Free My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki

in Tokyo to let him know what had happened, and to my immense surprise, he turned the shoot over to me. To direct.
    This was it. Without bothering to ask for anyone’s permission, I rerouted us south into Texas and straight into the Martinezes’ kitchen.
     
     
    Bert wore a mean-looking hook in place of his missing hand, and during lunch he had taught me how to two-step, resting its point in the middle of my spine, while Cathy took a turn around the kitchen table with Suzuki. They were excellent dancers. Bert used to play the guitar beautifully, Cathy told me, when they were still in Mexico, before the accident.
    “So now”—she shrugged—“in America we have not so much music. But we can still dance.”
    We filmed them stepping out on Saturday night, and on Sunday afternoon after church, Cathy prepared Texas-style Beefy Burritos, made with lean, tender slices of Texas-bred sirloin tips. The burritos were the symbol of their hard-earned American lifestyle, something to remind them of their roots but also of their new fortune. Afterward, Bobby wanted to show us his 4-H project piglet. So there we were, in the chigger-filled field, filming little Bobby in a sea of golden grass that rippled in the wind. Bert and Cathy stood arm in arm, watching. The piglet, whose name was Supper, was so big and heavy that Bobby could barely hold it up in front of him. Bobby was wearing his Sunday suit, a hand-me-down from a neighbor, which was still a bit big for him and the trousers flapped against his bony shins. His head was dwarfed by an old felt hat of his father’s. He had given the piglet a bath and the animal was still wet, sending glistening droplets into the sunlight as it squirmed in his arms. Bobby smiled at the camera, a little Mexican boy shyly offering his American Supper to the nation of Japan. Everything was in slow motion. It was a surreal and exquisite moment.

AKIKO
    The alarm clock rang at seven-fifteen on Saturday morning. Akiko woke in panic, which subsided into gentle dread when she realized she was alone. She lay in her futon, staring up at the acoustic ceiling tiles and fluorescent light fixture. Out on the balcony, she could hear the dull rhythmic thump of someone’s wife beating the bedding hung over the balcony rail. Children were awake too. Their voices drifted up from the playground. When Akiko went to market, she always took great care to avoid the playground and the young mothers who congregated around its periphery, just inside the gate. Akiko found it difficult to walk by them along the path outside.
    Akiko found it difficult to do many things: to go to bed at a reasonable hour, for example, when “John” stayed overnight in the city or was out of town on business. The air in the small apartment smelled damp and sweet. Sweet poofy exhalations all the night through. She turned over on her side and spotted the squat little whiskey bottle that she’d emptied last night in her exaltation. It had felt so good to be alone. Unmolested. She felt the hard lump of Shōnagon under her pillow. Then she spotted her pillow book diary, its pages scrawled with her own pickled lists.
     
     
    Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster
    Rain clouds massing before thunder. To stand on one’s balcony looking toward the city. To see the dull green-ocher ring forming around the point of impact, that bruised sky, my Tokyo heart.
    To contemplate his key in the latch, the scraping of his shoe, his sock-clad heel hitting the hollow floor. To feel the sweet, humid steam from the meat bathe one’s face as one carries it in on the platter. To retreat, to purge—not a soul sees, yet these produce inner pleasure.
    It is night and one is feigning sleep. One becomes aware of his critical mind grazing one’s sparrow ribs, considering the cavity of one’s pelvis, fingering the knob of one’s spine, disdaining one’s breasts. Suddenly one is startled by the sound of his deep snoring.
    Soused, she’d had this dumb idea that