“Easy there,” her husband said, leaning over them as he patted June on the back. “You have a family again. We’re going to take six of you. We have plane tickets for six.”
“For goodness’ sake, John, we haven’t even asked her yet!” she said to him, shushing him. And then to June: “Would you like to come live with us, sweetheart? As my eager husband said, you’ll have sisters and brothers. We’ll have plenty of room and plenty to eat. We have four of our own but they’re pretty much grown up. We have a big farmhouse and barns and surrounding us are all the fir trees you will ever want to see.”
“Not like here.”
“John, please!”
“You should know we have animals, too,” he went on anyway, as though he had practiced his pitch and didn’t wish to lose the chance. “Horses and milking cows and chickens, not to mention dogs and cats. Do you like animals? Do you want to have a pet?”
She didn’t know whether she did want one or not, but she nodded, weakly, for it was all she could manage, the rest of her gone slack in Mrs. Stolz’s arms. June had no feeling in her limbs. And if she felt no love or kinship yet, it was enough to be absorbed into this kind stranger woman’s flesh, to lose herself and still be alive, to shed the tyranny of this body, always aching and yearning, always prickly and too aware. Even more than death, she was sure, she hated this enduring. This awful striving that was not truly living. But maybe it was ending now…
“You don’t have to tell us right this minute,” Mrs. Stolz said. “We’ll be staying here for a couple more hours. We’re going to go talk to some other children now, but we made sure to see you first.”
“Nobody chose me before.”
“We’re all the more fortunate, then! We’re lucky. There must be a reason. You have a spirit in you that is wondrous, anyone can see it, and you’re going to be happy in our home.”
“You’ll be the oldest,” her husband said. “You can help with translating, among other things. There’ll be some chores, naturally, just like the jobs Reverend Tanner says all of you do around here.”
“You don’t have to help with anything you don’t want to,” Mrs. Stolz said, glaring at her husband. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through already. What you’ve had to live through and see. But I can promise that you’ll be safe and sound with us. You’ll always have our love and support. And God’s love, above all. You’re going to begin a whole new joyous life.”
She hugged June closer, and despite a seam of unease, June shut her eyes, bracing the woman tightly in return, while Mr. Stolz took a step back to snap another picture, this time of the two of them; but he found he had run out of film. While he turned the crank to wind in the roll, Mrs. Stolz stroked at June’s temple, her hair.
“What a lovely thing,” she said, touching the tortoiseshell clasp. “You know, it’s the first thing I noticed when I saw you. I thought it made you look so beautiful and graceful. Just like a fluttering butterfly.”
No sooner had Mrs. Stolz spoken the words than June tried to break away from her. The woman, not understanding, clutched at her again, holding on, but June warded her off with a forearm that pressed stiffly enough against her clavicle that the woman gave out a panicked cry: “Oh no, what’s wrong? Please!”
Her husband took hold of June, more in confusion than anger, but she rose and stamped on his foot, causing him to drop the camera, the back panel springing open and exposing the stretched film. June heard him curse loudly as she ran away, Mrs. Stolz weeping beside him as she sat crumpled on the bunk room floor. She ran as fast as she could, up into the bare hills, climbing until she started to descend, the sun following her down in the next valley until it grew dark.
When she finally returned, just before lights-out, the Stolzes were long gone. No one knew the Stolzes had come to see her, and she had only missed dinner, which she sometimes did before, staying in with Sylvie Tanner. The ten-year-old girl in the next bunk, So-Hyun, told June that they had adopted six of the children, just as they said they would, three girls and three boys, of varying ages. They were in Seoul now, and in two days they would be leaving the country. They didn’t have room for the children’s footlockers and so they’d left them behind, each child taking only one sentimental object, like a doll or book or blanket; the rest of their things were distributed to the others. So-Hyun had gotten a sweater, which she showed to June, a red wool one that was of good quality but was pocked with several moth holes in the chest and back.
“Did they seem upset?”
“They were all crying,” So-Hyun said, a bit glumly. She was a bit of a smart aleck, which made June admire her. “But I think it was in happiness.”
“I meant the American couple,” June said.
“Oh, them,” So-Hyun said. “The woman was crying, too.”
“In the same way?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me!”
“I guess so. Yes.”
“Did Reverend and Mrs. Tanner see them off?”
So-Hyun said, “Just the reverend.”
“How was he?”
“He wasn’t crying,” So-Hyun said, sleepy now as she lay in her bed. “He asked where you were.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“What we always say. ‘Who knows! Who cares!’ ”
The lights went out then, one of the aunties padding through the bunk room with an oil lamp to make sure everyone was in bed. When she got to June she gave her a cross look, but June didn’t care. She didn’t care, either, about what So-Hyun said, even if she acidly added the latter line, because of course it was only the truth. All that was important now was that the Tanners would soon depart, as the couple from Oregon had, but with her in tow. She didn’t care anymore if there were others they might take along as well. Or whether Sylvie became pregnant again. In fact she herself was hoping for it now. For if they had a baby, June would cherish it as her own, give her life over to the child, if necessary, in all the ways that she had not been able to do for her siblings.
She couldn’t sleep that night, overeager to bond with Sylvie again (after their weeks of observing a mutual distance), to go over the plans she surely had to make for their imminent travel and resettling in Seattle. She would explain, too, if Sylvie asked her, what had happened with the Stolzes, that despite the woman’s kindness and the very fine life she described, June had realized just in time that she was not meant to go with them. She could not be a part of any other family again. In a different lifetime she would have her parents back, her older brother and sister would be healthy, the twins happy and whole; but in this one she had been paired up, she and Sylvie aligned like twins themselves, if by one of them not quite acknowledged.
Just before dawn broke she got out of bed, her mind feeling as honed and ready as a newly forged blade. Though her belly was unfilled from not having eaten supper or lunch the previous day, the emptiness felt more like purity than privation, what she imagined a pilgrim might feel at the end of an arduous journey, this state of cleanly ecstasy that suddenly became, in the last meters, both its own great fuel and flame. She dressed quickly as the others slumbered and went across the yard and knocked on the door of the Tanners’ cottage. She knocked again when there was no answer. Finally the door creaked open and Reverend Tanner looked out at her in his plaid pajamas, putting on his spectacles in the blue morning light.
“What’s happened? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I want to talk with Mrs. Tanner, please.”
“Mrs. Tanner is asleep,” he said angrily, “and I was as well. What is wrong with you, June? You make everything so difficult!”
“I do not mean to.”
“I don’t believe you!” he said, barely in control of himself. He stepped outside, closing the door behind him. “Or else I must think you have a wrecking force within you. Mrs. Stolz was terribly, terribly upset. She actually feared she’d done something awful to you.”
“She did nothing to me.”
“Of course not! But I can’t imagine what you said or did to make her think she had. If she weren’t such a generous, humane woman, they would have fled. Certainly her husband wanted to leave right away. Do you realize that? Do you realize that you near ruined the other children’s chances as well? Did you ever for one moment think about them?”