Rain Song

by Alice J. Wisler

  And I can’t forget Sazae. “She wasn’t from Mama,” I tell Ducee. “The maid gave her to me.”

  Ducee searches my eyes. “I’m sorry.” She seems disappointed, just as I was, to learn this. “I assumed your mother bought you that doll.”

  After a moment, Ducee pats my arm and whispers, “I bet you’re tired.”

  I hadn’t thought about it, but now that it’s been mentioned, yes, I am.

  “It sounds like you learned a lot lately. Learning can be exhausting.”

  Suddenly it is as though all the twists and turns of the day have caught up with me. It seems as if weeks have passed since I printed out Harrison’s newest message and carried it into the janitor’s closet to read. My muscles ache just thinking about the whole day.

  Ducee has a question for me. “How did you find Harrison?”

  “He read one of my columns at Pretty Fishy. He has carp in a pond in his garden and asked me a question about them.”

  “The Internet,” says Ducee with a small nod. “I heard it does connect the world.”

  As I carry our dishes to the sink, she stands and cries, “Leave them. I can do them in the morning.” Then her arms circle my waist. “Oh, Nicole, isn’t it wonderful?” She lifts her face to kiss my cheek. “I thank God you have met someone from the past.” Her next question makes me jump. “When are you going?”

  “Where?”

  “To Japan.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ducee winks. “What do you think I mean?”

  “I can’t go there!”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? I hate flying. The last and only time I’ve flown, I threw up on the airplane. My roots are here; I can’t leave Mount Olive. I ask, “Who will take care of my fish?”

  “With half of Mount Olive being related to us, we can surely get someone willing and capable.” She tilts her head. “Monet would be my first choice.”

  Monet! I envision my whole aquarium murky and lifeless as three-year-old Monet laughs and hops on one foot. “Oh, Ducee, I hate to fly.”

  “Lots of people don’t like to fly. One out of eight.”

  I ask, “One out of eight what?”

  “Americans. One out of eight of us is petrified to fly. Even Loretta Lynn.”

  “The country singer?”

  “That’s right,” says Ducee. “I heard it on this program on TV.” And according to Ducee and Iva, if it’s on TV, well, then, it’s pretty close to truth.

  Even Loretta Lynn hates to fly. Imagine that. For the first time, I don’t feel so alone with my fear.

  “Okay. Okay. Don’t go, then.” Ducee’s voice suddenly is firm, and a stern look shifts into her eyes.

  “What?” My mind is still on Loretta Lynn.

  “See?” Ducee’s face breaks into a smile. “Hard to think of giving it up, isn’t it?”

  Ducee sure has some strange psychology.

  “Risk!” she tells me as I make my way to the front door.

  “What?”

  “Lizzy risked her life. Young girls didn’t just leave their homelands and take off to meet strangers every day, you know. Eventually she and Edgar risked their lives to come to this great land of opportunity. They believed in a dream that this land could provide them with brighter futures than the lot they had been given in England or Ireland. So they came here. Risked it all. Yes, yes.”

  “I don’t know. . . .” Lizzy was courageous. I have yet to find a brave bone in my body.

  “Be like the duck that jumps into the pond.”

  In my mind I picture a yellow duckling diving headfirst into a pond. Her webbed feet vanish into the water, the last visible sight of her. The older ducks surround her place of entry, watch the ripple from the splash, and wonder. “How does the duck know if she can swim?”

  Without hesitation, my grandmother says, “She doesn’t.” With a wink she adds, “But there’s a good chance she can.”

  I kiss the top of Ducee’s head, breathe in lilac, and whisper, “Good night.”

  “Nicole, I think it will do you good to go” are her last words to me.

  In the driveway by the fence, I touch Maggie’s wet nose. Maggie sniffs, possibly wondering where all the shrimp I had earlier went.

  The moon is still a beautiful glowing ball. And yes, if I squint, I can see a pair of eyes and an imprint that could serve as a mouth. I have always seen the man in the moon. If I cross the Pacific and go to Japan, will I be able to see the rabbit within?

  ———

  At home, my first stop is to see Sazae. In my bedroom, I take her from her spot on the pillow and cradle her. “You were not from Mama,” I tell her. Of course she has no reaction. Did I expect her to stand up, plant her hands on her hips, and demand, “And why not?”

  Seated on the edge of the bed, I trace her kimono sleeves with my finger. Back and forth, my finger travels across the sleeve singed in the fire and later trimmed by Watanabe-san. “She gave you to me,” I say. “She saved you, too, and altered your burned sleeve.” I clutch her, press her head to my nose, and smell that moldy orange aroma. “She risked her life to save us, Sazae.”

  Her expression doesn’t change. Same black eyes and fading thin lips.

  Perhaps knowing Sazae wasn’t a gift from Mama will make it easier to give my childhood doll to Monet. I smile at Sazae, examine her geta, and feel her cotton body against the bend in my arm. She feels like she did when I was six and nine and twenty-nine.

  This doll has been with me for as long as I can remember.

  Her presence has comforted me all these years.

  Oh, Monet, she is still my, my, my.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I explain to Harrison about Sazae and ask if he could possibly find the shop in Kobe and purchase a doll like Sazae. “I’d like to give her to Monet.”

  Harrison writes that he will certainly try. “Of course,” he says, “you could come to Japan and I’ll take you to Kobe. We can look for the shop together. And while we’re at it, we can have lunch at this hole-in-the-wall restaurant that serves the best unagi. It melts in your mouth.”

  In my next message I write that I don’t fly. “Some people don’t eat meat. (And while we’re on the subject, I am not sure I could eat eel.) Some think it’s a sin to read your horoscope. I don’t travel by plane.”

  He writes to me about Dramamine, and I reply that no medicine could possibly be potent enough to take away my fear of flying.

  “Well, then,” he writes, “you may have to be like our parents and the early missionaries and take a ship to Japan.” In the same message, he says he’s going on a weekend trip with Jurgen to Shikoku. I’m glad he told me, because otherwise I would have worried when I didn’t hear from him for two whole days.

  Sitting in Aunt Lucy’s chair, I have a view out the window of two bluebirds sailing around the oak tree, now full with new spring leaves. The birds dart under and over each other. They take turns perching on a limb. They are stunning against the green. Then suddenly they’ve disappeared. Flown off to someone else’s yard. As though they were bored with mine.

  I feel panic spread across my skin. What if Harrison decides to leave? How can I be sure he will continue writing? Do I really expect to still be corresponding with him, say, five years from now?

  Oh, I hate thinking about those five-year plans. Teachers think it is a topic students should contemplate. “Where do you see yourself five years from now?”

  And the answers fly out: Happy, wealthy, living the life of ease.

  Isn’t that what each of us really wants?

  And no one gets?

  Instead of that smooth path filled with greenery and frolicking birds, it’s a winding, uphill climb in the desert, with scorpions and rattlesnakes at every bend.

  The five-year plan doesn’t know that the spouse will get sick and die, or that the boss will lay you off one morning when you come to work all ready to go, cup of steaming coffee in hand.

  “Life is a series of unha
ppy and happy events,” Ducee told me once. “But it’s in those moments that we grow. Most of life is made up of single happy moments. And sometimes a few moments are all you get.”

  ———

  My grandmother was given many happy moments with her daughters, Betty and Emma. Ducee took the girls each Saturday to the five and dime, and sometimes to the movies, where they bought popcorn when there was money to spare. While her little girls played dress-up with old hats and shoes from the attic, she sat in front of her sewing machine with patterns and pins, creating school clothes for them to wear.

  She had many proud moments—graduations from high school, nursing school, and weddings. Births of grandchildren.

  Then one winter afternoon, twenty-nine years ago, she received a telegram that let her know there would be no more moments with her oldest. Emma was dead.

  Every year on Mama’s birthday, Iva, Ducee, and I make our annual pilgrimage to The Meadows, the cemetery where Mama is buried. Ducee wears a black fisherman’s hat and a solemn expression. Iva is usually late.

  Once we’re all gathered, Iva and I help Ducee take three purple helium balloons, tied with long white strings, from the cab of her red truck. We each hold one, protecting it, guarding it from flying away too soon. Then we stand in a circle, talk about Mama, and wait for Ducee’s cue—“We love you, Emma!”—to release the balloons and watch as they dance into the April sky.

  This year I am early. Against the wind, I walk carefully on freshly mowed grass over to Mama’s gravestone—still white, even after twenty-nine years.

  When I was small, I’d lean my whole body on the stone, resting my head against the inscription. Emma McCormick Dubois Michelin. April 30, 1938—January 30, 1970. Our Loss, Heaven’s Gain. With my eyes closed, I would say, “Mama?” A pause. “It’s me. It’s Nicole. It’s me.” Another pause. A small hand touching my mother’s name. “Mama?” Rubbing her name, hoping, somehow, the action would bring her to life again.

  One summer afternoon when the ground and air were sticky with heat, I swore I heard a rustling sound followed by a gentle female voice. “Oh, Nicole,” the voice whispered, “of course, I know it’s you. I love you.”

  It was a day I’ll never forget, one of those fleeting happy moments Ducee refers to.

  When Grandpa Luke was alive, Ducee, Luke, and I would come to The Meadows with a picnic and spread a red-checkered cloth on the ground by Mama’s grave. We’d eat ham biscuits, homemade pineapple chutney, chips and coleslaw, and pour chilled lemonade from a thermos into Dixie cups.

  Ducee would say, “Emma loved lemonade,” and I would think that I should love it too, then.

  It was after one of those lunches that I heard the tender voice speak to me. Quickly, I opened my eyes, certain that I’d see an illuminated, parted sky, and angels descending with harps and halos of purest gold. Surely this was a miracle, the kind recorded in the Bible.

  Instead, the sky held only the same thick clouds it had earlier. Grandpa Luke and Ducee were leaning against the tall pine tree on the hill to the left of Mama’s grave and talking calmly as though nothing spectacular had happened. Perhaps Mama had only spoken to me—Nicole Delores Michelin. Perhaps this could be our secret, like our special family pineapple chutney recipe.

  Today, I listen as intently as my ears let me.

  I wait.

  Even as we grow older, our childhood hopes don’t leave us. I would give almost anything to hear that voice of summers ago whisper in my ear.

  But I hear only the wind.

  And then there is a rumble. Ducee has arrived in her truck. I see the purple balloons bouncing inside the cab.

  Fifteen minutes later, Iva walks across the grass toward us, muttering something about the police blocking part of the road a mile from here. She’s sure they are trying to catch an escaped convict.

  Ducee hands us each a balloon and kisses hers. With her free hand, she pulls the black fisherman’s hat down over her ears.

  The wind whips across the silent graves.

  “We remember this day,” Ducee says. She lets the tips of her tennis shoes touch Mama’s tombstone. “This is a day to celebrate. Without this day, Emma wouldn’t have been born. This is the day she entered the world and made it a sparklin’ place.” Then Ducee calls out, “Memories.” It’s a cue for any of us to share a memory of Mama.

  I hold no memories, so my tradition has been to say, “I love you, Mama.”

  Iva clears her throat and says, “I remember the time you ate the soap in the bathtub.”

  I wonder if I’m allowed to laugh.

  Quickly, my aunt adds with a flourish of passion, “We miss you, Emma.”

  Ducee closes her eyes, and except for the wind, there is silence. Once, Ducee stayed silent for a full eleven minutes. I checked the time on Iva’s wristwatch. It was the April I was thirteen and the minutes seemed long and stretched, like my patience.

  This afternoon, within seconds, Ducee raises her head, shouts, “We love you, Emma!” and we know it is time to let the strings to the purple balloons go.

  I release mine reluctantly, as though I am letting Mama go. Which is silly to think of because she left a long time ago.

  With energy, the purple globes fly into the sky.

  We watch in silence as we do every year. Sometimes the balloons head east, sometimes north, but always, they disappear too quickly for me. And I wait with Ducee till all we can see is a speck against the crystal-blue spring sky.

  “They go to heaven,” Ducee once told me.

  “Really? Does Mama get them, then?”

  “Yes,” breathed Ducee. “Yes.”

  All these years that is what I want to continue to hear. The balloons make it to heaven, against all of nature’s laws of gravity, against birds that might pop them with their beaks, against all forces. Those very balloons grace Mama on her birthday in heaven.

  We head over to Ducee’s for a dinner of hot biscuits, cold beets, pineapple chutney, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes. This meal is prepared every April thirtieth; it was Mama’s favorite.

  I’ve grown to love the meatloaf Ducee makes. She flavors it with tomato sauce, a little brown sugar, and a host of spices. However, the beets I can’t seem to acquire a taste for. I still keep them well away from the mashed potatoes on my plate so that they won’t make the white, fluffy potatoes red.

  After the meal we have the customary angel food cake Ducee buys from a bakery near the pickle company. Iva and Ducee usually sing a song or two from their collection of favorites.

  This year they croon “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

  After the second verse, I excuse myself from the living room and wash dishes.

  This is our tradition. Tradition keeps us strong, Ducee tells us every year. As long as she doesn’t break out into the song “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof, we’ll be okay.

  ———

  “Did my mom really like meatloaf and beets?” I ask Harrison after returning from Ducee’s. It is a little strange to be asking someone I have no memory of about another person I hold no memory of.

  As Harrison told me earlier, he will be gone from his computer this weekend, taking a trip with Jurgen to visit fishermen friends in Shikoku. This is also the week of Emperor Hirohito’s birthday, which means lots of traveling and time off during this week, known for some reason as Golden Week. So I’ll have to wait to find out about Mama and the beets.

  A weekend stretches before me, offering what? All I want to do is hear from Harrison. I look at his picture on my computer. Then, since there are no new messages, I read old ones from him. The words “Come to Japan” pop out at me.

  In his most recent message, Harrison tells me I can freely ask Watanabe-san as many questions as my heart desires if I just come to Japan. “I visited her today and she was in her brooding mood. She only shared tea with me, no memories,” Harrison wrote. “I’ll visit her again when I get back from Shikoku.”

  ———

  Just for fun, I se
arch at Google and before I know it, I am at the government’s official passport Web site. In order to get a passport—not that I ever would—I’d need to apply as a new applicant. Since my old passport was issued when I was under sixteen, it can’t be renewed.

  I need to fill out a form and take it, along with two twoby-two-inch recent photos and a picture I.D., to a government building. There are a number of government buildings in the state of North Carolina that provide passport service.

  I search some more, fascinated by the assortment of information on international travel. I can’t wait to tell Principal Vickers. We might even be able to chat about the Internet’s wealth of information in the hallway on Monday.

  With a few more clicks, I am at the U.S. Department of State’s Web site. I type my zip code into a little search box to see where the closest passport location would be. Up pop six locations, the Clerk of Court building on East Walnut Street in Goldsboro being the closest at only fourteen miles away. I jot down the address and phone number.

  Am I going to apply for a passport and fly to Japan? Hop on a plane and let it take me over the sea? Thirteen hours of motion while cooped up with strangers? When I throw up, who will hold my hand and give me a sip of water to drink?

  I exit the U.S. Department of State’s Web site.

  I’ll swim to Japan before getting on a plane.

  ———

  Harrison writes that his trip to Shikoku was enjoyable and that he and Jurgen have made plans to spend the last two weeks of July and most of August working at a fishing village on that island’s southern coast.

  “So,” he says, “why don’t you come here the first of July and spend two weeks?”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, I shoot back a message.

  “I can’t travel then. The weekend of July Fourth is our family reunion.”

  Miss that event? Never. Those of us with any McCormick in our blood take attending the annual family reunion very seriously. Why, if you don’t show up for the reunion, awful things can be said about you. If you are dead, then and only then are you excused from a McCormick reunion. As for the bad things being said, that will happen if you are not present—dead or alive.