He leans over to kiss his mother’s forehead. “You’ll let me know if you need anything?”
She shrinks into her bed, stiff to his touch, and it occurs to Kyung that maybe she’s not over it, the way he spoke to her in the field. He wants to apologize for his reaction, to explain why he didn’t understand, but not in front of the reverend or Jin.
The three of them walk into the corridor, waiting for Mae’s door to float closed on its hinges. Kyung stares at the shiny bald patch on his father’s head. There’s a cut running diagonally across it, and a thick wad of gauze taped over another cut on his brow line. He’s wearing his glasses now, unaware of how crookedly they rest on his nose, which is swollen and bookended by black eyes.
“Don’t bother her about what happened,” Jin says. “She’s not right in the mind.”
“I’m not going to bother her. I just want to talk.”
“No.” Jin grabs his forearm, his grip still firm. “Never. Never talk to her about what happened. She won’t survive that. It’s better if we all let her forget.”
Kyung pulls his arm away. “How could she possibly forget? She’s going to need months—years of counseling to deal with this.”
“I’ve offered to counsel Mae, every week if she’d like,” Reverend Sung says. “For as long as she’d like.”
“No, not your kind of counseling. The kind with a doctor, a therapist. God isn’t what she needs right now.”
The reverend and his father glance at each other uncomfortably, but the truth seems obvious to Kyung.
“God didn’t help her when those men broke into the house and did what they did to her. God didn’t help you either when they were beating you up. What do you think he’s going to do now?”
“It’s only natural…,” the reverend begins.
“No,” Kyung snaps. “Nothing about this is natural. You can hold hands and pray and do whatever it is that you people do, but don’t tell me that forgetting is what’s best for her, that God is going to help her forget. She will never forget—do you understand that? She needs a doctor, a psychiatrist.” And then, because Jin looks so stricken by his outburst, he throws him a jagged bone. “You too. You need to see a psychiatrist. Again.”
An orderly passes, studying the three of them carefully. Kyung realizes he’s been talking much louder than he should. He turns around and sees everyone in the waiting room staring at him. The woman at the front desk is craning over it, frowning at the commotion.
“I’m sorry for upsetting you,” the reverend says. “I know how stressful this must be.”
The fact that he’s apologizing only upsets Kyung more. He’s the one causing a scene; he’s the one who should be sorry. Now he’s just embarrassed. He came here to be helpful, which is hardly what he’s done.
“It’s almost a quarter after nine.” Reverend Sung taps the face of his watch. “I have to go lead services now. We’ll all say a special prayer for you and Mae.” He shakes hands with Jin and glances at Kyung, the expression on his face still quiet and kind. When he heads toward the exit, the entire population of the waiting room files out behind him, the sheep following their shepherd.
“You should have been more polite to him,” Jin says. “His family’s done a lot for us.”
“All he ever does is ask for money.”
“You know what I mean.”
The reverend inherited the congregation of First Presbyterian from his father, who’d recently moved back to Korea after his retirement. Kyung preferred the elder Reverend Sung, a serious, bookish man who could silence any room by simply entering it. He was the only person Kyung could think to call after he’d threatened to kill Jin. When the reverend arrived at the house, he took Jin by the arm and made him kneel on the floor beside him. They stayed that way for over an hour—eyes closed, hands clasped together, praying in Korean while Mae and Kyung looked on. Jin cried the entire time, but Kyung wondered if it was all just for show, if he’d later be punished for bringing an outsider in. He stood off to the side, studying the candelabra on the mantel, the statues on the ledge, wondering which would make for a heavier weapon, which would crack open a human skull when he finally had to make good on his promise. No one was more surprised than he was when the hitting actually stopped, a change that Kyung always attributed to the elder Sung’s intervention.
“How did all those people in the waiting room find out what happened?”
“I called the reverend last night.”
“But if you’re so worried about putting this behind her, then why did you tell anyone? Now everybody at your church is going to know.”
Jin shakes his head. “There are different kinds of forgetting.”
Kyung wonders if his father still has a concussion, if he thinks he’s making sense when he really isn’t. He looks him over, stopping when he notices a small gold crucifix that someone—the reverend, probably—pinned to his sling.
“Stop staring at me,” Jin says.