Kimiko

This assignment was to choose a character prompt and write a page or so from that character's point of view. This is what I chose: 30-year-old Asian female, computer expert, black belt, has her tubes tied. I can't decide if I really like writing from prompts or if I just like the opportunity to write something short which I can actually finish in one sitting. (It makes me feel productive.)

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Kimiko Ohki: Eggs, Bodies, Time

I've been teaching my husband Tetsuo how to speak English. It's important, he said. For the akachan. I told him akachan in English is baby. He told me he wants at least five baby. And they will all speak Engrishu, because we are Americans now. They can learn Japanese at school if they want to.

I started with food. These are eggs, I said. This is bread. Egguso, he said. No, eggs. Egguso. Ehhhhggs. Ehhhhhgguso? I wrote the word on a Post-It note and stuck it on the egg compartment in the refrigerator while he put two slices of bread in the toaster. Bureddo! he said. I was optimistic. I figured by the time we actually had any children, I'd at least have Tetsuo saying the word breakfast.

It started out kind of fun, something we could do together and laugh about. I had a new job at Intel (as in, your laptop has Intel inside), and Tetsuo had been fixing up our new house. As soon as I came home from work and started speaking to him, he would say, "Kim. Uso Engrishu, pless." I was always Kim when we spoke English, because that's what the Intel crew called me. He only called me Kimiko when he forgot he was supposed to be learning.

This is called a kiss, I'd say. These are your hands on my breasts. I'm spreading my thighs for you. And he would say, Hai, Kimiko, hai.

One day he asked me the English word for the small, jagged line of puckered skin on my belly, beneath my navel. Scar, I told him. It had happened ten years earlier while I was still living in Japan, working at Toshiba. This was before I met Tetsuo. I was taking a computer tower home to fix it when some maniac decided to mug me. He stabbed me in the gut with a pocketknife before he even had a good hold on the tower, and it hit the ground and busted into about twenty pieces before he ran off with just my wallet. I was alright when I came out of the hospital, but no amount of surgery could fix that tower.

I taught Tetsuo the word nursery after he painted it yellow and white. We'd been trying to get pregnant since before the move. I think he thought somehow that it would be easier to have children now that we actually had enough room for them, but it just wasn't happening. I finally went to a doctor to ask if something was wrong with my egguso. I didn't tell my husband.

Some intrusive tests and an ultrasound later, the doctor told me my eggs were fine. But I can't have children because my uterus has been invaded by scar tissue. The scar's just a tiny line on the outside, a bad memory and a shattered Toshiba, but on the inside, it's like half my womb's a hardened shell. There's almost no elasticity. It's physically possible for me to get pregnant, she said, but if I did try to carry a baby to term, my uterus wouldn't be able to stretch to contain it. The tissue would perforate, and I would bleed internally, possibly to death. Any akachan of mine would die, and kill me, too. It's a good thing, she said, that you haven't managed to become pregnant yet. Now we must take steps to ensure it doesn't happen in the future.

I made a follow-up appointment that day.

When I got home, Tetsuo was ready for his next English lesson. I thought about teaching him tubal ligation, but I couldn't make myself say it. I taught him units of time instead. Ten years ago, a man took something from me. The past turns our scars into nightmares. The future cannot be what we hoped. Today is happening while you hold my hand and look at me like I can teach you the meaning of everything. Tonight none of this will make sense.

Now I will tell you the difference between yesterday and tomorrow.