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

consumed with your anger, too,” she continued. “You were not thinking clearly. You allowed your emotions to cloud the purpose of the work you needed to achieve.”
    I gasped at her words.
    â€œI see much even when I am not looking,” she said, answering my unspoken question. “You have failed our great father today.”
    I glanced at the girl with the round face, my face steaming again in anger. Her father, I had heard, was a factory supervisor, a loyal and devoted Party member. “I will always be an outsider,” I thought to myself, my heart heavy. I wanted to cry beneath the classroom portrait of Kim Il-sung, begging him for his forgiveness.

Chapter Seven
    During the summer holidays between my first and second year of school, which stretched across the eighth month, my mother decided to take my sister, my brother and me to her parents’ house in Hoeryong. Umma was pregnant again, the baby set to come near the end of the twelfth month. Unlike in her other pregnancies, Umma was tired all the time and could keep little food down. She vomited after nearly every meal. The only thing that agreed with her was corn rice, and only if she ate it right before bed.
    Whenever my siblings and I had a fever or a winter cough that stayed in our chests for weeks, my mother would worry that she had caused it. She had not been given the seaweed soup or white rice after our births that would make her breast milk full of nutrients and vitamins. “Your father and I couldn’t afford these things from the black market,” she told us. Because she believed her own milk was deficient, she had weaned us early, feeding us goat’s milk instead. None of us were truly healthy, and my mother said we hadn’t had the right start in life. Anything bad that befell us was because of her, she believed. She was not a good mother.
    That summer, my mother was worried that the child inside her would not live. That was the reason we were going to her umma and abuji’s farm, she told us. They had so much food, and my mother would have help with us so that she could rest.
    The last time we had visited Hoeryong was in the first month of that year. My abuji had come too, for a few days’ holiday. It had been very cold and we needed to bundle up. All that showed above my scarf were my tiny black eyes when my father, my sister and I tried tobogganing. We abandoned our outdoor fun to head inside, but it was not much warmer there, even by the stove. My grandfather pulled the squashes he had harvested in the fall out of storage. My sister and I cut them open and then into slices, which my halmuni baked. Once we had eaten the flesh of the squash and the seeds and had licked our fingers clean, we all felt warm inside. That night, the full moon had shone across the virgin snow, causing the shadows to dance.
    From our earlier visits, I knew that in springtime Hoeryong was covered in white apricot blossoms. The air would be full with their powdery scent, and their fuzz floating in the air. To me, Hoeryong was a city of lights, with crimson-lipstick smiles on women with perfect teeth and men with rosy cheeks who bowed ever so slightly when they passed my parents on the street.
    â€œThis is the hometown of the tireless eternal fighter and revolutionary comrade, the wife of Kim Il-sung,” a female voice announced as we disembarked at the main station. “Welcome to Hoeryong.”
    I was tired, since we had left home in the middle of the night. I could barely move my legs, let alone carry my bottari, which contained a few changes of underwear and some rice. We could not afford to hire a car, so we walked to my grandparents’ farm. The cement houses in the main city and the sandy-dirt road were a blur. My legs dragged, my head slipping to one side as my eyes closed.
    But as soon as the road widened and I saw the swallows dipping in and out under the apricot trees, I woke up. I knew we were close to our