Thus it didn’t bother her in the least that the atmosphere of the orphanage was lifeless for some days after the announcement of the Tanners’ departure, the boys not even playing soccer or tag during free time. The aunties seemed less patient with the children, scolding them more hotly for not clearing the tables fast enough, or for making too much laundry. In fact it was mostly just Hector who seemed as active as ever, maybe more so, as the winter would soon be approaching and countless repairs needed to be completed before the frightful cold descended again upon the hills. As June watched him work at reframing a window-his face unshaven, his hair unruly, his eyes unwavering from the task at hand-a pang of recognition struck her low momentarily: his life was about to begin again, too. She almost felt sorry for having tried to bring him trouble. What would he do, after they were gone? It was why she could smell him from a distance, the boozy smell and the sharp body smell and the faintest ashen smell of someone’s embittered heart.
It was with the news that visitors from a new adoption agency in America were coming to take photographs of the children that the compound came back to life. The aunties heated water the entire day to draw enough for bathing all forty children, separate boys’ and girls’ tin tubs accommodating three or four of them at a time.
June refused at first to bathe, for there was no reason for her to do so, she was already spoken for, but as one of the aunties berated her she realized she ought to take every chance to better herself, as much as stay in line. And so she got in with three much younger girls, soaping up their hair for them, reminding them to shut their eyes, even drying them off quickly in the chilly air and helping them get dressed in their best outfits. She put on her own good clothes and accompanied the younger ones out and waited in line with them for their photographs, except that the kindly-faced, plumpish older couple who arrived by taxi had no intention of taking portraits but rather wanted to meet all the children in the hope of taking home as many as they could manage. They had a camera, but only for taking snapshots of their journey. Reverend Tanner was confused, as he’d obviously received erroneous information from the church office in Seoul, but he still had everyone meet the Stolzes, who sat in chairs in the central yard and shook each child’s hand. Sylvie had not yet reemerged from the cottage after the midday meal, Reverend Tanner making her excuses to the couple, telling them she had a bad cold.
Reverend Tanner introduced each child by name and age, adding some humorously flattering description or anecdote, and when June stepped up he didn’t hesitate at all, saying she was self-possessed and highly independent, adding that she took and gave no quarter to the boys during games, eliciting approving nods from the Stolzes. When they asked him about her English, she answered that she spoke it well, surprising and impressing them. Mrs. Stolz, wearing a dark green dress and black shoes, asked how she had learned the language and June explained that her father had been an educated man, a teacher, and had attended a top university in Japan.
“And what about you, June? Would you like to be educated?”
“I am already. Mrs. Tanner has been teaching me.”
“I can see that!” Mrs. Stolz said to her, with a spark of delight. “And do you have any brothers or sisters here?”
She didn’t answer but Reverend Tanner pursed his lips and shook his head, which Mrs. Stolz immediately understood to be a topic for another time. She took June’s hand and patted it tenderly, her hands thick and fleshy and warm.
“What do you think about living in America? Mr. Stolz and I live in a place called Oregon. Do you know where that is?”
She shook her head.
“It’s near Seattle,” Reverend Tanner said, his mention of it significant to June but not in the way he was thinking.
“You know Seattle?” Mr. Stolz asked her. “That’s way too big a town for me.”
“We’re close enough, I suppose,” Mrs. Stolz added, if perhaps somewhat confused herself. “It’s a half-day’s car ride.”
June said, “I will go there soon.”
“You seem quite certain of that.”
“I am.”
“Well, I guess why shouldn’t you be?” Mrs. Stolz said, gently squeezing her palm. “You’re a very strong girl, aren’t you?”
June was about to tell her it didn’t matter what she was but Reverend Tanner answered for her, pronouncing with a strange, surprising tone of pride that she was “as strong as they come,” and it was then that Mr. Stolz stepped forward and aimed his tiny camera right at her and quickly clicked the shutter. He had taken pictures of only a few other children. June’s instinct was to put her hand over the lens, but Reverend Tanner immediately introduced the boy behind her and Mrs. Stolz tightly pressed her hand in farewell as one of the aunties ushered June away.
By the time the Stolzes got around to meeting the last child in line June was back to the girls’ bunk room, where she changed out of her good blouse and skirt. She had first gone straight to the Tanners’ cottage, tapping on the front door and then going around to the back, but a new dark brown window shade had been put up, covering the glass right to either edge of the frame. There was no answer at the rear door, either. Despite her resolve not to bother her, she needed now to see Sylvie right away, not to interrogate her or make her promise anything but simply to stand before her and read her eyes, her face. Did she know what the old couple was here for? Was that why she had not come out? Was she hoping that someone like them would take her? Relieve her of this burden?
“May we come in?” a voice said. It was Mrs. Stolz, her head poking in the doorway of the bunk room. When she saw that June was dressed she entered, her husband at her side. They seemed somehow shorter and even plumper now that they were standing up: these two smiling folk dolls, their cheeks round and pink. He was dressed in a denim work shirt and rough wool trousers and scuffed-up shoes, and though they seemed to her as impossibly rich as all the other civilian Americans she had ever seen, she understood now that they were probably country people, small-town citizens like those in the village where she had grown up. But rather than feeling enmity toward them for how those villagers had treated her mother and father with suspicion and resentment and ultimately callousness and cruelty, instead a tide of longing unexpectedly washed over her, this longing for the days before her father yielded to his demons and retreated to his study, longing for her mother’s proud face, longing finally for her two brothers and two sisters who could not even stand here as she was in an ugly, too-large pair of trousers, and all at once June was not mature or resolute or strong in the least but a fallen pile of child, sobbing and shaking.
“Oh my dear, oh my dear, dear,” Mrs. Stolz cooed, embracing June and pressing her to her ample breast as they sat on the cot. “It’ll be fine now.”