The Cherry Robbers

by Sarai Walker

finding pleasure not in the world but in my work, engaging each day in the ritual communion that produces it.

Women are raised to be accommodating, so I suppose a woman who draws clear lines that others are not allowed to cross becomes remarkable for that fact alone.

When I have moments like this, when the darkness suffocates me, I need to hold on to something more powerful than myself.

“I am the daughter of Earth and Water, and the nursling of the Sky, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.”

Home was intrusive like that—it wafted its way into every part of you.

For him, I knew, my sisters’ deaths had taken on the aura of something distinctly female and thus shameful.

But since that day among the cherry blossoms, I hadn’t experienced anything similar, nothing that had brought up the same intense emotions in me, and for that, she lingered.

Maybe that was the secret to running away, to freedom—becoming someone else.

“It’s easier to say that women like my mother are crazy. Then you don’t have to listen to them. And so maybe in a way she became crazy. Maybe she could communicate only by screaming.”

Sudden swells of emotion aren’t uncommon to me. When one has buried so much, it builds up beyond containment.

“If you need anything, give a holler,” Diego said on his way out. He often says this, assuming I find comfort in the protection inherent in his maleness. I’ve never had the heart to tell him that men have never been the ones to protect me.

I’m not certain, though, that this is how the story actually ends. I’ve had to search for the light each and every day of the past sixty years, and only sometimes do I find it.