But in Her Heart a Cold December

But in Her Heart a

Cold December

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 Superbowl. 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 Carter County (The Daria Diaries) to Lawndale County (“One J at a Time”).

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.

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 Lawndale High School, so we gave you a sedative in your IV to help you rest.”

“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 America, so I could better perform my duties here. Those were exciting days. . . .

“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 America?”

“No. I was born in Seoul, Korea.” We lived by the railroad yards, where my father worked. He wanted to be a teacher; he read everything he could find, and he taught my mother and me to read and write. He would have been a great teacher, but the Japanese destroyed his dreams. They tried to erase us as a people, my father often said. They tried to paint over us, cover up our culture and language and everything we are, when they ruled us. I could not go to school and get my degree to become a teacher, he said, so now I load and unload boxcars to feed my family. The Americans are blessed for destroying our oppressors, burning up their cities and bombing their armies so we could be free—but now the Communists will enslave us if they can. It will be worse than what the Japanese did to us. We must do everything we can to be free. Remember that, Joo-Hyun: everything.

“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.

“Seoul.”

“Oh. S-E-O-U-L.”

“That’s in South Korea, right?”

“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 Seoul, so my father used all our savings to buy food and medicine and blankets, and we hid in our dirt-walled cellar a few days later when the People’s Korean Army arrived. Through the wood floor above me, I heard the grumble of heavy trucks, the crack of rifles, the thump of bullets hitting the walls of our house as the PKA came through the streets. We found ourselves in the Communists’ hands and thought it could not possibly get worse. We were wrong. We were horribly, terribly wrong.

“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 Inchon, he said. It must be the Americans. They are landing at Inchon. They have come back to save us. We dared not turn on the radio, or the PKA would shoot us all, as they had shot so many in our city. “Everyone talked about the war. It affected . . . everything, you know.” My father was taken away by the PKA to fight for them, but he escaped and came back to us as the Americans advanced from Inchon, their aircraft filling the skies and their guns pounding the North Koreans firing from Seoul. We hid in our cellar as the city was blasted and burned to cinders. The ground jumped, dust and dirt fell on us, and we choked on the smoke until I was sure we would die. Our house collapsed on us, but it did not burn, and the ruins protected us from the shelling and gunfire. When we dug our way out three days later, half our neighborhood lay in piles of smoking rubble.

“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 Pusan, when we fled Seoul from the Chinese tide. It was late December, and even the Americans could not hold the Chinese back. Get up, please, I begged my mother. Her hands were like ice, and she seemed to be asleep. My father knelt down and lifted my mother to his back. Cover her with a blanket, he shouted, we must keep her warm, Joo-Hyun. We left all our belongings there by the roadside, beside the fallen dead and the debris, and we rejoined the river of marching people that stretched as far as the eye could see, a million feet crunching the ice on the road. The falling snow muffled all sounds, and the cold ate into my lungs and bones as I walked, the endless bitter cold. . . .

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 Seoul in the spring, the highway was littered with the blackened shells of trucks and tanks of every nationality. My feet were wrapped in rags; I wore a filthy coat I took from a dead girl my age. We had nothing left but what we carried. It was not difficult to envy those we left behind, buried in mass graves at refugee camps in the south. “And the unexpected always has a way of making itself known, but we did our best.” When we reached Seoul, I looked for our home, but the neighborhood had been burned to the ground. Only the chimneys were left, a forest of blackened pillars in long rows by the old streets, where bulldozers had plowed the rubble aside. We lived in the railroad yard among the wrecked boxcars in which my father had worked less than a year before, and we ate anything we could find.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s interesting that you’re from Korea, yet your first name is Angela.”

“My parents—” —would never have done it. The Americans caught me stealing from their mess tent on the outskirts of Seoul, in the spring of 1951. The Americans were big and pink-faced and sharp-nosed and had loud voices. They befriended me and called me Angel. They taught me to sing Broadway show tunes, and they gave me shoes and chocolate and food I took back to my parents. Most of them were kind and protected me, but even the bad Americans killed Communists, so I held nothing against them.

“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 America in 1970 and left Joo-Hyun behind.

“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 Korea and said it was kind of bleak, but he was way out in the boonies, you know? He was a long way from town. No offense.”

“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.”

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 Seoul inform her of a scheduled summit meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea, set for June. The look on her face could have melted rock into magma.

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 Tacoma on your first major teaching job. You have a world peace website you haven’t updated in three years, and lately you’ve used the school computer to e-mail a former high-school boyfriend who now works in Seattle, detailing the six hundred reasons why you dislike the World Trade Organization while also asking if there’s any chance your ex-flame will visit Lawndale soon. You hint that he can stay over in your studio apartment. He, not the WTO, is the burning issue in your lonely, dateless life.

“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 Lawndale County with a positive balance, although . . .” She shrugged. “Oh, well.”

“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 Seattle that you don’t like my deal with the devil to keep Lawndale High afloat, she thought as a nervous Claire stared back at her. Very well—let’s see if you can come up with a better idea. The good people of Lawndale County would rather spend their money for cable TV and gas for their SUVs than pay extra in property taxes to support their own children’s education, not to mention their police and fire departments and libraries and whatnot. Let’s see what brilliant idea you can pull out of your ass to save our betrayed, beaten, barely surviving educational system, my dear, sweet, principled Claire.

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 Seattle by the waterfront where I could sell my macramé flowerpot holders, and maybe some handmade jewelry, but I wanted to branch out into macramé wall hangings and pottery, too. Well, one day I was talking with Freddo, and he said I should think about teaching art, since I was so good at it. He was very encouraging, so I said . . .”

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 Lawndale High School. I am in a quiet hospital room deep in America, and I am safe now. I am safe. I am safe.

“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 Lawndale High School when it suited her purposes. She was meticulous at covering up activities that would generate unwanted trouble if detected. She had learned from the best.

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 Seoul and did well until their store burned from a chimney fire. They lost everything and became laborers after that. Li Joo-Hyun, however, considered herself Korean in every way. She hated Communists and would do anything to pay them back for what they had done to her country. The interrogator laughed. She was a traitor and a spy, he said. Her parents would be arrested as accomplices and would be punished, just as she would be. Terrified, Li Joo-Hyun began to cry.

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 Seoul years before, the old man who sent Li Joo-Hyun on strange errands that she faithfully accomplished. He came in on crutches, but he had an air of authority about him. She learned later that he had been listening to her interrogation in a nearby room. She learned much later that he was with the KCIA.

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 General Park. I tried to tell the owner of the beer hall, but he did not believe me. He beat and kicked me because he wanted the Communists to keep drinking his beer and eating his food. Please send someone to get the papers. I swear it is all true. Do not hurt my parents, I beg you.

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 Seoul did not automatically deserve to be in that room. Everyone in Korea had problems with the government—even government people had problems with the government. Her own father had problems with the government. She would not send him to the little room for that.

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 Republic of Korea was free—troubled, for certain, and not without periods of darkness of its own making—but free. A small rock holds back a great wave, said Homer in The Iliad. Li Joo-Hyun had been just such a rock.

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.

And when she thought of that, she smiled.

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. “Normal,” she said, disposing of the thermometer cover and putting the device away. “Getting out tonight depends. I suppose you can sign yourself out under the rules, but we’d rather you stayed in until a doctor cleared you. You look like you’re doing a lot better today, but you were pretty tired earlier. I wouldn’t drive home right now if I were you.”

“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 Lawndale’s school colors, tied around it.

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 Black American History Museum at Turner University. I think I’m supposed to be a greeter and tour guide. I leave a week or two after graduation.”

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 Lawndale with your very existence,” Angela continued. “Since the day you entered ninth grade, you’ve given me much to brag about to the superintendent.” Whom I should call as soon as possible. “It was not an easy journey, Miss Landon, but you overcame all obstacles and proved yourself worthy of any challenge. I have every faith in you and your future. You will always bring glory to your old school.”

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 wort