Hiroshima in the Morning

  When we were apart, Brian did everything. He refused all help; he made cookies for the school bake sale instead of buying them like the rest of the working parents; he cooked for the children and my parents every night of their month-long visit instead of getting takeout. Instead of doing what I begged him to: go out, go away for the weekend, take a photography course, try to relax. He hollowed himself out, inspired by his friends’ comments that he was “a saint” to let me go to Japan, rehearsing the shorter fact that he was letting me do this. It was his gift to me, and the harder it was to give, the more proof that he loved me; the more synergy he could create—however postponed and long distance—to bind us together when we were reunited.

  It was a gift. It was for me. But in its giving, both of us are miserable. There’s no gesture I can make to match it, not even giving up my interviews. He has no faith, not in me, not in my promises. Anything I do for myself now just throws his sacrifices in his face.

  Even when he’s asleep—as they all are now, my childhood sweetheart on his back, arms out like Christ ascending, a small boy tucked into each crook—Brian’s cheeks are sunken and his eyes bruised by his long ordeal. While I was in the shower, playing these same, terrible grooves in hope of an answer, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory folded itself around his exhausted thumb and in less than five minutes, the three of them lost the bedtime story and drifted away. The thing I do not forget, cannot forget, amid Brian’s distress and the boys’ wild sally forth on their saucers of need, is that I love them. I chose them.

  “Brian . . . ” I say into the telephone. There must be some way to make Ami understand. “He’s so tired and he’s had the kids for so long . . . ”

  “Of course he can come too,” she says. She means to the Noh performance. In true Japanese fashion, she has heard my words, but more than that, she’s heard my silence and she understands this is serious. While I’ve been running through my mind, she has been spinning a plan. Has he seen Tomo-no-ura? she asks. Of course, there’s been no time, not yet. But he could go there, while I am doing my interview. He could rent a bike—it’s a beautiful fishing village with narrow streets on the Inland Sea, so easy to navigate—and of course someone else will watch the children. She will fix it. It is set then. He will love it. He will love Japan.

  I can’t suggest this to Brian. I know what Ami’s saying to me, that I have put her in an awkward situation, that she will lose her credibility if I say no. I know the reputation she has been building with me is important to her work as a peace activist, and that she believes these interviews will save the world. This is what she’s telling me, with her force-fulness. I am being squeezed on both sides and I don’t know if there’s any leeway on either. I know something else too, even as I take in my sleeping family: there is yet another interview I’ve been trying to arrange, the most important interview of my time here, and I have recently received an email that it might come through.

  I can’t fight this. I don’t know what to do, except to do nothing.

  “Why don’t you call back in the morning?” I ask her. “You can say hello to Brian. He is so looking forward to meeting you.”

  BACK STAGE AT THE NOH THEATER

  FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE show time, and Ami has slipped me behind the great stage curtain, where we can watch her father getting ready for his role. The first play is the story of the moon princess who comes down to earth to bathe in a pool and the fisherman who steals her robe. Ami’s father plays the goddess; he is seated in a wide chair, draped in a kimono and hakama of gold and orange. The costume, deliberately bulky, is being tweaked into perfect drapes by the dressers who are helping him get into his role. The fabrics swirl in a cacophony of colors and patterns; the final, clashing layer of orange and gold is perhaps deliberately too brilliant to hold the human eye.

  If Brian was here, would he see it as I do? Would the Japanese indifference to coordinated clothing that’s evident daily on the street of Hiroshima flicker into his head? This is joy for me, crazy as it seems—these fleeting glimpses of sense that pass through whenever I’m not trying to make sense. When I first came to Japan, I would have analyzed this clothing preference, written a little paragraph on it; just before Brian came, I would have experienced it and let it go. Though I can guess, I’ll never know which reaction Brian would have to this. We couldn’t bring the children, so Brian wouldn’t come.

  The goddess ignores us and the fussing dressers. He is gazing at his reflection in the full-length mirror that’s been placed in front of him. On his head, an elaborate female hair-piece, and over it, in front of his face, a spray of ornamental gold. The goddess’s mask is set quite high—her forehead above his, which leaves quite a fat lower jaw protruding and gives his silhouette a hunched appearance.

  Ami’s father is still, absorbing his reflection. No effort has been made to hide this man inside his character, and yet he’s disguised just the same. This effect is noticeable on the stage, but up close, enough to see his pores and jowls, something I have come to sense about Japan suddenly comes into focus. I remember, when I first arrived here, being preoccupied with opposites and lies. How could we claim one thing, yet be another? Americans view ‘duality’ as deception: they pride themselves on being transparent, on being one thing—only and always—and turning that “true” face to the world. The Japanese, though, show their allegiance to society, and their respect, by being different in the outside world than they would be at home. In Japan, dichotomy is commonplace, and yet it is less like division, and more like addition. We can be both indirect and forceful; victim and savior; mother, yet child. We prize the Noh dancer because we can see the essence of both creatures—the heavy body moving lightly—and we understand the achievement.

  His feet make her step mincing. His fan flickers with her grace. We want to see his skill beneath her face and hold onto both at the same time.

  Him and her, simultaneous. Both visible. Both real.

  CONSULTING WITH DOCTORS

  ON THE DAY BEFORE, we tiptoe. When we walk together to the train station to buy his tickets to Tomo-no-ura, to get film for his camera, I point out the stairs to the platforms and confirm the number of the one where he will wait in the morning. Brian is more like himself today, the former intrepid traveler. I write down a few basic questions for him in Japanese—jitensha wa . . . doko desuka?—so he can rent a bicycle to get around and he mutters them, testing and tasting the words. I don’t know how Ami did it, but he seems excited to be going out on his own. He has decided to be happy, to enjoy Japan, and if the day means that I will also be enjoying a different, separate Japan, he seems to have accepted that for the moment.

  We do not voice the fact that I am doing an interview when I said I would not. We do not declare it the last one.

  And on that morning, Ian wakes up just as Brian is leaving and comes into my room to snuggle under my futon. We lie together and look through the gauzy curtains to the river. I give him a hug and he whispers: “I love you, Mommy.” Then turns his head and pukes all over my pillow.

  The front door is opening. I wait until it closes.

  The interview is not until noon. The interval between vomiting is getting longer, but Ian can’t hold water down. He’s so tired he will curl up on the linoleum floor of his own volition, which is a good thing since I can’t put him in the tatami rooms or under the quilted and borrowed kotatsu in case he vomits again, so I lay a towel down on the linoleum, cover him with blankets, and pull the small space heater over to him.

  He sleeps.

  I think.

  Dylan devours two pre-manufactured pancakes from 7-Eleven, one squashed chocolate pudding manju shaped like a fish, a banana, and toast.

  I could live without this interview if I had to. My child is sick, and my work is much less important that he is. But . . . the boys have shown a great capacity to puke and recover within hours. Ian will spend his day sleeping. And Brian is gone.

  I circle this dawning conclusion, poised to cast it off if it’s r
evealed to be too self absorbed. But it sits there. Inert. No one is pressing me, or angry to be picking up my slack, so why am I even questioning whether I should drop the interview for a bad bite of chicken or a touch of the flu?

  I am losing the novel. Once my story haunted me, but now I’ve handed it over, tried to buy peace with it, even though I know it’s not the right currency and peace cannot be bought. I ignored the bombing once, and I am doing it again, numbly putting it off to the side until my life is more stable, focusing instead on our travel schedule, waiting for that future day—“when nothing else is going on”—and hoping that I’ve already gathered everything I will need then. But what if I haven’t? What if my memory fades, just as theirs has or through some other, more ominous manner? What if I lose myself, and the book dies? I used to think I owed this book to my Aunt Molly. Then I owed it to the hibakusha, who tell their stories so that their loved ones will not have died in vain.

  But now, I want it back. I miss my ghosts.

  I call Ami and begin to broach the subject of the vomit. She’s the one who will stay with the boys—they’ve met her and it seemed to be the best choice—so I’ve asked another friend to do my translation. She assures me she will come, no problem; she has friends with children, she has borrowed lots of toys and books—so many things to do at my house for the afternoon. Don’t worry about the kids, don’t worry about Harry Potter, the movie they will now no longer go to, don’t worry that she’ll get sick too . . . By the time Ami arrives, Ian has not thrown up in hours, though he’s not eaten anything in hours either, and from his prone position, he even seems mildly interested in her wealth of goodies.

  Are you sure this is okay?

  Of course. Look at Dylan.

  Dylan is already tossing his way through the pile of books, looking at the drawings. I promise to be back in two and a half hours.

  Better make that three.

  Dr. Yamada has a lot to say. So does his friend, Dr. Yoshida. So does Dr. Suzuki, the sister of another colleague who they call to join the interview about an hour into my visit. My translator is gamely trying to follow all three of them, sometimes in two overlapping conversations, when yet another of their friends drops by and she is a hibakusha too. The new arrival has brought fresh bread, which allows me a break to call and check on Ian (he seems okay, sitting up, holding down a bit of water but no food). I am an hour overdue, and Ami has to leave, but again, this is no problem, she will just take the boys to Kimiko’s house.

  Kimiko knows they are sick and doesn’t care. She wants to have a pizza party.

  It’s a balancing act, but it seems to be working. The tape is rolling, and the discussion is still going in the other room. It’s difficult to follow the simultaneous conversations, to decide which one to participate in and try to direct, and I’m not even sure who’s saying what since it’s all being channeled through my translator.

  The windows were smashed, so they hung straw mats over the holes to try to keep out the flies. There were patients everywhere: on the floor, even on the ground outside without a futon to lie on, but it was so hot it didn’t matter. Everyone was hurt, doctors and patients alike. I can see Dr. Yamada extracting glass fragments from his own body without anesthesia, but the image is gone before I can ask how many, from where, and whether it hurt. I can’t smell the cremation, because no one else could—they are numb to most sensory input within days—but Dr. Yoshida is digging pits and piling bodies, and there’s a bonfire of burning flesh just outside the building day and night.

  The stories are flooding in from every direction, and I am catching what I can, absorbing what I can, trusting the tape recorder to catch the overflow: there is a clerk directing patients like traffic—he wears a headband and carries a sword, but was he a clerk at the hospital or somewhere else—and why the sword? A family heirloom saved from a falling building? Protection because the war is not yet over? Insanity? We are moving in and out of time and detail in a whirl that I have missed so much: the beds were iron frame; even before the bombing, hospitals had no emergency admission system, so people who were suddenly ill or injured had to be taken to the doctor in a two-wheeled, hand drawn cart. If only I had more time, or I could speak to each of them separately, then I could exhaust each story, but I am out of practice and this is the greatest challenge I have faced. I can feel their narratives fragmenting, shattering into a million points of view. I can’t keep up, and yet, I am transcending, being restored: they are spinning the story back to life, painting the rainbow of visions and interpretations that remind me that the truth is somewhere, not in the details but in the heart of it, if I can just blur my focus and feel. They are returning my novel to me, and I am just so happy to be here.

  After four hours, I can’t stay any longer, although we’re eating bread and cake and no one is moving to leave. I have to excuse myself due to a sick child. Dr. Suzuki is a pediatrician, and very concerned to hear about Ian since there’s a severe flu going around and she has been hospitalizing children for dehydration. It’s just as well that I didn’t know about the severe flu; just as well I found out from a pediatrician who has offered free medication if I follow her to her clinic. So into the streets we go on two bicycles to get suppositories for the boys because of course, when kids are puking, they can’t hold medicine in their stomachs so it has to go the other way. It means another twenty minutes, and it’s just as well I don’t know Ian has assured Kimiko that he can eat pizza, is in the process of eating three pieces as I ride, and is preparing to throw up in a spectacular manner in her genkan when I arrive.

  I am a bad mother. I am a sloppy researcher. But at least I have been to the doctor.

  “I went back to the hospital after the war ended, on the seventeenth of August. The ceiling had collapsed, the walls were broken down, the window glass was smashed into pieces. Chunks of rubble and plaster were gathered and put out of the way, but the facilities were completely destroyed. On the ground, just in front of the hospital building, a huge pile of dead bodies were being cremated.

  “That was eleven days after the bombing. There were still patients everywhere, inside and outside the building. Where there were benches or any kind of furniture remaining, they were turned into beds, but the rest were lying on the floor. Since it was summer, they did not need futons. But the maggots—I was amazed by the great number of maggots and flies. On bodies, on food, on whatever you had. You could see the maggots moving inside people’s wounds.

  “I waded through them. Everyone helped. Soldiers, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, clerks, anyone who survived and could move. The doctors took charge in turn but there was no medicine, no medical supplies. People were asking for help—some were shouting, but in most cases, there were only low groans.

  “It was unbearable.”

  —Seventy-six-year-old former

  surgical intern, survivor

  NAMES ON A LEAF

  WE ARE ON THE ROAD, on my first trip away from Hiroshima that has nothing to do with my novel. We have planned it for Brian, to add to the growing bag of film that he started in the fishing village and ease his displeasure that I left my sick son alone with a babysitter while he was gone. At some unrecorded mile marker on the Seto Ohashi Bridge, we entered uncharted territory, and I crossed the blessed threshold between tour guide and tourist. We are now on the northeast corner of the island of Shikoku, sanuki udon country, land of thick noodles and thatched roofs and vine bridges; it’s the first place we have visited that I’ve never seen and, therefore, am in no way responsible for. Here, where there are no longer any expectations, and none of the ideals I’ve been scrambling to meet, we can start over and encounter Japan on equal footing. We are heading into the heart of the island, toward Kompira-san, a shrine that sits eight hundred steps above the sleepy, traditional village of Kotohira.

  Faith is returning, fueled from unexpected sources. At the ryokan in Kotohira, my Japanese is not as spotty as it seems: our hostess shows us the furo with no long explanation about how we
are supposed to wash before getting into it; her husband smiles and helps us find some palatable medicine when Dylan throws up without warning on his shoes. All of this without the panic I first encountered in the J-phone shop when I got to Hiroshima, without the panic I felt walking into the okonomiyaki building to find I was unable to order a meal. Now, I can tell our host we would like the usual Japanese breakfast and he believes me. A bit of rice and sweet rolled omelet for the boys (plus a leftover doughnut from the car), but this is Brian’s first wa choshoku. He is game. We’re the only foreigners in their dining room; the boys chime itadakimasu before eating, and Brian lifts a cradled cup in his palm to be served tea. The boys seem to view the deliberate array of food on the trays in front of them as a game, not as weird purple and yellow things. Everything goes down—rice, soup, pickled vegetables, sweet beans, umeboshi—from Brian’s tray and the kids’. Brian even eats the stewed fish, and if he passes the little fermented ones my way, I still breathe a little deeper and smile more broadly at each bite. Had I asked him what he wanted for breakfast, or did I, as in my memory I will imagine it, make the decision and hope? The boys challenge their father, pointing to tiny fingerlets of dried fish on their own trays and he feigns impatience—who do they think he is that he would turn up his nose at a bit of fish skin?—but with his own smile, and I love him for it.

  THERE ARE EIGHTY-EIGHT temples in Shikoku, or at least there is an eighty-eight temple walk, which takes two months and is supposed to bestow on the pilgrims who make the journey the ability to overcome the eighty-eight evil human passions defined in Buddhist doctrine. These days, the pilgrims often go by bus. Kompira-san is one of these sites, and the wide, granite steps to the top of Mt. Zozu are peopled with chipper folks equipped with hats and walking sticks; if you didn’t bring your own, the souvenir shops and udon factories have stands full of them outside their doors—they are free loaners, and an incentive to stop on the way down to purchase omiyage or eat lunch. The shops step up with the stairs for nearly half the climb: it is a terraced mall where masks and snacks begin to run together. The path breaks into occasional plateaus; for all the talk of an arduous climb—and if 785 steps is not enough, there are actually more than five hundred more to get to the true end of the path at the inner shrine—there are so many levels with temples and halls and even a stable with horses, that no one breaks a sweat.