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So by the time Grandmother was stiff in the ground, Papa couldn’t fish no more with his arm being broke, Mama nearly burnt the house down twice, and even though I got over my chills and fever, I couldn’t never quite shake the feeling of being kinda sick to my stomach. ’Course, that coulda been on account of the famine that’d started as much as on me being curst, but after everything that happened to us, you can’t tell me it weren’t because of that wicked old mudang and her hex.
With Papa’s arm all busted up and his net broke too, we didn’t get no fish after that, not to eat or to sell neither. Folks started talking more and more about the drought. It was the middle of summer, but hardly nothing growed. When me and Min-Jung took walks to look for roots or whatnot, we got along better than ever on account of me suffering from hunger-weakness so I couldn’t pick on her, and her being too hungry and grumpy to worry about pounding me. We still cuddled at night too, her and me and Mr. Mittens.
Mama started to do whatever she could think of to bring good luck back to the family. I didn’t see the witch no more, but Mama went out more than once with herbs or other stuff and nonsense to trade the old woman in exchange for an amulet or two. ’Course I never told Mama about me being the cause of the curse to start with, and as far as I know there weren’t no more talk about the ghost, but I was so tired all the time from the hunger-weakness, I don’t think I woulda cared if that baby crawled up and sat on my lap, just as long as it didn’t try to touch whatever food we scrounged, and I started missing the days when all we had was plain old fish.
Without him being able to go to work and such, Papa took to getting even more serious-like, and he was always tired. If I were to tell anyone, I woulda let Papa know it was my fault the net tore and he got his arm broke. I wouldn’t be scared of him knowing because he wasn’t one to get mad, but I couldn’t never bring myself to tell him what really happened on account of how sad I figured it’d make him.
So anyway, Papa and Mama and the other adults in our village, they were all talking about the rains and how we’d all take to starving soon if we didn’t get some, and I remember wondering how a boy could starve any more than I was already doing, which just goes to show we hadn’t got to near the worst of the famine yet in those days.
And Mama, she came home every other day with new tricks she said were sure to get the rains to come or the crops to grow or Papa’s arm to heal so he could go back to his fishing, ’cause plain old fish cooked without any herbs at all is still better than a bowl full of watery mush, especially when it’s nearly all water and hardly any mush.
Me and Min-Jung were getting along, like I already mentioned, so sometimes we got to talking about things. Mama never said nothing about Grandmother, not after the funeral, and Papa ’course never really talked at all, but sometimes on our walks hunting for food, I’d ask Min-Jung about Grandmother, and sometimes at night I talked to Mr. Mittens and told him about me missing her, and I knowed he did too, on account of Grandmother being the one to make him in the first place and whatnot.
There’s a hard part about having your grandmother die when you think it’s ’least partly your fault. You don’t feel quite right about acting sad, since if you didn’t want her to die, why’d you go and let yourself get curst in the first place? I still wonder about that dream, too, Teacher, ’cause what Mama said is that when you dream of someone dying, it’s supposed to be good luck, so what went wrong with me back in the old days? Did I mess things up when I talked to Mr. Mittens, do you figure? But then I think about the time after the flood and how hungry she woulda got, and I know Pastor’d tell me I’m evil for saying so, but sometimes I think that maybe she was lucky to die peaceful-like in her sleep instead of having to die slow and painful like so many others, especially them older folks.
That reminds me of a story from school, actually. When I heard about Charlie Mansfield missing class to go to his grandpa’s funeral, I made a point to go up and tell him I’m sorry the next day, and he didn’t shove me away like I thunk he might. He just muttered something about me having slanty eyes and an ugly ear, and then he wiped his nose on his sleeve and sorta walked off. But that don’t got nothing to do with the rains, and I can’t even remember now why I brung it up.
Anyway, when the rains came, at first we were so happy, me and Min-Jung both, we took off our shoes, and we splashed around in all the puddles, empty bellies and all. It’s the only time I remember my sister laughing. I’m sure there musta been other times, but that’s the only one I got to carry around in my mind, which when you think about it is sorta sad, isn’t it? So anyway, this rain, it come and come for days until you’d step down and hafta be careful or you’d sink in mud all the way to your knee. And by the third day with it not letting up, the road was more like a little stream and the adults got worried, and Mama told Papa maybe he should stay in, but Papa was anxious about the boat and wanting to check on it. Neither one of them was happy now ’cause it was so much rain that it would drown the crops, and at first you couldn’t play outside on account of dying of pneumonia or tracking in too much mud, but then it started pouring so hard you wouldn’t have wanted to go out anyway. So the grown-ups went from fretting over no rain at all to wishing it would stop, and Mama was so angry-like on top of being scared, and I couldn’t go more than a few minutes it seemed without her getting down the spanking spoon.
By the way, I was looking ahead in the science book, Teacher, and it looks like we’re gonna be talking about flash floods soon, except the book leaves a lotta stuff out. It don’t talk about how a whole river can change so that one minute it’s down in the riverbank where it’s always been, and the next minute it’s rushing through your living room and toppling you down sideways until you don’t know which way is which and it don’t seem to matter none anyway because you’re afraid you’re gonna drown whether you’re upside-down or not. ’Least that’s what happened to me. I tried holding onto Min-Jung when it came, this giant wall of water that knocked our house flat down, but that’s something else your book don’t say. You think of water like the kind you swim in, and it’s all nice and easy so you can splash in it and push through it to go wherever you want, except in a flood it’s the water that’s telling you which way to go, and the only choice you really have is if you’re gonna try to hold your breath the whole time or if you’re just gonna act like you’re a fish that can breathe under water, and really it don’t matter ’cause you can die either way.
As for me, I remember the water crashing into the house, and I remember screaming for Min-Jung, only it didn’t make no sound on account of me already being underneath, and the next thing I knowed it was nighttime and I was in some strange bed, and this lady — she was old like Grandmother, except her hair was white and Grandmother’s had been black — and she leaned down over me and said, “Chong-Su?” So at first I wondered if maybe I was at the hospital and she didn’t know my real name. Then I started to feel scared that maybe my body died and my soul found another little boy’s body to go ahead and live inside of, except that boy’s name was Chong-Su instead of Woong. But I felt myself all over real good, and I couldn’t find no differences except all the cuts and bruises from getting dragged down with the river. And my head hurt fiercer than a tiger, so I finally decided it would be best to stay quiet and wait for Mama and Papa to come and clear up the mistake.
The old woman, she was sitting by my bed, and the first thing I seen was it’s a real bed, not just a little cot like me and Min-Jung used to share. The woman held my hand in hers, and her skin was all leathery and hard, not smooth and soft like Grandmother’s had been, and she kept calling me things like “Precious Baby” and “Sweet Little Blessing,” and I didn’t know what to think. But the bed was real comfortable, so I sorta lain there and waited for my family to find me.
“Why were you out there swimming in the rain?” she asked me, and it made me kinda wonder if she even knowed what she was talking about, ’cause she spoke in that sorta mumbling way out the corner of her mouth so as to make you hafta guess if she was all right in her head or not.
By and by, she said something about her little Chong-Su needing food, and ’course I weren’t about to argue then no matter if she got my name wrong, and when she brung me a bowl of soup, I looked at all them vegetables swimming in the broth, with little fat droplets floating up to the surface. And I asked myself if maybe this was something like heaven, my reward for being such a good boy even if I did make Mama angry too much. I figured maybe I had died in that flood, except my body still hurt all over, and I could poke my finger in the back of my thigh where a rock or something musta scraped off a chunk of my skin, so I knowed I was still alive.
And then the old woman asked about my ear and said, “How’d you get hurt? Did that happen in China?” And ’course she was talking about the part of my ear that got tore off, and that happened when I was really little and fell off a tree, which was even before the floods and the curse only I forgot if you already knew that. But I couldn’t figure why this woman was asking me about China, so I didn’t say nothing.
“I made your favorite soup,” she said next, and she had this smile on her face, so I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t have a clue who she was ’cause if she knew the soup wasn’t for me, what would stop her from taking it away and sending me out so I had to find somewhere else to wait for my parents to pick me up?
Once I finished eating and the woman washed the bowl, a man come into the home, taller than average. When he opened the door, I saw right away that the rain stopped, so I figured that was good news ’cause my parents would be looking for me, and I didn’t want them getting any wetter than they had to. So the man, he stopped in the middle of the room when he saw me, and the old woman said, “Look, Chong-Su’s come back to us, and he was out playing in the rain just as naughty as ever.” Then the man patted the old woman’s hand like she was a pet dog or something, except he didn’t smile none but just kinda gave me a mean sorta stare, and the woman told me, “Say hello to your uncle,” so I did.
The lady looked happy and said, “Isn’t it good to have Chong-Su home?” and he muttered, “Yes, Mother.”
Then she said in a kinda wispy-like voice if you can picture what I mean, “It’s a blessing from heaven. Maybe the Great Leader himself sent him home to us.” And I was about to tell her the Great Leader was dead. It was his son, the Dear Leader, that we all had to bow to now and hang pictures of up in our houses, but then the man, he glared at me so mean-like I stopped myself.
No one talked for a while after that.
I was ready for another bowl of soup by then, but I didn’t want to trouble no one, and the old woman’s son didn’t seem too happy to have me there, so I waited and wondered what was taking Mama and Papa so long finding me. After he ate, the man helped the old woman take down her hair and get out of her sweater, and he walked her over to another bed and lain her down and put a blanket over her just like he was her parent and not the other way around. Then he sat with his back to me and smoked a cigarette, and I musta drifted off to sleep because the next thing I remember he was kinda kicking me awake and saying, “Tell me who you really are. What game is this?” And he talked with a kinda snarl that made him sound like an angry dog, and I couldn’t remember the last time I talked to an adult outside of my family besides Mrs. Nosy. (The mudang doesn’t count on account of her being the one to curse me back in the old days.)
I didn’t answer right away, and that made him even madder, so he said, “You think this is a home for beggars? You think you can come in here and lie to my mother? Who told you about Chong-Su?”
And at that point, I was so confused I wanted to ask him to please tell me where my mama was, and then I started to think about Papa and his broken arm, and how could he have swum with it being all busted when that river came through the house? So I started to cry from fearing that Papa mighta got drowned, and maybe that’s why nobody had found me yet. Well, that didn’t make the man any happier, but ’least he leaved me alone for a little bit, and when I woke up in the morning he was gone. But the old woman was there, sitting by my bed with her face and eyes both full of smiles, and she said, “Good morning, Chong-Su. How did you sleep, sweetie?”
And that’s how I come to live the life of a stranger I’d never met.