The Surrendered

She was sure this was true of the children. But what of a person like her? Could one ever reroot her own long-trampled self? Or would you in perpetuity need someone to pick you up at certain intervals, pluck you from the slow rot of your being? It was a good thing that people buried themselves in mostly shallow graves. If she thought about her adult life, it was an existence of constant exertion and work, but also one marked serially by the compulsion to yield. And however miserable and dissolute she ended up, however wretched in that suspension of utter fall or erasure, there was an undeniable seam of what must be gratitude, too, a kind of relief in finding yet another path to giving herself over.

Hector was still angry with her. By the time Ames a

Yet it had been an affair to her, for it wasn’t only the carnality she craved (which was as sharpened, as ardent, as she had ever known), but even more the easeful, inertial pull of the hours together afterward, as if they were floating on some quiet water instead of a bed. He’d drink his liquor and she’d bind her arm or thigh and soon they dissolved into each other in the tight well of his cot until she felt them become the pool itself, shedding all their mortal properties. It was a feeling akin to when she was a child and slept between her parents in a stifling hut in West Africa and the heat of their three bodies put her in a near-trance of fever that let her hear their blood coursing together like a wide, whispering river. In her dreams she became that bloody river ru

But she was at the end of her own ruinous clemency. She had to release herself. She must cease. When Ames left on his last brief overnight she found herself again at Hector’s door after midnight and saw the weak yellow lamplight through the slats and was about to push inside when she saw herself in the clutch of her kit and her hand began to shake, both in anticipation and in dread. The tremors subsided but then a hard knob rose in her chest and she could barely breathe; she had to walk back to her cottage by propping herself against the exterior walls of the dormitory, and once inside she dropped hard on her knees to the floor.

The next day after the midday meal Hector caught up with her in the kitchen and asked where she’d been and although the aunties spoke no English anyone could tell he was confused and hurt. She turned away from him and he trailed her across the yard and in an odd reaction that only drew more unwanted attention she broke and half-ran, feeling a tightness in her chest. He followed her to her cottage and without knocking stepped right inside and embraced her. His smell was gamey and sharp. She asked him please to go but he kissed her and she couldn’t help but kiss him as well but the door had drifted back open to the sight of some children in the central yard, paused in their games, and she panicked and pushed up hard at him. Her hand glanced him on the cheek, but he shrank from her as if she had smashed his face. He bolted from the cottage just as the sedan transporting Ames from his overnight drove through the gate. She couldn’t tell if Ames had seen him leaving.

It was only several evenings later that Ames asked if there had been something amiss or in need of fixing in the cottage, not mentioning Hector at all, and when she told him there wasn’t he nodded and didn’t pursue it. Later Ames came into her bed and wanted to make love and she must have surprised him with her intensity for he was as physical with her as he had ever been, so lost in the moment that he was unaware of his hand pressing her throat, nearly to the point of her losing consciousness. Yet she had not resisted him in the slightest. He seemed to know that he could do whatever he wished to her, that she would give herself over to any extent, and in the veil of perfect darkness he was not so much a man as a fury, this starved force that sought out every peccant part of her. He fell asleep half atop her in the single bed and by morning the one side of her was numb. He dressed quickly for the day and kissed her but wouldn’t meet her gaze; it was always like this after their lovemaking, from the very begi

Ames now returned from breakfast with a bowl of beef broth for her. It was milky white, made as it was in the Korean style, shin-bones completely boiled down. She didn’t want it but he asked her to try some and she took a sip and then another, the soup dense and rich and salty. Her stomach felt calm and she sipped some more. But then something seized and turned and spit up in the washbasin next to her bed. Ames braced her as she gagged. She wiped her mouth, her burning eyes.

“I shouldn’t go tomorrow,” he said. “You’re not getting better.” He was scheduled to go on his final trip to visit two recently opened orphanages along the eastern coastline. It was a slow journey on the poor roads across the coastal mountain range and down along the peninsula, three full days to go out and return.

“I’ll be okay.”

“I don’t see how,” he said. “You look as if you’re dying.”

“I’m not dying.”

He looked down at his hands. “Do you want me to go?”

“Of course not,” she said. “We have so little time left. No one wants you to leave. The children as much as I.”

“I can have Reverend Kim go in my place.”

“Do you truly think he can? Do you think he knows yet how an orphanage ought to be run?”

Ames didn’t answer. “Sometimes I wonder if he knows much besides conducting the liturgy.”

“And how to eat,” she said.

“He’s a champion eater, isn’t he!”

They laughed easily, the first time in a long while. Ames said: “He’s a good man, though. He’s smart, if a bit dreamy. He’ll learn.”

“I hope so,” she said. “But sometimes I worry. He never spends any extra time with the children. He has no natural feeling for how to be with them.”

“Perhaps sending him now would do him some good. Force him to co

“That would be fine if we weren’t leaving, and you could go visit. But this is your last chance. Why should those children have to lose the benefit of your being there? Just because I’m not feeling well? I don’t want you to have to go anywhere, but should you take a chance with their welfare because you’re worried about me? I’d only feel worse, knowing they would be shortchanged.”