“The Capacity,” by Cynthia Dewi Oka (Poetry ’19)
2019 poetry graduate Cynthia Dewi Oka was recently featured in Court Green and Pank Magazine. Read an excerpt of Oka’s short story, “The Capacity,” below:
The Capacity
The day you and your dad find out you’re both pregnant is the day the last of the leaves fall from the trees. The whole world, all of a sudden, loses its cover, the jades and emeralds of the generous seasons, the golds and vermillions of the lean ones. You emerge from the bathroom holding the pregnancy test stick with its pink plus sign at the exact time that he walks in through the front door waving a lab report with his blood cell and protein counts. Wow, what are the chances, he says, rubbing his belly, which you can see is protruding more than yesterday. You hug him, but you can’t stay, there is choir practice you have to get to at school, and you have a solo so you really can’t miss it. On the way, you’re practically skipping, not noticing the change in the world, how the newly bare branches almost immediately begin to reach for each other, locking like fingers overhead. Even higher up, the sun is nodding from side to side, a dandelion on a thin stalk of cloud.
The first few weeks are thrilling. When you’re done with all your homework, you sit with your dad on the couch in the waiting room, taking turns with his old stethoscope. First, he listens to your belly, moving the chestpiece around methodically, like he doesn’t want to miss a single note of what he calls a composition in progress. One day he swears he hears timpani. The next, an oboe. When you put the earpieces in though, all you hear is the sound the edge of the ocean makes when it’s pulling away from shore. Interesting, he says. I wonder if this is because I threw your placenta into the waves when you were born. Then he pours more of the bone broth that’s been simmered all night and spiced with ginger. It’s extremely delicious. The stethoscope is not needed for his belly. Both of you can hear the bubbling and growling in him while you sip from your bowls. Whatever it is, it’s growing fast.
Sometimes you take walks together, enjoying the muted weather now that the trees have knitted a kind of basket around the world. The wind doesn’t whip anything around anymore. The rain doesn’t drench. Light falls in chips on your faces and on the ground. The birds have quickly learned to adjust the design of their nests, making domes that hang upside down then pecking a door through so they can get in and out. You walk to the wharf, the supermarket, the library, the downtown strip with people in long, fluttering coats rushing in and out of boutique shops that display knives, pottery, shoes, lingerie, softballs, jewelry, chocolates, and small, groomed animals behind spotless windows. When you have to cross the street, he puts his hand on the back of your neck, he’s done this instead of holding your hand since you were little and still when you are taller than him and almost the age you can vote.
When the sick begins, at least you are in it together. His is always the color of sunshine. He rocks back and forth in his dotted gown until it’s all out of him. Yours doesn’t come out at all. It’s just a kind of potential lodged in the tunnel between your stomach and vocal cords. He thumps your back with his palm, but it doesn’t let go. You get used to it, but there is a consequence. You have to tell the choir director you can’t do the solo anymore. He pouts and tries to negotiate with you, pacing the forest of music stands in his bright blue suit. You explain that you’re not even that good of a singer, and now you can’t even button your jeans.
Read the story in its entirety here: https://pankmagazine.com/piece/piece-the-capacity/
