Drought

I.

The two and a half year old holds the cereal up to the light, stares at the emptiness in her breakfast, perplexed, “Why’re there holes in my Cheerios?”

“Because their tummies are empty. They can’t get full until you eat them.”

“Oh.” Emery nods sagely and places the cereal into her mouth. Milk moistens the pudgy little crease between her finger and palm and drips from above her wrist. “That’s sad.”

Iris nods as well and thinks about whether to clean up her niece before Scarlet gets home. Just a little milk, it’ll be fine. The liquid makes the little girl’s skin shine and dries like charcoal sealant. Maybe it will keep her from growing up, mold her warm rolls and plump cheeks forever in place. If she bathes the girl in milk, would her skin stop wiggling? Scarlet would be mad. Emery is a baby, Iris reminds herself. Never mind milk or Oakland, she makes enough moisture as it is. But maybe Scarlet would understand. Didn’t people in fairytales bathe the beautiful in milk? Iris recalls her niece’s naming, the look of pride on Scarlet’s face as she unveiled the title for the bulge in her stomach.

“Emery, like Emrys, Merlin’s name.” Iris understood the importance of Merlin; as did everyone in the room, a mark of Scarlet’s dedication to her job as a specialist in Medieval Literature.

Iris’ brother-in-law, Aaron, had quickly chimed in, as well, “Emery like the mineral.”

Iris looks down at Emery, now sticky and cramming Cheerios into her mouth, ravenous in her attempts to protect against empty stomachs. The child doesn’t remind Iris particularly of either of her parents or their professions for which she has been named. Iris pokes her over-full cheek gently, half expecting to indent it like rising bread dough. “They don’t get empty stomachs the same way you and I do. You can finish them tomorrow if you’re not hungry anymore. They’ll be alright.”

Emery grins, revealing a mouthful of barely chewed Cheerios. “Promise?

Iris quirks her lips. That’s a new one. She wonders where Emery picked it up. She must remember to ask Scarlet what kinds of promises she’s been making with her three year old.

“Sure. Promise.”

II.

            It is 6:05 and Iris hasn’t made it to the apartment yet. They have talked about this date for two weeks now. It’s their one-year anniversary. Henry has even programmed the time into Iris’ phone. He can’t help but feel resentment towards Scarlet, knowing her tendency to run late, especially when Iris is watching Emery. And where is Aaron? How hard could it be for a man who works with ancient manuscripts to keep a steady work schedule, for heaven’s sake? A couple fewer hours of work isn’t going to change how old they are. He’s a curator. He knows what he’s talking about. Henry runs a hand through his hair and pulls the salmon from the oven, intensifying the aroma of garlic and cilantro in the already heady-smelling kitchen. The heat released into the room causes traces of condensation to form in droplets on the windowpanes, a mockery of the rain that California so needs. He props open the kitchen window believing that the scent of the ocean will add to the flavor of the food, and knowing too that Iris will feel guilty when she smells the herb as she walks into the apartment building. No use getting upset. He shoots a text to Iris, where are you? and leaves his phone on the counter. He’ll still hear it ring if she texts back.

Henry has waited until tonight to show Iris his newest acquisition. He had hidden the grey slate statuette of a blind woman in the back of the closet, up on the high shelf behind his sweaters. He hadn’t planned to purchase her, she was of little use for the museum’s collection, but she captivated him in a way the objects he procured for the museum rarely did. It’s not that she is coy, precisely, but there is something endearing about the way she has her head turned over her shoulder, as if looking back. So she won’t be stuck with her head turned towards a wall, he’s placed a mirror behind her, noting that the eye facing the wall tilts slightly down, thus avoiding direct confrontation with her reflection. He considers the perverseness of placing the mirror there, the cruelty, even. Yes, maybe so. Still, she is his statue, and he likes the freedom to watch both the carelessly covered features of her front and the rounded stone of her buttocks, the line of her non-existent spinal cord that snakes down her back and nearly touches the dimple-like bird-wing bones just in line with her hips. Her right foot is lifted slightly at the heel, as if she is walking. The act catches shadows on her calf and casts a small circle of dark beneath her foot, the opposite of what he imagines her pupils would look like.

He looks up from the statue when he hears the door open followed by Iris’ slightly breathy voice, “I’m so sorry I’m late!”

III.

Iris knows she should be more contrite for her tardiness, that she should be so much more attentive to Henry, who has gone through the trouble of making fresh salmon with cilantro and garlic, who has made ochazuke with her favorite green tea, and yet her eyes keep drifting back to the statue in the living room; she can’t stop looking at it. Henry is telling her about the gallery, smiling attentively at her, and visibly growing frustrated with her distant responses, but something about the stone woman pulls her attention away from the table and the delicious food and the man she has come to love.

The twisted-eyed blind woman covers her nakedness with hands and angles her head over her shoulder. Triangles of breast and pubic hair creep into visibility between her fingers. Why would a blind woman cover her body? She probably learned to go wall-eyed when she was young. Her cheeks and the skin around her eyes are too perfect, the creases not deep enough, the eyebrows too well behaved. People don’t give statues enough credit for these small deceptions. Poor, foolish Henry Nishikawa must have believed the statue when she whispered her blindness to him and begged him to look, so that the world wouldn’t be blind to her as well. She notes the nice, square mirror with a thin black wooden frame that Henry has placed behind her to catch the glow of her nice, round buttocks. He will probably count the number of times a day that he looks at this statue, tally the number of sneak-glances he catches of her breast-flesh, webbed between her fingers, the crescent shadows that her butt cheeks cast on the backs of her thighs.

Henry won’t be upset if only she can just explain to him why she is so distracted, but words fail her. She meets his eyes and then moves her glance to the right, jerks her head towards the woman who is staring at her from across the room: “Who is she?”

Henry’s face opens up and unfurls from its previous posture of upset into understanding of Iris’ behavior. “Of course!”

He was so focused on eating dinner while it was still hot. It isn’t his fault he’s more Japanese than Iris, or that he spent too much time reading his mother’s diaries when he was young. He has shown Iris the beautiful little columns of kanji, unintelligible to her, from one of the letters his mother wrote to him when he went to college. Iris is close to her mother, too. She has read the books about Japan that her mother kept stacked by her bedside and tucked neatly in her bookshelf, all filled with pictures of houses that would be good for blind people: clean and minimal rooms with black, low tables that contrast sharply with the milky walls and pale lamps. Iris has always know that such houses are not suitable for seeing people, those who need to be able to find landmarks on the walls. She had pressed cilantro leaves onto one of the pictures until the walls of the image became stained with little green fingerprints and veins. If her mother noticed, she never mentioned it. She married Neptalí; of course she must have understood why Iris had done it.

Before she disappeared, Iris’ mother told her stories about her grandmother, who went blind when she was a little girl. All of the villagers liked to touch her feet, which became soft until she learned how to walk again. She wonders what her mother’s feet must look like now. Are her heels still perfectly round and dainty, or have they taken on a likeness to her grandmother’s decayed feet? Iris knows about the Japanese love of blind people—knows to be wary. Henry is a full-blood Japanese American, so he doesn’t know any better than to love blind people, and he doesn’t even know any better than to be taken in by fake-blind statuettes.

IV.

Iris’ coppery face doesn’t hold shadows the way the figurine does. Ordinarily he finds her aesthetic extraordinary: Japanese build, wide brown eyes which contrast sharply with the harshness of her straight nose and thick black eyebrows. Tonight her jaggedness catches him off guard, makes him turn his head to the rounded shadows and soft, firm grey of the blind girl. Henry doesn’t try to hide it—she is a statue, after all. What could be wrong with admiring the art one lives with? The thinness of her lips tells him of her displeasure, which surprises him. He and Iris have shared a similar aesthetic up until now, having arranged their bedroom together without quarrel, selected what should be hidden in drawers and cabinets and what should be displayed. Iris has gifted him with pressed cilantro, tucked into a black picture frame. Still, he catches Iris glancing at the statue accusingly. He notes the way the figure has her cheek turned to meet Iris’ gaze, one eye staring at her from her head, another wandering vaguely towards the dinner table, out from the mirror. From this distance the stone looks less blind, more opaque, the over-blown pupils vanishing into her irises an act of magic. He feigns surprise when Iris questions him about the statue. She nods to his explanation, smiles, compliments the purchase fondly, but he can see the tightness that remains at the corners of her eyes.

When he reaches out to touch her thigh while they are watching a movie she edges away. He doesn’t understand why until he sees her turn just the slightest bit back, towards the blind girl and the mirror. He reaches his hand a little higher on Iris’ thigh and ignores the background noise of the movie—her reaction to the figure is unreasonable.

Iris sighs and reaches for the remote to turn off the television only to have Henry push it away and lean towards her. He doesn’t want the sound to go away, doesn’t want the statuette to hear the room go quiet. Iris turns her attention over the back or the couch, grabs the lapel of his white shirt, leads him away into the bedroom. The T.V. plays on, flashes of beautiful actresses and mediocre men accompany laughter to keep the blind girl occupied.

V.

            The sounds of sex barely outlast the murmur of voices coming from behind the door to the living room. Henry, who seemed so driven earlier in the night, falls asleep shortly after the act. Iris lies beside him on her back, skin close to his, not touching, and smells the sheets and the barest vapor of sweat in the cold room. Unable to close her eyes without imagining the feel of her great grandmother’s blind feet, Iris stares up at the pristine ceiling. The window is cracked open just enough to overlay their bodies with salt and city and sound from the ocean a quarter of a mile away. The sheets feel sharp and delicious against her skin. She fears she is going blind, only to remember the whiteness of the room. She casts about for shadows and fastens on the barely defined slats of darkness thrown from the window shades. The sight allows her to feel the sweat on her arms and face cool and calcify with licks of ocean air.

She keeps her eyes open, thinks of the statue frozen in the other room. The longer she stays awake the less she can hear the T.V. Is the statue eating the noise? She isn’t blind, why would she eat the noise? Feeling the static in her stomach Iris bolts from the bed, rushes to the bathroom to fill herself with tap water. The taste of the fluoride in the water calms her. She lets the sweetness saturate her mouth and drip from her chin in heavy drops. The water spirals down the drain, coming down faster than it can spirit itself away. It is cleaner than the water that she bathed Emery with this afternoon. She had pointed at the swirls with the little girl’s finger, mouthed the word “mermaid” until her niece dashed the figure with her free hand, transforming it back into flowing water. The word “drought” drifts into her mind and she shuts off the tap, turns to the door without looking in the mirror, without bothering to dry her face or hands. She can hear the droplets beat a second set of footsteps behind her as she trails away from Henry’s sleeping form and into the living room. She locks the last droplets of water in with Henry when she shuts the bedroom door behind her.