Stars Between the Sun and Moon by Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland

right.”
    â€œShe has a son,” I heard my father say. “About Sunhwa’s age.”
    â€œWho could it be?” I wondered, my mind going over all the children I saw at noodle night.
    â€œI hope the son and his father have told the Boweebu that they do not support the woman,” another man said.
    Everyone nodded again.
    That night, I could not sleep. I listened to the crickets rubbing their legs together, my eyes wide open as I stared into the dark. My head hurt from the way my mind kept churning over all my fears: fears that someone who lived close to us was a traitor.
    The night before I started school, my mother washed my hair and body with laundry soap. I cleaned the dirt from underneath my nails with the same wooden stick I used to pick lice.
    The following morning, I woke before the others did and tiptoed over to the wall, where my father had nailed a peg for my clothes. I felt grown up. The top pegs held my mother and father’s clothes, the bottom peg mine, including my school uniform. I ran to the outhouse and dressed after washing my hands. I couldn’t eat my rice that morning, though, because my stomach was queasy from nerves. As I waited for my mother to finish eating, I squished my feet into my new black leather shoes, tossed my backpack over my shoulder and waited for her outside.
    When my mother and I arrived at the school, we were instructed to stay in the yard with the other mothers and daughters. I gripped my mother’s hand as we stood underneath a tree. There were four Grade 1 classes, two all-boys’ classes and two all-girls’ classes, my mother explained. As we waited for the school official to tell me where to go, I spied on the people around us. Some of the mothers wore navy skirts and high-heeled black shoes and had their hair in tidy buns. These women looked clean beside my mother. Their daughters, whom my mother said would also be in Grade 1, were twice as tall as I was. The fathers and mothers of those girls must hold important jobs in the Party, I thought, for some girls had bellies that looked like they might explode. I squeezed my mother’s hand tighter and tried to duck in behind her. “If I get into a fight with one of these girls,” I thought to myself, “I will surely lose.”
    I started to tremble as my mother released my hand. My name had been called, and a school official was escorting me to the line for my class. I closed my eyes tight and made a wish that I would end up with the girls who were my height and skinny. In the end, that was what happened. The larger girls were in the other class.
    The school official had us walk single file to our new classroom, then sit on the floor cross-legged, facing the photograph of Kim Il-sung on the wall. After the bell rang three times, our teacher arrived. We called her Sunsangim , an honorific title indicating a person with great power. Once she had introduced herself, she proceeded to guide us in what would become a morning ritual: a dedication to our great father and eternal president.
    â€œThe beloved father is watching over you,” Sunsangim told us. “So sit upright and behave properly.”
    She then recited a story from Kim Il-sung’s childhood: “Once our great father and eternal president’s straw shoes were falling apart, and his mother gave him money she had saved from sewing for new shoes. She told him to buy the best rubber shoes at the market. But instead, he bought new shoes for his mother.”
    â€œOhhh,” I hummed silently. “He is such a good man.”
    â€œWe must try to be like him,” Sunsangim concluded.
    â€œOnce our great father and eternal president’s mother fell ill,” Sunsangim told us another day. “She needed a special fruit from a distant mountain. Only that fruit, a prune, would cure her. Kim Il-sung, just a young boy at that time, went in search of the fruit. He walked for days with no water or food. On