The Beloved Daughter by Alana Terry Read Free Book Online

would have no reason to doubt Mee-Kyong’s words. “Chung-Cha quotes verses to the other prisoners from that Western book of lies. She even tells her dorm mates to convert and become Christian pigs like herself.”
    Overcome with dizziness, I wanted to sit down but stood frozen in my place. I saw my employer reflected in the glass from one of his frames. Officer Yeong’s body was rigid, his jaw clenched. My reported sins, which were about as serious as a prisoner at Camp 22 could commit, would cast a poor reflection on him as well. I was certain Officer Yeong was thinking about the Chief Officer of Productivity position, and I hated him for having used me the past eight months only to now regret the way my alleged crimes would harm his reputation.
    I heard heavy boots march out of Agent Pang’s room. I clenched my jaw and braced myself. Like a trapped animal I waited. The offenses my friend had just accused me of were weighty enough to land me back in the detainment center where another guard like my father’s tormentor Agent Lee would break me down until I confessed to these crimes and countless others. If I were ever released back into the main camp, my body would be so broken and decrepit from my punishment that I would never find a position as an office maid again.
    As much as I despised the time I spent with Officer Yeong, I regretted that I would have no other way to earn extra rations if I survived the cruel torture that I knew awaited me.

 
     
     
    Broken Vessel
     
    “He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave.” Psalm 107:20
     

     
    As you read my words, beloved daughter, I pray that you are living in safety, with nothing to cause you excessive pain or fear. You have no need to know everything I suffered during my second stay in the underground detainment center, so I will recount only a few important details.
    After Mee-Kyong’s betrayal, I was taken directly to the underground chambers and locked in a small box. The sleep I managed to find was haunted with nightmares of my father’s torturer, whom I never saw during my second detainment but whose menacing laugh still echoed in the concrete walls.
    I was finally let out of my cage and made to sign a statement confessing to my numerous crimes: sleeping with a guard, taking stolen contraceptives, blackmailing a National Security agent, spreading religious ideology, and singing Christian hymns. I never learned what happened to my friend Mee-Kyong, whether Agent Pang paid his comrades enough yuan to keep her out of trouble or whether he rejected her, whether she gave birth to his illegitimate child or whether she simply disappeared with no God or lover or friend to rescue her. The last time I saw Mee-Kyong was when the guards dragged me out of the garment factory. Mee-Kyong, bloody and sniffling, was crumpled on the floor of Agent Pang’s office. She looked up at me as the officers hauled me away. When our eyes met, Mee-Kyong let out a haunted, guttural wail that still plagues my memory to this very day.
    In spite of the pain of her betrayal, I wasn’t angry at Mee-Kyong. She acted out of fear and self-preservation. Mee-Kyong wasn’t created to face suffering. She was too full of laughter and joy, a Korean maiden who ought to have been riding ponies in centuries past with brightly colored ribbons in her hair and a host of suitors vying for her love, instead of languishing away as a common criminal behind an electric fence. I carried around in my heart a debt of gratitude toward Mee-Kyong for the way she helped me survive as a child at Camp 22. My next four years of detainment due to Mee-Kyong’s accusations – at least as I reconciled it in my own mind – repaid that debt.
    Beloved daughter, there is no need to speak of the crimes that I witnessed or the hopelessness that engulfed me during those years underground. I’ll just tell you that there is a God who works all things together for good. I’m convinced it was his