Shelter(4)

“Is something wrong with the yard?” he asks.

Slowly, she lifts her finger and taps on the glass. “I think that woman out there—I think she might be naked.”

Kyung and Gillian gather around the window, craning to see what she does. Their backyard is empty except for the swing set and clothesline. The neighbors’ yards too—all empty. He looks out toward the overgrown field of weeds and wildflowers where their property line ends and the conservation land begins. Kyung’s eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but when he squints, he thinks he can see someone wading through the tall grass.

“Is she actually naked?” he asks.

Gillian leans in closer, fogging the glass with her breath. “Jesus, Kyung. I think that’s Mae.”

He narrows his eyes, trying to sharpen the blur of lines and colors coming at them. The woman’s hair is black like his, but with the sun parked behind a cloud, he can’t make out her face. It’s not her, he thinks. She’s limping. Mae doesn’t have a limp.

“You two know this person?” Gertie asks.

“I think it might be Kyung’s mother.”

He continues staring as the woman approaches, holding one hand over her breasts, and the other over her privates. Neither hand can obscure what Kyung realizes is not an optical illusion, not some crude misunderstanding of distance and light. His mother is completely naked.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t understand.…” Half of him wants to tear out of the house, but the other half wants to salvage the meeting by making up excuses. “She hasn’t been well lately. She’s … forgetful, I guess you’d call it.”

“My mother had Alzheimer’s too,” Gertie says. “It’s a sad way of losing someone. Why don’t I leave you two alone now?” She collects her papers and puts them back in the folder. “When I hear from my clients, I’ll give you a call.”

Kyung restrains himself, clutching the back of his chair as Gillian tries to show her out, but Gertie stops just before she reaches the door.

“I know you probably hate the idea of renters in here. Most people in your situation do, but it might not be the worst thing in the world to spend more time with your parents right now. I wish I had.”

Mae is fifty-six years old. She doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t have anything. But Kyung doesn’t bother to correct her because dementia is the only reasonable explanation for what she’s done. As soon as Gertie leaves, he runs out the back door toward the field, the same way he did when he saw Ethan turning blue at a neighbor’s birthday party. He was choking on a piece of candy, a thumb-sized chocolate that he wasn’t supposed to eat. Kyung was terrified at first, and angry later. Now he feels the full force of both. He rips a beach towel from the clothesline, and a plastic pin snaps off and hits him in the face, missing his eye by almost nothing.

The grassy field comes up to his knees, littered with things that he never noticed from a distance. Everywhere he steps, there’s broken glass and pieces of metal and thick patches of thistle that sting and scrape his legs. Even if the ground were free of obstacles, he wouldn’t look up. He can’t. His mother is so conservative, so timid about her body. She’s never even worn a bathing suit. He doesn’t understand how that woman became this one. As they meet near the middle of the field, Kyung turns his head and hugs her with the towel, covering the parts of her that he doesn’t want to see.

“What?” he shouts. But his thoughts are too scattered to finish the question. “Why?”

Mae’s face is filthy. Her skin is covered with dark brown streaks. He worries that it’s excrement, a possibility no stranger than wandering naked from her house to his.

“Where are your clothes?”

Mae’s expression doesn’t change, not even when he shouts the question just inches from her ear.

“Help,” she says, followed by something in Korean—so low, he can barely make out the words.

“English. Speak English. I can’t understand you.”

“Help,” she repeats.

“I’m trying to.” He pulls the towel around her tighter, embarrassed by the sight of Mae so diminished, wrapped in hot pink sea horses and neon green stripes. “Where’s Dad? Can we call him to come get you? Can he bring you some clothes?”

“Aboji ga dachi shuh suh.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“Aboji ga dachi shuh suh.”

Korean is no longer the language he speaks with his parents. They retired it from use years ago, when Kyung was just a child. Like a dog, he sometimes recognizes the sounds of certain words, but doesn’t always grasp their meaning. Aboji ga … your father? Dachi shuh suh … hurt me? Your father hurt me? The air catches in his lungs as the question forms a statement, and suddenly everything forgotten is familiar again. He turns Mae’s face toward his, gently lifting her chin until he notices the bruises. Two in the center of her throat. Eight more fanning out on the sides of her neck. Fingerprints. When he backs away, the towel slides off her shoulders and falls to the ground, but Mae doesn’t reach for it or even cover herself with her hands. She just stands there, trembling as he takes in everything that he missed before. The scratches on her arms and breasts. The bloody patches where her pubic hair has been ripped out. Bruises everywhere. Bruises again.