1126
PARTISAN REVIEW
Hayano and his absorbed wife and then forced a smile. "He must
be tired," she said.
Haru was not giving up yet. "May Rosie stay overnight?" she
asked, and Natsu,
Aki,
and Fuyu came to reinforce their sister's plea
by helping her make a circle around Rosie's mother. Rosie, for once,
having no desire to stay, was relieved when her mother, apologizing
to the perturbed Mr. and Mrs. Hayano for her father's abruptness
at the same time, managed to shake her head no at the quartet,
kindly but adamant, so that they broke their circle to let her go.
Rosie's father looked ahead into the windshield as the two
joined him. "I'm sorry," her mother said. "You must be tired." Her
father, stepping on the starter, said nothing. "You know how 1 get
when it's
haiku,"
she continued, "I forget what time it is." He only
grunted.
As they rode homeward, silently, Rosie, sitting between, felt a
rush of hate for both, for her mother for begging, for her father for
denying her mother. 1 wish this old Ford would crash, right now, she
thought, then immediately, no, no, 1 wish my father would laugh,
but it was too late: already the vision had passed through her mind
of the green pick-up crumpled in the dark against one of the mighty
eucalyptus trees they were just riding past, of the three contorted,
bleeding bodies, one of them hers.
Rosie ran between two patches of tomatoes, her heart working
more rambunctiously than she had ever known it to. How lucky it
was that Aunt Taka and Uncle Gimpachi had come tonight, though,
how very lucky. Otherwise, she might not have really kept her half–
promise to meet Jesus Carrasco. Jesus, who was ,going t'o be a senior
in September at the same school she went to, .and his parents were
the ones helping with the tomatoes this year. She and Jesus, who
hardly remembered seeing each other at Cleveland high, where there
were so many other people and two whole grades between them, had
become great friends this Summer- he always had a joke for her
when he periodically drove the loaded pick-up up from the fields to
the shed where she was usually sorting while her mother and father
did the packing, and they laughed a great deal together over infini–
tesimal repartee during the afternoon break for chilled watermelon
or ice cream in the shade of the shed.
