Kartika_Issue15

ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2013
kimono. Moth-eaten, the owners had said, and she had purchased it for a few
dollars—liking how the fabric felt, how the black weave picked up sunlight.
Always thin, the dress still fit. Etsuko had last worn it to her niece’s wedding
with the simple one-pearl necklace her husband had given to her. She
thought she had looked very fine. Would the boy, Masayuki, recognize her
in red?
There had been little blood when the eight-year-old had fallen. He had been
shinnying high to reach the last fruits on a tall mango tree. Masayuki was
always so hungry. Tsune had run up to Mrs. Littlejohn’s house and pounded
on the door. Etsuko hadn’t felt any broken bones. Only a deep puncture
wound on the side of the boy’s heel. She had made a paste of ground up
potato bugs to help eat the bad flesh away. But Masayuki had grown fevered.
More bad luck, Etsuko thought to herself. From that time on, it seemed like
something was always a burning inside, behind her son’s young eyes.
And then Tsune was pulling the dress over her head, and she was sputtering
and flailing as her hands searched for an opening. “I’ve only the one chance,
Ma,” a voice seemed to be saying from the past, either her husband or her
son. She hadn’t thought they sounded anything alike, but here they were
together inside her head.
When the buttons had found their holes, and Tsune had straightened the
sleeves and collar, Etsuko had leaned against the bed, then looked down to
see her feet still wearing battered zoris. The dress felt silky and smooth, but
her own skin seemed so wrinkled.
“Be patient, you say. Wait! Always wait! How long?” The words were
circling around and around and Etsuko kept seeing how Masayuki would
turn a lichee, gently tearing the shell into one long peel. “Until I die?” This
voice that spoke belonged to a young man, his hair slicked back into a
pompadour high on his forehead.
Tsune’s hair was clipped short at the sides, a little longer in the back; and the
grey wool suit she wore did nothing to make her appear younger. She looks
like my mother, Etsuko thought, as Tsune bustled about, searching through
drawers for stockings and soft slip-on shoes. She wondered if Masayuki
would limp with a cane. His weakened ankle might make his walk unsteady.
Perhaps he would slump, round-shouldered like his father.
“Why do boys want more?” she asked herself. “More love, more food, more
money?” Wrapped up in a piece of toweling, hidden inside a tin can beneath
a board under the bed, the sepia-toned picture of the two of them after their
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