Claire W. Zhang ~ On Next Train to Sinuiju I Dreamed of You

I @mentioned Yang in our WeChat group chat at eight AM my time and PM their time, telling her I dreamed of her being a North Korean spy. In my dream she was only revealed as being from North Korea, not nec­es­sar­i­ly a spy, but when it comes to North Koreans – we say they are all spies, includ­ing those young wait­ress­es who per­form dances for politi­cians and rich cus­tomers in Korean restau­rants on the bor­der. I wrote, Yang, could you have been a North Korean spy all these years and I just didn’t know about it until some ran­dom god sent me a mes­sage? Then I wrote, things final­ly made sense now because you ate an abnor­mal amount of kim­chi the time we went to that seafood BBQ. I chuck­led to myself and patient­ly wait­ed for everyone’s replies. I secret­ly believed the three of them had their own group chat since, unlike me, they all still lived in China and would only talk in our group chat when the top­ic con­cerned me. Not sure how I was sup­posed to feel about that.

Yang quick­ly replied, say­ing yeah, I’m a North Korean princess. Send $50K my way or I’ll let my dear supreme leader know that you ate your own snot in third grade.

I said I dreamed of you because I missed you.

Ew, Yang said.

I dou­bled down. I said there’s no shame in being North Korean. You guys are rich now. Last time I came back home, mod­ern build­ings lined the riv­er shore on their side. Oh, I’m sor­ry, your side.

Lu joined in. Girl, you joke, but I’m kin­da bit­ter when I look at them now. Remember how we waved at the North Korean fish­er­men from the fer­ry when we were chil­dren? They used to look at us like how we looked at Hong Kong in the 90s. Now they look at us like how we look at Hong Kong today – noth­ing special.

Fei @sked me, did you see that gigan­tic pink coin-shaped thing when you came back? They say it’s a lux­u­ry hotel or some­thing. Like, what the fuck.

I said, yeah. What the fuck.

~

You will grow up hear­ing three rumors if you come from where I’m from. Number one: the bor­der patrol once caught a North Korean man who tried to swim across the Yalu River. When they appre­hend­ed him from the algae-infest­ed water, the first thing he asked for was food. They put him in an inter­ro­ga­tion room and left him with a whole pot of steamed pork buns. When they checked back lat­er, the man was lying prone on the floor, with no breath. No heart­beat. All the buns were gone but one, half-eat­en in his hand. The doc­tor came and told every­one his stom­ach explod­ed with­in his body. After that, the bor­der patrol had a new rule: nev­er give a North Korean refugee more food than a kid’s meal. Fei told me this sto­ry when we were lit­tle. She said her uncle was a mem­ber of the bor­der patrol. I then told oth­er peo­ple includ­ing my par­ents. They said yes, they’d heard of this before. Their colleague’s uncle worked in bor­der patrol.

Number two: the female own­er of that Korean restau­rant you always order take­out from is a North Korean spy. This rumor would vary depend­ing on which neigh­bor­hood you live in. Sometimes they’d say the food at a cer­tain Korean restau­rant was not on a par with what it used to be because the pre­vi­ous own­er was secret­ly arrest­ed for spy­ing activ­i­ties, and the new own­er assigned by the gov­ern­ment was only there to deesca­late the impact. I was too young to order take­out from any restau­rant when I lived at home, but a friend who lat­er emi­grat­ed to America told me her English tutor who owned a café on the river­side was detained for snoop­ing on clas­si­fied mil­i­tary secrets. He’s Canadian, she said, he made the best cof­fee in the world because it was authen­tic North American cof­fee. I said why would a Canadian guy be inter­est­ed in China/North Korea-relat­ed secrets, like, they’re so neu­tral in every­thing. She said, are you fuck­ing stu­pid? What she said was, in fact, not a rumor. I saw the arti­cle years lat­er in the Washington Post. They said he was inno­cent. To this day I still can’t decide who to believe.

Number three: the North Koreans who study here all come from élite fam­i­lies. Older peo­ple said it was an hon­or and priv­i­lege for the North Koreans to send their chil­dren to China. Here, they would learn all the knowl­edge and skills they should need to become future lead­ers. Though, these élite chil­dren would all go back to their home coun­try in a mere cou­ple of years in case they became too “cor­rupt­ed” by the pop­u­lar cul­ture. This rumor rang half true because near­ly every young adult from where I’m from can tell you a sto­ry about that one North Korean kid they went to school with, and none of them had bad grades. “He bare­ly spoke.” They’d always start their sto­ry with this sen­tence. I have noth­ing to negate this obser­va­tion of North Korean kids, as I once had a crush on one who indeed bare­ly spoke. We were in dif­fer­ent class­es in high school but went to the same after-school oral English pro­gram taught by real Americans. He had fair skin, slen­der limbs, and the face of an Arctic fox in den­tal braces. He was qui­et but friend­ly, espe­cial­ly to our lit­tle sis gang that would make up our cur­rent day WeChat group. This was when our gang had five mem­bers. We asked him why he need­ed all this extra cred­it in English it’s not like he’d be able to use it. He just smiled. Oh no, Fei said, it means he’s going to use it and that’s scary. It’s scary if a North Korean needs to under­stand English. I said shut up Fei but agreed with her in heart. He, again, just smiled and turned his head away. The fol­low­ing Friday, Lili threw her­self off of the sixth floor of our high school build­ing. We were not invit­ed to her funer­al and my par­ents ordered me to go to school all the same. After school, I decid­ed that I would just sit on the high stairs fac­ing the entrance of the English tutor­ing cen­ter and not go inside until my par­ents come to pick me up. The set­ting sun made the cement­ed stairs glow like rose gold. I let my legs dan­gle from the edge of the stairs, merg­ing into the street view. Then I felt a tap on my left sneak­er. May I sit with you? A pale fox face look­ing up from the side­walk with his index fin­ger lift­ed next to my shoe. I nod­ded. He walked up the stairs and sat twen­ty inch­es to my right, let­ting his legs dan­gle like I did. He said if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. It wasn’t until that moment did I real­ize that I did very much want to talk about it, but we just sat in silence with those twen­ty inch­es between us. It also wasn’t until that moment did he look more like the pro­tag­o­nist of a Japanese romance dra­ma than a com­mu­nist heir. We sat there, exchang­ing not a word until the sun ful­ly set and the street lights came on, giv­ing the stairs a cool sil­ver shade but no longer warmth. He helped me up as I com­plained about my legs falling asleep. We said good­bye to each oth­er and it was the last time I saw him. If he reap­peared today and told me he was a North Korean prince, I think I might just send him all the $6,000 in my bank account in a heartbeat.

~

My mom called me at six, AM my time and PM her time, telling me my uncle got arrest­ed. She was pan­ick­ing a lit­tle but I pan­icked more because she knew how bad the sit­u­a­tion was, and I didn’t. I always tend to think worse of a sit­u­a­tion if it hap­pens far away from me. She said my uncle who worked in the rail­way sys­tem post­ed on his WeChat Moments that he wit­nessed Kim Jong Un’s train trip to China. The vis­it wasn’t exact­ly a secret but a sud­den deci­sion to avoid planned assas­si­na­tion, and a well-trained eye could deduct from my uncle’s post the exact train num­ber and sched­ule of the world’s most hat­ed man. I said what? Is he fuck­ing stu­pid? My mom said yeah, what are you gonna do about it. Your uncle must have real­ly want­ed those likes. Now she’s try­ing to pull some strings and see if she could bail him out. I hung up the phone, the sto­ry of that Canadian café own­er cross­ing my mind. I thought shit, shit, shit. In an instant, I remem­bered Yang was now part of the police force. I sent a mes­sage into the group chat, “Guys, guys, emer­gency! My uncle got arrest­ed for post­ing about Kim Jong Un. Do y’all have con­nec­tions that might help espe­cial­ly @Yang?”

I wait­ed for a while; no one replied. I entered, “@all.”

A long ten min­utes passed. Fei broke the silence. She said, “Are you sure it’s ok if we men­tion his name here? Group chats are mon­i­tored. Can you try with­draw­ing the message?”

Are you say­ing we might get arrest­ed for talk­ing about my uncle’s get­ting arrest­ed for talk­ing about that guy?” I said.

Fei replied, “I don’t think it will go that far, but you’re abroad and we’re not. Withdraw the mes­sage. We’ve all seen it. Let me call Yang.”

I sat up straight in my bed, my head full of ran­dom frag­ments of mem­o­ries: That time my nine­ty-year-old grand­ma thought the war had bro­ken out when the gut­ter pipe atop her roof fell apart and made a thun­der­ous sound. My dad asked her, “What war?” And that time I went through the U.S. cus­toms, the first thing the offi­cer asked was, “Have you been to North Korea?” I said course not, so he smiled and said, “Sorry I had to ask, see­ing the city you come from.” And and all those nights when the five of us skipped after-school pro­grams and sat on the lime­stone stairs cas­cad­ing into the erod­ing riv­er bank drink­ing beers. Leaning into each oth­er as if we were XOXO gos­sip girls on the gran­ite steps of the Met, we casu­al­ly killed the ants crawl­ing onto our thighs and squint­ed our eyes look­ing for evi­dence of any human activ­i­ties from across the dark water. We could see none.

The man sleep­ing next to me woke up and gen­tly pulled my elbow, “Is every­thing ok, babe?”

I put down my phone, turned my face towards him, and asked in the most gen­uine tone, “What kind of life do you think the North Koreans are living?”

He looked confused.

I said, “Yeah, I dun­no either.”

~

My mom called me again at six the next day. My uncle was final­ly released after 24 hours of deten­tion. Did Yang help in the process? She couldn’t be sure. None of the offi­cers would say much besides telling him not to ever do it again. Is he OK? Yes, he’s doing ok, still a lit­tle uncon­vinced of the need for his deten­tion. Don’t wor­ry. This page has been flipped over.

I sub­se­quent­ly called Yang. I told her I didn’t know if she helped in my uncle’s case but I appre­ci­at­ed it if she did. I added that I knew she prob­a­bly couldn’t talk much on the phone and I felt sil­ly for not know­ing ear­li­er. She was out­side eat­ing seafood BBQ with her cowork­ers. The sound of fresh-out-of-water clams siz­zling on the grill was in the back­ground. She said no prob­lem. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

I asked, “Which one? My uncle’s thing or us talk­ing about my uncle’s thing?”

She laughed, “Are you fuck­ing stupid?”

I laughed, too. I still didn’t under­stand which one it was. Maybe nei­ther was a big deal. Maybe both were big deals and she was just being cordial.

We laughed for a while, then I said, “You looked so sad in my dream. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that sad. Your swiveled face. So much des­per­a­tion. You told me it was you who pushed her off the school build­ing and that you had no choice because she found out you were in fact North Korean. My heart felt bad for you there, tru­ly, like, did you have to swim across the river?”

She took a sigh. I could hear emp­ty shells clank as they were dis­posed into the bas­ket by her cowork­ers. I missed those yel­low shells. Just as I was about to ask her whether she ate a lot of kim­chi this time, she said, “I miss her, too. Fuck you. I miss her, too.”

~

Claire W. Zhang is a writer cur­rent­ly resid­ing in Long Island, NY. She writes long short sto­ries and short short sto­ries with the goal of con­fus­ing or pro­vok­ing her read­ers. Born and raised in China, she had very lit­tle idea of what writ­ing cre­ative­ly in a sec­ond lan­guage entailed until quit­ting her career in busi­ness for which she was trained for ten years, hold­ing a BS, an MS, an MBA, in finance, project man­age­ment, and oth­er relat­ed shits. She recent­ly earned an MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute, which she swore would be her last degree.