Chorus of Mushrooms

by Hiromi Goto

  “What smell?” I asked. “Can I have half of your Wagon Wheel?”

  She broke the Wagon Wheel, the marshmallow stretching a bit when she pulled the halves apart. She gave me the bigger half and nibbled on the biscuit, licking the chocolate away.

  “That smell. Your house smell.”

  “What house smell?” I said anxiously. We didn’t eat foreign food at all. Only meat and carrots and potatoes like everyone else. And Obāchan hadn’t sneaked any squid for months.

  “It smells like warm toes or something.”

  “Is it gross?” I asked. Clean warm toes or dirty ones?

  “No, not gross,” she thought, picking at the marshmallow with her pinkie. “Just funny.”

  “I can’t smell it,” I nervously glanced around my house with new eyes. Strange to me for the first time.

  “Don’t worry, you smell something all the time and it’s like not smelling anything at all. I don’t know what my house smells like,” she smiled reassuringly.

  “Potato steam.”

  “Is it gross?” she asked. Curious.

  “No, it’s just potato steam.”

  “Do you want to play outside?” she licked chocolate smears from her fingertips.

  “Sure.”

  I wandered in my house after that, my nose a finger pointing. And really smelled for the first time. I didn’t want to believe that our house had a smell. And Mom was so clean all the time. From cranny to closet I scurried about, hands on my knees and all hunched over. Obāchan said,

  “Kora, Murasaki-chan. Nani o shiteru no ka na?” as I scuttled to and fro, from kitchen to hallway to living room closet.

  “Not now, Obāchan, I’m looking for something.” I crept back and forth, then crawled to my grandmother. Sniffed cautiously around her ankles.

  “Ara ma ha! ha! ha! ha!” she laughed. “Mattaku inu to sokkuri! Nani o isshōkenmei sagashiteru no?”

  No, it wasn’t her. Obāchan only whiffed slightly of dust and the sweet smell of chinook. Warm toes, warm toes, nose and nose and nose warm toes. Some lingering odour from the laundry room. I poked in the laundry hamper, filled with Dad’s work clothes. And the waft that rose around me. The clamour of mushrooms growing.

  I was horrified. Something so insidious tattooed into the walls of our home, the upholstery in our car, the very pores in our skin. We had been contaminated without ever knowing. For all that Mom had done to cover up our Oriental tracks, she’d overlooked the one thing that people always unconsciously register in any encounter. We had been betrayed by what we smelled like. We had been betrayed by what we grew.

  You know what I hated most? Valentine’s Day. Those press-out Valentine card booklets that everyone bought, including me, and I knew what I would always get. At least five of them. Every year. I hated it. The press-out Oriental-type girl in some sort of pseudo kimono with wooden sandals on backwards and her with her hair cut straight across in bangs and a bun and chopsticks in her hair, her eyes all slanty slits. I knew there was something wrong about me getting these cards. What the picture was saying. But the words weren’t there to speak out loud yet and all I could do was feel this twisty thing inside me. I only smiled and said, “Thank you,” like my mother had taught me. And burned them when I got home.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” Dad said, and gave me a heart-shaped candy that would crumble in my mouth tang-sour that said, YOU’RE MY SWEETHEART. Mom gave me two dollars and Obāchan winked.

  (Murasaki: Obāchan, are you cold?

  Naoe: No, I’m full up with ginger and hot sake!

  Murasaki: Wait a minute, Obāchan. Just stay a while.

  Naoe: Something you want to talk about, Murasaki?

  Murasaki: Obāchan, everyone wants to hear stories. And I can’t finish them. They scatter like sheep. Like dust.

  Naoe: No need to tie them up. There is always room for beginnings.

  Murasaki: And I’ve been doing this thing where I bite the inside of my mouth accidently and it swells up so that it’s even easier to bite and it swells even more and it never has a chance to heal and I bite again and again. Obāchan?

  Naoe: Yes?

  Murasaki: Will you tell me a story?

  Naoe: I thought you were tired of tales.

  Murasaki: Never of hearing them.

  Naoe: I’ll tell you a tale of “Uba-Sute Yama”

  Murasaki: Is this a real story?

  Naoe: As real as these words here and now.)

  Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi . . .

  When it was so very difficult to find food in plenty, there lived a poor, poor family in a poor, poor village on a poor, poor mountainside. The village was so very poor that there was a law decreed that upon reaching your sixtieth birthday, you must be abandoned in the mountains by your family. Well, there was outrage and anger and plenty of tears, but the younger people were secretly pleased because parents who were sixty years old were too old to watch over five children and cook dinner and weed the garden and haul water, but young enough to eat two bowls of barley gruel every day. So there began a practice of carrying one’s parent on the back to the ritual place of abandonment.

  Now there was one grandmother who was fast approaching her sixtieth birthday, and every day, she counted on her fingers, counting down the days. “Well,” she thought, “well, I might as well do a nice home perm before I go.”

  (Murasaki: Obāchan, did they have home perms so very long ago?

  Naoe: Well, they do, indeed, in this tale I tell you now.

  Murasaki: I like that. I like that notion.)

  So the not so very old but fast approaching sixty year-old grandmother walked, sa! sa! sa! up mountain down mountain across a creek with her bare feet to her sister’s house for a home perm. Sa! sa! sa! She walked walked walked. “Where are you going?” people called, raising their heads, backs still hunched over in the endless cool mud ache of replanting rice. “Where are you going, Obāchan, in such a hurry?” The grandmother only pulled her lips inside her mouth and grinned quite grossly, mimicking toothlessness, and waved with a flap flap of wrist, not pausing for a bit of gossip or a sip of cold boiled water.

  “Ara-raaa. Yappari,” the people muttered into tender blades of rice. “It’s her turn now and she’s so frightened that she has no words to talk.”

  At last the grandmother reached the house where her sister lived. Her younger sister was cleaning the mud from her straw sandals, sluicing her icy calves with water from a bucket.

  “Older sister! Why it’s such a long walk to wasa wasa come and see me. Please sit down. In the sun where it’s warm and I’ll go and put on some hot water for us.”

  “No fuss. Don’t fuss.” She squatted on her haunches by the doorway and, “Whooosh,” sighed. Rocked a little on her heels and seeped forward back toward her toes. Her younger sister hung her wet scratchy sandals from a peg in the wall and stumped barefoot into the house. There was a clatter clang of lid on kettle and the hiss of cold water poured into an already hot nabe. The grandmother could hear her sister raise this lid that, rustling clatter of boxes, jars and empty containers. Heard her sigh. She came out holding a well-chipped and slightly heat-warped wooden tray with two cups of hot water. And nothing else.

  “I’m sorry, Onē-san, this is all I can serve you.”

  “No fuss, don’t fuss. Ahhh, this hot water is fine! I was thirsty after my climb. No, no, I came to see you and ask a favour.”

  Her sister knelt on the ground beside her, bowed low until her straggle hair was streaked with dust. The grandmother stroked her sister’s knobby back and waited. Her sister looked up with tears in her eyes.

  “Ara-raaa. Now why are you crying? I’ve come to have some fun!”

  “Fun?” asked her younger sister. The word strange on her tongue.

  “Yes, fun. Now up! Up! We have to get ready,” the grandmother said, her eyes merry as minnows. “I want you to give me a nice home perm.”

  “I’m so sorry. We had to trade my home perm set. I don’t have it any m
ore,” her sister said, miserably.

  “No matter! No matter! I’ll think of something, that’s certain. Let’s go!”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t!” said her younger sister. “I still have to stoke the fire and the twins will wake soon and my son and his sons and my daughter-in-law will come home in half an hour waiting to be fed and the bath to fill and heat and I haven’t even—”

  “When was the last time you had fun?” the grandmother asked.

  “Oh, well, I guess, it’s been a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Over fifty years.”

  “Then it’s time to have fun again,” her onē-san said, and held out a work-scrabbled hand. So they left the twins, the empty bath and climbed up into the mountain. They walked some time, just holding hands, the trees as warm as stones.

  “Why, I haven’t done a nice home perm since I don’t know when! But what will we use for curlers?”

  The grandmother stopped, winked and reached down to the cushy forest floor and held up a pine cone.

  “Pittari!” her sister laughed and clapped her hands. They chattered and collected pine cones together. When they had enough, they found a tiny glade of bamboo where the sun trickled. Sat close like they did when they still lived in their mother’s house.

  “I have a surprise for you,” the grandmother said, smiling. Smiled again.

  “Oh, what?” Her younger sister cried, clapping her hands like when she was a child. “What, oh what is it?”

  The grandmother reached into her sleeve and pulled out half a package of Mild Sevens, a lighter, and a Meiji chocolate bar.

  “Oh, Onē-san,” her sister sighed, eyes all dreamy. The grandmother tucked a cigarette between her sister’s lips and lit. Lit her own and broke the chocolate bar in half. They flopped backwards on the springy moss, and drew deeply on their cigarettes. Nibbled on chocolate between puffs of heady smoke. Looking skyward and the flickering blue between bamboo sheaves.

  “Are you having fun?”

  “Yes.”

  They lay silently. Only the sigh of smoke trickling into lungs. The smack smack of tongue and lip on pieces of sweet chocolate.

  “Are you scared Onē-san?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of Uba-Sute Yama?” the younger sister said, with a small shudder.

  “Not at all,” the grandmother said, smacking her chocolate.

  “Why not?”

  “Because what we call something governs the scope and breadth of what it’ll be.” The grandmother sat up and clasped her arms around her knees.

  “What do you mean?” Her younger sister sat up beside her.

  “It’s a place where people are abandoned. It’s a place of abandonment!” The grandmother flung wide her arms and flopped backward onto the moss.

  “I think I’m beginning to see.”

  Good gracious me and my tits! Where in mackerel did that story come from? I can’t tell where Obāchan ends and I begin or if I made the whole thing up or if it was all Obāchan.

  Mom never told any stories. No compound sentences for that woman, she thrived on subject verb object. But I guess I can’t complain. She made my life easy and easy to assimilate if your grandmother is skinny enough to be stuffed in a closet. Not that she ever did and not that Obāchan would ever allow it. But in Mom’s mind, the closet door never opened. Too bad, I say. Too bad about shit like that.

  NAOE

  The wind is warm and from the west, the ache melts from my toes. Chinook, I mutter, chinook. The winters are long here, and nothing like long winters to make you think and think. The days, grim and grit, and not even a soft persimmon to sweeten my day. Keiko is a Nutra-sweet woman and doesn’t take any cream. She’s an Ivory girl with eyebrows plucked and pencilled in darker. It’s funny how children grow inside your body, but they turn out to be strangers. Funny how you can love someone but never learn to like them. And I’m no prize myself. Ahhh, old malformed Richard wasn’t the only one whose winters stretched long and bitter. Old Shakespeare might have written a different play if there had been chinooks where he lived. A chinook does wonders to a body. My curled-in fingers slowly soften and I can bend them again. I carefully search in the folds of my clothes for the last moth hidden there, but it is too late. She falls, brittle and stiff to the floor by my feet. But the wind is warm and the crystals of ice that manage to whisper into the house slowly melt into puddles. Keiko comes to wipe them up and mops the entire floor as well.

  “Move your feet, Obāchan,” she says, and shoves the mop between the legs of my chair, between my slippered feet.

  Wait, I say, I want to pick up my moth, but Keiko has already soaked her up in the strands of the mop. No matter, I say, never mind. There are eggs somewhere and there will be moths again. Ahh, it would be an easy thing to sleep now, to stop my mouth and close my eyes. But there are things still left to do.

  There is a non-wind, in Japan, in the summer. When the air hangs thick. A breathless time of sucking air like water and Shige and I sat still, in the shade of the persimmon tree. If we moved, the air would stick to our skin like wet hot paper. So we sat motionless, like the stone gods, and watched sweat trickle down our faces. Only the cicadas had the will to stir.

  After seven long years of burrowing beneath the soil, seven long years of tender-white grub skin and wet dirt silence, they welcomed the heat with their newly brittled wings. They clung to the bark of trees and cried and shrilled in thrumming songs of ecstasy. The songs rippling outward on the sweat-moistened air around them.

  “Naoe-chan, Shige-chan,” Okāsan called. “I have cucumbers I cooled in the well. Come, eat. It will make you feel better.”

  We smiled to each other and slowly rose to our feet. We did not run like we did in the spring or autumn, but moved with languid arms and legs, as if we were stirring deep underwater.

  Shige. What, you are seventy-five, eighty years old? And kind Fumiko, always smiling, even after the childless years. Still smiling, no doubt. Kiyokawa to end with us. You had no children, Shige. Fumiko. When you visited temples and climbed steep stairs to pray at the shrines, for a child. Send us a child, we will love any child, even if that child should be as small as the end of a finger. But to no avail. The gods didn’t hear you, or perhaps they had other matters to tend to. And Keiko takes the name of her husband. Kiyokawa to end with me. Foolishness! To attach so much to the continuation of a name. You might have a grand name and still live and die as an idiot. What matters are the things you do, the things you say out loud.

  Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi . . .

  There lived a good couple who were married for many years. They were kindly people and loved each other dearly, but one unhappiness marred their life. They were not blessed with a child. So the couple prayed at the temple, every day, please bless our home with a child, even if that child were to be tiny, even if that child were to be the length of the tip of a finger. Their wish was granted and in due time, the woman gave birth to a tiny child, the length of the tip of her finger. They loved their son dearly, and called him Issun-Boshi.

  Issun-Boshi grew up to be a brave and comely lad, even though he didn’t grow in stature. One day, he expressed his wish to visit the capital. So his mother armed him with a needle from her sewing basket, gave him a bowl for a boat, and he drifted down the river, steering with a pair of chopsticks. When he arrived at the capital, he found work with a noble family and they were much pleased with his demeanour. Miwa, the daughter of the household, was particularly fond of him.

  One day, Miwa decided to visit the temple to pray and Issun-Boshi accompanied her. As they walked through the dapple green of bamboo groves, two hideous oni jumped from the trees to accost the lovely girl. Issun-Boshi drew his needle and stabbed one of the oni in the toe.

  “Itai! Itai!” he bellowed and looked down to see what had pricked him. When he saw tiny Issun-Boshi brandishing a sewing needle, he laughed and laughed until the ground shook. “My, what a fierce little warrior,” he chuckled and p
icked up the brave lad between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Unhand the maiden or you’ll have me to deal with!” Issun-Boshi challenged, not the least intimidated by the strength and size of the monster.

  “Why you mouthy little underfed manling! I’ll eat you for a snack,” the red oni laughed, and tossed him into his gullet. But the brave lad did not give up. He ran about the demon’s great belly and stabbed his organs with his needle sword until the oni howled with pain and spewed him from his gut. The second oni bent low to pick him up, but Issun Boshi flew at the demon’s eye and pierced the giant globe with his needle. The two howling oni fled from the great warrior, back to their mountain home. As they ran, one of the demons dropped a magical mallet. A mallet which could be swung, ichi, ni, san, and asked to grant any wish desired. The lovely daughter of the noble family saw what the monsters had dropped and picked it up with joy.

  “Issun-Boshi! Now you can grow to the size of normal men and we can become married!” Miwa cried, her heart filled with love and admiration for her mighty little warrior.

  “Let this be so,” the youth answered, and Miwa swung the mallet, ichi, ni, san, and Issun-Boshi grew bigger and broader and, in fact, was a great samurai. The family were overjoyed when they heard the story and gladly agreed to their marriage. Issun-Boshi joined their family as an equal despite his modest past. But his sudden stature, his noble position and his victory over two oni filled the lad’s heart with pride and his kindly demeanour became a thing of the past. When Miwa lay down to sleep beside her new husband, he cared not a whit for her pleasure, but tore into her in what he thought suited his manly position. Miwa wondered what had happened to the boy she had loved. She bled but did not cry.

  Many weeks passed. Issun-Boshi, who had been brave but gentle when he was so much smaller, became more arrogant and violent. Miwa waited and waited to see if Issun-Boshi was only going through a period of adjustment. When his kindly parents in their coarse cotton clothes came searching for their tiny son, he laughed at their poor appearance.

  “I have no time for peasant talk,” he mocked. “And if your tale is really true, than your son must have surely drowned in the river, for no such boy was ever heard of in the capital.”