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I couldn’t tell you quite how long it took on account of me staying in that coal shed all the time and not really paying attention to when it was day and when it weren’t, but I got better by and by. I never went back to The Stare, but a few nights I had a fever so bad Crazy Wu said maybe I wasn’t gonna make it, except I did. And he stopped by every evening with all the leftover soup he hadn’t sold to the travelers, and Auntie always said, “The Lord bless you,” in a way that was so nice it almost reminded me of the way that blind lady spoke when she put her hand on my forehead. Then Crazy Wu would answer back, “He certainly has, Miss,” which after a few times I figured was his funny way of blessing her back. And that made me feel sorta bad for him on account of the way we flower swallows treated him and spread rumors about his soup. And I found out it weren’t human meat at all. It was little bits of this and little bits of that Crazy Wu managed to hunt, ’cause whenever he said they were low on meat, Auntie would pray, and more often than not he’d come back with at least a sparrow or whatnot to make his next batch for us all.
I wasn’t the only one Auntie took care of. The number was always changing, sometimes depending on how much food we got from Crazy Wu to spread around and sometimes depending on whether or not someone died. ’Cause Auntie wasn’t a kokemi or boogeyman like the others claimed, but it was true what they said about her taking the littlest and the sickest ones, except she did that to help nurse them instead of chopping them up into stew meat. And a lot of times she picked kids who wouldn’t have survived no matter how hearty the soup was. I was the only one who made a full recovery from The Stare for example, but others would at least stay alive a little longer than they woulda otherwise. Auntie always took time to pray over each one and tell them about Jesus and the real heaven (not the kind Grandmother talked about where all you do is sit around staring at your dead ancestors). And I think she did it that way — picked the sickest, I mean — on account of her knowing they didn’t have as much time as the others and wanting to make their last days a little nicer, and I thought that was awful good of her, don’t you? Well, I don’t think she expected me to survive at first, and I know Crazy Wu didn’t. But one morning I woke up and didn’t feel sick no more at all, and I ate two whole bowls of Crazy Wu’s soup, which today I’m ashamed of on account of that soup being intended for all of us. But Auntie weren’t too mad. She just said she was glad I got my strength back, but I couldn’t be greedy like that no more. So I tried hard not to be.
Do you know much about that old guy Elijah? Well I was in Miss Sandy’s Sunday school class once (this was before the attendant told Pastor I was too big to go downstairs with the little kids), and she teached us the story of him getting fed by birds bringing him crumbs every day, and I remember thinking it was lucky Elijah knew to just eat the crumbs and not the birds themselves ’cause that’s what I woulda done if I was him. But Crazy Wu was sorta like them ravens on account of him bringing us his soup near every day. And sometimes I’d worry and ask Auntie what would happen if Crazy Wu didn’t find any birds or whatnot, ’cause it’s not like there was a whole lot of extra animals running or flying around Chongjin those days. But Auntie said God would take care of us, and sometimes he did right away and sometimes we ended up having to wait a day or two, but it was still more food than I was getting when I lived by myself at the train station.
Me and Auntie and Crazy Wu and the other little ones, we sorta were our own kind of gang, except Auntie preferred calling us a family. But that makes sense too since there was so many kids and she was like the mama, which is funny since she wasn’t even married and still a teenager. And I guess family really is a better word for it than gang since Auntie didn’t believe in stealing. She said if God wanted us to eat, he’d show Crazy Wu where to find food for us, and sometimes Crazy Wu would come in tears and say, “I’m sorry, Miss, there’s nothing left for the children,” and she’d say, “God must have known someone else needed it more than we did.” And the way she talked, it got me so shamed I ever thought she was a kokemi, and I never told her what the other kids said about her, but I knowed the rumors was still going around on account of sometimes the new kids she brung home saying things like, “Please don’t eat me.”
And Crazy Wu, I’d been wrong about him, too. I never learnt how he met Auntie or why he spent his days hunting food for all us blossoms (that’s what Auntie called us, her blossoms, I think on account of some of us thinking there was something shameful in being named flower swallows). But pretty soon I got to be the oldest one of Auntie’s blossoms and the one who’d been with her the longest. She gave me my own special name, Ginkgo, on account of her saying I was bright and perky like the leaves of a certain kind of tree, and that made me feel real special since not everyone got their own nickname. And sometimes Crazy Wu would take me hunting with him, and he teached me how to do all sorts of tricks like what to do with a bird if you catched one in a trap. I could tell you about it, but it might be a little distressing, so I won’t. But if there’s ever a famine or if you ever hafta know how to do it, come find me and I’ll show you then.
I liked those days with Crazy Wu, especially since spring was coming, and everyone was talking about how maybe the worst of the famine was all over now. I’d ask Crazy Wu about his family, and he’d say things like, “Well, now, I got a brother in this province,” or, “My daughter lives there,” but I didn’t know none of the names on account of me never going out of Chongjin since the day I wound up onto Granny’s porch.
I still thunk about that angel, about the one who took me to Granny’s and the one who came to me in the body of a blind woman, and I wondered sometimes if Auntie was the same angel, except she said she weren’t. I even asked Crazy Wu about it, too, on account of me thinking maybe Auntie really was an angel except she wasn’t allowed to say so, but Crazy Wu told me, “No, Sir.” That’s how he talked to everyone, you know, calling them sir or miss or whatnot. “She’s a good soul, she is, but she’s flesh and blood same as you and me.” And sometimes I believed him, like if Auntie was real tired by the end of the night and asked me to tell the other blossoms a story or two before bed on account of her not having no energy, but most of the time I figured Crazy Wu wasn’t giving me the Pyongyang-perfect truth and Auntie really was an angel, only she couldn’t say so outright.
And I already told you about my days with Crazy Wu and how much I liked them, but I liked nights with Auntie even better. She believed in Jesus, by the way, her and Crazy Wu both, only I think you mighta already figured that out. But maybe you’d think with her being so into God and spending all that time and energy taking care of us blossoms, even the ones about to die and go to heaven, you might think she knowed all about the Bible and did devotions every morning like Pastor does where you read some verses and talk about them together and stuff and nonsense like that. Only that’s not how Auntie done it. She’d never even seen a Bible on account of those being pretty rare back home, and if you have one you might get sent to jail. So everything she knowed about God, she knowed from loving him so much, and the rest she learnt from Crazy Wu, who teached her. And he’d had a Bible once but lost it a long time ago when some police came and searched his house, and that Bible had come from this secret man Crazy Wu couldn’t tell me nothing about besides the fact he was the bravest Christian alive in North Korea, ’least Crazy Wu hoped he was still alive, since he hadn’t heard otherwise.
So the interesting thing about that was whenever Auntie was teaching us about God, it was all from memory. And it weren’t Bible stories, neither, like Miss Sandy tells the little kids who get to go downstairs to Sunday school instead of sitting up in big church like I have to now that I’m bigger. In fact, once I met Pastor, I didn’t know the Bible really had so many stories in it at all other than the one about Jesus dying and coming back up out of the grave. Auntie knew that one real well, and she told it to us near every night. Sometimes she’d tell it short where we had to listen and then thank God for dying for us, and sometimes she’d tell it long where she’d put in the parts about the disciples running away and stuff and nonsense like that, and I always liked the longer version best, but sometimes she was too tired like I already mentioned.
But even though Auntie didn’t know that many Bible stories on account of her not having read them herself, she talked about God all the time. She told us how he created us and loved us and how he could clean away the sin in our hearts and how he promised if we needed something, all we had to do was ask him. What I always wanted to know was why Crazy Wu brought soup most days, except some days he didn’t even though we prayed for it. And Auntie said she didn’t know, but that didn’t mean God didn’t hear our prayers, ’cause what about me and how I shoulda died from the sickness, except that’s not what happened? And I felt bad for asking on account of feeling like she had more faith in things like that than me, but then sometimes she’d bring a new blossom to the coal shed, and he’d die in a day or two, and it wasn’t always the sickness, neither. Sometimes it was just the hunger-weakness that done it. So it didn’t make much sense to me. I asked Crazy Wu about it once on a hunting trip, asked him why God would let some of the blossoms die since we was all praying otherwise, and he said, “Ginkgo” — he’d taken to calling me that too on account of hearing Auntie use it so much — “Ginkgo, how big do you think God is?” So I said he was probably taller than the Dear Leader, weren’t he? And Wu explained how God’s even bigger than the sky, which stretches around the whole earth, except I couldn’t understand that part ’til I seen the globe in your classroom, and then it made more sense.
Next thing Wu does is ask, “Now if you were a grasshopper, and you saw me out here hunting, would you know what I was doing?” And I said no, I figured I wouldn’t. So Wu said, “Now compared to God, you’re even smaller than a grasshopper, so is he going to make sense all the time?” And I said no, I figured he wouldn’t. And that’s all Crazy Wu said, which seemed a little strange to me ’cause really all he taught me was God was bigger than the Dear Leader and the sky too, but if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be easy for him to feed all us blossoms proper-like every day?
Now that I’m living at Pastor’s house, Miss Sandy’s always trying to get me to memorize Bible verses, and that’s hard to do, especially if you’re doing it in a language you weren’t born speaking. She says it’s impossible to grow as a Christian if you don’t study Scripture, but then I think about Auntie and her never having a Bible in her life, and I don’t get how Miss Sandy could believe stuff and nonsense like that. ’Cause Auntie was teaching us about God all the time, not just during certain times of the day like devotions and bedtime prayers neither. And when she prayed, you could tell she knowed the one she was talking to real well. So I figure maybe Miss Sandy doesn’t know quite as much about that sorta thing, and maybe that’s because she’s never met Auntie, but I sure wish she could on account of how much I miss Auntie now that I’ve moved all the way to Medford.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is Auntie knowed tons from the Bible even if she didn’t have one herself or have none of the parts memorized. Here’s what I mean. Have you ever heard of the verse that says, “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first”? It’s one of the famouser ones, far as I can tell. And Auntie never teached me that verse, but soon as I heard it in one of Pastor’s sermons, I knowed he was talking about her and the way she was always choosing the sickest and weakest of the flower swallows to become her little blossoms. And there’s another part where it says if you share a cup of water with a little kid, for example, it’s kinda like you’re sharing it with Jesus himself. And Miss Sandy taught me that one when I told her I didn’t want to keep going to that old-people’s home where they smell so funny, but she said Jesus would want a visitor, and if we go cheer up them old folks, it’s like we’re actually visiting Jesus. And that got me thinking about Auntie too, on account of the way she never stopped taking care of us blossoms, even when we was hungry, even when we was dying of cold. And that meant she was hungry and near dying of cold too, I finally figured, only she never complained.
Miss Sandy’s got this pretty piece of Scripture hanging up in the bathroom, and it’s called the Baditudes, which from the sound of it might make you think it’s about things you shouldn’t do, but instead it’s this sorta poem (the un-rhyming kind) about how to be blessed. And back in the old days, I probably woulda thunk blessed had to do with not being sick or having enough to eat or whatnot, but the Baditudes say things all backwards, like, “Blessed are the hungry.” And whenever I see them up there on that wall, I think of Auntie on account of her being the most blessed person I ever met, ’least if you’re talking about the kind of blessed the Bible uses.
Here’s what I mean. One of the Baditudes says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God,” and Pastor explained that pure in heart means having less sin in you than most folks, and that was like Auntie on account of her being so good. I’m pretty sure she never sinned once when we was living together in that coal shed. And the part about her seeing God, well if you’d ever heard Auntie praying, you’d know what that means ’cause I think even if you started out as an unbeliever and you heard her pray and saw the way she talked to God like he was right there with her listening in on every word, well, you woulda left a believer even if you weren’t one before. And I don’t know if you’re a believer or not, Teacher, on account of me never seeing you at St. Margaret’s, but it’s a pretty big church so maybe you go there and I just don’t know it. Or maybe you go to one of them other churches around town, and that’s ok too as long as you go somewhere, and there’s more to it than that but you’d hafta ask Pastor for all the details.
Anyway, there’s another Baditude that says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” And if you was anything like me, you might think it’d be better not to mourn at all, except once I met Auntie it sorta made sense. Like a day or two after I got better from the sickness, a little blossom she’d been caring for died in her sleep, and Auntie cried so hard I knowed she musta loved her. And after she cried, Auntie had this look on her face I can’t really describe, but it reminds me of this painting I seen at the art museum when we went there on that field trip, and there was a picture of Mary looking so sad-like after Jesus died, but she was beautiful, too. Not really pretty, ’cause there’s a difference, but she was beautiful, and I realized it was her sadness that made her that way. It was the same with Auntie.
And once I asked Auntie about it ’cause she always cried if someone died, and sometimes she cried before they died on account her taking care of sick blossoms so much she could guess when it was coming. So I asked why she kept doing it, and wouldn’t it be better if she and Wu moved somewhere else where all they had to do was take care of each other for a change? But she said her life would be even sadder if she didn’t have a chance to tell people about Jesus, and who was better to tell than someone laying there just an hour or two away from meeting him face to face? And then she said she was sad on account of missing the blossoms that died, but she knew she’d see them again once they reached heaven, and that made sense. Besides, her version of heaven sounded loads better than the kind Grandmother talked about where it was just you and a bunch of dead ancestors and other stuff and nonsense like that, don’t you think?