Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

Funny, but what made me feel most nostalgic was the yellow-green color of the floor. . . . When I lived there I had hated that color, but now that I was to leave it I loved it with all my heart.

There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured. “I think I understand.”

As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.

I feel very odd writing a letter to my own child. But because lately I’ve been feeling that somehow I might be in danger, I’m writing you this on the one chance in a million that something might happen to me. No, just kidding. One of these days we’ll read this together and laugh.

If I try to say what it is now, it’s very simple: I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change.

Soon after, I heard Sensei call, “Mikage! Are you awake? It’s snowing, look! It’s snowing!” “I’m coming!” I called out, standing up. I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again.

She had been gentle and smiling with me, and then, as soon as she was alone again, she . . . if I had to describe it, I’d say the expression on her face was like that of a demon turned into a human who suddenly caught herself feeling emotions and was warning herself that she wasn’t permitted to. It was unforgettable. I felt that my own pain and sadness had never even come close to hers. Perhaps there was still much worse in store for me.