Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

Whenever we tell the story of Fan, details are apt to change. You don’t mean to alter anything; in fact, your intention is the very opposite, you want nothing more than to be an echo of the previous speaker, who, you decide, did a perfectly super job. And try as you might to match the very tone of the telling, the bellow of certain episodes and the half-breathed whisper of others, isn’t it the truth that, despite your fealty to the story, a moment will arise that compels a freelancing, perhaps even rebellious, urge?

Of course, those moments will vary depending on who you are. Like everyone else, we have a sensitivity to particular incidents, which can strike a nerve. For example, when we hear about Miss Cathy’s girls surrounding Fan, we’re as startled as anyone else, the same hard knot instantly twisting in our chests as in yours; and yet we can’t help but add a little of our own special imprint, a tiny re-marking here, a slight miscoloration there, and sometimes even more than that if the feeling is intense enough.

For what comes to us when we picture Fan’s last circumstance is not solely worry or fright or repulsion but also a fascination with this unlikely gathering, which, we are quite sure now, did not alarm Fan as much as one might assume. And why not? The Girls were only nice to her. She was certainly in shock when they appeared and quickly conveyed her back into their room behind the curtain, helping her change out of her regular clothing into a nightshirt exactly matching theirs, even squeezing toothpaste onto a new toothbrush and placing it in her hand. They brushed her hair and washed her feet and lightly misted her with a fruity, candy-sweet perfume. She would sleep in the bed next to Miss Cathy’s bed for several nights before moving in with them, after which they would resume their nightly schedule of taking a turn to sleep in the bed outside.

Apparently Miss Cathy could not sleep if sleeping alone in her room, and when she didn’t rest well enough, the following day was often very difficult because of the pall of her mood, which perhaps prompted the Girls to bring Fan right back out to Miss Cathy, who was already in her own bed, eyeshade on. Fan realized how chilly it was in the room — the AC constantly pushed icy air down from the vents — and she turned off the lamp and slipped beneath the tightly tucked sheet and blanket of the tiny bed. She found she had to lie on her side and bring up her knees a little to keep her feet from overhanging the edge, which she would have done anyway to keep from shivering, as the cotton nightshirt was thin and the sheeting was starchy and cold. Miss Cathy had a fluffy duvet covering her and Fan wondered if she was supposed to freeze and thus be compelled to climb up into the big bed. In fact, for nearly all of the night the woman did not stir, which Fan knew because she could not fall asleep herself, given the frigid temperature and the high beam of her own vigilance. What perverse episode lay ahead for her now? How might she have to defend herself? And how would she ever manage to escape, which she needed to do soon? She was at last thinking about Mala as she finally did relent and lose consciousness, wondering if the woman had been wholly false in her kindness and feeling, acting out yet another round of temporary friendship that would reside as a set of glimmers in her bedside viewer, to be accessed when it appealed.

Miss Cathy did, however, wake Fan up in the night. A light tug on her shoulder roused her and she instinctively curled up at the sight of the woman above; the bedroom was faintly lit by moonlight and the expression on Miss Cathy’s face was of a ghoul, lifeless but hungering, her eyes half lidded, her mouth slackly ajar. But all the woman did was nudge Fan off, and the moment she cleared the bed and stood up, Miss Cathy took her place. The woman even expropriated Fan’s meager blanket and wrapped herself in it as she curled into a tight ball, which was the only way she could fit, this sonorous mound of a whorl. Fan did not quite know what to do. After a while, she climbed up into the huge, high bed and got under the heavy duvet, which was still warm and dampish from Miss Cathy, the downy pillow laced with the powdery, floral scent of her facial cream; and she must have fallen asleep within a minute, for the next time she stirred it was morning and Miss Cathy was gone from the little bed and the Girls were enveloping her with their excited warbles and trills and their many petting hands, conveying her straight back into their lair.

They sat with her on a circular sofa in the middle of the very large, airy room and introduced themselves by number, One through Seven. Fan could keep them straight for it was the order of both their coming to the house and their ages, One being the eldest and so on down the line, although their identically altered eyes made it harder at first. Fan had heard of girls and boys doing this long, long ago to make themselves look like their favorite anime characters but had never seen it done. Apparently early on One and Two had asked Miss Cathy if they could have their eyes done and then each successive girl wanted it as well soon after her arrival. Their bizarrely large eyes made them look deeply attentive, like some puppy or doe who craves only your company and succor. But there was also a welling of wistfulness in those big brown discs, as if they were all quietly longing for someone or something, that they would always be searching.

As for their names, they’d had their original ones before, but once there were three of them, it seemed best to shrug off the markers of the near and distant past, and start anew, this world of a room peopled only by themselves and, of course, anchored by Miss Cathy, who rarely came inside but always received one of them nightly. And what happened with Fan, said Five, was exactly how it went each night, Miss Cathy arising at some point to switch places, something about the temperature and smell of a girl’s just-vacated bed helping Miss Cathy to go back to sleep after she awoke from her nightly bad dream.

The Girls didn’t seem to know what had happened to Mister Leo, and Fan did not say anything, perhaps concerned that such news would be too disruptive, or simply because of her characteristic reticence. What is clear is that she joined their grouping without resistance, the only worry being that they would assume she’d want to have her own eyes done, too. But none mentioned it. They seemed simply pleased to have a new addition, a brand-new sister, and Fan let herself be appended on their line when they asked if she would be their most propitious number Eight.

Of course, there was an eighth bed already made up for her, the last along the wall. All the beds were made up exactly like the one next to Miss Cathy’s, with a white sheet and thin flannel blanket, and they were the same shrunken size. At the foot of each was a small white plastic set of drawers on black plastic wheels, just enough storage for perhaps underclothes and socks, some toiletries, maybe a few pieces of jewelry, and an extra nightshirt. It could have been like a barracks but the huge square room was bright and fresh smelling, despite having no windows or even a skylight. This now explained the massing above the garages, which was covered in ivy and looked like the broad tower of a granary and which Fan had assumed housed a personal gymnasium or some such thing. The space was well lighted by numerous can fixtures set in the double-height vaulted ceiling, as well as by the lamps on the night tables beside each bed. The carpeting was wall-to-wall and white, though more like the white of an animal, vaguely richer in tone, and in fact, Fan would learn that it was made of many sheep hides all stitched together, practically a small herd. She’d never seen a live sheep, so she didn’t know that they could look like this. The carpet was wonderfully plush on the feet, which was good, as they only went barefoot. The four expansive walls were white, too, except that approximately one and a half of the panels had been painted from ceiling to floor.