Chang-rae Lee - The surrendered

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 Tanners so easily? Did you think we wouldn’t find out?”

“I’m not going away!” he pleaded. “I’m not going anywhere!”

“That’s not what I heard Reverend Kim telling one of the aunties,” Byong-Ok said. “He said you were going to get all new clothes and shoes from the church office in Seoul. And maybe some spending money, too.”

“Why would I get anything, if the Tanners were adopting me?” he cried. “It doesn’t make sense! The Tanners would just give me whatever I needed!”

“Shut up, you bastard,” Byong-Ok said, and knuckled him viciously. Min groaned sharply. Byong-Ok said, “How would I know why? Maybe that’s the way they do it. Maybe the Tanners don’t have as much money as those other people who were here. All I know is you’re going to give us whatever you get. All of it. You hear me?”

Min murmured something.

“What?”

“I think you will be eating…” Min said.

“What? What are you saying? Speak up, you little bastard.”

“When you’re on the streets,” Min said, now quite slowly and clearly. “I think you will be eating your own shit.”

Byong-Ok punched him hard in the belly. Min doubled over and fell to the floor. He spit up his lunch, a muddy puddle of barley rice and soup. The boys standing about him jumped away, laughing disgustedly. Byong-Ok then grabbed Min again by the hair and was about to push his face into the vomit when June found herself running at him. She knocked him over with her lowered shoulder. He rose, ready to fight, but he dropped his hands when he saw her. June was as tall as he, taller than his friends, and she stepped forward and pushed him, making him stumble over the corner of Min’s cot. When he tried to get to his feet she pushed him down again, and then again, and finally he shouted from the floor, “Okay, stop it! Stop it!”

She let him get up and the boys trudged out. They cursed Min on the way, cursed her, too, though she could tell from the low huff of their voices that it was for the sake of their own pride so she didn’t respond. Min seemed to understand this as well and he stood beside her in silence.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

He sat on the cot, cradling his belly. “Why did you do that?” he said. “I’ve got nothing to give you.”

“I know.”

“Then what do you want?”

“You can tell Reverend Tanner. Or Mrs. Tanner.”

“Tell them what?”

“You can tell them that I helped you.”

A flicker of something momentarily lamped his face. “All right,” he said. “But you have to protect me. You have to keep me safe from them. They hate me.”

“You don’t try very hard to make them like you.”

“Why should I? I hate them. They’re dumb as oxen. They just play marbles and soccer and eat all they can, and they don’t think about anything.”

“What should they think about?”

“What you and I are thinking about. What’s outside of this place. What’s going to happen. What we’re all going to have to do. Isn’t that what is going on inside your head, noo-nah ?”

She didn’t answer; she didn’t like how he addressed her, much the way her younger brother might, with a lingering plaint. But of course he was right. There was no other consideration in her mind. It was becoming ever clearer to her, transparent, all the other concerns dissipating as she could feel her own flesh dissipating, cell by cell, the needless layers dropping away to leave only fresh, hard bone.

“So will you protect me?” Min said.

“I can’t be with you everywhere,” she said. “At night you’ll be in here with them.”

“I can sleep out in the chapel.”

“What would that do? They’ll just come for you.”

“You can sleep there, too.”

She shook her head. “It’s cold enough in the rooms.”

“I’ll relight the fire for us in the stove, after Hector has come and gone. We can sleep right in front of it.”

“I’m not going to sleep out there.”

“You would if you were my sister.”

“Yes,” she said. “I would.”

“Well, you’re going to be my sister. I’m going to be your brother. Soon enough we will be in America together.”

“How can you be so certain of that?” She found herself pinching his meager forearm. “What did Mrs. Tanner say? Is that what she said?”

“You’re hurting me, June.”

“What did she say!”

“She didn’t say anything!” he told her, wrenching himself from her grip. “It was Reverend Tanner. He said he was going to take us with them.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re lying, just like you were lying to Byong-Ok.”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Did you get spending money like Byong-Ok said?”

Min nodded. “But it wasn’t from the church office. It was from that old couple. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t be as useful on their farm, with my foot. They were going to take me but decided at the very last moment on Sang-Ho instead and they must have felt guilty. It was twenty dollars. I don’t know why they bothered. I wasn’t going to get any of it anyway. But of course I couldn’t care less now. Soon we won’t have use for anything like money. We’ll have everything we need.”

“How do you know?”

“Talk to Reverend Tanner, when he returns. Ask him yourself.”

“I will,” she said, though already knowing-as Min undoubtedly surmised-that she would not talk to him, or even approach him, out of fear of further sullying her chances. She made to leave but Min hooked her arm and hugged her with every ounce of his little boy’s force, his scant strength, and although she could have easily nudged him aside she let him hold on to her the way one of the twins might, his face mashed hard against her breastbone, his fists digging into the small of her back.

“Very soon,” he murmured, his voice muffled in her sweater. “You’ll see. We’ll be living a new life.”

That evening, well after lights-out, Min tapped at the door of the girls’ room, just as he’d told her he would. It was freezing in the chapel but he had just relighted the fire in the stove. It was enough to blunt the chill. He had dragged the two front pews before the stove and put them together front-to-front for the planks to be wide enough to lie upon. He pointed her to the pews and she climbed over the back. He had spread a folded blanket as bedding. She asked where he was going to sleep and he scooted quickly beneath the pews onto the bare floor. It was quiet and she was vigilant for any sign of Byong-Ok and the others. But Min kept turning on the floor beneath her and groaning with the discomfort and she pushed apart the pews and scolded him for making too much noise. He said he would stop but after a few more minutes of his tossing she gave up and pushed apart the pews and he scooted up between them. She made room and spread his blankets over hers and without hesitation he tucked himself into her side as snugly as if this were a nightly ritual and almost immediately fell asleep. She bristled with annoyance, but the faint, high sound of Min’s breathing made her think of her brother, and though the smell of his hair and body was not at all pleasant she instinctively wound her arm over his cheek and neck, to keep him warm.