by Angie Kim
At this reference to her, Young’s heart thumped her chest, hard and fast. Pak said, “Meh-hee-yah, answer me. Do you understand?”
“No. We should tell Um-ma,” Mary said, in English as always except for “Um-ma.” How long had it been since Mary called her Um-ma, what she used to call her before encasing herself in an armor of resentment? “You said she’s been getting suspicious. What if she asks about that night? What am I supposed to say?”
“What you’ve been saying all along, that everything is fuzzy.”
“No, we have to tell her.” Her voice shook, sounding unsure and small like a little girl’s.
“No.” Pak spat this out with so much force, it rang in Young’s ears, but he paused and took deep breaths, as if to calm himself. “For me, Meh-hee-yah, do this for me.” Forced patience coated his words. “It’s my decision, my responsibility. If your mother knew…” He sighed.
There was silence, and she knew that Mary must’ve nodded, knew he would’ve kept badgering her if Mary hadn’t obeyed. After a minute, she heard steps and the wheelchair moving. Closer and closer, then moving past, toward the house. She thought about waiting until they were inside and running away. Or maybe going in after them, pretending not to have heard anything and seeing what they’d do. Both acts of cowardice, she knew, but she was so tired. How easy it’d be to stay here and seal the world out, lie here entombed for as long as it took for things to stop spinning, for everything to just pass and disintegrate into nothing.
No. She couldn’t do nothing, couldn’t let Pak just push her aside and make her any more irrelevant than he already had. She pushed the hatch, hard. It squeaked open, the dissonance of the noise piercing her ears and making her want to scream. She tried to stand. Her head banged the steel above, the thud resonating in her skull like a beaten gong.
Footsteps entered the barn, slow and cautious. Pak said it was nothing, probably an animal, but Mary said, “Mom, is that you?” Her voice was sopping with fear, but something else, too. Maybe hope.
Slowly, Young raised her body. She crawled out and stood up. She reached out to Mary in invitation to join her, to grieve together for this loss that was uniquely theirs. Mary looked at her, tears streaming down her face in rivulets, but she didn’t walk toward her. Instead, she looked at Pak as if to ask permission. He held out his hand, and Mary hesitated before walking away from her and closer to Pak.
A memory: Mary as a baby between them, both Young and Pak reaching and calling for her, and their baby girl crawling to Pak, always Pak, and Young laughing and clapping, pretending not to be hurt, telling herself how wonderful it was that he was so close with their baby, unlike other men, how it was only because Meh-hee spent so much time with her—the entire day!—that she preferred the parent she hadn’t seen. It had always been this way with them—an imbalance, even their positioning now, the three of them forming a skinny triangle with Young the lone castaway far from the others. Maybe all families with only children were this way, inequality in closeness and the resulting envy being inherent in all three-person groups. After all, equilateral triangles with truly equal sides existed only in theory, not in real life. She’d thought the balance would change when they were together on a different continent from Pak, but ironically, he saw Mary more than she did even then: twice a week, through Skype (which Young couldn’t use, as the store had no Internet). The balance always skewed to Pak-Mary. It had in the past, and it remained so now.
Young looked at them. The man in the wheelchair, who had committed a monstrous act he’d hidden for a year and had entrusted their daughter, not her, with his secrets. And next to him, the girl with the scar, who’d already forgiven her father for the crime that gave her that scar. The girl who always chose her father, who was still siding with him now, mere minutes after this crushing revelation that should have brought her back to Young. Her husband and daughter. Her sun and moon, her bone and marrow, those without whom her life wouldn’t exist, yet always out of reach and unknowable. She felt a deep pang in her chest, as if every cell in her heart were suffocating and slowly dying.
Pak looked at her. She expected penitence, for his head to droop like a dying sunflower, for him to be unable to look her in the eye, as he confessed his crime and begged forgiveness. Instead, he said, “Yuh-bo, I didn’t realize you were there. What were you doing?”—not in an accusatory or nervous way, but with a tone of feigned casualness, as if testing her out, to see if he could get away with continuing to lie to her. Looking at him, at his fake smile that looked eerily genuine, she stumbled back, and suddenly, it was as if the floor had vanished and she were falling through a vacuum. She needed to get out of this space, this ruined site of death and lies. She staggered, the scorched flooring beneath her feet uneven, needing to hold out her arms for balance, like walking down a plane aisle during turbulence. She walked past Pak and Mary to the stump of a long-dead tree and wiped her tears.
“I see—you heard,” Pak said. “Yuh-bo, you have to understand. I didn’t want to burden you, and I thought there was a better chance of things working out in the end if—”
“Working out?” She turned and stared at him. “How could this possibly work out? A boy is dead. Five children have no mother. An innocent woman is on trial for murder. You are in a wheelchair. And Mary has to live the rest of her life knowing that her father is a murderer. There is no way anything can ever be all right.” She didn’t realize she was shouting until she stopped and heard her words echoing in the silence. Her throat felt raw, grated.
“Yuh-bo,” Pak said. “Come inside. Let’s talk about this. You’ll see—everything will work out. We just have to keep going and not say anything, for now.”
Young stepped back, onto a branch, the uneven footing making her wobbly, ready to fall. Mary and Pak both leaned forward and held out their hands. Young looked at the hands of her daughter and her husband, side by side, offering to steady her, support her. She looked at their faces, these beautiful people she loved, standing at the foot of the trail running along the creek, the tall trees behind them forming a canopy over their heads, sparkling strings of sunlight poking through the leaves. How beautiful it was this morning, when her life was collapsing, as if God were mocking her and confirming her irrelevance.
Mary looked at her and said, “Um-ma, please,” the tender way she said “Mom” in Korean making Young want to take her daughter in her arms and wipe her tears with her thumb, the way she used to. She thought how easy it’d be to say yes, to join hands and forge this union that would forever be held tight by their secret. Then she looked up, at the blackened submarine peeking through, charred by the flames that had engulfed an eight-year-old boy and the woman trying to save him.
She shook her head no. She took a backward step, then another, and another, until she was out of their reach. “You have no right to ask me anything,” she said. Then she turned from them, her husband and daughter, and walked away.
MATT
HE LOOKED FOR MARY IN COURT. He wanted to see her. Well, not wanted, exactly. More like needed. The way you don’t exactly want a root canal, but you need to get the rot out, stop the pain. The courtroom was fuller than usual—probably the by-product of the latest news (“‘Mommy Murderer’ Trial: Defendant Fed Son Bleach”)—but the Yoos were absent, which was strange.
Janine was already there. “I did the voice sample. They’re playing it for the guy today,” she whispered, and anxiety churned in his stomach, thinking about Mary’s access to his car, the phone inside.
Abe turned. “Have you seen the Yoos?”
He shook his head. Janine said, “I think it’s Mary’s birthday. Maybe they’re celebrating?”
Mary’s birthday. Something felt wrong, ominous, the coming together of these unnerving things—the car-key realization, the dream, and now her birthday. Her eighteenth, legally becoming an adult. As in, able to be fully prosecuted. Shit.
Detective Heights walked up for her cross-examination. Shannon didn’t waste any time with good-m
ornings or how-are-yous, didn’t stand or wait for the whispers to die down. She just said, from her seat, “You consider Elizabeth Ward to be a child abuser, right?”
People looked around, as if to figure out where the question came from. Heights appeared taken aback, like a boxer who expects a minute of circling the ring and, instead, gets punched in the face immediately after the bell. She said, “I, um … I suppose that’s right. Yes.”
Still sitting, Shannon said, “And you told your colleagues that was critical to this case, that without the abuse claims, you had nothing on motive, correct?”
Heights frowned. “I don’t recall that.”
“No? You don’t remember writing ‘No abuse equals no motive’ on the whiteboard at a meeting on this case on August 30, 2008?”
Heights swallowed. After a moment, she cleared her throat. “Yes. I do recall that, but—”
“Thank you, Detective. Now”—Shannon stood—“tell us how you handle child abuse claims in general.” She walked up, her steps slow and relaxed as if she were strolling through a garden. “When you get a serious complaint, you sometimes remove children from parents’ custody right away, before the investigation’s even done, correct?”
“Yes, when there’s a credible threat of serious harm, we try to obtain an emergency order temporarily assigning the child to a foster home pending investigation.”
“Credible threat of serious harm.” Shannon stepped closer. “In this case, when you received the anonymous complaint about Elizabeth, you didn’t remove Henry from his home, didn’t even try. Isn’t that correct?”
Heights looked at Shannon, mouth shut tight, eyes unblinking. After a long moment, she said, “Correct.”
“Which means that you believed there was no credible risk of harm to Henry, correct?”
Heights looked over to Abe, back to Shannon, and blinked. “That was our preliminary assessment. Before our investigation.”
“Ah, yes. You investigated for five days. At any point, if you had determined that Henry was, in fact, being abused, you could and would have removed him to protect him. That’s your job, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“But you didn’t do that.” Shannon stepped forward like a bulldozer ramming through a barrier. “For five full days after the complaint, you left Henry at home, correct?”
Heights bit her lip. “We were obviously wrong in our assessment—”
“Detective,” Shannon said, projecting her voice. “Please answer my question and my question only. I didn’t ask about your job performance, although your supervisor and attorneys interested in suing on behalf of Henry’s estate may be very interested to hear your admission of wrongdoing here. My question is: After five days of investigation, did you or did you not find Elizabeth to be an abuser posing a credible threat of serious harm to Henry?”
“We did not.” Heights looked dejected, her words flat.
“Thank you. Now let’s turn to your investigation itself.” Shannon put a blank poster board on the easel. “Yesterday, you said you investigated four types of abuse here: neglect and emotional, physical, and medical abuse. Correct?”
“Yes.”
Shannon wrote those categories in a column on the poster. “You interviewed Kitt Kozlowski, eight teachers, four therapists, and two doctors, as well as Henry’s father, correct?”
“Yes.”
Shannon wrote the interviewees on the top row:
Shannon said, “Did anyone express concerns about Elizabeth neglecting Henry?”
“No.”
Shannon wrote NO five times across the Neglect row and drew a line through the whole row. “Next, anyone other than Kitt express concerns about emotional abuse or physical abuse?”
Heights said, “No.”
“In fact, Henry’s teacher from last year said—I’m reading from your notes—quote, ‘Elizabeth is the last mother I could see traumatizing her child emotionally or physically,’ right?”
Heights breathed out, almost in a sigh. “Yes.”
“Thank you.” Shannon wrote NO in both rows across all but the Kitt column. “Finally, medical abuse. You focused on this, so I imagine you asked detailed questions to every person you talked to.” Shannon put down the marker. “So let’s have it. List for us all the instances of medical abuse these fifteen other people told you about.”
Heights said nothing, just stared at Shannon with a look of intense dislike.
“Detective, your answer?”
“The problem is, these people weren’t aware of any of the so-called medical therapies the defendant inflicted on Henry, so—”
“Yes, we’ll get to Henry’s therapies in a minute. But in the meantime, it sounds to me like your answer is that these fifteen people you interviewed did not, in fact, think that Elizabeth had committed medical abuse. Is that right, Detective?”
Heights breathed, and her nostrils flared. “Yes.”
“Thank you.” Shannon wrote NO across the last row and stood back to give the jurors an unobstructed view of the easel.
Shannon pointed to the poster. “So the fifteen people who knew Henry best and cared for his well-being agreed that Elizabeth did not in any way abuse him. Let’s talk about the one person with concerns. Did Kitt actually accuse Elizabeth of emotional abuse?”
Heights frowned. “I think it would be fair to say she questioned whether the defendant harmed Henry by saying he’s annoying and everyone hates him.”
“So she questioned emotional abuse.” Shannon drew a question mark in the Emotional Abuse/Kitt square. “And what’s your opinion on that, Detective? Is that child abuse? I have a child, a very teenage girl, if you know what I mean, and I admit, I catch myself telling her often that she’s rude and mean and downright hateable and she’s going to wind up alone with no friends, husband, or job if she doesn’t change and soon.” Some jurors chuckled and nodded. “Now, I know I won’t win any mother-of-the-year awards, but is that the type of thing we take kids away from moms for?”
“No. Like you say, it’s not ideal, but it doesn’t rise to the level of abuse.”
Shannon smiled and slashed a line through the Emotional Abuse row. “Now, physical abuse. Did Kitt actually accuse Elizabeth of that?”
“No. She merely raised the question because of the scratches on Henry’s arm.”
Shannon wrote a question mark on the Physical Abuse/Kitt square. “When you interviewed Henry, he said he got scratched by a neighbor’s cat, right?”
“Yes.”
“In fact, you wrote in Henry’s interview notes that there is, quote, ‘no evidence supporting a physical-abuse claim,’ correct?”
“Correct.”
Shannon drew a line through the Physical Abuse row. “That leaves medical abuse. That claim centers on Elizabeth’s alternative therapies, specifically IV chelation and MMS, right?”
“Yes.”
Shannon wrote IV Chelation and MMS (“Bleach”) on the chart. “Now, forgive me. I’m not an expert on this, but it seems to me a prerequisite to medical abuse is that whatever the mother does must actually harm the child—that is, make the child sick or sicker, right?”
“That’s typically the case.”
“Here’s what confuses me. How can Henry’s treatments be abuse when he’d been getting better, healthwise?”
Heights blinked a few times. “I’m not sure that’s the case.”
“No?” Shannon said, and Matt caught an amused look on her face, a trace of a childlike watch-this! anticipation. “You’re aware that a neurologist at Georgetown’s autism clinic diagnosed Henry with autism when he was three?”
“Yes, that’s in his medical records.” Matt hadn’t known that. He’d always assumed, based on Kitt’s comments, that Henry’s “autism” was all in Elizabeth’s head.
“It was also in his medical records, was it not, that according to the same neurologist, Henry no longer had autism as of February last year?”
“Yes.”
“Well, going f
rom autism to no autism is better, not worse, right?”
“Actually, the neurologist indicated he may have been misdiagnosed—”
“Because the improvement in Henry’s condition was so vast as to be unaccountable otherwise, because most kids don’t improve the way Henry did, right?”
“Well, in any case, he stated that large amounts of speech and social therapy were most likely responsible for the improvement.”
“The large amounts of therapy that Elizabeth insisted on, arranged for, and drove him to every day, you mean?” Shannon said, depicting Elizabeth once again as Mother of the Year. But instead of annoying Matt, it made him think: Had he been wrong? Had there been a reason for Elizabeth’s obsessiveness, and had that obsessiveness caused a boy to go from autism to not-autism?
Heights’s frown deepened. “I suppose so.”
“Autism aside, Henry improved in other ways, too, right? He went from second percentile for weight at three, with frequent diarrhea, to an eight-year-old in the fortieth percentile, with no intestinal issues. Do you recall that from his medical records, Detective?”
Heights’s face turned red. “But that’s not the issue. The issue is that these so-called treatments are dangerous and unnecessary, which does constitute medical abuse, regardless of the actual consequences. And let’s not forget: there was a harmful consequence for Henry, namely death from the well-known risk of fire from one such treatment, HBOT.”
“Really? I wasn’t aware that HBOT at a licensed facility constitutes medical abuse.” Shannon turned to the gallery. “There must be, what, twenty, thirty families here who were Miracle Submarine clients. So I take it you investigated all these families for child abuse for undertaking such a risky treatment for their children. Is that what you’re telling us, Detective?”
Out of the corners of his eyes, Matt saw many women in the gallery turn their heads nervously, looking at one another and Elizabeth as if it hadn’t occurred to them that they might be considered guilty of the same things she was being condemned for. Was that why they were so eager now to believe she was an evil murderer? Because if she didn’t set the fire on purpose, it might mean that their own kids were safe at home instead of in a coffin due to nothing more than chance?