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So I already told you how it was the American’s fault about me going to The Nightmare and all, but it was also on account of the police and how they’ve all got eyes on the back of their heads. I didn’t even know what that phrase meant until Pastor explained, and that was back when I first moved in with him and Miss Sandy. I woke up from one of them bad dreams I sometimes get, and I was afraid to go back to sleep and dream the whole thing over again, so I sneaked out of bed and tiptoed into the kitchen and got a bowl of cereal and took it to my room even though I knowed it was against the rules to eat in there. Miss Sandy came in a few minutes later asking what I was doing, and I didn’t know her well enough then to understand she was surprised, not angry. So I tried acting like I didn’t understand, except she knew I was better than that with my English by then, and she sat down on my bed and said, “Sweetie, if you’re ever hungry, all you have to do is ask.” And then she said I’d hafta give up my TV time tomorrow on account of taking food to the bedroom, but she said I could go out into the dining room and eat it proper-like if I wanted.
Once we got to the big table, Miss Sandy said, “Well, it’s only a few hours before we need to wake up anyway,” and she wanted to know how I’d feel about her making us some pancakes. Then we musta been raising enough noise that even Pastor came out to see what the fuss was about, and when I told him I didn’t mean to wake nobody up, he said, “Something you’re gonna learn real soon is that Mom has eyes on the back of her head.” I’d gone to enough meetings by that point with social workers and whatnot that I knowed the difference between birth parents and adopted parents and there’s even an in-between thing called foster parents. And Pastor and Miss Sandy said it’d make them real glad if I called them Mom and Dad, but I didn’t hafta unless I felt comfortable about it, which I didn’t, ’least not yet. But I didn’t mind neither when they called each other Mom and Dad around me, and funny thing is lots of people call them that too, even a bunch who aren’t their real kids or even their adopted ones.
Anyway, when Pastor said Miss Sandy had eyes on the back of her head, he had to explain to me that it weren’t really eyeballs beneath her hair. It means she knows everything that’s going on even when you think it’s impossible. And I figure in some ways teachers get that too, that extra set of eyes, on account of you always knowing when Chuckie Mansfield’s giving me a hard time even if you’re looking at the whiteboard. And that seems like a good kind of extra eyes to have, but there’s another kind that makes life real hard for certain folks. Here’s what I mean. Back home, if you did something really bad, the police was gonna find out. And once they learnt about it, you’d sorta disappear, you and your whole family. And that’s what I mean when I say the police there had eyes in the back of their heads, except they didn’t use it to stop bullies or give extra snacks to hungry little boys in the middle of the night. They used it for really bad things, like catching kids who didn’t do nothing wrong and locking them up. I still don’t know how they found me after I picked up the American’s black container, but I figure them extra eyes might have something to do with it.
What happened was I walked toward the train station with that roll of film in my pocket (’cause that’s what it was, by the way, except I didn’t find that out until later). I wasn’t even to Auntie’s yet when I heard someone say, “That’s him there,” and it was the man with the mustache pointing at me. Before I could do nothing, it was him and his partner and two policemen that catched me and carried me away while I was flapping my arms and legs and squawking like a chicken getting stole. I never seen that red-headed American again, but if I do, I figure I’d kick him in the privates and not even feel sorry for it on account of what happened to me when those men found his stupid film in my pocket. And by now you’re probably wondering what it was that happened, only I’m not gonna talk much about that part, and here’s why.
When I first got to America, I had to do these things called interviews where sometimes it’s a man and sometimes it’s a woman, but they’re always dressed in suits and offering you bagels or muffins or stuff and nonsense like that and expecting you to talk for hours about the old days. And Miss Sandy, she’d come and sit with me through them. Sometimes they had an interpreter who would say the things to me in Korean and then give my answers back to the workers in English, but sometimes they didn’t, and we did the whole thing in Korean, so Miss Sandy couldn’t understand it none anyway. But she went with me to all of them just the same.
And maybe you’d think it’d be exciting to have all kinds of interviews like that and to have so many people in fancy suits wanting to know all about you, except it weren’t. Sometimes the questions were boring, like what was your name back home, and I learnt really quick they didn’t care about me being Chong-Su or Squirrel or Ginkgo or stuff and nonsense like that. I could just say Woong, and they’d go on to the next question. That one was usually, “How old are you?” and no matter how many different folks asked me that, I’d hafta explain all over again how I couldn’t be exactly sure. And every once in a while, one of them would throw in a funny question like, “Have you ever been married?” or, “Have you ever killed somebody?” except the way they asked it, you’d think they didn’t even know it was a joke. Whenever I laughed, Miss Sandy would touch my hand real gentle and say, “Now answer their question, darling,” so I did.
It got to where I had to tell the same thing to five different people over five different interviews. And the folks were always interrupting with questions of their own, like did Uncle ever belong to any revolutionary organizations, and ’course I didn’t understand words like that, even in Korean. So when those didn’t work, Miss Sandy would ask me the question in a different way that was easier to follow. I got so used to talking about the old days, I probably coulda done it in my sleep, and that woulda been a lot less boring, too, except they needed me to stay awake through it all, so I’m glad they gave me them muffins or whatnot or else it woulda been even worst.
Well, the one part I never told nobody at them interviews was about meeting the American and picking up his stupid can of film. And once, at this one particular interview, a guy in thick, ugly glasses asked me if I’d ever met Kim Jong-Il or any of his helpers. The next thing he wanted to know was if I’d ever been arrested back home, but I didn’t answer. He asked the question a few more times, and then he tried asking in different ways, like, “Did you ever get in trouble with the police?” And I still wouldn’t say nothing, but when Miss Sandy reached out to touch my hand, I grabbed hers so tight both of our knuckles started turning white. She said, “Pumpkin, do you have something to tell him?” And I shook my head so hard I think I mighta jostled my brain on account of the headache I got later on, and then Miss Sandy asked, “Are you sure?” And that’s when I started to cry, and she sorta straightened up in her chair and stared at the interviewer with his red, white, and blue tie with his little American flag pinned to that folded part of his suit, and she said, “We can come back to that part later.” Then she gave my hand another squeeze, which I took to mean she was only telling the interviewer what he needed to hear to move on with the next question, and he never did ask me that one again.
On the way home from that meeting when we was in the car, Miss Sandy turned off her Jesus music and said, “Baby.” That’s one of the things she likes to call me when it’s only the two of us, only if Chuckie Mansfield ever learns that, I know he’d follow me around at recess saying baby, baby in a real mean-sounding way, so it’ll have to stay a secret. Well, Miss Sandy said to me, “Baby, these workers are just doing their job, and that sometimes means you’ll get questions you might not want to answer. If it’s something that you really, truly can’t talk about, none of these folks can make you do it. And if they try, I want you to squeeze my hand two times just like this, and I’ll explain to them that particular subject is off-limits.” Then she went on to say I couldn’t use the hand squeeze all the time, and most of the questions I had to answer respectfully and honestly no matter how bored I got. But if there was one particular part of the old days that was too sad or scary to talk about, she wasn’t going to make me do it.
Have you ever had that feeling in your heart like it’s getting squeezed and that’s keeping all of the good things from getting in? Well that’s sorta how I’d begun to feel in the middle of the interview, only when Miss Sandy told me I wouldn’t hafta talk about The Nightmare, it was like that squeezing stopped, and all the good feelings that hadn’t been able to get in came rushing through all at once, so I could barely even say thank you on account of my throat tightening up. And she was still holding my hand in the car, and she said, “I love you, Baby,” and I told her I loved her back, and I called her Mom for the first time. I think she liked that ’cause she didn’t say nothing else, but she put her Jesus music back on and we rode home both happy and quiet-like, and sometimes I’d look over and see a little tear in the corner of her eye, but I’d swear on the Dear Leader it was the happy kind.