Unending Nora

Chapter 32

Julie Shigekuni 279 Chapter 32 Recovery from a cesarean was more harrowing than anyone could know. Within hours the nurses sat Caroline up and forced her out of bed. When she complained that movement of any sort was painful, they pretended not to hear. One of them even had the nerve to say, “Of course it’s painful,” leaving her certain that she wasn’t cut out for life with a baby. The scar across her bikini line scared her, though not anything like the much anticipated walk down the hall. She was a mother now, but soon they’d see that she was really still baby, not quite ready to take her first steps and mortified by the wound that everyone claimed would heal just fine. If someone were to have told her childbirth would be that way, she doubted she would have gone through with a pregnancy. But when her o.b. listed symptoms of post-partum depression, then wanted to know if she’d been experiencing any, she dismissed the question as irrelevant. Reverend Nakatani’s wife Aiko sent over a basket of things for the baby and long-stem pink roses for her. Caroline had never much liked the minister’s wife, and the roses pointed to why. She knew they’d been given to remind her of the church and how she’d not attended a single service in weeks. She wondered if it were rational to hate a flower, and concluded that her feelings were more properly directed at Aiko who had cast a spell over the flowers, causing them each morning to appear droopier and more neglected, and to emit a stench that was far from fragrant. Unending Nora 280 Since Nora’s birth, she’d seen more friends than in all the time she and Wade had occupied their house. Each came bearing a sympathetic smile and a bit of advice. But she no longer took people’s well-intentioned advice seriously. The best advice, she told herself, was not to listen. Caroline was not with Wade at Tuesday Night Bible Study when the announcement was made that bones that were thought to belong to Nora had been discovered in the San Gabriel foothills but she had heard the rumor that Yukari had not been attending church since she’d heard the news. The following Sunday, soon after Wade left the house for services, Caroline dressed Nora in her yellow sun suit and took her for a visit. “I’m sorry I didn’t come see you in the hospital.” Yukari greeted Caroline and her baby at the door looking surprised and at a loss for the right words. “That’s okay,” Caroline said, apologetic herself; she understood about unexpected visitors. Though it was past ten o’clock, Yukari still wore a housecoat. She looked awful, but took Nora from Caroline, cooing at her as Caroline entered the Yano house behind her. The couch, a sickening green and yellow floral pattern, all but swallowed the older woman up making it clear how much weight Yukari had lost since Caroline had last seen her. A foul odor of pickled vegetables or perhaps it was stewed fish permeated the room, and for the baby’s sake Caroline got up, hoping they could move to another room where the air might be fresher. But Yukari, disregarding Caroline, only cooed down at Nora. Her long greasy hair loosed itself from its pins and fell over the baby’s face, and looking over at her, Caroline realized in horror the source of the bad smell. Attempting to calm herself, she parted the thick drapes and pushed open a window. “That’s better,” she said, exposing the room to air and sunlight. But the natural lighting revealed the brown shag carpet, along with stains in the shabby mustard colored furniture. The room looked exactly as it always had, no less depressing now than it had been when Nora was growing up, the ravaged looking woman Julie Shigekuni 281 across from her no stranger. Yukari was the mother of a woman who had been her lifelong friend; as well she’d been Caroline’s friend and role model, and Caroline willed her to look up from the baby and declare herself familiar again. “They found Nora,” she said, hugging the baby to her chest. “Just her bones. In a stand of Russian olives, on a nature preserve...