Kartika_Issue15

ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2013
he be better.” Etsuko spoke aloud even though she knew Tsune wouldn’t
answer.
Maybe raising Tsune had been too easy. Etsuko didn’t know what the girl
ever thought about, how she felt about being pulled out of school to help
earn money. And here she was, bent over beside Etsuko’s bed, carefully
sliding white anklets over her mother’s toes. Tsune’s hair was more grey
than black now. The two sides of the bob cut parted to expose the back of
her neck. Quietly, Etsuko raised one hand, wondering briefly what it would
be like to touch the skin, before she let her fingers fall back.
As Tsune rolled her wheelchair into the dining hall, Etsuko glanced up at all
the people gathered in one room. Everyone, even the other residents leaning
on their canes and sitting in chairs with dressing robes pulled tight around
them, were waiting. Some bored youngsters were lingering close to the
windows. For two ugly people, Tsune and her husband had managed to have
attractive children with reddish-brown hair. Their lips were cupid-shaped
and pouty. Their eyes had strange grey shades circling a pale brown iris.
“Okasan, my mother, had me and a brother, Masayuki. And now there’s
three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren,” Tsune stopped, slowing
the wheelchair to explain to a staff worker. Etsuko lifted up her head at the
sound of her son’s name, but she didn’t understand the rest of the sentence.
What she saw was how Tsune’s husband walked out from the crowd to stand
close, to slide one arm around his wife’s waist.
In their best dreams, rocking their infant son in his cradle, she and her
husband had imagined Masayuki with a tiny, graceful wife from Yamaguchi
Perfecture. They would have money to send him to study in Japan. He would
return to help his father with their growing farm. Etsuko squirmed, trying to
turn around, searching for the face of her son. She felt Tsune lay one hand on
her shoulder.
And then everyone in the room started clapping as Etsuko was rolled to the
head of a table. A huge sheet cake with burning candles was spread before
her. She blinked at the bright points of light, the sound of all those pairs of
hands striking each other.
His black head had been cradled on his shoulder, his arms searching for the
box beneath the bed. Masayuki had been flat out on his belly. For light, a
single candle was pushed out before him. His open palm and spread fingers
had slammed the floor when he realized what he wanted wasn’t there.
17