by Joy Kogawa
Obasan is removing her clothes as she chats with Nomura-obasan, and I am already in the washing area, dipping my basin into the tub and pouring water over my shoulders. A woman with a face like a monkey, and her hair piled high in a bun, is squatting on her haunches against the wall of the tub, beside a puffy-faced woman. The water covers their shoulders and necks right up to their chins. In a corner opposite them are Reiko and Yuki, two sisters I know from school, one older and one younger than I am. The woman with the monkey face has a squashed-down nose that almost meets her protruding lower lip. I have seen her before in stores, scuttling along with her eyes darting. The two women are glancing in the direction of Obasan and Nomura-obasan.
I dip my basin in again and again and rinse myself thoroughly before Obasan is even undressed. Beside me are scattered a few of the square wooden basins, the corners slippery with soap.
"So fast," Nomura-obasan says as she joins me on the slatted floor. She is almost bent over double as she walks on the slippery slats. Tonight the water is not as boiling hot as it usually is and I do not hesitate to step right in for the soaking. I move toward the corner of the tub where Reiko and Yuki are. As I draw nearer, I see that the monkey-faced woman is beckoning to them. Is she their mother? When I look back, she acknowledges me with a crooked unfriendly smile but keeps nodding to the girls. For some reason she is disapproving of me. I search her face, then look away, puzzling.
"Let's swim," Yuki says in greeting to me, and she and Reiko dog-paddle through the hot water to the other side. I stay in the corner alone, watching the two women whispering with their eyes lowered, the monkey woman occasionally glancing at Nomura-obasan.
Obasan rinses off Nomura-obasan and as they step into the water together the two other women do not look up. Apart from Reiko and Yuki splashing, and the steady hissing stream of cold water from the cold-water tap in the washing area, the bathhouse is strangely silent. I have never found it so empty of banter, I have never felt the edges that I find here tonight.
The two women are whispering to Reiko and Yuki and avoiding all contact with us, greeting us neither formally nor informally. Obasan and Nomura-obasan also have their heads down. Yuki, who has been swimming around and calling to me, stops and looks at me oddly. What, I wonder, can it be?
The two women step out, beckoning to the girls to follow them. Reiko leaves at once, but Yuki lingers in the water, paddling back and forth along the width of the tub.
"Hurry," the monkey woman says in a sharp voice to Yuki. She beckons with her hand in the waving slapping motion and the quick nodding of the head that means "Come at once." On the bench, Reiko is drying herself and making hissing noises, pointing to an insect.
Obasan is talking to Nomura-obasan in a quiet voice. "Much strength has come to you," she says.
"Thanks to your prayers," Nomura-obasan murmurs through her toothless mouth.
"A matter of great thankfulness," Obasan says, smiling. When Obasan smiles, sometimes her eyes grow soft and moist as if she is about to cry.
I feel reassured to hear them talking and push out towards Yuki, who is still swimming back and forth. Yuki stops swimming and backs away from me. She steps out of the tub and goes to join her sister and the two women as they dress.
"Come," Nomura-obasan calls to me. "Baa-chan will wash your back tonight."
We climb out to the washing area as Reiko and Yuki and the two women dress and leave. There are still no words, even as they go, although I wave to Yuki and Reiko.
"Bye," Yuki calls, and the monkey woman seems annoyed with her.
“Why was there no speaking?" I ask when the door swings shut. Nomura-obasan is making her washcloth into a fist to rub the aka off my back.
"There was nothing to speak of perhaps," Obasan says lightly.
"A shameful matter," Nomura-obasan says quietly.
“It is nothing," Obasan says as she washes herself.
I kneel with my head bent forward as Nomura-obasan rubs vigorously, then it is my turn to wash her. I am pouring a wooden basin full of water over her shoulders when the door opens and Sachiko Saito peers in. I have often taken a few eggs from our chickens to the Saito house. Obasan says I must always say hello to old Mr. Saito, whose limbs are always trembling. Once when I handed him the eggs, he dropped them and looked as if he would weep.
"Kon-ban-wa," Nomura-obasan calls. “Good evening. The water is still fine.”
“Gomen-nasai," Sachiko apologizes. "I'm sorry to disturb you, I will come later."
“No no," Nomura-obasan says. "Come. No worry."
"Yes, come," Obasan says, nodding. “It is so late tonight, we are the last."
Sachiko hesitates, then pushes open the door. Her old grandfather follows her, one hand on a cane and the other gripping her arm. Old Saito-ojisan coming to the girls' bath?
"Gomen-nasai," he says. His voice shakes like autumn leaves. "Later, we will return."
"It is fine, it is fine," Nomura-obasan says. “The same as our own family. Come. Ira-shai."
"Do you mind if my grandfather comes in?" Sachiko says, asking me.
"It's okay," I say, not looking up.
Sachiko is a pretty high school girl with large eyes. She is apologizing that she must bring her grandfather to the girls' side because her brother is ill.
"Dozo. Please feel free. We are finished," Obasan says as we re-enter the bath for the final soaking. We are careful not to watch as Sachiko helps her grandfather to undress, but Nomura-obasan chats easily with them.
"It is peaceful, is it not, when the crowd is gone?"
Sachiko's grandfather sits on one of the small wooden stools as Sachiko dips the basin in the tub. His face, neck, and hands are dark, but below his neck his body is pale as ivory. He seems to be trembling less as the hot water pours over him. All across his back, around to the side, and down one leg, there is a red scar. Sachiko scrubs his back and chats with Nomura-obasan, as Obasan and I get out to dry ourselves and dress.
Most afternoons, the room is thick with the steam from the bath and the water rolls down in little streams from the walls, but this late at night, the water has cooled and there is only a little mist with water drops on the ceiling and walls.
I am not hot enough tonight to douse myself with a basin full of cold water before dressing.
Outside the bathhouse, the air is clear and cool as fresh running water, and full of the damp wood and sap smell from the sawmill. The green air whisks away the wetness from the bath.
Just as we come to the crossing where the road to the Green Light Cafe meets the road to our place, I see Yuki and Reiko and two other girls. Yuki waves to me. Obasan continues walking up the road, but I stay behind, waving back to Yuki and waiting for them to reach me. When they are almost beside me, Reiko stops.
“My mom says we can't play with you," she says.
Yuki and the others stop when Reiko says this.
“Why not?"
"You're sick. You've all got TB. You and the Nomuras and your dad." Her words are spraying out in a rush and she points her finger at me. "That's why Stephen is limping."
"It is not!"
“It is too!" Her voice is rising and she keeps pointing her finger at me. "Nobody will marry you," she says, in a taunting singsong voice.
"What!"
"You sleep on the floor!"
"I do not!"
"Yes, you do. That's how you get it."
"I haven't got it."
"Yes, you have. Your dad is in the hospital, so there. My mom told me."
I flee. I run along the shortcut towards home and burst in through the kitchen door, slamming the screen door behind me. Stephen and Uncle are at the table.
"What is TB?" I ask.
Stephen ignores my question. When I continue asking, Uncle says quietly, "For some people it is a shameful matter to be ill. But it is a matter of misfortune, not shame."
twenty-four
The bantam rooster's early-morning crow is more a choked chirp than the full-thr
oated call of the regular rooster.
It is early autumn in 1945, several months after the evening of the late-night bath. I waken suddenly, before the regular summons of the rooster, to the soft steady steam of rain and fog and a grayness thicker than sleep. Something has touched me but I do not know what it is. Something not human, not animal, that masquerades the way a tree in the night takes on the contours of hair and fingers and arms.
Only my eyes move, searching the shelf ceiling above my bunk. Stephen in the bunk below is asleep, his mouth squashed open on his pillow.
She is here. She is not here. She is reaching out to me with a touch deceptive as down, with hands and fingers that wave like grass around my feet, and her hair falls and falls and falls from her head like streamers of paper rain. She is a maypole woman to whose apron-string streamers I cling and around whose skirts I dance. She is a ship leaving the harbour, tied to me by coloured paper streamers that break and fall into a swirling wake. The wake is a thin black pencil line that deepens and widens and fills with a grayness that reaches out with tentacles to embrace me. I leap and wake.
Something is happening but I do not know what it is. I listen intently, all my senses alert.
Yesterday Stephen came running back from town shouting that the war was over and we had won. "We won, we won, we won!" he cried, running through the yard with both hands raised and his fingers in the V-for-Victory sign. The bantam rooster that roams freely in the yard squawked and flew away to a branch in the apple tree, from which it stared down fluffing its brown-and-red feathers till it looked twice its size.
After Stephen calmed down, he climbed the woodshed and hopped to the roof of the house, carrying a hammer and nails and a flagpole with a well-worn Union Jack.
This morning there is no shouting, only the familiar soft thudding of a log dropping into the wood stove and the clank of the stove grate being pushed back into place. Obasan is up and there is the plip noise of the dipper entering the bucket of water and—splash—the kettle filling, once, twice, three times, then the lid of the kettle, clink, the shuffle to the stove, the slide of the kettle, and the hiss of the water turning to steam where it spills on the hot surface.
The greyness moves aside, then returns, separates, but returns confident as breath.
Obasan's feet are treading a faster rhythm than normal.
I turn my head and peer down into the kitchen. The coal-oil lamp on the table is lit, the wick turned just high enough that there is no smoke going up the glass chimney. On the window ledge by the cactus plants is the bowl of water with the three black hairs that Stephen has been watching for days. Miss Pye, Stephen's music teacher in Vancouver, wrote him that black hairs turn into water snakes.
"How long does it take?" I asked Stephen a few days ago.
Stephen shrugged as he stared into the bowl and pushed the hairs with his forefinger. However long the hair stays hair, Stephen swears Miss Pye never tells lies. Somewhere between her words and his watching is a world of water snakes he cannot find.
Uncle is up and sitting at the table, stretching his arms.
"Sa," he says, punctuating his stretch as if he has come to the end of his thoughts. Obasan turns the toast on the wire grill and pours tea into one of the large flat-bottomed mugs.
I curl up under my covers again and close my eyes. The weight of the nightmare is as persistent as rain, a shape that falls and evaporates, rises up from the earth and disappears again.
"Stephen," I whisper, leaning over the side of the bunk and blowing at his face. I push aside the heavy futon with my foot and feel for the ladder rung with my toes. "Wake up," I say as I step onto his bed.
The bantam rooster has started a gurgle of croaks as if he is trying to outdo the proper rooster.
"So early?" Uncle asks as I appear.
"Sleep some more," Obasan whispers.
They are both still in their nemaki and Obasan's long braid of hair dangles down her back.
I stumble out to the outhouse. The sharp air of the mountain morning cuts through my fog. When I come back Obasan hands me a square of toast. I glance at the water-snake bowl to see if the hairs have changed, but nothing has happened. And then, as I finish my toast, I see through the doorway that Uncle and Obasan's room is different. The cupboard bookshelf Uncle made which stood along the wall is no longer there and instead I can see the end of Nomura-obasan's cot. I stand up to see better and Obasan gestures me to silence.
"Quietly," she whispers.
"Who's here?" I ask, tiptoeing into the room. Has Nomura-obasan come back?
On the side of the room in front of the narrow bed and the piano, and all over the rest of the room, there are piles of empty boxes. Someone is in the bed, an arm crooked above the pillow. The sleeves of the nemaki cover the head.
The arms move then, and I see the familiar head, the smooth face, the high cheekbones, the black hair straight back over his head as if it had just been combed. Without moving from the spot, my body leaps. My hands, palms open, fall to my thighs.
Without turning his head to look at me, he beckons, and I see the same hand, the long thin fingers that I have watched moving with confidence over the keyboard.
"Good morning, Naomi-chan." He is talking to me. How does he know it is me? He has not moved. His back is toward me.
He turns then and smiles and I scrape my knees on the cupboard as I fling myself onto the bed. He sits up and gathers me into his serious smile. His forehead is wrinkled with new puzzle lines as if he has been asking questions all the time.
We do not talk. His hands cup my face. I wrap my arms around his neck. The button of his pajama top presses into my cheek. I can feel his heart's steady thump thump thump. I am Minnie and Winnie in a seashell, resting on a calm seashore. I am Goldilocks, I am Momotaro returning. I am leaf in the wind restored to its branch, child of my father come home. The world is safe once more and Chicken Little is wrong. The sky is not falling down after all.
There is no sound in the house except the satisfied "Aah'" that Uncle makes after he has swallowed a hot drink, and the scrape scrape of Obasan's knife buttering the toast. In the chicken house outside the rooster is still crowing and the neighbour's dog barks three short excited blasts.
The laughter in my arms is quiet as the moon, quiet as snow falling, quiet as the white light from the stars. Into this I fall and fall and fall, swaying safe as a feather through all my waiting hours and silent night watchings, past the everyday walk through the woods and the noisy school grounds, down past the Slocan City stores and the sawmill whine and Rough Lock Bill's cabin, back along the train journey and the mountain ridges and the train station in Vancouver with all the people and the luggage and missionaries and women trotting here and there, carrying babies and boxes. Back up the long bus ride to Marpole and our house and the hedge around the yard and the peach tree outside my window and the goldfish bowl in the music room and I am in my father's arms again my father's arms.
When I move my head finally, the words rush around stumbling to form questions, but there are no questions and I do not understand how he has found us or when we will return home. But he is here now and his hand strokes my sleep-tangled hair.
Then suddenly Stephen is in the room, barefoot, with his nemaki open to his belly and the sash half undone. He has his flutes in his hand as he usually does.
Father nods as Stephen stands there staring, wiping the sleep from his eyes. "Good morning," Father says.
"Dad!" Stephen is upon us with a howl.
Father releases me and takes a flute, his wide-set eyes delighted. For a moment, the lines disappear from his brow and he is exactly as he used to be. "These?" Father turns the instrument around, fondling it with his fingertips.
Uncle grins and squeezes into the room. He sits on the edge of the cot, pushing the wooden boxes aside.
Deftly, Father places the pads of his fingertips on the holes and, holding the mouthpiece flat against his lower lip, he plays arpeggios rapidly. Then, with a light legato
, he opens with the first few notes of “The White Cliffs of Dover”. Stephen picks up the tune immediately and Father's flute dips and trills birdlike notes in and around the tune. Without a break, Father leads into "Waltzing Matilda”, and Stephen improvises harmonies. Their heads nod in time to the music and their elbows sway like airborne birds as the clear notes bounce off the walls and the cow-dung ceiling. Stephen's head is angled up like the rooster when it crows and flaps its wings sending out its call.
The music goes on and on from song to song. Uncle taps with spoons on his knees, "Whoo," Father says finally, and shakes his head approvingly. "Not bad," he says, and Stephen is on center stage, beaming.
“Not bad," Uncle says.
Obasan turns down the coal-oil lamp and, cupping her hand behind the chimney, she blows out the night's light. She hands us all pieces of toast.
twenty-five
After music, after breakfast, Uncle and Father sit at the kitchen table and I can see it in Father's eyes. It's happening again, it's happening again—the same stare, the eyes searching elsewhere.
I do not understand the words.
"What are they saying, Stephen? What are the boxes for?"
"We're moving."
“We're going home?"
“No.''
"Why not?"
"We can't."
"But why?"
Everyone, Stephen tells me, is going away again, and again we do not know where. Every day or so since spring, a few families at a time have been leaving on a passenger car attached to the local freight train. Obasan and I go quite often to the station to wave goodbye. Last week Uncle was called to the office of the Security Commission, a small hut on the main street with a long table and an oval-shaped tin stove.
"Why can't we go home, Stephen?"
"Because. That's why," Stephen says crossly, and tells me no more. His eyes are like Father's, searching.
The orders, given to Uncle and Father in 1945, reach me via Aunt Emily's package in 1972, twenty-seven years later. The delivery service is slow these days. Understanding is even slower. I still do not see the Canadian face of the author of those words.