So Grief Gives Its Beloved Sleep

by Author Name

Before Ūmi winced, she gripped her sleeve. Its golden bells attached at the seams

wouldn’t stop singing as she pressed her lips together. It was the first time a man other than her

father had hit her, and when she opened her mouth, she could taste the blood surfing across the

edges of her tongue and between the gap in her two front teeth. In her bedroom, a four-walled

barrack with nothing but stained anime posters littering the damp walls, she focused on the red

smudge on the ground next to the man with a scarred face and a suit like her father wore. He

watched her, pointing to the splotch with the sooty index finger of his left hand.

“I won’t ask you again,” he murmured. “Bring them to me.”

She grabbed a small object wrapped in a bloody cloth from her now-soiled sling-over bag. She brought it to her face next to her red eyes. The man nodded. “Yes.”

“This one, too?” She held up an identical object wrapped in a less grimy cloth.

“Yes,” the man almost begged. “They’ll change you, Ūmi. No more.”

Ūmi imagined the checkered porcelain floors of the abandoned corner store she had last

seen her father. She imagined herself in her then-favorite sunflower skirt littered with tiny

splotches of red from ketchup or some other unknown spilled substance, her father approaching

in his freshly pressed suit, kissing her forehead and hugging her tightly.

The holed awning above them almost kept Ūmi shaded from the Carolina summer heat that

day—almost—but not enough to keep wet droplets from sliding past the bruises from her legs.

Even still, she couldn’t find one wet spot peak through the white shirt under his suit and tie. Not

even a bead of sweat adorned his Vaseline-slicked forehead as he turned to jog towards his friend

lying on the broken horn of the ‘94 Ford Ranger parked in their driveway. She turned to the open

screen door behind her, scanning for her mother, hoping to ask her why her father would wear a

suit to a war. When Ūmi couldn’t find her, she began tapping her foot—her mother never missed

her father’s departures—but she figured they’d already talked, so she turned back to watch two

of her father’s other war buddies in the bed of the truck with identical suits waving Ūmi’s father

up and yelling a goodbye to Ūmi.

The next time her father’s red eyes locked with her own, they were in a small jar

presented to her and her mother on their front porch by the same friends. When the frontline men

proceeded to express their condolences, their buffer was returning these two treasures that made

this dark-skinned man an anomaly.

The first day after her father’s eyes were returned, Ūmi tried to explain them to her

younger brother, Naír, but he didn’t bother with them. Instead, wearing his “My Daddy’s a Hero”

shirt and a diaper taught on his bottom, he pushed her to the couch and crawled onto the seat

beside her to lay his head on her shoulder in silence.

The next morning, after serving breakfast to Naiír, she went upstairs and cracked the door

to her mother’s room to peak at her father’s eyes while she slept. Her mother, though, was awake

and hollered at Ūmi—her breath cutting through the smell of 2-day-old dinners that Ūmi would

place at the doorway everyday—pleading with Ūmi to stop asking about the eyes, that they

needed to stay in her room.

So, the following afternoon, she didn’t ask her mother to see them. Ūmi snuck into her

mother’s room while she was asleep and wrapped the jar in a dirty cloth, stuffing the covered jar

in black sling-over bag. Her father’s eyes stayed in the bag on her wooden desk.

Every morning for a week straight, Ūmi would rush to her desk, pull the bag off the jar of

eyes and stare at them until Naír’s cries snapped her from her gaze. For the first few days, she

would feed Naír, crack her mother’s door open to leave a plate at her doorway, and head upstairs

to her room, staring at her father’s eyes until she felt a buzz that moved from her middle to her

head. By the end of the week, she had brought Naír to sleep with her in her bedroom and taken

the eyes out of the jar to have with her everywhere she went, only looking away her father’s eyes

when she’d cook a larger meal for her mother in order to spend more time with her father’s eyes.

The week after, she had not heard from her mother, so she started leaving the dishes in

front of the closed door instead of opening it, ignoring Naír’s cries at the growing smell of

uneaten food. She continued to ignore his cries in the mornings, too, as he tossed and turned

while she sat at the desk for almost entire days, eventually dropping a plate at the front of her

mother’s door and in her bed for Naír as to not to disturb the his sleep. She figured he’d been

tired from the crying.

At night, while she cuddled Naír, she’d peak at her father’s eyes on her desk from her

bed, the red almost shining through the thin material of her sling. She believed that they

protected her from everything. Sometimes, when it was cold and she couldn’t sleep, she believed

that her father’s eyes would speak to her in short whispers, and the quick bursts always warmed

her brown skin. It was never enough to sleep—Naír was the only one who seemed to get that

blessing—but the brief bits of warmth comforted her.

She felt cold standing in front of the man who had hit her. The man left her room, and as

she backed to one of her bedroom walls and slid to the floor, she blinked twice and fell asleep.