of their regime.” Yul turned to Chu-Sook’s mother again, to try to make another plea. “I’m here to help you find your son. I want to help you. Don’t believe what the police told you. I’m not here to harm you.”
“I can’t, I can’t. Please go. I can’t speak to you. I can’t speak to anyone who participates in acts of rebellion against the lawful and righteous government!” said Chu-Sook’s mother, with her eyes closed, as if trying to remember the words she was supposed to recite. She started to wave more and more vehemently.
Soo-Ja began to fear that the woman would not speak to them at all. She stood closer to her and held down both her arms. When Chu-Sook’s mother calmed down a little, Soo-Ja looked straight into her eyes and spoke.
“Mrs. Yang, you know me. I’m not a member of a student group. You can speak to me.” Soo-Ja reached for her hand and pointed toward the house. “Let’s go in, Mrs. Yang. Let’s go in and have a chat.”
“Why would I speak to you? You lied to me.”
Soo-Ja grabbed her hand a bit more forcefully than she’d intended to and directed her inside. “I want to help you, Mrs. Yang. Please, let’s go in. Let’s go in before your neighbors see us out here and tell on you to the police.”
Soo-Ja glanced at Yul for help, but he seemed distracted, looking intently in the direction of the woman’s shack. His eyes were squinting, as if he was trying to guess its contents. He had to know it had no windows, and probably no running water or electricity either, with the only light coming in through tiny slivers on the edges of the straw door, keeping the place dark and stuffy. Soo-Ja was about to follow Chu-Sook’s mother into her house when Yul stopped her, reaching for her arm.
“Wait,” he said. Yul’s nostrils widened, as if he were sniffing something foul. He blocked Soo-Ja’s way with his arm, in the firm manner of a traffic officer. He pulled her back, away from the woman’s house. “What’s that smell?”
Chu-Sook’s mother looked away, staring down at the ground. Her body seemed emptied out of tears, with no more blood left to run through her veins. When she spoke, she did so matter-of-factly: “That’s my son.”
They held the boy’s body up in the air, and from a distance, it looked as if it were floating, though it was propped by a dozen hands. They had first wrapped him in a blanket, tucked in from head to toe, like a newborn, but somewhere along the march the blanket fell—his cold, decomposing skin rejecting the human comfort. It felt heavy, almost unbearably so, though in life the boy had been light, and not very tall. Chu-Sook would, in fact, have been surprised to see the effort it took to carry him; similar to the effort it took to find him, after a long search in the river. Were it not for the school uniform he wore, they would not have recognized him–with his face smashed out, bits of grenade still lodged in his skull.
They’d been marching from his mother’s shack toward Daegu city hall, starting with a group of about a hundred people, led by Yul in front, and Soo-Ja and Chu-Sook’s mother next to him. Yul had been expected in Seoul hours earlier, but he’d stayed behind to lead this extemporaneous protest. Night fell somewhere along the way, and the chants grew less angry and more mournful, turning the walk into a funeral procession.
Word spread quickly of the discovery of the body, and the crowd seemed to grow with each block; first the students from the nearby high schools and universities, then everybody else, until almost all the denizens of the town seemed to have left their homes and joined the demonstration. Along the way, Soo-Ja had to help Chu-Sook’s mother remain steady a few times. Her spirit appeared to leave her body, becoming a mere bag of tissue and bones, unable to walk or remain upright. Soo-Ja had to hold her with her arms around her back, until her strength returned. The other protestors glanced occasionally at them. Word had spread about Chu-Sook’s mother, but no one knew who Soo-Ja was, which made her glad; she did not want the presence of a woman of her social class to serve as a distraction.
Once in a while, Soo-Ja would glance over at Yul and wonder how his lungs never got tired.