But in Her Heart a Cold December
Text ©2008 The Angst Guy (theantgstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated characters
are ©2008 MTV Networks
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever)
is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: “Might be CIA,” Daria Morgendorffer sarcastically wrote
of the security-obsessed principal of “Laaawndale
High,” Angela Li—but Daria was closer to the truth than she knew. From her
hospital bed, Ms. Li reviews her turbulent life as she recovers from her
breakdown in the fifth-season episode, “Fizz Ed.”
Author’s Notes: This Daria story
was written in response to a personal challenge issued by Brother Grimace on
PPMB, who asked that I write “a serious piece on Ms. Li that goes into her
head. . . . a serious piece on Ms. Li that, without
killing off half of the student population or her immediate family, can
actually make the reader feel sympathy for her and/or her goals for the
students of LHS.”
Following the
letter of the challenge perhaps more closely than the intent, the following
story is offered, in which no one dies in Ms. Li’s immediate family, and
the student population of Lawndale High School is unharmed, but several million
other people die. It can’t be helped, as it’s already in the history books. The
story is also designed to mesh with canon, fitting inside the fifth season Daria episode, “Fizz Ed,” during Ms.
Li’s brief hospitalization at the end of the show. The year is assumed to be
A.D. 2000, a little over four weeks after Ms. Li signed the contract with
Ultra-Cola to let the company market its products at LHS for cash, which
occurred after the Super Bowl. Elements from that episode, a later one (“Lucky
Strike”), and the movie Is It College Yet?
are incorporated herein. Early parts of IICY are
assumed to have occurred during or between certain fifth-season episodes,
covering Daria’s senior year at Lawndale High. The location of this tale was
also changed from
The story’s
title comes from the last stanza in an English madrigal for four voices, from
the year 1597.
Acknowledgements: Here’s to you, Brother Grimace.
*
I
To be prepared for war is one of
the most effectual means of preserving peace.
—President George Washington, address to Congress,
1790
The past is never dead. It’s not
even past.
—William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
Angela Li blinked
in the glare of the ceiling lights, aware that she had awakened from a deep
sleep. Disoriented, she thought for a dreadful moment that she was in that
room again, and she flinched in sudden fear. After a long moment, she
realized that she was alone. Her fear passed, though her confusion remained.
She found that
she lay on her back in a narrow bed, covered with a light blanket, a pair of
pajamas, and not much else. Her vision was clear but fuzzy, as her glasses were
missing. Her left arm had an IV needle in it, the tube taped to her skin. A
small device with wires trailing from it was taped to the tip of her left
middle finger. Her gaze drifted to the left, where she noticed a
heart-monitoring machine with a green light flashing on top of it; the wires from
her finger led there. The room was small but bright, with a single window and
door, three chairs and a desk (her rectangular-frame glasses sat folded on a
stack of papers there), and medical items scattered about the room.
She touched
her face and ran her fingers through her short black hair to reassure herself
that she was truly awake. What is going on? she
wondered. Am I in a hospital? How did I get here? Her head throbbed with
a dull ache, slowing and clouding her thoughts.
Footsteps
sounded outside the door. The door opened, and a smiling doctor and nurse
entered.
“Good
morning!” said the doctor in a loud voice. “Ms. Li? I’m Doctor Robertson, and
this is Ms. Ross, one of our LPNs. I see you’re awake
now. How are you feeling?”
“Feel tired,”
Angela mumbled. She made a face. “My mouth tastes . . . funny.” Am I
drugged?
“That’s
probably from the medication,” said the doctor, opening and reading the chart
he carried. “You were having a rough time when they brought you in yesterday
from
“My IV? Oh. I have a . . . what happened? How did I—” I
feel like my head was beaten and stuffed with cotton. Am I hung over?
“Do you
remember what happened when you were brought in?” the doctor asked.
“Um . . . I
think I was . . . with the cola machines, there was a problem with the
Ultra-Cola machines. I remember I was . . .” I was hitting them with a fire
axe, heaven help me. I remember it now. I couldn’t control my thoughts or what
I did. Fine way for a high-school principal to behave! I wanted the students to
drink more Ultra-Cola, so we would get more money from that company, but my
mind completely got away from me. I must have been crazy for a while. The
superintendent was there—oh, no! Superintendent Cartwright was there, heaven
knows why, and he must have seen every—
“I’m sorry.
You faded out there on me. You said you were what?”
“I don’t
remember much of it. It’s like a dream.” A better answer
than the truth. I’ll have to think up a good excuse for the
superintendent later, when I’m more coherent. “May I have my glasses,
please?”
“Certainly.” Nurse Ross carefully put the glasses on
Angela’s face, then the doctor and nurse each took a seat near her bed. The
nurse kept her eye on the medical monitoring equipment but did not appear
concerned.
“Ms. Li,” Dr.
Robertson said, “if you don’t mind, I want to talk with you for a while and get
a little more information on how you’re doing.”
Angela waved a
hand. “Oh, very well. Fire away.” It’s not like I
can refuse you in my condition.
The doctor
grinned and pulled a pen from his white coat pocket. “What is your full name,
please?”
“Angela Li. No
middle name.” Ah, doctor, but there was once a Li Joo-Hyun,
in a distant time and place where a cold war burned.
“What year
were you born?”
“Nineteen
fifty-two.” Are you testing my memory? In reality, then, I was born in
nineteen forty-four. I hope I did not say that aloud. My homeland government
adjusted my papers before I came to
“You are—how
old?”
“Forty-seven.” Can you not count? In truth: fifty-five
and hiding it well, I hope.
“Do you know
where you are now?”
“I believe
that I’m in . . .” The hospital’s name is on the calendar on the wall, but
you didn’t see the calendar when you came in. “I’m in Cedars of Lawndale
Hospital. I don’t know my room number.”
Dr. Robertson
laughed. “That’s fine. I meant to ask if you knew what city you were in, but
that’s an even better answer. You’re in room six twenty-five.”
Angela
blinked, surprised. “Six twenty-five,” she said. “Thank you.” My birthday. How strange. June twenty-fifth,
nineteen forty-four. My thoughts are thicker than concrete. It must be from the
lack of caffeine.
“Ms. Li, do
you know what day this is?”
He’s
definitely testing me. “February . . . no, March, the um . . .” It feels
like I have a hangover. I could use an Ultra-Cola. Is there a machine on this
floor? “Saturday, March fourth, if I was brought in yesterday.”
Yesterday was Friday the third. The fourth—an unlucky
number for a Korean. Yesterday should have been the fourth, since that’s
when my bad luck appeared.
“Excellent. To
be honest, I’m checking your mental status. You’re oriented to person, place,
and time. Now, I’d like to ask a few questions and check your distant memories.
I want to see how quickly you retrieve them, what you remember. Okay?”
“Why is that?
Do you think I have brain damage?” Like yourself? Or are you really a
doctor? I wonder now.
“No, no. We
like to find out how the good old brain is working, you know. You had quite a
spell yesterday. We’re waiting on some lab results and an MRI scan we did last
night, but we don’t expect to find anything wrong. This is just another way of
checking on your condition. Do you mind a few more questions?”
“Oh . . . very well.” I do not like others to peer into
my past, doctor or doctor-not, so you will not mind if I answer carefully.
People are not always what they seem.
“Okay, let’s
start at the beginning. Were you born in
“No. I was
born in
“Ms. Li?”
She shook her
head and came back to reality. “Yes?” I’m daydreaming too much. The
medication is doing this. I am so tired, and my mind is so—
“I was asking
how you spell that.”
“Spell what?” I
must be careful with my tongue. Do not say too much, Joo-Hyun.
“
“Oh. S-E-O-U-L.”
“That’s in
“Yes.” Dolt. Did you not take Geography in school? Do I
look like a Communist?
“Nineteen
fifty-two. So, you were born during the war, then?”
“Yes, near the
end.” Swallow that one for me, if you would. I was old enough to remember
the start of the war as well as anyone could—all too well.
“Huh. I used
to watch reruns of M.A.S.H. all the
time when I was in college. That was a great show, really funny.”
“Hmmm.” Idiot. Yes, it
was funny, very funny on my sixth birthday when the air-raid sirens sang over
my city because the Communists were flooding across the border from the north.
My mother would not leave
“Ms. Li? You
looked distracted for a bit.”
“I am so
sorry, but the medication—I feel so—” Fake it good, girl.
“Not a
problem! Take your time.”
“Thank you.” I
shall. The stress must have made me crazy yesterday. I didn’t sleep well for
days before, either—all that caffeine in the Ultra-Cola, no doubt. My poor,
aching head!
“Did your
parents ever talk about the war?”
“Oh . . . yes,
of course. It was very much on their minds.” The thunder in the west woke us
up. My father got up from the floor and went to listen at a window. It is from
“Do you have
any other living relatives?”
“No.” You
may have the truth, for once. My parents’ siblings and their families died in
their homes. We alone of our family survived, and we salvaged very little, but
we had cause for relief. The Americans were back, the PKA was routed, and we
thought the end of the war was near. Had we known it had only started, we would
have fled south at once and saved ourselves from the terrors yet to come.
“Are your
parents still alive?”
“Yes. I’m an
only child.” Get up, I shouted at my mother, please get up. She lay in the
falling snow beside the refugee-choked road through the mountains to
The doctor
discretely coughed to bring back Angela’s wandering attention. “What was your
life like as a child?” he asked.
She sighed.
“It . . . was hard, because we were poor. Times were difficult at best, as you
can imagine.” When we walked back to
“I don’t mean
to be rude, but it’s interesting that you’re from
“My parents—” —would never
have done it. The Americans caught me stealing from their mess tent on the
outskirts of
“Your parents . . . what?”
“Ah—my parents
had a thing about Americans, because of the war, you know. So, they named me
Angela.” They would have killed themselves before giving me a non-Korean
name. Angela was the name I took when I immigrated to
“Ah.” The
doctor, Angela noticed, had a pocket tape recorder running. He made a few notes
in her chart. “What was school like for you?”
Are you
probing me, my good doctor? Will you report back to your government or my
former one when you leave this room? And why do you need to know this? “School?”
The doctor
smiled. “Elementary and high school, or the equivalent of
it.”
“I was a good
student, I recall. I liked going to school.” I went to school under a tent
with the few other surviving children in the area, taught by an old man who was
missing his left leg. We used paper and pencils donated by the Americans and
books scavenged from the ruins. I always did my assignments, with my father’s
help, and I swept the dirt floor of the classroom after school. The old man
said I was his only good pupil. He wept because I reminded him of his dead
grandchildren.
Dr. Robertson
grinned at a private joke as he wrote something in her chart.
“Something
amusing?” asked Angela in a deadpan.
“Oh, nothing,
really,” said the doctor. “I was just thinking of that old saying—those who
can, do, and those who can’t, teach.’” He hesitated as the import of his words
came to him, and he looked up in embarrassment. “Um, I hope I didn’t—”
Angela’s eyes
narrowed. “I was a teacher for fifteen years before I became a principal,” she
said in a flat voice. “The saying is from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and
Superman. Mr. Shaw also said, ‘The worst sin towards our fellow creatures
is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them.’” Oh, to have had you in
my hands two-dozen years ago, when my word was enough to wad your miserable
life into a ball and throw it into the iron stove of hell. Oh, for the pleasure
that would have brought me.
The doctor
looked down at his notes, his face turning red. He cleared his throat and
shifted in his seat under Angela’s gaze. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “So, getting on
with the questions, did you have a job when you were growing up?”
“When I began
high school—” Careful, Joo-Hyun, you are in the
minefield now “—I helped teach some of the smaller students, and I ran
errands for the schoolmaster.” The schoolmaster had contacts among the U.N. forces,
and he gave me medicine for my mother, who was often sick. I did not know it at
the time, but the old man had been part of the resistance against the Japanese
overlords. “It helped make ends meet.” The errands I ran for him when in
my teens always involved taking papers to a certain place that always changed,
handing the papers—which I had hidden under my coat—to a particular man there.
This was always done in secret, and I received extra food for it, which I gave
to my parents.
The doctor
paused, looking away in thought. “I had a friend who joined the army a few
years ago. He was stationed in
“None taken.” Shall I tell you of my first impressions of
your mad country when I arrived here? Or should I be honorable and polite, and
let it pass? I will smile for you now. “Are we done with the questioning?
Is my mind working properly?”
The doctor
laughed nervously. “Your mind is working fine, Ms. Li. I do have a few more—”
The beeper on
the doctor’s belt went off. “Excuse me,” he said, and he glanced at the
display. He shook his head and got to his feet. “I’d better go. It’s almost
lunchtime, anyway. Ms. Ross will check your blood pressure and temperature, and
I shall return in an hour or two. I have some other questions, if you don’t
mind, about the incident yesterday that brought you here.” He waved and left
the room.
Angela smiled
weakly at the nurse who walked over to her bedside—if a nurse the young woman
really was. “Is there any chance the hospital kitchen has kimchee?” she asked
with a trace of hope.
The nurse
frowned as she lifted Angela’s wrist and took her pulse. “Kim what?” she said.
“Who’s that?”
Poor child. If it doesn’t look like a French fry,
you don’t know what to do with it, do you? “Never mind,” Angela said with a
sigh. “It was a long shot, anyway. If there is a spicy noodle dish available, I
will have that, please.”
II
Lack of money is the root of all
evil.
—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
The people may be made to follow a
path of action,
but they may not be made to
understand it.
—Confucius
Angela Li
glared at the television set hanging from the ceiling of her hospital room.
Propped up on her bed after her lunch and a nurse-assisted bathroom visit, she
watched a CNN reporter in
After Nurse
Ross was called away before she could complete her check of vital signs, Angela
began channel surfing, finding nothing close at hand to read. She was slowly
feeling more like her old take-charge self. The only sour note had been the
hospital’s unwillingness to provide her with any sort of spicy food, much less
her beloved kimchee. Bad for her digestion, the staff said—as if they knew
anything at all about proper digestion with all the fat-soaked fried garbage
they probably eat, ran her thoughts. The nurse finally let Angela have
extra black pepper, so she could choke down the otherwise tasteless chicken
noodle soup. She made a mental note to hide packets of pepper oil and spices in
her clothing in case something unexpected like a hospitalization ever happened
again.
Her mood,
which had improved nonetheless, was entirely spoiled by the TV news. Morons!
she fumed, watching footage of the North Korean
military on parade. How anyone can think the Communists will keep their word
to do anything but lie and betray and destroy is beyond me! A video
appeared of Kim Jong Il, the
dictator of the Democratic People’s Republic, smiling and waving at a crowd.
Enraged, Angela thrust her upraised middle fingers at the television. Eat
this, you traitorous mongrel! You have fooled no one. You will see what I mean.
You will see, indeed.
The news then
switched to a different topic, the coming presidential election in November.
Angela lay back on her pillows, sinking into depression. Governor Bush
hasn’t written back to me yet, she silently grumbled. I’ve sent him six
letters and received not a word in reply. American politicians are supposed to
be so approachable—ha! You’d think one of his flunkies would have at least sent
a postcard. Maybe I should have sent a little money for his campaign, too, but
the school’s defenses ran over budget, and we can hardly do without them. Only
the fool does not prepare for winter—or for war.
Angela picked
up the remote and shut the TV off, then tossed the remote on the bedside table.
She rubbed her eyes, aware of a dull headache and general weariness. Almost
fifty years now since my ruined sixth birthday, but the cold war never ends.
Everyone mouths words of peace, but until the murderers in the north are thrown
down, nothing will happen, nothing at all—except the next war. And that war
will come. I know it in my bones. I have read the signs and portents, listened
what was said and not said, assembled the puzzle from bits and pieces all
others ignored. How can everyone else have missed it? Am I truly alone?
The last
question was rhetorical only. She knew she was alone. She also believed that
she was right. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
men to do nothing. I love that saying, but I forget who said it. Edmund someone—Burns?
Burke? I should look it up when I get out of here.
A knock came
from the door, interrupting her gloom. A moment later, the door swung open, and
a young woman wearing a peasant blouse, fiber sandals, and a long woven beige
skirt peeked in. A timid lamb greets a wounded dragon, Angela thought,
and she gave her best official smile. “Hello, Miss Defoe,” she said aloud.
“Bring a little school spirit along with you?”
“Hello, Ms.
Li! Happy Saturday!” The woman gave Angela an anxious
smile back as she entered the room and carefully shut the door behind her. Her
chestnut-red hair was wavy and long, and a handmade seashell necklace, green
yarn-and-bead bracelet, and oversized mood ring completed her neo-hippie
ensemble. She held a grocery bag in her arms and had an enormous purse on a
shoulder strap. “You’re looking great!” said Claire with forced cheer. She
checked her grocery sack. “I think I’ve got everything that you asked for when
you called me earlier.”
“Let’s see,”
said Angela, sitting up again. She adjusted her glasses and took the sack from
Claire. Claire Defoe, thought Angela as she went through the bag’s
contents. Twenty-nine years old, a starry-eyed liberal
idealist from
“Ah,” said
Angela in triumph, “a chilled six-pack of Ultra-Cola—excellent!—my cell phone,
the charger, my laptop, my appointments book, and—oh!” Her face filled with
delight, Angela pulled a large jar from the sack and clutched it to her bosom. “Kimchee! Yes!” She kissed the jar. “You are such a
dear! I’ll pay you for it Monday when I’m back in the office.”
“You’re
welcome,” said Claire, wrinkling her nose at the kimchee. She had tried it once
in college, and it had nearly burned off her taste buds. “The Oriental Kwikee Mart had lots of it. Oh, and I brought you something
else!”
Angela looked
up over the top of her glasses. “Oh?” Something with a
high alcohol content, I hope. A little bottle of Irish whiskey, or—
“Here!” Claire
exclaimed, pulling a large, brown-paper-wrapped package from her voluminous
purse. “It’s a wind chime! I made it myself from recycled aluminum cans.
Ultra-Cola cans, of course.”
Angela kept
her smile frozen in place. “Eh . . . wonderful, dear.
You can leave it on the chair against the wall, over there. I’ll look at it
later. And how were things at Laaawndale High
yesterday when I, um, left? Did everyone cope without me?” Did everyone
remember to stay out of my computer files? If not—
“We did our
best.” Claire’s bright look faded. She cleared her throat, looking more
nervous. “However, Mister Cartwright, the school superintendent, is
investigating the, um, contract with Ultra-Cola. He said he might have to make,
um, certain, um—” Her voice dropped to a whisper “—adjustments to it, but we’ll
still—”
Angela looked
up, eyes wide. Adjustments? Oh, no!
“Cartwright didn’t do anything rash, did he?” she asked, barely keeping her
voice steady. “He didn’t cancel it, did he? We need that revenue! Did he talk
with Leonard Lamm at Bleeding Edge Marketing? We’re on the line between red ink
and black, as you know!” I absolutely have to get out of this place and get
back to my office tonight to call Lamm! This could be disastrous! I need the
upgrade to that satellite transmission jammer, or I’m cooked!
“I don’t know
what he had in mind,” said Claire, “but I’m sure he isn’t going to cancel the
contract.” She took a seat near Angela’s bed. “He said he wanted to eliminate
some of the, um, extreme measures that Mister Lamm and the Ultra-Cola people
have forced you—I mean, all of us—into taking. The
stress is just too much for, um, the school. We’ll still get the income, I’m
pretty sure of that. We’re still the only public school in
“Oh well, what?”
Angela said. Her faced hardened, and she was not able to keep the venom out of
her voice. I already know from reading your e-mails to Freddo
in
Swallowing,
Claire shook her head rapidly. “Oh, nothing, Ms. Li, nothing!
It’s . . . we’re . . . we’re doing great!” She imitated raising
and drinking from a soda can. “Cheers to Ultra-Cola!”
Angela’s glare
softened to a disdainful gaze. You don’t even have the courage that Daria
Morgendorffer showed when she challenged me on this, but I can forgive her. She
is just a child, and a sheltered one at that. When she leaves school and faces
the real world, she’ll find out exactly how valuable and useful her vaunted
morality is. She will appreciate, as I did, that ethics will not fill anyone’s
stomach. The things I did to keep my parents and myself alive after the war,
the things I did—
With an
effort, Angela shoved the bad memories aside. She could do nothing about the
contract situation now, unless her cell phone was charged. She thought about
calling then and there, but a wave of weariness swept over her. She slumped
back on her pillows. I don’t feel as well as I thought I did. I’d better
rest a bit longer. If I get up but then collapse in here, they’ll never let me
out.
“How are you
feeling?” said Claire. She was eager to change the subject. “We were very
worried about you.”
That’s
possible, but I doubt it, Angela thought. You were the only teacher I
knew who would go shopping for me if I asked. Some would say you were too nice
to refuse, but I would say that you’ve got the assertiveness of a hamster.
“I’ve been doing much better since yesterday,” she finally said. “I hardly
remember what happened. I should apologize to everyone for anything I said or
did.” May as well get that out of the way.
“Oh, you were
fine,” Claire said. “We were a little worried when you . . . uh . . .”
“I recall
swinging a fire axe around, attacking things,” Angela prompted.
Claire paled.
“Oh, no one was hurt, so no problem! I’m sure there was a reason!”
Angela gave a
thin smile. If nothing else, the axe story should keep everyone in line when
salary negotiations come up with the teachers’ union, unless Anthony “Popeye” DeMartino is the negotiator. He won’t back down. He’s
wanted to go toe-to-toe with me for months. “There is good news is that I
hope to be back at Laaawndale High tomorrow morning,
if the doctor says my condition has improved.”
“Oh, don’t
push yourself too hard! You should take the rest of the week off! Everything’s
going smoothly! Don’t worry about us!”
You’re as
transparent as air. Let’s pick some other topic. “I was curious, Miss
Defoe. How did you ever come to choose teaching as a career?”
“Oh!” Claire’s
face brightened in relief, and she became animated. “That’s quite a funny
story! I had this boyfriend in high school, Fred. I called him Freddo. He wanted to be a teacher, but I wasn’t sure what I
wanted to do. I was thinking of starting a little kiosk in
Blah blah blah.
Angela’s thoughts drifted as Claire chattered away. Such an innocent thing
you are. It’s a wonder you got this far in life. If Daria Morgendorffer is
sheltered, you were locked away in a trunk in a closet. I never had your
idealism. After the war, we had nothing but our lives. My rewards for running
those little errands for the one-legged teacher weren’t much, but they
helped—more than I knew then. My father worked as a common laborer, and we were
all ashamed that my mother was forced to do laundry instead of keep house.
Worse, my father became dispirited from all the tales of corruption in
President Rhee’s government. His great faith in democracy was shaken. We are
destroying ourselves, he muttered. What is wrong with us? Where is the justice?
We have become our own worst enemy.
I do not
recall that I cared about politics, one way or the other, unless it concerned
Communism. My hatred for Communism grew every day, for what its deluded
followers had done to my family, my city, my nation, and my people. It had torn
my homeland in half and murdered millions. It had destroyed our national pride,
ripped great clans in two and set them at each other’s throat, and made us the
wretched of the earth. It was evil incarnate.
I lied about
my age and was clearing tables and washing dishes in a beer hall when I turned
sixteen. My parents thought I was cleaning homes; they would have beaten me
senseless had they known where I really was. I was not attractive enough to be
a waitress at a good-paying beer hall, one near a U.N. military base, though
that defect also saved me from a rapid slide into prostitution. I was neither beautiful nor ugly, only forgettable. Mine was the
face you would overlook first in any crowd. My parents sometimes talked of finding
a husband for me, but the wealthy and hardworking men were long dead or long
taken or not interested. Then, too, we were overwhelmed with just staying
alive, and the three of us had been through so much together, we could not bear
to think of breaking up our family.
I remember I
was sweeping up the hall one evening, preparing to go home, when I overheard a
group of university students talking at a corner table. They drank too much
rice liquor to be prudent. General Park had taken over the government in a coup
a few months before and autumn had come, so it must have been about September
1961. I was seventeen. The students talked loudly of overthrowing the junta and
setting up a collectivist workers’ paradise, reunifying the south with the
north. I gave no sign that I understood them or cared, and I continued
cleaning. When I got home, I carefully wrote down all that I remembered of what
the students said, what they looked like and what they called each other, and
thus began my new career. It also destroyed what remained of my naive trust in
youth and the power of education. I had never imagined that college students
would turn to Communism, as if nothing at all had been learned in the two
decades before. It shattered my faith, but my hatred drove me on.
In the
following days, the students came back, more of them. I listened in on them as
I worked, making more notes, and before long I knew everything there was to
know about them: where they met for political meetings, what they plotted
against the government, the name of the Democratic People’s Republic spy who
gave them money for weapons and bombs. I wrote it all down and hid the papers
at home, but I left a note on top for my parents to take the papers to the
police if I was ever killed. I did not fear death, but I knew my records
guaranteed a great reward from the police and the military for uncovering the
subversives. It would be my last gift to my parents.
One cold night
in December, I gathered my courage and told the manager of the beer hall about
the traitors who drank his beer. I expected a reward. He slapped me so hard it
threw me to the floor of his upstairs office. Get your ass back to work, girl,
he shouted, and shut your hole about the customers. He kicked me again and
again with his hard-toed shoes as I tried to shield myself. What our customers
say is none of your concern, he shouted. I should kill you and get someone who
won’t drive my business away. I should cut your throat, you worthless whore. He
kicked me until he was tired, and then he walked back to his desk. Finish
cleaning up before I kill you, he said, and then get out of here and never come
back. I crawled out on my bruised and battered hands and knees, my left eye
swollen shut and my cracked ribs driving knives into my lungs with every
gasping breath.
I had made it
to the top of the stairs and was reaching for the railing,
to help myself crawl down to escape, when there was terrific shouting. The
police had broken into the main hall. I heard a loud gunshot—then the air
exploded. I covered my head with my hands, deafened by continuous bursts of
automatic gunfire and the crashing of chairs and the trampling of feet and the
screams, the inhuman screams—
“Ms. Li?”
Angela
started. Heart racing, she stared at Claire and realized she was breathing very
fast. Her face felt clammy and cold. She swallowed. “I must have—I guess I
faded off or something,” she said, trying to breathe slower. “They have me
taking this, I don’t know, some kind of medication, and I’m not myself, not . .
. not myself.” I am not Li Joo-Hyun. That was
another life. I am Angela Li, the principal of
“Do you want
me to get a doctor?”
“No, no. I
just need to rest. Maybe that would be best. I should get some sleep.”
“Can I put
that sack on the chair over there?”
“No, just
leave it with me. I’ll . . . I’ll put it on the floor by my bed, so I can get
it. Thank you for bringing it to me.”
Claire stood,
looking uncertain. “If you’re sure you’re okay, then, I’ll—” She pointed to the
door.
“That would be
best.” Angela felt beads of cold sweat run down her face from her forehead. “I
just need to rest for a while. Thank you.”
Claire Defoe
waved goodbye and left, with a final concerned look back before closing the
door.
Angela took a
deep breath and held it, driving down her fear. When she exhaled, she lay back
in exhaustion. It was too much to bother with putting the sack on the floor.
She closed her eyes and lay still, barely breathing, and remembered the cold
week when her life changed forever.
III
Whoever obeys the gods, to him
they particularly listen.
—Homer, The
Iliad
Come not between the dragon and
his wrath.
—William Shakespeare, King Lear
Somewhere in a
forgotten box or file cabinet, in an old storage room in a South Korean
law-enforcement or internal-security agency, was the
first recording ever made of Li Joo-Hyun’s voice.
Silent and alone, just short of her fifty-sixth birthday, Angela Li lay in her
hospital bed and thought about that tape, the frightened seventeen-year-old
girl captured on it, and that room, the windowless little room in which
the tape was made, the room she occasionally saw in nightmares all her adult
life.
Angela had
never heard nor seen the tape, nor had she ever asked about it. She did not
believe anyone had listened to the tape since shortly after it was made in
December 1961. It was likely that the tape no longer existed, destroyed during
one of the many internal purges of files that periodically afflicts government
agencies short on storage space—or eliminating evidence of civil-rights
violations. Angela understood this, as she was no stranger to destroying
evidence. She had deleted many computer files, shredded and burned many
documents, and erased many security-camera tapes at
The first tape
recording of her voice would generate much trouble if it were found, for many
reasons. Its last storage space was likely in the headquarters of the Korean
Central Intelligence Agency, which was only a few
months old when the tape was made. Many similar tape recordings, Angela knew,
had come and gone in the KCIA’s files. She had heard
a few of them in her time, but only when necessary. Most such tapes began with
the subjects protesting innocence to the interrogators, though some were stoic
and silent, and a few were foolishly hostile. A couple even laughed. As the
tapes progressed, however, they became more alike. Cries of pain invariably predominated the subjects’ responses to questioning, until
the subjects were either removed or predictably confessed to a given crime.
Li Joo-Hyun’s tape recording would have been one of the unique
ones. It began in much the same way as most others did. She had been kept for
two days in a large holding cell she shared with about forty other people taken
prisoner in the December raid on the beer hall. During those two days, many
were taken from the cell and questioned. None of them were returned. No one
knew if those who were taken away were freed, imprisoned, or dead. Li Joo-Hyun was not very religious despite her Buddhist parents,
but as she was marched away from the holding cell, the beer-hall dishwasher
with the forgettable face prayed for deliverance with the fervor of a mad
convert.
She was taken
under guard to a small windowless room. In the room was a chair, a bright ceiling
light, a small table with a tape recorder and a seated man who operated it, and
two men who asked questions. Li Joo-Hyun had been
thoroughly searched before she was brought in and seated, and her hands were
tied behind her with wire. The two interrogators were tired and bored. One
asked her name, then asked where she lived, then asked if she was a Communist,
then asked if she was not a Communist, why she was working at a beer hall
infested with Communists. She protested that she had collected information on
Communists to give to the government, but she was not one herself. The man
called her a liar and threatened to beat her until she told the truth. He said
if she confessed, things would be easier for her. She told him she had a large
amount of information on the Communists at the beer hall, collected over a
period of months, but it was at her parents’ home. She begged him to send
someone to get the information; it would prove that she told the truth.
The man
shouted that she was a liar, and she would suffer for it. She wasn’t even a
Korean; her surname was Chinese. She said she was a Korean. Her father’s
grandparents were Chinese, it was true—they were immigrants in the late 1800s who set up a small grocery in
At this point,
fifteen minutes into the interrogation, something different happened. The door
to the room opened, and an old man came in. It was the old man who had taught
school under the tent in the ruins of
Li Joo-Hyun, said the old man angrily, what have you done? You
were my best student. Why have you fallen in with Communists?
She cried that
she was innocent. She told him where her notes were hidden. She begged him to
read those notes and spare her parents, who knew nothing of this.
The old man
was furious. If this is so, he said, why did you not go to the police before
now? If you knew of this treason, why did you not tell someone when you
discovered the matter?
I wanted to
find out where they got their orders and their money, she said, and I found the
answer. The agent’s name and address is in the papers at my parents’ home. They
mean to attack government buildings and overthrow
The old man
stared at her, then ordered to one of the
interrogators to take a squad of men and go to her parents’ home to get the
papers. I hope you are telling the truth, said the old man, his face a rock
wall. He ordered that she be put in a cell by herself and given a chance to
clean herself up, to have fresh clothes and something to eat. This was done,
and she waited alone for hours before several men came and freed her. They
questioned her for hours more, then brought her to a
room where only the old man was present, sitting behind a desk on which were
her notes. He had her sit in a chair across from him.
You told the
truth, said the old man. Your parents are unharmed. Li Joo-Hyun
burst into tears when she heard this. Stop it, barked the old man. You did much
good, but you should have come to the police sooner than this. There is much
you discovered that we needed to know weeks ago. The old man sounded angry, but
there was a touch of respect in his voice. He praised her diligence, her
accurate eye and ear for detail, her careful records. You were well named, he
said—Joo-Hyun for “wise jewel.” He said she would
receive a large reward for her work, a very large reward, but if she wished it
would be given in secret, so no one would know it was her who had turned over
the information. She said the reward should go to her parents, but she did not
want anyone else to know how they got it. The details would have to be worked
out. Her parents were frantic and would have to be calmed, given a false story
that they could swallow. They would in time get over this mix-up, as would she.
And the old
man offered Li Joo-Hyun a job. The government needed
someone like her, someone who could get inside close-knit cells of insurgents,
saboteurs, and revolutionaries, then report on everything she had learned. The
risks were plain. If she was discovered by the Communists, she would die, but
only after a long period of unimaginable agony. The Communists were masters at
torture. If she turned out to be a double agent and betrayed the government,
she would also die—and she did not need the circumstances of her demise spelled
out.
Li Joo-Hyun was overcome with surprise for a moment, but she
took the offer on the spot, even after all she had been through. The police
were fighting Communists, just as she was. It would be an ideal line of work.
Her ill treatment was merely a misunderstanding, an accident now resolved.
Justice had triumphed. All was forgiven.
But she did
not forget the windowless little room. Though the room had been mopped before
she came in, she had smelled blood in the air—fresh blood that stung her nose,
and sweet-sick old blood that nauseated her. The marks on her wrists from the
wire that bound them faded in days, but she never forgot her terror that the
only people she loved, her parents, would suffer unspeakably—and she would be
to blame for it.
As the long
years passed, Angela thought less often about the little room, but she never
forgot it. It made her careful and sharpened her sensibilities. She resolved
that she would never send a person to that room who
did not deserve it. People who didn’t like the government in
Communists and
traitors, however, were a different matter. When she found them, Angela cast
them into the hands of the police as if flinging them into the fiery mouth of
Moloch. She did it without great emotion. It was a job, and it needed to be
done.
And she was
very good at her work. Within two years, she was an agent for the KCIA. Her
parents had no idea where the extra money came from, but they wisely never
spoke of it outside the family. They were even wiser to spend it carefully, so
their sudden wealth did not become obvious. Her mother secretly feared her
daughter was involved in something immoral. Her father secretly feared she was
involved in something patriotic. Neither dared to bring it up
to Li Joo-Hyun.
Angela Li lay
in her hospital bed and wondered how many people had been imprisoned or killed
through her actions. It was impossible to know for certain. She could not even
make a reasonable guess.
She did not
regret a moment of it. The
For a moment,
she thought about the only person she had ever turned over to the police that
she was sure had not been a Communist. She put a hand to the left side of her
face, where the beer-hall owner had struck her almost forty years ago. She had
put nothing about him in her original notes, knowing he cared only for profit
and never gave politics a thought—but she added something when talking with the
old man later, and the old man had believed her, and the beer-hall owner was
never seen again.
Angela Li
gently rubbed her left cheek. She did not smile when she meditated on the
beer-hall owner’s fate, but she felt a touch of satisfaction. Her mind
wandered, and she recalled that Lawndale High’s football team had a saying
about payback, which they chanted when they went up against a rival team that
had beaten them in the past. It is true, Angela reflected. Payback is
indeed a mother.
When she
thought of that, she smiled.
IV
A prince should therefore have no
other aim or thought, nor take up any
other thing for his study, but war and
its organization and discipline,
for that is the only art that is necessary
to one who commands.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The
Prince
Whoever fights monsters should see
to it that in the process
he does not become a monster.
—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and
Evil
Angela Li was
jarred from her reverie when the door to her hospital room opened wide. The
nurse, Miss Ross, flashed a smile as she entered. “Hi, there!” she said with
businesslike cheer. “I’m back to finish up your vital signs. Did you take a
nap?”
“Only for a
moment,” said Angela in irritation. “You woke me up.” Go away and maybe I
can call the school superintendent about this contract problem. I should have
done it already. The medication and my low energy level are making it hard to
keep my mind from drifting off.
“Sorry about
that. What’s in the sack?”
Angela
realized the paper sack Claire had brought was still at her side on the bed.
She sat up quickly and peered in, then rolled the top down to hide the
contents. “Oh, my cell phone, laptop, some other
things to keep me occupied. Is the doctor coming back to see me?”
“I’m afraid
not,” said the nurse, picking up a small device on the desk. “Doctor Robertson
got called away for the rest of the afternoon. He said he wants to see you
tomorrow morning, though.”
Tomorrow
might be too long a time, if Superintendent Cartwright is thinking of
terminating my agreement with Ultra-Cola. “Is there a chance I might be
released tonight?”
“Open your
mouth,” said the nurse, holding an electronic thermometer. Angela grudgingly
did so, wondering what would happen if she bit down on the plastic tube. The
nurse pulled the device out moments later when it beeped. “
“I don’t think
my car’s here,” Angela said. It’s probably still in the high-school parking
lot. It will be safe there. No one’s going to steal it or even key the paint
without at least three monitors along the parking-lot fence recording the deed,
and everyone knows it.
“By the way,
you have a visitor,” said the nurse, now taking Angela’s blood pressure. “She’s
waiting outside. I think she’s one of your students.”
“Oh?” Angela
looked at the door. Who would ever come in to see me on a Saturday, unless I
told her to do it? I’ll see her briefly, then call the
superintendent. “Could you send her in?”
Miss Ross
removed the pressure cuff from Angela’s arm and finished scribbling a note in
the medical chart. “Shall do,” she said, walking for the door. “Buzz for help
if you need to get out of bed. You may be unsteady on your feet for a while.”
The nurse
opened the door to leave and called, to someone outside, “You may come in now.”
A moment later, an African-American teenager in a white
blouse and beige slacks stepped into the doorway. “Ms. Li?” she said.
“Am I bothering you?”
A smile broke
over Angela’s face. “Miss Landon!” she cried. “Come in at once!”
Jodie Landon
returned the smile as she walked up to Angela’s bedside. “I brought you a card
and a gift,” Jodie said, handing over an envelope—and a can of Ultra-Cola with
yellow and blue ribbons, for
Angela
laughed. “Exactly what I need,” she said, taking the envelope and can. “I have
a bit of a caffeine-withdrawal headache, and as you know, this is the only
cure!” She sat up and popped the top on the can, taking a long, lovely drink. “Ahhh!” she sighed, lowering the can. “Looking forward to
graduation, Miss Landon?”
Jodie’s smile
took on a tired character. “Oh, yeah. My father said
he would throw a party for me on graduation night. It’s probably the only
relaxation I’ll have before I get to Turner this fall.”
You’re
probably right, Angela thought. She knew perfectly well of the pressure
that millionaire inventor Andrew Landon put on his oldest daughter to succeed.
He had called Angela on numerous occasions about Jodie’s progress in school.
“What plans do you have for the summer? Taking a well-earned vacation to a
lovely beach somewhere?” I’ll bet not.
Jodie’s cheek
twitched, and her smile disappeared. “No vacation this time. My summer’s
already spoken for. My parents signed me up to do volunteer work for the
I knew it.
“I see. Well, your parents must be extremely proud of you.”
Jodie nodded
wearily. “It’ll be Rachel’s turn after me,” she said, referring to her younger
sister. “I hope she’s up to it.”
Not likely.
I’ve already heard about Rachel’s attitude problems and mediocre work from the
middle-school principal. “Speaking of being up to it,” said Angela
brightly, “I have a surprise for you, too. You’re going to be the class
valedictorian for graduation! I was going to tell you yesterday, but—well,
anyway, congratulations!”
Jodie blinked.
She did indeed appear surprised, though not terribly. “I thought Daria
Morgendorffer would get to do that,” she said.
She would
have, yes, except for her disrespectful mouth, her unsociable behavior, and a
few Cs in Phys Ed. “No, it’s definitely going to be you. You’re the only
student with a solid four-point-oh, and your community activities and
extracurriculars run to about six pages in single-spaced type. You’ll have to
make a speech, but keep it to ten minutes because we’ll be short on time. Just
talk about what you’ve learned at Laaawndale High,
and bring me—I mean, bring your school more glory, if you could!”
Jodie, lost in
thought, shook herself to wakefulness again. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice
less tired. “Thank you, Ms. Li. I really appreciate the honor.”
A perfect response. Jodie Abigail Landon: tall,
black, and eighteen years old, bearing the world on
your weary shoulders but ready for more. All blessings and praise to your
father, whom you no doubt regard as rigid, uncompromising, and incapable of
understanding you. He taught you to be and do your best. One day you will see
it. You are brilliant, beautiful, capable of anything—and respectful. The
manners of everyone else in this school, added together, could not equal yours.
I won’t see your like again.
“No,” said
Angela. “No, dear. Thank you, Miss Landon. You
are my best student, my best student ever.” As my old teacher said I was for
him, so you are for me, but more so, much more so.
“Oh,” said
Jodie. She appeared genuinely surprised this time, and she blushed. “Why, thank
you.”
“You bring
honor to
Jodie’s blush
deepened. For the first time Angela could recall, Jodie was at a lost for
words. She looked down, licking her lips, trying to think of something to say.
I wonder if
you are thinking of how hard it was for you to live up to your father’s
expectations. I wonder if you are thinking of what you gave up to make it to
the top. If only you knew. You had it easier than I, Miss Landon. I am glad you
never went through what I did to survive, to get to where I am now. You will go
on to surpass me a thousand times. For that, I have no regrets.
“Thank you,”
said Jodie. She wiped her eyes. “I need to go. My mother’s in the waiting room.
We’re shopping for clothes at the Mall of the Millennium today.”
Angela
grinned. “Go forth and conquer, Miss Landon. I’ll see you on Monday.”
Jodie nodded.
Still wiping her eyes, she turned and made her way out of the room, waving
goodbye as she left.
Angela waved
back. Enjoy the surprise one-year scholarship you have waiting for you at
Turner, she thought, and a personal invitation to join the most influential
academic sorority there is. I twisted a few arms to get these for you, but you
are worth it. In return, your millionaire father—who knows who got these gifts
for you—can be counted on to donate a very sizeable amount to our June
fundraiser for a new computer lab, so I won’t have to bleed any money for it
from the budget. Everyone gets a good back scratch, and I get the upgrade for
that satellite transmission jammer.
Moved to
action, Angela sat up in bed, drank more of her Ultra-Cola, and opened the sack
that Claire had brought. Her cell phone was fully charged, so she put a call in
to the superintendent’s home. His answering machine picked up instead. Angela
left her name and cell phone number, asking him to call her at once. Well,
that was a waste of time, she thought. May as well get
my other projects going.
A minute
later, she had her wireless laptop up and running. She opened the jar of
kimchee for a treat. I wish I’d remembered to ask for a fork or some
chopsticks when I called Claire, she thought as she plucked a bit of
garlic-and-hot-pepper-infused pickled cabbage from the jar and ate it. It was
like eating a bomb. Her face got hot and prickly, and her sinuses burst and
drained. Delicious. She licked her fingers and
sealed the jar, setting it aside as she sniffed. The spices made her nose run,
but it was worth it. She got a box of tissues from a bedside table and blew her
nose, feeling vaguely guilty about it though no one else was in the room—not
that anyone in this country would have minded, of course. Americans were
wonderful, if thoughtlessly rude. Wiping her hands on another tissue, Angela
pecked at her computer, getting into her Internet account.
If only I’d had one of these when I was working for the Korean
Central Intelligence Agency. She sat back and waited for the screen
to show her e-mail. It was all spam, except for a few news reports she had
arranged to be sent to her when key words were mentioned. Her fingers hovered
over the computer’s keys, but after a moment her hands fell into her lap. I
probably wouldn’t have had time to use it, given all I had to do. I can just
see that straight-arrow attorney, Helen Morgendorffer, when she was an idiot
teenager in hippie garb, a marijuana cigarette in her mouth and a protest sign
in her hands. Me, I wore threadbare uniforms and worked on the janitorial staff
at various universities, mopping floors and taking abuse from faculty—all the
while reading papers in people’s trash, listening at doors and windows,
installing microphones in ventilation ducts, taking pictures, and reporting
back to my superiors on all I learned. I hunted down traitors, subversives, and
saboteurs, pausing for moments only when famous Americans were shot or
spaceships landed on the moon. Helen, I am sure, listened to Beatles records,
complained about her homework, and told her parents her life was hard indeed.
I stayed away
from politics, but it did not stay away from me. I was furious when
Worse, I had
differences with my KCIA managers over exactly who were the real enemies of the
state. The KCIA was casting too broad a net. I was interested only in the
Communists, but the KCIA wanted anyone and everyone who spoke out against the
government. I pretended to go along, but I was careful to restrict my interests
to rooting out real traitors, not every fool student or teacher who had a head
full of naïve ideals and a gripe to air. My mother never asked about my work,
preferring blessed ignorance to the damnation of truth, but I saw in my
father’s face how much he feared for me.
Still, I struggled
on. I was very patient. I knew my cause was just. I remembered what an American
general once said, I think it was Omar Bradley, that
in war there was no second prize for the runner-up. I was still fighting the
good fight.
And then came
the cold, bad week.
Angela roused
herself before she fell into the clutches of depression. Her fingers tapped the
computer’s keys and opened a news-alert e-mail. A website that analyzed
worldwide military news reported that
Her fingers
again lingered over the keys, staring at her computer screen. In her mind, it
was the last week of January 1968, when razor-cold winds swept through
The Americans
did eventually manage to stop the offensive and destroy the Viet Cong, but the
Yanks lost their will to fight. The crew of the
What is the
good of my life? What is the good of my work? Months, later, the cleaning
woman stood in a secluded place in her hometown and looked out over the
spectacular
She waited
until her mother and father both turned sixty, a major event in the life of
every Korean that she felt obligated to personally oversee, as she was her
parents’ only living relative. Shortly afterward, she turned in her paperwork
to go to
Her paperwork
was approved. Her birth date and birth place were revised in official files, so
she could enter college in
“And here I
am,” said Angela. She blinked and came to her senses, still sitting up in bed
in the hospital with the computer waiting for a command on her outstretched
legs. She had no idea what to do next. After a moment, she closed her e-mail
account and clicked over to the
The door
opened. Reflexively, Angela shut down her computer and put on a false smile
when she looked up. “Yes?” she asked pleasantly.
“You have
another visitor,” said Nurse Ross. “A Mister Cartwright.
Should I send him in?”
V
For mere vengeance I would do
nothing. . . .
But for the security of the future
I would do everything.
—Senator (later President) James A. Garfield, 1865
Big Brother is watching you.
—George Orwell, 1984
“Cartwright?
He’s here?” repeated Angela Li faintly. The superintendent! Here! “Oh!
Eh, certainly! Send him in, please!” Angela quickly adjusted her hospital
clothing, smoothed her black bangs with a hand (A brush! I forgot to ask
Claire for a hairbrush!), and straightened as she sat up in bed.
A moment
later, Lawndale County School Superintendent Horace Cartwright came in, wearing
a sports shirt and slacks instead of his usual business suit and tie. He gave
Angela a crooked smile as he carefully shut the door behind him. “Ms. Li, good
to see you again! I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, no, come
on in! Have a seat!” Angela thrust the closed laptop into its paper sack, along
with the cell phone and everything else within reach. “I’m doing much better
this morning! Whew! Can’t imagine what got into me yesterday. Food poisoning, I
suspect. Maybe an electrolyte imbalance, who knows.
I’ll have to watch my diet very closely after this. So! Um, how are you?”
Mr. Cartwright
ignored the chairs in the room, standing comfortably near the foot of her bed
with his hands in his pants pockets. “Fine, thank you. We were worried about
you yesterday. You didn’t seem to be yourself.”
“Well, like I
said, it was probably food poisoning, maybe carbon monoxide, a virus,
something, whatever! I’ll have the maintenance staff get on it right away. Can’t have it spread to the
children!”
Mr. Cartwright
nodded. He did not appear concerned as his gaze roamed the room. “All that matters
is that you get back on your feet again,” he said. “Oh—I saw Jodie Landon in
the hall on my way in. She said she dropped by to check on you. Great kid, Jodie. God bless her. She’s going a long way in
the world, a very long way.”
“Oh, she is,
yes! My best pupil. A credit to the entire teaching
staff at Laaawndale High! And, of
course, her parents.”
“She is the
best,” said Mr. Cartwright absently. He looked out the window of Angela’s room.
“I was in your office yesterday afternoon, after you . . . left for the day. I
looked for that contract with Ultra-Cola. I think we need to look at some
changes to it.”
“Cha—”
Angela’s heart skipped a beat. “Cha-changes, of course.
Nothing’s perfect. Everything could use a little improvement, certainly. I was
just saying—”
“That was a
brilliant move on your part to get the funding you needed to keep your school
going, Ms. Li,” said Mr. Cartwright, still looking out the window. “These are
desperate times, and only innovative leaders will take the risks to gain fiscal
survival when all others around them wither and starve. You have to respect the
will of the taxpayers, even when it . . . doesn’t seem to make any sense, like
when they vote against a property-tax increase to fund overdue school
improvements. It’s insane.” He turned and looked Angela in the face. “I’m
speaking strictly off the record, you understand.”
“Of course,”
said Angela, who had no idea what to say because she had no idea where this was
going. “Of course.”
Mr. Cartwright
sniffed and looked out the window again. “I think the Ultra-Cola people, and
maybe Mr. Lamm and his marketing firm in particular, have not been, um,
respectful of your position, Ms. Li. I think they’ve tried to take advantage of
your school spirit and desperate circumstances, and they’ve forced you to
accept certain conditions in your contract that aren’t in your, or your school’s, best interests. I’d like to see that changed.” He
looked directly at Angela again. “You’re the best principal I have. I’m not
going to lose you, if I can possibly help it.”
Angela now had
no idea at all what was up. Cartwright had never said anything like this to her
before. “Thank you,” she said in a daze.
“You’re
welcome.” He looked around the room again. “We’re going to have our attorneys
renegotiate the contract. We’ll take out the parts where Ultra-Cola gets to
advertise on school property, except in traditionally approved ways, like in
the school paper, that sort of thing. We might be able to keep the same level
of payments they were making you as well, because our lawyers don’t think
Ultra-Cola—or Mr. Lamm, to be honest—played fair with you. We’d like to have
some compensation for that. If you’re up to it, I’d like for you to come by my
office next Tuesday and look over some proposed changes to the contract. I
think you’ll be pleased with the result. It will be a lot less of a headache
for you, and the other schools can copy your example without being put through
the intolerable pressures to which you were subjected.” He was at the desk now.
He flipped through a travel magazine left there, looking at the pictures.
“Okay,” said
Angela. She felt like she was in some kind of
“Good.” He sniffed again and let
the magazine fall shut. He put his hands back in his pockets. “You have Daria
Morgendorffer at your school, too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she
said, lingering over the word. She was about to add some criticisms of the
girl, but something made her wait and listen.
“Smart girl, that one. Is she your valedictorian, or is
Jodie Landon?”
“Miss Landon
is.”
“Good. Daria’s
up there, too. Not so many extracurriculars, but her head’s in the right place.
Maybe she could get some kind of lesser award at graduation. Something in
recognition of her, um, academic excellence, despite . . . you know, whatever
else. I’ll leave it up to you.”
“I’ll get on
it,” said Angela. “First thing Monday.”
“No rush,”
said Mr. Cartwright. “We have three months till graduation, but something for
her would be nice. She deserves it.” He paused. “I was stationed in
The world slowed
down. I know what happened, but I was not a part of that plot. It was
because of that craziness that the KCIA stopped bothering me in
He nodded,
looking at the magazine. “So I’ve heard. I remember you said something about
that to me when you took over at
Angela nodded
back. It was, it was. The most powerful of nations
made up of the rudest of people, none of whom ate rice. All of them believed if
you looked Asian, you were a Japanese martial-arts expert. All stared at you
when they talked, instead of looking away like polite people. They blew their
noses and deep kissed in public, I couldn’t believe it, and they cursed their
government whenever they felt like it, even for no reason at all. The women
dressed like prostitutes, and the men like criminals and tramps. No one held a
shred of loyalty or respect for higher authority, and no one had any sense of
discipline or order. Teenagers openly supported Communism and anarchy in
willful ignorance of the consequences, and no one gave a damn about what
happened outside his or her own home, much less outside one’s own city, state,
or nation. Oh, and people legally marrying their cousins, their own relatives—I
thought I would claw my eyes out. Yes, coming to
Mr. Cartwright
looked around the room again. “Do I smell kimchee?”
“Oh—yes, I
have a little of it.” Angela reached over and picked up the jar. “A, um, friend
brought it over.”
Mr. Cartwright
grinned. “I love that stuff,” he said. “Started eating it
when I was at the DMZ. My wife hates it, so I buy it and hide it in the
garage, so I can eat it there.”
Angela smiled.
It was a frightened smile.
“When I was in
Time stopped.
Angela stared at the superintendent.
“Nice old man.
We kept in touch for a while, until he died around Christmas in nineteen
ninety-two, I think it was. You’d just come in as
“Fine,” said
Angela, covering her face. I cannot cry now, I cannot cry now. Wait, just wait a little longer until he leaves. It won’t be
long. She wiped her eyes and looked up. “My sinuses,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I’m fine.”
He continued
to look at her for a moment longer, then looked out
the window again, down at the grounds below. “Sorry,” he said. “I told him
about you, said you had an excellent record and you were from
“You’ve done
an excellent job with your school’s security,” he went on. “Maybe you overdid
it in some places, like the bulletproof skylights over the indoor pool, all the
security cameras, but I don’t know. The times we live in.
Kids with guns, nutcases everywhere—you have to be ready for anything, or else
it’ll come and all you’ll have left are the regrets. Better to be prepared,
think like a Boy Scout, do what you have to do. It’s
the best thing for everyone, even if no one else gets it but us. You’ve done a
great job.”
Those skylights
will stop everything up to a rocket-propelled grenade. Angela brushed away
a tear before it could get more than halfway down her cheek. “Thank you. I do
my best.”
“That, you
do,” he said. “Some kids and their parents, they think schools are becoming too
much like prisons. Kind of silly when you think of it, since we let the
prisoners go home every day.”
“Exactly,”
said Angela. “Not really like prisons at all. Just playing it
safe.” Safe in case a North Korean assassin comes looking for me one
day, to even up the old score. I put hundreds of them away, the bastards. If
they ever found me here, if they learned that Angela Li was Li Joo-Hyun, they’d want payback for sure, and it would be a
mother. I may have to move into the school in time. The place is a fortress as
is. I almost live there now, so it wouldn’t be that much of a change.
Silence again
reigned for a few seconds.
“Ms. Li,” said
Mr. Cartwright at last, looking up, “do you really need a satellite
transmission jammer?”
Angela gasped.
Oh, my God—don’t take away that! You don’t understand—they might use it to
find me here! They can pick up my voice over radios and cell phones, match it
to their files—they’d know it was me, Li Joo-Hyun,
the agent who destroyed so many of their networks and plots in the south! You
can’t—you—oh, God, please don’t! “It seemed to be . . . what I mean to say
is, you know, I, uh, I thought—”
“It’s to jam
transmissions from North Korean satellites, right? North
Korean spy satellites? Assuming they can ever get one off the ground, I
mean.”
Terror seized
Angela by the heart and froze the blood in her veins. She opened her mouth to
speak, but nothing came out.
He sniffed.
“From what I saw of your setup on the roof, you could interfere with just about
any kind of satellite. You’ve got all the hardware. You send a satellite the
wrong kind of signal, it’ll fire its motors and spin
too fast and tear itself apart, or put itself in the wrong orbit, or reenter
and burn up, or shut itself off, or do any one of a hundred things to screw
itself up. Turns itself into a billion-dollar flying wreck, just like that. Happens all the time, mostly by accident. Can’t do it so
easily to a really sophisticated satellite, one with a little artificial
intelligence or really complex coding, but it can still be done, if you know
what kind of messages to send.”
“I suppose,”
Angela whispered after a pause.
Mr. Cartwright
looked out the window. “That old man thought the world of you, Ms. Li. I could
tell.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I have some contacts back at the
Pentagon. I know some people who might find it interesting, sort of as a little
test, to see if you can screw around with a hostile satellite from the ground.
Totally unofficial, you understand. Off the records, not a
word. Just fooling around. The North Koreans
don’t have anything up there yet, but the Chinese do. Wouldn’t
hurt to try a little experiment, maybe, just to see if it can be done.”
He looked back at Angela. “Some wars never end, do they?”
“No,” she said
dumbly. “No, they never do.”
“Okay,” he
said. “I’ll get the upgrade for your jammer by the end of the month. Save your
budget money to fix up your library instead. The Pentagon boys might dig up
some operational codes worth trying, too. We’ll have to stop talking about it
in the open, of course. It wouldn’t hurt to make anything you said about it up
to this point into a joke, if anyone asks. Everyone knows you wouldn’t have a
real jammer on your school’s roof. That would cause big problems. Huge problems. It’s just a joke, then, all right?”
“Of course.”
“Excellent.
Great football team you’ve got, too,” he said. “The rest of the country thinks
“Yes,” said
Angela. The strength was coming back into her voice. “Yes, we do. We do love
our football.”
“
“We’ll be
ready for them!”
“I know you
will,” said Mr. Cartwright. “I know you will.” He checked his watch. “Hey, I’ve
got to go run some errands for the wife. Sue sends her best.”
“Thank you so
much for dropping in, Mister Cartwright.”
“Not a
problem. Had to come by and check on my best principal.” He flashed a broad
smile and reached for the door handle—and paused. He bit his lip, thinking.
“Ms. Li,” he
said, “were you always known as Angela?”
Three seconds
passed.
“Of course,”
she said. “Always. My parents . . . had a thing about
Americans. Because of the war.”
Mr. Cartwright
nodded. “I thought so,” he said. He looked up again and smiled. “It was good
talking with you about football. Have a good day, Ms. Li. See you on Monday, if
you’re up to it.”
“I’ll be
there,” she said. She made herself grin. “I won’t let down the students and
faculty at Laaawndale High!”
Mr. Cartwright
nodded. The door closed behind him.
For a long
moment, Angela Li stared at her room in disbelief. In time, though, Angela Li
faded, and it was Li Joo-Hyun who put her hands over
her eyes and broke down and wept for the teacher who looked out for her, to
death and beyond.
Original:
9/22/03, modified 06/17/06, 09/23/06, 09/19/07
FINIS