And then, just then, at the perfect moment, just like in the movies, the message will appear on the screen of Aaron’s laptop.
“Oh,” my cousin will say, “I just got a message from Nicole.”
Ducee’s lips will certainly be sealed with a grin, as family members look at her with bewildered eyes, wanting to grasp how Emma’s daughter could have something else to do and let it be important enough to take her away from this anticipated family reunion weekend.
Ducee will tell them, yes, she encouraged Nicole to make the trip. She will say, “Yes, yes, it was to be.”
Will they understand?
And if they don’t?
Actually, they should be amazed, and for two very good reasons. One, that I’m traveling to Japan and on a plane when I hate to fly, and two, that three of our relatives were able to successfully keep a secret from the rest of them. That’s something for the front page of the Mount Olive Tribune!
I rub my scar and then my neck, trying to ease the pressure in my ears. Opening a pack of spearmint gum, I chew a piece. I wiggle the toes on my left foot and then the ones on the right. If I can wiggle my toes on an airplane in flight, how bad can flying be?
The golden sky is perfect; I know we can’t be far from heaven.
Mama. Oh, Mama. Your little girl is daring, isn’t she? She is going to see the big wide world. She may not be ready, but are any of us humans ever ready? We’d like to think we are brave, capable, and strong. But the minute we lose our luggage or are delayed, we’ve been known to break into pieces.
I’m going to give it my best shot. Certainly, future generations will equate me right up there with bold Lizzy McCormick.
I breathe in an aura of reverence, “God, you have always been with me.”
And then, sure as the sun, I feel it. God’s hand, steady and tight, around my shoulder. It feels like warm fingers, warmer than even the ocean waters of my dreams, circling my whole being. It’s as real to me as my very feet, feet that are wiggling, no longer blocks of concrete. Feet eager to step onto Japanese soil.
My reflection in the plane’s small window is of a woman with confidence. Confidence that matches every one of her bitten polished nails.
My smile is as wide as the sun over the Carolina coast on a brilliant summer morning.
Chapter Forty
Just like Harrison wrote, Watanabe-san’s room at the Katsura nursing home has a small bulletin board crammed with pictures. In the center is a color photo of her, taken when she was much younger and more limber, dressed in pants, cap, and an orange fleece jacket, climbing a snowy mountain. In another, a blackand-white, she smiles while holding a little girl with frizzy hair. I look closely and my heart melts. “It’s me,” I whisper to Harrison.
He peers toward the photo to get a better view. “I remember you that way,” he says. His voice is deep, rich, and over the past days, one I love to hear—one reason being, it speaks a language I understand.
There are two black-and-white photos of Mama I’ve never seen before today. In one she has her arm around Father. Youth fills each of their joyful faces. The other is of Mama standing in the kitchen. On the burner beside her elbow sits a large metal pot.
I point to it, asking Harrison what Mama was cooking. He asks Watanabe-san in Japanese.
Still clutching the jar of chutney I earlier presented to her, Watanabe-san, seated in a wheelchair, rattles off a few lines.
“Pineapple chutney,” Harrison tells me. “That particular day your mother made it for a group of women she taught at a Bible study.”
How many times have I heard Ducee repeat that Mama brought pineapple chutney and the Gospel to Japan? Yet somehow hearing today and in this place that Mama did make chutney and teach the Bible makes it more real—much more real than hearing the tale in little ol’ Mount Olive, far from where it took place. Of course, I’d never let Ducee know this sentiment.
“You also helped,” Harrison continues to translate. “You liked to stand on a chair and mix the chutney with a large wooden spoon as your mother held on to you.”
“Did we wear aprons?” I think of how Ducee, Iva, and I always don our Mount Olive aprons when we cook up a batch of the delicacy.
The answer comes back. “Yes, green ones from your mother’s hometown.”
Some things never change, I think, and the thought makes me smile.
“She doesn’t have it on in the picture,” Watanabe-san explains in Japanese. “She took the apron off because she spilled pineapple juice all over the front.”
So Mama was clumsy like I am, I think. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The photo in the middle of the board is the same one I have in the silver frame at home. Mama, Sazae, and me, all in kimono, looking much more international in this Japanese setting than we look on my bedside table in Mount Olive.
Harrison stands next to me, studying all the pictures. He claims he spent much time looking over every photo during his past visits to meet my former maid at this nursing home. “I’ve often thought this one of you and your mom is cute,” he observes now with a grin.
“With Sazae,” I say. I turn to look at the real Sazae. My cotton doll is seated in the wheelchair with Watanabe-san this afternoon. Last night as the bullfrogs and crickets sang under a crescent moon, Harrison and I sat by his koi pond planning this visit to the home. I asked whether or not to bring the doll.
“Of course,” he told me. “She’ll be thrilled.” Then he gave me a few lessons on how to correctly pronounce my companion’s name.
I tried to say Sazae, enunciating every syllable like he taught me. Finally I concluded with, “I don’t know. All these years she’s answered to the way I’ve said her name. If I change, she might not know it’s her.”
“She answers when you call her?” Harrison looked at me with wide eyes, as if I had six heads.
He thinks I’m crazy, I thought, or badly affected by jet lag. I then tried to come up with some response.
Before I could say another word, he asked, “So does she answer in English?”
“Always.”
He grinned and I thought it was nice of him to play along with me. Really nice.
And Watanabe-san was thrilled. Tears welled in her worn eyes as she took my cotton doll and murmured a few words. My eyes filled, too. We took tissues Harrison handed us from a box on Watanabe-san’s bedside table.
“You are so beautiful and so grown-up,” Watanabe-san said between light sobs. “I remember brushing all that red hair.” With one hand over her heart, she repeated a number of times, “And you really are alive.”
As Harrison translated, a lump formed in my throat. Here I am, Mama. Did I ever think this day would come? I only hope it’s not a dream, that I am really standing in my former maid’s room, this woman who knew a part of you I am so eager to learn about. I’m not in a sea with fish, and Harrison looks human, so perhaps this is reality.
When I tried to answer Watanabe-san, no words came. Gently, Harrison placed his arm around my shoulders—the first time he’d touched me since hugging me upon my arrival at the airport three days ago. I felt my heart flutter and then I knew if it could, it would have turned a complete cartwheel, one of those spontaneous ones children do with sheer agility.
Now Harrison and I move together from the bulletin board to sit in chairs beside the older woman. She is still holding on to the chutney and Sazae. As we sit, she carefully secures the objects in her chair against one of her thighs. Pushing her wheelchair close to me, she reaches for my right hand, taking it, painted bitten nails and all, between her scarred palms. They are a dull purplish red, looking ugly, like bruises. These hands of hers— God used them to save me. And they cost her. I have never seen such beauty.
Observing that I am studying her scars, she speaks.
Harrison translates. “These wounds are superficial. The real longing has been in my torn heart. Oh, to see your mother again. She was such a kind woman.”
I note Watana
be-san’s wrinkled face, her gray head of hair pulled back into a bun, and imagine what it must have been like to have been rocked by her as an infant as Mama and Father smiled at each other. I breathe in talcum powder and a faint aroma of cold cream.
As much as I’m grateful to Harrison for being the interpreter, I only wish I knew the language to get the real gist of what Watanabe-san is conveying to me.
Yesterday at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant over a lunch of unagi, which is absolutely fabulous, Harrison explained something to me that makes sense. He said that even if I can’t speak the native tongue, my body language as well as the tone of my words in English will bridge the sea of the language barrier. “People know you are sincere and happy to be with them and be here. That’s what translates well.”
Sitting here with Watanabe-san, Harrison says, “She knows you have more questions about the past. Perhaps you want to know about that night. She says your father was a brilliant man. He loved your mom and you very much.”
I smile. I want to stop the conversation here, put a period at the end of her sentence, and not venture any farther. But I know there’s more.
So far this afternoon, we’ve talked about the house we lived in—what it looked like, the neighborhood with the market and the playground where I fell off the swing. I asked about the hospital where I was born and where Mama and Father worked. I learned Mama would affectionately kiss the top of my head each night at bedtime, just as I’ve seen other mothers do. She enjoyed watching children’s programs with me on the black-and-white TV in the living room. We’d both sit barefoot on the sofa with a quilt covering us as we watched the shows.
But yes, I did come here to hear more.
I listen as Harrison and the woman converse. Then my body tenses as Harrison translates again. “Your father became a shadow of his former self once your mother died.” Solemnly Harrison adds, “Apparently he and your mother got into a fight the day he left for the meeting in Tokyo.”
My skin feels clammy, and I have to take my hand away from Watanabe-san’s hold as she continues with the story. I stick a finger in my mouth, remove it, and then clamp my hands tightly in my lap.
Harrison explains, “The house was cold. There was no central heating, and earlier that day your dad had gone out to buy a kerosene heater. The oil stove in the living room only heated a portion of the house. After he returned with the heater, your mother asked him to stay and not go to the conference in Tokyo. She wasn’t feeling well. She had the flu and, as you know, was pregnant. She’d told few people about the pregnancy. She’d had a miscarriage the year before and wasn’t sure this baby would stay. Your father said, ‘I got you this heater, what do you mean I don’t do enough for you?’ He purchased the heater secondhand. I will always wish he’d spent the money for a reliable new one.” Here Harrison pauses, nods to Watanabe-san.
She continues in halted sentences. “Your father left in spite of the argument. He called a cab that took him to the airport. Poor thing, last time he saw her alive she was sad, coughing, and crying. He never got to apologize. But she would have forgiven him; he needs to know that.”
Harrison’s translation of the rest of the incident comes slowly. “The heater had a leak, and the firemen that came later said that was the cause of the fire. While your mother slept, the kerosene leaked and caught the rug and the curtains in her bedroom on fire. She woke and tried to get out of the room, but she had already breathed in too much smoke. Your mother died from the very heater your father thought would keep her warm.”
My throat feels as if someone has stuffed a towel inside it. I try to breathe, speak, swallow. In my mind I see Mama’s youthful body motionless on her bedroom floor. Mama, my poor mama. Harrison notices my struggle and places his hand on my arm. My eyes are clouding over again. I sniff, hoping to hold back more tears.
The old woman’s weathered cheeks are moist.
I reach out to squeeze her hand, and as I do, that place in my heart for Father starts to ache. “Sometimes,” Ducee has said to me over the years, “those who survive have the hardest burden. Survivor’s guilt is a weary load.” He bought a heater that killed her. As if that guilt—his heavy shackle—of not being at the house to protect her that night wasn’t enough. The thoughts make my head sting, along with my eyes. I rub my scar, as though the motion will ease my pain.
When my eyes meet Harrison’s, I note his deep-set blue eyes are watering, too.
He has to clear his throat before being able to translate Watanabe-san’s next statement. “I can die now, is what she says. I can die now a happy woman. God in heaven has answered my prayers. You are here.”
Suddenly, there is a knock on the door and an attendant in a white uniform quietly enters the room. She’s the same one who ushered us into Watanabe-san’s room an hour ago, rounding up extra chairs for us to sit on.
The attendant and my former maid talk as Harrison gently runs his fingers against my bare arm. “Are you ready to go?” he asks me. “We can come back another day.”
Before I can answer, Watanabe-san has shifted from her mellowness and is rapidly ordering the attendant to get something. The attendant bows, cries, “Hai!” and bolts out of the room.
I look at Harrison, questioning.
He translates. “Watanabe-san said it’s time for tea. You’ve come all the way across the world to see her and she has yet to serve you tea. What a terrible hostess she’s been.”
I start to laugh. The sound of my laughter is like a cascading waterfall—robust and full of life. Just throw your head back and let it out.
Harrison joins me. I like the way his mouth curves upward and his eyes light like a warm, starry night. Sincere eyes, kind eyes. Eyes that have even glossed over when told a sad story.
Watanabe-san glances at us for a moment, as though she doesn’t know what to make of us. Or perhaps she is remembering those years, decades ago, when Harrison and I were both small and walked on narrow streets to the neighborhood park. She chuckles in her tender way.
After a moment she asks if I still sing.
“Sing?”
“The rain song,” Harrison interprets. “About the falling rain and the mother coming to pick up the child with an old Japanese-style umbrella.”
The song I sang that helped this woman know where I was so that she could follow my voice through the smoky house and rescue me. I wish I knew the words.
Watanabe-san’s face softens. “It is somewhere still inside you—the words.” She sounds like Ducee whenever I’d say I recalled nothing about my mother. She is you. You are her.
When the ocha is served—steamy green tea in round pink cups painted with pale cherry blossoms—I taste more than I can imagine. It is the past and present all melding into one. It is understanding, truth, hope. I briefly close my eyes, trying to absorb it all.
And when I open them, through wet eyelashes, I smile at Harrison drinking his tea.
As he smiles back, I think that maybe I see the future.
I hear Ducee’s voice as clear as if she’s seated right next to me, nodding in the way she often does, eager to voice her familiar phrase. Yes, that’s it, yes.
The McCormick Family Recipe
PINEAPPLE CHUTNEY
1 fresh pineapple
1 cup water
salt to taste
1 cup brown sugar
4–6 whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
3 tablespoons vinegar
Peel the pineapple and slice into bite-sized pieces. Cook over low heat in 1 cup of water with salt. Bring to boil. Let boil for three to four minutes. Add sugar, cloves, and cinnamon sticks. Stir constantly and simmer for ten minutes. Remove from stove and add lemon juice, powdered cinnamon, and vinegar. Let cool and then spoon into mason jars. Seal tightly.
Recipe can be doubled for any family reunion.
Acknowledgments
No work is ever accomplished with
out the critique and guidance of others. For spending long Tuesday nights with my chapters, I want to thank the Six Serious Scribes—Julie, Martha, Catherine, Dianne, Katharine, and Kim. For believing in me so that my feet can enter the door to the novel publishing club, my gratitude goes to my agent, Kristin Lindstrom, and my editor, Charlene Patterson. And to the woman who gave me a pedicure at the spa years ago, thank you for encouraging me not to give up.
About the Author
Alice J. Wisler, daughter of missionary parents, was born and raised in Japan. Since graduating with a B.S. in social work, she has worked in a group home in Pennsylvania and taught English-as-a-Second Language at a refugee camp in the Philippines and a church school in Japan. In 1997, after the death of her son, Daniel, she founded Daniel’s House Publications, an organization to help other bereaved parents and siblings. She gives workshops across the country on Writing the Heartache, believing that writing through pain is an essential tool to healing. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her three children. Rain Song is her first novel.
QUESTIONS FOR CONVERSATION
1. All her life Nicole has pushed away anything to do with Japan. Why does Nicole fear Japan so much? Is her fear justified? Is there any place you particularly dislike because of something that happened there?
2. Nicole’s feelings about Monet change the more she gets to know the little girl. Have you ever found beauty in someone you once thought irritating? Has a child ever surprised you with his/her talent or intelligence? Have you ever dealt with a hard-to-diagnose condition?
3. Do you have a family member you never got to meet due to his/her death that you wish you had been able to know? What has captivated you about this relative?
4. Nicole has to come to terms with her past so she can welcome her future. Have you ever had to do this? Do you think Nicole handled it well? Do you think Nicole’s life will be different now that she knows more about her family history?
Rain Song Page 21