by Joy Kogawa
I glance at the electric clock above the stove. Unlike the faithful grandfather clock that stopped when its owner died, this one whirrs and hiccups on and on. Eight a.m. Some children from the farms will be getting ready for the buses. I hope the substitute doesn't overwater the plants the way the last one did.
I can hear the scratch slap of the tree's fingers by the kitchen window this morning. The tree's outline is blurred through the plastic covering the pane. Ever since Obasan's operation for cataracts, she's lived in a darkened house. The branches of the tree are as elastic as whips in the gusts—slap clatter clatter, insistent as a drummer.
Obasan has picked up the twine ball again and her fingers move along the hemisphere of the globe, carefully forming and re-forming the shape. All her movements this morning are in a different dimension of time. When she is finished, she stands up. Slow as pyramid blocks rising one by one, her leg muscles, thigh muscles, her hands resting on the box, will her upright.
She takes the twine to the pantry, then shuffles to the kitchen sink. She never wipes her dishes, saying it's unhygienic. Her way is to hold them under a trickling tap, rinsing each one without soap, then setting it aside to drain dry. Now, with her bad eyesight, she doesn't see the dark stains in the plastic cups and in the grooves of the plates and saucers. Every so often, I give the plastic kitchen things a bleach bath.
"Everyone someday dies," she is saying with a sigh as she clears the table. She takes half a piece of leftover toast and puts it away in a square plastic container. The refrigerator is packed with boxes of food bits, a slice of celery, a square of spinach, half a hard-boiled egg. She orchestrates each remainder of a previous dinner into the dinner to come, making every meal like every meal, an unfinished symphony. Our Lady of the Leftovers.
There are some indescribable items in the dark recesses of the fridge that never see the light of day. But you realize when you open the door that they're there, lurking, too old for mold and past putrefaction.
Some memories, too, might better be forgotten. Didn't Obasan once say, "It is better to forget?" What purpose is served by hauling forth the jar of inedible food? If it is not seen, it does not horrify. What is past recall is past pain. Questions from all these papers, questions referring to turbulence in the past, are an unnecessary upheaval in the delicate ecology of this numb day.
Another item of Aunt Emily's package is a gray cardboard folder. I have seen this folder before, though I can't quite remember where or when. It's complete with dime-size red circle tabs, one on each of the two flaps that meet in the middle. A short red string is twirled around the tabs as a fastener.
Inside the folder are two envelopes about as narrow and long as bank checks, and inside each envelope are blue-lined rice-paper sheets with Japanese writing which I cannot read.
"What is this about, Obasan?" I ask.
She wipes her hands on her apron as I hold the slippery sheets out to her and she shuffles past me to the sideboard where she keeps one of several magnifying glasses. Then, putting on her glasses and holding the magnifying glass about two inches from the sheets, she reads the words. Her head moves in a long slow fall, top to bottom and up again.
“Who are the letters from?" I ask loudly.
She does not respond. Her face is expressionless. After a while she puts down the magnifying glass.
"Everyone someday dies," she says again.
By repeating this so often, I suppose she is trying to make realizable what is real. Surely that is task enough for her today. But I ask once more, "Who are the letters from?"
She stares steadily at the table. The greater my urgency to know, the thicker her silences have always been. No prodding will elicit clues.
Her hand moves on the table like an electrocardiograph needle, delicate and unreadable. Then, with her back bent forward, she stands up and shuffles out of the room.
Today is not, I repeat, reprimanding myself—today is not the day for unnecessary questions.
The last item in the package is Aunt Emily's diary. It is written, I see, in the form of letters to my mother. The book has obviously suffered from moisture. Its edges are crinkly and the covers are sprung apart by a stiff clump of wavy pages.
"Dearest Nesan," her diary entries begin. The sight of the word "Nesan" cuts into me with a peculiar sensation of pain and tenderness. It means "older sister," and was what Aunt Emily always called Mother. Grandma Kato also called Mother "Nesan" from time to time, especially if she was talking to Aunt Emily. I remember one time I called Mother "Nesan" and Grandma Kato laughed and laughed.
The book feels heavy with voices from the past—a connection to Mother and Grandma Kato I did not know existed. I feel a strong urge to put everything aside and read the journal, but right now it is Uncle's absent voice that speaks even more urgently and that I must attend. I can hear Obasan rummaging in the next room. "Care for Obasan," Uncle is saying. "Tanomi-masu—keep her safe."
I put the diary and letters aside on a clear spot on the sideboard. By the time Obasan returns, I have finished cleaning the counter and cupboards.
In her hands is a familiar photograph. I am about two or three years of age and clinging to my mother's leg with one arm. My mother's face is childlike and wistful. Her head leans shyly to the side and her hair is tucked under her wide- brimmed hat.
"Yasashi desho," Obasan says. She has often spoken of my mother's "yasashi kokoro," her tender, kind, and thoughtful heart. She places the picture in my hand. "Here is the best letter. This is the best time. These are the best memories."
When would this be? I turn the photo around to see if there is any identification on the back, but there is none.
nine
In the picture I am clinging to my mother's leg on a street corner in Vancouver. A small boy is standing hugging a lamppost and is staring at us. His thumb is in his mouth. I am mortified by the attention. I turn my face away from everyone. My mother places her cool hand on my cheek, its scent light and flowery. She whispers that the boy will laugh at me if I hide. Laugh? There is no worse horror. Laughter is a cold spray that chills the back of my neck, that makes the tears rush to my eyes. My mother's whisper flushes me out of my hiding place behind the softness of her silk dress. Only the sidewalk is safe to look at. It does not have eyes.
Who is it who teaches me that in the language of eyes a stare is an invasion and a reproach? Grandma Kato? Obasan? Uncle? Mother? Each one raised in Japan, speaks the same language; but Aunt Emily and Father, born and raised in Canada, are visually bilingual. I too learn the second language.
My mother and I are on a streetcar. She boosts me up on the seat and I reach for the cord. We will be getting off soon. As I scramble down to the floor, I see a man sitting hunched forward, his elbows on his knees. He is looking around quizzically, one dark eyebrow higher than the other. When our eyes meet, he grins and winks. I turn away instantly, startled into discomfort again by eyes. My mother's eyes look obliquely to the floor, declaring that on the streets, at all times, in all public places, even a glance can be indiscreet. But a stare? Such lack of decorum, it is clear, is as unthinkable as nudity on the street.
On the other hand, nudity at home is completely thinkable. Grandma Kato is in the bathtub with me. The water is so hot the skin reddens instantly. When I lift my foot up it looks as though I am wearing red socks.
"Samui, samui," she says jokingly. "Cold, cold." The hot-water tap is on full blast.
"Atsui," I screech. The comic books are right. We yell words like that.
She urges me down deeper into the liquid furnace and I go into the midst of the flames, obedient as Abednego, for lo, Grandma is an angel of the Lord and stands before me in the midst of the fire and has no hurt, neither is a hair of her body singed nor has the smell of fire passed on her. She is sitting directly beside the gushing boiling hot-water tap and the steaming froth plunges around her bony buttocks.
“You can sit down." She nods, placing a steaming facecloth wrung to dampness on my knees and
again on my back.
I squat slowly at the other end of the tub. This is sweet torture, with Grandma happy and approving and enjoying the heat I cannot endure. I am more brave, more praiseworthy than Stephen. He will not bathe with Grandma. But I will suffer endless indignities of the flesh for the pleasure of my grandmother's pleasure.
When the tub is full, Grandma lies down on her back, her head up against the taps.
"Ah, such a good feeling," she murmurs. "Rest your shoulders fully under the water."
My body is extended beside hers and she makes waves to cover my shoulders. Once the body is fully immersed, there is a torpid peace. We lie in this state forever.
At some point, Grandma has opened her eyes and rolled her washcloth into a tight damp fist. I stand beside her and over the redness of my body she scrubs vigorously, like an eraser over a dirty page. The dead skin collects in little rolls and falls off into the water. She exclaims at the rolls.
"Look at this!" Her voice is full of curiosity and amusement at this cleansing and she makes mock cries of alarm at my dirtiness. She rubs each of my fingers, my hands, arms, chest, belly and abdomen, neck, back, buttocks, thighs, legs, ankles, the lines behind the ankles, the soles of the feet, between the toes. Then I soak again, watching as Grandma towels herself the same way. She rinses the cloth, makes another fist, and hands it to me. Although I use all my strength to rub her back, it is not really quite hard enough, I know. Grandma, however, is content.
“Is there much aka?" she asks. That is the word for the little rolls I rub off. She always wishes to know how much there is.
While I lie back again to soak, I play with my washcloth, wringing it out and resting it on the water, then thrusting it up like a tent with two fingers and thumbs. This makes an air bubble which can be captured like a balloon if I squeeze the edges and corners together in my fist. I squash the bubble into my face and feel its moist airiness oozing out with a wet wheeze.
So many uses for one piece of cloth. Grandma rubs the bar of soap over it until it is spongy with lather. The cloth, once it is soaped, must not enter the water. She soaps me thoroughly and I am rinsed off before she soaps herself.
The bathroom is steaming and I am languid as I am hoisted out, my body limp and capable of no objections. I am dressed in a nemaki, a sleeping garment of purple-and-white cotton which Grandma has sewn by hand. It has rectangular envelope-shaped sleeves with openings at the armpits and two ties meeting in a bow at the back. I am supremely safe in my nemaki, under the heavy bright-coloured futon in my house.
The house in which we live is in Marpole, a comfortable residential district of Vancouver. It is more splendid than any house I have lived in since. It does not bear remembering. None of this bears remembering.
"You have to remember," Aunt Emily said. You are your history. If you cut any of it off you're an amputee. Don't deny the past. Remember everything. If you're bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream! Denial is gangrene. Look at you, Nomi, shuffling back and forth between Cecil and Granton, unable either to go or to stay in the world with even a semblance of grace or ease.
All right, Aunt Emily, all right! The house then—the house, if I must remember it today, was large and beautiful. It's still there on West 64th Avenue in Vancouver. Phone Langara 0938-R. I looked it up once in the November 1941 inch-thick Vancouver telephone directory. I wrote to the people who live there and asked if they would ever consider selling the house but they never replied. I don't know their names. I don't know what they've done to the house. It used to have a hedge and rose bushes and flowers and cactus plants lining the sidewalk, and the front iron gate had a squeeze latch. The backyard had a sandbox and an apple tree and a swing, and I could dangle by my knees from a branch thicker than my father's arms.
If I search the caverns of my mind, I come to a collage of images—somber paintings, a fireplace, and a mantel clock with a heavy key like a small metal bird that fits in my palm.
The living room is the darkest room, the walls of dark wood lit with dim lights. On the floor is a deep blue Indian rug with a complex border of multicoloured designs and a ribbon of rectangles and roads that can be traversed like a maze by Stephen's toy train. We line the lead soldiers in their bright red coats along the edges, march them around the sofa legs on their flat bases leap them upward to land them off balance on the soft velvet frieze of the sofa. The sofa is a mountain to climb, a valley for sleeping in, a place of ambush for surprise attacks on passing parents.
Beside the sofa is a large record player with a shiny handle on the left-hand side which I can just reach. Below are thick wine-coloured albums with silver rings on the back. Some of the records have flags or pictures of a dog, some have only gold or black printed letters. The ones with Japanese writing have green labels.
The music room beside the living room is full of windows and plants and a round goldfish bowl with two goldfish. A piano, a violin, another stringed instrument that is half constructed, a piccolo, and a shakuhachi with its eerie wail are in this room. My father plays every instrument by ear. My mother and Stephen play the piano.
Here they are in the music room in the evening, before dark, Mother in her chair beside Stephen, who sits on the piano stool with its eagle-claw feet clutching three glass globes.
“And one, and two, up and one, and duh two and...."
Stephen's practice time each night is half play. Father, with his violin bow raised dramatically, bobs in time to the music, sometimes making a correction on his violin when Stephen hits a wrong note. Father's sleek hair angles away sharp as a knife’s edge from his shiny face. With a pencil held by the tips of his long thin fingers, Father makes tiny pencil marks on Stephen's music book. Everything about Father is precise and graceful as the milk-white porcelain crane, its beak pointing straight up from its long smooth neck.
I am sitting in my nemaki on the wicker chair beside the fern, eating a tea biscuit and watching the goldfish with their little round mouths puckering open and closed endlessly. We three, the goldfish and I, are the listeners in the room, as Mother sings and Stephen and Father play. Mother's voice is yasashi, soft and tender in the dimming daylight. She is altogether yasashi. She is singing a kindergarten song to entice me to join in.
How did you, Miss Daffodilly,
Get your pretty dress?
Is it made of gold and sunshine?
Yes, child, yes.
Beside me on its carved wooden pedestal is another silent listener, the Ninomiya Kinjiro statue. My fingers slide over its head, down over the lump on its back, to the porcelain books in its porcelain hands.
Father, seeing my reluctance to join in, comes and sits beside me on the wicker chair.
"See how he carries the wood on his back?" Father asks, lifting the statue and placing it on my lap. He shows me the green and red and golden twigs strapped to its back like a knapsack. Dangling from its side is a parcel of books.
Stephen stops playing and comes over to us, leaving Mother at the piano, still humming kindergarten songs.
"He's studying," Father tells us. The statue has clear white arms and hands and his little white-and-gold book lies open to some black squiggles I cannot read. His feet are spread apart in full stride.
Father tells us the story often. "Up early to the mountains for wood before the rooster calls 'ko-ke-kok-ko!’ He studies and works every day every day to feed his baby brother and his mother. That is how he becomes the great teacher, Ninomiya Sontaku of Odawara, Japan."
Father also studies every day every day. His rolltop desk sits in my memory in the center of the basement with a heavy iron lamp bent over like his head. Along the walls are shelves of books.
Behind Father's study is the huge sawdust furnace and behind the furnace room is the playroom with the back door at ground level leading to the backyard. The playroom has two bronze baby cribs and a black carriage in the corner. These seem untidy to me, sitting there useless and unattended. Stephen and I have light wooden blocks with crinkly red celluloid
windows and pointed roofs for building houses and gateways and castles. There are scissors, folding paper, Plasticine, huge picture books, a Meccano set, doll dishes, and a rocking horse with its mouth open wide in laughter.
My dolls are not in this room but upstairs in a large bin in the kitchen. Later, it was the family of dolls I missed more than anything else—the representatives of the ones I loved.
My bedroom with its long white-lace-curtained window looks out over the neighbour's yard. A peach tree is directly outside the window. Above my bed with the powdery blue patchwork quilt is a picture of a little girl with a book in her lap, looking up into a tree where a bird sits. One of the child's hands is half raised as she watches and listens, attending the bird. The picture is entirely in muted shades of green.
These are the bits of the house I remember. If I linger in the longing, I am drawn into a whirlpool. I can only skirt the edges after all.
“This was a long time ago," I say to Obasan, returning the photograph to her.
The woman in the picture is frail and shy and the child is equally shy, unable to lift her head. Only fragments relate me to them now, to this young woman, my mother, and me, her infant daughter. Fragments of fragments. Parts of a house. Segments of stories.
ten
"Mukashi mukashi o-o mukashi …,” Obasan says, holding the photograph. "In ancient times, in ancient times, in very very ancient times...”
She places the picture on the sideboard, propping it against a tin can filled with old pens.
Seeing Obasan now, older than the grandmother I knew as a child, older than any person I know today, I feel that each breath she takes is weighted with her mortality. She is the old woman of many Japanese legends, alone and waiting in her ancient time for the honor that is an old person's reward.