Hank, up ahead, made the signal to halt and we froze. I began to hear voices. It ebbed and flowed and was distant, but the music was that of an argument. We walked a little farther, slowly, trying to step lightly, not seeing anyone, though the voices grew more distinct. At some point, Hank went down on his knee behind a fallen tree trunk and motioned us to do the same. Then he dropped to the ground. The Shins were still twenty yards away, but I could see them. Mrs. Shin was grippingthe sleeves of her husband’s shirt and hanging on to him while he stood rooted and bent like an aging tree. He was crying and choking out words.
They were speaking a Korean that was beyond me, but I didn’t need language to see how distressed they were. She began pleading with him, though by now he had stopped trying to make any sounds. He freed himself from her grip and, turning, knocked his head several times against a tree trunk. It had a heavy, slow weight to it as though he didn’t possess even the energy to hurt himself. Mrs. Shin, her grip on her husband released, threw herself down onto the ground. She was crying too, pounding the ground and her chest, her flipped-up hair bobbing comically along. Suddenly, she rushed at her husband on her knees, wrapping her arms around his legs. When he turned around to try to loosen himself again, she started scrabbling to undo his belt and pants. She began to scream the same thing over and over, and though I’d never heard it before, I knew what she was saying. She was asking him to fuck her, to sex her, to pound her like the miserable dog she was.
I didn’t want to see anymore. Mrs. Shin cut me to the bone; I felt raw and exposed, though it wasn’t me. I was hidden behind a tree trunk; I was down on the ground and whole. Cathy cried out, “Hank! Hank! Where are you?”
We all ducked, then turned our heads to Cathy, all in a line. I was afraid to look up, afraid the Shins would see me, but finally I had to look. They were quiet now and worried, looking around them. Mrs. Shin smoothed her dress and wiped her eyes. Her husband tucked his shirt back into his pants and abruptly walked away. She followed him, head down, wet leaves sticking to her bare feet.
We didn’t talk. We brushed ourselves off and stood. The boys kept a small distance from us and we were glad. As we walked away, John said, “She is weird.”
I felt like killing him.
The Shins stopped coming to church. When I thought of what happened in the woods, I got a hot, sick feeling. If I sat quietly next to my mother at church while she was talking to some of the other women, I heard bits and pieces about the Shins. One woman said she’d heard Mrs. Shin had been hospitalized briefly—twice before—for some kind of nervous fits. Mrs. Choi remarked that that sounded right because she knew for a fact that Mrs. Shin had a genuine talent for art and copied beautifully. She never did any original work herself, but she could copy anything from Michelangelo to Picasso.
During communion the next week, Mrs. Park asked my mother in a loud whisper whether she’d heard the latest.
“The latest what?” my mother whispered back behind her curved hand. I put down my book and listened.
“She’s back in the hospital,” Mrs. Park said. A stale coffee smell came my way.
“Who?”
“The little bird, Shin-si.”
“Oh my God,” my mother said. “What happened?”
“Well, I don’t know if this is exactly the way it happened or not, but I heard that the husband—poor fellow—came home from work late one night—you know he works for the telephone company—and what does he find? All of them naked—all three little girls and her too. Dirty and hungry as well, in addition to being naked. Imagine that. How’s that for a mother? What do you think my little Meeho would think if one day I decided not to put on any clothes and wandered about the house with my hair sticking up like a madwoman? Not that sometimes I don’t feel like doing that myself.”
They both laughed.
“That family’s been smashed to bits,” Mrs. Park said.
“What’s he going to do now?” my mother asked.
“I heard he already took the kids back to Korea.”
“So soon? Those poor children,” my mother said.
“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Park said. “Those poor children. He’ll probably remarry within the year.”
“A stepmother!” my mother said, as if this was the worst fate that could ever befall anyone. She shook her head sadly and remained silent until the congregation returned to its feet.
Listening to them, it all seemed settled. Mrs. Shin’s life was over. It was clear she’d been cut loose from her old life like a boat from a shore. I pictured her floating away, closed and folded.
Then to everyone’s surprise, one Sunday in October, Mrs. Shin returned to church. Alone. She walked up the long, carpeted aisle and sat in the front row closest to the lectern, keeping her head down. She’d changed, though the how of that came as a shock. For
