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37 Moon Body Kuan Yin has moseyed off to a rocky niche in a grotto, charcoal gray, next to cliffs plunging toward water. The pines shoot up vigorously, towering over a paper-paneled hut, like a bathhouse. The tumbling clouds are also brewing up a charcoal gray, dunking the moon in and out of wind and water. As Kuan Yin gazes at the moon-wisps, her pale orange shawl swings open negligently, on the way to the bath. Dad is getting washed. Not so confident any more at climbing into the tub, even with rails and a shower chair in his own niche, he lowers himself to the closed toilet seat to let me help him bathe. I hand him the purple sponge, vivid when wet, and remind him, “That’s soaped; watch your eyes” or “Dry that arm.” He pauses at the conundrum of watching his own eyes. Each session he laughs at my same feeble jokes, as I scrub past the “chicken coop,” the ripple of bone left under his skin from bypass surgery. Every time I praise, “Look at these beautiful hands,” he obediently turns over his gentle work hands and gazes at them wonderingly. It’s Mom who taught us this ease with bodies. The family never displayed casual nudity, but they clearly knew the body made joy, and if it had pain instead, or 38 The Moon in the Water needed help, you could surely squeeze out some good juice somewhere. Back when Mom had a hernia operation, Dad would slip to her room to help change bandages, and she would ad-lib jokes, though the nine-inch cut on her belly refused to heal up. Her diabetes-stunned tissues left an inch-wide gap, plunging to a V, wet like a spring-fed grotto. Still, I’d hear the two of them, sequestered, giggling like teenagers. Now at home in Honolulu, my role is to wash unreachable spots and some available ones, when he loses interest. Soaping his hands, I note the hint of blue tinting the skin between thumb and finger and roping his arms, from thinned blood seeping: pooling, greening. When I hand him the sponge and prompt, “This is for your genitals,” he makes the foreskin slip up and down like a loose sock. He stands to wash his bottom. Weird, this American culture, to make an insult of flashing the moon. Then, as part of the ritual, when I ask him to hang the towel on its rack, which is taller than I am, he always chuckles at being able to help me. In fact, I discovered recently that this goal is his whole reason for staying. Tucking him in one night, I asked if he wanted to turn on his other side, to give a developing bedsore a rest. No, he prefers to lie permanently on his deaf left ear, to leave his right ear listening, even while asleep: “in case you call for help.” ...

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