A Small Revolution Page 8

  “My parents changed my flight to tomorrow,” I said.

  You dropped my hands at once and started pacing around me. “But you said two weeks.”

  “I know, but my dad . . .” I held out my hands, but you waved them off.

  Then you stopped suddenly, put your arm around me, and started walking down the street. “I’ll show you right now, then. Tongsu said it could get out of hand, but so what? Each one of us counts, right? There are people with everything to lose showing up to demonstrate. We’ve got nothing, right? We’ll do it, go together, okay?” you said and squeezed me closer to you.

  I had no idea what you meant, not really. “Okay, yes,” I replied, thinking I was going to a meeting, going to hear a speech.

  Your arm around me, I walked with you. I pulled away once to look back at my aunt’s gate. I didn’t want her to worry, but I reasoned I’d be right back. I’d walk with you a bit, and then I’d bring you to the house to meet her, and everything would be fine. I hugged you closer to me.

  We’re walking down a narrow street in Seoul, and a cab stops for us, and we get in. You give the driver an address. And then you say in a low voice to me, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ve got to figure out a way to stay here longer.” All my heart can take in right now is that I’m with you. With you. With you. We’ll figure it out. You said so, and I know so. I’ll figure it out. “Lloyd’s waiting for us,” you say, and I’m disappointed for a moment, but I know we’ll have our chance later. This is the way it is. I don’t mind. You look down at me as if reading my mind and pull me closer to you in the cab, and I think I can keep this memory of us, and it will last.

  The cab drops us off in a crowd; it can go no farther. People block our way in the street. You pay the driver, and outside the confines of the car the air is festive. It’s as if we’re going to a parade. People laugh and clap each other on the back. They welcome each other and hurry along, talking over each other about their plans for their jobs, their families. They come out of shops, the people who work there and the people who own the businesses, together. From what they say, I can see they’re hopeful and at ease with each other, determined as they join their neighbors in the street.

  Lloyd steps out of a doorway, and we greet him louder than we usually would, so contagious is the palpable excitement around us. “Took you long enough,” Lloyd says, but he’s not really complaining, because the three of us laugh and stroll deeper into the crowd.

  (I know I should have said something to you here. This was my last chance. If I could go back to that moment, I would say something about what we should do if we’re separated. I’d devise a plan. But how could I have known? Everything until that moment had been easy. We’d escaped everything. Even the trouble in the tour group with the leaders—we’d broken all the rules, and we’d never had to pay.)

  Now everything goes wrong. People are shouting, and it’s chaos. Too many people in the street. Where did they come from? And then I hear it: rhythmic chanting. The crowd surges forward, and I’m pushed along with them—pushed to move or else I’ll be trampled. The sense is that we’re going to a slaughter willingly, though I don’t know why we’d face a violent end. I don’t know the street I’m on, don’t know the district. Street to street, left and then right, and then here into this crowd, accidentally into this crowd. And it’s a mistake I can’t correct right away. I have to back up. Escape. Something is in front of us. I feel it even if I can’t see it. Something ahead. You’re to my right, and Lloyd is to my left.

  “Something’s wrong,” you say. You freeze just then, we all freeze. Things come hurtling through overhead and clang hard as they hit the pavement. We scatter from them. Tear gas pours out. Our eyes and throats sting. Everyone starts coughing. We jerk away, the whole crowd of us, flinching, together, one mass too big to scatter. We can only brace ourselves as clouds of yellow smoke rise. I hold my hands over my face. The stench of rotten eggs. I bury my face in my shirt. I’m knocked aside. And suddenly there is space and everyone is running. I drop my hands and nearly lose my balance when someone knocks into me. And then it’s as if someone has thrown handfuls of sand lit on fire into my eyes. “Don’t rub them.” Your voice comes through the screams now, and every which way people are running. I crouch, just want to crouch down and wipe my eyes until they stop burning. But rubbing them makes them hurt more.

  And then a bigger panic sets in. I look but can’t see my hands. And then I feel your hand pull mine along and someone takes my other hand. Your voice calls for me and then Lloyd’s joins in. I’m dragged to one side and then another and then forward. “Slow down,” I say as my feet slip. I shout, “Wait.”

  “Come on,” you shout. I feel bodies press against me. I’m too slow. And I’m dragged to a standstill on both sides.

  Lloyd shouts, “This way.” Which way? I take a step, but I’m locked between you.

  You hold me up. I know it’s your face in the smoky haze. We must move. We must go. Somewhere. We must run.

  “Come on, Yoona,” you say.

  Then Lloyd’s voice: “I’m telling you this is the way.”

  “It’s not.”

  “The fuck, Jaesung.”

  “The fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Stop it.” I can’t pull my arms free, and then I’m yanked, my arm rips out of your hand. I reach for you and am pushed to the ground. Bodies in white and black, backs, chests, faces of old and young, mouths turned down, hands up to eyes, shoving, pushing along. And where is Lloyd? I stop. I say, “We can’t leave him.” And you say, “I’m not. Keep going, I’ll be right back.” And I tell you to wait, but you’re gone. Suddenly the gas dissipates enough that there is calm for a moment. I think we’ve made it. There are no more people to push against. Like the car ride with my aunt and her chauffeur that comes to mind, we’ll be talking about this afterward and remember how it turned out. We’ll be relieved, and we’ll be planning our next day. And then I see I’m wrong. How many still in the street? They’re crouching. And then I see why they’re not struggling anymore.

  Before us is a wall of soldiers. They’re in black uniforms, so I know they’re soldiers. They raise their guns. I see them clearly. Suddenly too clearly. The tear gas matters not at all. I don’t know how I know with so many people in front of me. You’re nowhere in sight, and I know this is the moment we all die.

  Everyone ducks. They crouch and cover their heads, make their bodies smaller targets. We squeeze down to the ground. Beg. Everyone around me turns all at once, so completely at once that they look to be people I’ve never seen before coming from a different direction, and they run, and I have to turn and run too to keep ahead of them, even though I can’t, but those people, they overtake us anyway, and I keep looking back for you. Where are you? The explosions come then. At me. Through me. We’re all shrieking. Shrieking. Running and shrieking. But ahead of us are only more soldiers aiming at us.

  Doesn’t matter who is knocked down by whom. Everyone is trying to save herself, trampling and dodging, using each other as human shields. I see a man drag a woman behind him, pause only to look back and hold her between the soldiers and him. She pummels him, but he doesn’t let go. I see a woman shove aside another woman in her haste to get away. I run around bodies picking themselves up on the street, trip on someone’s arm, and I think I’ve lost you forever.

  And then there you are. I can’t believe my eyes, and I also can’t believe I ever doubted I’d see you again. You’re helping a man in a business suit who has a gash on his forehead get to his feet. He looks dazed. I run to you, zigzagging my way, ducking, and you ask the man if he can make it, and in reply the man nods and stumbles away. I pull on your arm, and you follow me, still looking in the direction of the man you helped, who is fine—I tell you he’s fine, we’ve got to go. I don’t know where, and then a door opens, and a man urges us inside what looks to be a pharmacy of sorts. We follow him down an aisle as a woman shuts the door behind us. There are other people in the stor
e, nursing cuts and other injuries. The woman who shut the door offers us bandages. You thank her, and then the man who had originally let us in motions for us to follow and opens another door for us toward the back. “Straight and out, through the second door, in the alley. A storeroom. Wait there until it’s quiet. Go well,” he says to us in Korean.

  The sounds of gunfire outside are muffled, and we keep going, following the man’s instructions. Across into an alley and then through another and into another building—and you stop and yank me back and tell me it’s okay to stop, that it really is okay. We’re safe. It’s okay. “Let’s wait here,” you say.

  I tell you I thought we were going to die, and the sobs come up from my throat, and we huddle on the floor of a room, a storage room, between crates of vegetables. You say that could never happen.

  “Making love” is a strange euphemism. It’s more like showing love. It’s like words can say only so much. For the rest, there are no words. I’ve recently finished my period, so thoughts of condoms don’t enter my mind, though I know there are other hazards besides pregnancy. We sit up against the door, half-dressed. I trace the scar on your lowest rib, the semicircle, the edge of half a quarter.

  “A burn when I was a kid,” you explain.

  “You were a reckless kid. In the womb with half a pinkie finger, out of the womb with burns.” I sigh.

  “Enough about me.” You raise my face to yours. “Thought that would be more awkward.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I pull back.

  “No, for me. It’s new to me.”

  “Haven’t you done this before?” I lean toward you.

  “It’s the truth, Yoona.”

  “Me too,” I confess. “You’re the first for me for everything.”

  You look at me for a long moment, and it is as if I’m seeing a much younger version of you, trusting and eager. And then you say, “Let’s do it again.” And the enthusiasm makes me believe you really never had sex before.

  There is a kind of drunkenness to love. Or illness, as some people have described it. We push and prod, cling and wrestle each other among radishes and onions.

  There’s an odd quality in that room. We could be in any past century. It reminds me of the first time I saw you at the airport. There was something about you that wasn’t of this time and yet was. Nothing pinned you to it. Your close-cropped hair wasn’t ancient or futuristic. It had more to do with your face. Or the look in your eyes that seemed to be contemplating something eternal.

  We fall asleep. And when we wake, it is dark outside. We dress in a hurry and go outside as if we can fool everyone into believing we were simply walking through that storage room. You pick thin outer layers of onions off my back, and I swipe at dirt on your sleeve. It’s astonishing how evidence of the political demonstration has vanished. The street is like every street we saw hours before the protest. Maybe a little dirtier, with newspapers and upturned crates along the curb. I flinch only once when a car horn sounds. Everyone is going about their business around us. We kiss as we walk and run into people on the sidewalk, and some girls giggle at us, and other people tell us to look where we are going, and I don’t want it to be night but the sun has gone down. You hail a taxi and put me in it. “I’ll find you,” you tell me. “As soon as I’m back, I’ll call you at Weston.”

  “I’m jealous you get to stay here,” I say.

  “Sophomores don’t need orientation week,” you say. “Freshmen have to suffer.” And then you kiss me one more time through the open window, and I push the door open, but you close it firmly again. (Talking about college when we’d just been through a violent street protest seemed out of place, and yet being American students in Seoul during this politically turbulent time did also. I believed our lives would continue, much as they had for other Americans our age.)

  45

  “You’re pregnant, Yoona?” Daiyu asks. I can’t meet her eyes.

  “Have his baby, for god’s sake,” Faye says to me. And then to Lloyd, she says, “She said it. She’ll have your baby. Let us out of here.” She starts sobbing.

  Lloyd grabs Faye’s arm and shakes it. IT’S NOT MY BABY, YOU DUMB FUCKING BITCH. IT’S JAESUNG’S. I’M SAVING IT FOR JAESUNG, AND WHEN HE’S FREED, HE’S GOING TO THANK ME FOR SAVING HIM, UNDERSTAND? YOUR LIFE IS WORTH NOTHING COMPARED TO HIS AND THIS BABY’S.

  I met him when I met you, and if I could not have met him, I could not have met you, so I don’t know if I would take it back. He’s going to make me take it back. All this is not worth having met you, been with you. How could this have happened to us? Yes, there’s a baby. That room after the violent street protest, in that room, when you and I made love among radishes and onions, I got pregnant. And I couldn’t do what people do in romance novels or movies. I’m sorry.

  “You’re mad at me, not her, Lloyd,” I tell him. “You’re right. I don’t want to have this baby, but I will do whatever you want. Let my friends go. I’m the one who shut you out. I was wrong. I’ll listen. I’ll help. Whatever you want.” I put myself between him and Faye. “I’ll do whatever you say, just let them go. Please, Lloyd.”

  46

  One night in my dorm room, two weeks after I’d seen you in Seoul, I called you at your parents’ house. It was the fourth time in the last two days I’d called and there had been no answer. I figured you’d be back in the States by now and were busy getting ready for college. It was late when I called this time, nearly eleven thirty, but your family lived in North Dakota, so I thought the time difference would make it early enough. Still, I was nervous. Why was I nervous? Part of me remembered the girl named Aecha. Had you left me for her?

  “Yes? Hello?” someone said.

  I told him I was looking for you, that I was a friend from the Korean tour, and my voice hesitated at the word “friend.” Inwardly I was fuming that you were making me embarrass myself this way. You should have called me by now. You should have. But I remembered my promise—no more breaking it off unless I meant it, really meant it, and I couldn’t. You knew I couldn’t.

  I had to ask him to repeat himself because his words didn’t make sense. The man on the other end of the telephone line said, “We appreciate your call. My wife and I, it’s difficult. We know Jaesung had many, many good friends.”

  “Is he there? Can I talk to him, please?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I thought he was already back. School started, didn’t it? Was there a delay?” I thought how I’d tell you how your father’s voice didn’t sound anything like yours, and I wondered if you’d sound like him when you were old. I couldn’t imagine you old.

  “You’ve caught us at a bad time. We just walked in from the airport. You’re asking about my son, Jaesung?”

  “Yes, is he there?”

  “I’m afraid you don’t understand. There was an accident.”

  “You mean he’s in the hospital?” I could picture you now. Of course, you had been in a minor accident and couldn’t reach me. “Is there a phone number at the hospital? Could you tell him I called?”

  There was a pause. I thought maybe we’d been disconnected. “Hello?” I said. “Hello? Hello?”

  Finally, I heard the sound of muffled voices. A low one and a higher one in tone.

  Another man came on the line. Sounded older somehow. A deeper voice. He spoke more slowly. “I’m sorry, I’m Jaesung’s uncle. There was a car accident on August twenty-first, sometime in the evening, not only a collision but a car fire, and Jaesung didn’t make it. We’re asking for a little privacy for the family. Friends of his can contribute to a scholarship fund at Lewiston High School and—”

  August 21 meant the day after the protest.

  I hung up as if the receiver had caught on fire.

  47

  Your face in the window of the taxi. I’ll see you soon, I promise. Those had been your words. You closed the door of the taxi. You said you’d find me. You closed the door with your hand on the open window frame of the car, and you said you’d f
ind me. We’re intertwined in that little room with radishes on the floor. You said you’d find me. Sophomores don’t need orientation week. Freshmen have to suffer. I’ll see you soon.

  48

  I remember stillness. Your uncle was wrong. It was as if he’d said I was dead, not you. His words cut my lifeline, and I fell through stillness, fell through space, rolled and rolled, and there was no ground to save me.

  49

  I sat up all night going over and over it again in my head. I checked and rechecked the phone number I had for you. I called directory assistance and asked them to verify the number I had. And then I called the number again, and the man at your house answered again. Not your uncle, your father. He was kind. He complied. He told me they were all in shock. He said you had many friends. I wanted to shout at him that I wasn’t just your friend. I wasn’t any friend. “If you want to know, there was no pain. They say it was instantaneous. The car hit them from the side.”

  “Them?”

  “Another boy was in the car with him. He was driving. Jaesung’s side was hit, and then the car caught on fire, but they say he was unconscious. He didn’t feel any pain.”

  “Who, who was it? In the car? Who was in the car? Was it Lloyd? Someone named Lloyd?”

  “Excuse me a moment.” I heard him say something to someone beside him. I heard someone sobbing in the background, noises like sobbing. I heard your father say with his hand over the receiver, “Time for another, darling, doctor said take two pills, good,” and then come back to me. Your father gave me the phone number of the other person in the car. “I need to go now. My wife needs me, but thank you for calling.” And then he hung up.

  Even as I dialed the number, I knew it would be Lloyd’s house. Lloyd answered the phone, static breaking up his voice.

  “Sorry, do you have a phone number for Jaesung?” I said to Lloyd. “He’s supposed to call me, but I haven’t heard from him, so I wondered if you had. And could you tell him to call me, I mean, when you talk to him?” I said, hearing myself scratch for answers.