by Joy Kogawa
"Mukashi mukashi ..."
Each night from the very beginning, before I could talk, there were the same stories, the voices of my mother or my father or Obasan or Grandma Kato, soft through the filter of my sleepiness, carrying me away to a shadowy ancestry.
“Tonight, which story? Momotaro again?"
Night after night I asked for Momotaro. What remains as I remember the story, beyond the rhythm of the words and the comfort and closeness, is our transport to the gray-green woods where we hover and spread like tree spirits, our ears and our eyes, raindrops resting on leaves and grass stems.
The mountainside, hazy as Vancouver fog, is so far away that distance is blurred. The old old man and the old old woman of the Momotaro story, white-haired and bent double with age, move with slow tiny steps in the whispery rice-paper house. The haze makes everything one colour. Even the morning glories that cluster around the well are the same green-gray. A bamboo bucket hangs from a rope. Wooden wind chimes clatter softly.
My mother's voice is quiet and the telling is a chant. I snuggle into her arms, listening and watching the shadows of the peach tree outside my window. “Early every morning," she murmurs, “Grandfather goes to the mountain to gather firewood. Grandmother goes to the stream to wash clothes.”
“One day as Grandmother is washing the clothes—pound and dip, pound and dip—down over the waterfall comes a big peach bouncing over the foam toward her. 'What a fine peach,' she says, and takes it home for Grandfather. All day she waits for him to come home. When Grandfather arrives—ah—when Grandfather arrives..."
“What then, what then?” I say as Mother pauses in this delicious moment. "So-re kara?"
The story never quite recovers from the excitement of Grandfather's homecoming.
“Grandmother shows him the huge peach. 'Ah, such a fine momo,' Grandfather says. And carefully they lift it up, feeling its ripe lush flesh in their hands."
Whenever I bite into peaches, I wonder as my lips touch the slippery cool tang how it must have been. I wonder as I stare at the peaches in the peach tree outside the window, changing from buds to blossoms to small green balls.
"Momotaro, Momotaro, what a fine young man, what a gift from heaven.”
The little boy, golden and round as a peach, leaps onto the table from the heart of the fruit before their astonished eyes. The delight of it. And the wonder. Simply by existing a child is delight.
The story could end here, but Mother offers the whole telling before she rolls up the tale once more, round and complete as an unopened peach ready for a fresh feasting.
Secretly, I realize I am more fortunate than Stephen because I am younger and will therefore be a child for a longer time. That we must grow up is an unavoidable sadness.
My arms are flung around my mother as she lies beside me and I breathe in her powdery perfume as she continues her chant.
The time comes when Momotaro must go and silence falls like feathers of snow all over the rice-paper hut. Inside, the hands are slow. Grandmother kneels at the table forming round rice balls, pressing the sticky rice together with her moist fingertips. She wraps them in a small square cloth and, holding them before her in her cupped hands, she offers him the lunch for his journey. There are no tears and no touch. Grandfather and Grandmother are careful, as he goes, not to weight his pack with their sorrow.
Alone in the misty mountains once more, the old folk wait. What matters in the end, what matters above all, more than their loneliness or fears, is that Momotaro behave with honor. At all times what matters is to act with a fine intent. To do otherwise is shameful and brings dishonor to all.
To travel with confidence down this route the most reliable map I am given is the example of my mother's and Grandma's alert and accurate knowing. When I am hungry, and before I can ask, there is food. If I am weary, every place is a bed. No food that is distasteful must be eaten and there is neither praise nor blame for the body's natural functions. A need to urinate is to be heeded whether in public or visiting friends. A sweater covers me before there is any chill and if there is pain there is care simultaneously. If Grandma shifts uncomfortably, I bring her a cushion.
"Yoku ki ga tsuku ne," Grandma responds. It is a statement in appreciation of sensitivity and appropriate gestures.
I cannot remember that I was ever reprimanded or punished for anything, although that seems strange and unlikely now. The concept that a child could do wrong did not seem to exist. There was no need for crying.
"Surely I cried sometimes," I said to Aunt Emily when she told me what a quiet child I'd been.
She shook her head. "I can't remember that you ever did. You never spoke. You never smiled. You were so 'majime.' What a serious baby—fed on milk and Momotaro.”
"Milk and Momotaro?" I asked. “Culture clash?"
“Not at all," she said. "Momotaro is a Canadian story. We're Canadian, aren't we? Everything a Canadian does is Canadian."
eleven
It isn't true, of course, that I never speak as a child. Inside the house in Vancouver there is confidence and laughter, music and mealtimes, games and storytelling. But outside, even in the backyard, there is an infinitely unpredictable, unknown, and often dangerous world. Speech hides within me, watchful and afraid.
One day, I am standing alone in the backyard. Beside the garage is a wire cage placed high above the ground, at about the level of a table. I can barely see the floor of the cage. A white hen struts in here, its head jerking as it scatters the hay looking for grain—claw scratch, claw scratch—jerking as it starts up in alarm, cocking its head sideways, its neck feathers fluffing in and out. Where its chin should be, a rubbery tongue flaps and jiggles. It seems constantly surprised, ready to utter its gurgles and squawks, its limited language of exclamation and alarm.
My mother and father have bought a dozen cotton-batten-soft yellow chicks, a light boxful of jostling fluff. Their feet are scratchy as twigs. If I stand on a stool, I can lift the wire gate. Carefully, I take the babies and put them into the cage one by one, the trembling bodies filling the palms of my hands.
In the corner of the cage where I place them, they are a clump of yellow puffballs, a piccolo orchestra. The white hen stops scratching and cocks her head at them. The chicks begin to leave the cluster, hopping, cheeping, their shiny round eyes black as apple seeds. One chick reaches the hen's feet. Without warning, the hen's sharp beak jabs down on the chick, up again and down, deliberate as the needle on the sewing machine. A high trilling squeal and the chick spreads its short wings like a fan as it flops forward. Again and again the hen's beak strikes and the chick lies on its side on the floor, its neck twisted back, its wings, outstretched fingers. The hen lifts a scaly leg, the claws collapsing and clutching as it struts around the cage, bayoneting the chicks darting past her feet, their wings outspread.
I climb down from the stool and run up the back stairs into the house, where my mother is sitting in the music room with Mrs. Sugimoto.
"Mama——”
Without a word and without alarm, she follows me quickly to the backyard. The arena is punctuated by short piercing trills as the hen keeps pecking and the chicks squeal and flutter, squeal and fall.
With swift deft fingers, Mother removes the live chicks first, placing them in her apron. All the while that she acts, there is calm efficiency in her face and she does not speak. Her eyes are steady and matter-of-fact—the eyes of Japanese motherhood. They do not invade and betray. They are eyes that protect, shielding what is hidden most deeply in the heart of the child. She makes safe the small stirrings underfoot and in the shadows. Physically, the sensation is not in the region of the heart, but in the belly. This that is in the belly is honored when it is allowed to be, without fanfare, without reproach, without words. What is there is there.
But even a glance, if it is not matter-of-fact, is a betrayal.
Mrs. Sugimoto has followed us. Although it is a warm day, she is wearing a fur collar around her neck and a tiny animal head w
ith sharp teeth looks over her shoulder. Mrs. Sugimoto's teeth are also sharp and protrude and a slight spittle is on her lower lip. When she talks she breathes in audibly through her front teeth, making "ff” sounds. Mrs. Sugimoto reminds me of the white hen, always fussing over her boys, telling them to put sweaters on even when the weather is warm. Her face is not matter-of-fact like Mother's. Her eyes search my face. Her glance is too long. She notes my fear invades my knowing.
I look away from Mrs. Sugimoto to my mother's face. She is examining the wounded chicks in her apron, holding them upside down even as they peep in alarm.
And suddenly, the yard is full of boys, clambering and exclaiming and jostling.
“What happened? What happened?" I am pushed aside by Ralph, the boy who lives at the end of the alley. He bangs his fist on the cage and the hen squawks as its wings flap once.
Mrs. Sugimoto's eyes are wide with alarm and she steps backward. Although her knowing is an invasion, I stand close to her and away from the other children. Given a yard full of enemies, the most familiar enemy is a friend.
"Hey, Nome, whassa matter?" Ralph says "Cat gotcher tongue?"
"What's a matter with the chicks, eh?”
I do not answer.
Mother takes all the chicks, the dead as well as the wounded and the unharmed ones, into her apron and goes to the garage filled with sawdust.
Later, when all the children and Mrs. Sugimoto have gone, Mother and Stephen and I are in the kitchen, where the chicks are now kept in a box beside the stove.
"It was not good, was it?" Mother says. "Yoku nakatta ne." Three words. Good, negation of good in the past tense, agreement with statement. It is not a language that promotes hysteria. There is no blame or pity. I am not responsible. The hen is not responsible. My mother does not look at me when she says this. She squats beside the box and we watch the trembling chicks together. "Kyotsuke nakattara abunai," she says. "If there is not carefulness, there is danger." She has waited until all is calm before we talk. I tell her everything. There is nothing about me that my mother does not know, nothing that is not safe to tell.
Except there is the one secret thing that emerges even now, curious as an infant fern, a fiddlehead question mark asking with its unformed voice for answers still hidden from me.
His name is Old Man Gower. He lives next door. I can see his house beyond the peach tree from my bedroom window. His belly is large and soft. His hair is thin and brown and the top of his head is a shiny skin cap. When he lifts me up in his arms, I smell something dank and unpleasant. His breathing is noisy and too close to my face. He has a mustache, scratchy as a Christmas tree. I do not wish him to lift me up but I do not know what it is to struggle. Every time he carries me away, he tells me I must not tell my mother. He asks me questions as he holds me but I do not answer.
It is not an isolated incident. Over and over again, not just Old Man Gower—but years later there is Percy in Slocan, pressing me against the cave wall during hide-and-go-seek, warning me against crying out. The sharp stone cuts into my shoulder. I try to move but he holds me harder. The other children are running past on their way back to home base. We will be the last ones unless we go. He says we will fool them and hide there. I am filled with a strange terror and exhilaration. When does this begin—this fascination and danger that rockets through my body?
Two weeks ago, the day of our first staff meeting at Cecil Consolidated, there was that dream again. The dream had a new and terrible ending. In earlier versions, there was flight, terror, and pursuit. The only way to be saved from harm was to become seductive. In this latest dream, three beautiful oriental women lay naked in the muddy road, flat on their backs, their faces turned to the sky. They were lying straight as coffins, spaced several feet apart, perpendicular to the road like railway ties. Several soldiers stood or shuffled in front of them in the foreground. It appeared they were guarding these women, who were probably prisoners captured from a nearby village.
The woman closest by made a simpering coy gesture with her hands. She touched her hair and wiggled her body slightly—seductively. An almost inaudible whimper or sob was drowned in her chest. She was trying to use the only weapon she had—her desirability. This is what a punished dog feels—this abject longing, wretchedness, fear, and utter helplessness. She lay on the edge of nausea, stretched between hatred and lust.
The soldiers lifted their rifles, aiming across the bodies of the women. This was sport. A game to play with animals in the forest. Power. The rush of release from the rifle barrels. The puffs of blue smoke.
Crack!
The first shots were aimed at the toes of the women, the second at their feet. A few inches from the body, the first woman's right foot lay like a solid wooden boot neatly severed above the ankles. It was too late. There was no hope. The soldiers could not be won. Dread and a deathly loathing cut through the women.
Does Old Man Gower still walk through the hedges between our houses in Vancouver, in Slocan, in Granton and Cecil?
I am a small girl being carried away through the break in the shrubs where our two yards meet. Old Man Gower is taking me to the edge of his garden on the far far side away from the street. His backyard is a jungle of bushes, flowering trees, weeds, and flowers. Near the farthest corner is a thick arch of vines. He stoops to enter the arch. The ground here is covered with pebbles and a wooden slab across two stones forms a bench. If I reach up I can touch the small green grapes that cluster in bunches across the vine roof. But I do not move.
When he sits on the bench, no one can see us. The vines are so thick I cannot see my house or his. He does not release me. When I make the faintest move he puts his hand on my skirt. He offers me a toffee. I neither wish nor do not wish to have the candy, but it is more polite to refuse.
He thrusts it into my hands. I sit still on his lap.
“Would you like me to tell you a story?" he asks.
I do not respond. If I am still, I will be safe.
Is this where the terror begins?
I am four years old. His hands are large and demanding. He caresses my head as if I were a small animal. My short black hair straight across my forehead like a broom is blown aside as he puts his mouth on my face.
Another day I am in the garage, behind the huge pile of sawdust. I have arranged a bed for my dolls out of baby blankets. I have many many dolls, and stuffed animals. Baby dolls with breakable hard heads and straw-filled bodies, children dolls, grown-up dolls, a rabbit, a bear, a furry mouse. I have tea sets and doll shoes and socks and dresses.
Mr. Gower is standing beside me and looking down. I cannot play because he is watching. I wait for him to go away. He squats down. I wish to go to my mother. His hand holds my skirt as I get up to go. The soft elastic around the waist pulls at the straps crisscrossing over my shoulders. I cannot move. I cannot look at his face. It is unthinkable to be held by force.
He lifts me up saying that my knee has a scratch on it and he will fix it for me. I know this is a lie. The scratch is hardly visible and does not hurt. Is it the lie that first introduces me to the darkness?
The room is dark, the blind drawn almost to the bottom. I am unfamiliar with such darkness. The bed is strange and pristine, deathly in its untouched splendor. I have never seen his wife. Does she not live here? Is this where they sleep?
"Don't be afraid," he says. "I know another little girl just like you and she isn't afraid."
He tells me her name is Veronica and she talks to him. She is also four years old. I cannot imagine Veronica actually talking to Old Man Gower. If I speak, I will split open and spill out. To be whole and safe I must hide in the foliage, odorless as a newborn fawn. But already the lie grows like a horn, an unfurled fiddlehead fist, through the soft fontanelle of my four-year-old mind.
He stands me on the bathroom toilet and opens the medicine cabinet. He begins to undress me. I do not resist. One does not resist adults. But I know this is unnecessary for my knee. He is only pretending to fix my scratch.
From outside the bathroom window I can hear Stephen calling for me, his high voice singing the two-tone chant "O-mi."
"Sh," Mr. Gower says. One finger is on his lips and the other hand on my mouth.
Mr. Gower closes the bathroom door, locking me in.
I hear him calling Stephen from the kitchen door "She's hurt her knee," he says, "I'm fixing it."
He is giving Stephen a penny to go and buy some candy. My mother never does this. I know he only wants to send Stephen away so we will be safe. I want Stephen to rescue me from this strange room. But I do not wish him to see me half undressed. I am not permitted to move, to dress, or to cry out. I am ashamed. If Stephen comes he will see my shame. He will know what I feel and the knowing will flood the landscape There will be nowhere to hide.
"Run away, little girl. Hide. Hide," he says, putting me down in the bathroom. I am Snow White in the forest, unable to run. He is the forest full of eyes and arms. He is the tree root that trips Snow White. He is the lightning flashing through the dark sky.
We are in the movie theater in a torrent of sound. I am transfixed by the horror. Old Man Gower lifts me onto his lap.
"Don't tell your mother," he whispers into my ear. This is what he always says. Where in the darkness has my mother gone?
I am clinging to my mother's leg, a flesh shaft that grows from the ground, a tree trunk of which I am an offshoot—a young branch attached by right of flesh and blood. Where she is rooted, I am rooted. If she walks, I will walk. Her blood is whispering through my veins. The shaft of her leg is the shaft of my body and I am her thoughts.
But here in Mr. Gower's hands I become other—a parasite on her body, no longer of her mind. My arms are vines that strangle the limb to which I cling. I hold so tightly now that arms and leg become one through force. I am a growth that attaches and digs a furrow under the bark of her skin. If I tell my mother about Mr. Gower, the alarm will send a tremor through our bodies and I will be torn from her. But the secret has already separated us. The secret is this. I go to seek Old Man Gower in his hideaway. I clamber unbidden onto his lap. His hands are frightening and pleasurable. In the center of my body is a rift.