Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Mee-Kyong copied the characters and let her eyes linger on the page before she went to the next verse. Who had looked over her in her distress? Who had cared about her while prison guards raised her behind barbed wire?
Nobody.
Even into her adulthood, who cared for her? Who delivered her from Pang and his unpredictable violence? Who rescued her from Mr. Lee’s attack in the Round Robin Inn? She took care of herself. Mee-Kyong had survived, but it wasn’t because the Sterns’ all-knowing deity had stepped down from heaven and condescended to come to her aid. It was because she was smart. Smart and determined. She didn’t l
