Risk, Courage, and Women: Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

the club

137 the club Mitsuye Yamada He beat me with the hem of a kimono worn by a Japanese woman this prized painted wooden statue carved to perfection in Japan or maybe Hong Kong. She was usually on display in our living room atop his bookshelf among his other overseas treasures I was never to touch. She posed there most of the day her head tilted her chin resting lightly on the white pointed fingertips of her right hand her black hair piled high on her head her long slim neck bared to her shoulders. An invisible hand under the full sleeve clasped her kimono close to her body its hem flared gracefully around her feet. That hem made fluted red marks on these freckled arms 138 Risk, Courage, and Women my shoulders my back. That head inside his fist made camel bumps on his knuckles I prayed for her that her pencil thin neck would not snap or his rage would be unendurable. She held fast for me didn’t even chip or crack. One day, we were talking as we often did the morning after. Well, my sloe-eyed beauty, I said have you served him enough? I dared to pick her up with one hand I held her gently by the flowing robe around her slender legs. She felt lighter than I had imagined. I stroked her cold thighs with the tips of my fingers and felt a slight tremor. I carried her into the kitchen and wrapped her in two sheets of paper towels. We’re leaving I whispered you and I together. I placed her between my clothes in my packed suitcase. That is how we left him forever. Reprinted from Camp Notes and Other Writings (Rutgers University Press, 1998) ...