I don’t have any money.” I knew how valuable it was, was sure she’d miss even one.
“Just take it,” he said.
I reached out my hand, my fingers long, stretching, daring, and I didn’t care who his mother was or where she got the ingredients from or whether this was going to get me into trouble or not. I just saw food, and I just wanted to eat.
Hunger does strange things to a person, and I had been hungry for a long time.
I held the bun in my fingers, turned away from Sook and lifted it to my mouth and nose, closed my eyes and smelt it, stretched out my tongue and touched the crust, gently. My mouth watered and slowly, slowly I sank my teeth into it.
It was so good.
“I have to go,” I heard him say. “My mother will be expecting me.”
I turned to him, not chewing, just holding the piece of bun in my mouth, enjoying it for as long as possible.
“I live up there.” He pointed to the biggest house in the village, with far more rooms than the two we had. I knew the house: it used to have an orchard in the back before the village kids destroyed it looking for apples, stripping off the fruit and the leaves and the bark and everything. It had been empty since the last family were taken away for treachery. “We moved in yesterday,” he said.
He paused a second and I watched him look left and right and back to me. “Meet me sometime,” he whispered.
My eyes shot to him.
“After the sun’s gone down.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I simply stared at him, not believing what he’d said. But I caught movement behind him and I saw her, the woman from earlier. She was marching towards us, her black hair scraped away from her face, her hooded eyes piercing.
I didn’t stop to reply, or wait to see who she was, or what she wanted. Instead I muttered an apology, spun round and walked away.
I headed home thinking of my family: my mother and father who would be going to work, both thin and tired, hardworking despite the hunger in their bellies that was never sated. I thought of my grandparents: at home all day, too old, too weak to work, their skin stretched like old leather across their bones, their eyes hollow with sadness and disappointment, my grandfather’s stomach growling with hunger like a beast inside slowly dying.
I should share this bun with them, I thought, staring at it in my hand. But how can I explain where it came from? What will they think?
I took a guilty bite, and another, and before I even realised, there was too little for me to take home. So I finished it, and it was wonderful: the anticipation as I lifted it to my mouth, my senses screaming as I sank my teeth into it, that wonderful thick feeling as it slid down my throat. I missed proper food so much, couldn’t remember what a full stomach felt like, or what it was like to not be hungry.
When I neared the house I could hear voices, low and mumbling, lifting and dropping again, and I slowed my pace, trying to make out what they were saying as they spoke over each other. I stepped closer, resting my hand on the door. The wood creaked.
The voices stopped, and I stood for a moment, waiting for someone to speak again. But nothing came. I took a breath, steadied my face and stepped into the house.
The tension was palpable; my mother standing next to a cupboard, pushing the drawer shut as she watched me, my father at the fireplace, my grandparents seated at the table. I felt their eyes, all of them, upon me, all with the question behind them – What did she hear? But the guilt I was trying to hide was from eating the bun all by myself, not from overhearing their conversation. Yet I knew for the first time, as I stood watching them, that something, some secret, was being shared in my house, only it was not being shared with me.
It scared me.
“I’ve met somebody new in the village,” I said, hoping for the tension to ease. “He lives up in the big house.” I looked around, expecting curious glances and inquisitive faces, but instead saw my father fidget, heard my grandfather’s intake of breath, saw their eyes shoot to each other, and my mother’s almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“Stay away from him,” hissed my grandmother, her eyes narrowing at me as if they could see the smile he’d brought to my face earlier. “We don’t have any business with them. Remember your place, Yoora.”
Uncomfortable, I looked away, and saw my grandfather’s eyes drop. “His mother’s the new Inminbanjang,” he whispered.
“What?” I asked, staring at him.
But my mother was marching towards him, wagging her finger in his face. “No,” she whispered. “She doesn’t need to know. She’s only fifteen.”
“Know what?” I whispered back.
Over her shoulder my grandfather was shaking his head, and I could hear his mutterings. “Fifteen. She’s nearly a woman. She leaves school this year. She’s old enough to know the truth, and to be trusted. She should know.” Calmly he stood up, tucking the chair under the table and striding from the house. Nobody stopped him. Nobody said a word.
But even among all this confusion, the guilt I felt over the bun didn’t go away. At least not until that evening, when stomach-ache hit me, my body not used to the richness I’d given it, and I passed my share of thin noodle soup to my grandparents. My guilt then, to some degree, was assuaged.
I lay on my bed mat on that long winter night, watching the flames of the fire die, the embers fade and turn to black, and I felt the gradual leaking of cold from around the window frame and under the bottom of the door, felt it like ice forming across my face and cracking my lips, and I thought of Sook. I thought about meeting him, being with him, his face, his smile, his company.
He had given me a spark of light in my life of dark.
Yet his mother was the new Inminbanjang, and I did know what that meant, even though I had pretended not to, had suspected it as soon as Sook told me where he lived. She was the new head of our local neighbourhood group – a spy for our government.
Every few weeks she would have to report to an agent from the Ministry of Public Security. Inform on people who hadn’t worked hard enough, or had said something against our Dear Leader, or failed to wear the badge with His face on over their hearts, or let dust gather on His picture. An endless list.
Other people would work for her too, all reporting back to her, even if only gossip; they had to say something. Some of those reported would be sent to re-education lessons, some to prison, some executed in the fields. I had never known anyone accused to then be found innocent.
It hung over us as we tried to live, shaping everything said and everything done, not because of guilt – we had none, we were good citizens, working hard, doing our duty – but because of the power these people held. Even the most patriotic, the most innocent and best behaved and hardest working could be accused and found guilty of anything, if someone wanted it enough.
“Is anyone incorruptible?” my grandfather used to say to me as a warning. “If they’re hungry enough, or sad enough? Or need money to try to buy medicine?”
Or if they want to keep someone away from their son? I wondered.
