he got in his cab that morning in a sore mood. his wife, yuna, had forgotten to turn on the coffee maker when she awoke, as usual, one hour before he did. she used this time to get both of them ready for the day. this included but was not limited to; laying out his socks and trousers. laying the newspaper out on the table, each section separated to make selection easier. and, of course, turning on the coffee maker to have a cup ready for him when he awoke.
yuna had always done this, since they were newlyweds. she had ever insisted that it made her happy. he was uncomfortable with it at first, but grew to appreciate it, and not only that, but expect it.
he had recently brought it up at work, in a fevered moment of approval – seeking with his new boss. he had been clapped on the back by his coworkers for his great luck in having a wife who wasn’t conforming to these femi-nazis on the internet. his insecurity assuaged, he boasted that this was not all she did every morning—there was also the daily fellatio in which she partook without complaint or prompting.
This part was not close to true. In fact, Yuna had never enjoyed fellatio, like all women, he supposed. She had a small mouth and an even smaller tongue, which made prolonged entry quite painful. Often her little jaw was sore for hours afterwards from being forced into quite an uncomfortable and unnatural position. She had even gone to the hospital once for a dislocated jaw when, having grown frustrated with his wife’s lack of enthusiasm and natural ability, Haruto had grabbed the back of her head and shoved himself inside repeatedly until she clamped down on his penis with her teeth from the pain.
She called her sister, Mio, to drive her to the hospital. Mio drove her, alone, on a wet, rainy day, thirty miles away to the nearest hospital.
Yuna had returned home later that evening and, without a word, went up to her room and lay on her bed, staring out the window. She had not moved for an entire evening when Haruto came to join her. They did not look for each other that night, but lay, quite still, side by side. Haruto wished something would happen. An outburst, a fart, or a whimper. Something to open a pocket of air to breathe between them. Nothing came.
This episode had occurred six months ago, but still there had been no fellatio. Haruto congratulated himself on his self-restraint for the first 30 days, knowing it would not be a good time to ask for it. But still, as the weeks went by, he grew ever more impatient and curious.
slowly, yuna grew more forgetful.
first, it was his socks. his trousers would be waiting for him, hanging over the arm of the sofa, but no socks could be found. at first he thought they must have fallen behind the couch and thought nothing of it. but slowly he sensed a change in her. a loss of heart in her usual morning routine in which he had always perceived her to take such pride; something he only sensed in a missing sock or here and there.
it was with this impatience and hurt that haruto climbed into his cab that morning. he could barely bring himself to look his driver in the eye. the driver was a small stout man with big hands that gripped the steering wheel.
haruto eyed him wildly. he surely has a large penis, he reasoned as he examined his large hands.
haruto’s penis was nothing to be ashamed of but nothing to write home about either. and every woman he had been with had confirmed this fact in one way or another. yuna, herself, had, upon first witnessing haruto’s penis, pressed her lips together in a straight line and furrowed her brow.
he had never brought this up to her for fear of humiliation. it was one of those moments shared between lovers that one keeps hold of, a last resort sort of piece of armor.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When he came home that night, Yuna was dripping wet in a nightgown as if she had bathed with it on, instead of putting it on her wet body afterwards. There was red running down her legs, so diluted it looked more like watercolor paint than blood. Haruto feigned ignorance.
Are you painting, my beautiful wife?
She did not answer. She looked through him until, he felt, her eyes rested on the lottery ticket in his pocket. The one he bought daily, the one he had never told her about. It wasn’t his passion for internet porn or his habit of wiping his boogers on the bedsheets that made him feel inferior to her, but this small cardboard rectangle. Dream Jumbo. Haruto’s Dream Jumbo. That he would so blindly express hope for a better life in such a transparent manner shamed him. It exposed how shallowly his own roots stood in the earth. He was flighty. Changeable. He had ever suspected if such fortune was bestowed upon him that he would not turn to look at any part of his old life again but would be swept towards a future of bright neon and plastic. he knew his humble station in life was the only part of him that would ever be earth-bound.
It was in this small way, every day, that he betrayed this drive towards things brighter and blinding. he felt that everyday he didn’t win, the light dimmed for him. that one day it would dim out entirely. he’d be left in the dark alone, groping, dissatisfied and disappeared. everyday he yearned for his life to be less real. less real than the patches of yard out back that had never been gardened, but just sat like gaping wounds in the earth, less real than the red running down his wife’s legs.
He felt the moment come and go. The moment to say something, anything,
“What happened, my love?”
“Did you cut yourself?
“Oh god! Are you bleeding?”
This is perhaps what another man would have done; fumbled through his numbness for a response, any response that could approach normalcy, that would approach a decent human imitation. Not Haruto. He felt her eyes on his Dream Jumbo and felt a white light fall over his eyes and he couldn’t see Yuna or her nipples through her wet nightgown, two small dark discs, like faces to be met, or the watery red river down her legs, by now much more water than red.
He felt something open and close within him, a door deep in his stomach. he realized he had always envisioned his personal, internal, physical space in that way, a door to be pried or pulled or, on rare occasions, pushed open and closed.
And like that, the moment was gone. It stole away into darkness like the once present desire to touch the woman standing in front of him. he stared at her and she at him. he didn’t know how to close the silence now that it had been let out, like the rabid animal who, until this moment, only preyed on their insides. the silence was an ugly truth uttered in a moment of fury.
what had been uttered had been involuntary, and for that, haruto felt inconceivable anger and confusion well up in him. that he didn’t have a choice was what he remembered most about his mother. he remembered sitting in the bath at six years old, feeling her play with him, taking him in her hands and washing him as he sat and stared at her long black hair as it fell over her shoulders.
her eyes had always seemed at once a bastion of safety and also a pit to fall into and never return from. he did not know how to articulate it, but he had felt a deep fear that one day, he would wake from sleeping to find his mother, her mouth wrapped around his feet, her jaw locked, unable to be removed, and he would just have to lie there and wriggle into her mouth.
haruto found the courage to look into yuna’s eyes. what he saw there frightened him. he did not see yuna. her dark brown eyes flooded with water, but flashed with something else; they were still, like a mirror.
With that, he shoved his hand deep in his pocket and fingered his lottery ticket, its glossy face seemed to call to him, “keep your lamps burning, haruto.”
he gave yuna another once-over, and turned to his stereo in the corner. he picked up his remote and clicked play. the milliseconds between hitting play and sound filling the room stretched out into an eternity. neither of them breathed.
i want the gift.
je voudrais le cadeau.
do you want to eat lunch with me?
ques’que tu veux manger dejeuner avec moi?
i like you.
je t’aime.
i love you.
je t’adore.
do you need me?
tu as besoin de moi?
i need you.
j’ai besoin de vous.
can you help me?
ques’que vous attendez moi?
please help me
s’il vous plait attendes moi.
he turned to look at yuna. her jaw slowly released as she stared at him.
both stood there in shock.
he did not know why he had done it.
they had planned a trip. a trip to paris. they had planned it all together. it was to be a last getaway for the two of them before the baby came and their family became three. dinner on top of the eiffel tower. sun lit strolls through montmartre with the fall leaves falling around them. croissants and chocolate for every meal. making love in their hotel room, the veranda doors open, the louvre in the distance.
after she miscarried, they said they would go anyway, to keep their spirits up. but when the day had come to drive to the airport, haruto sat in the car for an hour. yuna never came. he sat for another hour. no yuna. he sat there until he saw the plane take off on his app on his phone.
they had never discussed it again.
the silence had grown too big and unwieldy and now was a tundra too barren to cross.
haruto quickly turned it off.
he looked at the woman standing before him. shoulders shrugged with what? grief? shame? anger? acceptance? he did not know and he had long forgotten how to ask. at once he wished to hold her fragile frame, which seemed at risk of collapsing at any moment, and also to strike it down. he did not know how it was possible for so many feelings to exist inside of and about one person.
and in that moment, he hated her. he hated the blood running down her legs. he hated her wet hair dripping all over the carpet. he hated her eyes. that she was enigmatic was what had attracted him most. he felt safe, lost in her cloud of unknowableness. it was a silent deal they had struck.
but now, the cloud had lifted. he looked into her eyes and saw himself there, crouched in the corner.
he could not bear to look.
instead, he raised his hands up and slowly crept towards yuna without breaking eye contact with her. he was surprised to find his body moving and wondered what he would do when it stopped.
haruto dreaded the moment he touched her. he did not know if she would bite or turn to ash.
he delicately bent his body beside her and putting a hand on her back and a hand behind her knees, swooped her up so that he held her like a baby.
yuna bucked and then broke.
her sobs sent shockwaves through his chest.
he did not know what to do, but to lay her on their bed.
he did not know where such gentleness had come from.
he had not thought he could be this strong.
yuna lay there, weeping, her face into the blankets she had bought when they were newlyweds. reaching her hand between her legs, the white blanket seemed to hemorrhage as she held her hand out.
haruto stood, watching. he silently understood.
blood meant no baby.
as he watched their last hope pour out of her, his eyes filled with a spring morning, a few months ago.
they had not been intimate since the fellatio incident. and as haruto’s desperation grew, his morning showers had become a time for release.
but that particular morning, the shower curtain opened quite suddenly, and there she was, completely naked.
he had not seen the bareness of her body in months. she stood there silently, peering at him, the water spraying between them. he suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of his own lack. as if her eyes were tracing the shape of it inside him.
without a word, she stepped into the tub and pulled the shower curtain back across. she took him into her hands and, propping her leg up on the side of the tub, guided him inside of her.
when it was over, she left.
he did know what he was feeling, but only that it wasn’t what it should be. his previous desperation felt hot on his skin. his memory suddenly seemed to elude him. a familiar sense of dread descended as he wondered whether he had had a choice.
he curled himself up inside the bathtub and wept.
back in the present, haruto blinked away the memory as he felt something wet run down his face as he watched yuna wipe pieces of herself on the bed.
she had stopped crying. she lifted her head and sat up straight.
“i’m leaving you.”
“i know.”
“will you be sad?”
“i don’t know.”
yuna pulled herself off the bed and walked into the hallway and haruto heard her steps down the stairs.
he felt at once free and entirely broken. he slid down the wall and sat in the darkening autumn evening light through the bedroom window.
he turned on his tv. he stared as an infomercial for a country music album played.
he had always loved country music.
he had always loved the way the women sang, big and twangy, with hips that swayed and shoulders that did not shrug. american women, white women. these were the women he idolized.
he watched the women on stage, fringe shaking as they shimmied and danced. and as he watched, he felt a light go out somewhere in the house. he sat in the dark, lit by the glow of their 1,000 watt blonde smiles as he fingered the lottery ticket in his pocket.
e l i p a u l e y 