Europa Editions

It was every face of Makiko I’d ever known—the one who laughed and cried with me, who ran up to greet me the second she saw me, who sat in the park in her uniform and rode off on her bike, who shut her eyes tight and cried through the entire wake, who took money straight out of her pay envelope to buy me new indoor shoes for school, who sat there, all alone, in her hospital bed after giving birth to her daughter, who was always there for me—every side of her was smiling now.

Is it possible that our parents never die, that every child inevitably conceals them in himself? Would my mother truly emerge from me, with her limping gait, as my destiny?

Lila was like that? She didn’t have my stubborn diligence? She drew out of herself thoughts, shoes, words written and spoken, complicated plans, rages and inventions, only to show me something of herself? Having lost that motivation, she was lost? Even the treatment to which she had subjected her wedding photograph—even that she would never be able to repeat? Everything, in her, was the result of the chaos of an occasion?