Kiku and Jésus
from Heart Medicine Bones
a novel by Carol Harada
In the night bubble of her car, Kiku remembers the first time she met the janitor with the blessed name. She’d forgotten something that night, her calendar or something, and returned to the studio to find him sculpting small animals out of clay. They marched across the work table in pairs.
“Noah’s ark?” she asked, startling him.
He apologized and begged her not to report him. The studio was already spotless. She introduced herself and smiled in wonder at his name. Not religious, she still took it as a sign to take off her coat and sit. He stammered that his young daughter needed them for a class project. She looked at the clock, at the simple animal forms and at the still embarrassed man before her.
Kiku tore off some clay and pulled out two foxes and told him the tale of Fox Woman in Japan. She pulled out two ravens and told him a Salish creation story she heard from Josh. Together, working easily within talk and silence, they completed his task. She helped him transfer the figures to flat boxes, since he didn’t need to fire them. As she left Berkeley behind for the second time that night, she passed the aftermath of a horrible pileup and Hazmat trucks just leaving. Jésus saves.
That was ten years ago. And now Inez is old enough to have a miscarriage and see the scientific wisdom in it. Kiku’s arms feel heavy on the wheel. What Jésus said about having a daughter reminds her of the special regard that Sumi’s missed since Josh died. How pitiful for one parent to try to make up for the attentions of a missing one.
One time Kiku had asked Jésus why he doesn’t pursue sculpting as a profession. She had seen a spark flutter in his eyes, but then dim. He was a widower, an immigrant from the Yucatan, and no one had asked him that before. He said simply, “Here, I am a janitor.” She tried to encourage him to take a class. He never did, but ever since then, with her encouragement he’d work alone in the night studio when he wanted to, sometimes leaving her a note with a request to fire a piece he deemed worth keeping.
Next day after news of Inez’s miscarriage, Kiku finds a clay figure on her desk of a toothy being with cupped hands in front of her small breasts. The note from Jésus says she is the Aztec goddess of love and excrement, Tlazolteotl. She eats filth given up in confession and offers love and forgiveness at the time of death. For purification, generally. “Do something with her,” he writes. “I made one for me too.”
