06.17.05
'bee wee'
As he was leaving, we walked beside him, separated by glass and by an old police officer staring sternly at us, as if to say that we were too overzealous in our intentions. He smiled, he smiles like a little boy. Sheepish. Earlier he wondered if his shirt was too long, if he looked ok. He wanted to have his nails done, to have his hair clipped again. It was as if he could not go back without the proper offerings, things that he had never made while he was there.
She died the one night I forgot to pray for her. That morning we were working, preparing for what was to come ahead. It was a normal morning and he walked by without so much as a kiss to his coveted breakfast seat.
The morning was beautiful and a bright white light covered the table. It seemed so odd; this large dark man crouched over these bright delicate things. The plates had ruffles, flowers and ribbons painted on them. Behind him, the white cabinet displayed the closest that we had to crystal � which I found out one night when after watching something on television I tried to make them sound a note, nothing, just the sound of wet glass - with such pride. He always laughed at the comics.
When she took him by the shoulders, he knew that something was wrong. She told him that she had died that morning and I could feel my soul dropping out of me and the tears welling. No one had bothered to let me in on the secret. They each figured that someone had told me. No one did.
I looked at him then, to see if he would cry or if anything would happen and he just tugged at his nose and looked a little bit lost. Then too, he looked like a confused little boy.
We took turns hugging him, and when I got to hug him over his big pot belly I tried hard not to cry and stain his uniform, because I knew how he always wanted his uniform to be pristine. I though, too, of how he always told me to save my tears for big moments, for when anything should happen to him or something of that nature. I wondered now, if he said that because he had overspent his balance, and so now couldn�t cry but only stumble around a bit before darting up the stairs.
We all have the same neuroses, and he likes to be in control. He needed to leave tomorrow, today if possible. He would call work, his sisters, and the travel agency. He had to get money out of the bank. He had to get a suit, a tie, he had to learn how to tie a tie, and he had to find his passport.
She did what a wife is supposed to do then. She calmed him.
The last time he had seen her, she had come to meet us. I don�t think I quite understood at the time, but I liked the excitement of the airport and of meeting a new person so, it was all right. I saw this person, darker than chocolate and her skin, as if leather, clinging to her body coming towards us. She smiled at me and rubbed her paper hands over my cheeks. She smelled of cocoa butter and hibiscus.
What do I remember? She was absolutely alert and probably just as strict as she was when she had small children of her own. I was almost afraid, but she could barely make her way off of the chair she sat on. She disciplined us with her stern looks. We both wanted her affections but I could never win them. I was too skinny to be loved.
This Christmas, he sent her a stereo with Lady Day CDs. He wasn�t sure what she would like so at first he was going to take all of them. The only thing that stopped him was price.
When he gets there, they will be eating. The whole village will be out, drinking at his house. They will gather just as if it had been festival time. They will greet him with large smiles, wondering how the years had weathered him so. He will show them pictures and his eyes will light up and he will laugh, nervously, at his pride.
That was all the offering that he could bring.
He hugged me once, in the darkness of his room against his belly. He told me how proud he was, how he had never thought anyone he had raised could do anything- he was always saying this like this, and how he might die suddenly, which made me watch him carefully when he was sad- , how I was his only hope. He told me to keep his name when I married and how he remembered once when I almost died, and how he would have died as well.
She said she did not want me around such things at a time like this.
The pictures would have to suffice.
That was why everything was so quick; the nights could go on like this forever. The body would lie, and as the sun set people would stroll in and eat as freely as they liked in the house with all the clocks stopped and the mirrors covered. They were poor. They could not afford it. So bright in the early morning and with the sun so near she would go into the earth. He would pull at his nose, fumble with his hands and take a picture.
I asked him to bring back candies.
So now he�s on the plane. It is rising so improbably into the air with its steel pan painted in green and white on the side. Up. Up. It�s like a cartoon; the plane is on a string. It has to be.
It�s raining now.
shi-ou-sama at
