Chang-rae Lee - The surrendered

After he finished all the end pieces, he cut out notches for the long boards, which he had sanded as well, and then nailed two-by-fours underneath for the cross-bracing to support blocks in the middle. The back-less benches were somewhat crude, for he was no artisan, but he had skill enough from a summer job as a carpenter’s assistant to construct them to sit sturdily and in balance. He had intended to stain them, but he could get only free paint (no primer) from the base quartermaster and the paint came only in gray, flat, mute gray, and after the first swath the lifeless hue stopped his hand.

“It looks all right to me,” he heard behind him. It was Sylvie Tanner. She wore a billowy cotton dress, the points of her shoulders shiny in the sun. Like everyone else, she had seen him outside building the pews but until now was one of the few people at the orphanage who had yet to come up and make some comment about his work. “I think it’s a good color.”

“You must like rain clouds,” he mumbled. “Or battleships.”

“Maybe rain clouds,” she said, taking the wide brush from him. She dipped it into the can and dabbed the excess from both sides on the inside rim and added three strokes to his, painting a section the width of the board. Her motions were lengthy, voluminous, almost flamboyant. “There. You see, it’s not so bad.”

“I doubt your husband will like it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s not a fan of me. I don’t care, but I’m just saying.”

“I know you don’t care,” she said, surprising him. Her eyes, which she visored with her hand, were remarkably large and dark, even in the daylight, her pupils seeming to push out nearly all the sea green around them. He was trying not to look at her, but he kept failing. “Besides, I wouldn’t be so sure. He admires all the work you’ve been doing, this project especially. As do I.”

“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 Tanner appeared in the frame of the main doorway.

“There you are,” Tanner pronounced, though not quite sounding as if he was surprised. “I saw the benches out by the storeroom.”

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

“Indeed, they do,” Tanner said. He cuffed her waist and leaned to kiss her but she warded him off by flaring her brush, her paintsplotched hands.

“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,” Tanner said.

“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 Tanners left the vestibule. It bothered him that her enthusiasm didn’t seem to wane when her husband appeared. But who was he, to care about such a thing? He was being a child. As he painted he was surprised at how tense his hands were, not realizing until it was too late how fiercely he was pushing the brush against the surface, enough so that he marred the first coat beneath. He had ruined all of the first pew, and a good part of the second, before painting the others properly. He had to wait until the first two were completely dried before stripping them down and starting all over again.

FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS he tried to steer clear of her. It was easy to avoid Tanner, who was busy giving sermons and teaching history and math and regularly leaving on day trips to tour and inspect other orphanages. Sylvie was busy herself, teaching English and sewing and sometimes helping the aunties with the cooking. She worked along with the children in the large gardens of the orphanage, harvesting the last of the summer peppers and tomatoes and preparing the plots for lettuces and cabbage. But she would appear in the most casual of manners, coming around to where he was working bearing a glass of iced barley tea or skillet corn bread, invite him to come down from the searing rooftop and try what she’d made. He hadn’t yet started painting the chapel. Or at dusk, if he had forgotten because of working straight since dawn, she might knock on his door with a supper tray. She never came to him alone, for June accompanied her now almost everywhere. He’d hardly meet Sylvie’s eyes and nod and take the tray inside. She’d go away with the girl’s hand in her own, arms swinging easefully as if they were sisters.

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.