The Befuddler: November 2007

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.

The Befuddler

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Quote of the day

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Quote of the day: Rehab

Monday, November 12, 2007

Lipstick

Introduction to "Lipstick"

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Random Quote of the Day

One Size Fits All

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

About Me

I Like These, So You Will Too

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