by Hiromi Goto
Ruby Restaurant. Well, more of a cafe, but the food is remarkable. There can be no complaints if you are hungry in the middle of the night and the door is open. Ahh, sip some tea. Eat. Crispy green gai lan and slightly bitter on my tongue. Shrimp and squid and scallop too, all salty crackle hot. And crispy mein, deep fried and such a sauce. My face all flush with taste, it fills the ache my belly has been missing after twenty long years of boiled beef and macaroni. Certainly, there were times when I had squid and osenbei too. And once I even made sekihan for Murasaki. But everything always from a cardboard box. Not spread before me on a table with so many choices, I don’t know where to begin and steaming hot from the stove. Such food. It nourishes more than my body. I am replete.
“Can I offer you a beer?” Tengu asks, licking grains of salt from his lips.
“No,” I say, heaping more lobster on to my plate. “I’ve had four tonight and I don’t want to be so very drunk that I can’t remember. But you go ahead if you like. I don’t mind driving if you want to drive onward, or we can always find a hotel if we want to get some rest.”
“You know, that might not be a bad idea. I kinda feel like having a couple beer and I’ve been sleeping in the cab of my truck for too long. Wouldn’t mind taking a shower.”
“Hotel it is, then! Why I haven’t stayed in a hotel since I don’t know when! So much fun in one night, I don’t know if I can stand it. Do you have any money?” I ask.
“Yeah, I got some, but not very much. I have to ration it for gasoline, though. I don’t want to be mooching from you, but do you have any?”
“Well, I have some cash, but I want to save it in case of an emergency. I really didn’t want to use it until I was out of this province, but I think my credit card will be all right.”
“Any particular reason you didn’t want to use it in Alberta?” Tengu asks, reaching up to tug the brim of his cowboy hat, but he has politely taken it off when we sat down at the table, so there is nothing to tug.
“No need for you to worry about.”
“If you’re sure you won’t get into any trouble,” he says, his sun crinkle eyes concerned.
“Have another beer, Tengu.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
I eat, I drink. What more could a body ask for when there is shrimp, squid, scallops, and lobster heaped on plates before you? If I measured my happiness at this given moment, no one could be richer than me. Simple pleasure of crack crack lobster shell between my molars, pry sweet meat with my hashi and suck out the juice still inside, licking the garlic ginger cream sauce, pungent with green onions, and chew chew of lobster flesh, fresh and sweet as the sea. Sip, slurp from my cup of tea and choose a shrimp, a scallop. Pick up my rice bowl and tip some rice into my mouth, sweep the last bits with my chopsticks. I eat for Murasaki. I eat for Keiko.
I never thought I would end up in a hotel with a cowboy. I never expected to leave Japan. I never knew I would get married and then divorced. I never thought I would bear a daughter who speaks a different language. You never think. You never expect. You never know. But things still happen.
The fubuki has passed, and the clouds are tearing apart far enough so that the moon shows her face from time to time. When I was child in the house of my parents, when we were still rich with fatted land, we viewed the moon together and ate the special dumplings. Shige would sit on Okāsan’s lap and I would sit on Otōsan’s. And Okāsan would say,
“See, see how the rabbits are making mochi on the moon. They are taking turns pounding the rice.”
But I never saw the rabbits on the moon. I only wished I could.
The tall buildings of downtown Calgary are mostly dim. Only a few squares of lights. Sometimes, a figure walks across, the light goes off and the room next to it is turned on. Someone is doing the night shift cleaning. Someone is always awake. The clouds have broken up the sky and the pale stars, dimmed by the orange street lights, wink off and on as the clouds silently drift. To Saskatchewan? I wonder. Tengu has fallen asleep with his hat on his head, his boots on his feet, and his coat buttoned up to his neck. He is so tired, he must be shouldering his own weight of stories untold and so back-breakingly heavy. I would at least tug his boots off his pinched feet, but I don’t want to wake him up. It’s better to just let him rest. So much could be done if we could just part with sleeping. If we didn’t need to rest our heads from our daily cares. If only we could live in waking dreams, and not be clouded with the thin wisps of sleep and doubt. What magic we’d create around us. Instead of daily loaves of hate that we eat every morning and wash down with bitter coffee. Che! Stop it already! Enough of this depressing talk. You are born. If you are lucky, you live. And while you are alive, you might do a thing or two. Or not. It’s up to that person, after all. After sitting in that chair in Keiko’s house for twenty years, I guess I’m ready to do a thing or two. You can be old, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have a few tricks up your sleeve. Don’t blink too slowly.
MURASAKI
It was dark by the time I got home and Dad was asleep in front of the TV, a dirty plate with dried ketchup on the floor. I went upstairs to Mom’s room and turned on the plug-in night light. Mom was still awake, or at least her eyes were still open, a plate of cold scrambled eggs on a tray in her lap. Ketchup on the side and two pieces of toast all congealed with a thin crust on top.
“Well, Obāchan is right. It’s obvious you’ll never get better on food like this and it looks pretty damn gross right now, doesn’t it. Don’t worry, Mom. Obāchan gave me some pointers and I met a woman named Sushi and Dad is a closet seaweed eater. Life is getting better.”
Mom didn’t move or blink, but I was feeling better and I knew she would too. I thumped downstairs and unloaded all my groceries. Dumped wieners and Cheese Whiz and left-over potato salad into the garbage. Carefully put away my store of treasure. I flicked on all the lights in the kitchen and turned on the radio. Honey murmur of a DJ soothing to my ears, I still sought the sound of voices in our hollow house. I sat down at the kitchen table and started to read my cookbook.
Tonkatsu (Deep fried breaded pork cutlets) It’s true.
Bread crumbs all over the kitchen counters and crunching beneath my feet. I was red in the face and deep-frying pork chops for the first time in my life at eleven forty-five at night. Apparently, Tonkatsu is served with thinly sliced raw cabbage and I had three plates all ready, cabbage on the side. I couldn’t stop putting a capital on the t, I couldn’t stop thinking of it as our name. The deep-frying was a bad scene. I didn’t know how done they were and took the first two out too soon, the outside fried, but the inside meat still pink and bleeding. Possible tapeworm fears. So I put them in the oil again, but I had waited too long and the bread crumb coating was too soggy so it all broke apart. I had to go outside, dump the oil on the gravel driveway, and start over again. The second time, I fried them too long and they came out harder than leather thongs. But it wasn’t a wasted effort because, by then, I figured out that the Tonkatsu sank when they were raw and floated when they were done. What does this mean?
The third batch bobbed up light and golden, the pork just done and still tender. And while I was furiously cooking, bread crumbs flying in my wake, Dad was dreaming of something so close to his home he could almost taste it. He woke up in a daze and turned off the silent TV. He picked up his ketchup plate and set it in the sink. Washed all the dirty dishes I had made and wiped them and put them away. When I turned and finally noticed, he was sitting at the kitchen table, hands folded in his lap. He had set the table with forks and knives and the bottle of Tonkatsu sauce. There were three table settings. The miso soup I had made was overboiled and the seaweed was almost melted, but I served them up in bowls. Filled three more bowls with rice and a small plate with the pickled yellow takuwan that was little a strong in smell. I proudly placed my golden pork cutlets on the plates with sliced cabbage. One fifty-three in the morning. Funny, I thought, we’re going to eat our name.
“Mom. Mom, supper�
�s ready,” I yelled up the stairs and crossed my fingers. Silence. Then a creak of floorboards. Slow, tentative steps, out the room, down the hall and down down the stairs. Mom, in Obāchan’s nemaki, like a woman dreaming. A sleep walker. When Mom reached the bottom of the stairs, I held out my hand and she took it. We walked to the table together. Mom paused before she sat down and looked at the food before her.
“Where are the hashi?” she asked. “Chopsticks.” Her voice creaky with disuse.
“We don’t have any,” I gently reminded. “We’ve never had any, Mom. We’ll just have to use forks and knives, okay?”
“Wait a minute,” Dad ran outside in his stocking feet, even though it was snowing and he ran back in with twigs in his hands. A proud grin on his face. He plunked down on his seat and flicked out his Swiss Army knife. Started whittling, blading little knobs and scars off the twig in his hand until it was smooth. He flicked bark and bits of wood all over the kitchen floor, but Mom didn’t say a thing, just waited until he had smoothed the second one and held out her hand. Dad gave her his home-made ohashi and she nodded her thanks. She raised her bowl of miso soup to her lips and slurped! Zuru zuru zuru. She slurped her soup and I was amazed. Dad kept on whittling and finished making two more sets of chopsticks.
“Oh, I got something for you too.” I ran to the fridge and took out the small jar of salted seaweed paste. Opened the lid and set it in front of him.
“Thanks,” he said and handed me my chopsticks. They felt awkward in my hands and I couldn’t hold them. Couldn’t bring food to my mouth. Dad didn’t notice, he was heaping salted seaweed all over his bowl of rice with intense concentration. Mom looked up from her miso soup and saw. She took her fork and knife and cut my meat for me then poured Tonkatsu sauce evenly over my pork and a little over the cabbage. She took the chopsticks I was turning in my hands this way and that and held out my hand flat. Set the two thick ends of the chopsticks on my palm and closed my fingers over them in a fist. She turned my wrist ninety degrees and the points hung straight downward. Rigid and awkward, I could only make basic stabbing movements, which I did in the space above my plate. I looked up at Mom’s face, wondering if she was making fun at me.
“Start eating. Like small child,” her voice so thick and dusty I couldn’t recognize it. “Work from there.”
I nodded slowly, beginning to understand. Something. I glanced at Dad, and he had cut his cutlet with his knife and fork too. He was holding his chopsticks with the grace and ease of a conductor, darting like swallows like fish. And Mom, the ohashi fit in her hands too. For all I had believed otherwise. I turned to my plate, my hashi in my fist, and stabbed a piece of meat with the points. I raised it to my nervous mouth and took a tentative bite. The bread crumbs crunchy and the pork tender firm, the sauce tang and salty. It was good! I shoved the whole piece in my mouth and chewed with joy. Eating Tonkatsu in the heavy silence between night and dawn, a strange configuration.
There were no hugs or kisses or mea culpas. There wasn’t a sudden wellspring of words, as if everything we never said burst forth and we forgave each other for all our shortcomings. We sat and ate. No one saying a word, just the smack of lips and tongues. We passed around the Tonkatsu sauce whenever it looked like someone was running out.
But it was a chrysalis time for Mom or me. Maybe for both of us, I don’t know. Every day, we ate supper around midnight, food I had made from the Japanese cookbook and we used Dad’s twig ohashi. Mom’s words slowly coming back, or maybe me beginning to hear them. She didn’t get up the next day and start cleaning the house or something like I had thought she would. She lay in bed all day and poked holes into the words she said out loud and laughed sometimes. It was nice hearing Mom laugh. I still stayed at home, to run the house and take the business calls. But mostly to hear the rich sound of my Mom’s laughter.
(Murasaki: Obāchan.
Naoe: Hai?
Murasaki: Mom’s feeling better now.
Naoe: Oh, I’m so glad to hear it.
Murasaki: And I’m cooking some Japanese food too.
Naoe: Murasaki. I’m glad. Do you like it?
Murasaki: Yes, I do. Obāchan?
Naoe: Hai?
Murasaki: Did you know that the sound of Mom’s laughter makes you feel warm inside and all melty?
Naoe: I used to know.
Murasaki: I’m knowing now.
Naoe: Ask Keiko to clean your ears.
Murasaki: What?!
Naoe: Just ask her, Murasaki.
Murasaki: That’s disgusting!
Naoe: Just ask.
Murasaki: Okay.)
“Mom,” I asked, sitting on the corner of her bed, feeling slightly embarrassed but curious as well. “Could you clean my ears?” I was looking at her face, wondering what she would say or do. She looked bemused.
“You’ll have to go look for the mimikaki in the bottom of your Obāchan’s sewing box,” she said, tying back the curtains in her room to let the sunlight in. I hopped up and went into Obāchan’s room, the same as when she left. Her sewing box was on the homemade headboard shelf made out of two-by-fours. I sat on the bed and peered inside. Spools of thread and packets of shiny needles, a bag of unmatched buttons and scraps of yarn and cloth. Looking for the mimikaki, wondering what it was and if I would recognize it when I saw it. A long slender piece of wood, bamboo? and on one end, a tiny spoon head, and on the other, a fluffy ball of down, like a dandelion fluff Q-tip. Ahhhh, mimikaki. I went to Mom’s room, and she was sitting up, a piece of Kleenex in her hand. She patted the bed and I sat down. She gently pulled my arm so I lay down, my head in her lap, the sun warm and cozy through the windowpane. Mom carefully tugged my ear lobe and cupped her other hand, her palm, beneath my chin, so the angle would be just right. The warm scent of Mom’s clothes, seeping in the air. My eyes shut on their own accord and my body limped. Relaxed.
“My, you have quite a bit.”
“Really?”
“It’s a wonder you can hear anything at all.”
“Really?” I wanted to look down my own ear, to see what was inside.
“Your ear channel goes straight down. Obāchan said mine was quite twisty so she had a hard time cleaning them.”
“Obāchan used to clean your ears?” I was amazed. It seemed like I was being amazed quite often, lately. Wondering what it meant.
“Oh, yes. She was really good at it too.”
“Why didn’t you or Obāchan ever clean my ears?”
“Did you ever ask?”
“No—”
“There you go,” Mom said, “now no more talking, or I can’t clean your ear. And don’t move.”
“Do it softly, Mom,” I whispered. Closed my eyes to thought. And I felt the mimikaki dip inside my ear.
Anticipatory shudder of fear or longing or I don’t know what. The thrill of bamboo piercing fragile tissue, tearing through tender flesh, but the longing for the first touch, the unknown. I hovered in that delicate place between anticipation and intense pleasure, teetering between fear and longing, hovered above the delicate skin over my closed eyes, a pinpoint of light yet heavy as golden honey. My trust lying in my mother’s lap, my fragile skull, my legs curled up. Mom’s clothes a warm breath around me, a cloud of bees, a palmful of seeds. Me and my heavy eyes shut and the sun stretched long beside me and time quivered like a taut skin. And soft soft softest scrape of bamboo scratching sensitive channel. The sensation was incredible. My mouth watered with delight, my toes curled in exquisite pleasure. The scrape scrape rustle so loud in my ear and the slow scratchy easing of tiny itches within. Mom softly lifted the mimikaki, tapped the wax on the Kleenex, and dipped the spoon again. Scrapes against skin never touched before but so softly itchy I never noticed until now, thrilling to the danger of bamboo piercing ear-drum yet the incredible unbearable pleasure.
“Does it hurt?”
“Don’t stop,” I say, the sun warm on my face, my body, the smell of her clothes, Mom scratch scratching so unbearably perfectly
my teeth ache with the pleasure, a taste in my mouth like nectar.
It’s funny how you never hear what you miss. After Mom cleaned my ears, I heard sounds I had never heard before. At least I didn’t remember them. I walked around in wonderment, tilting my head from side to side, so the sounds could trickle into my ears more fully. I was bemused. Apparently, the cicada has a long pupa stage. They live under the damp darkness of soil in silence for seven long years. Suck the juice from roots of trees and turn their blind underground eyes skyward, to dream of what they’ve never seen. For seven long years they churn in the ground their bodies white and tender, scrape their way through soil on two scythed arms, with serrated edges. After seven years of silence and darkness, they dig out from the soil and climb the bark of a tree. During the cover of night. In the morning there is nothing but a dry husk. The cicadas with newly patterned brittle wings fly off to other trees where they sit in the sun and shriek their songs, as long as there is light. They have only seven days to find a mate and complete their cycle so they shriek and hum and rattle and saw, with their bellows in their chest. They never shut up.
I have never seen a cicada. I have never heard them cry. What I know about them may be hearsay. It’s a question of belief.
PART THREE
AN IMMIGRANT STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING
Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi . . . . Nothing is impossible. Within reason, of course.
Part three. Everything that is missing or lost or caught between memory and make believe or forgotten or hidden or sliced from the body like an unwanted tumour.