Free The Electrical Field by Kerri Sakamoto Page A

driveway up to the house, skirting the U-Haul. In one hand she was carrying a box wrapped in a brightly coloured cloth, a furoshiki chosen, I knew, with care; with the other she dragged along Sachi, who was the same age as Tam and Kimi. Struggling to keep up.
    Keiko knocked, waited, knocked again; after another moment, she set down the box in the furoshiki beside the door and left. This time she crossed in front, through the mounds of melting snow, glancing up at the wide empty window.
    Five minutes later, no more, someone peeked out from the corner of the window. It was Chisako. I saw her thick black bundle of hair. I felt like a birdwatcher spying a rare, twittery bird. A moment later she appeared at the door, reached for the box, and disappeared.
    Another day passed before Yano emerged, by himself, to begin unloading boxes from the U-Haul. I remember noticing then, from that distance, something disagreeable about him. A mean stubbornness. The way he took on too heavy a load but refused to put it down in order to close or open a door. The boxes tumbled from his arms two or three times, and each time he stood over them for a minute. Later I would see his broad, ugly hands in tight fists of frustration, like Papa’s in years past; he was so angry at himself and the rest of the world. So many times he proved to himself with those tumbling boxes that nothing went his way, nothing turned out right, ever. Things went more wrong for him than for anybody else.
    I didn’t see any more of them for several days, until Chisako came out with the two children, leading them to the side yard, still clutching her handbag and wearing a dress, very ladylike. There they played on the crusty mounds of greying snow. To me, the children’s coats looked flimsy and the two seemed to grow cold quickly.
    I stood watch at my window whenever I could, but Papawas growing more demanding with each passing day. Stum would shut himself away in his room. Then one morning after I’d packed Stum off to work with his lunch, when Papa lay dozing on the old green chesterfield, long since pitched out, there was a knock at the door. Not one knock or two but several, over and over, insistent.
    My speechless surprise at finding him at my door might have been taken for rudeness by almost anyone other than Yano. But he was as distracted as ever, preoccupied with his own scattered concerns, yet at the same time quite focused and determined. He was someone who could only concentrate on one thing at a time. If you gave him a square inch of sidewalk to study, he’d find something in it.
    “What do you want?” I asked. A little more brusque than I meant to be. I held the door half closed, as I did with strangers. Sometimes I wouldn’t answer, to avoid pushy door-to-door salesmen or nosy neighbours. Yano seemed to expect me to open the door wide and invite him in.
    “Saw you walking,” he said in a stilted way, punching the air towards the field with his fist. It was the way so many nisei spoke, their Japanese no better, with that halting rhythm I’d worked hard to rid myself of; no grace at all. I remember that feeling, the hated awkwardness of my speech; the lumpiness of my tongue. I cringed to hear it come back at me out of another’s mouth. And there were other loathsome things about Yano: his smell, of course, and how he stared so intently at you and stood so close. I closed the screen door even more, as if to shoo him away. But he stayed put, his face almost pressed to the mesh. His smell grew more pungent.
    “You nihonjin?” That’s how direct he was. I nodded, though I was not willing to acknowledge the slightest connection between us. “Yano desu,” he said, pushing his hand inside the door, I suppose to shake mine, when Papa suddenly shouted for me. I excused myself and quickly shut the door.
    “Dare desu-ka?” Papa was demanding to know who it was. I hastily shut the drapes as he strained towards the window. I did not want him to become