Quote of the day

"It is a dismal commentary on our failures to note that in [other countries] many of the leaders who were (and are) most vehemently anti-American, are those who were educated in the United States."

-William J. Lederer, from A Nation of Sheep (1961)

Quote of the day: Rehab

My reaction to rehab:

They said I had to go to rehab, and I said 'Oh, O-Kay'

Lipstick

He couldn't believe her.
He just couldn't.

Introduction to "Lipstick"

Lipstick is a piece of micro-fiction. Micro-fiction is a sub-genre of flash fiction, where as flash fiction stories are generally 1000 words or shorter, micro-fiction stories are generally 250 words or shorter.
This piece in particular is 7 words long.
I wrote this piece when I was 19 or 20, I can't remember now. At the time I was writing in a journal: a lot of bad poetry, sketches, and lines that happened to float into my head. This story comes from one of those college journals. Originally I thought it could be a poem, but as a poem, I believed it seemed too deliberate, too direct, too "look at me I'm a poem with deep meaning". I decided recently that it could stand alone however as a piece of micro-fiction.

The title of the piece stems from a need to not want to be too deliberate, too heavy-handed. I have an idea of what I believe is being discussed, or perceived, but I don't want my interpretation to interfere with anything else, especially when the words used are so open to suggestion. I toyed with the idea of calling the piece Trust but that eliminates a lot of non-fidelity issues, and infers what it could be about. I wanted the title of the piece to be as abstract as the piece itself. I didn't want the title to portend that it could be a heavy piece: it is only seven words after all. I like the idea that the characters are not defined by age, by culture, by class, by race, by relationship. by anything other than one is male, the other is female. It doesn't take sides either, at least not explicity, although it is definietely from one person's point of view.
THe title Lipstick comes from my own idea of what the story is about, the issue at hand, but I don't want to get into why I decided to call it that. I don't want my own perception of the story to interfere with the reader's interpretation of it.

So, now that I have written a piece infinitely longer than the story itself, I hope all you hypothetical readers out there enjoy this story.

Thanks

Random Quote of the Day

Paranoia is the corruption of rational thought

-Me, an attempt at being profound/wise

One Size Fits All

One Size Fits All

“Sara-a-a-h.” Her mother’s muffled voice seeped under the doorway like a dense fog. Sara stood sideways in front of the steamed mirror, naked. She pulled her red hair back into a tight bun, alternately sucking in her stomach and pushing out her breasts. She held this position until the strain of pulling in her stomach began to cause pain. She let her stomach drop to its normal drooping shape, and watched as her breasts sighed into their usual sagging position on top of her stomach.

“Sara-a-a-a-h-h-h-h,” her mother called out again. It was the sing-song voice her mother used when proposing a collaborative project. When she was younger, the project would usually consist of chopping food, or trying on one of dozens of dresses that her aunt had sent from Osaka, dresses that didn’t fit her: her mother and aunt were both convinced that one day Sara would wake up and be the same porcelain doll size they were. Sara could hear her mother outside the bathroom door now. She took a deep breath and rolled her eyes while wrapping a towel around her body. “Yes, mom?” Sara replied, poking her head out the door. She held the doorknob with one hand, and the towel with the other.

“Let’s go shopping today. That would make you feel good.” Sara couldn’t tell if this last part was a question or just her mother’s inflection from her unused English.

“Um, let me get ready first, mom,” Sara said, and started to close the door. “Okay,” Reiko replied. She turned around and started walking down the stairs, tiny arms covered in oversized yellow rubber gloves, hand clenching a scrub brush. She turned around abruptly, pivoting on one foot on the step. “I am downstairs,” she said, and turned just as quickly back down the steps. Sara could see that, underneath an apron, her mother was wearing the same black dress with orange calla lilies that had been worn to her high school and college graduations.

Sara left the door slightly ajar to let out some of the steam. She stared at herself in the mirror, pulling at her pudgy cheeks. She quickly pulled on some underwear and clasped her bra. Through the crack in the door, she could hear her parents arguing downstairs: or, more precisely, could hear her mother yelling at her father. She closed the door to block out the screaming. It was one of the reasons she had not wanted to move back in; she didn’t want to see what her parents’ marriage was like up close. They rarely spoke, had rarely spoken even when Sara was in high school, and when they did, they screamed; usually Reiko yelling at Peter about putting his shoes in the right spot, or to put the cups in the cabinet face down so dust could not settle inside. Not that her father was completely from blame from these tirades. Since Sara was young, her father was away a few days per week on business trips or at the office. When he was home, he sequestered himself in his office. Throughout her life, Sara had never heard her father say anything approving toward his wife. On the other hand, he never allowed Sara to say anything disapproving about her mother. Sara had, on more than one occasion, thought her parents would be better off divorced. But Reiko considered divorce a sign of failure, despite how much the marriage needed it. When Sara had called home to ask to move back in, her mother, after interrogating her, assented, “Well, you may have failed, but we still love you.”

With the door closed and the fan on, the din from downstairs was turned into a minor humming. She continued to get dressed, hopping on one foot to fit her pants over her hips, a practice growing more and more frequent the past few months. She needed new clothes. She thought about what going shopping with her mother might mean. They hadn’t gone shopping together since before Sara started high school. Each time would end in frustration as Sara would not want to wear any of the suffocating dresses her mother would pick out, and her mother would refuse to acknowledge the wide-bottomed jeans and baggy sweatshirts that Sara always picked out. Reiko called them “fatty American clothing”, but held particular disdain for jeans, calling them “disgusting, lazy person pants.” She never elaborated on this, but in all the pictures her mother had from back home, Sara never saw anyone --her grandmother, aunts, uncles, anyone-- wearing jeans. They all wore traditional Japanese robes, or black workpants and robes. Sara saw people on Japanese TV wearing jeans, but her mother thought the same of modern Japan as she thought of America. Sara romanticized that her mother held herself responsible for Japanese culture falling prey to the American beast: when she left, so did the heritage.

Sara’s original intentions that day had been to go through the boxes she had moved back with her, and then to hunt for apartments. But she could hear the excitement in her mother’s voice. She hadn’t agreed to go shopping yet, but felt her mother would be disappointed if they didn’t go. And the last time her mother had worn that black dress was years earlier, the one time her sister came to visit from Osaka.

Sara came out of the bathroom and could hear her mother still yelling at her father, except this time in Japanese. She heard the familiar sounds of a glass slammed on a counter, the refrigerator door opening then slamming shut, ice clinking, the glug and fizz of soda (usually it was scotch, but Sara was glad that even her father realized it was too early for that), the office door slam shut. Her mother yelled the whole time in Japanese, her protests cut off with the slam of the office door. When it was over, Sara walked to her room, closing the door behind her, and began folding the piles of laundry that had taken over her floor, bed, and closet.
Bang-bang-bang. She thought the door was going to crack, and she dropped her laundry onto her bed. “Sara,” her mother’s voice shot, tense and angry. “Hurry up. We are leaving now.” It was the first time she had spoken Japanese to Sara since she had moved back in.

***** ***** *****
They drove in relative calmness, Sara driving, Reiko looking out the window and updating Sara on the developments of the neighbors as they passed each house and yard. Reiko spoke dismissively of the vacations the neighbors took, disapproving of the time they spent away from their households. Sara wondered if this was because her own parents had not vacationed together for so long. They passed the Ellerys’ house just before the freeway, and Reiko complained about how the Ellerys spent six months of their time in Florida, how when they return there must be dust and cobwebs over everything.

They had not decided where they were heading: Sara hadn’t even asked before they left. While Sara had been getting ready, her mother barged into her room and started folding Sara’s clothes, furiously making piles of pants, socks, sneering at jeans and rock band t-shirts while she creased them.

Sara tried to get her mother to stop folding. “Mom, you don’t have to do that for me.”

Reiko didn’t look up from folding; instead she looked in shock as she held a pair of Sara’s pants against her legs. It looked like it could almost be a sleeping bag for her, Sara thought. “Just get ready, Sara.”

Sara tossed clothes around the room, searching for her pocketbook and phone. “Mom, I was going to do that later. Don’t worry about it.”

Reiko finished folding the pants in her hand. “Are you ready? Good. We go.” And she turned around and marched out of Sara’s room. Sara followed, one coat sleeve on, the other dangling near her leg, as she awkwardly tried to keep pace.

As she drove down the freeway, Sara could see the muscles in her mother’s face had started to slacken. “Where do you want to go shopping?” She knew her mother would want to go to downtown Portsmouth, the only stores her mother could tolerate going to: there was a women’s clothing store that catered to petite women that carried mostly imported clothing.
Reiko had been staring out the passenger side window the whole time. She turned her gaze over to Sara. “I thought we could go to downtown.”

Sara thought of the possibility of running into Kevin, whose real estate business was downtown, walking around with his former secretary Barbara. She thought of her mother’s reaction, or of what her own reaction might be. She fantasized about her mother pouncing on Kevin like a lion after a fresh gazelle, then scratching away at Barbara’s face, stretching Barbara’s eyelids down to her ample, home-wrecking breasts. Sara thought of what her own reaction would be, which would probably be to look at the ground, and try to stifle in a cry, a sheepish hello and a glare at Barbara. Sara and Kevin would exchange pleasantries, and awkward how-do-you-dos, and Sara would have to restrain her mother from causing the scene that Sara wanted her to cause, that Sara herself wanted to cause.

But she had suffered enough indignities for one week. “Mom?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“Can we go to the mall?” Sara took her eye from the road and looked at her mother. When they had tried to go shopping when Sara was younger, her mother would always get frustrated at the throngs in the mall, claiming she couldn’t understand anyone, and that the store clerks were deliberately making fun of her. She would always march out of the store, out of the mall, Sara following behind, and nothing would ever get purchased.

Sara watched her mother’s expression change, her brow furrow, and her eyes grow hard and squinted. Her jaw clenched and her posture stiffened. Anticipating another volcanic explosion, Sara quickly added, “Kevin’s office is downtown. I’d… rather… not run in to him.”

After a long pause, Reiko responded in a tightened voice while staring at the dashboard, “Whatever you want to do.”

The rest of the drive was made mostly in silence. Reiko rummaged through her pocketbook, pulling out papers and unfolding them; she looked at these papers quickly, not long enough to read the contents, then folded them back up and put them back into her pocketbook. Her eyes darted from her pocketbook to outside to Sara to the odometer, back to Sara.

Sara could feel her mother’s fidgeting. She would try to start a conversation, appealing to her mother’s discomfort. “Maybe the mall will be closed. And we’ll have to go downtown.” Or she would appeal to her own sense of humor. “Mom, maybe you could drive on the way home.” Her mother never learned how to drive until Sara turned fourteen and only because she didn’t want Sara driving with boys. Peter had been telling Reiko to get her license for years, that she would feel much better if she could drive, but she always refused. Needless to say, Sara’s mother was not a good driver, and if Sara had not been so prone to returning with so many bags from the mall, she would have taken the bus home.

Sara even tried appealing to her mother’s heritage, and spoke Japanese. When she was younger, her mother always spoke Japanese when it was just the two of them; Reiko only spoke English in the house when Peter was home. This was one of the things Sara had been looking forward to when she moved back in. But since then, her mother was speaking only English. Sara hadn’t said anything, as she didn’t know when her mother would voluntarily speak English to her again.
Through all her efforts, Sara’s mother would still just stare out the window, or smile slightly and nod; Reiko gave Sara a sideways glance when Sara had suggested she drive on the way home.
As they pulled up to the traffic light in front of the mall, Sara could see the parking lots were full, and cars were patrolling the aisles for empty parking spaces. She looked over at her mother, whose tiny chest was heaving, and Sara could hear the loud exhale of her mother breathing through her nose. “Are you okay?” Sara asked, noticing her mother’s rigid posture, hands pressing into her legs at the knees, eyes glaring at the overweight people walking out of the mall.
Reiko’s face tightened further, and she stared out the front window. “The light is green,” she replied, and pointed her finger towards the traffic light.

Sara circled the mall twice before finding a spot in front of the food court. They emerged from the car and Sara watched a group of teenage girls walking in to the mall, waving goodbye to the van dropping them off, much as Sara had waved to her mother’s car when Sara and her friends were that age. She turned to face her mother, smiled, and looped her arm around her mother’s arm, resting her hand on her mother’s elbow. Reiko looked at Sara’s hand, and then up at Sara. She smiled back, and patted Sara’s hand as they walked in.

***** ***** *****

They ate a quiet lunch from one of the food kiosks masquerading as Japanese, but which was really a combination of Chinese, Thai, and Japanese –Pan-Asian, they called it, as if all Asian countries could be glommed into one. Sara brought the food over to her mother who sat underneath one of the faux palm tree benches, away from the crowds.

“So, Mom?” Sara asked, watching her mother lift a small water chestnut with chopsticks. Sara had already finished her lunch, while her mother had only eaten a handful of bites. “Can I ask why you’re speaking so much English.”

A large piece of chicken dropped from the chopsticks and into Reiko’s bowl, her expectant mouth left open and empty. She turned to face the shoppers walking by. Her body was at perfect right angles to the bench, to the floor, to Sara. “What do you mean? I always spoke English,” she answered, and turned her head to face Sara, her body still in rigid posture. “Ask your father.”

“Noooo... No-no. I know you’ve always spoken English. But,” Sara paused, picking up her empty container. She scraped her chopsticks along its sides, fishing for whatever was left. She was afraid she had asked the wrong thing and was thinking of her words carefully. “You’ve… You’ve always spoken Japanese with me… When dad’s not around.”

Reiko stabbed at a piece of chicken and lifted it to her mouth. She chewed slowly, and lifted a few more bites. Sara watched as the main area of the mall filled up, lines at the food court swelling to where others usually sat. Sara was glad they were away from the crowd.
Reiko took a small sip of water from Sara’s water bottle. “Your father says—,” she stopped. She recapped the bottle and put it between herself and Sara. “I… thought you would like it.” Reiko reached for the water bottle again, and took a larger sip this time.

Sara watched her mother as she did this, watching her mother’s hands tremble. She decided to drop the line of questioning, not wanting to know why her mother wasn’t speaking Japanese with her anymore. She changed the subject, “So what were you shopping for today?”
Reiko smiled at her daughter, lifting her head from her lunch. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I just wanted to spend time with you.”

Sara could feel her face redden, and lowered her head. She pulled her sleeve into her hand, and wiped her face. “Maybe I could buy you a pair of jeans.” Her mother laughed for the first time that Sara could remember.

They threw out their containers and eased into the traffic pattern of the mall, Sara towering over her mother, but walking close to her side, as if awaiting command. Their size difference always made Sara self-conscious in public. Her mother was of a traditional Japanese build: skin light and taut, stretched evenly over her delicate, tiny mannequin-like features; hair, long, black, tinged with streaks of gray, and thinned with age, tied in an unyielding knot atop her head. Sara, on the other hand, was an amalgam of all the most disjointed features of her parents: her father’s shocking red hair, freckles, and height; her mother’s olive skin, tiny feet and hands. And from American laziness, according to her mother, she had acquired her stomach, her flab. But today, right now, this didn’t bother Sara. She could ignore the stares of all the mall walkers. She was happy to be with her mother.

The mall had changed considerably since they had last been there together. There were more women’s clothing stores, one for each body type: petite, plus size, maternity wear, many for teenage girls. There were shops that, just as at the food kiosk, were dedicated to European style, as if all European styles were the same. They continued on until they came across Bonsai Couture, a woman’s clothing store, like the European store earlier, but dedicated to Asian clothing, Asian women. They looked up, then at each other, almost beckoning the other to make the first step toward the door. Thai headdresses, large straw hats for working in the field, kimonos, kabuki robes, Chinese shoes, and, to Reiko’s horror and Sara’s smiling face, jeans, some designed with traditional Chinese dragons, some with a yin-yang.

“Let’s come back,” Reiko answered. “I want to keep walking.”

Reiko walked ahead, stopping in front of a bookstore. Sara stopped frozen in place, legs flexing as if she was trying to move but couldn’t. Her muscles tensed, and her face began to grow red. She could feel her knees shaking, and she wiped her moist hands on the sides of her pants. Across the way, out of the electronics store, walked Kevin, hand in hand with Barbara. Sara ran a hand through her hair and shifted her weight to her right leg, folding her arms across her chest. Reiko had stopped and walked back to Sara.

“Sara?” she asked.

Sara nodded her head across the way to the approaching couple. Reiko steeled her body and folded her arms across her chest, while taking a few steps back, almost against the wall, directly behind Sara.

“Hi Sara,” Kevin said, as they approached. He was tall, thin. Sara noted that his usual clean-shaven face was sporting the beginning stages of a beard. His hair, which had never been below the ears, was longer, and he was growing sideburns. His shirt was wrinkled and not tucked in to his pants, another thing he never would have done. “Hello, Mrs. Cleagh,” he craned his head around Sara’s body to acknowledge Reiko.

Reiko nodded in assent, almost imperceptibly. “Mawakata,” she corrected him, lips moving as little as her head had.

Kevin clasped his hands together and bowed toward her. “Sorry. Mrs. Mawakata.” He turned to Sara. “How are you?”

Sara had tilted her head to look past Kevin and glare at Barbara, who had retreated a few feet behind Kevin to the fake plants and wastebasket. Barbara was looking at herself in a compact, teasing her blond hair higher than it already was. Sara returned her gaze to Kevin’s. “Good. I’m good.” She stretched the bags out from under her eyes.

“Good,” Kevin replied, as if unable to think of anything else to say. They stood there fidgeting for a few long moments, the throngs of the mall moving around them. Sara watched Barbara playing with her cell phone, listening to the beeping, and watching Barbara slowly move her thumb over the console. Sara turned around and saw her mother’s eyes, not blinking, chest heaving as it had in the car.

“I’m good,” Kevin finally responded, breaking the silence. Sara turned around to face him. “The business is doing good.”

“Mmm-hmm. That’s good,” said Sara, shifting the weight of her legs, looking at the floor. Her hands were clenched in each other behind her back, fingers enlaced, but slipping from their grip.

“We should get together soon,” Kevin started. “To, um, you know, figure stuff out.”

“Yeah,” said Sara. They stood there for a few minutes longer, drowned out by the sound of an advertisement being played over the intercom system. Barbara’s whiny voice, talking on her phone, could be heard over the intercom: “Yeah, we’re at the mall. Uh-huh. Yeah, it’s really crowded.”

Reiko leapt forward at this point and slapped Kevin across the face, hand outstretched as far as it would go. She needed to jump to reach his face. Barbara had stopped playing with her phone, and stood staring at Reiko, mouth agape.

“Mom!” Sara yelled at her mother, who was holding her arm off to the side from her body, fingers folded into her palm. Her chest was heaving, and strands from her hair had fallen over her face. Kevin had walked back a few steps, one hand resting on his cheek, the other resting on his other arm. He stared at Reiko, mouth moving as if forming words, but no sound was coming out.

Sara reached down to grab her mother’s arm, her large hand enclosing around her mother’s skinny wrist. Just as quickly Reiko wheeled around and slapped Sara across the face and stood glaring at both Sara and Kevin.

The bun on top of Reiko’s head had fallen out, most of her hair falling in front of her face, down her back. She twirled her hair back into its bun, and reassumed her rigid posture. She walked backwards a couple of steps, and straightened out her dress, pressing her hands down her sides. She took a few deep breaths, waiting to catch her breath. “I am sorry. Mr. Morris,” she faced Kevin, who almost walked backwards into Barbara. “It is not my place to do that.” She nodded her head deeply at Kevin. She turned to Sara, who took a half step backwards and was leaning her sizable body away. “We leave now,” Reiko said, then walked back to the wall to pick up her pocketbook, which had dropped. “Sara, are you ready?” she said in Japanese, and started walking away. Sara shuffled her feet, following her mother, leaving Kevin, Barbara, and the mall people who had stopped watch them in stunned silence while they walked away.

As Sara caught up to her mother, Reiko looked up at her daughter and with a large smile on her face, said, “Let’s go back to that Asian clothing store.”

***** ***** *****
The drive home Sara listened to her mother prattle about how much fun she had, how nice it was to get out of the house, how good it was to spend some time together, and how that Bonsai store was not so bad after all. Her mother had bought a pair of folding fans, and a new dress, the first dress she had purchased in the US. Reiko’s sister made most of her dresses back home and mailed them every couple of years. Sara didn’t say a word, just silently fumed. Not once, though, Sara noted, during all her prattling, did her mother offer an apology, or act as if anything had even happened. Sara had wanted to talk to her mother about Kevin, about how she felt about seeing him, about how she couldn’t believe he was out in public with that bimbo, how Barbara was changing how he looked, dressed, wore his hair. But she couldn’t trust her mother’s reactions.

As Sara pulled off the highway and onto the back roads by the farm houses, she decided to embarrass her mother in one of only two ways she knew how: she would make her drive, or she would buy the jeans with the yin-yang on the knees, in her mother’s size. She pulled the car off the side of the road. “Mom, can you drive? I’m not feeling too good.” Reiko’s face, which had been stuck in an elated smile since leaving the mall, retracted to near-full tension. “You are fine.” Reiko returned her gaze out the window.

“No, mom,” Sara reasserted, turning the car off. “I’m feeling really sick.” Sara closed her eyes, lowered her head, and pretended to stifle a vomit.

Reiko turned to face Sara, expression unchanged. “I will make you tea when we get home. Drive slowly. Like me.” Sara could be literally vomiting in the car, and it wouldn’t work. Although her mother would try to protect anyone when they were seriously injured, she viewed sickness as a weakness. Unless you were truly ill, there was nothing tea, hard work, and will power could not cure.

Sara regrouped, wiping her face with her sleeve, stretching out her eyes. She stretched her arms out to the side, almost hitting her mother in the side of the head. She took a couple of deep breaths, restarted the car, and slowly merged with the oncoming traffic, driving slower than how her mother would drive. What normally took about five to ten minutes from this point, twenty for her mother, would take at least a half an hour.

Sara finally pulled into the driveway, and slowly dragged herself out of the car. Reiko had gathered her belongings and raced inside, putting the tea kettle on immediately. Sara walked into the house and walked straight up to her room, not stopping to remove her shoes, or her coat. She had no interest in talking to her mother, and was now determined to move out as quickly as possible.

***** ***** *****
For the next few weeks, Sara maintained a low profile around the house. She would go to work and, instead of going directly home after school to start grading, she would head to a coffee shop to grade papers, and apartment hunt. She had decided to look in Dover or Portsmouth: a little further away from work, but also further from her parents’ house.

She would return home when it approached dinner time. She was thirty years old but, living with her parents, she felt obliged to eat with them. For the first couple of weeks after she moved in, she would help her mother finish the dishes, and would talk about her day at school, her students, before completing her grading on the dining room table. She did this out of a need for comfort, and out of a need to help break the monotonous silence between her parents. Since their trip to the mall, however, Sara didn’t care about maintaining her family illusion. She would wolf down her food, and excuse herself, claiming that the seasonal change was making her tired, or that the school was giving performance assessments so she had to be extra prepared for each class. She’d go upstairs, leaving her parents to their own silence.

She went upstairs leaving her parents to argue about her father’s upcoming business trip to Tokyo. She sat on her bed cross-legged, folders and grade books splayed in front of her, laptop on her knees. She was comparing two apartments she had looked at already. One, in Dover, had a move-in date of the following Saturday; the other, in Portsmouth, had a move-in date for the first of November, almost one month away, but was considerably cheaper. She could hear her mother’s voice slicing through her closed door. Sara’s father was refusing to bring anything with him to mail to Reiko’s family in Osaka, upsetting Reiko. Sara sat up from her bed, and placed her ear to her bedroom door. She could hear her mother’s stabbing voice over the violent water from the sink. Sara turned from the door, found her phone, and circled the name of the woman renting the apartment in Dover.

“Hello, is this Evelyn?... Yes, this is Sara Cleagh… Is the apartment still available?” A few minutes later, Sara leaned back on her bed, arms clasped behind her head, as the sound of slamming doors and her mother’s screaming lulled her to sleep.

She woke up a few hours later and opened her door surprised to see all the lights still on in the house. Going downstairs for some water, she saw her father sitting at the dining room table, books spread in front of him, and her mother standing behind him, leaning over the papers, arm around his shoulders. She could hear her father speaking basic Japanese words, her mother correcting his pronunciation. It was the first time since she was a child she had seen her parents display any form of affection toward each other. Fearing that they would stop if they noticed her, she turned back up the stairs; she would fill her water glass from the bathroom.

***** ***** *****
She called her mother the next day from a work phone to tell her she would not be home for dinner: she and a colleague who was also going through a divorce were going to go out.

“That is a good idea. You can help each other,” her mother had said over the phone.

Sara was really going to fill out paperwork for the apartment in Dover, and then to the mall. She had called from the teachers’ lounge because she had left her cell phone at home that morning. She had woken up late as a result of poor sleeping: having snuck up on her parents the night before had made her anxious. For the rest of the night, Sara thought about how to apologize to her mother the next morning, but eventually, with the sun poking its head from under its own blankets, she decided that would cause even more problems. When she had first moved back in, she had mentioned her observations of her parents’ marriage to her mother, about how they didn’t talk much, never showed affection. Her mother reacted by saying, “I know my husband. I am still married.” She returned her gaze to the sudsy water in front of her, adjusting the yellow housework gloves, and plunged them into the sink of dirty dishes. Sara never asked anything about her parents’ marriage again.

She arrived at the apartment early, and the realtor arrived late. When the realtor did arrive it was not the older woman she had dealt with and spoken to the night before, but a young woman with long, straight, blonde hair, and no makeup. Instead of the customary business suit, she wore a long, flowery skirt, and a green button-up sweater. When she opened the car door, she dropped her folders on the ground, and Sara could see papers and boxes and trash lining the back seat of her car, as if her filing cabinet had been emptied in the backseat.

The girl picked up the papers, started walking over Sara, apologizing as she walked, and walked back to the car, realizing she had forgotten to close the door. She held the papers in a jumbled stack under her arm. “Hi-hi. I’m Robin. You must be Sara Claayy—.”

“Cleagh. Like Craig.” Sara answered. Sara was looking at Robin with a puzzled expression. What had happened with Evelyn?

“You got Evelyn’s message,” Robin started, “so that’s good.”

“No, I didn’t. What happened?” Sara realized that she hadn’t given Evelyn her work number; she must have called her cell phone. Oh crap, she thought. Her cell phone was in her room. Her mother would hear it ring. “I left my cell phone at home today.”

“Oh. Well, her son got really sick at school, so she had to bring him to the doctor. I’m her assistant.” As Robin held out a reluctant hand, the papers under her arm slid out and scattered on the ground. “I’m sorry. This- this is the first one I’ve done… without Evelyn here.” She said this while squatting down, picking up the papers.

“That’s okay,” said Sara. “I used to do real estate with my…. I used to do real estate, so I can help you out.”

When the paperwork was finished and Robin drove away, Sara walked to the front door of her new apartment. The present tenants still lived there, but weren’t home right now. Sara pressed her face against the window, framing her face with her hands. She could see boxes piled up along the walls, nails that had hung pictures still lodged in the walls. Plants harbored most of the corners of the rooms she could see. She started thinking about where to put tables, couches, a TV, started to make an itinerary of what she would need, what she would want. She reached down and jiggled the handle of the door. When it wouldn’t budge, she smiled, wishing she had accepted the keys that Robin had offered her. Sara took one last look into the house, and walked back to her car.

***** ***** *****
During the drive to the mall, Sara fretted over her phone. What if her mother had answered the phone? What if she heard it? What if Evelyn had called the house phone? Had she given Evelyn the house phone as an emergency number? She couldn’t worry about these things. Since she was already out she would continue with her furniture shopping.

She could picture her mother screaming at Evelyn over the phone, pictured the phone thrown in the trashcan under the sink, could picture her mother standing at the door later that evening, arms folded tightly over her chest. Before she could get both feet in the house, her mother would slap her. Sara walked through the mall, oblivious to her surroundings, thinking of these scenarios, making herself angrier and angrier. She really had come to the mall to furniture shop. But she had decided: she was buying the jeans. She stopped abruptly and looked up, realizing she had walked through a majority of the mall without any of the stores registering to her. She turned around and walked back to Bonsai Couture.

Neon lights cascaded down as she stood in front of the store. She stood frozen, second-guessing herself. What if this caused a permanent rift with her mother? What if her mother disowned her? What if she was sent out of the house that night, forced to stay somewhere for a week? Years before, when she was in the middle of a worrying screed of this kind, Kevin had told her to imagine the most ridiculous thing that could happen in order to feel better. It was an exercise they had practiced to alleviate Sara’s fear of flying. What if the plane crashed? What if right when the plane landed, the doors would malfunction and not open and they all suffocated, trapped there waiting, panicking, breathing the dead stagnant air? What if a herd of buffalo come running out of the cockpit? Kevin would say. What if in mid-flight the plane suddenly turned into rubber and could bounce?

As she stood in front of the store, remembering one of the good things about Kevin, she thought about coming downstairs from her bedroom, carrying under her arm the yin-yang jeans, wrapped in a box. Her mother would be standing in front of the rocking chair, arms outstretched, gigantic smile on her face, wearing the same yin-yang jeans. She would be pivoting to show Sara how well the fit. She could have two pair, then, Sara thought, and strode into the neon glow.

Choosing jeans had always been difficult for her. But choosing jeans for someone else, especially someone of her mother’s size was something else entirely. And which would her mother hate more, the yin-yang or the Chinese dragon? Which would she hate less, for that matter. And they had to fit, too. There would be no sense in buying the jeans for her if they did not fit correctly.
She walked through the aisles slowly, deliberately. She had a plan: she would find a pair with a hideous design on the front, and would hunt the store for any clerk that was almost the size of her mother, and ask her to try them on. It would be an odd exchange, she knew, but one thing she had learned about her size was that it was intimidating and sometimes came in handy.

A store clerk came walking toward Sara. The clerk had long, blonde hair, and her face was splattered with makeup. She brushed her hand through her hand, and gave Sara a large, toothy smile. “Hi, do you need any help?”

She was just the side of perky that Sara found irritating. “Actually. Yes. Yes I do. This is going to sound weird, but… I was looking for a pair of jeans for my mother, but I can’t, try them on,” she shrugged her shoulders and motioned to her body, indicating her size. “She’s a size one. Is anyone here that can try them on for her?”

The clerk looked at Sara confused.

Sara, realizing it was an odd question, attempted to explain. “Well. Do you have either of these in size one?” She held out the yin-yang and Chinese dragon.

The clerk didn’t say anything, and continued giving Sara her toothy smile. She took the two pants from Sara and walked to the back room.

After a few minutes she came back holding one pair of the Chinese dragon, and two pairs of the yin-yang jeans. “We only have these ones in size one.” She held up the yin-yang jeans.

“That’s great.” Sara snatched the jeans out of the clerk’s outstretched hand.

“I think the owner’s wife is a size one,” said the clerk. “She’s in back. Do you want me to get her?” She motioned toward the door reading “Employees Only.”

Sara looked at her watch, looked at the back door. If her mother even accepted the jeans, and on the stranger event she ever wore them, she could always have them adjusted. “No, that’s okay. I’m sure these are fine.”

She paid for the jeans, and walked out of the store, face flush red, trying not to laugh, or to cry.

***** ***** *****
All the lights were off in the house except for the one at the top of the stairs, and the light in the kitchen, where her mother stood, filling the tea kettle with water. Reiko lifted her head briefly, saw it was Sara, and returned her gaze to the tea kettle, making sure it didn’t overfill. She turned the water faucet off. Four quick steps back to the stove, and a twist of her fingers turning on the burner. Sara took her shoes off, watching her mother’s precise movements, trying to read her mood. She seemed placid to Sara, almost remorseful.

“You forgot your phone today,” Reiko said, as Sara got to the second step. “Did you wake up late?”

‘Yeah. I’m sorry, mom. I just—“

Reiko nodded. “Go upstairs,” she said, pulling a second teacup from the cupboard.

Sara hesitated, thought about telling her mother she had bought her a gift, but decided to head upstairs. When in her room, she threw her bags on the bed, and pulled the jeans from her backpack. She put the jeans into a box, taping the sides shut. She didn’t have time to wrap it. She held the box under her arm, grabbed the doorknob, took a deep breath, and walked downstairs.

Her mother was sitting at the living room table, a tea tray in front of her. Two cups, pot of tea, sugar, cream. Sara took a seat next to her mother, poured herself a cup, and leaned back against the couch. Her mother sat on the edge of the couch, but after a few moments moved herself to normal sitting position.

Reiko had pulled the photo album out from under the table and was flipping through the section of her sister, holding her teacup off to the side. “Your father is going to Tokyo tomorrow,” she said, looking down at the pictures. “I have a big bag of dresses for Osato. He won’t take them with him.” Her voice was slow, calm. There was an air of resolution in the way she said things. “I have not seen Osato for five years. She has a daughter. You know Yukari.”

Sara had only met her cousin once, when she Sara was fifteen. Yukari was twelve years younger than she.

“Yukari is eighteen,” Reiko continued. “She is done with school. She can fit into these clothes. I wanted you to have them, but…” She looked up and down at Sara’s body. She patted Sara’s hand, which still held on to her cup of tea, and squeezed it. Sara looked down at her lap, reached her right arm to the side of the couch and felt the box sitting there, strengthening her resolve to give the box to her mother. Her mother moved her own hand back to her teacup. “Your father… is very selfish.”

Sara leaned over to refill her teacup, letting go of the box.

“And you are moving. When?” Reiko asked. She looked directly at Sara as she said this. She shivered slightly, and pulled on a sweater which had been resting behind her on the couch.
Sara put the teapot down, not having filled her cup, and leaned back. She looked at her mother, then lowered her gaze to the cushion between them. “Next Saturday,” Sara responded in a quiet voice.

“Mmmm.” Reiko closed the photo album. She poured some cream into her teacup, and refilled it, the swirls and rising water looking like the foam of a breaking wave. She placed her hand on Sara’s leg, still looking at the coffee table. “That,” she paused, breathing deeply. She blew across the top of the tea. “That will be good for you.”

Sara’s tea splashed as a drop of tear fell from her face. In all her years, her mother had never opened up to her. She couldn’t give her the jeans now, but she had to. She could tell her what they were originally for, but give her mother the option of sending them to Yukari instead. Knowing her aunt Osato, Yukari was probably having the same issues with her own mother. Sara raised her head and stared at the spot across the room where the wall met the ceiling. She reached over the side of the couch and pulled the box up, thrusting it on her mother’s lap, almost spilling the tea: her mother pulled the cup away just in time. Sara spit out, “I bought you some jeans tonight, but you can give them to Yukari, too, if you want. They fit you.”

Reiko blinked rapidly, and darted her head from the box on her lap to Sara and back to the box. The look on her face was a combination of horror, consternation, dismay, surprise, as if someone had slapped her in the face.

Her mother continued to look from the box to Sara and back. Finally, she put her teacup back on the tray and pushed the tray to the far side of the coffee table. She lowered her hands so they rested on top of the box. “You… bought this?” Sara detected a hint of pride in her voice. It was the first gift Sara had voluntarily bought for her mother not dictated by holiday or obligation.
When Reiko opened the box, her face remained placid, expressionless. She unfolded the jeans to their full length, looking from the jeans to Sara and back to the jeans. Her eyes kept returning to the knees, to the yin-yang design. She slowly folded them back into the box, along the pre-made creases, and placed the box under the table, on top of the photo album. She paused for what to Sara seemed an eternity.

“Yukari would hate them,” she said, and smiled at Sara.

Story in Progress II: One Size Fits All (final version) introduction

Yes, dear hypothetical readers, I do exist.

As promised in a previous post, I have posted the final version of the previously posted work in progress One Size Fits All. I have also started work on an idea posed in the previous Story in Progress post about taking all the words and phrases from previous versions that did not make the final cut and posting them, compiling them into their own entry, for posterity's sake.

Sometimes great lines or ideas are written that do not make the final cut. If not saved, these lines, while well-written, are forgotten, never to be heard from again. Hence, the outtakes idea.

However, I will not natter on any further. Here, in its completion, and what is its final version (I sure do hope), is One Size Fits All. Thank you, all two dedicated readers for your patience.

Random Quote of the Day

Fuckin' Heilman!

Monday Morning Songs, More

I can't believe I didn't put this in on the first Monday Morning songs list. This is easily top five, ever.

Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presley (the Fine Young Cannibals version is good, too, but this song is Oh. So. Good.)

Random quote of the day

Like candy? Me, too

Unicorn Museum

Unfortunately, they aren't selling unicorns in the gift shop... yet.

http://www.unicornmuseum.org/

Story In Progress: One Size Fits All

Here I start an idea I had recently:
I will post first drafts of stories, and repost the story with each ensuing draft.

Another idea I had recently, which I may yet use, was to take all the deleted portions of a first draft, or even before the first draft is completed and place them into their own separate piece. This new "snippets" piece does not need any plot. It will be just excerpts, deleted takes, outtakes, if you will, from stories. Those parts of the stories that just didn't fit in for some reason or other, that needed to be deleted. These would consist of those parts that the writer (in this case me) really liked, thought was very well-written, but when trying to edit the final version, just didn't work, disrupted the flow.

Now that I am writing that, I think I may follow through. But not on this post:

Here is the first draft of "One Size Fits All." As I write this, I am printing out a copy of this draft, so that I can begin the revision process. Let's call this exercise, Story In Progress.

Enough belaboring. Enjoy this unfinished version.

One Size Fits All

“Sara-a-a-h,” her mother called from down the hall, the sing-song voice she used when proposing a collaborative project. When she was younger, the project would usually consist of chopping food, or trying on one of dozens of dresses that her aunt had sent from Osaka, dresses that didn’t fit her, as her mother and aunt were both convinced that one day Sara would wake up and be the same porcelain doll size that they were, and not the before picture in a diet ad that she was and would always be. Every time her reaction would be the same: closing her eyes, and a resolve-strengthening deep breath, followed by a conciliatory, “Coming, mom.”
Sara was in her room, door ajar, unpacking her suitcases into the dressers she had brought back with her, dressers that had sat in the same positions against the same lavender wall from before Sara had gotten married. She surveyed the room looking for traces of evolution since before she had moved out, how it had changed, and any accidental traces of her marriage that her mother forgot to remove. Her parents had left the bed where it was, in case of company, and had kept the vanity on the back of the door, scuff marks in the upper corners where there had once been stickers and pictures of she and Kevin. A ceiling fan and purple curtains over the windows swaying from the movement of the fan were the only additions.
She had just moved back in the day before. She and Kevin were separating. She hadn’t wanted to, but all her friends were married with kids, and she didn’t want to rent a week-to-week apartment before she figured out what to do next. Part of the reason for not wanting to move in was that she knew her parents did not have a happy marriage, but she did not want to see what it was like up close, now that she was old enough to judge her parents as individuals. Her mother also had a history of strange reactions when Sara moved out. Her mother also had never liked Kevin, but considered divorce as a sign of failure, despite how much you dislike someone. Sara had, on more than one occasion, thought her parents would be better off divorced.
What caused the breakup of her marriage was that Kevin had met someone else: his secretary Barbara. When they hired her for his real estate business, Kevin said Barbara was efficient, Barbara had experience, Barbara would take care of all the paperwork that Kevin couldn’t get to, things that kept him at the office late and away from Sara. Sara had offered to do this years earlier, but Kevin didn’t want to mix work and pleasure and besides, Sara had her own teaching career to think about. Barbara also had a distorted body, like Sara. But whereas Sara’s distorted body focused upon her facial features, namely the garish bags under her eyes that looked like a snapped elastic band, and made Sara look tired, withered, and worn, Barbara’s distorted body resided in a different section of the female anatomy. So much so, that when Sara’s mother interrogated her as to why she needed to move back in, Sara replied tearfully, “Boob-bra.”
“Saaaarrr-a-a-a-h-h-h,” sustained her mother.
“Give me a few minutes, Mom. Just let me unpack.” She closed the closet door, and wiped tears away with her sleeve. She could hear her mother walking up the stairs.
“Sara,” her mother’s voice came from the doorway. “I’m making your favorite.” Sara turned around to face her, wiping her hands over her eyes, and drying her hands on her pants. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she sniffled. “Just a little.”
Her mother paused briefly. “I’m making beef stew. I think your father would like that.” A large apron covered her body and she had not removed the oversized yellow gloves that she always used when cleaning or cooking. A couple of renegade black strands fell from the tight bun on top of her head. “I thought you could help me.”
Sara breathed in deeply, and looked at a growing spot of water on the floor, forming from the overflowing pools in her eye bags. “Just give me a few minutes, mom. To straighten out.”
“You have plenty of time to do that.” Her mother shook her head, pivoted on her feet and went back downstairs, spatula swinging in her hand.
After she finished putting away her clothes, she closed her bedroom door, and went downstairs. Her mother had already started boiling the water, and sat at the kitchen table peeling the carrots and potatoes into a trashcan. Sara grabbed a cutting board and knife, and started arranging the celery and onions on the cutting board.
“You forgot gloves,” her mother stated, head down, focusing on the carrots and potatoes, making sure that no peels fell onto the floor.
“Sorry, mom. Where are they kept now?”
Her mother stopped peeling, looked at Sara, and gestured with her head to the drawer under the sink. “In the drawer under the sink,” she reasserted.
Sara retrieved a pair of gloves and returned to the task of chopping. They continued in this fashion for a while, Sara chopping away at the cutting board, her mother adding the vegetables to the broth one by one as Sara finished and moved on to the next one, the pile of carrots and potatoes growing as her mother finished peeling. Sara watched as her mother stirred the vegetables, and side stepped to the other side of the stove to brown the beef, the counter-clockwise turning of her wrist, the string of the apron around her neck, her rigid, yet strangely relaxed posture in front of the stove: these were the things Sara knew and expected, what she wanted, why she had come home.
After all ingredients were chopped and added to the mix, her mother grabbed the kettle from atop one of the unused burners. A quick turn of the water faucet, on then off, four quick steps back to the stove, and a twist of her fingers turning on the burner. “Okay. I think we are good. Go sit, I will make tea,” she stated, her voice the sharp sound of air when a knife flits over vegetables, the sound of jeans rubbing together on a brisk walk. The dishes sat on the counter, still dirty, not having been moved to the sink.
In a few minutes, her mother emerged, carrying a tray with two cups, saucers, spoons, and a larger white kettle. She placed the tray on the coffee table, and walked to the other side, sitting next to Sara on the couch. Her mother pulled a photo album from underneath the table and started telling Sara about when she was a little girl in Osaka: Reiko’s mother would teach her about cooking, and she would crane her neck to try to see the whack-whack-whack of what her mother was chopping, the sound of the knife slapping against the cutting board exciting and infuriating her at the same time. Sara looked at the unsmiling woman in the pictures, arms folded rigidly over her chest. In one picture she stood awkwardly in front of a door, apron over her body, shoulders the same height as the door handle. Sara had never met her grandmother, but recognized the woman Reiko described just the same. But Sara’s mother told these stories in English, something she never did when it was just the two of them. Her mother had been speaking nothing but English since the day before, when Sara came home. She had actually wanted to hear her mother’s chopped Japanese staccato, but didn’t say anything, as she didn’t know when her mother would voluntarily speak English to her again. She found the foreignness of her English soothing, calming in its discomfort.
When they had finished poring over the photo album, Reiko stood up and walked into the kitchen to check on the beef stew. Sara refilled her tea cup, and looked around the room, finding the jade plant in the corner she had given her mother for her birthday the year before. In front of the plant leaned a picture of her grandmother kneeling on the ground, gloved hands covered in dirt, resting on a mound of dirt from which a small tree sprouted from the middle. A large wide-brimmed hat covered her head, and she was smiling at the camera, the only picture of all in which she was smiling. The frame of this picture –silver, ornate flowery leaves, had recently housed a picture of Sara and Kevin at their wedding. She turned the picture around and peeled back the cover to see if the picture was still there. It wasn’t.
“Sara, Sara,” her mother’s voice called from the kitchen. She was laughing, but Sara could hear the spoon clanging against the side of the pot in a frantic pace. “We forgot to put in the flour.” Sara repositioned the picture and walked into the kitchen to find her mother, hair more disheveled, stirring frantically at the vegetables and beef floating in a thin, browning liquid. “Your father --.” Heavy, nervous laughter sliced off her words. “Your father will hate this.” “Just use corn starch,” Sara added, pilfering through the pantry. She found a dusty box of corn starch in the back, walked over and began pouring it in, as her mother continued to stir. They both watched as the broth thickened.


Saturday was the first day of the week Sara had to herself. And Saturday afternoon would be the first time she could start the process of rebuilding her life. She had made sure she took care of all small things: unpacking, organizing. She had unpacked her suitcases, put the clothes in the dresser, hung her blouses and skirts, dresses in the closet, and had started unpacking the boxes of books, CDs, movies, electrical equipment that she and Kevin had split. Over the years they had upgraded all the stereo and entertainment systems – they were all Kevin’s purchases, so he could keep them—but Sara had kept the old system in boxes in the basement, in case one of their friends was moving into a new apartment, or in case something happened to the new equipment, Kevin wouldn’t have to go without his beloved television.
She had planned to organize all the boxes that had been thrown in a heap in the basement, that had been packed in a rush when she was moving out, start the dreaded process of going through the boxes of his stuff, her stuff, their stuff, the items he had bought for her over the years. It would be a box of tissues kind of day. Once that was finished she planned on going through the newspapers, looking for apartments, deciding where she would want to live, what kind of apartment she would want, if she would want roommates. She knew she would have the time today as Saturday afternoons her parents usually spent visiting her father’s friends, or fighting over the cleanliness of her father’s office.
First she had to shower. Sara went in, bringing a change of clothes, and her makeup bag with her. After showering, she stood sideways in front of the mirror, naked. She pulled her red hair back into a tight bun, alternately sucking in her stomach and pushing out her breasts, pushing them closer together, and mouthed the words, lips in a protruded pout, “Hi. I’m Boob-bra,” and shook her hair. She could feel the onset of tears, and she dropped her arms to her side, letting her stomach out to normal proportions, and watched as her enclosed breasts sighed into their usual resting position.
“Sara-a-a-a-h-h-h-h.” Her mother’s muffled voice seeped under the doorway like a dense fog. She could hear her outside the bathroom. “What are you doing today? Let’s go shopping. That would make you feel good.” Sara couldn’t tell if this last part was a question or just her mother’s inflection from her unused English.
“I was going to go through those boxes downstairs,” Sara replied, poking her head out of the door. She held the doorknob with one hand, and, just below her neck, a towel wrapped around her body.
“We wouldn’t go for long,” Reiko answered quickly, smoothing down her dress and her sleeves for any wrinkles and lint. She was wearing a black dress with light orange calla lilies printed throughout. Sara had only seen her mother wearing this dress three times before: for her high school graduation, her college graduation, and for the one time her mother’s sister came to visit from Osaka.
Sara clutched the towel tighter around her body, and dried the hand that was holding the doorknob on the towel. She looked past her mother’s shoulder then down at her feet, before meeting her mother’s expectant gaze. “I was going to start looking for an apartment afterwards.” She gripped the doorknob tighter, bracing herself for her mother’s reaction. Every other time Sara was moving out, or told her parents she moving out, her mother had strange reactions. During college breaks her mother would have all the dinners lined up during the week, and would each day remind Sara that she was leaving in a week, like a countdown, and would wake Sara up promptly at seven the morning she was to return to school. There was no deviating from the schedule. When she had told her parents she was moving in with Kevin, it was over dinner. They made no response, and continued eating. Sara asked if they had heard her, and her mother replied in a voice as creased as the lines in her hair, “We heard you the first time.” Sara and Reiko didn’t speak until after she moved out.
Her mother’s face tightened, and her eyelids twitched slightly. Reiko’s left arm, which had been holding a matching clutch at her waist, slackened, elbow straightening out, and she momentarily lost grip of the clutch. Sara looked at her mother’s dress and how she hadn’t seen her mother this excited since the trip to pick up her sister at the airport, and asked, facing the ground, “Where would you want to go?” She knew her mother would want to go downtown, the only stores her mother could tolerate going to: there was a women’s clothing store that catered to petite women that carried mostly imported clothing.
Her mother resumed her posture, her arm sprung back to her side. “We can go downtown,” she answered, sounding like a child who had one moment been told there was no ice cream, only to have it appear seconds later.
Sara thought of the possibility of running into Kevin, whose real estate business was downtown, walking around with Boob-bra, and of what her mother’s reaction might be, or of what her own reaction might be. She relished the idea of seeing them together, and of her mother’s seeing them together, her mother pouncing on Kevin like a lion after a fresh gazelle, Sara scratching away at Barbara’s face, stretching her eyelids down to her ample, home-wrecking breasts. She thought of what her actual reaction would be, which would be to look at the ground, and try to stifle in a cry, a sheepish hello and a glare at Barbara. They would exchange pleasantries, and awkward how-do-you-dos, and Sara would have to restrain her mother from causing the scene that she herself wanted to cause. She had suffered enough indignities for one week. “Can we go to the mall, instead?”
After a long pause, her mother responded in a tightened voice, “Whatever you want to do.”
Sara quickly pulled on some underwear and clasped her bra. She reached into her makeup bag and pulled out the first of what would be many layers of cover-up makeup for her eyes. Through years of trial and error, she had learned a few tricks to make them not seem as garishly creased as they actually were.
Bang-bang-bang. She thought the door was going to crack, and her hand almost smeared eyeliner across her nose. “Sara,” her mother’s voice shot, tense and angry, “Hurry up. We are leaving now.” It was the first time she had spoken Japanese to Sara since she had moved back in.


They hadn’t gone shopping together since before Sara started high school. Each time would end in frustration as Sara would not want to wear any of the suffocating dresses her mother would pick out, and her mother would refuse to acknowledge the wide-bottomed jeans and baggy sweatshirts that Sara always picked out. Reiko called them “fatty American clothing”, but held particular disdain for jeans, calling them “disgusting, lazy person pants.” She never elaborated on this, but in all the pictures from back home, Sara never saw anyone, her grandmother, Reiko’s sisters, her grandfather, uncles, anyone, wearing jeans. They all wore traditional Japanese robes, or black workpants and robes. Sara saw people on Japanese TV wearing jeans, but her mother thought the same of modern Japan as she thought of America. Sara romanticized that her mother held herself responsible for Japanese culture falling prey to the American beast: when she left, so did the heritage. Reiko would also get frustrated at the throngs in the mall, claiming she couldn’t understand anyone, and that the tellers were deliberately making fun of her. She would always leave the store tense, Sara following behind, and nothing would ever get purchased. They had resolved this shopping impasse with Reiko giving Sara money to buy clothes, and Sara would go with her friends.
This prevented Sara from having to drive with her mother. Her mother never learned how to drive until Sara turned fourteen and only because she didn’t want Sara driving with boys. Her father had been telling Reiko to get her license for years, that she would feel much better if she could drive, but Reiko always refused. Peter usually relented, Sara assuming that it was enough progress that he had gotten her to learn English. Needless to say, her mother was not a good driver, and if she weren’t so prone to returning with so many bags, Sara would have taken the bus.
Their size difference also made Sara self-conscious in public. Her mother was of a traditional Japanese build: skin light and taut, stretched evenly over her delicate, tiny mannequin-like features; hair, long, straight and black, tied in an unyielding knot atop her head, tinged with streaks of gray, and thinned with age. Sara, on the other hand, was an amalgam of all the most disjointed features of her parents. From her father she inherited her shocking red hair, freckles, and height; from her mother her eyes, olive complexion, and tiny feet and hands. From no one, she had inherited the bags under her eyes. They had been there since birth, but had grown deeper as she grew older. What once resembled small ripples across a pond, what most people claimed she would eventually grow out of, like an overbite or a cowlick, had become crop circles. And from American laziness, according to her mother, she had acquired her stomach, her flab.
They drove to the mall in relative calmness, Sara driving, Reiko looking out the window and updating Sara on the developments of the neighbors as they passed each house and yard. She spoke of the vacations the neighbors took dismissively, disapproving of the time they spent away from their household. Sara wondered if this was because her own parents had not vacationed together for so long. why her mother had been clinging to the idea of going shopping so much that she was willing to go the mall, a place she always hated. And why was her mother suddenly speaking nothing but English? Whereas in most bilingual households, the parents would always speak their native language when reprimanding their children, with Sara, her mother spoke Japanese as a way to connect. Now, after splitting from Kevin, Sara noticed her mother spoke nothing but English, except when they were to leave.
“Mom,” Sara began, after listening to her mother complain about how the Ellerys spent six months of their time in Florida, how when they return there must be dust and cobwebs over everything, “can I ask why you’re speaking so much English.”
“What do you mean? I always spoke English,” her mother answered defensively. “Ask your father.”
“Noooo... No-no. I know you’ve always spoken English. But,” Sara paused, gripping the steering wheel tighter. She was afraid she had asked the wrong thing and was thinking of her words carefully. She slowed down for the red light as the car approached the intersection just before the mall. “You’ve always spoken Japanese with me. When dad’s not around.”
Her mother’s face tightened further, and Reiko looked out the front window. “The light just turned green,” she replied, and pointed her finger towards the traffic light.
Sara released the brake and pulled in to the mall. They didn’t speak as the mall parking lot was full, as was to be expected for a Saturday afternoon. She circled the mall twice looking for parking, driving up and down every row as she went, sneaking looks at her mother as they drove. She saw Reiko’s lips pursing tighter with each turn down the rows. If they were any tighter, she would be eating her lips, Sara thought.
“There, there, there,” her mother yelped, swinging her left arm so hard into Sara’s, which held the steering wheel, it caused Sara’s arm to jerk down. The car swerved for a moment before Sara adjusted, narrowly avoiding rear-ending a parked car next to the empty spot Reiko had noticed. Sara pulled into the empty parking spot, in front of the food court, yanked the emergency brake, and turned off the car.
“Mom!” Sara remanded her mother. “You could have caused an accident. Don’t hit so hard next time.” Sara rubbed at the red spot forming at her elbow.
“I found a spot for us,” Reiko answered.
They sat in the car for a few minutes, Sara closing her eyes, and breathing deeply through her nose. When she opened them she saw a group of teenage girls walking in to the mall, waving goodbye to the van dropping them off, much as she had waved to her mother’s car when Reiko had dropped Sara and her friends off at the mall when at that age. She turned to face her mother.
“Are you ready?” she asked, noticing her mother’s rigid posture, her hands pressing into her legs at the knees, her eyes glaring at the overweight people walking out of the mall.
“Would you like me to speak Japanese to you?” she asked in a measured tone, each syllable dripping with effrontery.
“No, mom,” Sara said, shaking her head. “You can speak whatever you want. Are you ready to go?”
Sara opened the driver’s side door and stepped out of the car. Her mother unbuckled her seatbelt and they started walking in to the mall side by side, her mother holding her clutch tight against her, as if ready to wield it as a weapon, eyes darting distrustfully, filled with scorn at all the people who walked by.
They ate a quiet lunch from one of the food kiosks masquerading as Japanese, but which was really a combination of Chinese, Thai, and Japanese –Pan-Asian, they called it, as if all Asian countries could be glommed into one. Sara brought the food over to her mother who sat underneath one of the faux palm tree benches, away from the crowds.
“What were you looking for?” Sara asked, lifting the chopsticks to her mouth.
“I don’t know,” Reiko replied. “I just wanted to spend time with you.”
She smiled and lifted the chopsticks to her mouth again. She looked at her mother, smiling through chewing lips. “Maybe I could buy you a pair of jeans.”
Reiko squinted at Sara and smiled. It was the first time Sara didn’t feel as if her mother was going to slap her for suggesting this.
When they finished eating, they threw out their containers and eased in to the traffic pattern of the mall, Sara towering over her mother, but walking close to her side, as if awaiting command. The mall had changed considerably since Sara and her mother had last been there. There were more women’s clothing stores, one for each body type: petite, plus size, maternity wear, many for teenage girls. There were shops that, just as at the food kiosk, were dedicated to European style, as if all European styles were the same. They spoke in English as they went, window shopping, Sara politely nodding to her mother’s complaints of the people talking on their cell phones, the girls taking pictures of each other in the stores with their phones, the ugly style of the boys, their strange handshakes and greetings, chest bumps they gave each other. Sara would defer an eruption from her mother by pointing out an antique chest in one of the interior decorating stores, escorting her mother to the kitchen and dining stores, those parts of American culture her mother had seemed to accept, or at least didn’t totally abhor. They walked through the mall like this for about a half-hour, stopping at small furniture and jewelry stops, peering through the windows, debating about going on.
They continued on until they came across Bonsai Couture, a woman’s clothing store, like the European store earlier, but dedicated to Asian clothing, Asian women. They looked up, then at each other, almost beckoning the other to make the first step toward the door. Thai headdresses, large straw hats for working in the field, kimonos, kabuki robes, Chinese shoes, and, to Reiko’s horror and Sara’s smiling face, jeans with traditional Chinese dragons, some with a taijitu.
“Let’s come back,” Reiko answered. “I want to keep walking.”
They turned and continued around the corner. As Reiko continued to walk, stopping in front of a bookstore, Sara stopped frozen in place, legs flexing as if she was trying to move but couldn’t. Her muscles tensed, and her face began to grow red. She could feel the bags under eyes fluttering. Across the way, out of the electronics store, walked Kevin, hand in hand with Boob-bra. Sara ran a hand through her hair and shifted her weight to her right leg, folding her arms across her chest. Reiko had stopped and walked back to Sara.
“Sara?” she asked.
Sara nodded her head across the way to the approaching Kevin and Boob-bra. Reiko steeled her body and folded her arms across her chest, while taking a few steps back, almost against the wall, and almost directly behind Sara.
“Hi Sara,” Kevin said. He was tall, thin. Sara noted that his appearance, hair closely shorn, face clean shaven, was slightly disheveled. His hair, which had never been below the ears, was longer, and he was growing sideburns, and he had either the beginnings of a beard or a few days without shaving. His shirt was not tucked in and wrinkled, another thing he never would have done. “Hello, Mrs. Cleagh,” he craned head around Sara’s body to acknowledge Reiko.
Reiko nodded in assent, almost imperceptible if you had not been watching. “Mawakata,” she corrected him, lips moving as little as her head had.
Kevin clasped his hands together and bowed toward her. “Sorry. Mrs. Mawakata.” He turned to Sara. “How are you?”
Sara turned her head to glare at Barbara, who had taken the same position behind Kevin, except pulled a cell phone out of her purse and started flipping through it, pretending to look for a number. She returned her gaze to Kevin’s. “Good. I’m good.” She stretched the bags out from under eyes.
“Good,” Kevin replied, unable to think of anything else to say. They stood there awkwardly for a few long moments, the throngs of the mall moving around them. They could hear Barbara’s phone beeping behind them as she continued to play with her phone.
“I’m good,” Kevin finally responded, breaking the silence. “The business is doing good.”
“Mmm-hmm. That’s good,” said Sara.
“Yeah.” They stood there for a few minutes longer, the beeping of Barbara’s phone drowned out by the sound of an advertisement being played over the intercom system of the mall.
“We should get together soon,” Kevin started. “To, um, figure stuff out.”
Reiko leapt forward at this point and slapped Kevin across the face, hand outstretched as far as it would go. She almost needed to jump to reach his face. Just as quickly she wheeled around and slapped Sara across the face and stood glaring at both of them. Barbara had stopped playing with her phone, but stood staring at Reiko, mouth agape.
Reiko straightened out her dress, pressing her hands down her sides. The bun on top of her head had loosened, hair falling in front of her face. She twirled her hair back into its bun, and reassumed her rigid posture. “I am sorry, Mr. Morris,” she faced Kevin, who had started to retreat backwards, so that he was almost stepping on Barbara. “It is not my place to do that.” She nodded deeply at Kevin, her body only moving at the neck. “We leave now,” she said, turning to Sara then walked backward to her spot against the wall. She leaned over gingerly and picked up the clutch, which she had dropped. “Sara, are you ready?” she said in Japanese, and started walking away. Sara shuffled her feet, following her mother, leaving Kevin, Barbara, and all the mall people who had stopped to watch them walk away in stunned silence.
As Sara caught up to her mother, Reiko looked up at her daughter and with a large smile on her face, said, “Let’s go back to that Asian clothing store.”


The drive home consisted of Sara listening to her mother prattle about how much fun she had, how nice it was to get out of the house, how good it was to spend some time together, and how that Bonsai store was not so bad after all. Reiko had bought a pair of folding fans, and a new dress, the first dress she had purchased in the US. Her sister made most of the dresses for her back home and would mail them to her every couple of years.
Sara didn’t say a word, but just silently fumed. She had wanted to talk to her mother about Kevin, about how she felt about seeing him, about how she couldn’t believe he was out in public with that bimbo, how she was changing how he looked, dressed, wore his hair, how Sara felt some satisfaction knowing that he looked awful. At the least she wanted to apologize to her mother for suggesting they go to the mall, just so that she could avoid running in to Kevin. But she couldn’t; she couldn’t judge her mother’s reactions, she couldn’t trust her mother’s reactions. And as it turns out, her mother was very glad to have gone to the mall. She kept saying how shocked her sister would be when she came to visit over that store, how much she wanted to bring her there, even in spite of those horrible jeans, with Chinese on them, too. But not once, Sara noted, during all this prattling, did she offer an apology, or act as if anything had even happened.
As Sara pulled off the highway and onto the backroads by the farm houses, she had an idea. Since her mother had embarrassed her at the store, she would embarrass her mother in one of only two ways she knew how: she would make her drive, or she would buy the jeans with the taijitu on the knees for her mother, in her size. First she would try to make her drive, by appealing to her sense of mothering. She pulled the car off the side of the road. “Mom, can you drive? I’m not feeling too good.” Her mother’s face, which had been animated and stuck in an elated smile since slapping Sara, retracted to near full tension. “We are almost home. You are fine.” She returned to looking out the window, glassy look in her eyes, indicating that she was thinking of something else.
“No, mom,” Sara reasserted, pulling the car over to the side of the road. The car stopped and Sara looked at her mother. “I’m feeling kind of tired.” Sara began to close her eyes, feigning sickness, much as she had tried to do as a child and she didn’t want to go to school. It didn’t work then, but she was determined to make it work now.
Reiko turned to face Sara, expression unchanged. “When we get home I can make you some tea. We are almost there. Just drive slowly. Like I do.”
It wouldn’t work; her face did not look sickly enough. Although her mother would try to protect anyone when they were legitimately ill, she also viewed sickness as a weakness. Unless you were truly ill, there was nothing tea and hard work could not cure.
Sara pretended to regroup, wiping her face with her sleeve, and stretching out her eyes, in order to keep them open, then dragging the bags under her eyes to full extent. She stretched her arms out to the side, almost hitting Reiko in the side of the head if she hadn’t moved it. She took a couple of deep breaths, released the emergency brake, and slowly merged with the oncoming traffic, and started what she had decided would be a long drive home. What normally took about five to ten minutes from this point would take at least a half an hour. She would drive slower than her mother. However, not once on their tortoise-like journey did Reiko offer to drive, or ask if Sara was feeling okay. Finally, Sara pulled into the driveway, and slowly dragged herself out of the car and into the house, with the deliberate pace of a moping child. Reiko had gathered her belongings and raced inside in front of her, putting the tea kettle on immediately. Part of the reason Sara walked so slowly, other than to maintain the ruse of illness, was to allow distance between she and her mother. She had no interest in talking to her, and was now determined to move out as quickly as possible. She walked into the house and walked straight up to her room, not stopping to remove her shoes, or her coat.


For the next few weeks, Sara maintained a low profile around the house. She would go to work and instead of going directly home after school to start grading, she would head to a coffee shop instead, to grade papers and to go apartment hunting. She had looked at a few in downtown Portsmouth, Dover, and even out in Exeter, where she taught, and eventually decided to look in Dover. The commute would be a little longer, but she wouldn’t have to worry about running into Kevin were she in Portsmouth, and, best of all, her mother would be 40 minutes away in Epping.
She would return to her parents’ house when it approached dinner time. She was thirty years old but living in her parents’ house, she felt obliged to eat with them, except on the rare occasion she met a colleague or a friend out for a drink. At dinner, she would give cursory details of her day, would listen to her father go on about his clients, and where work was trying to send him next, and ate quickly.
For the first couple of weeks after she moved in, after dinner she would help her mother finish the dishes, and would talk about her day at school, her students, before completing her grading on the dining room table. She did this out of a need for comfort, and out of a need to help break the monotonous silence between her parents. They rarely spoke, had rarely spoken even when Sara was in high school, and when they did, they screamed; usually Reiko yelling at Peter about putting his shoes in the right spot, or to put the cups in the cabinet face down. Sara never noticed these things as odd growing up, but now that her own marriage was over she had originally thought she could repair her parents. Since the event at the mall, however, and the lack of acknowledgement on her mother’s behalf that anything had even happened, Sara didn’t care about protecting the family illusion. After she would finish wolfing her food, she would excuse herself, claim that she had a lot of grading to do, that the school was giving teacher performance assessments at school so she had to be extra prepared for each class, and would go upstairs, leaving her parents to their own strange acceptable silence.
When she had first moved back in, after her mother had seemed so accommodating, so changed, she mentioned her observations of her parents’ marriage to Reiko, about how her parents never spoke, never showed affection. Reiko furrowed her brow, squinted at Sara, and said, “I know my husband. I am still married.” She returned her gaze to the sudsy water in front of her, adjusting the yellow housework gloves, and plunged them into the sink of dirty dishes. Sara never asked anything about her parents’ marriage again. She went to her room, sat on her bed and threw the one remaining picture she had of she and Kevin against the wall. She fell asleep that night sobbing.
The night before their shopping trip, Sara came downstairs to get some water, and found her father sitting at the dining room table, books spread in front of him, and her mother standing behind him, leaning over the papers, arm around his shoulders. He could hear her father speaking basic Japanese words, and her mother correcting his pronunciation. It was the first time since she was a child she had seen her parents display any form of affection toward each other. Fearing that they would stop if they noticed her, she turned back up the stairs; she would fill her water glass from the bathroom sink, not the refrigerator.
After dinner that night she went upstairs leaving her parents to argue about her father’s upcoming business trip to Tokyo. She sat on her bed cross-legged, folders and grade books open, splayed in front of her, laptop on her knees, looking at apartments. There were two she had looked at in Dover that she was debating about: one had a move-in date of the following Saturday, the other had a move-in date of the first of November: almost one month away, but was cheaper. She could hear her mother’s voice raising through the closed door. Her father was refusing to bring anything with him to mail to Reiko’s family in Osaka, making Reiko understandably angry. Sara sat up from her bed, and placed her ear to her bedroom door. She could hear her mother’s stabbing voice over the violent water from the sink. Sara turned from the door, walked across the room to the radio, and turned up the volume. She grabbed a pen and circled on the name of the woman renting the apartment for the following Saturday in Dover.


She called her mother the next day from her work phone to tell her she would not be home for dinner: she and a colleague who was also going through a divorce were going to go out.
“That is a good idea. You can help each other.” Reiko had said over the phone.
Sara was really going to fill out paperwork for the apartment in Dover, and then was going to the mall. She had called from the teacher’s lounge because she had left her cell phone at home that morning. She had woken up late as a result of poor sleeping: her parents’ arguing had caused her to stay up late to finish grading her students’ reports. She could use the teacher’s lounge phone to call the landlord and schedule a meeting for that night.
She arrived at the apartment early, and the realtor arrived late. When the realtor did arrive it was not the older woman she had dealt with the previous week, but a young woman with long blonde hair which she wore straight, and wearing no makeup. When she walked out of the car she dropped a couple of folders, and Sara could see papers and boxes and trash lining the back seat of her car, as if her filing cabinet had been emptied in the backseat.
The girl picked up the papers, started walking over Sara, apologizing as she walked, and walked back, realizing she had forgotten to close the door. As she walked toward Sara her posture suddenly stiffened, her face became scared. It was a reaction Sara was accustomed to.
“Hi-hi. I’m Robin. You must be Sara Claayy—“
“Cleagh. Like Craig.” Sara answered. Most people had a hard time pronouncing her last name. Sara was looking at Robin with a puzzled expression. What had happened with Evelyn; she had spoken to her earlier in the afternoon.
“You got Evelyn’s message,” Robin started, “so that’s good.”
“No, I didn’t. What happened?” Sara realized that she hadn’t given Evelyn her work number; she must have called her cell phone. Oh crap, she thought. Her cell phone was in her room. Her mother would hear it ring. “I left my cell phone at home today.” She tried to let on that there was no major issue.
“Oh, that’s okay. Her son got really sick at school, so she had to bring him to the doctor. I’m her assistant.” Robin held out her hand gingerly, and dropped half of the papers she had in a jumbled stack under her arm. “I’m sorry. This- this is the first one I’ve done without Evelyn here.” She said this while squatting down picking up the papers.
When Robin stood back up, Sara looked at her and said, motioning to the bags under her eyes, “It’s a birth defect. They were supposed to stop growing, but they continued to. I could get rid of them with surgery but, I kind of like them now.” It was a stock phrase she had been using since she went to college. It had helped to put people at ease and, at the time, convinced Sara that she could adapt to living on her own.
Having had a husband in the real estate business, she was able to help Robin through the entire process, including how much she owed, and where each of them was to sign. While filling out the paperwork, she thought about what the office would have been like if Robin had been hired instead of Boob-bra, if Kevin would have even hired her, if she and Kevin would have still been together. She knew that wasn’t true, that Barbara was just a symptom that something else was wrong, but it was nice to wish anyway.
When the paperwork was finished and Robin drove away, Sara tossed the keys to the apartment in her hands, and walked to the front door. She wouldn’t walk in as the previous tenants still lived there, even though they weren’t home at the time. She could see boxes piled up along the walls, and copy of Hokusai’s “Great Wave” on the wall. A small bonsai tree sat in the windowsill, and on a table in the corner, sat a large rabbit bell, above it a few flower bells. She smiled, looked down at the keys in her hand, placed them into her pocketbook, and walked back to her car.


The entire drive to the mall Sara fretted over her phone. What if her mother had answered the phone? What if she heard it? What if Evelyn had called the house phone? Had she given Evelyn the house phone as an emergency number? She couldn’t worry about these things. Since she was already out of the house she would continue with her plan of furniture shopping.
When she got to the mall, she thought about what her mother’s reaction would be when she got home, and also about how her mother had slapped her in front of Kevin the last time she was here, had slapped her period. She was thirty years old, and had lived on her own for almost twelve years. She was capable of living her life without her mother’s influence. She could picture her mother screaming at Evelyn over the phone, pictured her phone in the trashcan under the sink, could picture her mother standing at the door later that evening, arms folded tightly over her chest. Before she could get both feet in the house, her mother would slap her. Sara walked through the mall, oblivious to her surroundings, thinking of these scenarios, making herself angrier and angrier. She had decided. She was buying the jeans. She stopped abruptly and looked up, realizing she had walked through a majority of the mall without any of the stores registering to her. She turned around and started walking to Bonsai Couture.
Neon lights cascaded down on Sara as she stood in front of the store. She had been so determined, but now stood frozen, second-guessing herself. What if this caused a permanent rift with her mother? What if her mother disowned her? What if she was sent out of the house that night, forced to stay somewhere for a week? What if her mother sold all her belongings in the next week before she was to move in? Years before, when she was in the middle of a worrying screed of this kind, Kevin had told her to imagine the most ridiculous thing that could happen in order to make her feel better. It was an exercise they had practiced to alleviate Sara’s fear of flying. What if the plane crashed? What if they got halfway over the ocean and were unable to contact someone on land and the plane started going down, and she wasn’t able to get in touch with any of her family? What if right when the plane landed, the doors would malfunction and not open and they all would be trapped there waiting, panicking, breathing dead stagnant air? What if a herd of buffalo come running out of the cockpit? Kevin would say. What if in mid-flight the plane suddenly turned into rubber? Or taffy?
As she stood in front of the store, remembering one of the good things about Kevin, she thought about coming down the stairs from her bedroom after getting home and bringing her stuff upstairs, and seeing her mother in the living room, standing in front of her rocking chair, with a white blouse, arms outstretched, wearing the same jeans. Well, she would have two pair, then, Sara thought. She smiled and walked into the neon glow.
Choosing jeans was always difficult for her. But choosing jeans for someone else, especially someone of her mother’s size was something else. And which would she hate more, the taijitu or the Chinese dragon? Which would she hate less, for that matter. And they had to fit, too. There would be no sense in buying the jeans for her, if they did not fit correctly.
She walked through the aisles slowly, deliberately, head hung down so as not to draw attention to herself, to her eyes. She had a plan: she would find a pair with a hideous design on the front, and would hunt the store for any teller that was almost the size of her mother, and ask her to try them on. It would be an odd exchange, she knew, but one thing she had learned about her looks, was that it was intimidating and came in handy. It also made her memorable.
“Hi, do you need any help?” Sara saw a teller coming toward her. As the teller got here the other day, her eyes widened and she asked, excited, “you were just here the other day, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Sara answered. She felt herself crawling behind her mother’s legs. She read the badge on her shirt reading Ivy. “I was. I was with my mother.”
“That was your mother?” Ivy was the opposite end of the same rope as Robin, Sara thought. Just as perky, but more self-assured. And she wore makeup. “You guys look nothing alike.”
“We get that a lot.” Sara started thumbing through the jeans.
“Well, do you need help finding anything?”
This would be easier than she thought. “Actually. Yes. Yes I do. This is going to weird, but… I was looking for a pair of jeans for my mother, but I can’t,” she shrugged her shoulders and motioned to her body, indicating her size difference. “Is there anyone here that’s her size that can try them on for me?”
The look she received from Ivy was the look she usually received from people upon first sight. Ivy started thumbing through the jeans, without looking at them.
Sara, realizing it was an odd question, attempted to explain. “Well. Do you have either of these in her size?” She held out the taijitu and Chinese dragon.
“Do you know what size she is?” Ivy asked backing away two steps.
“I think she’s a one.”
“Okay.” Ivy took the two pants from Sara and walked to the back room.
After a few minutes she came back holding one pair of the Chinese dragon, and two pairs of the taijitu jeans. “We only have the yin-yang ones in a size one--”
“That’s great,” Sara interrupted.
“I think the owner’s wife is a size one,” said Ivy. “I just saw her in the back. Do you want me to get her for you?” She motioned toward the door reading “Employees Only.”
Sara looked at her watch, looked at the back door. If her mother even accepted the jeans, and on the weirder event she ever wore them, she knew how to sew and could straighten them out. “No, that’s okay. I’m sure these are fine.”
She paid for the jeans, and walked out of the store. For the first time since she could remember, she felt attractive. As she walked out the exit by the food court, an older gray-haired handsome man held the door open for her, and she could feel the eyes of the teenage boys smoking outside on her body.


She opened the front door to the house, her head recoiling to avoid a well-timed slap. All the lights were off except one at the top of the stairs, and the light in the kitchen, where her mother stood, filling the tea kettle with water. Reiko lifted her head briefly, saw it was Sara, and returned her gaze to the tea kettle, making sure it didn’t overfill. She turned the water faucet off, and placed the kettle on the stove. Sara took her shoes off, watching her mother’s precise movements, trying to read her mood. She seemed placid to Sara, almost remorseful.
When Sara finished taking her shoes off, and hanging up her coat, she started walking up the stairs.
“You forgot your phone today,” Reiko said, as Sara got to the second step. “Did you wake up late?”
“I did. I’m sorry, mom. I just—“
Reiko nodded her head. “Go upstairs,” she said, pulling a second cup of tea from the cupboard.
Sara hesitated a moment, thought about telling her mother she had bought her a gift, but decided to head upstairs instead. When in her room, she threw her bags on the bed, and pulled the jeans from her backpack: she had put it there so her mother would not see the Bonsai Couture packaging. She had asked for a box before she left, and put the jeans into the box, taping the sides shut. She didn’t have time to wrap it. She held the box under her arm, grabbed the doorknob, took a deep breath, and walked downstairs.
Her mother was sitting at the living room table, tray of tea in front of her. She wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a red plaid flannel shirt that had belonged to Peter when he was a boy. Sara took her seat next to her mother, poured herself a cup of tea, and leaned back against the couch. Her mother sat on the edge of the couch, but after a few moments moved herself to normal sitting position.
She had pulled the photo album out from under the table and was flipping through the section for her sister. “Your father is going to Tokyo,” she said, looking down into her cup of tea. “I have big bag of dresses for Osato. He won’t take them with him.” Her voice was slow, calm. There was an air of resolution in the way she said things. “I have not seen Osato for five years. She has a daughter. You know Yukari.”
Sara had only met her cousin once, when she Sara was fifteen. Yukari was twelve years younger than she.
“Yukari is eighteen,” Reiko continued. “She is done with school. She can fit into these clothes. I wanted you to have them, but…” She looked up and down at Sara’s body, and smiled. She patted Sara’s hand, which still held on to her cup of tea, and squeezed it. Sara looked down at her lap, reached her right arm to the side of couch and felt the box sitting there, strengthening her resolve to give the box to her mother. Her mother moved her own hand back to her teacup. “Your father is very selfish. But I know this already.”
Sara leaned over to refill her teacup. “And you are moving. When?” Reiko asked.
Sara put the teapot down, not having filled it, and leaned back. She looked at her mother, and lowered her gaze to the cushion between them on the couch. “Next Saturday,” Sara responded in a quiet voice.
“Mmmm.” Reiko closed the photo album. She stirred some cream into her tea, and refilled her teacup, the swirls and rising water looking like the foam of a breaking wave. She placed her hand on Sara’s leg, still looking at the coffee table. “That,” she paused. “That will be good for you.”
Sara’s tea splashed as a drop of tear fell from her face. In all her years, her mother had never opened up to her. She couldn’t give her the jeans now, but she had to. She could tell her what they were for originally, and give the option of sending them to her cousin instead. Knowing her aunt Osato, her cousin Yukari was probably having the same issues with her mother. She reached over the side of the couch, as fast as Reiko has slapped her, and pulled the box up, thrusting it on her mother’s lap, almost causing her to spill her tea. “I bought you some jeans tonight, but you can give them to Yukari, too. They fit you.”
Reiko blinked rapidly, and darted her head from the box on her lap to Sara and back to the box. The look on her face was a combination of horror, consternation, dismay, surprise, as if someone had slapped her in the face. Sara also detected a hint of pride. It was the first gift she had voluntarily bought for her mother not precluded by holiday or obligation.
When Reiko opened the box, her face tightened, and her lips pursed. She unfolded the jeans to their full length, looking from the jeans to Sara and back to the jeans. Her eyes kept returning to the knees, where the yin-yang design was. She folded them back into the box, along the pre-made creases, placed the box lid on and placed the box under the table, on top of the photo album. She paused for what to Sara seemed an eternity.

“Yukari would hate them,” she said, and smiled at Sara