The Electrical Field Read Free Page B

Closed eyes. Cold shoulders. Where were the children? No jeers, not even a
hey, chink lady.
Deserted. Nothing.
    I ran into the field. Seized, I wanted to be seized. Like that girl, like my Sachi was, instantly and firmly. I ran until my heart was pounding, but still I felt shallow and light.
Shot twice. In the chest.
I touched myself there; the beat was slowing. I held out my hand but it was steady.
    I found myself at the feet of the giant, where Sachi had stood, among the weeds. Cool and dry. I leaned and the cold metal shocked me at my hip. I held the rail and squeezed. Yards away, smoke spiralled up. I could not mistake the acrid smell from the grass, how something that is moist with life held in it smells when it burns. Suddenly children swarmed the south end of the field. In the distance, the middle-school bell rang. I ran to the spot of smoke and ground my heel over Sachi’s stub of cigarette and the smouldering blades. The children were calling out to one another, rushing in as I backed away; quickly I returned to my porch.
    I stepped inside the screen door in time to hear Papa’sfaint wail.
Sa, sa, sa.
A lulling sound that brought me back to my life. I was not Chisako. No matter how many times I had wished it. Nor was I that girl pining for her special friend. I took a last look at the sky through the screen, and the flood of schoolchildren, like gulls come in from the lake when it starts to rain. The sky was blue as ever, with white puffy dashes. As I tried to keep Papa’s call at bay, I kept seeing those dashes in blue, a ghost’s hoary eyebrows raised at me. Whose, I could not say.
    I went into the kitchen to prepare lunch. I noticed that the clock on the stove already said 12:16. No wonder Papa was wailing for his lunch. The school bell must have gone off late.
    “Chotto matte,” I called up to Papa. Just a minute. I heard my own voice, cheery almost, forgetful. Steady. There with my tray at the doorway. Then Chisako came to me again, the thought of her, and I had to set it down. Chisako. Dead. I’d have to say it to myself aloud, to make myself understand.
    Some time later, I sat down to rest on the chesterfield for a moment or two; I did not go to my window. I noticed the newsprint that stained my fingertips, the pitch that had not come off through all the chores of washing and wiping and dusting I’d got on with. I marvelled at that, the consolation of my quiet life, the getting on: my calm. My grief, oddly removed from myself.
    For I had long ago understood that you had to live in the midst of things to be affected, in the swirl of the storm, you might say. And once you did, only then could you be for ever changed. You couldn’t simply sit and watch, imagining fromtime to time how such-and-such would feel, would be, what happened to others and not to you.
    I hadn’t spoken to Chisako in a long while, or so it seemed. It felt as though months had passed, and yet it could only have been days, perhaps not even a week. I had not said what I would have wanted to be my last words to her.

TWO
    S TUM CAME HOME A little later than usual that evening. I’d read that newspaper over and over, searching for clues, but nothing had come of it. Even the air was staler in the house, the way I could imagine the inside of an airplane, though I’d never been in one. Stum must have been sitting in the living-room for several minutes before I realized he was there. He was still sitting, staring at nothing, when I came in to tell him dinner was ready. At dinner, he began to mash the beans between his teeth.
    “You cooked them too much,” he said, frowning. “And the rice.” He let the grains drop from his chopsticks.
    “You were late coming home,” I said, calmly taking the dishes away. He groaned and pushed his plate back. The clatter of our two dinner plates against one another sounded more hollow than usual.
    “You heard?” His voice popped out then, seemed almostto disappear. I nodded and continued clearing.