why?”

  This was the fight we had after we visited the Emile Bell on the student tour. The “mommy” bell, the bell that celebrated the child thrown into the molten lava so her father could make a bell that pleased the king. The story of this child triggered something in me. I couldn’t tell you about my mother and father and what it was like to grow up in a house they fought in. Instead I told you I never wanted to see you again. And you said, “You’re kidding. Over what?” And I said, “You don’t understand. You’ll never understand.” And you said, “Try me.” And I said, “No.”

  But the next day I waited for you outside your cabin, and I said I was sorry, and you said, “I still don’t understand.” And I said, “Even so, can you just forgive me for yesterday?” And you said, “I forgive you. I’ll always forgive you.”

  Three times in two weeks I said I’d never talk to you again. And each time I went back. There are songs about this kind of desperation. Fairy tales. Cautionary tales. Lloyd talked to me during those times. He said, “Jaesung doesn’t understand when people have to be by themselves. You need space. I get it.” And I said, “Look after him for me?” and he agreed he would.

  After the third time, I had to promise you I’d never break up with you again. Not like this. “Promise me that. We’ll always be friends, even if you decide you don’t want to see me anymore. Not this kind of shutting the door. Not this way where you say we’ll pretend we don’t know each other. I can’t take that, I’m telling you. Promise,” you said. I promised. I didn’t resist. I couldn’t.

  35

  Lloyd cocks the handgun and holds it over Heather. YOU NEVER LIKED ME. AND SINCE WE’RE BEING HONEST, I NEVER LIKED YOU EITHER.

  Negotiate. A voice is screaming in my head. Say something. Now. Negotiate, Yoona. You’d do that. My mother did that. Even Willa, in her own way, with her avoidance, was finding a way to handle our volatile father. Up until now I’ve resisted looking at Lloyd head-on. This isn’t going to end soon.

  “If you shoot her, they’ll hear, and they’ll come in and kill all of us.” It’s Faye’s voice.

  THAT MEANS THEY’D BE RESPONSIBLE FOR KILLING ALL OF YOU. I THINK THEY’LL TRY TO SAVE ONE OF YOU AT LEAST. He steadies his shaking hand and aims the gun at Faye on the bed next to me.

  “Lloyd, okay, no bullshit, you’re right. Let’s be honest, I have that problem. You know what Jaesung said, I shut you out, and I was wrong. I should have gone with you. What are you saying about proof that Jaesung is alive?” I say as loud as I can.

  I swear it’s nearly a smile on his face, a smile and relief. I’ve seen it before, and if I have to pretend one more time, I’ll do it. For my friends’ sakes, I have to do it. This has gone too far. Too far, and I can see that there’s no going back now.

  He turns to me. I have to look straight back at him. There’s silence. Even Daiyu has stopped crying. They wait.

  36

  During the second week of the tour, we went to the DMZ. A man in a beige uniform greeted us and explained that there were thousands of US army, navy, and air force soldiers combined in one place on the southern side of the 38th parallel. “Together with our army, the North knows they can’t invade by land. But they will stop at nothing,” he said, his voice louder now. “We always have to be on guard. Which is why,” he said, “they try to get to our shores at night. Which is why they’ve infiltrated our universities and factories. Those communists will even go overseas to other countries to kidnap people who are on our side.”

  He took us upstairs to a guard tower, where another man in a beige uniform handed us his binoculars. I looked across the field in the direction he pointed, at a town he’d said had been made up to look like a common village but was a stage set. Propaganda. You were quieter than everyone else. Lloyd was arguing with one of the tour guides, Mr. Kwang, about something North Korean. But you stayed away from them. You looked out into the distance and didn’t comment.

  After that, the spokesperson said he wanted us to see how the North Koreans had begun to infiltrate—he was going to show us proof of it. They’d nearly made it all the way to Seoul, he claimed. We’d go down into the tunnels the South had dug to intercept the North’s tunnels. I didn’t need to see any more. All the uniforms and weapons and talk of invasions were making me nervous. What were we doing here?

  At the entrance of the tunnel they led us to, I held my breath. The earth. The roots in it. As we walked, I stayed close to the middle of the tunnel, the tallest part. Away from the sides, covered with the root strands of the underbrush and trees. The tunnel widened as it leveled out. I told myself there was plenty of room for all of us and tried to keep moving. The guides were shouting at us to keep up. People around me were chatting, but it was in hushed tones.

  I could imagine soldiers from both sides storming through these tunnels, coming at us with bayoneted guns while we cowered, trapped in the middle. I wouldn’t be able to go forward or backward. When I finally let out my breath, the smell of dirt and insects and sweat and smoke filled my nose, and a metallic taste filled my mouth. Was something burning? The walls suddenly felt close to me, as if they were by my ears—was that possible? Had they narrowed like that? I closed my eyes, but I could feel the wispy roots of trees and hear boots pounding through the tunnel, see men in uniforms with rifles pointing at me. I’d be shot and trampled. My feet stopped. I couldn’t go any farther. The rest of the tour group walked around me. Some walked into me, not knowing I’d stopped. How were there so many of us? I took a step backward, and someone protested before passing me. Soon they’d all pass me, and that thought frightened me as well. Which was worse? To be with all of them as we were killed together or to be caught by myself, trying to flee? I took a step backward.

  “Ready to leave?” It was you. “I pretty much get the idea of these things, don’t you?” you continued.

  “As much as I need, anyway,” I replied, relieved as we retraced our steps back to the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Can only take so much propagandist bullshit.”

  In minutes we were back out in the sunlight.

  “Looks pretty real to me,” I said, looking back at the tunnel. “How’s it propaganda?”

  “Do you think North Korea really made those tunnels?”

  “Why would they lie?” I asked.

  “Serves their story, don’t you think?”

  “North Koreans are the bad guys?”

  “Think about it,” he said.

  “It has to change in our parents’ lifetime,” I said. “My father was separated from his whole family. He was only fifteen years old. He wants to see them again before he dies. I can’t imagine never seeing my parents again.”

  “I’m sorry for him. My parents’ families came down together.” Jaesung kicked at the ground.

  “Lucky.”

  “But they have their own issues. I wonder sometimes if it serves other countries for Korea to be like this, separated.”

  “You mean the United States and the Soviet Union.”

  “Someone’s benefitting from it. Lloyd says there’s evidence. When we get back to Seoul, we’re going to talk to some people. Tongsu Cho is going to work for a restaurant there. He said to look him up. He’s going to introduce us to some people behind the scenes.”

  “The cook Lloyd talked about?”

  “We’ll see what’s really go
ing on.”

  37

  BUT IF YOONA TELLS THE TRUTH, I’D HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT. YOU READY TO TELL THE TRUTH NOW?

  “The fuck,” Faye shouts at me. “Tell him what he needs to hear.” Lloyd smirks at her, walks over to me, and sits. I look down at my taped wrists, which are pinched red from the strain.

  “He’s crazy. Nothing she says will change his mind,” Heather mumbles.

  SHE KNOWS WHAT I MEAN. Lloyd nudges me with his shoulder as if we could be any two friends teasing each other. GO ON. TELL THEM.

  I force myself to speak with as much truth as possible. “I’m saying I was wrong. You’re right. You never gave up on Jaesung, but I did. He told me you were his best friend. I see why now. I see you’ve been fighting by yourself all this time. Even in Korea, it was you and Jaesung who fought together on the same side.”

  38

  Lloyd kept his promise to me in Korea about Tongsu Cho. He found me in my cabin, folding my mosquito net. I’d missed lunch and dinner, having been curled over since we’d returned from our morning tour of another Silla palace. My stomach had been cramping, so I’d been running to the bathroom over and over again, having eaten something that made me queasy, probably too much of the hamburger and fries they’d given us for breakfast. (We had American food for breakfast and Korean food for lunch and dinner. The cafeteria staff didn’t distinguish between types of American food, since Korean food was not categorized by meal time.) When I asked about you, Lloyd hesitated.

  “Is he sick too?” I said, picturing you as miserable as I’d been, crumpled over on your yo.

  “Different kind of sickness.” He had his hand on the ladder to my bunk.

  “How bad?” There was a small fan on the wall nearby, and I thought I’d heard him wrong.