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 running from it; she was inviting it along in a kind of dance, as a partner, a companion that would mark her every move. She knew that hunger would clarify her mind, strip away all extraneous thought, and leave her with the focus of pure, unswerving will.
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 Tanners’ cottage-an auntie had informed her that she should not go there anymore-and as no other job was assigned to her she could simply slip off after classes and meals where attendance was noted and wander in the hills. The foliage of the bushes and young trees had mostly fallen to the ground so that she was wading through puddles of brilliant color. She would have liked to pick up the pretty little leaves or even lie down in a pile of them but the strange thing was that she had to keep moving, for when she kept still she grew dizzy, this wild ball of a storm twisting within her like a gyroscope. She gagged if she stopped for too long. So she took to running, running fast in her too-tight shoes, the raw throbs of the blisters marking the distance on the deer trails that the boys and Hector used in their forays to gather firewood. With each step the grating pains flashed up into her chest and throat but she didn’t whimper or even grimace and she swallowed them as if they were sweet sustenance.
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 Tanner might see them. And even if he couldn’t, she would show Sylvie her resolve. So instead she just nodded and scurried away. Since rousing Reverend Tanner out of bed a week earlier she had not spoken to Sylvie at all. Not a word. She knew earlier had been wrong to be so stubborn that morning and she would do what she could to get back into his graces enough so that he’d let his wife adopt her, and if that meant denying herself and Sylvie for a brief time, then so be it. June had faith: if he loved his wife, he would yield. She had never known anything like faith before but she was quite certain she knew what it was now, at least the bodily expression of it, the privation in her belly paradoxically convincing her of her way.
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.”