How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [52]
When I finished, Charlie turned on the sink for me to wash my hands. I held on to the edge and looked in the mirror. My hair was half white, since I hadn’t dyed it in so long. I needed lotion and there were big bags under my eyes. My face had lost its moon shape and my cheekbones stuck out. “I’m too skinny,” I said wonderingly, touching my collarbone. “Heh, all my life I want be skinny, and now too much.”
In the mirror, I could see Charlie’s downcast eyes. Did he not want to look at me? “Help me back bed,” I said.
A nurse appeared. “Where are you? You went off the monitors.” She was African-American, older, short like me. She was a nice lady who brought me vanilla ice cream in a paper cup when it wasn’t on the menu. She saw where we were and rushed to help me.
“We’re fine,” Charlie insisted.
The nurse came over to help anyway. “Good job, honey,” she told me. “You keep it up.”
I nodded, too winded to speak. I never thought I would have just as good a chance of going shi-shi by myself as I did of climbing Mount Everest with no oxygen. Maybe the doctors are right, I thought for the first time ever. Scared, I blocked it out of my head. I smiled at the nurse. “How ’bout some of that vanilla ice cream?”
THE DAY AFTER I went to the bathroom on my own, my blood pressure stabilized and Dr. Su finally came to see me. He was a friendly-looking guy about fifty years old, wearing wire-frame aviator-style bifocals. His hair was thin and bald in front, but he didn’t comb it over. I liked that. Nice white smile, too. I decided that I would get my teeth bleached as soon as I got out of there. Have my own movie-star teeth.
Charlie and I held our breath as Dr. Su looked at my charts and at my blood pressure history. “Looks good, Shoko. We’ll do it tomorrow.”
“So soon?” I asked.
“Yes.” Dr. Su said. “If your vitals hold.” He made some notes on a piece of paper. “Sign this release, please.”
I read it. It was the usual: you can die from this operation or from anesthesia, et cetera. I signed. “If my brain die,” I said, “you let me go, right? No keep around.”
Charlie nodded. “If you say so.”
“I do.” I handed the form back to Dr. Su. “Okay if I have Japanese food, Doctor?”
He shrugged. “Just lay off the shōyu.”
I saluted him. “Can do, chief.”
I liked Dr. Su already.
SURGERY DIDN’T MAKE ME NERVOUS. Being sick was what made me nervous. And being around Charlie while sick made me extra nervous, because he acted so different than normal. Why couldn’t he be calm? Was this what he was like medevacing soldiers out of the jungle? I doubted it.
The procedure began at six. I closed my eyes as they wheeled me into the operating room and the anesthesiologist started talking to me about procedures. Over the years, Mother and Father visited me in my dreams. They held my daughter, born after they were dead. After Mike was born, I’d dreamed of Ronin talking to me and telling me how he was happy I had made a good life for myself.
Now I hoped I wouldn’t see this trio as I slept. Today, it might mean that I had really died.
What would I tell Sue if I could see her again? Would I visit her in her dreams? And Helena?
The anesthesiologist patted my hand as he put the oxygen mask over my face.
“I don’t want be ghost,” I said.
He didn’t hear. His face was shrouded by the bright light behind him. “Now we’re going to count backwards from ten. Ten, nine, eight . . .” and I was gone.
PART TWO
Butter-Kusai
As a young Japanese lady, you have been schooled in all the ways of housekeeping. Your high school taught you how to arrange flowers, the fine art of fan dancing, and how to launder and store kimonos.
Now that you have married an American, you might be at a loss as to certain American customs. How to iron a Western shirt. How to make a bed properly. If you were lucky enough to have worked as a maid in a Western-style establishment, you may already know these things. But for those of you who do not, or do not know the details of American culture, this book will provide all the higher education that you need.
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