Kartika_Issue15

ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2013
“Nurse Hopkins said your daughter will be coming in with your
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. They’re going to help you celebrate
your eighty-fifth birthday. You’re going to want to comb your hair. I’ll come
back to help you later.”
Etsuko chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. It didn’t matter what
the attendant had said. She knew this was as good as breakfast would get.
But even though the food didn’t taste good, at least it was something to do.
The warmth of her cup soaked into her thin fingers. The steam smelled
sharply of leaves. She was getting sleepy. Etsuko pointed her big right toe
beneath the blanket, then felt the calf muscle tighten. Little needles danced
up and down her leg as the circulation returned. It was usually her knees that
wobbled, had made her take to using a stick to tap her way across the yard.
She knew the pain couldn’t be fixed. There had been too many floors to be
scrubbed, too many bills she had carried in her fisted hand as she bowed
lower and lower before the merchants—promising to pay, giving what she
could. Who had the money or the time?
When you were poor, there were always so many things to do, promises to
make to children. Someday, after we’ve saved a bit of money. Someday
when you’ve grown up and have a good job, you can afford to go to a movie
or maybe a Chinese restaurant. So many times when she had to bend over to
pick up the little ones when they cried and reached out, swing them onto her
hip. All of them had looked like fat sausages, their arms and legs ballooning
up until they finally began to crawl. And she had been so skinny, so busy
washing other people’s laundry in a big wooden tub.
She had ti leaf plants at all four corners of their rented house—for health and
good fortune. But they had grown up stunted or diseased with browned
edges. Maybe she had used all her luck up in seven short years. Lucky in
love, a good strong man who hadn’t minded that she was uneducated,
without social standing. So lucky that he chose her over his own family. Her
husband had had plans to buy land. They were saving money. And then,
there had been the two babies who died. Finally, her husband.
She lay and drowsed, her arms cradling herself as if she were cold. There
was the funeral service, the casket carried by eight of the men who had seen
the scaffolding start to crumble, who had shouted and scrambled to dig her
husband loose of the rubble. But she hadn’t cried. There was too much to do,
and all she wanted was a little rest.
“Ka-san! O-ka-san!” The voices seemed to pull at Etsuko, just like they had
at the funeral, their tiny hands pulling at her sleeves.
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