Iowa Journal of Literary Studies

Johannesen, Heidi

PERFECTION IS AT ITS HEART SORRY
Heidi Johannesen
The night is unworkable. The tree outside 
never sleeps.
Imagine how crazy it is— 
all the roots and branches it’s stuck in.
And the ground—what if it wants to get up 
and climb into the tree
in the dark?
There is no center unless you choose one. You have 
to choose one. Even the world needs 
a home in the dizzy universe.
The leaf finds a shape 
if it can
and hangs on.
The leaves fall because they are dead.
They are not trying to find their roots.
They are not symbols.
* * *
And there is nothing beyond you 
that hasn’t taken you with it, though maybe 
it’s holding back 
needing something to say.
Words won’t do. They think they’re doctors.
They turn you around and around until you fall off.
They say try thinking about a nice place.
They say the world might be easier 
when you are off the list of possibilities.
They say pretend the tubes aren’t in your nose 
and it’s snowing.
If they say they don’t know then
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they don’t know,
but definitely if they chop you up 
they won’t be able to find you
or the good news of the ground 
where the darkness comes without falling,
you understand.
75


English

Perfection Is at Its Heart Story

Kennon, Robert

The Dim Light

Darnell, Marc

Lilies; Petunias

Notes on Contributors, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 11.1

Smith, Jim

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 11.1

Lisicky, Paul

JENNY B.
Paul Lisicky
T h e  N i g h t  B e f o r e  my mother and I moved away from Fort Myers, 
I stood outside Jenny B . ’s house holding the new pinch pot in my 
hand. It was a tiny pinch pot, with a dark red rim and blue and yellow 
stripes. It was the best one I’d ever made.
I pressed my finger on the doorbell. I heard voices from upstairs, 
then walking. I was afraid it was going to be the mother.
“You’re here,” Jenny B. said.
I put the pinch pot in her hand. She was wearing a man’s t-shirt and 
a green rubber band in her hair. She picked at a scab on her elbow. 
“Did I wake you up?” I said.
“Come in,” she said, and grabbed my hand.
Inside, there were piles of newspapers on the floor. I saw plant 
clippings in mayonnaise jars and a fish tank beneath a bright purple 
light. A wooden tv was in the corner. She put the pinch pot on a table.
“Jennifer,” a lady’s voice said.
Jenny B. looked at the ceiling. “My mother,” she said. She rolled her 
eyes like she was embarrassed, but I could tell she was really glad. “My 
bedroom’s back there. I’ll come down in a minute.”
She went running up the steps. Her arms flapped like she was 
trying to fly.
I found her room at the end of a hall. The covers were pushed 
down, and there were schoolbooks and finger paintings all over the 
bed. On a table I saw a half-filled glass of orange Hi-C. A bent straw 
was sticking out of it.
The door opened after a long time.
“She wanted me to rub her nude back,” Jenny B. said. Her eyes got 
big and she pressed her hands across her mouth. She started giggling.
“What time do you go to sleep?” I said.
She laid down on the bed, pulled her legs over her head and 
counted. I sat still, looking at the white of her underpants. Then she 
let her legs fall down hard. She was staring at me with a funny look. 
Long pieces of her hair were sticking in her mouth.
39
T
“Let’s sleep,” she said. She patted the covers next to her.
She turned off the light. It was so dark. We laid together on the bed, 
listening to the house. For a while I thought she might be dead. Her 
breaths were so slow and small and quiet, but then I felt her body 
moving toward me. She licked at the place beneath my right eye.
“Why did you do that for?” My voice sounded upset.
“I don’t know,” she said.
We didn’t say anything after that. A car drove by on the street. My 
heart was making beating sounds, like I was under water.
“Your mother’s weird, isn’t she?” she said.
Her face looked serious in the dark. She smelled like she’d just taken 
a bath. “I think,” I said.
She reached for my glasses and took them off my face.
“Give them,” I said.
She put them on the night table and laid back down again.
Upstairs her mother turned on the sweeper. I could hear her 
mumbling, saying bad things to herself. And then Jenny B. was 
pulling her underpants down around her legs.
“Your turn,” she whispered.
I couldn’t move. My hands were perfectly still. I thought about the 
time Jenny B. was in the high weeds. She was lying on her stomach, 
laughing, while the big red dog jum ped over and over her back. There 
was a tractor rumbling in the distance. The dog was making a high 
yipping sound like a horse. I stood beneath a tree, waiting to beat it up 
with a stick.
“Jennifer—”
The mother turned on the switch. I sat up in bed, holding my waist. 
I thought I was going to be sick.
“Oh,” she said. She held onto the doorknob, giving us a look. “I 
didn’t know you had company. I’ll be back in a minute.”
The mother left the room.
Jenny B. smiled, her underpants still on the floor. She reached for 
my glasses on the table and put them over her eyes. I started getting 
mad. I was getting mad because she was still lying in bed, looking 
stupid, drawing pictures with her finger. She didn’t care that I was 
leaving tomorrow. For a second I knew I could kill her.
“I’m going home,” I said, and took the glasses off her face.
I started walking down the hallway. She didn’t get up from her bed 
or say anything, but I was waiting. On the dining room table the pinch 
pot looked shiny and plump, like an apple.
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41


Jenny B.

Bienen, Leslie

LOOKING INTO THE SUN
Leslie Bienen
WHEN I WOKE up that morning, my throat was already sore from the 
dry heat of the night. The hair on the back of my neck was sticky with 
sweat, and the futon cover felt damp and heavy. At breakfast, while I 
ate a dish of rice and sipped noisily at a bowl of salty miso soup, I told 
Mother that I had had nightmares again, so she let me wear my 
favorite blue and white kimono. It was made of very thin, fragile 
cotton embroidered with expensive silk, and I was supposed to wear it 
only for special occasions. It had a pattern of butterflies and lilies 
intertwined on it, which Mother said brought good luck to girls who 
behaved themselves, and I felt especially safe when I wore it. She had 
assured me long ago that it would keep away any evil spirits that might 
try to distract me as I walked to school or that might try to make me 
disobedient and willful.
Nevertheless, I felt anxious as I walked the short distance to First 
Elementary, carefully trying to keep my kimono and white tabi socks 
unsoiled to avoid a scolding in front of the class. I dreaded getting to 
school in the morning, when Teacher carefully looked over each 
student, making sure our clothes were clean and our notebooks neat 
and orderly. Even worse than Teacher’s daily scrutiny was the 
question and answer session before classes began. Every day, Teacher 
would ask a different student to stand up and tell the class what he or 
she would do in the service of the Emperor. I knew that any day it 
would be my turn. The other students all knew what they would do for 
the Emperor. Standing up and bowing to Teacher, they answered his 
question in high, unfaltering voices. “I would cut out my tongue 
rather than tell our secrets to the enemy, teacher.” “I would kill my 
parents and then myself rather than be taken alive.” “I would devote 
my life to fighting in the Emperor’s service.”
I was sitting quietly at my desk arranging my lesson books and 
making sure my writing brush was supple enough to make strong, 
clean brush strokes. Suddenly, I heard my name and realized that 
Teacher was ordering me to stand up and tell the class what I would
31
do for the Emperor. My hands began to sweat and my voice shook. “I 
would die, Teacher,” I said. “I would slit open my belly and die.”
***
That afternoon, I got home from school late—Teacher had not 
been pleased with my flower arranging, and I had not been able to 
leave at three o’clock with the other girls, but had had to stay after and 
practice. I had felt nervous with Teacher hovering over me and was 
sure that he resented my hesitant, deceitful voice when I answered his 
question that morning. In my haste and worry, I kept breaking the 
stems off my flowers, and finally, with his brows knotted into a scowl 
and his lips pressed tightly together, Teacher hit me over the knuckles 
with his stick and sent me home with the admonition not to be such a 
stupid, clumsy girl.
When I got home, my hand still stinging from the hard blow and my 
shoes and tabi brown from the dusty road, Mother and Father were in 
the kitchen listening to the radio. The radio was on constantly then, to 
keep us informed of the progress of the war and to broadcast safety 
bulletins. I went into my small room at the back of the house. The sun 
shone directly onto the roof of the room, and it grew almost 
unbearably hot during the day. I lay down on the floor, pressing my 
cheek to the cool tatami, and licked my sore knuckles, trying to get the 
redness to go away so Mother and Father wouldn’t notice I had been 
hit.
Just then, I heard a muffled cry from Mother and I got up and 
hurried back into the kitchen. Mother and Father were staring at the 
radio. Mother had turned the volume up, and the static was loud and 
crackled, periodically drowning out the voice. “The enemy has created 
a new and most cruel bom b,. . .” The next sentence was lost in a flurry 
of static. Mother grabbed my upper arm so hard that it hurt. “That’s 
Him! That’s Him!” she cried. Her voice was high and harsh, and I had 
never heard her use the shortest, crudely masculine speech form. Too 
surprised to concentrate on the pain, I pulled my arm away. When the 
Emperor’s words became distinguishable once more, I did not under­
stand them. They were long and unfamiliar sounding, and I did not 
even know where one word ended and the next began.
As the Emperor’s voice filled the room, I remembered the day last 
June when Mother and Father had brought me to see the Emperor. It 
was one of his rare public appearances at the Meijii Palace, and it 
seemed everyone in Tokyo had come to the Palace that day; the sound 
of wooden geta shoes clicking and clattering was like geese calling to 
each other as they flew overhead. Mother and Father reminded me 
numerous times before we got there that I absolutely mustn’t look at 
the Emperor, for He was a direct descendant of the sun. Mother took
32
her hand and placed it over my face, showing me how to arrange my 
fingers correctly so my eyes wouldn’t be burned out by the sight of 
Him.
When the gong sounded, signalling that He was about to appear, 
Father put me up on his shoulders so I wouldn’t be jostled by the 
crowd. In a ripple of movement, everyone raised their hands to their 
faces and bent their heads. I held my hands over my eyes like 
everyone else, but spread my fingers a little. From underneath, I 
could still see out. Not daring to gaze at the Emperor, I looked around 
at the crowd. Tens of thousands of sweating people stood staring at 
the ground, hands raised to shield their eyes. The sound of the gong 
hung in the quiet air. From up on Father’s shoulders all I could see 
before me were bowed heads, the hair on top shining as it caught the 
afternoon light.
For the few minutes that Emperor’s voice filled our kitchen the 
neighborhood was silent. No doors slid in their tracks. No thwack of a 
dusty futon being beaten with a stick sounded in the air. Then, after 
three or four seconds, screams came from houses up and down the 
street, doors slammed and people ran outside, their hands pressed 
over their ears. Father, who was too old to fight in the war and had 
been turned down for service, didn’t move from his tatami. He just let 
the tears fall down his cheeks. It was the first time I had ever seen him 
cry.
I began to sob, and the sight of Father and the noises all around me 
gave rise to a panic that choked off my breath. I went over to where 
Mother stood, a pot of unhusked rice in front of her, her hands 
hanging motionless over it. But she pushed me away, something she 
had never done before. I tried to put my arms around her waist, but 
she disentangled herself without even looking at me, and let her 
hands drop to her sides. She walked slowly out of the kitchen into the 
small dressing room which adjoined her bedroom. Frightened, I did 
not want to follow her; it did not occur to me to go to Father. Afraid 
to dirty my kimono by wiping my eyes and nose on the sleeve, I used 
my hand, sticky with tears and rice starch.
I made my way to the door of Mother’s dressing room. She had not 
slid the shoji all the way shut, and peering timidly through a crack, I 
saw her kneeling on the silk brocade cushion in front of her mirror. 
She seemed to search through her little sewing basket, the one she let 
me play with at night while she braided my hair into a tight coil, 
pulling so hard on the roots that tears would well up in my eyes.
After a few minutes she pulled out her long embroidering needle. 
Without any hesitation she pushed it firmly into first one ear, then the
33
other. When she put down the needle, her face was white as cotton 
and her hand was shaking uncontrollably. She inserted into each ear 
a small strip of gauze wadded into a ball. When she pulled it out, it was 
soaked with blood. I slipped through the crack of the open door and 
stepped inside the room, still crying, and called out “Mama, Mama.” 
But she didn’t turn around or say anything to acknowledge my 
presence.
That summer and the following fall, I lived in a constant state of 
fear—fear that I would be found out and exposed to everyone. Often, 
when I remembered my behavior in school that morning, I wept with 
guilt at my own treachery and deceit.
It seemed to me that only I had escaped unscathed. Not only 
Mother and Father, but our friends, neighbors, my school teachers — 
all bore visible scars and wounds from that day. Many, like Mother, 
had fulfilled their vows never to hear another voice after listening to 
the Emperor’s. Many others took their lives in the days that followed. 
Not able to face the unbearable humiliation of losing the war, and sure 
that an honorable death was still possible, they would not taint 
themselves by behaving as if nothing had happened.
Father seemed to walk more slowly than before. Instead of his 
formerly purposeful stride, which even in my bedroom I had been 
able to hear rattling the dishes in the tall cupboard, I now heard the 
scrape of his slippers dragging across the mats. At meals his chopsticks 
dropped from his fingers, and a few long seconds would elapse before 
he picked them up and began eating again. Most of the time the house 
was quiet. When Mother spoke, it was usually in a whisper, for now 
that she could not hear her own voice, she lived in constant fear of 
speaking too loudly. And I had curbed my former chatter, knowing 
that what I said went for the most part unheard, since Mother of 
course could not understand unless she looked at my face and 
watched my lips. Father spent more and more time at the post office, 
often not arriving home until after nine o’clock. He ate his dinner 
alone, long after I had finished mine and was soaking in the tub or 
hunched over my writing table, trying to imitate Mother’s graceful, 
flowing calligraphy. During those hot, sleepless nights, I lay in bed 
and contemplated the enormity of the lie I had told. In my room on 
the other side of the screen from my parents, I waited eagerly for 
nightfall to cloak my shame in darkness. I knew only that in my black 
heart, I had betrayed the Emperor and deserved to die the death of 
beggars and outcasts, those whose bodies lay unnoticed in the street 
until August heat began to work on them and they started to rot,
34
filling the air with their stench.
September came. At night the cicadas chirped more loudly than 
ever. In school we read poems about them, about how their chirps 
grow louder as they get closer to death. In the mornings, the thinnest 
layer of ice covered the water in my basin, so thin I could break it with 
the slightest pressure of my fingers.
At school each morning, a different student came to the front of the 
class and explained how to cook or eat one of the foods the occupation 
army had distributed that week. When it was my turn, I brought in 
one of the fifty packs of gum Mother had received as that week’s 
rations. When we had examined the package at home, Mother had 
refused to try any of the gum. I loved the sweet tasting saliva it made 
in my mouth and put in three pieces at once, almost gagging as I tried 
to swallow the strange, slippery wad. In class I explained that the 
wrappers weren’t edible, and showed them how to slide the stick out 
without tearing the paper, a trick I had discovered while seeing how 
high I could stack the pieces of gum. Then I carefully folded one stick 
into a small square, chewed it and swallowed it. Glancing proudly at 
Teacher’s face, I was surprised and confused to see his amused 
expression. Back at my desk, as he explained to the class that you were 
supposed to spit out the gum after chewing it, I blushed angrily. 
Later, at home, I chewed one stick after another, not waiting for the 
first to lose its flavor before taking it out of my mouth and unwrap­
ping a new piece. Though Mother still would not try any of the gum, 
she fastened the colored wrappers next to the plain white papers that 
were tied to the branches of the little wishing tree in the tea room.
One morning after all the leaves had fallen from the trees, I woke 
up and realized that the night before I had fallen asleep almost right 
away. Lying in bed, I had not heard the sound of my voice shaking as 
I answered Teacher; I had not pictured myself standing before the 
class, the eyes of the students watching me scornfully, as I had 
imagined and dreamed of them doing night after night. I had 
forgotten to be afraid. That day as I walked to school, hearing the 
crunch of my shoes on the frosty ground, it occurred to me that the 
others too would not really have made the sacrifices they had boasted 
of. Perhaps they had never intended to do all those things they had 
claimed they would.
In the spring, the Emperor once again appeared at the Palace. 
Mother and Father and I stood in the crowd, holding hands, the cool 
breeze drying the sweat on our foreheads even as it formed. Standing 
at the gateway to the Palace, the Emperor gave a blessing for the new
35
year, then read a poem and said a prayer for the dead as he looked out 
over the crowd. We looked back at him.
36
37


Not a member yet

Perfection Is at Its Heart Story

The Dim Light

Lilies; Petunias

Notes on Contributors, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 11.1

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 11.1

Jenny B.

Looking into the Sun

Mighty Pup

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 11.1

Approach; City #6

241

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