Breasts and Eggs

It was every face of Makiko I’d ever known—the one who laughed and cried with me, who ran up to greet me the second she saw me, who sat in the park in her uniform and rode off on her bike, who shut her eyes tight and cried through the entire wake, who took money straight out of her pay envelope to buy me new indoor shoes for school, who sat there, all alone, in her hospital bed after giving birth to her daughter, who was always there for me—every side of her was smiling now.

like when you’re folding up a bedsheet and its top and bottom edges come together.

It felt like the whole room was throbbing to the beating of my heart.

“Because you’re not one of the kids inside that little house. That’s why you can do it. Because whoever the child is, the one who lives and dies consumed with pain, could never be you.”

Maybe this is a very special day. The day that someone finally understood how kind you truly are.”

“I wonder if maybe you’re so kind that no one’s ever noticed.”

How many summers had I been alive? The obvious answer was as many summers as my age; but for some reason I felt the presence of another number, a different, realer number somewhere out there in the world. I thought about this as I gazed into the summer glare.

“Well, we use words to communicate, right? Still, most of our words don’t actually get across. You know what I mean? Well, our words might, but not what we’re actually trying to say. That’s what we’re always dealing with. We live in this place, in this world, where we can share our words but not our thoughts.

“They say ‘good friends are hard to find.’ It’s true. It’s so hard to find people who actually listen, who try to understand your words, who try to understand you.

“Well, we use words to communicate, right? Still, most of our words don’t actually get across. You know what I mean? Well, our words might, but not what we’re actually trying to say. That’s what we’re always dealing with. We live in this place, in this world, where we can share our words but not our thoughts.

“They say ‘good friends are hard to find.’ It’s true. It’s so hard to find people who actually listen, who try to understand your words, who try

People like pretty things. When you’re pretty, everybody wants to look at you, they want to touch you. I wanted that for myself. Prettiness means value. But some people never experience that personally.