The Surrendered

“You want to paint some more?”

“Would you mind?”

He told her to keep the brush. He went to find another in the storeroom, and when he finally returned with one she was nearly finished with a first coat. They moved on to the others, and soon they were done and ready to go back to the first bench she’d painted. But it wasn’t yet dry enough for its second coat, so she asked if she could see the work he’d done so far in the vestibule. He had already brought in the salvaged stove, now situated in the rear corner, and shifted and reframed the facing doors of the girls’ and boys’ rooms to be closer to the main entrance so that they wouldn’t be impeded by the benches once they were installed. He had taken apart a pair of broom closets to make as much room as possible and the space was starkly bare. The wooden walls, formerly the exterior of the separate structures, had been long weathered to a dark, silvery sheen.

“It’s dark in here even with the door open,” Sylvie said. “If we were to hold a service now we’d have to use oil lamps, or candles.”

“This wasn’t meant to be anything but another storage room. And a windbreak.”

“What do you think we should do?”

He didn’t know, but he felt as though he suddenly did care, if only because she was here, away from everyone else, within his reach.

She said, still holding her brush, “How much paint do you have?”

“There’s plenty. But it’s all that same color.”

She looked about for a moment, then took some broad swipes at the wall, down and then up. She stepped back. “You know, I think that will be fine.”

“It’s going to look like a concrete box in here.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “We’ll see. But do you mind? It’s a lot more work for you. I can help, if you like. In fact I should, since I’m putting you up to it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You can do what you want.”

“Then I’ll help,” she said brightly. They were standing near where the altar would be. Painted or not, this would be like no other house of God he’d ever seen. Above them there was no ceiling, and the bare rafters were strung with cobwebs and pocked by old hornet’s nests. It was quite warm inside and though they were both marked with the pungent oil paint he could still glean faint notes of her, her sweet sweat, the soft, palmy oil of her hair. He could smell himself, too, and it was not good, this dried animal reek, this lower-order tone, but she didn’t seem to mind being this close to him. He had the strange compulsion of wanting to pick her up, to see her high in the cathedral; maybe he was a Catholic after all. But the little light there was flickered and the lanky silhouette of Reverend Ta

“There you are,” Ta

“Don’t they look good to you?” Sylvie asked.

“Indeed, they do,” Ta

“We’ve decided we’ll be painting in here, too.”

“Is that right?” he answered her, though he was looking at Hector.

“Yes,” she said. “We think the same color as the benches.”

“Well, I’m sure that will be fine,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll lend a hand as well.”

“Yes,” Sylvie added enthusiastically. “We can all work together.”

“Listen,” Hector said. “I really don’t need any help.”

“It’s a lot more than painting a few benches,” Ta

“It’s still not a big job.”

“Don’t be silly,” Sylvie said. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”

“I’m not being silly,” he told her, with an edge that seemed to deflate her. “It’s not a big job, and if you want me to do it, I will. Look, I better get a second coat on those now.” He held out his hand to Sylvie and she handed him the brush. Outside, the benches were dry and he pried open a fresh can of paint and stirred it and began applying a second coat, not looking up. He didn’t see when the Ta

FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS he tried to steer clear of her. It was easy to avoid Ta

Sylvie had originally taken her up because June could not play with the other children without a resulting argument or fight, her counterpart invariably ending up the more injured party. June was moody and aggressive and when she wished could be unrelentingly cruel, as harsh to the youngest ones as she was to those nearer her age. Her main chore at the orphanage was to help the aunties with the laundry, and she once made a boy who chronically wet himself take off his underpants after an accident and wear them on his head. She would often bully other girls when she found them too girlish or weak, especially when it came to standing up to the boys. Hector himself had broken up several of her fights-the last one found her crouched in the middle of a gang of the oldest boys, who were taking turns punching and kicking her, shouting at her to go away, that she was ruining the orphanage. She was trouble enough that Reverend Hong had quietly attempted to place her in another orphanage, or in a job-training program. And yet because he knew there was only misery and degradation in store for most family-less girls, he had at last decided he must try to keep her on even after she turned sixteen, to delay her entry back into the world for as long as possible.

But after Sylvie took an interest in her, she visibly softened; before, she was always quiet and kept to herself when not fighting, but now she sometimes helped the smaller girls carry the clean folded laundry back to the dormitories, or worked extra hours in the garden, and was particularly helpful in translating for Sylvie and the students during English classes, where she was easily the best speaker. Soon she was working a couple of hours each day in the Ta

One afternoon he saw Sylvie reading a book while he was clearing the underbrush as preparation to trench the new sewage pipe. She sat on a large rock that overlooked the lowland where he would install the septic piping and field. June was not with her. Reverend Ta