by Joy Kogawa
Stephen, on his crutches, has disappeared ahead of the rest of us. The mountain, immediate and immense as night, swallows us as we turn onto a path into a clump of trees.
"Stephen! Wait!" I call, running to catch up with him.
I find him and Sensei peering into the woods. There is nothing to be seen except trees, trees, and trees. The ground under our feet is soft and bumpy with needles, moss, pine cones, and small acorn hats. On either side of the path, green fronds of ferns are everywhere, open and extravagant as peacocks.
"See that, Nomi?" Stephen says, pointing. I can see nothing and everything, a forest of shadows and green shapes. "Over there," he says impatiently.
We walk a few steps farther down the path, and there, almost hidden from sight off the path, is a small gray hut with a broken porch camouflaged by shrubbery and trees. The colour of the house is that of sand and earth. It seems more like a giant toadstool than a building. The mortar between the logs is crumbling and the porch roof dives down in the middle. A "V" for victory. From the road, the house is invisible, and the path to it is overgrown with weeds.
"That's our house," Stephen says. "Sensei told me."
We wade though the weeds to the few gray fence posts still standing beside a gate flat on the ground, anchored to the earth by a web of vines. Behind the house, the mountain lurches skyward above a vertical rock wall. When I look up the side of the mountain, above the gray rock, to the left, there is a thin stream of water falling straight down a gray rock wall.
Stephen clumps up the porch steps and pushes his way in the front door. It scrapes along the floor. I stand at the broken gate waiting, then follow him, crossing the rickety porch step. The pine-green outside air changes suddenly to the odor of attic gray. Everything is gray—the newspapered walls, the raw gray planks on the floors, the two windows meshed by twigs and stems and stalks of tall grasses seeking a way in. A rough plank bed is in the middle of the room. Grayness seeps through the walls and surrounds us. "See that?" Stephen says, pointing to the ceiling, which is an uneven matted mass of fibers. “That's grass and manure up there.”
"What?"
"Sure. Cow manure.”
''Says who?'
He shrugs his shoulders.
The ceiling is so low it reminds me of the house of the seven dwarfs. The newspapers lining the walls bend and curl, showing rough wood beneath. Rusted nails protrude from the walls. A hornet crawls along the ledge of a window. Although it is not dark or cool, it feels underground.
There is no expression on Obasan's face as she comes in following Nakayama-sensei and Ojisan. The room is crowded with the three adults, the suitcases, boxes, Stephen, and me.
Obasan takes a handkerchief from her sleeve and offers it to Ojisan. "Such heavy things," she says. “You must he weary."
"Ah," Ojisan says, “when one is almost fifty."
“Chairs just to fit," Sensei says, pulling up the wooden boxes. “A small house for small people.”
Ojisan reaches up to touch the ceiling. “Short people lived here, the same as we are.”
"So it seems'' Sensei sighs.
Obasan sits beside me on the edge of the bed.
"Together," Sensei says, “by helping each other...." It sounds half like a rallying call, half like an apology as if he is somehow responsible.
“As long as we have life and breath," Ojisan says.
“That is indeed so," Sensei repeats, "while we breathe, we have gratitude." It is comforting to hear them talking calmly.
"For our life and that we are together again, thank you. For protection thus far, thank you.…” Nakayama-sensei is praying with his eyes open.
I follow Stephen into the other room. A rusty wood stove is against one wall. Stephen is poking at a bolt on the back door and pushes it back finally with the edge of his crutch. The rusty screen door opens with a scrape and shuts with a dusty clap as Stephen and I go outside.
Ah! The green air once more.
As we stand here looking over an overgrown tangle of weeds and vines, the air is suddenly swarming with butterflies. Up and down like drunken dancers, the gold-and-brown-winged things come down the side of the mountain fluttering awkwardly. There are dozens of them. Some park like tiny helicopters on grass stalks, flexing their wings as if for takeoff. Others hover near the ground before spilling back up into the air, ungainly as baby ballerinas. They are all dressed in the same velvet brown.
Stephen whacks his crutch into the grasses, scattering the butterflies. Each wing bears two round circles of gold, and when the pairs are spread, they are infant eyes, staring up at us bodiless and unblinking. I stare back as Stephen tramples and slashes, hopping deeper and deeper into the tall grasses, swinging his crutch like a scythe. Within moments, the ground and grasses are quivering with maimed and dismembered butterflies. The ones that are safe are airborne and a few have reached the heights of trees.
"They're bad," Stephen says as he wades through the weeds, "They eat holes in your clothes!”
His crutch clears a wide path through the middle of the backyard as he continues his crusade. When he reaches the end of the yard, he turns around. Some brambles and vines are clinging to his pant leg and one butterfly he cannot see is hovering above his head.
seventeen
Morning arrives and the next and the next and we are still here in the house in the woods. The grayness has rapidly become less gray. On a kitchen table is an oilcloth with a bold orange design and tiny daisies and blue flowers. Around it are wooden benches with box shelves beneath. The windows are covered with bright flowered curtains.
Stephen and I sleep on small bunk beds in the pantry. Aya Obasan shares the other room with Nomura-obasan, an elderly invalid with a long hollow face. Her mouth, when she talks, makes small munching sounds and is far down on her chin. She looks like a camel. Several times a day, Nomura-obasan uses a bedpan, which Obasan empties in the outhouse.
One afternoon, when Obasan has donned her white brimmed hat and gone through the woods to Slocan for groceries, Nomura-obasan calls me urgently, her hand beckoning.
"Chotto chotto, Naomi-chan."
It is clear she needs the bedpan.
"Where is it, Stephen?" I ask. Stephen is sitting on the kitchen floor sorting the records for the cameraphone—the portable antique record player Father bought for us just before he left.
"Don't know," Stephen says crossly. With his cast stuck out in front of him, he is not about to hop up and help me find it. I search under the bed, under the kitchen stove, outside the back door, on the wooden stool that has a round washtub on it, outside by the wood pile and around the block used for chopping kindling. The bedpan is nowhere.
When I come back in the house, Nomura-obasan is standing holding the kitchen table with both hands, her stick legs strange and naked under her loose nemaki. Somehow, when lying down, she seemed to be an enormous person with a large blanket-and-bed body, like one of my ornamental dolls in Vancouver—a bodiless head glued onto a cotton-filled quilt. Upright, she is like a plucked bird.
She beckons to me and leans heavily as I help her outside and onto the path to the outhouse that stands between two trees beside the compost pile. She lets go of my shoulders as she reaches the wooden bench with the round hole in the middle.
The first time I saw the outhouse, I didn't know the bench was for sitting on and clambered up to squat the way one does on the ground. Nomura-obasan shuffles into place and makes short gasping groans.
"Ah," she says as she pushes her camel mouth even lower into her chin. I would like to wait outside but one hand grips my shoulder,
Why, I wonder, does she take so long, her chest jumping as she breathes in short jerky gasps? I visit this place as little as possible, with its horrid smell of lye and dung and its spiders around the vent and the hornets that sometimes get trapped in here. There is a small hand broom in the corner that Obasan uses to kill the insects and clean the floor.
At last Nomura-obasan reaches for the toilet paper and,
leaning on my arm again, she stands up. I don't turn back to secure the door shut with the wooden bolt, but leave it swung open.
Obasan, carrying her black knit bag full of groceries, sees us inching our way to the house.
"Ara,” Obasan calls in alarm, and hurries over to assist.
Nomura-obasan sinks onto Obasan's shoulders and sighs deeply. I go ahead and open the back door. The song from the record player is speeding up. Stephen must be cranking it with the miniature handle. He stares briefly as we come in then turns back to the cameraphone, a rectangular wooden box about half the size of a loaf of bread. When it is open as it is now, the lid hinges back. In the lid is a metal slot for a steel leg assembly with an ostrich-egg-size celluloid loudspeaker on one end and, on the other end, a flat round head with a needle, like a beak on a strange metal bird.
Stephen hunches forward as if to shield his treasure from our presence.
“Such posture," Obasan says in a chiding voice to Stephen. "Tiredness is the cause," she apologizes to Nomura-obasan.
"Muri mo nai," Nomura-obasan replies. “It's no wonder. Without even a school...."
“Yes. Someday perhaps,…” Obasan says.
Stephen cranks the machine again and puts on the same record he's been playing for days. "Silver Threads Among the Gold”. All the records are Mother's favorites: "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms”, "Lead, Kindly Light,”, “Humoresque”, "Barcarole”. On each label, Stephen has printed “Property of Mrs. T. Nakane. Handle with Care…."
Obasan draws the covers over Nomura-obasan's shoulders. "It was a great strain, was it not?" she says. "Please rest.”
Nomura-obasan sighs contentedly and listens to the nasal-voiced man on the record singing "Darling, I am growing old, silver threads among the gold.…"
It does not occur to me to wonder why Mother would have liked this song. We do not have silver threads among the gold.
In one of Stephen's books, there is a story of a child with long golden ringlets called Goldilocks who one day comes to a quaint house in the woods lived in by a family of bears. Clearly, we are that bear family in this strange house in the middle of the woods. I am Baby Bear, whose chair Goldilocks breaks, whose porridge Goldilocks eats, whose bed Goldilocks sleeps in. Or perhaps this is not true and I am really Goldilocks after all. In the morning, will I not find my way out of the forest and back to my room where the picture bird sings above my bed and the real bird sings in the real peach tree by my open bedroom window in Marpole?
No matter how I wish it, we do not go home. Ojisan does not bring my doll and I no longer ask for her.
eighteen
It is twilight, and Obasan and I are standing on the bridge watching a large school of tiny fish shimmering upstream like a wriggling gray cloud. We are on our way to the wake in the Odd Fellows Hall. It is all so strange. Grandma Nakane, Obasan tells me, is in heaven.
"Dead?" I asked Stephen. "Grandma Nakane?"
Heaven, I am told, is where old people go and is a place of happiness. Why then the solemnness?
I stare straight down into the water past my new wine-coloured loafers Obasan bought for me at Graham's General Store. Obasan is wearing her white summer shoes with a hole at the toe. Can Grandma Nakane see us from heaven? I wonder. Could her spirit be in the little gray fishes?
The last time we saw Grandma and Grandpa Nakane was a few weeks ago when they arrived by train. I know they wanted to stay with us. But an ambulance took them away. Stephen says it takes a whole hour to drive the twisting twenty miles from Slocan to New Denver, where they are.
Obasan held Grandma Nakane's hand tightly until the driver came to close the ambulance door. Grandpa Nakane strained to sit up and tried to smile as he waved goodbye to Stephen and me, the ends of his mustache rising and falling. None of us spoke.
It is always so. We must always honor the wishes of others before our own. We will make the way smooth by restraining emotion. Though we might wish Grandma and Grandpa to stay, we must watch them go. To try to meet one's own needs in spite of the wishes of others is to be "wagamama"—selfish and inconsiderate. Obasan teaches me not to be wagamama by always heeding everyone's needs. That is why she is waiting patiently beside me at this bridge. That is why, when I am offered gifts, I must first refuse politely. It is such a tangle trying to decipher the needs and intents of others.
This little bridge is where sad thoughts come. Memories of my doll. Memories of home. And thoughts now of Grandma Nakane. I remember the time she wore her kimono and knelt on the floor playing a slow sad tune on the koto, her graceful fingers plucking the strings.
I take Obasan's hand and we walk down the pebbly road to the Odd Fellows Hall, a building by itself at the side of the road in a field without any trees. On Saturday nights the building is filled with children, white and Japanese, who come and watch war movies and newsreels and Batman. The hall is long and heavy with darkness. Two light bulbs dangle from the ceiling. In front of the stage, far away at the end of the hall, there is the wooden coffin. Several people I do not know sit on folding chairs with their heads bowed. It is a long walk from the entrance to the front, our shoes echoing loudly on the wooden floor.
Obasan bows to the people as they come, thanking them quietly. The ojisan who first helped us when we got off the train is accepting envelopes of money, which he will later give to Obasan. Eiko's mother, her round face smiling wanly, takes both my hands as I stand near her. She presses an envelope firmly between the palms of my hands.
There are about twenty people who have come to the wake. From our family only Obasan and I are here. Grandpa Nakane is too sick to attend and Stephen didn't want to come. We sit on the chairs and wait till the ojisan goes to the front. He stands beside the coffin and begins to say a long prayer full of words I do not understand.
The next day, for the funeral, the prayers are just as long. The hall is so full that men and women stand along the back wall. Some people are holding handkerchiefs to their faces and whisper quietly to Obasan. The words that are spoken by the minister, Nakayama-sensei, are not understandable. Obasan's head is bowed the whole time. Because the service is so long, she gives me a pencil and a small notebook in which to draw. I make a house with a triangle roof and triangle windows in the roof. I fill the sky with seagulls. I have just learned to make birds like the letter "v." While I am drawing, I listen to Nakayama-sensei's voice rising and falling in the formal chant that comes from deep in his body, then up to the top of his head and down again. I feel that he could make the walls of the building fall down were he to let out all his breath. The words seem to come from somewhere inside his belly and stop before coming out of his mouth, so that the sound is swallowed up and remains loud and powerful but barely to be heard. Occasionally a word is surrounded or followed by a long sigh.
Obasan's eyes are closed as she listens. Stephen is sitting on the other side of her and kicks his good leg back and forth. His fingers are digging at a black piece of gum stuck on the bottom of his folding chair. When he gets it off, he leans over Obasan and sticks it on one of my seagulls.
“’Nother mosquito for ya," he mutters.
Obasan opens her eyes and rummages through her purse for a pen to give to Stephen but he folds his arms and shakes his head, refusing it. I am about to take his gummy mosquito off my bird when everyone kneels and there is a rapid murmuring as the whole hall fills with voices joined in prayer.
After the service, Obasan, Stephen, and I walk behind some men who are carrying the coffin to a half-ton truck.
Stephen whispers to me that the man who is going to take Grandma's body up the mountain is called Mr. Draper. He owns a grocery store in New Denver, and when people die he uses his truck for funerals. He drove Grandma's body all the way down from the hospital at New Denver to Slocan.
Later in the evening, Obasan, Stephen, and I walk down the highway and up the steep road to the old silver mine. Obasan tells us that though she and Uncle are Christians, like Mother and Father and the K
atos, Grandpa Nakane is Buddhist. It was Grandpa Nakane's wish that Grandma Nakane's body be sent for cremation and her bones and ashes returned to him. At first it was arranged to send the body to Spokane, but some carpenters told Obasan they would build a pyre and take turns keeping the fire going throughout the night at the old silver mine. Obasan is carrying a furoshiki full of delicious rice osushis and several of the new pound cakes for the men to eat.
The sun has been long gone behind the mountain ranges and the first stars are in view by the time we come to the end of the trail to the mine. There is a bunkhouse hidden in the trees where several families live. Farther up behind the rubble, where part of the mine used to be, is a clearing where the men are, the summer night sounds of insects have begun and there is a cool twirl of wind as we begin the last part of the climb. From off in the distance we can hear the low muffled sound of water from a waterfall.
We come in sight of a half dozen men and a rectangular pile of logs in the middle of the clearing. The logs remind me of a game Stephen and I play with matchsticks, when we try to make a square base and lay one match on top of another till we get a high tower, The one who makes the pile fall down is the loser. The difference here is that the sticks are huge tree trunks, logs so wide I could not put my arms around them. They are built in a crisscross up to the height of a table. In the hollow space in the center of the log pile there are dry twigs and smaller pieces of wood. Grandma's coffin rests on top.
The first ojisan who sees us comes to help Stephen up the last part of the climb, and when we arrive we sit down on a log to rest. A little distance from the pyre, there are two stacks of wood. One man is pouring gasoline from a rectangular tin carefully onto all the logs of the pyre and another is binding a cloth onto the end of a stick. Obasan puts her gift of food discreetly behind the second wood pile, where it will be seen after we leave, then returns to sit beside me and wait.