Unending Nora

Chapter 8

Julie Shigekuni 59 Chapter 8 On the second night it was not enough to occupy the shape Joaquin had left behind on the bed. The perfect oval did not pretend to hold her imperfect form, the pull down shade served only to illuminate a shadow of itself, shedding no light into the rest of the room in which the air had all but run out. In this way the house that had been her haven became her prison. She thought of her parents, trapped in their childhood by the barbed wire fences that held them in and would not let them go, and she remembered how in her childhood she dreamed of being detained behind bars and narrated nightmares to her mother who claimed she never dreamed. Nora knew that she could, if she chose to, have picked up the phone and called her mother. She was reminded of that fact once when the phone rang and she sat paralyzed not even daring to breathe. Did Joaquin have a mother, calling to check on him? Or perhaps it was his son wanting to say good night. But she could not allow for such thoughts. On the third night, the waiting became unbearable. That night her period came, causing fat droplets of blood to stain the white sheets, and she rose from bed needing to eat. Making her way in the dark to the kitchen she had worked so hard to clean and set for two, she realized she could no longer survive without food. In the two nights and two days that had passed, she had eaten nothing, convinced that Joaquin’s return was imminent, but Unending Nora 60 now she warmed the tortilla on the stove top and ate it with jam and two eggs, which she scrambled for herself in a frying pan. What remained when she had eaten her fill, washed the frying pan, and reset the table for two, was a single egg. She would, she had already decided, keep it in the refrigerator to celebrate Joaquin’s return. But instead she took it from its carton and held it in her fist recalling how Reverend Nakatani had once spoken of the egg as a symbol of God’s perfect love. She would never eat the egg, nor, she decided, would Joaquin. Seated at the table she’d set for two with the bowls inside dinner plates and on both sides matching flatware and glass tumblers for juice, she placed her egg in the ivy bowl and staring down at its perfect form realized that the egg might be all she had to look forward to in life. Joaquin, who had had sufficient time to return had obviously fled his home, abandoning the impatiens to die in the heat and abandoning her, too. The egg, her companion, was all she had. Collecting it in her palm, she took it with her from the bowl where she’d set it in the kitchen to the bedroom where she waited for Joaquin and slept. And when she woke in the darkness, she took the egg from the pillow and welcomed it into the place where the blood flowed inside her. She put it there, in the tunnel that led to her womb, and experienced the ecstasy of holding God’s perfect love inside her body, in the secret place she wished to share with Joaquin. That night she prayed to God for Joaquin to come to her. To return home and find inside her the perfection of God’s love that she would release from her womb and share with him as a life created between them. The egg made the hours she spent alone productive. She let the heat of her body warm it and she could feel what Reverend Nakatani talked about, the smooth roundness pressed against her womb when she squeezed her legs together, safe and good inside her like a flower, like she was a flower holding inside her the gift of God’s love. That night passed without dreams, her sleeping in the shape Joaquin created, holding the perfect egg inside her. It Julie Shigekuni 61 passed in rapture and peacefulness into morning when a dull object thrust against her shoulder caused her to rise up with a start. He stood hunched over the bed rubbing his chin while she let the surprise of seeing him sink in. “I didn’t...