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Well, this next part could take a hundred pages to write out if I told you everything that went on, and lots of pieces I don’t even remember proper-like on account of the trip to South Korea taking so long and being so boring. I’m glad I had Mrs. Cho’s helpers there to take me from place to place, ’cause most of it didn’t make no sense to me. Here’s what I mean. We’d take a train to get from one part of China to another. And if we got stopped anywhere, I had to pretend to be asleep on account of the helpers not wanting the police asking me any questions. And then I’d get passed off to another helper, and then it’d be another long trip except this time in a car, or sometimes walking, and then it was more helpers and more train rides, and then on top of that it was sitting in a hotel for a week waiting for some paperwork or stuff and nonsense like that, but at least all them helpers had plenty of food so I didn’t get hungry none.
And would you believe that after all that I was still in China? Then it got even more complicated, with sneaking out of one country and into another, and that was most always by foot on account of it being harder for police to see you if you’re walking than if you’re driving a big noisy car. Once, we stayed two whole weeks at this nice lady’s house who didn’t speak a word of Korean. And neither did my helper at that point on account of her being from the part of China where they only talk Chinese. Except this lady whose house we lived at didn’t know no Korean or Chinese, so I’m sure you could imagine how confusing things got. But there was food there, so it weren’t too bad except for me wondering how on earth I’d ever find So-Young again. And that was before I knowed about things like internet where all you hafta do is type in a first name and a last name and then you can find all kinds of interesting things about a person.
So I don’t worry too much about finding So-Young again these days, on account of me knowing both her names and that she lives in the part of China where they mostly speak Korean, and when the time comes I think that’ll be enough to find her, don’t you? Only I’m not gonna look right now ’cause Pastor says that’s all stuff and nonsense ’til I’m older, and maybe by then I’ll have found another girl I want to marry anyway. I figure if I change my mind and decide on marrying an American then Becky Linklater’ll do, even though I felt her hair once and it wasn’t so soft as I bet So-Young’s is, but it was fun on account of it having all them springy curls. And if Pastor reads this part, I bet he’ll laugh, only he won’t mean it to tease. But what I figure is that Pastor’s always so joyful and happy that sometimes it comes right out of him as a belly laugh, so I don’t get my feelings hurt much.
Well, we went all over the world on our way to that orphanage, or at least it felt that way. You remember how we did that graphing project once where you asked the class how many states we’d been to? And I didn’t raise my hand much on account of me only living in Medford a little while by then, plus Pastor and Miss Sandy are so busy with their preaching and volunteering and whatnot they don’t do a lot of vacations like some of the other families who always go to places like Disneyland or Hawaii. But what I think is if you’d have asked how many countries we’d been to, I’d be the winner for sure on account of me living in North Korea and then China and then passing through all them others on my way to South Korea. I studied a map once in the back of the geography book, only I couldn’t figure out which other places they were. ’Cause I started in China, like I said, and I wanted to get all the way to South Korea, and you’d think all I’d hafta do is go back through North Korea, but I couldn’t on account of me and the helpers all getting in big trouble if we tried that. And that’s why I figure it took all them different trains and walks and waiting around in hotels and whatnot. But I finally got there, and I can’t remember if I had five different helpers or maybe it was more on account of there being so many, and sometimes I stayed with one for a week or longer, but other times it was just for a day or two.
Anyway, I finally got to the orphanage in South Korea, and it was in a huge city called Seoul (which is spelled funny ’cause you’re supposed to pronounce it soul like the part of your heart where Jesus lives). And when I say orphanage, I don’t mean one of those places Miss Sandy talks about in Romania where it’s just rooms and rooms full of babies in cribs. It was actually nothing but a big house with kids of all ages, and we were all looked after by the oldest lady I’ve ever met in my life named Mrs. Cho. And she took care of all us kids by herself, even though I think she musta been old enough to remember back when them evil ’Pansies took over Korea. Except I didn’t ask her about it none on account of me thinking that history was boring even though now Pastor says it’s one of the most important things we gotta learn.
But Mrs. Cho told me part of her story, at least, and that part was more interesting. It was once the ’Pansies left after World War II and right around the time when the Americans attacked Korea. Before the fighting started, she got married and had a baby, and then when the Peninsula War came on, things worked out in a bad way where her husband was stuck in the North part but she and her son were already in the South. And maybe you’d think they coulda just met halfway in the middle and found each other that way, except that’s not how it worked back then. In fact, she never saw him again.
I asked her if she figured he was still alive somewhere in North Korea ’cause maybe I’d met him and didn’t even know it. And she said once she’d dreamt about him, and he was so old he’d gone blind, and all he did each day was talk to himself and pray to God, and he couldn’t read the Bible no more, but he still had one he kept hid behind a picture on his wall. She said he’d pull it out and just smell the pages on account of him being so happy to have his own copy, even if he couldn’t read the words since his eyes didn’t work no more. And I tried to guess what my mama from the old days would think it meant if you dream about a husband you haven’t seen since you were a young woman, and now you’re an old woman and picturing him as an old man. I never heard Mama say nothing about a dream like that specifically, but I figured she’d decide it was a good omen, which is what I told Mrs. Cho. Then she did something that sounds just like Pastor. She patted my head and said, “Son, you don’t need good omens when you’ve got the Holy Spirit.”
And I was happy at Mrs. Cho’s. I didn’t stay there long enough to make any really good friends, but there weren’t no bullies there either, and we always had plenty of food. I figure the only way I woulda been happier was if it was Auntie doing all the watching over us instead of Mrs. Cho (or maybe both of them on account of me liking Mrs. Cho fine too). And if I really wanted to make things perfect, I woulda liked it even more if So-Young was one of the kids at the orphanage and said she’d be my girlfriend once we got old enough for stuff and nonsense like that, but of course that’s not what happened.