Comfort Woman

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On the fifth anniversary of my father’s death, my mother confessed to his murder. We had been peeling the shrimp for his chesa, slicing through the crackling skins, popping the gray and slippery meat, ripe as fruit, into the kitchen sink. My mother, who was allergic to my father’s favorite food, held her red and puffy hands under cold running water and scratched at her fingers. “Beccah-chan,” she told me without looking up, “I killed your father.”

My mother picked at her hands, rubbing at the blisters bubbling between her fingers. I turned the water off and wrapped her hands in a dish towel. “Shh, Mommy,” I said. “Don’t start.”

“Never happen like this,” she said, trying to snap her fingers under the cloth. “I had to work at it.”

I led her to the kitchen table, clearing a place for her by pushing the stacks of offerings we planned to burn after I ate the remembrance feast my mother made to appease my father’s spirit. My father died when I was five, and this yearly meal, with its persistent smell of the ocean, and the smoke and the ash that would penetrate our apartment for days after we burned the Monopoly money and paper-doll clothes, supplanted my dim memories of an actual man. Even when I unearthed the picture I had of him from my underwear drawer, stealing a look, I saw him less and less clearly, the image fading in almost imperceptible gradations each time I exposed it to light and scrutiny.

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