The Surrendered

“Fuck you.”

She turned to leave but he caught her by the wrist and pulled her in and tried to kiss her and she turned away, covering her face. He persisted and she slapped him. But he held on to her anyway, not even flinching when she raised her hand again. She tried to wrench away, but his grip on her was fierce, unbreakable, as though she were manacled to a rock wall.

“You’ve taken pity on all of us, haven’t you?” he said, tugging her closer. “I’m talking to you now! I want you to listen to me now! Before you came this place was no better or worse than any other orphanage in this damned country. Which was just fine for the kids and the aunties, and even for me. There’s enough food and a roof and no more killing, and so what else is there to want? But you’re leaving, and what do we have now? You know what I found one of your girls doing after your husband a

“Just let me go-”

“It was Mee-Sun. She was at the well pump, drinking water straight from it like she was dying of thirst. I passed her twice before I noticed she wasn’t stopping. She was just drinking and drinking, getting her sweater soaked, and I had to pull her off it. I thought she was going to drown herself. I asked her what the hell she was doing, and she said she felt fu

“What would you have me do? Don’t you think I want to take every one of them?”

“Then take them!” he said, grabbing her other wrist. She resisted him and he pushed her against the shed wall with enough force that for a moment she thought he might hurt her. And if he did she wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t fight. “Did you think you could come and go so easily? Is this what happens in that precious book of yours? I want to know. I thought it was about showing mercy to the helpless, to the i

“A long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Almost a hundred years.”

“A hundred years! How many people got slaughtered in that time? Got ground up to nothing? How many went up in smoke? I’m not even counting us leftovers. But you, you do your part, don’t you? You offer us hope and goodness and love. You’re indispensable. But no one can help you. Isn’t that right?”

“No.”

“So you have to help yourself. Finally I know why. I’ve figured it out. Because you know in your heart that once you’ve come here you can’t give up anyone. Because when you do, you leave every last one of us.”

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 ru

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 ru

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 Ta

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 Ta

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 Ta