Rain Song

by Alice J. Wisler

  She was always the “celebrity child” in Japan. With her blond hair and blue eyes, the Japanese asked her to pose for English language school posters and brochures. In America, especially in New York City, she is a dime a dozen. No one stops her on the street to ask if she’ll teach English or tell her she’s beautiful or comment on how long her legs are. She is another face in the crowd, and she is having a hard time adjusting to this. As an American in Japan, it’s like the horns blow and the red carpet is rolled out wherever you go. The only people who ask her for attention in the city of New York are the beggars on the street corners. In time, she may get used to it all.

  We like to act like we had the life of ease and fun. Deep down, there are so many insecurities and worries. I wouldn’t trade my upbringing in Japan for anything. It is who I am. But that doesn’t mean it was without difficulties.

  I’ve written a lot. You may want to be careful when you think about asking me a question like that next time. I may never stop. Thanks, by the way, for asking.

  I read his response many times. Then I print it on sheets of copy paper. Even though I don’t fully understand where he is coming from, I am honored that he took the time to share his thoughts with me. Perhaps when I actually get to Japan, I’ll comprehend better how he feels.

  I can’t wait to meet him. Again.

  ———

  Being female, I don’t know what to wear. I’ve never understood other women who complained about their lack of nice clothes or clothes that fit. Just put on a pair of jeans and sweatshirt and go wherever you need to go. That was my attitude. Who needs loads of clothes?

  How things can change. I’ve spent the last hour trying on all my sundresses—all two of them—and three pairs of faded jeans, one khaki skirt, T-shirts, and a skirt with a ruffle that was probably passed down from Aunt Lucy. I feel like a frumpy old schoolteacher. That is not the image I want to give Harrison when he greets me at the Osaka airport.

  My savings account tells me I have one hundred sixty-two dollars to spend on clothes. I check out a flyer from Julianne’s on Main Street. How convenient, it’s having a sale this week.

  The sky is a shiny blue without a cloud in sight, and the summer sun beats down on me with all the heat it can muster. It is summer in the South.

  Thank you, God, for a working air-conditioner in my car.

  Inside the cool car, before backing out of my driveway, I step on the brake and laugh. Throw my head back and let a laugh start in my stomach and work its way out of my mouth, just like Uncle Jarvis does. Then I laugh at the sound of my own laughter.

  It is the sound and feel of sunshine and waterfalls mixed together on a beautiful southern day.

  The Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I am going to the land of the rising sun.

  ———

  I don’t shop much. The few times I have gone to the mall, after about an hour, I’m bone-tired. Forget standing over racks of seasonal clothes, I just want to be home on my comfortable sofa in a pair of worn jeans and my tattered Mount Olive T-shirt with a mug of tea. It seems like trying on clothes and looking in the store’s dressing room mirror should be fun. Aunt Iva considers it a treat. Perhaps because she has long legs, so clothes look good on her. Sometimes I am able to admire the way a dress or pants fit and feel like a model, albeit a short one. Those are the few-and-far-between times. Usually, I’m mortified that the mirror could do such an injustice and make me look so awful. Once I do make the tedious decision to buy the particular dress, I wonder if I’ll wear it five years from now (another way the five-year plan haunts my life) and basically get my money’s worth out of it. All this wondering makes me sit even longer in the dressing room and debate.

  While in the dressing room at Julianne’s, I listen to other shoppers trying on clothes.

  “Oh, Susie,” one says in the stall next to me, “do you think these shorts make my butt look big?”

  “Well . . .” I hear Susie suck in air. “Well . . .”

  I figure if there is a slight hesitation and no immediate, “Oh, of course not! Your butt isn’t big at all. I wish my butt was as small as yours,” then really, it is time to forget those shorts.

  Susie continues with, “I like the color. Everyone needs a pair of pink shorts.”

  “Really?” A pause. She is probably studying herself in the full-length mirror. A turn to the left, a glance over her shoulder at her reflection, and then a slight twist to the right. “Okay, I’ll get them.”

  Her mistake. She will not get her money’s worth out of those shorts, regardless that they are the color pink and everyone needs a pink pair of shorts. Because, sure as the sun, she’ll get home and realize too late—“Wow, I knew my butt was big, but not this big!” And the shorts will either go in the Goodwill section of her dresser or she’ll return them to the store two days from now. If she’s remembered to hold on to the receipt.

  I know I won’t buy shorts today. Harrison says that only children wear shorts in public in Japan. Showing too much skin is taboo.

  After Susie and her friend leave the dressing room, I stand. The dress I have selected to try on has vertical green and black stripes. As I slip it over my head and look in the mirror, I smile. The colors glow a little against my pale skin. Twirling around, I feel thinner than I have in years. Then I scrape my heel against the door and muffle a moan. Rubbing my heel, I peer once more into the mirror and manage another smile.

  “Hello, Harrison,” I say to my own reflection, practicing for when I see him at the airport.

  I imagine him smiling back, eyes filled with light and warmth, and maybe he’s even thinking, “Wow, she looks good in that dress!”

  My heart feels as if it will pop out of my chest. I decide then to purchase the dress.

  ———

  As I pull into my driveway, I’m ready for some lunch and a glass of iced tea. Shopping not only makes you tired, it makes you hungry.

  I make a glass of instant iced tea. As I add three ice cubes, I’m glad Ducee can’t see me now. She’d be shocked if she knew I used iced tea mix. She always makes fresh tea from distilled water and tea bags. She instructs that the key to dissolving the sugar is to add it while the tea is still hot, right after the tea bags have been removed. Then to stir the mixture emphatically. I like watching her, at barely five feet tall, emphatically spinning a silver spoon around a glass pitcher. Sometimes the pitcher looks bigger than she does.

  She plans to make ten gallons of iced tea for the reunion’s Saturday picnic.

  It is going to be hard to miss the reunion. I wish I could be in two places at one time. I have never missed a reunion, except for my short years in Japan.

  As I drink my iced tea, I note that right now in Japan, it’s four in the early morning. Harrison is sleeping in his futon on the straw floor. Much of the time when I think of him, he’s asleep.

  The ringing phone breaks into my thoughts.

  “Hello?”

  “Nicki? Oh, Nicki.” Iva is out of breath.

  “Hi, Iva,” I say calmly, expecting to hear my aunt clear her throat and then tell me something about either a runaway prisoner or details of our upcoming reunion. The last time Iva called she said Great-Uncle Clive’s cucumber crop was producing many lovely green cucumbers. “I can taste those cucumber sandwiches, Nicki. They are going to be the best,” she said.

  “She’s had a heart attack.”

  I am confused. “What?”

  “Oh, Nicki.”

  “You’re at the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  With my aunt you can never be sure, so I ask, “Ducee?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “I’m on my way.”

  ———

  Ducee is in the intensive care unit at Wayne Memorial. Pumps, tubes, and machines that make gurgling noises surround her as she lies motionless in a sterile bed of white. She is breathing softly and on her own. Her eyes are shut, the veins in them the color of her blue crocheted throw rug.

 
I approach a nurse and ask what happened. The nurse asks another nurse. Suddenly out of what seems like nowhere, a doctor with a white mustache stands at my side. I don’t remember his name, but his worn face and bushy white eyebrows are familiar. I’m certain he was Ducee’s doctor the last time she was brought here in an ambulance, the time Mrs. McCready found her slumped in her recliner.

  “She had trouble breathing,” the doctor tells me as his eyebrows wiggle. “Pain in her chest. I heard that the donkey’s braying alarmed the neighbor. When the neighbor came to your grandmother’s yard, she found her on the ground by the donkey.”

  Good ol’ faithful Maggie McCormick.

  Then the doctor makes the Hippocratic Leap—at least, that’s what I call it. The huge leap into using medical jargon. I want to scream, “Just give me the layman facts, good doctor. Just the layman facts!”

  But he’s already taken off, using those five-hundred-dollar medical terms, terms that make my head spin. Greek would be easier. Of course, the doctor has to use them. Learning them cost him a pretty expensive tuition.

  I stand by Ducee’s bed, watching her and all the machines. My eyes dart back and forth—her, machines, her, machines— until my knees grow weak and I leave the room, while I can still walk.

  In the waiting room I am greeted by familiar faces. Almost a dozen of them. Iva, her daughter Clarisa Jo, Mrs. McCready, who is frantically reciting the Lord’s Prayer, Cousin Jerome from Elizabeth City, Tweetsie from Goldsboro, Great-Uncle Clive, and his daughters Chloe and Jackie Sue. Then in comes Cousin Aaron and his wife, who likes to be called, believe it or not, Puddin’. They take turns hugging me. I smell their cologne, lotion, hairspray, and perfume.

  Not one of them smells of that familiar scent I have grown to love—Ducee’s lilac.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The waiting room is tiny, with straight-back chairs and one lumpy fluorescent green sofa. Aside from the scents we’ve brought to it, it has its perpetual aroma of lemon furniture polish and chlorine. After all the hugging, no one knows what to say.

  Mrs. McCready keeps scratching her silver hair. “I’m not going to use that conditioner anymore,” she tells the assembled group. “It said it would make my hair soft and shiny and . . .” Sitting up in the chair, she reprimands herself, “Oh, how can I be talking about my hair at a time like this?” Silently, she adjusts her glasses, places her hands in her lap so that they form a small mound, and then scratches her head once more.

  “I know all about bad conditioner,” Clarisa Jo tells us. She raises her short arms to her own head of dyed-blond hair. Neither she nor Grable inherited Iva’s long-limbed-and-tall genes. “Believe me, I used some awful product last year and was miserable, just plain ol’ miserable.” She looks at her mother. “Wasn’t I, Mama?”

  Iva’s mind is yards away, in the intensive care unit with her sister. I know because mine is still there, too. Iva manages to produce a nod.

  “I don’t use conditioner,” Chloe tells us. Her southern accent allows her to replace every word ending in an “er” with an “ah” sound. “Makes my hair too soft. Such a bother to do anything with it.”

  Her sister Jackie Sue agrees. “My hair just flies away when I use that Herbal Essence stuff.”

  “Although it does smell nice,” says Chloe.

  “It does, but I like Pantene. That’s what I use now,” says Jackie Sue. “Only every other day, though.”

  There is a page over the PA system for a Dr. Williams.

  Iva’s face loses its color as she grabs my hand. “That’s Ducee’s doctor,” she tells us.

  The one whose name I’d forgotten, the one with the bushy eyebrows.

  Suddenly, hair conditioner doesn’t matter anymore. We’re back in reality. In this moment of crisis, we are knit together unlike any previous reunion. I look at each anxious face in the waiting room. We are truly family.

  ———

  Later, Iva takes note of the No Smoking sign as she’s about to light up. “I guess I’ll have to go outside,” she says, but doesn’t budge.

  I know she won’t chance leaving this floor where her sister lies motionless, even for a coveted Virginia Slims.

  I pick up a copy of a dog-eared Time magazine. The sound of my flipping through the pages is loud in this tiny, anxious room. I try reading an article on Taiwan’s economy, but it is no easier than listening to the doctor tell me what is wrong with Ducee.

  Iva leans over and whispers close to my ear, “Nicki?”

  “Yeah?”

  She lets out a moan. “I was supposed to die first.”

  “Iva.”

  “I’m the one who smokes and is difficult to get along with.”

  I pat her hand the way my grandmother pats mine. “You’re not difficult.”

  An hour later Monet bursts into the room with Grable. Grable looks exhausted, bags billowing under her eyes.

  Monet rushes over to me and buries her face in my chest. She’s brought her Sazae doll, the one she named Niccc. After dangling her in front of my face, the little girl embraces the cotton doll at the waist with both hands.

  Just the other day Grable said Monet takes her new doll with her no matter where she goes. She even took it to her last MRI and screamed that the doll had to be scanned too.

  As evening approaches and we have all taken turns seeing Ducee in the room where none of us chose to stay very long, Grable’s mom and Iva’s daughter, Clarisa Jo, calls Howie, a distant cousin of mine, twice removed, who runs a sandwich shop. Howie delivers a large hoagie filled with turkey, ham, cheeses, pickles, tomatoes, olives, and lettuce.

  “That must be nine feet long!” Iva says as she eyes the sandwich and watches her daughter set it on the table in a small kitchen connected to the waiting room. Clarisa Jo unwraps the clear plastic and paper surrounding the hoagie. Grable opens a few random drawers, finds a knife, and cuts the sandwich in pieces. Everyone enters the kitchen and stands around the table like a vulture, ready to eat. We wait. We’re used to Ducee giving the blessing. Finally Clarisa Jo mutters, “We thank you, God.”

  Monet mumbles, yet for some reason we all understand each word loud and clear tonight. “Duceeeee get weellll soooo.”

  “Yes,” says Clarisa Jo to her granddaughter, “we do ask God to make Ducee well really soon.”

  It is eight o’clock at night in Mount Olive, and we are famished.

  Ducee would enjoy this, I think as I bite into the bread filled with turkey, ham, and cheese. It’s fresh and full of flavor. Oh, she might think it needs a little salt, but because of her blood pressure, she’d use a salt substitute instead. I chew the sandwich and feel a vast improvement. Then I realize why I’m more hungry than usual; I skipped lunch.

  Iva says the food is wonderful and I agree.

  Is it wrong to feel good about eating when someone in the next room is unable to eat?

  Monet tugs at Grable’s pants and asks for a hot dog. A low groan springs from Grable’s throat.

  Quickly, I tear off a piece of ham and pretend to feed it to Monet’s doll. “Yum, yum, the doll likes this. Do you want to try some, Monet?”

  Monet frowns, starts to cry, and then as I continue acting like Monet’s doll is enjoying the ham, the wild one screams, “Me! Me! ME!”

  Monet patiently stands in front of my hand as I feed her a bite of ham.

  From across the room, Grable smiles.

  Monet asks for more. Then she grabs my arm and starts talking about my fish. “Fee! Fee at my hommmm. Fee! Fisssz swwi, swi mmmm.” She sticks a finger in my stomach to let me know she now wants to know about my aquarium of fish.

  “Yes,” I reply. “My fish are at home swimming, too.” It’s surprising to me that I can actually understand this creature when I used to think it impossible. Ducee says sometimes ears have to be trained in order to hear what they need to hear.

  I’m grateful when Clive inquires about her new doll and Monet leaves my side. We all watch as Monet is swooped up into Clive’s large lap a
long with her Sazae look-alike.

  Monet fingers Clive’s eyebrows, squeals a few phrases, and then settles down. Her doll faces me, and for the hundredth time, I wonder what my own Sazae felt like brand-new when Watanabe-san first gave her as a gift almost thirty years ago.

  I look around the room and suddenly recall why we are all here. Ducee is stuck in intensive care, and we have no idea if she’ll pull through. It is much too much to comprehend. I chew on a pickle as the conversations in the room become a dull din. A tinge of panic overcomes me as I am bombarded with questions. What were my last words to Ducee? What were her last words to me? Did I let her know how much I love her? That she makes the best barbecue in the world? That she is the only mother I can remember having?

  I almost choke on the pickle. Tears well in my eyes, and conscious of the others in the room, I sniff a few times. I will not cry, not tonight.

  Luckily, Pastor Donald steps into the room then, rescuing my mind from the endless worry, as well as any more tears. He has just been in to see Ducee. He says he’d like to pray with the family before leaving.

  I close my eyes and attempt to concentrate on his words, asking for Ducee’s speedy recovery and telling God how much Ducee means to all of us. I suppose God knows how much she means to each of us in this room, but I also suppose appreciation for His creation is something He never tires of hearing.

  At the end of the prayer, my heart no longer feels as if it’s on the racetrack.

  Iva blows her nose in a crumpled tissue she takes from a corner of her overstuffed purse.

  When Pastor Donald says he must go, I hate to see him leave. He shakes hands with Great-Uncle Clive and Aaron, and pats the women’s hands, saying he’ll be back tomorrow and to be sure to call him if anything changes.

  Monet clutches her doll, rushes into his arms, and plants a kiss on his left cheek. “Thannn youuu,” she says, her tone booming to the ceiling of the small kitchen. “Thannn youuu praaaa.” She smiles into the pastor’s eyes.

  He takes her hand and smiles back.

  Suddenly everyone else is smiling too, grateful for Monet, the little wild thing, somehow able to express at this time how each one of us feels.