The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee Read Free Book Online

but for a long, raised scar that ran from the corner of his eye to his jaw. June had noticed that he had a scar on his left palm, too, which aligned exactly with the one on his face whenever he raised up his hand. Once she asked him about it, and rather than answer directly, he simply said he was orphaned when he was young. “It was a very difficult period,” he said, in his heavy French accent. “A tribal conflict.” He had walked for several weeks on his own, hiding out during the days and moving at night, covering hundreds of kilometers on his bare feet. It was then that he asked June what had happened to her hands. His question took her aback, but then she surprised herself by turning them over and showing them to him. Her hands were delicate and petite and perfectly normal in appearance except when she revealed her palms, which was something she shied from doing. The palms and pads of her fingers looked like they were somehow unfinished, being putty-smooth and only faintly lined, like the hands of a mannequin. One of them was more scarred than the other. She told him they were burned in an accident. He’d nodded somberly, but without the cloying concern that others might proffer, and said nothing more. Yet she would have told him (as she would never tell others) that they gave her discomfort sometimes, despite the fact that they were almost completely numb.
    “There are some things I want you to look at,” she said. They walked to the back bedroom, their footfalls echoing in the empty apartment, and for a moment June pictured them as a couple, shopping for their first home. “I’ve had this furniture for a while, and now that you are married I thought you might like to have it.”
    The furniture was a child’s solid walnut desk and chair, as well as two matching chests of drawers and a bunk bed with rails and a ladder. All of it was in good condition, but June had spent a couple hours anyway filling and buffing the various scratches and dings, just as she might have in her shop. She then polished each piece until it looked brand new.
    “But we do not have children,” Habi said.
    “You will someday, won’t you? It’s high-quality furniture, the kind they don’t make anymore, at least not for children.” She pulled open the desk drawers, showing him the joints, the bottoms, even stepping up one rung on the ladder to give a tug at the bedrails. “I was about to sell it with everything else, but then I realized how stupid I was. I would have shown you last week, but I’ve been so busy.”
    “I am certain I cannot pay you enough.”
    “Pay me? You’ll pay me nothing. I’ll have my deliverymen bring it to you tomorrow.” Though she already knew it, she asked him to write down his address.
    He nodded, offering, “Please, I can take it myself.”
    “Don’t be silly. It’s their job, and you probably don’t even have a car.”
    “I do have one,” he said. “But it is small. Two doors.”
    “It’s a deal, then. But it has to be tomorrow, because that’s the closing. Will your wife be home?”
    He said yes, this was possible. His wife did alterations for a dry cleaner, work she could bring home. June didn’t know much else about her, except that she was from Senegal, and that Habi had met her in a park in central Queens, where they lived. June wished that she could have met her so she could more easily imagine what their children might someday look like, but for now she simply pictured two skinny boys in their pajamas, climbing up and down the bunks, laughing together with wide, watchful eyes like Habi’s.
    “My wife will be sorry she could not thank you,” he said, as if he had been able to read her thoughts.
    “Tell her that she is most welcome.”
    “I will.”
    He gently pushed in the drawers to align them and said, “I did not know you and Mr. Singer had children.”
    “Oh, well, yes,” she said, amazed at herself for not anticipating that Habi would of course wonder about who had