by Hiromi Goto
There are people who say that eating is only a superficial means of understanding a different culture. That eating at exotic restaurants and oohing and aahing over the food is not even worth the bill paid. You haven’t learned anything at all. I say that’s a lie. What can be more basic than food itself? Food to begin to grow. Without it, you’d starve to death, even academics. But don’t stop there, my friend, don’t stop there, because food is the point of departure. A place where growth begins. You eat, you drink and you laugh out loud. You wipe the sweat off your forehead and take a sip of water. You tell a story out loud, maybe two, with words of pain and desire. Your companion listens and listens, then offers a different telling. The waiter comes back with the main course and stays to tell his version. Your companion offers three more stories and the people seated at the next table lean over to listen. You push all the tables together and the room resounds with voices. You get dizzy and the ceiling tips, the chair melts beneath your body. You lie back on the ground and the world tilts, the words heaving in the air above you. You are drunk and it is oh so pleasurable.
“You can drop me off at Banff, if you would. Such a place, I’ve heard, I might as well see it.”
“Let’s make a date of it!” My cowboy friend grins at me with his sun-crinkled eyes, from beneath the brim of his creased hat.
“No,” I say gently, “my journey is not yours and yours is not mine.”
“But I thought. After last night and all. We might be spending some more time together, you know?”
“No. Last night was special. And something I was needing for a long time. But that doesn’t mean I can stay, and you have your own journey to tend to.”
“How will I see you again? At least a name or a phone number—”
“You will see me on every street, on every corner, in the semitrailer that passes your truck. I’ll be that woman who picks up the dirty trays in the food fair at the zoo. I’ll be the systems analyst in the office building you will some day go to work in.
I’ll be the teacher in the community centre when you go to learn the art of flower arrangement. You will pass me in Mac’s and see me in Woolco and step on my foot at the race tracks. I will hover on the wind and in the leaves and dwell inside the soil beneath your feet. You will even hold me inside your body every time you breathe the air.”
Ahh, the air is sweet with pine and sap. But cold! my nostril hairs are frozen brittle. He looked so sad, when he dropped me off, men with their affinity for unhappy endings! No need to make a tragedy out of every encounter. That doesn’t mean I don’t like to listen to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. That I can’t have a good cry after reading Where the Red Fern Grows. But I’d rather hear a mukashi banashi every time. Nothing like a good folk legend to warm up one’s belly and fill the emptiness inside you. Why a good folk tale can keep you going for at least a month, none of this manna talk and birds falling out of the sky.
But what a strange place Banff is, surrounded by jagged peaks of rock and ice, filled with the clamour of Japanese voices. Why, in the stores and restaurants, the signs are written in katakana. Who would have thought, this centre of snow and wind, and not a single cicada pupa sleeping beneath the soil, I’m certain. Funny how tourists flock from Japan in organized groups only to another translation of their home. With false fronts from Germany and Switzerland. It’s a funny thing and you can never be sure if you’re here or there. I carry my home in the cup of my palms, in the small hollows of my mouth. This is no place for a woman like me to stay. Let me travel from story to story.
“Mom,” I asked.
“Yes?”
“Could you tell me about our last name?”
“What do you want to know? You should ask your dad, he would know more about it after all. You still have talk to him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” There could always be a first. “Where is he?”
“Where else? In his office at the farm.”
The grasshoppers whirred away from my feet and the sundry heat scorched the top of my head. I always wondered if the sun was hot enough, if my black hair would hold enough heat for me to fry an egg. I suppose not, if I were still alive. But, the thought interested me for a time in my childhood.
I crunched the gravel drive, and when I walked past the compost barn the pigeons roared away in a sudden flurry, their wings heavy with compost moisture. They nested in the ceiling of the barn, and every year the shit got deeper and heavier. Sometimes, when I was younger, I’d go out and blast them with a shot gun on my days off. But my urge to kill things started ebbing away, the older I grew. Watching gophers explode didn’t seem much fun after a few summers. Dad never killed anything. Even when there was the danger of twenty years of pigeon shit caving in the ceiling. And no one was signing up to clean it out either. Dad just reinforced the walls and put up a couple steel pillars in the middle of the barn. Not that there was ever enough money to fix it. There was only money enough to keep the farm going and pay everyone’s wages. And pay for Obāchan’s credit card bills.
Can was outside getting a tank of propane for the forklift. Looked up at the roaring pigeons.
“Hi, Girl. What are you doing?”
“I’m just coming around to say goodbye. I’m going away.”
“Where are you going to?”
“I don’t know for sure. I’ll know when I get there.”
“You’re a funny girl. When you were little, you hated me, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess I did. I’m sorry about things.”
“Ohhh, you hate me, you like me, it doesn’t make a difference. It’s difficult to talk of things when you’re young. We can talk now, huh?”
“Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I would really like that.”
“You going back to Calgary tonight?”
“No, I’m sleeping over, then going in the morning.”
“Then come over tonight. We should drink together before you go. So nothing makes you look back and feel bitterness.”
“Thanks, Can. I would really like that a lot. Do you think you could tell me some stories?”
“Sure. Sure. See you tonight, then, Murasaki. Your dad, he’s in his office.”
Bemused. I was bemused. I slipped sideways through the little door in the wall, the bottom of the door frame a good two feet off the ground. Even I had to duck my head to get inside the door. Why was this door so small? Why didn’t I ever ask? The Green Machine was clean and had been sprayed with formaldehyde to kill any diseases, molds, or mites. I covered my nose and mouth with my forearm and squinted my eyes into slits. Tears made it impossible to see, I hadn’t been there for quite a while and I wasn’t acclimatized. I bumped into someone, “Sorry.”
“Muriel.”
“Huh, Dad?” I said, peering above my arm.
“Nice to see you.”
“Thanks.”
“Come into my office. It’s not so bad in there.”
I followed Dad into his room. For the first time in my life. Funny, I wondered, why hadn’t I ever seen it before? It was surprisingly neat and the plywood floor was raised so that water on the main concrete wouldn’t seep inside the office. There was a high power FM/AM radio playing classical music. I never knew. And the walls of the room, they were covered with shelves, filled with books and books. Hundreds and thousands and quadruple that, they towered all around making me dizzy. There was even a step ladder in the corner to reach the ones on top. I sank back into a chair. Dad looked sheepish, and I felt red crawl up my neck. The books were all in Japanese.
“Why—you knew all along! How could you?! When you knew that I wanted to learn. All along, you knew, and you didn’t say a word.” Without knowing it, I was standing up, my hands clenched into fists. Dad looked sternly at my hands, and I noticed my own violence. I unclenched my fists and sank back into the chair.
“All along, all along. God, you must really hate me.”
“That’s always been your worst fault, you know. Thinking the worst of people who love you. Without
asking why. My teaching you nothing Japanese had nothing to do with you. And I was very proud of you when you decided to learn it yourself. No, the problem was all mine.”
“Why, then?” I felt like crying and felt stupid for feeling like crying. “Finally, why didn’t you teach me to speak Japanese?”
“Because I couldn’t.”
“Because of Mom? She forbade you to do it?” I demanded.
“See, there you go again! I don’t know how you came to be so distrustful. Well, I guess we’re not innocent either—”
“Tell me!”
“It’s because I cannot speak it, Muriel. I cannot speak it at all. I can only read it to understand.”
“Really?” I said doubtfully. “Is that really possible?”
“I don’t know if it’s a medical condition. But it’s my reality. When we moved to Canada, your Mom and I, we decided it would be best for our children if we let them slip in with everybody else. Sure, we couldn’t change the colour of their hair, or the shape of their face, but we could make sure they didn’t stand out. That they could be as Canadian as everyone around them. As it turned out, you were the only child we had, and that made us even more careful. We wanted only your happiness. We decided, your Mom and I, that we would put Japan behind us and fit more smoothly with the crowd. And from that day, when we decided, neither of us could speak a word in Japanese. Not a word would pass our lips. We couldn’t even think it. And I was ashamed. I felt a loss so fine it pierced my heart. Made it ache. So I stopped talking. I used to talk a lot in my youth, that’s what won your Mom to me. She was taken with my chatter and my jokes. But after the day I lost my words, my home words, I didn’t have the heart to talk so much. I just put my energies into the farm, grew mushrooms in the quiet of the dark. Kay put it all behind her. She has a strong will, your Mom, so she just said, that’s fine. That’s life then. And carried on like nothing happened. We don’t talk about it. Some things, you don’t talk about. And I was feeling like I was half missing for a good ten years, never mixing with other Japanese folk, the communities in Calgary and Lethbridge, because it made the ache unbearable. Even if the third or fourth generation Japanese-Canadians could speak only English, like me, it wasn’t the same. They weren’t half a person like I was. Then this Japanese-Canadian minister from Lethbridge, I hardly met him once, he sent me a copy of The New Canadian. It’s a newspaper out of Vancouver, I think. Or maybe Toronto. Half is in English and the other half in Japanese. I picked it up and couldn’t help myself, I glanced at the characters written there. And I could read it! I could read it and understand! But when I tried to say it out loud, there was nothing. Still, I was so happy. So happy. I called your Mom to tell her the news, but she said it was too late for her. And it was too late for you. That she didn’t want to stir things up when it was all settled. So I didn’t push it. And I wouldn’t have been able to teach you even if your Mom had allowed it. The words were only inside my head to read, not something I could speak. I’m sorry Muriel, that’s why I can’t call you by the name your grandmother gave you, why I taught you nothing. I guess I’m not innocent after all. I guess I could have sent you to Calgary for special lessons. Your Mom is strong-willed, Muriel, and I went along with her decision. And I love her still. I hope you can forgive me.”
Dad sank into a chair, his face so pale. I had never heard so many words come out of his mouth at one time. I poured him a cup of muddy water that was sitting in the coffee maker. He gulped it back and wiped his mouth and forehead with a piece of toilet paper.
I sighed.
“I’m sorry too. Sorry too.”
We sat in the blue hum of fluorescent lights.
“What about our name? Isn’t our name Japanese?”
Dad actually laughed, and it was a dirt brown sound.
“It’s funny, really. That word. It was the only word I could utter when the change took place. Your Mom suggested we take a Canadian name, if we couldn’t remember our real one. But I was firm about that. I said if we couldn’t remember our own name, the least we could do was keep the one word I could remember. Tonkatsu! Of all things!” Dad started laughing so hard that tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“Does our name really mean ‘breaded deep fried pork cutlets’?” “The translation isn’t literal as that, but that’s what it signifies. The thing is, tonkatsu isn’t really a purely Japanese word. Ton, meaning pork, is Japanese, but katsu is adopted from ‘cutlet’, and I don’t know the origins of that word.”
“That’s really weird, Dad.”
“So the joke is on us, really. I don’t know why I only remembered tonkatsu, but that’s what our name became. You can always change yours, if you like. It’s not a binding thing for you.”
“I don’t know, I might keep it. Keep me from forgetting my humble past and all that.”
“Well, you do what you like. I guess you always have,” he said, and tugged the end of my nose. I laughed.
“Actually, that’s why I came to see you. I’m going away. And I wanted to let you know.”
“Glad to hear it!” Dad winked.
“Really?”
“Of course. Plenty out there. Plenty more than just living in Calgary for the rest of your life. Or Nanton for that matter. Your mother and I, we left Japan and came to be in Nanton. I suppose it’s reasonable that you need to find elsewhere. Whatever or wherever it happens to be. Are you going overseas?”
“No, I don’t want to be a tourist. And nothing so biblical as a mission. There is a sound I can almost hear, just slightly outside my hearing range. And I want to know what that sound is. What I’m missing. That’s about as close as I can get.”
“Are you going to Japan?”
“No, no. That’s too literal a translation, I think.”
“Well, wherever you go, you write your Mom and me so we don’t have to worry.”
“Sure, Dad. I can do that. I’ll be writing all the time.”
“Did I hear Joe inviting you over for a drink?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think I could join you if Joe doesn’t mind.”
“Dad, I’d really like that.”
Dad swung his office door wide, and we stepped out. The formaldehyde had lifted or evaporated, or whatever it does, and my eyes didn’t water any longer.
AN IMMIGRANT STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING
Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi . . .
Why do you leave a homeland in the first place? If there isn’t any turmoil and plenty of food and political freedom to top it off, why would anyone ever leave? And if you don’t like the way the new country treats you, why would you bother to stay?
“I deserve to be here. I earned the right to live here. Those other people, who knows where they came from? That’s why there is a gang problem. They didn’t come through the right channels. When I came here, I was questioned and interviewed and they made sure of my intent. I provided new jobs for the people here and I’ve never ever been on welfare. Not like some others. We carry their load on our backs. I say we should never let them in.” “You can never trust those people, you know. Heavens, I’ve tried, but you can never tell what they’re thinking. And they always stick to their own kind, never mixing with other people. Always talking in a foreign language. And even when they do bother talking in English, why their accent is so thick, I can’t make out a single word. If those people want to live in Canada, they’ve got to try a little harder. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
“Have you seen Mr. Baseball? It’s about this American baseball player who goes to Japan to play because he isn’t good enough to play in the States and he doesn’t understand the culture at all and he causes a lot of trouble on the team until he finally learns to live with the culture rather than against it? It was really funny. You ought to go see it.”
“Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!” (Pinch a bit of material from your shirt about breast level with both hands and pull outward so that you make two cloth pyramids haha.)
When does it end?When does itend?When doesitend?When doesitendWhendoesitendwhendoesitendwhendoesitendwhen doesitendwhendoesitendwhendoesitendwhen
You tell me.
An immigrant story with a happy ending. Nothing is impossible. Within reason, of course.
When does one thing end and another begin?
Can you separate the two?
PART FIVE
“Laaaaadies and gentlemen, the event you’ve all been waitin’ for! It’s time for the meanest, toughest cowboys on two thousand pounds of lean muscle and grit. Let’s give a rowdy Calgary Stampede yaaahoooo to the best bullriders in the whole, wide world!”
“Yaaaaaaaaahooooooooooooo!”
Easy enough for a woman to slip by security. If you’re quietly Oriental and carrying a furoshiki packed with cowboy equipment and starkers as the day you were born, people are glad not to notice you. Like telling people you were picked up by alien life forms and impregnated on a distant planet. If you mentioned what you saw, you’d be the one bundled away. In a soft-cushioned van with wire mesh over the windows.
A winter away from Alberta is pure pleasure, but funny how a glancing memory of an unappetizing corndog is enough to tug you back to Calgary in time for the Stampede. I don’t know why, when there is a International Jazz Festival in Montreal and a perpetual light show in the Arctic. So why do I swing by, this annual migration, to catch a rodeo? Spin on the Zipper and watch Elvis impersonations? Mattaku! There’s not an answer for everything, that’s certain. No harm in a body going to see a rodeo once a year, I say. No harm in participating. Why, the best place to be is behind the chutes, where you can smell the adrenalin sweat of young and old cowboys alike. The sweet smell of horsehide and green grass sweat. Sour mash shit and hot dogs and coffee.