KINDERGARTEN by Kyoko Uchida

I play jelly-jounce to the flag of the United Stetson America, one, two, three, rip-ugly-four witch: it stands, one Asian, other gods invisible, with rubber teeth and just this for all.

The kindergarten room has its own two bathrooms: one with a Raggedy Andy doll on the door, one with a Raggedy Ann, their yarn hair so red it hurts to look, their stockings red-and-white-striped, overalls and apron-dress blue and white just like the flag. This Raggedy Andy has freckles so bright it looks like chicken pox, but a few of the boys and my friend Karen have tawny ones sprinkled pretty over their noses. 

Angela has no freckles but lives in our townhouse complex and teaches me to turn cartwheels; cartwheels are better than somersaults because you don’t get grass and ants in your hair. Over and over we hurl our bodies at the earth, left palm, right palm, one, two, kicking our feet into Texas sun, making the playground whirl, the rusty swings and see-saws a blur, until the ice cream truck’s scratchy jingle sends us running in all directions to ask our mothers for a nickel. 

One week to first grade, we don’t get our nickels. The jingle cuts off after the first few notes and there’s shouting instead. We find the truck not where it usually stops by the mailboxes but just inside the complex, where it turns right from the main road. And on the asphalt in front of it: a boy. A small boy in a white T-shirt and blue shorts, one of his sandals upside down a few feet away. Chad. The carrot-haired, splash-freckled bully from the other kindergarten class who pulled Angela’s hair and made mean faces at me, pulling his eyes into slits. 

He’s quiet now, his face turned the other way, but his tiny chest rises and falls—fast, too fast. We’re quiet, too, watching from three cartwheels away, breathing too fast. Until the ice cream man comes back with one of the mothers and bends over him. 

“The ambulance is on the way, buddy, you hang in there, be jus’ fine. Your mama’s comin’ right now,” he says, and again, “be jus’ fine.” But his young voice catches, shatters into a hoarse whisper. 

And the next moment we hear it: from across the playground, not words but a wail hardly human, so broken we know right away we’re all in trouble now, every last one of us. We run. We run for our lives. 

Kyoko Uchida’s poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in journals in Australia, France, and the U.S., including Boston Review, Brooklyn Review, The Georgia Review, Nimrod International Journal, and Prairie Schooner. Her poetry collection Elsewhere was published in 2012 by Texas Tech University Press. She works for a nonprofit organization.

15 November 2024