Picture Brides Term Analysis

They were handsome young men with dark eyes and full heads of hair and skin that was smooth and unblemished…They looked like our brothers and fathers back home, only better dressed, in gray frock coats and fine Western three-piece suits. Some of them were standing on sidewalks in front of wooden A-frame houses with white picket fences and neatly mowed lawns, and some were leaning in driveways against Model T Fords.

On the boat we carried with us in our trunks all the things we would need for our new lives: white silk kimonos for our wedding night, colorful cotton kimonos for everyday wear, plain cotton kimonos for when we grew old, calligraphy brushes, thick black sticks of ink, thin sheets of rice paper on which to write long letters home, tiny brass Buddhas.

They took us by the elbows and said quietly, ‘It’s time.’ They took us before we were ready and the bleeding did not stop for three days. They took us with our white silk kimonos twisted up high over our heads and we were sure we were about to die.

They took us while thinking of some other woman […] and then cursed us afterward when they could find no blood on the sheets. They took us clumsily, and we did not let them touch us again for three years. They took us with more skill than we had ever been taken before and we knew we would always want them […] They took us swiftly, repeatedly, and all throughout the night, and in the morning when we woke we were theirs.

We gave birth at five in the morning […] and that night our husband began kissing us in bed. I said to him, ‘Can’t you wait?’ We gave birth quietly, like our mothers, who never cried out or complained […] We gave birth easily, in two hours, and then got a headache that stayed with us for five years.

We gave birth but our milk never came in and after one week the baby was dead. We gave birth but the baby had already died in the womb and we buried her, naked, in the fields, beside a stream, but have moved so many times since we can no longer remember where she is.