I’m afraid to say anything else. Instead, I turn back to the chicken lying on the chopping board, to the comfort of doing something I’m completely in control of. I pick up my cleaver and quickly chop its head off, dissecting first the legs and then the thighs from the body. When Franklin first disappeared, I was always waiting for him to return, looking up when I thought I’d heard his voice, checking one more time before I locked the door at night. It was like a fever. I remove the chicken breasts and chop each into halves, then quarters. At every week’s end I told myself he’d be back the following week, but he never was. It would have been easier if he were dead. I put down the cleaver and look over at Koji and smile again. No more, I just want my life to move forward. Koji is a good, hardworking man. No shame in cutting cane, I tell him. What we have now is a family, strong and solid. I gather up the vegetables to cut, potatoes, carrots, and onions that will later simmer along with the chicken in coconut milk and spices. But first I sprinkle salt and pepper over the chicken before dropping each piece into the hot skillet of oil to brown.

I hear Koji’s chair push back, feel him standing behind me, watching. “Smells good,” he says, breaking our silence.

I know how much he appreciates my home-cooked meals, having lived such a simple life. Early on, he told me his mother cooked over an open fire when they first arrived from Japan and lived in cane shacks. “One iron pot she carried with her from Japan,” he said. “Root vegetables and tofu in shoyu, sugar, and a sake broth over rice. Couldn’t afford meat most times, but after a day in the fields, yeah, nothing better.”

Now his evening meals usually consist of rice and vegetables, a bit of meat, or fish from Nori, or something he has picked up from the plantation store. These Sunday dinners mean so much to him, so much to us. By early evening, a wonderful aroma will fill the house and we’ll sit down to my Portuguese chicken and rice and listen to Daniel talk happily about his baseball practice, our words and laughter rising like steam through the kitchen.

Secrets: December 17–18, 1935

Secrets

December 17–18, 1935

32. Town Boy

32

Town Boy