Read Online The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka - Free Book Online
Authors: Julie Otsuka
Ads: Link
nearby gullies while we dug up and sacked onions and began picking the first plums. We gave them sticks to play with in our absence and called out to them from time to time to let them know we were still there. Don’t bother the dogs. Don’t touch the bees. Don’t wander away or Papa will get mad . But when they tired and began to cry out for us we kept on working because if we didn’t we knew we would never pay off the debt on our lease. Mama can’t come . And after a while their voices grew fainter and their crying came to a stop. And at the end of the day when there was no more light in the sky we woke them up from wherever it was they lay sleeping and brushed the dirt from their hair. It’s time to go home .
SOME OF THEM were stubborn and willful and would not listen to a word we said. Others were more serene than the Buddha. He came into the world smiling . One loved her father more than anyone else. One hated bright colors. One would not go anywhere without his tin pail. One weaned herself at the age of thirteen months by pointing to a glass of milk on the counter and telling us, “I want.” Several were wise beyond their years. The fortune-teller told us he was born with the soul of an old man . They ate at the table like grown-ups. They never cried. They never complained. They never left their chopsticks standing upright in their rice. They played by themselves all day long without making a sound while we worked nearby in the fields. They drew pictures in the dirt for hours. And whenever we tried to pick them up and carry them home they shook their heads and said, “I’m too heavy” or “Mama, rest.” They worried about us when we were tired. They worried about us when we were sad. They knew, without our telling them, when our knees were bothering us or it was our time of the month. They slept with us, at night, like puppies, on wooden boards covered with hay, and for the first time since coming to America we did not mind having someone else beside us in the bed.
ALWAYS , we had favorites. Perhaps it was our firstborn, Ichiro, who made us feel so much less lonely than we had been before. My husband has not spoken to me in more than two years . Or our second son, Yoichi, who taught himself how to read English by the time he was four. He’s a genius . Or Sunoko, who always tugged at our sleeve with such fierce urgency and then forgot what it was she wanted to say. “It will come to you later,” we would tell her, even though it never did. Some of us preferred our daughters, who were gentle and good, and some of us, like our mothers before us, preferred our sons. They’re the better gain on the farm . We fed them more than we did their sisters. We sided with them in arguments. We dressed them in nicer clothes. We scraped up our last pennies to take them to the doctor whenever they came down with fever, while our daughters we cared for at home. I applied a mustard plaster to her chest and said a prayer to the god of wind and bad colds . Because we knew that our daughters would leave us the moment they married, but our sons would provide for us in our old age.
USUALLY , our husbands had nothing to do with them. They never changed a single diaper. They never washed a dirty dish. They never touched a broom. In the evening, no matter how tired we were when we came in from the fields, they sat down and read the paper while we cooked dinner for the children and stayed up washing and mending piles of clothes until late. They never let us go to sleep before them. They never let us rise after the sun. You’ll set a bad example for the children . They never gave us even five minutes of rest. They were silent, weathered men who tramped in and out of the house in their muddy overalls muttering to themselves about sucker growth, the price of green beans, how many crates of celery they thought we could pull this year from the fields. They rarely spoke to their children, or even seemed to remember their names. Tell
SOME OF THEM were stubborn and willful and would not listen to a word we said. Others were more serene than the Buddha. He came into the world smiling . One loved her father more than anyone else. One hated bright colors. One would not go anywhere without his tin pail. One weaned herself at the age of thirteen months by pointing to a glass of milk on the counter and telling us, “I want.” Several were wise beyond their years. The fortune-teller told us he was born with the soul of an old man . They ate at the table like grown-ups. They never cried. They never complained. They never left their chopsticks standing upright in their rice. They played by themselves all day long without making a sound while we worked nearby in the fields. They drew pictures in the dirt for hours. And whenever we tried to pick them up and carry them home they shook their heads and said, “I’m too heavy” or “Mama, rest.” They worried about us when we were tired. They worried about us when we were sad. They knew, without our telling them, when our knees were bothering us or it was our time of the month. They slept with us, at night, like puppies, on wooden boards covered with hay, and for the first time since coming to America we did not mind having someone else beside us in the bed.
ALWAYS , we had favorites. Perhaps it was our firstborn, Ichiro, who made us feel so much less lonely than we had been before. My husband has not spoken to me in more than two years . Or our second son, Yoichi, who taught himself how to read English by the time he was four. He’s a genius . Or Sunoko, who always tugged at our sleeve with such fierce urgency and then forgot what it was she wanted to say. “It will come to you later,” we would tell her, even though it never did. Some of us preferred our daughters, who were gentle and good, and some of us, like our mothers before us, preferred our sons. They’re the better gain on the farm . We fed them more than we did their sisters. We sided with them in arguments. We dressed them in nicer clothes. We scraped up our last pennies to take them to the doctor whenever they came down with fever, while our daughters we cared for at home. I applied a mustard plaster to her chest and said a prayer to the god of wind and bad colds . Because we knew that our daughters would leave us the moment they married, but our sons would provide for us in our old age.
USUALLY , our husbands had nothing to do with them. They never changed a single diaper. They never washed a dirty dish. They never touched a broom. In the evening, no matter how tired we were when we came in from the fields, they sat down and read the paper while we cooked dinner for the children and stayed up washing and mending piles of clothes until late. They never let us go to sleep before them. They never let us rise after the sun. You’ll set a bad example for the children . They never gave us even five minutes of rest. They were silent, weathered men who tramped in and out of the house in their muddy overalls muttering to themselves about sucker growth, the price of green beans, how many crates of celery they thought we could pull this year from the fields. They rarely spoke to their children, or even seemed to remember their names. Tell
Similar Books
