How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [75]
She huffed a little as we got to the steep part of the hill. The sun had come out hot. On our left, a meadow led to a mountain; on the right, a drop down to the ocean. “You’re always telling me how extraordinary I am, but what about you?”
My shoulders slumped. Everyone had dreams when they were young. But they slumbered, were put off, and sometimes they died. I could not confess this to my daughter, with her face upturned to the sky. I could not tell her the truth. “Helena.”
“What about you?” Her voice echoed forlornly across the meadow.
I spoke quietly. “I do the best I can, Helena.”
Helena stopped moving. “That’s just it. You do—just enough. Enough to get by. You’re”—she jammed her finger into my chest—“lonely.” She started moving. “I worry about you, you know.”
“I don’t want you to.” I wished that she were a little girl again, un-bothered by my worries and ambitions, unaware. I wished I could pick her up and distract her with a lollipop and a kiss.
She walked faster. I caught up. “Did you ever have any dreams?”
I paused. From up here, the waves churned tiny foam. “Of course I did. But they changed.” My words sounded hollow even to me. Helena was right. This life was not enough. Soon enough, my child would be off. And I would have nothing.
Helena sat, too. “I ruined your life.”
“Of course not.” I reached for her and she pulled away.
“You should have just had an abortion.”
“I wanted you.” I remembered the day I found out I was pregnant. “You were a surprise, but I wanted you. We both did.” I took the pregnancy test in the bathroom with its old pink bathtub and toilet, Craig and I waiting in anxiety. It wasn’t the first pregnancy scare we’d had, but this was the first time we’d had real cause for alarm. A vacation when I’d accidentally left my birth controls pills in my dresser drawer at home.
“What is it?” Craig’s boyish face leaned over the toilet.
“Two lines.” I spoke too softly for him to hear.
“That’s a positive.” He put his arms around my waist and kissed my neck. I looked at us reflected in the mirror, our faces unlined, slender, in love.
I leaned into my knees and searched for the right words for my daughter. “Things don’t always go the way you plan when you’re young, Helena. But I want you to know.” I cupped her face with my hands. Her eyes gleamed. “You have never been a sacrifice to me. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I dropped my hands. “Don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t if you won’t.” She glanced at me sideways. We continued our walk, quiet, each of us staring off into the expansive sea.
WE CAME TO TARO’S CHURCH after a twenty-minute walk. It was similar to the one in Ueki—tiled roof, guardian statues on either side of wooden steps, a wooden pavilion-like structure. A garden, a weeping willow bending low over a koi pond, was visible to the right. I felt the urge to do some plein air painting, though I hadn’t attempted such a thing since college art class.
A Japanese woman in a big straw hat, on her knees, weeding near a small pine, was the only other person around. She wore overalls and a long-sleeved white shirt with cotton gloves. She rose and saw us. She smiled. Her skin was very fair, her eyebrows and hair charcoal against it. “Hello,” she said in English.
I waved. Maybe she knew where to find Taro. We approached. In the pond, koi in brilliant fall colors swam. The young woman took a plastic bag filled with pellets out of her tool basket. “Food.” She pointed. “Like to feed?”
“Arigatō.” I took the pellets, unsure how to proceed. Helena pinched some in her fingers.
“No, no.” She forced Helena’s hand open, the pellets in the middle of her palm. “Put hand by water.”
Dubiously Helena knelt, dipping the back of her hand into the water. A gold-and-cream koi stuck its head out and plucked the food from her hand. I tried it. The fish sucked gently at my fingers.
“It’s like feeding the bat rays at Sea World,” Helena smiled. She turned to the woman. “How long do they take to get this big?”
“Many years,” the woman answered.
“Ojı̄chan and