A Small Revolution Read online

  “Yoona, they’re wrong.”

  “He was supposed to call me. I think we still have a bad connection, what did you say?” But I didn’t really want to know.

  His voice suddenly became louder. “Don’t believe them.”

  “No, I just thought he had trouble reaching me, and if you had a number for him—”

  “Yoona, he’s not dead. I’ve been trying to figure it out—there must have been a clerical error of some sort. There was an accident, but it wasn’t Jaesung who died in it.”

  “Oh.” Relief washed over me. My feet felt to be on solid ground again. Of course there was an explanation. And the mistake would be cleared up. So why hadn’t you called me? I told Lloyd about the man I’d spoken to. So that was the reason he thought you were dead. Mistaken identity. Korea was busy and confusing, and it was easy to make a mistake like this.

  “Do they know? I can call them right now and ask them about it. They just accepted it, but if they knew the truth . . . ,” I offered.

  “If I could have stayed longer, I could have shown them.”

  “His parents will believe you.”

  “He must be part of something—something big. There was secret service at the meeting we went to, I could tell. They had guns. They could be listening in right now.”

  “What would they want with Jaesung?”

  He was talking rapidly now. “Just promise me that you’ll go to your classes and do everything you know he’d want you to do. Promise me. Life as usual. Don’t let on that you believe anything other than the official story. Okay? Yoona? His life might be in danger, or we’ll be in danger. I’ve got to go. He’s part of some revolution. I saw it, at the meeting.”

  “Lloyd—”

  “Promise me, as far as you know, the official story is he died, okay? Don’t let on that you know any different. But there’s more, and I’m going to find out. Trust me. Do you trust me?”

  I didn’t recognize this person who claimed to be Lloyd. His voice sounded like Lloyd’s voice, but there was something else too. His voice went flat a few times, as if he wasn’t completely there. “Were you in the car with him?”

  “I can’t get into it now. They could be listening.”

  “Who’s listening?”

  “Remember the official story,” he repeated.

  I told him I would wait.

  “Good. If I need your help, will you help me?”

  “If it wasn’t him in the car, then where is he?”

  “We were on our way to a meeting—Jaesung said it was important. Things were going to change because of it, everyone was nervous. So you can’t say anything to anyone, promise me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Okay, I’ll be in touch.” And then he hung up.

  I didn’t sleep that night, but in the morning I went to my classes as Lloyd had said to do. I was numb. But I knew what I’d heard. Lloyd had said you were alive. I held on to that. I didn’t feel as if you were gone. I didn’t feel a vacuum in my heart like I knew I would if you were dead. Your father’s and your uncle’s words—those felt like lies to me. By the way, I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t know I was pregnant. I thought the weepiness I felt was because of you, the pitch and roll of the bed when I was lying in it before I closed my eyes—all that, I thought, was because of you.

  50

  “Let go of me,” Faye shouts at Lloyd.

  He holds her one second longer as if to show he can and then throws her away from him. “You’re next after that one.” He points to Heather.

  “A baby, shit, no wonder,” Heather says and covers her face with her bound hands.

  “No, Lloyd, you can’t. If you hurt them, they’ll never let us out of here,” I plead.

  I DON’T CARE IF ALL OF US DIE.

  “Yes, you do. How are we going to raise this baby, how are you going to save Jaesung and raise this baby if we die in this room? Come on, Lloyd.” I have to convince him.

  “You’re really pregnant, Yoona?” Daiyu repeats. I still can’t look at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The phone rings, and Lloyd stands. The shotgun falls by his feet. He takes the handgun out of his pocket and begins hitting his forehead with its grip. We wait for him to answer the phone, but he continues hitting himself. Blood appears on his forehead. Will he knock himself out?

  51

  “Look under the surface, and there’s tons more to Lloyd,” you had said. “Lloyd knows everything there is to know about Korean history, the history of every country. He’s read everything. He’s going to be someone important someday. Watch.”

  That second week in September, as much as I tried to concentrate on my classes, I couldn’t stop myself from looking up Korean newspapers in the library, looking up databases for news about Seoul, looking for anything that might tell me about car accidents and political problems, anything at all that might be a clue. But there was nothing. I couldn’t get an international line from my phone to ask my aunt about any accidents the day of my flight like the one Lloyd had described. I asked my mother to ask her. And then I called Lloyd again and then hung up after it rang ten times. I reminded myself of your trust in Lloyd. He said you were alive. You had to be alive.

  Sometimes I ran into Serena Im, usually around four in the afternoon, when my eyes hurt from looking at the screens and there was something in me that would knock all the machines to the floor if I could, a fear and a restlessness I had to hold in check. You had to be alive. Lloyd said so.

  I first met Serena in the stairwell of the student union. I was lost in between the ground floor and first floor. She was looking for a practice room, her cello in a case on her back. I didn’t know then that she was the Serena Im, musical prodigy, hiding out at Weston College for a year rather than going on a concert tour. She saw a photo of you with me standing at the DMZ fall out of my art history book. She picked it up, held it to her nose. “Bet he smells good,” she said. Serena made odd comments, that was true. But she was right. You smelled better than good; you smelled like fresh-cut grass and the sweet grape juice poured into ice cube trays in summer. And in the room with the radishes on the floor where we had sex, you smelled like garlic and cinnamon.

  Serena told me things about her parents, who sounded like my parents except her father was a famous violinist, and she said she’d told him to treat her mother better or she wouldn’t play cello ever again. “He listened to me for the first time. That’s why I’m here,” she said. “There’s a concert in Seoul next year that he wants me to play in with him, and I’ve refused. It’s his big moment to show me off, all his hard work, but I’ve told him if there’s even a single raised voice at my mother, then it’s over. And my brother is my spy at home. He knows he won’t get away with it.”

  Serena and I talked about sex during one of our coffees at the student union. She said, “I met this guy the other day in my music theory class who knows how to have a good time.” Leaves fell outside the window like giant snowflakes, big maple leaves, taking their time falling to the ground. It was later than our usual time to meet. I’d opened my book and was reading a section for class while I waited when she appeared. Sunglasses off. Her cheeks flushed.

  “Do you love him?”

  “Why’s that necessary?” She scoffed. “I’m here to learn about the world outside music. That’s the goal. I told my parents I want to know what I’m going to miss.”

  “I thought it was to help your mother?”

  “Both. I didn’t go to sleepovers or birthday parties, Yoona. I’m seventeen, almost eighteen years old, and I’ve never gone to a party.”

  52

  “Lloyd, the phone.” We’re all calling to him, louder and louder, when he suddenly seems to break out of his trance and answers it.

  “Everything all right in there?” Sax’s voice sounds tinny in the room, but we can make out every word.

  WHERE’S OUR CAR?

  “It’s c
oming. Look, I know you’ve kept your promise, the girls are safe, but the president’s security detail, they’re nervous. What is it you want to talk to the president about exactly?”

  I DON’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS. I TOLD YOU: JAESUNG KIM, KIDNAPPED AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST OUTSIDE SEOUL IN A CAR FIRE. ASK THE KCIA ABOUT IT. THEY KNOW ABOUT IT.

  “That’s a serious allegation. A diplomatic solution is required, Lloyd.”

  MY BEST FRIEND IS BEING TORTURED IN NORTH KOREA. AN AMERICAN IS BEING TORTURED IN NORTH KOREA. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? AND EVERYONE IN SOUTH KOREA AND THE UNITED STATES KNOWS ABOUT IT. HE COULD DIE AT ANY TIME. HE COULD BE DYING THIS VERY MINUTE.

  “Stop it.” My words tumble out before I can stop myself. I can’t stand to hear him talk that way.

  “You’re saying an American citizen was abducted,” Sax says.

  YOU’RE A PART OF THE CONSPIRACY, AREN’T YOU? SAX? IS THAT YOUR REAL NAME?

  “Look, we’ll find your friend, I promise. Let the girls go, and I’ll work with you, I promise.”

  I’M NOT GIVING YOU THE ONLY PIECE OF EVIDENCE I HAVE.

  “Lloyd, let me see what you have,” I say, my heart beating loudly in my ears. Could you be alive?

  I DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE IT, BUT I SAW IT. I KNOW WHAT I SAW.

  “You don’t?” My heart sinks. It’s just a delusion in Lloyd’s head.

  Sax is speaking. “Are you still there, Lloyd? Listen, I believe you, Lloyd, but if you can send one of the people in the room out right now, that would go a long way to convince the president’s security of your intentions. If you would let at least one girl go right now. What do you say? We’ll keep working on releasing your friend in South Korea.”

  NORTH KOREA. DAMN IT. THAT’S WHY I NEED THE PRESIDENT.

  “Right, North Korea. Let one of your friends in the room go so I can show them you mean well. How about it, Lloyd?”

  NO ONE HERE IS MY FRIEND.

  There’s such despair in his voice that I know he means to end his own life. “I’m your friend, Lloyd,” I tell him.

  He stiffens.

  “Lloyd? You still with me?” Sax continues.

  GIVE ME A MINUTE. Lloyd looks as if he’s counting. His mouth moves: one, two, three, four.

  “Just let her walk out of there, I won’t send any men to escort her, just let her walk out to us, and we’ll get the plane in the air. A private plane for you. That’s something I can arrange. And then we’ll get you to the White House and go from there. Come on, what do you say?”

  HOW DO I KNOW YOU WON’T HAVE A SNIPER SHOOT ME WHEN I WALK OUT?

  “Look, it’s my job to get you what you want. All of us want this situation resolved. You get what you want. We get what we want. No one gets hurt. Deal?”

  Lloyd looks at me. THE BABY COULD HAVE BROUGHT US TOGETHER, YOONA. YOU COULD HAVE INCLUDED ME. I WOULD HAVE FOUGHT FOR YOU.

  “What did you say, Lloyd?” Sax’s voice.

  “I couldn’t. I didn’t know for sure,” I tell him.

  THAT’S BULLSHIT.

  “Oh, Yoona,” Daiyu says, and I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with Lloyd or understanding that I’ve said the wrong thing to him because his face reddens.

  “Jaesung would want you to raise this baby,” I add, because the gun is clenched in his fist. I’m sorry, but I had to say it. Does it matter? Lies will be told in a hundred ways in this room. They already have been.

  “Did you say someone is pregnant?” Sax’s voice.

  Lloyd turns his attention to the phone again and shouts, YOU’RE NOT GETTING THAT ONE.

  “That’s fine,” Sax urges. “It just changes things—if she’s really pregnant, we can tell the president. He’ll want to know. It’s more than four now—it’s five, right, Lloyd? There’s a fetus. You with me?”

  IT’S FIVE. TELL HIM FIVE.

  53

  My mother explained it to me, as an apology, when my sister wasn’t home, that my mother had married a man before our father who lived in her neighborhood in Seoul. I don’t know why she thought she had to apologize, but she called it an apology. “I’m sorry, I want to say I’m sorry,” she said. “This man, who was very kind, he died right after we were married. There was a terrible sickness that winter, we all got sick, but he didn’t recover. I met your father during this time. And we got married sooner than was customary, because he was leaving for the United States. He was never sure about me. That kind of uncertainty can wear someone down. He felt he was second best. And we were too young. I couldn’t work with a baby, and I had no family here. If we’d had a little time before the baby came . . .”

  “That baby was Willa?”

  “No, I lost that baby in the middle of the pregnancy. We were relieved, both of us. But I think your father thought it was his fault. We couldn’t eat as well as we should have. I was tired all the time. People can romanticize babies all they want, but babies take a lot of time and money. I was glad Willa didn’t come for another two years. But your father, he can never do enough to deserve us. I don’t think he ever forgave himself.”

  I wasn’t convinced my father’s pain over some unborn child was at the heart of his rage. But I understood her message. I helped her apply foundation around her bruised eye and decided I’d never have a baby. There was too much pain in the world already. Don’t think I didn’t imagine for a second what we could have had, you and me. But I couldn’t dwell on it. You would never come back to me. And the pregnancy wasn’t real except as a ticking time bomb, a group of cells that were multiplying over and over like a tumor in my body that I had to get rid of as soon as possible. I felt it at night, clawing its way, grabbing at everything around it and taking over my body.

  54

  It was Heather who told us about the apartheid protests. I was in the dining hall on Monday when Heather handed me a red flyer. “There’s a meeting tonight,” she said. I read: “Divest Now! Your Tuition Supports Apartheid in South Africa. Arts Quad, 8 PM. Be There!!!”

  Heather and Daiyu were eager to go. Faye was curious. I hesitated at first, but I had no reason not to join them. I couldn’t go back to my room alone. Panic stretched through me. It had started with the phone call to your house, and though it had loosened up after my conversation with Lloyd, since Lloyd hadn’t arrived, it had become a taut wire in my chest that threatened to cut me in half.

  I stood with my friends, and we cheered that night when a woman with a bullhorn stood on the steps leading to Theodore Weston’s larger-than-life-size statue. I looked at the sky full of stars above us. There was talk about making the administration listen, and I listened. I heard them say that South Africa’s racist policy was being supported by money from our school, our tuition, and that people of color were being denied basic human rights. Someone set off firecrackers, and I hit the ground so fast I bruised my elbows and knees. I heard Heather and Faye at my side asking if I was okay, but I couldn’t get up just yet. Finally, Heather moved my arms away and looked at my face, and I realized how worried she was. I said I was fine, couldn’t explain it, just startled. I saw them exchange looks.

  They planned to build a living monument, a replica of the conditions people of color in South Africa had to live in. We were handed hammers and a bag of nails to build a house in a shantytown. The boy on the podium said we’d make a statement right here on our campus, since Weston College was investing in companies that did business with South Africa and therefore supporting the South African government.

  “What if they arrest us?” I asked.

  Heather shrugged. “We’re not getting arrested right now,” she said. “We’re in a public space. No big deal.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” Faye said. “But my dad’s a lawyer. He says they can’t arrest all of us.”

  “I’ve got to look something up in the library, and then I’ll come back,” I told them.

  “That’s fine, leave us to do all the work,” Heather joked.

  I
ended up meeting Serena for coffee. She was eager to share her exploits and ask me questions about love. I felt sorry for her that she didn’t know when she was looking for it, because that’s what I sensed behind her questions. She wanted love before she gave her life over to music. They didn’t have to be mutually exclusive, did they? But she seemed to believe it could only be so. It had been three days since I’d spoken to Lloyd about you. Each night I picked up the phone, dialed his number, and hung up.

  55

  Faye had a boyfriend who was from Turkey. He was a philosophy major who talked about kismet. You would have called it unmyeong: fate. I wondered how someone like you, who believed in fighting for your rights, could believe in something as passive as fate, as curses that couldn’t be broken. How did you know?

  56

  Heather’s face is still partially bloody from the first bullet that Lloyd fired in the room an hour ago. Only an hour, but it feels as if it’s already been the entire day. Next is Daiyu, whose hair is still tangled, whose face has dried mud on it still, streaked with dirt and tears, and she’s slumped forward—how much of the night was she held by crazy Lloyd? And then Faye, who sits with her back straight, but I can see the pinched expression in her cheeks, and I know she’s scared for her life.

  YOU DON’T THINK I’M SERIOUS. I’LL SHOW YOU SERIOUS.

  I hold my breath.

  Sax’s voice comes through the receiver. “You’re holding girls hostage in a college dorm with weapons, Lloyd. We’re taking you seriously. Work with me here.”

  FUCK. CALL ME IN TWO MINUTES.

  Lloyd sets the handset on the receiver. More gently than he’s ever handled anything, and it scares me more than the violence.