The Catharsis: The Tragedy of Son ChiChi

It's hard to believe, after all this time, that you'd choose to wed a girl like me, the luckiest sort in the world.

You know when I carried my wedding bouquet down the aisle that afternoon some part of me was so sure that I was the luckiest girl in the world, marrying the most special man. My selection had been perfect: your warm smile made me melt. The day was gorgeous, the sun was giggling off happily in the bluest sky. Happiness just sort of seemed to radiate off of my skin. It was bouncing about, like the butterflies in my belly.

You waved at me, looking nervous. The day was light and careless. In my memory everything seems to glow like in a real fairytale wedding. He seemed to want my assurance. I'm sure both of us were just a little bit lost as to what to do. Somehow after all of my daydreams about the wedding, it felt so new to me.

How am I expected to do anything other than love you? How was I ever expected to do anything but?

Every step I take down the aisle, closer to you and our life together, I begin to see images: you and me, laughing and playing together. We are ageless, chasing each other around our bed in our home together. I can see myself making you dinner, and the way that your eyes look when you slowly take off my dress with warm hands and we make love the first time.

I feel a blush rising to my cheeks ever so slightly, but there they are again, those eyes of yours, urging me on, telling me that it will all be alright. I needed you just like you needed me.

I know what they say about me, you know. I know that they say I tricked him into marrying me. That I ought to be ashamed of myself, but they didn't see it that day, when we were the only ones in the whole world at that moment. Two singular beings ready to mesh into one. No one has known Son Gokou as intimately as I.

I know he loved me. With that kind, warm smile he shot me, those comforting eyes willing me to give myself to him. We gave ourselves to each other that day in word and that night in action.

He looked at me, wholesome and sincere. Without a change in his expression, as though he were both afraid and focused, he took a few steps closer to me. My smile faded, and in front of my new husband I unzipped my dress for the first time. First he had his hands on my waist, as though asking for permission when I'd already sent him an invitation written and addressed formally. He didn't quite collect me into his arms, when he leaned in for the kiss. I felt his hands move up my body, from the small of my back to my shoulder blades. He set his hands on my shoulders, and with uncertainty he slipped my dress off.

It felt to the floor with just the slightest whisper of a complaint.

He looked down at himself just a little bit. I stepped out of my dress. I must have looked frightened when I felt my way to his pants, because I remember that I was shaking.

Boy meets girl, girl falls in love, and boy spends the rest of his life driving the girl out of her freaking mind:

"Are you listening to me?" I asked, feeling my frustration peak along with my voice. Of course he wasn't listening to me; his thoughts trail off like a child. I'm not raising one son, I'm raising two. I can't stand it when Goku encourages Gohan to be a little delinquent, to run off with his friends.

He's looking over at me with his eyes wide and I'm trying not to grit my teeth and launch an attack on him. Truly, my life was much easier when we could just spar over our issues. "Of course I'm listening to you, ChiChi." He says with a look at me. He smiles brightly, the way he does when he's trying to calm me down.

Have I expressed to you how absolutely annoyed I get when Gokou tries to disarm me like this? "Look," I say, closing my eyes and trying to find in myself some patience, "it's not going to happen. No way!"

"But, Chi…" He says, trailing off a little bit as he gathers his words.

"Gokou, no!" I hiss, "I can't believe that you actually would think that there's any way I am going to let you take Gohan along with you on this little mission of yours! You want to go off and save the world, then fine! I expect it of you! But you are not taking my son along with you! He went through enough on Planet Namek and the first time you died, and I let him train for the Androids, and now he's going to have the life that he deserves."

"Gohan wants to fight, ChiChi! You should let him make his own choices."

"Really, Son Gokou? Are you going to tell me that you honestly, absolutely think that you and Piccolo don't control every thought in my son's head? Gohan is an impressionable and sweet young boy, and I don't care how much he loves you, he is not the warrior that you are. He only wants to fight if he has to or he feels like it would please you. And is it any surprise that, now that Piccolo is his favorite thing ever, and Krillin isn't too far behind, that my son would feel a little obligated to fight by you? He's a little boy. You're a grown man. You fight, he stays."

"We need all the power we can get, ChiChi!" He says, giving me that earnest look. Like the fate of the world rests in his hands again, but he needs his friends and cheerleaders to be there to help him out. Not my son, not my son. He doesn't have to be a part of your glory.

"Well, Gee, Gokou, I'm starting to wonder exactly how powerful some of your foes really are. I mean, look at Piccolo and Vegeta and even the android Bulma worked on! Maybe you should just schedule a tea-party with Cell instead of going out there and risking my son's life! Maybe he'll want to be your best friend, too and we can have him over for dinner within the year." I crossed my arms over my chest, twitching in my rage.

"Not my son, not again! I do a lot for you, Son Gokou, do this for me! Believe me and trust in me and do not give our son your dangerous lifestyle, and do not hand him over to your enemies! You want to go and fight and die and train, then fine, but Gohan does not deserve to bear your self-inflicted burdens just because you think it's a good time!"

At this, stricken, he flinches. His fingertips grip the seat he's been sitting in, well, kind of rocking in, slowly back and forth like he's nervous and anxious. In an instant they have relaxed and he stands and crosses the floor, ready to leave me alone. He lingers there at the doorway, cocking his head back to look at me, before quietly he says, "I don't see why you have to be so mean about it." He says, and the door closes behind him.

I'm the story of the princess that married the hero but it wasn't exactly happily ever after:

But you are my love, the hero, and you are far away from me in Heaven. I should be grateful for everything you've done, but somehow I'm always right back at this place where I feel abandoned and like there was another way that you could have handled things.

Do you care so little for your family that you can just go wherever the wind takes you? Is the concept of a life at home with me and Gohan so boring to you that you have discounted it altogether?

How is it that this can happen, that you can possibly just take off with so little remorse? The first time, I was fairly complacent about it. I mean, relatively speaking. You did die, which resulted in our son being kidnapped and trained for a year. I was told to kind of just wait it out by a very nervous Krillin, and my dad caught me after I fainted. I'd say I was on a pretty acceptable level of alarm that you'd died and now we had to wish you back to life. After some time, I recognized that you were the only one that could have stopped the threat, and you died saving everyone from an evil Saiya-Jin. But really, when after defeating Frieza on Namek you decided to just hang out with some aliens over a new attack? What is that? But it's real nifty Chi, look!

Great, my husband can do tricks. Let's see him do the dishes.

Aw, Chi, don't mind!

The many voices Son Gokou has inside of my head.

ChiChi, don't take things so personally. I'm fighting because I have to. It's for the world, ChiChi.

Do I sound bitter? Do I sound hurt? Do I sound angry? Because I probably am: I very probably am furious to think that my husband left me to care for our son, who very constantly thought of his father.

Speaking of our son, guess who was the one that Gokou thought Cell should really fight? My only son, you say? No! Not my husband, not my loving and caring husband that has a concept of what it is to be a child. He would never send his little boy into battle unnecessarily as a display of arrogance and pride.

Gohan wants to train, and help, and fight? Fine. Grudgingly do I accept, time after time after time, all of Gokou's requests to have Gohan run off and learn to be more and more like him, with frustration and difficulty, I admit it, but I eventually come to terms with my son's love for Gokou and his determination to honor his late father. Each time he returned, stripped a little more of his innocence. He's been completely desensitized and traumatized and he's seen war. This was unnecessary. Gohan has nightmares, Gokou. My heart breaks every single time he wakes up in the middle of the night, calling your name with tears bursting through his eyes and I have to barge in his room in a state of panic until he's been rocked back to sleep. Nothing soothes our son anymore, Gokou, and I wish you had believed me when I warned you that eventually this would happen. He's going to get over it, because he believes in you so much that he even beats himself up for not appearing happy all the time, but he's swallowing a lot for you right now, and I hope you feel his heart breaking and his confidence fading in the Other World while you're training for funsies.

Really, do you dare ask me how I can be upset? I love my husband, and I've always loved my husband and I'll never love anyone but my husband, but the question that I have for each and every one of you is: did my husband love me?

What are you expecting from this? You're hurting yourself ChiChi. That's what the voice of reason tells me every time I indulge in these thoughts. You're not going to get anything out of being angry, it won't solve anything. What are you going to do, cry? Gokou's dead and Gohan needs to be fed and I haven't been feeling so well, so I'm progressively getting slower when my son needs me the most.

I can't afford to spend an ounce of my energy being hurt or angry, and yet you smile at me in the window, and I can still smell you in our bedroom, and all of it just makes my heart sink.

It was raining the day that Gohan walked into my house, bearing the bad news:

I feel like waste. I feel like I'm nothing more than some fleeting thought, that kind of nice woman that does all these things for you but yells at you a lot. Maybe you really do think I'm your mother, that I'm going to worry no matter what and it would just be best for you to avoid and/or ignore me.

I feel like I'm something you come home to, but you don't need bother to tell me you're leaving, let alone consult me about it. I guess it seems sort of petty to say that saving the world and killing yourself should be something that should be decided as a couple. You know, considering yourself to be a part of a whole and therefore, courtesy calls that maybe perhaps I'd have something to say about you dying.

Some people think of being married as being on a team. Son Gokou does not recognize team Son. He only recognizes his little warrior buddies. No matter what I say or do, we're two distant and very separate forms that sometimes knock into each other when he's in good humor and wants food. Remember when we were on the same team, because these days I can only bite my lip at the memory and swallow hard and hope that one day you will decide to come home.

And suddenly, I snap. I shake my head a little bit and blink. I am certain that I have misheard my son, so I decide to repeat what I thought I heard so that he can correct me. "Gokou's… dead?" I ask, in disbelief.

Gohan nods his head solemnly.

I shake my head and he looks at me a little oddly. "No, he's not." I say very certainly. "Now, Gohan," I say, heading to the kitchen, "Gohan, it's really not very nice to play such pranks before your dad gets home before a big battle like this. You know, I really need to start dinner and-"

"Mom," Gohan says, swallowing and his voice is thick with emotion. His voice is strained and tight. The worst part is that I will hear this voice many, many times in the near future. "Mom, Dad's gone."

I've stopped dead with a pot in my hand. I'm examining it at first, and then I sort of get lost in the pot, the little flecks of silver metal behind its slick black surface. I appreciate how nice my pots are, how they were an expensive wedding present from my father because he knew I would have to cook in bulk. I begin thinking about, as logic would follow, how many of my wedding gifts lasted a long time. A clock from Bulma. Other… things, I can't quite cast my mind back right now. Good quality products, that's what our friends know how to pick out. It was a beautiful wedding, and it was so long ago.

Something's making a banging noise, like heavy metal on tile, but I don't know what it is because I've spun around to look at my son staring at me. I take a few steps towards him, moving out of the kitchen. He's staring at me from the table and from the tears in his eyes slowly dribbling into his cheeks before they cascade all the way down his face. Quickly, he wipes them away, and shakes his head. "Mom, there's something else." He says.

Suddenly I smile and I run and take his hand. "Gohan, don't worry about it!" I'm grinning and stupid and laughing, "We can just wish your dad back with the Dragonballs, can't we? I mean, Krillin has been brought back to life with the Dragonballs before, hasn't he?"

"We can't do that, Mom." Gohan says very quietly. He's stiff and balling his fists and looking at the floor. He's focusing on the way the little yellow painted flowers on the white tiles are patterned together. He's savoring the chestnut wood, and the way that the firelight dozing slightly off to the side looks on it. He's looking at the little puddle of water formed just about his feet and trying to find his reflection in it, but realizing that it's too small. So he looks back at the wood and tries to see faces in the fibers and rings of the wood.

He may not know it, but his father built this house. He fashioned it after the ones he saw in the city, and he did a superb job. Other things would be installed later, but it was a really adorable gesture on his part.

I have fallen to my knees. My hands are on my face. I am not sobbing but I am breathing very hard and my eyes are watering but still the tears are not running down, and with its abrupt eruption I cannot stop it. I didn't even feel my knees hit the floor and the wood is hard. I think the word is shock. The word is called numb, and it is gathering from my knees to my legs to my soul.

"Gohan, go to your room." I say very evenly, imagining a knife spreading butter over a slice of warm bread as he's put his arm around me, like I'm one of his fighter buddies because this is undoubtedly how Gokou has taught Gohan how to console someone.

"Mom, look, it's going to be okay. Dad died because he wanted to protect the world. He said that if he didn't go then another foe would come looking for him. He said he had to go because he was too strong and there would always be someone out there to come and threaten him with."

I'm thinking several things as I'm hearing this and I'm going to do the best to peel the strands of thoughts from each other and make sense of them. Well, that was awful selfish of him, is my first impression of these words. Then, I believe I was thinking something about how arrogant it is to assume that he was so great the universe wouldn't stop until he was dead. It's hard to hear myself think these things, because I'm also in the middle of mourning for the loss of my dead husband and thinking badly of him at a time like this is kind of appalling. It's pretty easy, in another way, and that makes it really, really upsetting to take.

"Dad did this for us… Besides it's kind of my fault, Mom…" Gohan says, very slowly. Now he's hung his head.

Oh my god, Son Gokou has taken something from my son. I grab Gohan by his shoulders and I look at him. "I'm sorry, Mom." He says, his eyes flooding with tears again. This is not what I'm seeing. I am not looking at a grief-stricken son with misguided guilt and the beginnings of self-loathing. I asked him to spare Gohan. Even if I tried to care what Gokou did, I couldn't, but I asked him to spare my son!

I embrace him a little bit, my body calm although my insides are raging, as he cries against my chest I'm running my hand through his hair a little absentmindedly. Soon enough I realize what it is that's upsetting me about Gohan. He's lost some of his innocence, and I tilt his chin up at me. "Gohan, what do you mean, it's your fault? You're just a little boy. You could never be responsible for your father's death."

"Dad wanted me to fight Cell, and win. He was counting on me, and… and…" Gohan couldn't even finish the sentence. Suddenly, he makes a noise that sounded like an animal in great despair. It's a yowling sort of noise, and he rips himself away from me. "Mother, I am sorry! Dad told me to be strong for you and take care of you! Daddy died so that we could live in peace."

I hold him. My father comes soon, as he's heard the news that the battle with Cell is over, and he doesn't know where to start.

After all we've been through…:

"ChiChi," He asked with that perplexed look in his eyes. "I still don't entirely understand why you're so upset, or what this has to do with marriage." He says it slowly, like he doesn't want to hurt or offend me and the only way I can reward his efforts is to be calm as I listen to his words.

I look straight over at him, "Goku, I understand that you're having a hard time with this, but I'm not going to give in on this one. Gohan is not going to train and get into fights like you and that's that."

"But why not?" He asks, cocking his head to the side slightly. He's taking off his shirt, and I'm preparing the water for a bath. We're outside and the moon is high in the sky. The dishes are soaking in the sink, and Gohan is asleep in his crib.

"Goku, the world is peaceful now and Gohan can help save in another way. There are a million different ways to help people, and through his studies he could choose any of them. Gohan doesn't have to train and fight like you do. He can be a scholar." I say, trying yet again to get through his thick head.

Goku is unconvinced as he undoes his pants. "But maybe he'll like it!" He says, smile on his face, eyes scanning me. "Are you coming in or not?"

I shake my head. "I'm not leaving Gohan alone in the house."

"Aw, ChiChi he'll be fine." Goku says, waving a hand a little bit. See how early it started, my protective instinct and Gokou's careless manner towards our son?

"I'll take a bath later," I say, standing up as he is just completely becoming naked.

I put my hand out, trying to take his laundry and he puts a hand over mine. I'm looking into his eyes now and he's got that earnest look in his eyes, and he says, "You keep saying that. You haven't taken a bath with me all week."

I pull my hand away as gently as I can, but he's way faster than I am and his lips are on mine. They're warm and soft just as I remembered them to be, but somehow it felt even then like they were something I could only taste from time to time.

I didn't know my husband was forbidden fruit. "Chi, come and relax with me. You work too hard." This is probably the last time Son Goku expressed any degree of appreciation towards me. I think that his logic follows that since he has, in the history of his life, at some point thanked me ambiguously or at least acknowledged that I run our household with excellence, he never had to do it again. It would come after this, I'm guessing, that Son Gokou forgot about it altogether.

A smile is placed on his lips, and he grabs my waist and pulls me closer to him. He cranes his head down and deepens the kiss.

I look at the door, and we can both see Gohan sleeping soundly in his crib. "We can watch him from here, I promise." Gokou says. I feel his fingers running behind me and my skirt drops to the ground.

"Hey!" I snap, but like a little kid he's excitedly plucking my clothes off. He's really made a game of it, and he's kind of giggling as he does it.

I haven't responded, much less consented, but still with his arm looped around my waist he's managed to throw me into the warming can. He jumps in himself, and a little water spills over. He grins devilishly at me, and when I open my mouth with the immediate frown of disapproval, he points to the window where Gohan has a little smile on his lips.

I take a sigh, "Well, while I'm in here…" How can you do anything but love him?

The Cooker of your Food, the Perfect Wife:

I'm walking in to town today because we don't have a car, still and I don't have any eggs and I can't wait for delivery, and because I kind of like the little path to the village. It's simple and filled with beauty.

I saw this butterfly flutter past me and stop on a tree stump. I crouched down to watch it.

It reminds me of dance to end all time, or the type of dance that would end all time. Astonishing in its beauty and horrifying in its truth does the butterfly sit still, patient and mute. Glimmering in the frosty sky, I am left wondering why beauty and destruction waltz perfectly in the flittering of a butterfly's creased and broken wings.

Come to think of it, it's really half dead and half alive, and despite its gorgeous resplendence melancholy parades itself as hope fades of revival. Life will never again be as it should for the creature, and with that knowledge, withering and wincing does it fall.

The disaster of impending death oppresses us all. Butterfly, butterfly, with half a wing crushed, floating about the sinking sky, soon you will be dust.

In a few simple words:

You don't love me like I love you.

I hang my head in frustration and shame. I'm shaking my head wildly, trying to stop thinking about you but I think I know why I've been feeling sick.

"You mean Dad left you with a baby?" Gohan chirped earlier. He was excited to know he was going to have a little brother. And that's how he put it, like it was a gift from Gokou to have another mouth to feed.

I guess I'm going to town to pick up a pregnancy test, but I'm starting to feel sick and furious. Enough with morbid thoughts and self-pity, but how can one help but sit down, and look around, and think my poor heart.

"I wanted to grow old with you, this was my crime! Why didn't you just say you didn't love me anymore? Why didn't you just say you didn't love me at all? Why didn't you just leave me, break up with me or tell me it's over? Why would you just go without a word like that? Did you think that I was so fragile that I couldn't live if you told me you didn't know what marriage was when we were kids? Did you think that I was so naïve that I couldn't sense that this is not love? …Did you really think that you'd give me a son as something to do while you were gone, like a project?"

This is a broken heart that cannot be mended. What happens when you marry someone and the love is still unrequited? You cannot make someone feel a certain way about you. You can only affect how you feel about the way they feel about you, and it would be in your best interest to not think anything about it at all if you're the wife of Son Goku.

"Really Goku, I'd kill to get inside of your head for a minute and see how you rationalize these things, and what you really think of me."

My voice is gathering, "Do you really think that's all I am, a mother and wife? Do you not think I had dreams and goals that didn't involve you that I had to set aside for Gohan? I never expected you to be a romantic, but I'd hoped you'd have just a little bit of respect for me because I am your wife. I don't know if I'm angrier that you left in general, or about what you've done to Gohan, or now this!"

Just for the record, I think you handled the whole thing poorly.

"Now I feel like we're a little crinkled leaf. Once we were alive, but now we're just dead and fragmented, because even though you always saw yourself as some singular being dashing about the universe and saving everything, I'll have dinner out on time and your laundry done!"

"Maybe I'm not the same person I was when we married, Gokou. Maybe I got boring or stuffy or old. Maybe I grew up. But you? You're not the same person you were when we married either, and the worst part is I love you so much that no matter how furious I am the emotion that bursts forth is still the desire to see you again."

I stand up, wiping my face. I realize that I've been talking to myself for a long while. I need to get to the store. I need to get home soon. It's getting late and the sun is starting to hang low in the sky.

Sighing Resignation (I've given in, and I know I will never see you again, and I am alright with that):

I've returned home now, and I'm making dinner. Gohan smiles and sets the table. He's so sweet and quiet these days, and I'm proud that he's about to start attending a private school in the city.

It's time to clean up before bed, and Goten wants me to read him a story. Goten's gotten out of the bath, and he's snuggling in bed. He always likes stories about Gokou, so I tuck him in and sit by his side. This is evidence enough that when Gohan watches Goten, his favorite topic is their father. I wonder why we have to live like this, why we have to act like he's on vacation or a trip, and how odd it is that we've passed this on to my smiling little son. "Not too snug, Mommy?"

"It's not too snug, Goten." I say, showing that I still wrap an arm around me. He smiles and leans against my breast. "Now, a long time ago your daddy and I went on an adventure to find a very wise old man. My house was on fire, and I needed someone to put it out. And your father? Well, he was so strong and brave that the old man said that Gokou could do it all by himself. I didn't know if your dad could do it, because he was a scrawny little kid at the time, but soon enough the flames were out and he saved the day. Your dad's always been like that. Saving the day, being the hero."

By the time I am finished, Goten is snoring and sprawled out on his bed. I smile, fix his leg and hand within his sheets, give him a kiss on the forehead, and watch him for a moment. He looks exactly like Gokou. He's so beautiful it hurts to look at him. Truly he is sort of like a gift, like a little miniature version of Gokou that Gokou sent to me so we would have something to remember him by, something to hold on to.

I pick up Goten's laundry basket, and as I close the door I hear grunting noises coming from my other son's room. His door is cracked just slightly, and so I move forward slowly so not to be caught spying on this intimate moment.

I'm watching Gohan do poses, thinking aloud, "This doesn't sound the way that it did when Dad would say things like this at all…" when he thinks nobody is there. He's so concentrated on berating himself for not being Gokou that he doesn't even sense my presence.

It breaks my heart.

-CL