The Electrical Field by Kerri Sakamoto Page A

company.
    While dinner grew crusty and cold on the table, waiting for Stum’s arrival, I changed Papa. His gibberish would cease when I cleaned around his chimpo. There was a silence then that frightened me. Frightened me for him.
    When I was a girl, my eyes were always drawn to that hitch of fabric in his trousers. The cork glimpsed through the half-open bathroom door as he stood at the toilet. I imagined a row of them pointed down into the pits at the camp benjo. There was a time when I could not move from the crack in the doorway, could not look away. I dreamt such dreams. Yet the truth, when I learned it, its plainness, the common sense of what it meant to be a man, did not shock me. Once Papa’s hips grew rickety and his bowels went, I had to clean there with my striped washcloth every other day, and it became a little lever on an old machine; I lifted it easily and set it to one side, then to the other.
    Finally I drew the drapes and served myself dinner in the dim dining-room, while Stum’s empty plate lay opposite me with its watery sheen.
    There were never many chances for me. I knew that from long ago, from when we first got here. “On-ta-ri-o,” Papa kept saying with his pitiful accent. He’d wanted to come east to the city but all he could do was huddle behind me with Mama and Stum. With Eiji gone and Stum just a baby, I was the first-born, born here; they pushed me out to the big city, to the world, thrusting my homely face to it when they were afraid. Now that it wasn’t just nihonjin in the shack next door or down the road of the camp. Ask this, say that, while they hung back. I didn’t know the right words to say, in English or in Japanese. I cringed at how I stumbled along,each sentence gaping like a mouth with missing teeth. It was then that I sat myself down with my books and crosswords and word jumbles. I became clear in my own mind just what I could expect of myself. Exactly what I could desire from life, even in the day to day, so I would not be disappointed.
    I was refilling my cup with green tea when Stum came in. It felt late in my dining-room, hours past sundown, yet it was only early evening, and the light from outside cut into my left eye. He carried a rumpled brown paper bag under his arm, hugging it close to his side, the top rolled over.
    “Dinner, hoshii?” No “where have you been, why didn’t you call.” It was easier this way, not to nag, only to refer to our shared routine. To remind him.
    “Your favourite,” I said, swishing the spoon in the stew. “Nishime.” He was shuffling about in the dark hallway but going nowhere, head down, shaking it.
    “No, no.” He placed a hand on the rail. “I’m tired,” he murmured. “It’s too much trouble.” He had one foot on the first step. But I wouldn’t let go, not yet.
    “I’ll heat it up.” I rose with the bowl in my hand. “No trouble.” I flicked on the living-room light and glanced back. He looked startled. I expected some change to have come over him, a sign. He stepped forward. His lips were chapped, pink and swollen. His eyes tired, nearly folded double from no sleep.
    “No, Asa. Not hungry at all.” He said it with an adult weariness, a weariness with me, my name barely said. I had not heard quite that indifference before.
    “Go then. Go on,” I said, more harshly than I intended. I switched off the light and bustled into the kitchen. “Andtake off your shoes,” I shouted. “I just cleaned the carpet.” He said something back but I couldn’t hear him above the running water I’d spun on for the dishes. I couldn’t stand to see his face a second longer. From the corner of my eye I spied him disappearing up the stairs, then I heard the unmistakeable clunk of his bedroom door closing.
    What a waste, I muttered to myself as I emptied the leftovers into the garbage. Mottai-nai. I scraped away the last of the nishime. It was Yano’s phrase. His refrain. After clearing the rest of the dishes, I went to the