Silk
“Is this what you would like, the red silk?”
The cool fabric slides through my palms. It catches slightly on the calluses of my hands. I sculpt mostly in stone, and the chisels and hammers take their toll. Faint oak leaves rise on the surface of the silk – woven, not printed; a bit of burgundy on scarlet. “Yes, I think so.”
My grandmother turns back to the trunk, open on the attic floor. Dust motes float down around us. “Or maybe you’d rather have the green?” She lifts another kimono, tenderly setting yellowed tissue paper aside. Her hands shake ever so slightly, and I know she is remembering my grandfather.
I slide my arms into the red kimono. It would have been floor length on her sixty years ago. It hits me mid-calf. “No,” I say. “I want the red one.”
She lifts the green kimono and passes it to me. It’s the first one my grandfather sent back to her, the one she would have worn on his first night home from the war. Bright orange and silver fish swim down the back, their dark eyes luminous as moons. The belt is wide and stiff. The robe holds its creases as if it had never been worn, but I know that is not true. I have seen the pictures of my grandmother wearing this robe at my grandfather’s funeral, clutching the silk triangle of folded American flag above her distended belly, eight months swollen with my mother. I hold it open for her.
“Let me help you,” I say.
She turns to the flyspecked oval mirror, tilted against the wall. Her gnarled hands smooth down the heavy edges of the kimono’s belt. She is stooped now, and the robe pools on the floor around her, the fish flowing down her narrow back.
Let me help you. She said that to me when I was in my last year of college and had run out of money. Let me help you. She said that to me when I had been up all night, three nights in a row, with my colicky first child. Let me help you. She said it again the first time, the second time and the last time my husband left me.
“Thank you,” she says.
No. Let me thank you.
I step up behind her and stoop to rest my chin on her shoulder. She smells of cinnamon and vanilla, of oatmeal on a winter morning. My hair, as black as fish eyes, frames us both. Her hands come to rest on her own heavy grey braid. I am thinking of how to chisel her light blue eyes- and mine – into mahogany, how to capture the wrinkles and lines. The hair will be easy. Late afternoon light spills in through the attic windows, casting warm tones across the floor. It is early fall and soon will be too cold to be barefoot in the attic. My grandmother smiles. We have the same crooked teeth.
I would love to have the green kimono, but I would never ask. I put my arms around her and red oak leaves shimmer in the mirror. This is what I like.