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

the brink of starvation, he found the fruit, and he saved his mother.”
    Now that I was in my first year of school, I vowed to dress nicely, to write neatly, to do well in my studies, to be thoughtful to others and, when someone was in trouble, to help them. I wanted to possess all of the virtues of Kim Il-sung. “I want to be like him,” I told my umma that night.
    â€œI want to be just like our great father,” I told the stars as I stared out the window.
    From my first school day on, I said, “Thank you, dear father,” whenever I passed in front of the eternal president’s portrait in our home. I said, “Thank you, dear father,” before every meal. “Thank you, dear father,” I recited after every good mark I received in math or Korean lessons. “Thank you, dear father,” I muttered every night before hopping under the duvet and nestling my head next to Sunyoung’s.
    In the mornings, when our class leader went to the front to lead us in the oath of allegiance to our eternal president, I was determined to stand straighter than anyone. My voice, I vowed, would carry the most dedication. “I promise to study hard, to model harmonious group behaviour and to pay allegiance always to our beloved father. I swear I will,” I recited.
    In the song that followed, I opened my mouth wide, articulating everything with perfect pitch: “Our leader, standing atop Goonhaham Rock, takes out from his sheath a general’s sword. We have victory over our enemies! He takes out the sword, and at the sound of the sword, unleashed from the sheath, the Japanese tremble.”
    The autumn days turned crisp, and the biting winds snapped at my cheeks. I read the textbooks on Kim Il-sung’s childhood in the dim light of our house until my eyes closed and my head toppled forward onto the pages.
    Every night before bed, I took a cloth and dusted the frame around the portrait of Kim Il-sung, as Sunyoung looked on. When I was done, we would both bow and say: “Thank you, father.”
    Near the end of my first year, Sunsangim divided us into groups of four and had us line up shortest to tallest. I was a year older than the other students, because I had been started late, but I was still one of the tiniest, so I was very upset when the teacher placed me at the front of one of the lines. The child behind me, a short wide girl with a round face, stuck her tongue out at me when Sunsangim wasn’t looking. “We’re shorter than you,” she whispered into my ear, pointing to herself and the two other girls. “But you have to go first.”
    The other girls pointed at me and stuck their tongues out, too. Anger bubbled up from deep inside me. I felt like hitting the girl behind me.
    As Sunsangim explained the activity, my anger subsided. We were to run to the wall on the far side of the room and then back.
    â€œ Yoy, ddang —ready, go,” the teacher said. I leapt forward, running with my head high, my arms pumping, my legs the longest gait I could stretch them into.
    â€œI am going to come first and show those girls that being of service to our eternal president is the only way to live,” I vowed, as I kept my eyes focused on the chalkboard on the other side of the room.
    Suddenly, I crashed into a cement chair placed to divide the two sides of the room. The blow sent me backwards with such force the air was knocked out of me. I landed on my back with a thud and started choking.
    A few of the girls stopped running, but the teacher waved for them to finish. Sunsangim came to my side and told the teaching assistant to fetch my mother, who was in the kindergarten a few classrooms over.
    As my breathing returned to normal, the teacher lectured me. “You were not looking. You were too focused on the goal you would achieve. The chair was placed there to see who would falter.”
    I wanted to apologize, but all I could do was stutter.
    â€œYou were