by Kyoko Mori
“My father didn’t travel to Hiroshima to be with you first?”
“No, he sent us a letter saying he would wait for us, since we were coming back anyway.”
“So that’s how it was.” He had just sat in his cramped room waiting for news. What would he have done if a letter never came? How long would it have taken him to assume that his family was dead? Would he have gone back then, or would he have considered it unnecessary? If it had been my mother whose family was in Hiroshima, she would have taken the first available train as far as it went and walked the rest of the way into the heart of disaster.
“I just remembered something your father said.” Akiko’s eyes tear up.
“Don’t tell us if it makes you sad.” I put my hand on her shoulder. Her pajama top has a fuzzy nap.
“He told us that after hearing about the bomb, he wondered what would happen to the life insurance if we had all died but the records had been burned as well. He didn’t know how he would be able to collect the money. Why would he say such a thing to us?”
Kazumi pulls a white handkerchief out of her purse and hands it to Akiko. It has lace edges like the ones my mother used to carry. Long ago, Kazumi and I had handkerchiefs with cartoons printed on them, while our mothers had white ones with lace or small embroidery.
“Did he say that right after the war?” I ask.
“A few years afterward. We were celebrating New Year’s Day. He had had one cup of sake, and he was laughing when he said it.” Akiko presses the handkerchief to the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know why your mother married such a strange character.”
“Maybe he was different back then, at least to her. Aunt Keiko said he used to be very attentive. He actually seemed like a kind person, even.”
“No,” Akiko insists. “He was always selfish and cold.” She presses the handkerchief to her eyes one last time and then puts it in the breast pocket of her pajama top. “I don’t know why your mother didn’t see that right away. She was so smart about everything else. She could have married anyone else.”
Kazumi pats the back of her hand.
“Still,” Akiko continues, “I’m glad she married my brother and had you and Jumpei. She was such a good friend to me.”
“You were a good friend to her, too.”
A few months before her death, my mother wrote in her journal about how Akiko had come to visit her in the rain to cheer her up because she had sounded depressed over the phone. They sat in the living room in their thick sweaters and ate the hothouse strawberries Akiko had brought, listening to Takako’s old Doris Day and Peggy Lee albums. The strawberries were large and sweet. They reminded my mother of fairy-tale cures: dew from a moonflower, oranges in the dead of winter, an apple from a snow-covered mountain—always something nearly impossible to get. She told Akiko that sometimes she wished she could die in her sleep. “Please don’t say such a thing,” Akiko asked her. “You can’t die and leave me alone. Promise you’ll grow old with me.” Outside, the rain was turning into sleet. The trees looked gray and dead forever. Akiko-san, daisuki, Takako wrote in her journal: “I love Akiko.” She promised that she would try to cheer up.
“I was afraid you and Jumpei might forget her,” Akiko says. “Your father and grandfather wouldn’t let me speak about her in front of you.”
“I never forgot anything, but Jumpei says he was too young. He scarcely remembers her.”
Akiko pulls out the handkerchief again. “Jumpei didn’t understand what death was. About a month after the funeral, he told me something. He said, ‘I’m going to save a lot of money. Maybe I can buy her back when I grow up.’”
Nobody says anything for a while.
“Jumpei’s famous savings,” Kazumi says, trying for a light tone. “Remember Aunt Takako was worried about his turning into a miser? He was always counting the coins in his piggy bank. He got less allowance than we did, but he always had more money saved. You and I always spent everything we had.”
Akiko puts away her handkerchief.
“I want to come back next summer to spend a few weeks with my mother’s family,” I tell her.
“Stay a few weeks with us,” Akiko says.
“You don’t have to worry about seeing Grandfather,” Kazumi adds. “He’ll be busy working.”
Akiko grimaces. “He’s eighty-six, and he won’t quit working. He’s afraid of going senile. He thinks work keeps him young.”
“He’s fussy and vain as ever. If I don’t press his shirts the right way,” Kazumi says, “or if I don’t clean his room the way he likes, he calls me a freeloader.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It’s all right.” Kazumi smiles. “My mother and I know he couldn’t last a day without us. He doesn’t even know how to make a cup of tea. So we just laugh to ourselves when he calls us names.”
“I saw Grandfather only once,” I tell Akiko. “I didn’t even say good-bye to him.”
“Don’t worry about him or your father,” Akiko says. “You don’t have to see them or Michiko.”
“Even Grandfather doesn’t get along with Michiko,” Kazumi says. “She takes offense at the smallest things.”
“She’s always been like that,” I say. “She used to get mad at me for the most trivial things and then threaten to leave my father. I doubt that she really meant to leave him. Maybe she was just trying to make him angry at me.”
Akiko holds my hand. “If I had known how mean she was to you, I would have done something. I would have talked to your grandfather every day till he broke down and let me take you back. I’m really sorry I didn’t do that.”
I squeeze her hand and then let go. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t know what was going on. None of us did. I even believed Michiko when she said I was bothering you by visiting you every Sunday. I should have talked to you instead of listening to her.”
“Kazumi told me,” Akiko says. “That still made me angry, after all this time. Michiko lied to me, too. When you stopped coming, she said you were busy with friends, and that you were a teenager now and didn’t want to spend time with relatives.”
“My friends were with their families on Sundays. I went to the library alone.”
“It turned out all right,” Akiko says, trying to smile. “I’m glad you were able to get away from Hiroshi and Michiko. They’ve done you nothing but harm. You owe them nothing.”
We begin to talk about my life in Wisconsin. I don’t tell them how out of place I often feel in Green Bay. I don’t mention the long winter months and the bleak restlessness they bring. What good will it do to worry Akiko and Kazumi about my life in a place they can only imagine vaguely? For a long time, I have thought my closeness to people was defined by my ability to talk about what bothered me, what made me unhappy. But that isn’t the only thing. The closeness I feel with my aunt and my cousin, my mother’s family, and my old friends is based more on unspoken trust or respect. No matter where and how I decide to live, all these people I love will assume that I am doing my best, that my life is good, that they can be proud of me in some way. Unlike my father and stepmother, they will not criticize me for where I choose to live and with whom, what job I hold, how much money I make. They will never ask pointed questions about my relationships, my qualifications, my income, or anything. Their politeness, their desire not to intrude or criticize, is a relief. If I were unhappy where I was, and moved, my friends here would shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, a lot happens to a person in her life,” or “It’s all part of experience.” Many of them have already been unhappy or dissatisfied. When we were young, I felt that tragedy had set me apart from them. That was true back then, but it’s no longer the case. Though I haven’t been part of my friends’ lives in the last thirteen years, time and events have reduced the barriers. Akiko, too, is talking to me differently now, without the restrictions imposed by her father and brother, because I am no longer twenty. We can speak more easily now, even though we haven’t been speaking to each other for so long
. This is a comfort: time solves some of our problems even when we haven’t been consciously trying to cope with them.
The nurse comes in and hands Akiko a small tray with several pills and a glass of water. Akiko takes the pills one at a time, carefully swallowing the water after each. It’s four o’clock.
“I’m going to leave and let you rest,” I suggest. “Maybe Kazumi can have supper with me before I go back to pack my bags. I’m going out with some of my high school friends, but that’s not till later.”
“Let me walk you to the elevator,” Akiko offers.
“No, we’ll walk you to your room.”
“I can walk there by myself. I’ve been walking every day. It’s good exercise.”
Kazumi and I stand up first and reach down. Akiko puts one hand in each of ours and leans forward. We walk slowly down the hall, holding hands. At the elevator, she lets go.
“I’m so glad I saw you,” she says. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too. Get well soon. I’ll see you next summer.”
Kazumi and I get into the elevator and push the button for the first floor. The gray doors shut while Akiko is waving.
* * *
A couple of hours later, after our supper at a coffee shop, Kazumi and I have to say good-bye at the train station in Ashiya. She has to walk home to get the house ready for our grandfather.
Standing at the gate, I can’t believe we are actually saying goodbye, that in about thirty hours, I will be back in Wisconsin. Kazumi and I will not go on seeing each other every weekend, the way our mothers did. “I would have felt like an orphan,” Kazumi had said, “if something had happened to my mother.” Come and live with me, I want to say. Let me take you out of here. But she won’t, and I know it.
“Kai-chan,” I say, using her childhood name. “Kai-chan, daisuki.” I love you.
She starts crying. I lean forward and hold her.
“I’ll be back soon,” I say.
“Be happy,” she says.
“Seeing you was the best part of my trip,” I tell her.
I don’t want to let go. Still, I turn away and put the ticket in the slot. It makes a clicking sound, and the metal arm goes up on the other end. I begin to walk away. Kazumi is still waving at me when I look back from the corner. I climb the steps to the platform, where the train is waiting. Soon it lurches forward and retraces the route between Ashiya and Kobe that we used to ride as children, going downtown in the identical dresses one of our mothers had sewn for us.
* * *
Back at Sylvia’s house, I begin to look through my belongings: books and gifts I bought or was given, letters and kimonos from my grandmother’s house, brochures and postcards from the places I’ve visited. I need to make piles of things to take with me on the plane, things to pack into boxes for Vince to send to me, things to throw out. I stick my hand inside my backpack and touch something hard. It’s the package Michiko had dropped off with Kazumi. I had forgotten about it.
The glossy white wrapping paper I tear off has “Hokkaido” printed all over in blue. The necklace and the earrings are inside a clear plastic package. Shaped like lilies of the valley, they shine a glossy orange, the color of boiled shrimp in cooking magazines. The pamphlet inserted at the bottom explains how milk fat is boiled and cooled to form a paste, which is then carved and polished. The result is a dull shine like plastic. The earrings are clip-ons. Last year in New York, my stepmother noticed that I had gotten my ears pierced. “Very American,” she commented, even though some women in Japan also have pierced ears.
“Our tastes are so different,” she said on the phone yesterday. That was exactly what she said when I began to buy my own clothes in eighth grade, after she had thrown out the dresses my mother had made because they were too small for me. I never wore dresses again except when Akiko sewed them from the same material she used to make Kazumi’s. I went shopping downtown and bought blue jeans and T-shirts in bright red, sky blue, indigo, various shades of purple.
“You would never look very good in those pretty tailored dresses your friends wear,” Michiko used to say, looking at my T-shirts and shaking her head. “You and I certainly have different tastes. But you are lucky to be healthy looking and not too pretty. You can wear simple things and look comfortable rather than shabby. I’m sure you wish you were pretty like your friends. But looks aren’t everything. You’re smart and studious. They say heaven doesn’t give us too many gifts.”
I take out the necklace and the earrings and hold them up to the light. They would never match anything I wear. Even Michiko must see that my favorite colors are still the blues and the reds, never oranges or yellows. I picture milk fat boiling in a black vat and someone pouring the cooked-shrimp pigment over it. The liquid would bead up to the top and smell faintly sweet. Milk fat is milk fat no matter what you do with it. It never turns into a true gem. Nevertheless, I put the earrings, the necklace, and the pamphlet back into the plastic box and stuff it into my carry-on bag with the other gift items the customs inspectors might ask to see. I want to have all of them in one place so the inspectors won’t unpack my suitcases and go through what is personal: the letters, the notes I’ve taken, my mother’s kimonos and photographs.
* * *
At seven o’clock, Miya comes to pick me up in her car, and we drive to Ashiya to meet the others at a bar run by another classmate of ours, Kayoko.
When we get there, Yoshiko, Toshiko, and Hiroko are sitting at one of the round white tables. They wave at us as soon as we enter. Miya and I go over to their table.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Toshiko says when we sit down. She is wearing a white linen jacket and pants, her hair cut very short. Leaning forward just a little, she lights her cigarette with a silver lighter.
Across the table, Yoshiko and Hiroko are smiling at me in their print dresses, their fingers delicately wrapped around the stems of wine glasses.
“You haven’t changed,” Yoshiko says to me.
“I was just going to say that about you all,” I say.
Kayoko, our classmate, brings the drinks to the table and sits down. She is wearing a black low-cut dress and a silver necklace with a pendant shaped like a musical note.
“This is very nice,” I say, waving my hand to indicate the maroon-and-green interior. Etude is the name of the bar, written in a fancy script on the awnings outside the window. I remember that Kayoko used to play the piano.
“I started this business right after my divorce,” she says, laughing. “My parents put up the money for it because they felt sorry for me.”
I smile and nod, not knowing what to say. Kayoko says that she is now living with the man she hired to cook at the bar. They have no plans to get married.
“One marriage is enough.” She shrugs her shoulders as she gets up to go back behind the bar.
I am too astonished to speak. In high school, Kayoko was a very serious and studious person. She sat in front of me in Western civ, taking meticulous notes. She even copied the maps Mr. Kaneko drew on the blackboard, though similar maps could be found in the last pages of our textbooks. “Oh,” she would sigh very quietly if Mr. Kaneko erased the map before she was done copying it, but she would never ask him to wait for her.
“Kayoko went through a very difficult time with her divorce,” Hiroko whispers to me.
“We always come here when we get together,” Yoshiko adds, “to give her some business.”
Sipping her scotch and water, Toshiko tells me that she’s been reading Kazuo Ishiguro this summer. “I just finished his second book, An Artist of the Floating World.”
“I read only his first book,” I tell her. “I’ve been meaning to read the others.”
“The second is much better,” she tells me. “The third one is excellent, too, but maybe you’ll think it’s too philosophical. You never liked books with big ideas.” She laughs because we both remember that in tenth grade I hated Hermann Hesse. “Too philosophical,” I kept saying. “Too many ideas.”
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“I can’t believe that you’ve become a college professor,” Toshiko says, “when the thing I remember most about you is how you almost passed out during the math exam during our entrance exams to Kobe Jogakuin. Remember that?”
“Of course I remember that.”
“She and I were in the same exam room,” Toshiko says to everyone else. “Kyoko raised her hand in the middle of the math test and said, ‘Excuse me. I need to go to the nurse’s room and lie down.’”
“I was in that exam room, too,” Yoshiko says. “She sounded so casual, like she was going to take a nap or something.”
Everyone laughs.
“I wasn’t taking a nap,” I protest. “I felt sick because I didn’t know any of the answers.”
“I felt really sorry for you,” Toshiko recalls. “I thought for sure you wouldn’t get in. Then I saw you on the first day of school in that red dress, with red ribbons in your hair. I couldn’t believe it. I thought you had to have done really well on the other exams.”
“Maybe I was lucky.”
I remember going back after the math exam to the big cafeteria where all our mothers were waiting for us to have lunch. When I said to my mother, “I took my exam in the nurse’s office,” several other women turned around to look at me with pity. They must have thought, too, that I had surely failed. A week later, when we found out the results, my mother and I could not believe that I had gotten in. That was in February 1969. I didn’t know then that I would come back to school in April without my mother for the first-day ceremony.
Now, though, I’m glad to have Toshiko and Yoshiko remember me from the day of the exams, from the time my mother was still alive. Though they don’t remember my mother, we were all in that same cafeteria having lunch once, all of us anxious and a little tired.
Toshiko starts talking about how the two of us used to get into trouble. In ninth grade, our homeroom teacher, Mr. Hayashi, showed us a one-hour film about V.D., during which he stood in the back of the classroom instead of going to the teachers’ lounge and sending a woman teacher to supervise us. The next morning, Toshiko, I, and another girl named Yuko went to school an hour early and scrawled on the blackboard: Hayashi’s a pervert, Hayashi has V.D. of the mind, Hayashi is preoccupied with sex. Because Yuko confessed, our parents were called to school. My stepmother told Mr. Hayashi, in front of Toshiko, Yuko, and their parents, that I had possibly done these things because I had a crush on him. “You know how young girls are,” Michiko said, smiling and simpering. I walked out. Toshiko and I can’t remember now what the punishments were except for the letters of apology we were supposed to write. I never turned mine in.