The Electrical Field by Kerri Sakamoto Page B

since I learned of Chisako’s death. He seemed to have turned carelessly away from me. I took out the notebook I had begun, pressed its rippling pages to my breast, then opened it to the photo of Chisako with her family. Already it had changed: her features grown smudgy; her eyes inked in black. Already she had grown dead to me, even as I looked her in the face; my lips remained still. I tried to conjure her up, I tried to summon the peculiar light in her black eyes, that voice of tinkling crystal, but she remained a blank. All I saw was the carpet in her little room, and the spreading stain that my spilt green tea had left on its ivory surface from our very last visit. My clumsiness. For she had flustered me, after all. But beside that stain her slim legs gracefully leaning to one side like stems, her feet lifting daintily.
    I sat down, trying to collect my thoughts. My thoughts that wandered, stumbled down into the night. I tried to line them up into my usual practical concerns. I thought about koden money; how much would I send? From the family or myself alone? A ridiculous thought, I realized, the old tradition of sending money, under the circumstances. Who was there to send it to? I bristled at the idea of those church ladies downtown taking charge as they sometimes did when therewas no family. But Yano would return. Any day, any moment now. He would take care of things.
    Stum had left the door open, and in came air through the screen, sticky and warm like exhaled breath. I stepped onto my porch. Out in the field, I could perfectly imagine her, Chisako as she was when I first met her, those years ago. She was wearing a navy uniform-like overcoat. Despite her protests, Yano was pulling her towards me through the field muddy with late-melting snows. Her hair had been severely cut, too short to twist up into a bun. It made her look younger, like a rebellious teenager or a naive schoolgirl tugging away from Yano as he pulled her along. From a distance, he could have been her father. I was walking at my usual brisk pace, counting my steps to each end of the field, when Yano called to me, waving with one hand, holding onto Chisako with the other. “Saito-san!”
    I slowed down slightly, holding my count. Normally I would have kept on, but I was curious to meet her.
    “Saito-san, this is Chisako, my wife,” a breathless Yano announced, pushing her in front. She seemed to dangle there, as if relinquishing herself. Something told me she’d cut her hair herself, out of spite and unhappiness, for it was unevenly trimmed, in jagged clumps, hiding much of her face the way too thick, too massive Japanese hair stubbornly does unless it is kept long. We stood in silence for some moments until she finally glanced up. When she did, her spine seemed to straighten and stiffen, and she instantly appeared more robust and wilful. It was difficult to tell what she actually looked like, but I could make out her features: a fine nose, and deep black eyes that caught the light, a rarething. She pulled her hand from Yano’s with almost a childish grimace, and held it out to me.
    “Hajime mashite. Dozo yoroshiku,” I said haltingly, mustering the proper greeting learned in my girlhood classes in Port Dover. Not like my peasant bits of Japanese from Papa and Mama.
    “Nice to meet you, Saito-san,” she replied. Coolly, as if unimpressed by my addressing her in Japanese, insulted even.
    “Wanted to show her the hill,” Yano said, waving at it. We three paused to look into the distance. There it was, rising past my lone rooftop, lumpy and dull. “First time she’s seeing it from out here,” Yano said, taking her hand again. Suddenly she erupted in rapid Japanese to him, so rapid I couldn’t follow. She snatched her hand back, bowed slightly to me, and walked away, taking her dainty steps. It was then I noticed she was wearing only house slippers, now muddied and chunked with snow.
    She wasn’t beautiful as I’d imagined, and for that I