The Liberators by E. J. Koh

Author:E. J. Koh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

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The week before Easter, the church grandmothers took commuter vans to the Milpitas senior center. On the drive, they heard a taped sermon by a young priest from Sacramento who had visited a year ago. They agreed he had long and slender fingers for playing the piano after Eucharist. They commented on the delicate timbre of his voice—Christlike, swaddled in fine tones. The grandmothers often played his tapes. It didn’t chafe the ears like their priest in residence, whose coughs escaped him in thrashes. A voice should ring like a bell, not stomp like a shoe.

They gathered in the mess hall. Lined on cafeteria tables were cartons of boiled eggs, watercolors, paintbrushes, pens, sketchbooks, and straw baskets. The grandmothers were competing in the church Easter contest. Groups of seven or eight grandmothers each decorated one basket of eggs to display in the church auditorium on Easter. Churchgoers bought raffle tickets to vote on the best overall basket and runner-up. For years the same grandmothers had won. Their group presented in matching red visors and red vests and red lipstick. The prettiest grandmothers, they had clear and youthful voices and read the week’s homily.

Huran thought the grandmothers put too much of themselves into the reading. You ought to read the homily as a distant observer. They clothed their words, stretching the delicate fibers of meaning like stockings; if only she had the words to steer them away from their mistakes. But she felt embarrassed to make a correction. They sang the loudest and each year boasted a basket of eggs that won the majority of the votes.

This year Huran was determined to win. But she was shocked to see thistle-shaped laces, crystalline designs, cobalt-blue-and-white chinoiserie, golden foil carvings, dandelion foliage, circling miniature trains, waltzing clay figures, music boxes in nests. She felt overwhelmed by sketches of eggs wrapped in colorful yarn and sewn-on flowers. Copper-charred shells for a burning bush. Sculpted ice palaces of velvet-lined eggs. She couldn’t comprehend eggs in sandglasses, impossibly slipped through a narrow hollow.

A grandmother pinched her. “What’re you working on, Huran?”

“I don’t see any sketches for your group,” said Yonju, the team leader for the red group. “You must be hiding them from us.”

Huran hadn’t had time to make any but couldn’t say. “Don’t worry.” Huran tapped her head. “It’s all up here.”

The grandmothers gasped.

“You still do things from memory?” Yonju slapped Huran’s arm playfully. “What a remarkable thing. We’re all ready to die tomorrow but you.”

Huran felt more at ease with Insuk than she did with the grandmothers, who complimented her needlessly.

Yonju said, “If my son had stopped chasing after new jobs in Silicon Valley, I’d have a room to myself on the top floor like you.” Yonju thumbed her rosary beads, like dry beans on a fishing line. “Judas himself would crawl back from that place with his tail between his legs. He was an original member of the first start-up in the world!”

Huran tried to save face. “Your son and daughter-in-law are innocent and gentle,” she reassured Yonju.

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