by Hiromi Goto
Home life is something you have to cart around with you forever. No Freudian shit for me, but the home life stuff gets tattooed on to you something awful. Or something good. Just depends. Hysteria or history can become one and the same. Passed on from daughter to daughter to daughter to daughter to… The list is endless and the tattoo spreads. You’re born and things stick to you. Some fall off, but most you carry around for the rest of your life. Let me be old and foolish when I grow up.
NAOE
The wind blows from the west, the west, the west, again. Shrieking from the throats, the very teeth of the monstrosities they call mountains. From the bowels of the sea, the moisture sucked onto the jagged peaks, only dust left to blow across this prairie bowl. But sometimes, the wind swirls from the south and takes an easterly curve. I can smell the compost, then, from the compost barn. If they are turning the compost over, the smell is ammonia acrid. I have never been there, to the compost barn. I have never seen the mushrooms growing. I have never left this chair.
Keiko used to come back from the barns smelling like soil and moist. Like birth. I used to press her clothes to my face and breathe deeply, smell-taste her day. Warm semen smell of the first crop of mushrooms, wet wet peat moss, the tepid coffee she drank at 10:00, the stink of formaldehyde she used to sterilize her buckets. I can see these things with a scent in my nostrils, a passing taste on my tongue.
Easy for an old woman to sit in a chair and talk and talk. Easier, still, not to say anything at all. I could nod and smile and watch Sesame Street so I can learn French as well as the English people don’t think I already know. Bonjour! I’ll say and everyone will be amazed. Je m’appelle Naoe Kiyokawa. Ha! If an old woman sits in a chair and never gets out and talks and talks and talks, don’t ignore her. She might be saying something that will change the colour of your eyes.
Dai Makoto. His name was Makoto Dai. Is, I suppose, he’s still alive, so I hear. I had to put Kiyokawa aside, the name to flow through my brother’s blood, to the child they never conceived. Dai Naoe. The words written on the marriage document made it so. Lucky for me I changed my name before I came to English. The spelling different, but the weight of the word in sound would have been burden enough to plague me. Naoe die.
An easy thing to change a name. All it takes is ink and a piece of paper. A whole dimension on a family tree erased when one name is dropped and another assumed. All those mothers and daughters and mothers and daughters swallowed into the names of men. It would make us tear our hair, beat our breast, if we thought about it long enough. Enough of this tree nonsense! Mattaku! Leave it already, I say. Who cares what your father’s father did and who was given what honour. Honour dies with the person who earned it. Don’t leave me a bowl of rice in a golden shrine, don’t waste oranges on my memory. Bone crumbles. Flesh melts. If a few words I uttered were to echo in someone’s mind, then that is enough.
Makoto was not a bad man, and I did not despise him, but he was weak and foolish. He was not completely to blame, of course. I was proud, proud as only a daughter of a once rich man could be. And he was an easy one to torment.
“Naoe,” he called. “Sake.”
I heated the sake until it boiled over and the alcohol evaporated. Until it turned as sour as vinegar.
“Naoe, this sake is overheated. Be careful next time.”
Next time I barely heated it at all, as tepid as cooling urine.
“Naoe, it’s too cool this time. You must have more care.”
I overboiled it again. Bottle after bottle, I never said a word, served vinegar and urine until he lay on the tatami seeping sake tears, begging me to get it right, while Keiko watched with round black eyes.
“Okāsan, why is Otōsan crying?”
Nothing. I said nothing. Piled small bowls, dishes, tokkuri, ochoko, ivory ohashi, cluttered to the kitchen. Too tired, too angry to heat water to wash them, only left to harden in the tub, scurry of cockroach, one cockroach seen meant ten unseen, Keiko tugging my sleeve, my obi, Makoto crying so weak like Otōsan, Keiko tugging, and me saying nothing nothing NOTHING. I threw the futon down from the cupboards and made up our blankets. Keiko lay between us. Her Otōsan weeping and I, I was a silent katamari of hate.
Such a great anger I had. I hated for so many years. Am I angry still, I wonder and stretch my hand to feel.
It’s sadly unfortunate that I was too angry to enjoy sex when I had it. Too bitter, too proud to fall into my flesh. Long after the divorce, I still wouldn’t let anyone touch the surface of my skin. Not even Keiko. Now I pay, I suppose. Eighty-five years old and horny as a musk-drenched cat. The only human contact I have now is when Keiko washes my hair. When Murasaki sometimes hugs me. I love them and their touch makes my old heart almost pain with emotion, but there is nothing for this dull beating ache I find between my thighs. Most unseemly, to be this age and horny, but it is funny after all. This muttering, old, lamb-haired Obāchan wearing elastic-waisted polyester pants, brown collarless shirt with pink flowers, grey cardigan and heel imprinted slippers. Just pulling out the waistband with one quavering hand and the other just about to slip into cotton briefs, toying with the idea of—
“Obāchan! What are you doing?!”
I release the elastic and it snaps back to my wrinkled stomach with a flat smack and Keiko standing in the doorway with her mouth open. I start to mutter an excuse, but Keiko’s expression, my elastic pants, my horniness, my age, I start laughing and laughing until the old muscles in my stomach start to ache. Ahhh Keiko, it is funny after all.
“Sam, I think Obāchan’s finally gone senile,” Keiko hisses. Funny how the dark can carry sound so lightly. Even above the whistling creak of the seams in this house. Squeak of bedsprings. Shinji’s faced the wall.
“You’ve been saying that for the last ten years,” he mutters. He’s tired after loading compost all day. The smell was especially acrid this afternoon.
“She was doing something strange today,” Keiko whispers. She’s lying flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling.
“So what?” Shinji hisses. “Kay, I’m tired. I don’t want to hear about your mother tonight, all right? Just let me get some sleep.”
“She started to stick her hands inside her pants, but I caught her in the act and she stopped and started laughing,” Keiko continues, ignoring him.
“Really?” says Shinji, rustling blankets and the creak of bedsprings. Now he’s facing Keiko, suddenly interested and not at all disgusted. “I wonder why?”
“I told you! She’s going senile. I read somewhere that when some people go senile they start soiling their pants like babies and smearing their feces all over themselves, or even eating it!” Keiko, all horrified and disgusted. “I think I’ll call Silver Springs Lodge and ask about the waiting list. I just can’t deal with feces.”
“Maybe her crotch is itchy,” Shinji suggests.
There is a gurgle in my chest, up my throat, and at the back of my mouth. I bite my blankets to muffle the sound but snort through my nose instead.
“Sam! Obāchan’s choking!” Flung blankets, bata bata of bare feet on hardwood floors, sudden white light, and squeeze my eyes shut, still snorting through my nose. Shinji pounds my bony back and Keiko is trying to pry my eyes open with her fingers, why on earth for? And I unclench my teeth and the blankets fall out and I laugh and laugh and laugh.
I am tired, some days more than others, and today I am tired weary. Not even enough energy to mutter, the words seep out like breath. Bury me not, on this blown prairie.
It is hair day.
Keiko is moving one of the kitchen chairs into the laundry room. It is the most atatakai room in the house because of the heat from the dryer turning, the sun through the window. If it is not summer, parched and gasping, it is an endless winter of tiny ice crystals crinkling through the seams in the walls. Gets into my knees, my toes and slows the blood. But it is atatakai in the laundry room and my blood does not freeze clumpy inside my wrinkled veins. I’m not so proud that I can�
��t enjoy the pleasure of someone’s fingers in my hair. I’m not so stubborn now that I can’t fall into my flesh. The wind will howl, but a body needs to look after her hair sometimes. Keiko doesn’t say anything at all, and I only have to hum, watching her bustle from my chair in the hall. I can see all the way down through the kitchen into the laundry room. I can even see the washroom door. She says nothing out loud, but she moves the shampoo and conditioner to the large sink and the soft-nubbed brush. I put my two hands on the seat of my chair, beside my bony thighs, to push up my hollow buttocks. Whooosh, I breathe, and lean forward in a stoop. My back is bent and my belly is pressed up against my spine. Eyes spin, then settle. My slippered feet are stiff with cold from being still for hours. Or decades.
I wander from my chair, from my hall, with the scritch sluff of dust between my slippers and the hardwood floor. Down the hall, into the kitchen where I can smell stewing pork and boiled potatoes. I say nothing to Keiko, only hum softly between my lips. Gawa gawa gawa. . . .Through the kitchen and finally into the laundry room. Ahhh, she’s not forgotten the yellow stool for my legs. It’s most unbearable for a body’s legs to swing above the floor, all the weight hanging from the knee, blood pooling in the feet like stones. I creak back, into an unfamiliar chair, warm hum of the dryer turning, soothing. The atatakai sun on my face. My feet on the stool. I close my eyes, the pleasure of touch magnified when I feel without my eyes.
Keiko’s soft, middle-aged belly leans into my shoulder. Warm and soft, like mantō, I feel my stringy muscles loosen their hold on my bones. Her belly absorbs my pain. She softly rubs my brow with her palm and runs her fingers back into my scalp. Keiko’s fingers in my hair, through my hair, on the tired skin of my head. Ahhhhhhhh. She rubs small powerful circles with her fingers and thumbs, the tension rising up, off my head, floating upward like angels to heaven. Fingers strong and firm, pressing thumb in that spot where my neck and head meet. The press, ease, press, ease, of fingers of thumbs through my hair, on scalp, on aching scalp, slow rotation. My temples, slowly, her fingertips are strong, her touch so soft, down, across aching eyes, softpress my eyelids, down nose, around cheekbones, and finally, easing, easing my overtaxed mouth. She rubs and rubs my overworked jawbones, so tough, so stubborn, they could knock down whole cities if someone were strong enough to wield them. Keiko has finished massaging and she wipes my face with a hot towel, so that when the heat evaporates, it takes with it any remaining aches.
I lean my head back, into the sink. Rest my head on the towel Keiko has placed on the rim. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. The steady rush of water, Keiko checking the temperature on her wrist, warm water streaming, not a drop on my face or ears. Just warm water, moisture filling the tiny laundry room and the scent of Keiko’s clothes through my closed eyes. Snap of shampoo cap. Green smell of apples. She warmed the shampoo so it is not sudden and cold on my scalp, and lather begins to fill her hands, her fingers easing the itches from my skin, my pores. Keiko cups one palm beneath the back curve of my head, holds the weight in her hand. With her right hand, she rubs vigorously, with the pads of her fingers and a hint of fingernails. Not scoring the skin like an amateur, but a vigorous, generous scrubbing. From my hairline to the base of my neck, she scrubs side to side and backwards at the same time, her soft belly, a pillow for my shoulder. She doesn’t miss a single itch and she finds for me and washes away itches I don’t know I have. Warm water streaming away the soapy suds, not a drop on my face or ears. My eyes still closed. Squeak of clean hair. Conditioner, like warmed heavy cream in my silver curls. Keiko works it in with her fingers first, slowly and carefully, then the soft-nubbed brush. Soften skin. My body limp and moisture filling my skin, I don’t know if I can ever open my eyes again. Keiko rinses again, water hotter now warming my head, my face, my neck, the heat and moisture embracing my body, my pleasure, the atatakai sun.
My hair glows. Filaments from a silk worm.
The winter is hard on my winter moths. The sugar water, the canned peaches, not enough. Each night a few more die, a few more fall from the folds in my clothes. The brown patterns on their wings fades and the fur falls from their shrunken bodies. “Thank you, Naoe, for the peaches. Thank you for the sugar water,” they whisper. I smile. This dying is a natural thing. And their eggs are somewhere, hidden like treasure.
My sleep is a place uncluttered of dreams. Who was that silly Chinese philosopher? The one who fell asleep gazing at a butterfly and dreamt that he was a butterfly dreaming that he was a philosopher. And when he woke up, he didn’t know if he was a philosopher or a butterfly. What nonsense. This need to differentiate. Why, he was both, of course. Thoughts impress on soft skin and a taste can linger for days. Words tumble from my mouth and change shape and size. They grow arms and legs and crawl about in the dust by my feet, pick up dried moths with curious fingers and scrabble at my pant legs. I feed them with stories and they munch and munch. They grow bigger and stronger and walk out the door to wander over this earth.
The slow heaving shudders of this planet we call chikyū. This spinning mote, again, circling the sun, always circles spinning ever. The pattern has been set long before the sister and brother, Izanami and Izanagi, left their celestial home to create the world. Japan. Yes, Japan was the world, a long time ago when people called what they could see with their eyes, the mountains, the trees, lakes and stones. The very soil beneath their feet. That was where their world began and where their world ended. Japan. Island to itself and don’t leave your home. Easy to be convinced of your strength if there is nothing to compare it to. So much pride on such a little island, nowhere to go except to blow outward. No room for change except through death. And death. The cycle repeats itself. I sit here now, so far away and look back with eyes that see. At least now I see with some distance so my eyes have room to focus. Certainly, I read the newspaper, heard talk on the radio. Ara-raaaa. I said. Ara-maaaa. There will be war. Not knowing what it meant.
We lived in Manshū and Shina for ten years, Makoto and I, and Keiko too when she was born. Never returning to Japan in all that time, only once, for Keiko’s birth then back again, finally when war broke out. Ten years and I never learned to speak Mandarin or Cantonese or any other dialect. I stayed behind the walls they built around the cities, the towns, to protect the people who lived there from the people who lived without. Makoto building bridges across rivers and chasms. He even convinced himself that he was working for the betterment of the Chinese people. To aid in their development. Stupid fool. The bridges were for Japanese soldiers to march across to kill their inland cousins. And I was the stupidest fool of all. I never questioned why the schools were made separate, why Chinese and Japanese were not taught together. Why Chinese children had to learn Japanese, but Japanese children were not taught the words of the land they lived in. Why there were servants in our modest homes while there were people starving outside the walls of the city. The words of one woman would not have turned the marching boots of men, but the pain of not having spoken, of not bothering to ask questions, still aches inside me now. When I became the wife of Makoto Dai. Bitterness turned inward and I didn’t care for the things around me. Not even Keiko.
Winter in Manshū, and the wind. Snow like salt and the sting of cold chapping red hands and feet. Breath shattering, trying to light the stove, to cook rice, urine retreating far up the bladder, too cold to come out. We were more privileged than most of the Chinese people. Our home was modest, but we could still afford house help. We had a boy who lived with us. Fetched winter-wrinkled daikon, limp hakusai and eggs from the market. Made soup. He woke up early and knocked the rim of ice from the top of the water tank and washed our sheets, our underclothes in water still slushy thick with ice. Ironed our clothes and folded blankets and all this while Keiko was strapped to his back with strips of cloth. I huddled beside the tiny stove and mended clothes until my fingers split with dry and cold. When Makoto was away, building his bridges, the boy sat at the table with me to eat. He told me stories and I could almost understand.
“It is the responsibility of the men in developed countries to aid their underdeveloped brothers,” Makoto stated, filled with sour sake and self deceit. The boy poured the soup carefully.
“My work here is done. We’re moving farther south in the spring to build bridges across the whole country! The bridges will be a symbol of good will between our people and the Chinese.” Makoto, so proud and foolish. More fool me, for not uttering words of doubt. For not asking for another truth. His bridges echoed with the marching steps of thousands upon thousands of Japanese soldiers. They crossed his bridges of good will to slaughter their inland cousins.
We left the boy and his soup and his stories in the almost spring, and travelled by train to Shina. His name. Did I ever know his name? Did he ever tell me or did I never learn it? Filthy black soot seeping into pores and dust speckling against the door. Black soot and dust. Dust and dust and wind and dust! Will this wind never cease? Will this dust ever settle? Keiko wedges Kleenex into the cracks beneath the door, but the wind whispers in somehow. Cold eddies around my ankles. It makes a body wonder how dust can fly even in the middle of winter. Air so dry the lining of my nostrils split and crack. Bleed. My lips, two scars upon my face. Still, the words, they come.
“Obāchan, would you clean my ears?”
I just hum and rise from my chair, shuffle to the living room to sit on one end of the couch. The sunny side. Keiko’s face relaxes, the tight muscles beside her mouth lose their ache and her lips look soft and full. She lies on her side and rests her head on my bony lap. She hands me the mimikaki and I peer into her ear.
“Ara — ippai aru janai no. Yoku kikoeta ne.”
“I know,” Keiko says, her voice husky, “do it softly.”
When the wind swirls from the south, takes an easterly curve, it brings with it a scent of rich moistness. The dust does not fly where the mushrooms are growing. The air hangs heavy with wetness. Shinji comes home with mushrooms seeping from the pores in his clothes. The scent, so fushigi, so mysterious.