A Southern Girl: A Novel

11: Hana

A Southern Girl 108 j 11 i Hana I thought back to grammar school; to the day of the shot. At age eight, I lingered near the back of a long line, reluctant to undergo a smallpox vaccination . Ahead, my classmates surrendered themselves one by one to the inevitability of the needle while I unconsciously clapped my right hand over the spot on my upper arm just below my bare shoulder. Friends closest to me shuffled their weight from leg to leg, the way you do when you are nervous. I watched each one as they approached the medic with the needle. Some looked away as they felt the alcohol swab their arm, knowing that seconds later they would feel the stick. Teachers stayed at the rear, making sure no one left the line, as I admit I had thought of doing. There were three in front of me, then two, then only a girl who was shaking as she walked toward the white coat. She cried out in pain when injected, then sobbed as the band aid was applied. When she turned toward me to leave the line I saw such pain in her face that I feared I would start crying before I was hurt. I fought against it, but then it was my turn. I shuffled forward, but evidently not close enough because the medic reached for my arm and pulled me toward him. Then I did something I didn’t expect. When he applied the gauze with the alcohol, I looked directly at him, and when he pinched the skin of my slender triceps to form a ridge of sorts, I continued to stare, and when he raised the syringe and brought the needle close, I shifted my attention from him to it. I watched the point of the needle disappear into my skin, do its work, then withdraw. I watched it all, and I didn’t cry out or moan or even flinch. Today, twenty years later, I sat in my tiny office at the home. A metal desk, flush against the wall in my windowless office, permitted the opening and closing of my door virtually without tolerance. Overhead, a florescent light hummed. Eyeing a thick stack of portfolios piled in front of me, I sensed movement toward something harmful, a dread not unlike that produced by the needle; less defined, perhaps not as acute, but identifiably fear. The green portfolios contained “matches,” adoptive parents matched Confluence 109 to a child on my ward. Faith Stockdale had dropped them off that morning . Soo Yun’s portfolio, almost certainly within the stack, threatened the ethical dilemma I had foreseen from my first glimpse of the scars. Inside the folders, copies of the biographical data on the adoptive family , the home study, and the family’s correspondence with Open Arms proclaimed the future for those fortunate enough to match that family’s specified criteria. Faith Stockdale had collected these materials, then prepared a summary which she translated into Korean. These she forwarded to me to enable me both to inform the child of the match and to educate the child about the family of which he or she would soon be a member. Obviously, for infants matched, this synopsis served only to enlighten me as to the child’s destiny. As often as I reminded myself that every pairing represented a triumph for the home in its mission to place as many children as possible, and thus a vicarious triumph for me, I nevertheless opened each portfolio with bittersweet resignation. A departing child meant more than an empty cot for the days, sometimes hours, needed to fill it. A funny business, this: striving for an inseparable closeness to a child who, in my fondest hope, would soon be taken away. I picked up each green folder, perused them one by one, until my hand fell to a folder labeled “Soo Yun.” I thought back to my meeting with Faith Stockdale on the day of Jong Sim’s visit. I had intended to bring Faith into my confidence. The words formed on my lips: “The child has a horrible incision but is in perfect health.” But I had been unable to utter those words, then or since. At home on the night of that meeting, I rationalized my silence. To inform Faith of Soo Yun’s biopsy was to transfer to her the very decision I made by remaining mute. Viewed that way, I felt a bit like...