The Surrendered

by Chang-Rae Lee

  He let go of her then but she held on to him, afraid all at once of his absence, of being left alone, and though she turned her face away, he pulled off her knit cap and tightly clasped her hair and kissed her roughly on the face. Then he kissed her mouth and she turned but he held himself against her and when her own mouth softened all of his fury seemed to find her, his hands running over her as if she were difficult clay and he was desperate to remake her. But there was no need. She pulled him against her on the wall and she kept her mouth on his while his hand pressed her from beneath, rocking her, anchoring her on its hard seat, and after the days of unwinding wretchedness her body came wholly awake, alive. She didn’t wish it but it was true. She was cured.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE HUNGER. It had come for June again. Yet this time, unlike on the road, when she was marching with her mother and her siblings and with the twins and then finally alone, it was not a lurking angel of oblivion. An angel of death. None of them had succumbed to hunger itself but it had driven them to exhaustion and carelessness and ultimately to peril and she always believed it would do thusly to her. Push her to the precipice. But this time, she wasn’t hiding or running from it; she was inviting it along in a kind of dance, as a partner, a companion that would mark her every move. She knew that hunger would clarify her mind, strip away all extraneous thought, and leave her with the focus of pure, unswerving will.

  She was eating almost nothing. The first couple of days were difficult; she could not have a thought that didn’t involve breaking off from whatever she was doing and sprinting to the kitchen where the aunties were stirring the pots and push them aside and plunge her hand into the large cast-iron vat of rice porridge as if she were a bear reaching into a beehive. Fill herself to bursting. But after the second full day the panicked tremors began to subside, and on the third and fourth diminished enough that the chasm inside her was not of any need unrequited, nor a body forlorn, but a version of herself that she did not know until now existed, this June in quiet thrall. It wasn’t an emptiness at all. It was the truer sculpture of her, the more deeply worked shape, and rather than feel her strength drawn down she was girded as she went forth about the orphanage, the ground hardly apparent beneath her feet.

  Yesterday one of the aunties had regarded her suspiciously and kept glancing her way after she took her bowl of rice mixed with soup. After that, June made sure to eat a couple of bites whenever the old woman was looking her way but then would quickly spoon her food into the bowl of whoever was beside her (she made sure now not to sit off by herself), some younger boy or her mouthy bunkmate So-Hyun, who made no fuss or complaints about getting an extra helping, even though there was plenty of food. Orphans never declined.

  Otherwise she was still mostly avoided or ignored, which suited her. She was no longer doing chores at the Tanners’ cottage-an auntie had informed her that she should not go there anymore-and as no other job was assigned to her she could simply slip off after classes and meals where attendance was noted and wander in the hills. The foliage of the bushes and young trees had mostly fallen to the ground so that she was wading through puddles of brilliant color. She would have liked to pick up the pretty little leaves or even lie down in a pile of them but the strange thing was that she had to keep moving, for when she kept still she grew dizzy, this wild ball of a storm twisting within her like a gyroscope. She gagged if she stopped for too long. So she took to running, running fast in her too-tight shoes, the raw throbs of the blisters marking the distance on the deer trails that the boys and Hector used in their forays to gather firewood. With each step the grating pains flashed up into her chest and throat but she didn’t whimper or even grimace and she swallowed them as if they were sweet sustenance.

  The other day, after English class, Sylvie had offered a wave and a smile and though June was desperate to rush forward and press her face into the woman’s chest she knew Reverend Tanner might see them. And even if he couldn’t, she would show Sylvie her resolve. So instead she just nodded and scurried away. Since rousing Reverend Tanner out of bed a week earlier she had not spoken to Sylvie at all. Not a word. She knew earlier had been wrong to be so stubborn that morning and she would do what she could to get back into his graces enough so that he’d let his wife adopt her, and if that meant denying herself and Sylvie for a brief time, then so be it. June had faith: if he loved his wife, he would yield. She had never known anything like faith before but she was quite certain she knew what it was now, at least the bodily expression of it, the privation in her belly paradoxically convincing her of her way.

  And the way, she realized, included Min. She had become his friend. It hadn’t been at all her intention. She was keenly aware of him, yes, she couldn’t keep from thinking about him, seeing the scarf he’d given Sylvie, how she always wore it now around her neck. On one of her wanderings down near the main road of the valley she’d found the rusted, broken-off tip of a bayonet in the dirt and she couldn’t help but think of him darkly, pressing the edge against her own scabbed palm to test how sharp it was, drawing fresh blood. But the other day she had gone to the dormitory to retrieve a book and while in the space of the new chapel heard some scuffling coming from the boys’ side. She cracked open the door to see four boys standing about a cot in the middle of the room. Min, undersized anyway, cowered amid them, trying desperately to slump down into his cot. He looked as small as a toddler. But he was being held up on either side, while one of the boys stood in front and grabbed Min’s hair with one hand and with his knuckles of the other ground down hard at his scalp. The boys sometimes did this to one another, as it could be very painful but showed no marks, and Min cried out with each slash. “You think you’re clever, don’t you, you little bastard?” the next boy snarled at him. His name was Byong-Ok. He was one of the bullies in the orphanage, older and already very pimply. “You think you’re going to go away with the Tanners so easily? Did you think we wouldn’t find out?”

  “I’m not going away!” he pleaded. “I’m not going anywhere!”

  “That’s not what I heard Reverend Kim telling one of the aunties,” Byong-Ok said. “He said you were going to get all new clothes and shoes from the church office in Seoul. And maybe some spending money, too.”

  “Why would I get anything, if the Tanners were adopting me?” he cried. “It doesn’t make sense! The Tanners would just give me whatever I needed!”

  “Shut up, you bastard,” Byong-Ok said, and knuckled him viciously. Min groaned sharply. Byong-Ok said, “How would I know why? Maybe that’s the way they do it. Maybe the Tanners don’t have as much money as those other people who were here. All I know is you’re going to give us whatever you get. All of it. You hear me?”

  Min murmured something.

  “What?”

  “I think you will be eating…” Min said.

  “What? What are you saying? Speak up, you little bastard.”

  “When you’re on the streets,” Min said, now quite slowly and clearly. “I think you will be eating your own shit.”

  Byong-Ok punched him hard in the belly. Min doubled over and fell to the floor. He spit up his lunch, a muddy puddle of barley rice and soup. The boys standing about him jumped away, laughing disgustedly. Byong-Ok then grabbed Min again by the hair and was about to push his face into the vomit when June found herself running at him. She knocked him over with her lowered shoulder. He rose, ready to fight, but he dropped his hands when he saw her. June was as tall as he, taller than his friends, and she stepped forward and pushed him, making him stumble over the corner of Min’s cot. When he tried to get to his feet she pushed him down again, and then again, and finally he shouted from the floor, “Okay, stop it! Stop it!”

  She let him get up and the boys trudged out. They cursed Min on the way, cursed her, too, though she could tell from the low huff of their voices that it was for the sake of their own pride so she didn’t respond. Min seemed to understand this as well and he stood beside her in silence.

  “Are you okay
?” she asked him.

  He sat on the cot, cradling his belly. “Why did you do that?” he said. “I’ve got nothing to give you.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “You can tell Reverend Tanner. Or Mrs. Tanner.”

  “Tell them what?”

  “You can tell them that I helped you.”

  A flicker of something momentarily lamped his face. “All right,” he said. “But you have to protect me. You have to keep me safe from them. They hate me.”

  “You don’t try very hard to make them like you.”

  “Why should I? I hate them. They’re dumb as oxen. They just play marbles and soccer and eat all they can, and they don’t think about anything.”

  “What should they think about?”

  “What you and I are thinking about. What’s outside of this place. What’s going to happen. What we’re all going to have to do. Isn’t that what is going on inside your head, noo-nah?”

  She didn’t answer; she didn’t like how he addressed her, much the way her younger brother might, with a lingering plaint. But of course he was right. There was no other consideration in her mind. It was becoming ever clearer to her, transparent, all the other concerns dissipating as she could feel her own flesh dissipating, cell by cell, the needless layers dropping away to leave only fresh, hard bone.

  “So will you protect me?” Min said.

  “I can’t be with you everywhere,” she said. “At night you’ll be in here with them.”

  “I can sleep out in the chapel.”

  “What would that do? They’ll just come for you.”

  “You can sleep there, too.”

  She shook her head. “It’s cold enough in the rooms.”

  “I’ll relight the fire for us in the stove, after Hector has come and gone. We can sleep right in front of it.”

  “I’m not going to sleep out there.”

  “You would if you were my sister.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I would.”

  “Well, you’re going to be my sister. I’m going to be your brother. Soon enough we will be in America together.”

  “How can you be so certain of that?” She found herself pinching his meager forearm. “What did Mrs. Tanner say? Is that what she said?”

  “You’re hurting me, June.”

  “What did she say!”

  “She didn’t say anything!” he told her, wrenching himself from her grip. “It was Reverend Tanner. He said he was going to take us with them.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re lying, just like you were lying to Byong-Ok.”

  “I’m not lying to you.”

  “Did you get spending money like Byong-Ok said?”

  Min nodded. “But it wasn’t from the church office. It was from that old couple. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t be as useful on their farm, with my foot. They were going to take me but decided at the very last moment on Sang-Ho instead and they must have felt guilty. It was twenty dollars. I don’t know why they bothered. I wasn’t going to get any of it anyway. But of course I couldn’t care less now. Soon we won’t have use for anything like money. We’ll have everything we need.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Talk to Reverend Tanner, when he returns. Ask him yourself.”

  “I will,” she said, though already knowing-as Min undoubtedly surmised-that she would not talk to him, or even approach him, out of fear of further sullying her chances. She made to leave but Min hooked her arm and hugged her with every ounce of his little boy’s force, his scant strength, and although she could have easily nudged him aside she let him hold on to her the way one of the twins might, his face mashed hard against her breastbone, his fists digging into the small of her back.

  “Very soon,” he murmured, his voice muffled in her sweater. “You’ll see. We’ll be living a new life.”

  That evening, well after lights-out, Min tapped at the door of the girls’ room, just as he’d told her he would. It was freezing in the chapel but he had just relighted the fire in the stove. It was enough to blunt the chill. He had dragged the two front pews before the stove and put them together front-to-front for the planks to be wide enough to lie upon. He pointed her to the pews and she climbed over the back. He had spread a folded blanket as bedding. She asked where he was going to sleep and he scooted quickly beneath the pews onto the bare floor. It was quiet and she was vigilant for any sign of Byong-Ok and the others. But Min kept turning on the floor beneath her and groaning with the discomfort and she pushed apart the pews and scolded him for making too much noise. He said he would stop but after a few more minutes of his tossing she gave up and pushed apart the pews and he scooted up between them. She made room and spread his blankets over hers and without hesitation he tucked himself into her side as snugly as if this were a nightly ritual and almost immediately fell asleep. She bristled with annoyance, but the faint, high sound of Min’s breathing made her think of her brother, and though the smell of his hair and body was not at all pleasant she instinctively wound her arm over his cheek and neck, to keep him warm.

  They both awoke before reveille and June went to her cot in the girls’ room, leaving Min to set the pews back in place; he didn’t want to go to the boys’ side until everyone else was awake and waited in the chapel until the kitchen bells rang. The rest of the day proceeded like any other with Reverend Tanner away, Reverend Kim arriving in time to give the breakfast prayer, and then he and Mrs. Tanner conducting the classes. She was clearly no longer ill: the color had returned to her face and she appeared as vigorous as ever, and in English class she led them in a few songs, the last being “Rise and Shine.” There was always an unofficial competition among the children to see who could sing the chorus the loudest, and for the first time ever it was June’s voice that sailed above the others, everyone (including herself) surprised by the force of her sound, its pleasing pitch and carry. Min was in the class and he stomped his good foot loudly in time to the rousing chorus. The other children and Mrs. Tanner did the same. It was strange, but June had slept very deeply, and despite only eating over the last three days what she would normally take in a single square meal, she felt as if she were the very ark they were singing about, her hold filled to capacity with the vitality and promise of the world.

  After class she did not linger or even try to catch Mrs. Tanner’s eye, rushing out along with everyone else to the lunchroom, where she would take her bowls of food but merely touch the spoon to her lips, leaving the food for her bunkmate So-Hyun and Min to split. She calmly watched them finish her food. Lick clean the bowls. It was not for them she felt satisfied but for herself, sure now she had mastered herself, transfigured the great foe within.

  Outside, the boys were organizing the usual post-lunch soccer game. She had not played since tussling with the other girl back on that warm autumn day, but she felt a new electric strength in her legs, a need to run. When she stepped onto the field Byong-Ok held the ball underfoot, telling her to go away. She stood quietly and waited. He kicked it to start the game only when Reverend Kim and Mrs. Tanner came out to watch. Soon both of the adults joined in the play, even Reverend Kim, who rarely spent any time outside. Everyone expected him to be stiff and awkward but he moved easily with the ball, flipping it up and deftly trapping it on his thigh, then on his foot, before floating a perfect cross to Mrs. Tanner, who deflected it for a goal between the two dirt-filled petrol cans. She raised her hands and a hearty whoop went up on both sides, though perhaps it was one more of commemoration than celebration, as if everyone saw that this was one of the last times Mrs. Tanner would be here among them.

  June had now joined in the game, too. She was as carefree as any of them, feeling as though she was moving to the rhythms of the play, following the track of the ball and the others, when before all she would look for was an opportunity to avenge any slight with a shove or collision, a kick in the shin. Though no one except Mrs. Tanner was intentionally passing the ball to her it regula
rly ricocheted her way, and instead of rearing back and booting it as hard as she could at someone or out of bounds she tapped it to her surprised teammates. Min was on her team and she tried to stay close to him whenever she could, warding off those boys with a glare. They couldn’t goad her today. On one play, as she was dribbling toward the goal, one of the boys who had threatened Min tackled her hard, his foot riding into her ankle, but she popped right up from the hard ground and kept running after the ball. She felt remote and light, almost bodiless, as if she could no longer feel pleasure or pain; or else the pleasure or pain existed somehow outside of her, in some ghost of her old self. She was not the same vessel anymore. She was simply moving, playing, and she was certain that Mrs. Tanner was seeing her fully once again, appreciating her anew.

  It was not even a question of Hector anymore. Since Reverend Tanner’s departure he hadn’t appeared in the mess hall, instead taking his meals to his room or to wherever he was working. He was at last keeping to himself. He was not outside now but from habit she kept an eye out for him. Although she knew they’d not been together for some weeks, June had still awoken late last night and crept out in the frigid dark to check for any sign of light from either the Tanners’ cottage or Hector’s quarters. But there was nothing but blackness and the cold, no sound but the whining gusts of the harsh wind jetting past the long dorm building, and she had quickly returned to climb next to Min in the warm box of the butted pews.

  A pass was now booted down the field nearest June and Byong-Ok and they sprinted after it. He had a few steps head start but she propelled herself with all her will and she got to the ball first. He was a much more skilled player than she and should have been able to take the ball from her easily, but she thwarted him with her hip, her shoulders, leaning back into him so he couldn’t reach the ball. His flagrant kicks stung her ankles and calves but she didn’t give in and when she noticed Mrs. Tanner and the others running toward them, she faked a kick as she’d seen Byong-Ok do and then jabbed the ball through his legs with the back of her heel, sending it toward the approaching players. Byong-Ok, frustration twisting his face, shot after it, reaching it just as Mrs. Tanner did, both of them stretching out a foot at the very same time. But at the last moment, perhaps realizing that it was Mrs. Tanner, he slid to the side and averted the ball just as the sole of her shoe met it. Her shoe rolled over the ball, her leg extending unnaturally, and she fell in a heap. The ball came loose and Reverend Kim took control of it but he stopped when Mrs. Tanner remained on the ground. She was wincing terribly and gripping her leg at the knee. Everyone crowded around them as Reverend Kim knelt beside her but when he touched her leg to examine it she cried out, pulling away.