The Dream of Water

by Kyoko Mori

  “Kyoko’s here,” Sayo announces.

  I drop my backpack on the floor and sit down next to Fuku so she won’t have to stand up to greet me. “Hi, Grandmother. It’s good to see you.” I take her hand. Her fingers are thin and cold.

  She lets go of my hand and rubs at her eyes. “I’m so glad you came all this way to see me.”

  I can’t get over how frail she looks, even though she has always been a small woman. My cousins and I became taller than she when we were only nine or ten. Back then, I used to run up to her, put my palm on top of her head to emphasize how much shorter she was than I, and grin. Now her white hair is so thin that I can see the exact shape of her skull underneath.

  “I’m too old to do much,” she continues. “I wanted to make you lunch, but I cook only for myself now. I would ask Sayo, but she’s a busy woman. I don’t want to impose on her.”

  “That’s all right,” I say quickly so Sayo won’t have to offer. “I’m not hungry.”

  After Sayo goes back to the store for the afternoon’s work, Fuku and I visit the butsuma, the room in which the Buddhist altar is kept. The large black altar there is one of my earliest memories. The image of Amida glimmers in the back in gold leaf; on one of the shelves, six gold nameplates stand side by side. They are for my mother, her two older sisters who died of measles and dysentery before she was born, my great-grandparents Takehiko and Kayo, and my grandfather Takeo. Fuku and I each light an incense stick to put in the bowl in front of the nameplates. Then we close our eyes to address our family dead, who, Fuku always told me, watch over us night and day.

  Grandfather, I pray silently. I am home. There is so much I want to say to him, but I can’t concentrate. It feels too strange to address him as a spirit instead of having him next to me. The afternoon I learned about his death, I walked to the shore of Lake Michigan in Milwaukee and could not believe that there was so much water in the lake—so much water and not a drop of it touching any land he had ever walked on.

  I open my eyes and see the garden pinks, the cups of tea and rice, and a plate of pink manju dumplings on the shelves.

  “I went to visit my mother’s spirit in Osaka,” I tell Fuku, “at the family grave there. Kazumi went with me.”

  Fuku nods, her eyes red, but says nothing for a while. Finally, she starts getting up, slowly. She points to the plate of dumplings. “We’ll take down the manju.”

  I pick up the plate and follow her back to the front room.

  “The coffee’s in the cupboard,” she says as she sits down.

  I get out the jar of instant coffee, two cups, and two spoons and go to the kitchen to boil some water. Her aluminum kettle is small and dented. From the ceiling, she has hung the old bamboo colanders she no longer uses. They look dusty. I know the kitchen doesn’t look that different from when I was a child—my mother often complained about Fuku cooking in the same old pans instead of using the new ones her children had bought for her. My grandmother was always like that—frugal to a fault, saving things for special occasions that never came about. Still, I am struck by how meager and desolate the kitchen looks now.

  “It’s okay to give me strong coffee,” Fuku says when I return with the steaming kettle. “The doctor says I can eat and drink anything I want. At my age, I should enjoy whatever I can since I won’t be living very long no matter what I do.”

  I don’t think this is exactly how her doctor put it, but I keep silent while I prepare two cups of medium-strength coffee, set them on the table, and sit down across from her on the floor, my legs stretched in front of me.

  “We’ll have the manju from the altar,” Fuku says. “The plates are in that cupboard, too.”

  I get up again to serve the manju. They are balls of sticky pink rice with sweet bean paste inside, each dumpling wrapped in a pressed cherry leaf that wouldn’t come off in one piece. I hate sweet bean paste. Still, I peel off the leaf in broken fragments and bite into the pink rice.

  Fuku finishes her manju and takes a sip of coffee. “This is delicious,” she smiles, holding the cup in both her hands. “Sayo makes my coffee too weak.” She picks up another manju, peels it, and eats it slowly, chewing with her lips and gums because she is not wearing her dentures.

  On TV is a special program being broadcast all day because the emperor’s second son is getting married this afternoon. Right now, the camera is showing the town in which the bride’s family lives. They are commoners who rent a small apartment. The camera goes inside. A man is interviewing the family members while the bride is in her room getting dressed. I cannot help being annoyed by the tone of the interviewer as he cuts away from the family and starts talking to another newscaster, back at the main studio. They seem to be saying that this woman is lucky to be chosen, that a great honor is being bestowed on her and her family.

  I remember the van that Kazumi and I saw in Ashiya, its speakers blaring out the national anthem, the words to which mean “long live the emperor.” I cannot believe that Kazumi was not bothered by the van, that my cousin Akira wants to join the Self Defense Army. I am struck, suddenly, by how politics separates me from my relatives. Like most Japanese people, they are not politically or environmentally conscientious. They see little or no connection between politics and their daily lives. I have spent my adult life in a different world, among friends who believe that even small individual actions can contribute to the public good or harm. As a result, I want to feel morally upright even in the choice of what I eat and wear. I cannot hear ignorant prejudiced remarks without feeling a rush of anger and resentment. Unlike my cousin, I cannot dismiss them as a “nuisance.”

  My grandmother keeps chewing her manju, her eyes on the screen. I can’t believe that we are sitting here after all these years, watching the emperor’s family on TV. There is so much I need to say to her, and, with the TV on, I don’t know how to begin.

  I drink my coffee in silence, telling myself to be patient. That was what my mother always told me—we had to be patient with our grandparents when they seemed stubborn or nagging. We should be polite to our elders, she said, even if we disagree with them; we must first show respect to them if we want to be treated with respect in return. She taught me that, especially among family members, disagreement shouldn’t end in snide comments, unkind remarks, and other forms of rudeness.

  I think back to my visit to Kenichi’s house. I had decided, after all, to be frank about my vegetarianism because honesty seemed to be the only polite way—it would cause Kenichi’s family awkwardness and embarrassment if they prepared food I could not eat—so I told them ahead of time. Mariko made mostly vegetarian dishes for our dinner, except for a few additional things in case my cousins wanted meat. Everyone seemed vaguely amused and puzzled by my choices; still, no one made fun of my eating habits or any of the other choices I made in life. I, on my part, felt no need to criticize them or to bring up my political agenda at every turn.

  It’s the same thing now. Sitting here with my grandmother, who seems to show a reverential interest in the imperial family, I don’t need to tell her that she is wrong; I don’t even need to hold silent judgments and resentments against her. It doesn’t have to be the way it is with my father. When I felt angry at him for showing no sympathy toward the homeless in New York, for being so openly prejudiced, I was, in a sense, giving vent to my own personal resentment toward him. I was already feeling defensive because of the way he and Michiko had criticized me. I latched onto my anger at their political narrow-mindedness because it was something I could count against them in a seemingly “objective” way. It isn’t like that at all with my grandmother.

  My grandmother sees that I’m not eating. “Have another manju,” she says. She doesn’t remember that I hate bean paste because she has never taken my distaste for it seriously. All children like sweet things, she thinks—even children who are thirty-three. So I take another manju and slowly peel off the leaf. The rice is cold and sticky. The bean paste is too sweet, as always.

  Fuku�
��s cup is empty.

  “Can I make you more coffee?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you,” she sighs.

  “You don’t have to do anything for me.”

  On TV, the bride is about to leave her parents’ apartment. Outside a black limousine is waiting to take her to the wedding. Her family, being commoners, are not allowed to attend the religious part of the ceremony. Her father stands at the door in a black suit and bows deeply at her. She is no longer his child but a member of the imperial family.

  Fuku points to the bureau in the corner of the room and says, “I have some letters in the drawers there.”

  “What kind of letters?”

  “Letters from everyone. I’m asking people to take back theirs if they want them. Your uncle Shiro did. You should do the same.”

  The three drawers of the bureau are so full I have to yank them hard. Inside there are hundreds of old envelopes and postcards, some of them tied together with string or rubber bands. The first bunch of envelopes I pull out are from people whose names I vaguely recognize from family stories—relatives long dead before my time, friends of my grandparents from when they lived in Kobe before the war. Small photographs fall on the floor, mostly black-and-white prints.

  I bring a handful of these photographs to Fuku, and she tells me who they are of: my mother taking a dance lesson at eight, Keiko in her New Year’s kimono at ten, my great-grandfather Takehiko in the uniform he wore when fighting in the Russo-Japanese War.

  “I didn’t know he went to that war,” I tell my grandmother.

  “He was a captain. And he was decorated. Look at the medals.”

  Except for the uniform, the man looks so much like my grandfather that I might have mistaken the two—yet I know my grandfather never went to any war. I know little about my great-grandfather Takehiko. The only story I remember is that, as a young man, he was bitten by a poisonous mamushi snake while inspecting the paddies he owned. He calmly asked his sharecropper, who was standing by, for his sickle, and then he cut his own leg open to let out the venom. I stare at the photograph, trying to see some trace of his will to live, his ability to stay calm in a crisis, which were what we were supposed to learn from that story.

  “Do you want these photographs?” Fuku asks me.

  “Don’t you want to keep them?”

  “I have no use for them. They’re yours.”

  “Thank you.”

  Setting the photographs aside, I go back to the bureau to look through the letters. Halfway through the first drawer, I come across the letters I wrote in grade school. The stationery looks vaguely familiar. Each sheet of paper, colored blue or pink, has prints of animals, dolls, stars, or rainbows. My handwriting meanders over the page, dodging these pictures. It sounds like I was always bragging: about the writing contests I won at school, about the races I won, about how tall I was growing.

  “Take what you want,” Fuku says. “They’ll be ashes when I die.”

  I set aside my own letters and the weekly postcards my mother wrote. Many of them mention what she is planting in the garden; she often thanks her parents for the seeds, bulbs, or roots they sent her. Some postcards include anecdotes about my brother and me. She almost always mentions our health and our schoolwork, the places we visited together, what she is sewing or embroidering for us. In one postcard, she tells her parents that she is sending some flannel pajamas she made for them because the coming winter is expected to be particularly cold.

  In the second drawer I pull out, I come across two envelopes bunched together with a thick rubber band. The handwriting on the first one seems familiar, large and sprawled in blue-gray ink. I take off the rubber band and flip the envelopes—the return address is always written on the back of the envelope in Japan. I am right. The first one is from my father. The blue-gray ink is from his Parker pen, the same one he used to write to my English teacher, Miss Craddock, in tenth grade when I applied to study abroad the following year. He wrote that he could not provide the character reference for me that the scholarship organization had requested because he had very little to say about me that was positive—I was an intelligent but extremely self-centered and arrogant person. I wouldn’t have gotten the scholarship if Miss Craddock hadn’t torn up my father’s letter and asked my friend Machiko to write a reference for me instead. “In the recommendation I’m sending,” she told me, “I’ll explain why our school asked your friend. I’ll explain that you have an exceptional family circumstance.” Then she paused and added, “I know your father was wrong. Don’t be discouraged by what he said.” Stunned by her kindness, I wanted, for a moment, to burst into tears so that she would hug me and I could tell her all about my father, about how lonely I was in my own house. Miss Craddock knew that my mother was dead, but she didn’t know half the “exceptional family circumstance” she was referring to. But I just nodded and tried to smile, to say “thank you” without choking up.

  I am surprised by how painful this memory is, even now. Looking at his handwriting on the envelope, I wonder what my father ever had to say to my grandparents. The other envelope has my grandfather Tatsuo’s name and address on the back. I take out the letters and unfold them. They are both dated shortly after my mother’s death. I begin with my father’s letter.

  June 10, 1969

  The rainy season has started. It has rained quite hard in Kobe. How is the weather in the country? I hope you have suffered no severe rain damage.

  I am sorry that I have been too busy to respond to your frequent letters. You must have heard from Keiko, who came a few days ago to hear the priest read the sutras for Takako’s soul and then telephoned because she did not see the children on her visit. As I told Keiko, my children are quite happy and cheerful.

  My daughter has taken to Michiko just as she took to my sister, Akiko. She is quite eager to spend time with her new mother. Jumpei, too, calls her Okasan and follows her around. A friend who visited the other day said, “They don’t seem at all like children who have just lost their mother. How fortunate for them.” My father has pointed out that until lately, these children have been much too spoiled. They have not had an adequate education in their morals and attitudes, even though Kyoko has always excelled at schoolwork. I did not notice this problem till my father pointed it out to me, but once he did, I had to agree with him. The children have been quite spoiled. At the time, they were in Ashiya at his house, so I asked my sister, Akiko, to be a little more strict with them than their mother had been. I’m afraid Akiko did not make a good attempt. She is too softhearted. Since Michiko’s arrival, however, things have improved remarkably. Michiko is enthusiastic about giving the children a good moral education. As a result, Kyoko has become a little less self-centered and conceited. Jumpei is better able to express his naturally sweet temperament without being the weakling he used to be.

  I understand how you must feel. Indeed, I feel your pain with you and very much appreciate your concern for my children. Still, I am writing to ask you to let them be for the time being and not seek their company. The best thing for Michiko, Kyoko, and Jumpei is to be left alone to determine how the three of them will build a future as a family. When the children are older, they may understand the past for what it was; they may be able to give due recognition to the memory of their first mother without losing the gratitude and affection they owe to the second mother who raised them through the difficult years. For the time being, they are too young to attain such a complex balance of emotions. Therefore, though I understand your concerns, I must ask you to forget the children till they are adults.

  As you know, Shiro has offered to take them to your house to spend the summer. The children would undoubtedly enjoy the summer in the country. However, in view of all the above reasons, I am not ready to give my permission. I will think it over, consult my father, and think some more. He will contact you after our minds are thoroughly made up.

  I have never been good with words. Easy eloquence always e
scapes me. I can never fully express the thoughts that lie deep within my heart. But I trust that in your wisdom, you will understand my humble attempt to express my duties, obligations, and wishes.

  I hope to see you soon myself to discuss how and where Takako’s ashes will be dedicated next April. For the time being, however, I want you to know that my children are cheerful and happy. They are well on their way to a new life.

  The rainy season is hard on one’s health, especially since it will be followed by extreme heat. Please be sure to take care of your health. I wish for your welfare from the bottom of my heart.

  Respectfully, Hiroshi Mori

  That rainy season, I rode the commuter trains to and from my school every morning and afternoon. The rain, which beaded up and trickled down the large glass windows of the trains, looked like the tears my mother must be crying in heaven to see me so unhappy.

  I was never eager to spend time with Michiko, who told me that I talked too much even though I scarcely talked at all at home. One Sunday while we were having dinner, Michiko asked me to get a glass of milk for her. I said, “Why don’t you get it yourself? You are sitting closer to the refrigerator.” My father got up from the table and beat me until I bent over and threw up. A glass fell off the table and shattered because I had bumped into one of the table legs. My brother started crying. Michiko just sat there and watched the whole thing. This must have happened a week or two before he wrote the letter.

  Across the room, my grandmother is watching TV. I want her to understand that what my father said was a complete lie—I never wanted to be happy at the cost of forgetting my mother. But how can I explain this? My grandfather must have believed my father to some extent; maybe that’s why he decided that I would be better off living in the city with my father and Michiko. I cannot bear to think that my grandfather might have died still believing I had forgotten about my mother and was happy with Michiko. I will never be able to tell him how things really were.