by Joy Kogawa
Aunt Emily takes some Kleenex from her purse and holds it over her nose.
"That reminds me," Uncle chuckles, "chisai toki—when Stephen was small his favorite food was Ex-Lax." ("Exu raxu”, Uncle says.)
Aunt Emily snuffles through the Kleenex and her eyes swim beneath the crinkles again as she laughs. "The time Stephen found the Ex-Lax in my purse." She pats Stephen on the back. "And my poor sweater."
"Not so bad smell as this," Uncle says, rolling the window back down again.
"Some not so good old days," Stephen grunts. He's heard this before.
"We had some good times," Aunt Emily says. "Do you remember at all, Nomi? You were so little."
"Fubuki hodo, chika yori soe ba, atataka shi," Uncle responds in mock formality.
"Whazzat?" Stephen asks.
It's a haiku, a seventeen-syllable word picture.
Stephen rubs the sticky sugar of the doughnut off his stubbly chin and keeps rubbing in his nervous way. He is always uncomfortable when anything is "too Japanese”.
Aunt Emily works the translation, her voice rising above the rattle of the truck as we hit the gravel of road construction and a detour on Highway 3. "As the storm rages…our drawing closer…keeps us warm."
The dust plumes about us in a brown cloud. After a few yards we come to fresh tar, which splats against the side of the truck, then a stretch of gravel and washboard, our bones turning to jelly as we shake and clank along.
The traffic on the road is, in general, slow, but one empty truck passes us and lobs a rock against the windshield.
"Sakana fish," Stephen mutters as he steps on the brakes.
Aunt Emily looks startled. "What did you say?"
Some of the ripe pidgin English phrases we pick up are three-part inventions—part English, part Japanese, part Sasquatch. "Sonuva bitch" becomes ''sakana fish”, "sakana" meaning "fish" in Japanese. On occasion the phrase is "golden sakana fish”.
"Is that how you talk out here?" Aunt Emily laughs. "What a place." She shakes her head as she stares out at the flat land.
"Toronto too far, Emi-san," Uncle says.
"Too far," Aunt Emily agrees.
The truck hiccups along over the potholes until the clank of the jack in the back marks our leap over the irrigation ditch bridge.
Obasan is standing in the doorway wiping her hands in her apron as we pull up. She is wearing her white-and-blue silk dress with a little fringe at the waist. I've never seen her wear it in all the time we've lived in Granton.
"Maa, Emiri-san, you have come well," she says as we climb down from the truck. "A long time. From so far."
Aunt Emily stands silent and unsmiling in front of her. She nods her head slowly as she looks at Obasan, then looks away.
"And Father's health," Obasan asks, "Is he well?"
Stephen and I disappear into the house with Aunt Emily's suitcase.
For the week that she stays with us, I am so absorbed in studies that I hardly speak to her. The senior matriculation exams obliterate everything. Even, it seems to me, if a war were on in Canada, I'd be found studying like deaf Beethoven playing his piano while Vienna burned.
Aunt Emily approves. "Don't let anything distract you," she says.
On the last night of Aunt Emily's stay, there is a barely audible whispering that keeps me awake wondering late into the night.
I’ve gone to sleep at ten-thirty with an unresolved algebra equation and about two a.m. I’m awakened by a light in the kitchen. Uncle's voice is a low murmur. After a pause, he clears his throat.
"Kodomo no tame."
That phrase again. "For the sake of the children." Which children? Stephen and me? Stephen in particular, home for the summer after his time in Toronto, can hardly be called a child.
I strain to overhear what is being said. Did Aunt Emily whisper "Nesan" and "Japan"? Through the crack in the doorway, I can see Uncle folding a piece of blue paper and handing it to Aunt Emily. He takes his glasses off as he shakes his head once and speaks in a low voice.
"But they are not children. They should be told," Aunt Emily whispers.
Obasan is sitting on a stool and shelling beans. She neither looks up nor seems to be listening, but her lips are pursed in concentration as her fingertips unbead the black bean necklets from their crackling pods.
Aunt Emily leans towards Uncle and her head nods insistently as she whispers to him. She is patting some papers on the table as she speaks.
When Aunt Emily finishes speaking, Obasan stops shelling and leans forward, her hands flat on the table and her eyes closed. Her lips are moving slowly, deliberately. The expression on her face is as soft as a child's.
Aunt Emily leans back in her chair and breathes deeply. She covers her face with both hands and drops her head forward. Uncle, his hands clasped between his knees, nods his head rhythmically.
I know Obasan is praying. I've seen her before—the time Stephen leapt out of bed in the middle of the night yelling, "I've got to get out of here," and ran down the road away from the farm in the dark. Obasan sat at the table and prayed till he returned. He said when he came back he'd had a nightmare. Something about a metallic insect the size of a tractor, webbing a grid of iron bars over him. (Later, he told me he had the same nightmare again, but escaped the web by turning the bars into a xylophone.)
What is Obasan praying about this time?
Aunt Emily wipes her closed eyes with the back of her hand. She is crying. What can it be? When Obasan finishes, there is a long silence. The three sit without moving,
"Amen," Uncle says at last.
My bed squeaks as I strain closer to the crack. All three glance in the direction of the door,
The new stillness in the house is unrelieved by the sound of Uncle's chair scraping the floor.
"Well," he says in an audible voice. "What will be will be."
I can see Aunt Emily putting the papers into a gray card-board folder. She twirls a red string around a red circle tab deftly three times, then places the folder in her briefcase.
thirty-four
The gray cardboard folder. It's here in Aunt Emily's package. Early this afternoon Obasan opened the cheque-sized rice-paper envelopes that were inside it. I watched her smooth and read the slippery blue-lined papers, with the magnifying glass held over the pages. She followed each line down, then, lifting her head, she would start again at the top of the next row, as slow as a beet worker hoeing around each plant in a beet field. Occasionally her mouth formed the words.
"What is it you are reading?" I asked, but she did not hear me.
It's ten after four now and she has been asleep for about half an hour with the magnifying glass in her hand. I am yawning and thinking of having a short nap too when the grating buzz of the front doorbell sounds. It's loud as a fire alarm. Uncle rigged it up in the kitchen, where Obasan is most of the time.
I peer through the living-room windows but I can't see who it is. The doorbell goes again and it's Mr. Barker at the door. I've rarely seen him since we left the farm. In the last several years I've not been home enough to see anyone except Uncle and Obasan and the people who might happen to be in the grocery store. Behind him, sitting in the car, is his new wife, whom I've met only once. The first Mrs. Barker died five years ago of cancer. Mr. Barker's second wife is much younger than he is.
"Hello, Naomi—Mrs. Nah Canny," he says, peering in through the doorway. He must be dropping by to extend his sympathy. In a place as small as Granton, news spreads fast.
Mr. Barker hasn't aged since the last time I saw him three or four years ago. He has so many wrinkles his face is like an accordion.
I'm reluctant about asking him to come in, but he steps in unbidden, calling to his wife. She seems uncertain. "Come in, Vivian," he urges her.
She smiles a brief tight smile as she comes to the door. She is wearing a wine-coloured pantsuit and when she greets me the small ruler of her mouth dips again into a rapid "V”. Her light green-brown eyes remain unchanged, the p
upils so tiny they seem like pencil dots. She is remarkably like the other Mrs. Barker, whom I was never able to approach. Once, when Penny brought me to their door, her mother said through her small precise mouth, "Penny, I told you. I told you," and closed the door, leaving me alone outside. Once, at night, I heard her singing the first few bars of "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" in a high tiny voice that seemed to come out of the tip of her tongue.
Obasan gets up off the couch and shuffles towards me, looking to me for guidance. "O," she says in her startled way.
Mr. Barker is so tall and the ceiling so low, his head almost touches it.
"Just dropped by, Mrs. Nah Canny," Mr. Barker shouts. "Very sorry today." His booming voice is not unkindly and he puts his thick hands over hers. Mrs. Barker stands beside him nodding, her hands cupped in front of her, whether to give or to receive I cannot tell.
"Thank you," Obasan says, and shuffles past into the kitchen.
We stand awkwardly in the living room, Mrs. Barker glancing around. Her eyes dart back and forth. I find myself donning her restless eyes like a pair of trick glasses. She must think the house is an obstacle course. There is barely room to stand. Cloth on cloth on cloth covers the chesterfield and armchair and footstool and shelves. Everything is protected. The patterns and colours all clash. A bright purple maple-leaf-fringed cushion rests on a green-and-gold throw. The footstool is covered with a blue wool crochet. The two window ledges are covered in plants, several of which rise to the low ceiling. Boxes of Japanese-language newspapers are tucked under TV trays and in corners. She must be wondering how any mind can rest in such surroundings.
"Please sit down." I pick up Aunt Emily's papers that are strewn on the chesterfield and make room for Mrs. Barker. Her thin eyebrows lift and fall like windshield wipers and she sits unsteadily, her pantsuit lifting and showing the tops of her nylon socks. She sits like a bird poised for flight.
"And what do you hear from Stephen?" Mr. Barker asks as he settles onto the sofa.
"Oh, well, he's ... he's fine," I reply, trying to think of what else to say.
"He'll be coming to the funeral?" Mr. Barker says.
I nod.
"He's in Montreal these days? No more European tours?"
People in Granton are always asking about Stephen's musical career. But with the amount of correspondence we get from him, they know as much as we do.
The last time I saw Stephen was eight years ago when he came to Granton for a short afternoon visit with Claudine, a divorcee he'd met in Paris. She was trim and slight with deep shadows under her large brown eyes. She kept exclaiming in her mixture of French and English with her hands fluttering. "It is—how do you say? —like the Western movies?"
Stephen was obviously nervous having her in Granton. They were in the house less than five minutes. The rest of the time the three of us drove around the countryside. Obasan remained in the kitchen the entire afternoon preparing a meal that was as non-Japanese as she could manage but they left without eating. They have not been back since.
Last Christmas, according to Aunt Emily, the two of them were off on a cruise in the Mediterranean.
Obasan made some kakimochi—deep-fried and baked crackers coated with sugar and soy sauce—and packed them in an old Graham Wafers box. I mailed the parcel to Montreal but we never heard whether they received them.
Obasan shuffles back into the room, bringing a bowl of kakimochi and tea-stained cups on a chipped lacquer tray. The crevices of one of the fluted cups contains dark grease lines.
Mrs. Barker shifts uncomfortably. She puts her fists on her knees and her eyes dart from the cup to Mr. Barker sitting beside her. She is breathing unevenly.
What is it she smells? What foreign odor sends its message down into her body, alerting her limbs? If only I could banish all that offends her delicate sensibilities. Especially the strong smell of miso and daikon and shoyu. Especially all the dust that Obasan and I are too short to see. Mrs. Barker's glance at Obasan is one of condescension. Or is it solicitude? We are dogs, she and I, sniffing for clues, our throats quivering with subliminal growls.
"Will Mrs. Nah Canny be all right here on her own?" Mrs. Barker asks me as Obasan pours the tea. She is staring at the cups.
I clear my throat and stammer. I lack communication skills.
Obasan hands me the bowl of kakimochi and I hold them out. Mrs. Barker is uncomfortable that I do not speak. She raises her hand to her chest and ignores the crackers, saying to Mr. Barker, "Sunnydale is a wonderful place, isn't it, Jack?"
The new Mrs. Barker is new indeed if she is suggesting that Obasan could go to the Sunnydale Lodge. Obasan would be as welcome there as a Zulu warrior. It's a white-walled, whitewashed, and totally white old folks' home.
Mr. Barker leans his head to the side in a non-committal shrug as Mrs. Barker turns to face him. She sits straight as a flagpole. Her flag represents the Barker kingdom, a tiny but confident country. But momentarily she is planted here on this soil beside Obasan's own dark flag. It's not what she is saying. It's the way she sits here, her fists held tight, as if desperate to stop something from gushing out.
Obasan is moving about deaf and impassive, unavailable for questioning or their ministrations. Her land is impenetrable, so thick that even the sound of mourning is swallowed up. In her steadfast silence, she remains inviolate.
"Can she manage?" Mrs. Barker is asking me again.
Mr. Barker turns to Obasan. "You manage?" he shouts to her.
Obasan is startled by this outburst.
"Manage all right?" he says again.
Obasan nods politely and goes to the kitchen.
"She has what she needs," I say.
"You people very clever," he shouts after her.
He leans forward on the chesterfield and addresses me.
"Sam, he was a clever man. Never once said a bitter word. Told me he used to be a fisherman. Lots of your people buried here in the prairies. Takashima, he was a fisherman."
Mr. Takashima, Mr. Yoshida. They certainly are disappearing. Uncle will be in good company.
The part of the cemetery that holds their bones is off by itself in the northwest corner of Forest Lawn. Perhaps some genealogist of the future will come across this patch of bones and wonder why so many fishermen died on the prairies.
I remember one time we drove up the mountainside near Sheep Creek and came across shellfish fossils. "Ha," Uncle said in awe, expelling his breath slowly, "the sea was here."
Mrs. Barker faces me with her whole body as if there are no independent joints. "A fisherman?" she asks.
"It was a terrible business what we did to our Japanese," Mr. Barker says.
Ah, here we go again. "Our Indians”. "Our Japanese”. "A terrible business”. It's like being offered a pair of crutches while I'm striding down the street. The comments are so incessant and always so well-intentioned. "How long have you been in this country? Do you like our country? You speak such good English. Do you run a cafe? My daughter has a darling Japanese friend. Have you ever been back to Japan?"
Back?
Does it so much matter that these questions are always asked? Particularly by strangers? These are icebreaker questions that create an awareness of ice.
Where do any of us come from in this cold country? Oh, Canada, whether it is admitted or not, we come from you we come from you. From the same soil, the slugs and slime and bogs and twigs and roots. We come from the country that plucks its people out like weeds and flings them into the roadside. We grow in ditches and sloughs, untended and spindly. We erupt in the valleys and mountainsides, in small towns and back alleys, sprouting upside down on the prairies, our hair wild as spiders' legs, our feet rooted nowhere. We grow where we are not seen, we flourish where we are not heard, the thick undergrowth of an unlikely planting. Where do we come from, Obasan? We come from cemeteries full of skeletons with wild roses in their grinning teeth. We come from our untold tales that wait for their telling. We come from Canada, this land that
is like every land, filled with the wise, the fearful, the compassionate, the corrupt.
Obasan, however, does not come from this clamorous climate. She does not dance to the multicultural piper's tune or respond to the racist's slur. She remains in a silent territory, defined by her serving hands. She serves us now, pouring tea into Mr. Barker's cup. She is unable to see and stops halfway before the cup is full.
thirty-five
Exhaustion. Since the Barkers' departure, both Obasan and I have been dozing in the living-room. It's almost seven. Aunt Emily and Stephen should be here by now. I hope they've eaten. I haven't thought about supper. There's Uncle's last loaf of everlasting stone bread, but neither of us is hungry.
I was having a nightmare just now. Something about stairs. Ah yes, and a courtyard. That's it. Stairs leading into a courtyard and the place of the dead. It wasn't at all a "fine and private place”, that home beyond the grave. They were all there—my parents, the grandparents, and Obasan as well, small as a child. She was intent on being near me at the top of the stairs. And of course, there were soldiers. Always, I dream of soldiers eager for murder, their weapons ready. We die again and again. In my dreams, we are never safe enough.
In the courtyard, a flower ceremony was underway, like the one in my dream yesterday morning. Mother stood in the center. In her mouth she held a knotted string stem, like the twine and string of Obasan's ball which she keeps in the pantry. From the stem hung a rose, red as a heart. I moved toward her from the top of the stairs, a cloud falling to earth, heavy and full of rain.
Was it then that the nightmare began? The skin of the air became close and dense, a formless hair vest. Up from a valley there rose a dark cloud—a great cape. It was the Grand Inquisitor descending over us, the top of his head a shiny skin cap. With his large hands he was prying open my mother's lips, prying open my eyes.