“I really need to learn how to ride
a bicycle so I can go grocery shopping. You can’t depend on Mina-chan for everything.” She shook her
head. Now she was talking to herself; she really was suffocating alone in this house.
But the sound of a voice, even her own felt slightly comforting, “Where is Mina-chan anyway? Joseph left a week ago
yet she still never comes home for dinner.” The 5 p.m. song sounded on the
loudspeakers by their house. Beer time. She grabbed a Kirin out of the fridge as
she started to boil the water for curry.
Recently the only time she saw Mina
was late at night when she was already half asleep or during the weekends. Even
then Mina hardly spoke a word to June. June felt unease in her chest. Mina must
know that I looked through her side of the closet, she thought to herself. Mina
was very particular about her privacy, as were many Japanese. June thought to
bring it up and clear the air, but then again maybe that wasn’t it, and then
why give Mina a reason to actually be mad?
As she cooked, June played music
from her laptop to cut the silence that permeated the house. The songs were the
same ones she listened to almost a year ago when she arrived. There was no way
for her to get new songs easily so she played her music on repeat. She had
begun to associate certain songs on her playlist with certain days of the past
year. But there was one song she didn’t have any association with yet and now
it was speaking to her, “I think I’ll go to Boston. I think that I’m just
tired…” and she slowly started to sing along “I think I need a sunrise, I’m
tired of the sunset”. The days were longer in May; in March, June and Mina
would sit on their porch and watch the sun set together. “Yeah, you don’t know
me and you don’t even care”, she felt like an angst-ridden boy who had lost his
first love. “This can’t be healthy” June said both to her cubes of curry roux
and to herself.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment