Hiroshima Maidens by Anne Goodwin
Now we are friends, I want to see you smile again. I want to feel your laughter fizz around my ears. I want your gaze to brim with gratitude. I want you not to flinch at my approach.
In the queue, I take out my phone and scroll through the photos. Zoom in on glossed lips and come-to-bed eyes. On skin so smooth you’d think the image doctored. You can pose for more when I get home.
At the till, an old chap asks about herbal sleep aids for his wife. Kept awake, it seems, by his snoring. When the assistant suggests a remedy for that, he calls her a c**t.
As the manager’s summoned, and customers tut, I keep my cool watching YouTube. It’s not only pratfalls, kittens and rap. They’ve got documentaries about alien cultures. History you never learnt at school.
Last night, while you sulked, I caught a film about the Hiroshima Maidens. Forgotten victims of a twentieth-century war. The atom bomb that stopped hostilities blocked these women’s dreams. Seared and scarred them, razed their beauty as it raised a mushroom cloud.
Poor girls, feared and shunned for their disfigurement. Denied a future, husbands, jobs. Starved of flattery, drained of femininity. Despairing. Until American aircraft returned to Japan.
I must admit I felt quite teary: the former enemy making amends. How those women loved the medical men who fixed their faces. Adored the plastic surgeons who restored their charms.
The rude chap shown the door, the queue creeps forward. Soon, I’m placing the basket on the counter. Pocketing my phone.
The assistant’s hand hovers above the nail varnish. She hesitates, as if before a vial of blood.
“For the wife,” I say. “Stuck indoors right now.”
The assistant sweeps your mascara across the scanner. “She’s lucky.”
“Lucky?”
She plucks the tube of foundation from the basket and waves the barcode at the sensor. “Can’t imagine my hubbie buying me make-up if I was housebound. Easily misinterpreted down this end of town.”
I shrug. “As long as he doesn’t snore.”
She laughs and reaches for the palette of eyeshadow. Processes bronzer, lipstick, blusher, concealer. Pops them in a bag.
When I get these home and you’ve masked the bumps and bruises, I’ll tell you about the Hiroshima Maidens. Maybe I’ll show you the film. Sprawled on the sofa, I’ll let you cuddle up to me.
Now we are friends.
Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction. An award -winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize. Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.
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This was wonderful, Anne. The end so caught me off guard.
Radioactivity comes in many forms.
Nicely done.
Jim