Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

Fan would have expected that one or two of the Girls would have long rebelled at spending a life in a room, would have begged, say, the dentist, to help them steal away, but the funny thing about this existence is that once firmly settled we occupy it with less guard than we know. We watch ourselves routinely brushing our teeth, or coloring the wall, or blowing off the burn from a steaming yarn of soup noodles, and for every moment there is a companion moment that elides onto it, a secret span that deepens the original’s stamp. We feel ever obliged by everyday charges and tasks. They conscript us more and more. We find world enough in a frame. Until at last we take our places at the wheel, or wall, or line, having somewhere forgotten that we can look up.

At first Fan went right along with the rub of the days. A week passed, then two. The Girls had been especially pleased that she asked Miss Cathy if she could move to their room a full day early, spending only two nights out in the main bedroom. She responded to being called Eight right away, but the truth was that each Girl had already begun calling her Fan. Three and Four always seemed to be sitting next to her at meals. Seven followed her around. Six loved the shape of her eyes, saying they were like the daintiest pea pods, and even drew a special panel of them alone, floating above a field of waving girls’ hands. And aside from her own wall coloring, with which she was very careful and slow, knowing herself not to be naturally skilled, Fan helped out as much as she could with the few chores they allowed her, such as the sweeping and dusting, and then in assisting Four, who led the daily period of exercise.

Fan was strong and limber, practically in world-class condition compared with their chronically achy and weak array, instantly able to do what they considered to be the most difficult poses, and soon enough Four asked Fan if she would lead the session. Fan got them to try simpler, if more strenuous, exercises like push-ups and sit-ups and deep knee bends, and although it was tough at first (especially for the older ones) and a couple of them even half fainted, they grew accustomed to the burn in their arms and thighs, and to the dew of sweat dampening their brows and the cloth between their shoulder blades, and soon they were counting out the increasing number of reps they could do in an urging, tweeting chorus. They grew stronger for certain but the greatest change was in their level of energy, they seemed to be quicker in rising from bed, or stepping in and out of the shower, or even while taking their meals with their newly piqued appetites, when the play of their chopsticks over the platters seemed more vigorous and pitched.

Soon work on the mural was moving faster, too, Six having to draw several new scenes a day instead of just one, the girls behind her more focused and engaged, sometimes even nudging one another because of their tighter assembly. In fact, there was a genuine flare-up between Four and Five, who bickered about whose shade of blue marker was most like the color of the blank screens of Mister Leo’s office, this for a scene portraying Fan’s first solo encounter with him. This was the way of the mural; it reflected whatever was happening at the moment, and by reading it from the beginning, Fan could trace the looping arcs of their time and how each girl had come but also whatever was of interest or concern, becoming a more intricate map of their consciousness as it was emended and evolved.

For example, the scenes before Three appeared were generally straightforward and even childlike in their depiction of their lives before they came to the house and then after they began working with Mala, the renderings of chores and games and girlish pastimes shown simply and often sentimentally, happy girls ironing or painting their nails or brushing each other’s hair. Mister Leo was not yet shown as an ominous presence, but once Three appeared on the wall, those “parts” of him showed up, too; the broader mood of the renderings seemed to shift as well, the emotions of the Girls becoming more patent, raw, the backgrounds sharpened by bolder colors and menacing geometrical shapes, and then new images of long-suffering Miss Cathy as their beacon, their savior, respectively delivering them from the prison of Mister Leo’s downstairs world.

Indeed, they didn’t seem to blame Miss Cathy for standing by while her husband took a turn with each of them, and though at first this bothered Fan, she soon understood why: to them Miss Cathy was their wounded and vulnerable big sister, if one distant, stuck in an ugly misery herself, and from some of the mural scenes, it was evident she had been compromised, too, in her youth, by a gaunt-faced man in a business suit, who may have been her father or stepfather. He showed up here and there along the wall, stiffly eating at the dinner table, a murky silhouette in a nighttime doorway.

The primary problem, of course, was that they were locked in. Only Miss Cathy (and Mala), by a mere touch of her fingertips, specifically right index and thumb, could unlock the suite doors. And now her schedule had changed; after awaking in late morning and going through her ablutions, she went downstairs in her housedress and then didn’t return until evening. With Mister Leo incapacitated, you would think that her days would fully extend, open up to catch the best air and light, but the funny thing about a life is how eventually it will adhere to certain routines of mind, those tracks or grooves laid down in special pressure and heat.

She had already lost interest in shopping with Fan, and lunching out, and getting together with her few acquaintances, realizing now that what was most important was that her husband have her company. It was no matter if that company was gentle or sharp, if she spoon-fed him or let Tico do the job, if she shaved his chin with utter care while humming the melody of a favorite song or if she badly nicked him, if she alerted Tico that he had to empty his bowels or simply stood by as his face contorted with the strain while he was slumped in his wheelchair, letting him brew in the stink. She felt the compulsion to be there, to let him always see her face. But she was growing nervous again, too, tight and jumpy for stretches and then rooting for a period beneath an almost discernible cloud, through which you could tell she needed him, too, for no matter how homely or grotesque the bond was unassailable, having been once pure.

The other matter was indeed how fully the others took to Fan, this Lucky One the latest but also the Last, the role of which instantly elevated her along with the quality we all can’t help but recognize and admire: that effortless anchoring of being, that nascent stillness that typically occurs only in nature. They tended to gather around her, slyly jockeying about the marker tower so they could take the one that would have them coloring right beside her, or be at hand with the ladle to add more broth to her bowl. Though they did not change the position of her bed, they took turns sleeping in the bed of Seven (who was the youngest and quite liked moving about each night) to whisper numerous queries about her life and views, and recount their more curious dreams and then gently rouse her in the morning with an especially wide-eyed smile and their customary greeting, a sweetly harmonized croon: “New-day, new-day.” And then one day someone noticed that the group portrait of the eight of them featured not Mister Leo’s face but each of their own. When they asked Six why this was so, she simply told them she was tired of drawing his face. But of course, they all knew that Fan was the difference.

Another sort of person might have thoughtlessly disrupted their corpus, but Fan was careful not to bestow or withhold any special attention. In part, she accomplished this by regularly moving about the room, breaking from the mural work to take a cup of tea or use the toilet, and then linger alongside whoever was busy in the kitchen or bathroom before returning to the wall. There was no stratagem to this, no intention of gaining favor or influence or trying to engineer her own escape by employing them as cover or diversion. Indeed, Fan was growing fearful for what she might leave behind in these hardly grown-up girls, who seemed too fragile as individuals to endure any change or trauma like a sundering of their group. They had been practically orphans to begin with, toss-offs from the counties who were damaged by Mister Leo and then quartered in a literally hobbling protective custody.