The Translation of Love

by Lynne Kutsukake

  Her father had accompanied her to school that morning as if she were starting kindergarten. The school had a long name—Minami Nishiki Elementary and Middle School—so she had expected a much grander structure than the run-down building that stood in the middle of a dirt yard. The roof looked like it was sagging at one end and many of the windows were broken. The concrete walls were full of cracks. Aya’s father bowed several times to the principal before producing an envelope from inside his jacket, which he offered with yet another deep bow. Then he told her to remember her manners and left.

  Aya was given slippers that were torn at the toe and much too wide, forcing her to half shuffle, half slide in order to keep up with the principal as he led her from the main entrance and down the long corridor. She kept her head low and concentrated on the slap-flap slap-flap of his slippers. His feet hung over the backs, revealing a ragged hole in the heel of his left sock that seemed to get bigger with each step he took. Even though the wooden floors were not very clean, it seemed that no one was allowed to wear shoes inside. Later she would notice that none of the other students wore slippers. They were all barefoot.

  The principal stopped at the last classroom.

  “Class, rise!”

  Aya heard the teacher announce her name and say she was joining the class. He said she was from America. America, America, he kept repeating, and she didn’t know how to correct him. Not America—Canada. She hung her head even lower until her chin touched her collarbone. Her name was repeated over and over. If she weren’t feeling so nervous, she could have understood more of what he was saying, but as it was, the only thing she caught for sure was her own name and “America” and the word “English.” Ingurishu was what it sounded like.

  “You must bow properly. Zettai wasureruna! Don’t forget!” She recalled her father’s instructions delivered in his gruff Japanese. Keep your arms pressed tightly against your sides and bend your upper body at a ninety-degree angle. Hold for as long as you can. It was important to know how to bow, how to behave. Every phrase had a correct counter-phrase, every gesture a precise and appropriate response.

  “You have to learn how to behave like a real Japanese or you’ll never survive,” he’d said. “We’re here now. We’re here forever.”

  She realized with horror that she had missed her chance to bow earlier when she was standing in front of the class. Now the opportunity was gone and she was being urged to hurry and sit down. The narrow bench wobbled when she slid onto it. Aya shot a sidelong glance at the girl beside her, who had quickly turned her head away and moved to the far side of the bench. All Aya could see of her was her thick black hair cut straight across just below her chin. The surface of the desk felt rough, the wood unfinished. Aya put her hands in her lap, reluctant to take up any space on top of the shared desk, and squeezed her fists tighter and tighter until the knuckles turned white and shiny. Then, with her head bent low, she stared at the two fists in her lap. They didn’t look like her own hands.

  Nothing was recognizable anymore, not even her hands.

  Aya was in Japan because her father had signed the papers to repatriate. Go east of the Rockies and disperse, or go to Japan—that was the choice Canada had given them. No Japanese Canadians would ever be allowed to return to the west coast. In the spring of 1945, even before the war was over, officials arrived in the internment camps with forms to sign and gave everyone three weeks to choose between going “back” to Japan or scattering to unknown parts across Canada.

  Aya heard the panicked discussions among her father and other adults. Strange terms like “deportation” and “forced exile” confused her, but other things they said were perfectly clear: “Everything we have is gone,” “They want to get rid of us,” “How can I start over again at my age?” Clearest of all, though, was this: “They hate us. No matter where we go in this country, they will always hate us.” It was her father’s voice.

  He signed, and with his signature gave the government what it wanted—the ability to deport him. Once the war ended, he was not allowed to revoke what had been done. Aya knew she would have to go with her father. It was just the two of them now that her mother was dead.

  They did not leave until the fall of 1946, boarding their train in Slocan City to make the same journey in reverse as when they had been interned. From the interior of British Columbia, they traveled over jagged mountain passes, across endless tracts of forest, along the length of the mighty Fraser River with its thunderous roar pounding in their ears. At the port in Vancouver they waited under guard in the immigration shed for the American military transport ship that would take them to Occupied Japan.

  They were told they could take as much luggage as they liked, but they had next to nothing. Aya’s mother’s ashes were in her father’s suitcase, inside a small square box that had been sealed tight and wrapped in a white cloth. Sometimes she wanted to make sure her mother was still there, but she didn’t dare open his suitcase to look. Inside her own suitcase she had all her clothes, including the winter coat that had once been too big but that now barely fit her. And in a corner of the suitcase she’d also tucked the handkerchief in which she’d wrapped six little stones from Slocan Lake. They were ugly and gray, not like the sparkly stones she and her friend Midori had collected when they were pretending to be prospectors searching for precious gems. The stones weren’t heavy at all. For Aya, they could never be heavy enough.

  As soon as their ship came within sight of Japan, a cry had gone out that spread from family to family. “We’re approaching the coast. We should be able to see Nippon any minute now!”

  It was drizzling, but everyone, including Aya and her father, climbed up to the deck and crowded around the railing. They peered into the thick mist. No land was visible yet, although they could see a few small fishing boats close by dipping in and out of the ocean waves.

  “Mieru? Can you see?” Her father pointed into the murky distance.

  She couldn’t see anything, not even the horizon. The sea, the sky, and the rain were all of a piece, a flat wash of gray.

  “We’re here at last. Our journey is over. Our long, hard journey.” His voice cracked with emotion. She sensed that he meant something more than their two-week sea voyage.

  “If it weren’t for this damn rain, we could see Mount Fuji. That’s a beautiful sight, Mount Fuji is. There are lots of beautiful sights in Japan, Aya. You’ll see them soon enough. You’ll be glad I brought you here.”

  She looked at his profile. The stubble of his beard was flecked with more gray than ever before, making the shadow of his sunken cheek more pronounced. His jawbone moved just below his ear, in the spot where he was continually grinding his teeth. All the tension and resentment always found its way to that spot.

  “If only your…” He was staring out at the sea. Rain glistened on his hair and forehead.

  Aya knew better than to respond. It had become taboo to talk about her mother, for it made them both too uncomfortable. Her death had pushed Aya and her father farther apart, not closer, as if her mother’s absence was a solid mass that sat between them. Absence was not emptiness or nothingness, she had discovered. It was the opposite. Insistent and ever present.

  When the rain stopped and the mist thinned, the shoreline came into sight and they could see the sunburned faces of fishermen on boats that bobbed in the harbor. Soon they could even make out tiny figures on land. They were slightly southwest of Tokyo, bound for disembarkation at Uraga.

  “Look!” Her father suddenly cupped his hand against the back of her head as if he needed to make sure she was facing the right direction. She could feel his rough calluses. “This is Japan. These are Nihonjin! Japanese people. Everyone looks like us. We’re home.”

  They were close to landing. Aya stared at the group of unkempt men in ragged clothing who were running barefoot along the dock where their ship was coming in. These were the Nihonjin who had come to greet them. They were shouting something in Japanese.

  What are they say
ing, she was about to ask when she made out the words on her own. Not hello or welcome back, but “Amerikajin! Cigaretto!”

  Initially they moved in with her father’s relatives, an older couple who lived on the outskirts of Tokyo. But it soon became clear that the house was too small, resources too limited, the circumstances too strained. “There’s nothing here,” the husband said repeatedly, in a weary monotone. “This is what happens when you lose.” He was a remote man but not unkind. His wife, whom Aya was told to address as Aunt Ritsuko, terrified her.

  “Why didn’t you teach her to speak Japanese better? She’s thirteen, but she sounds like a six-year-old!”

  Aunt Ritsuko’s shrill voice echoed throughout the tiny wooden house, and Aya feared her sharp staccato words as if they were capable of drawing real blood. She quickly learned it was better to be quiet, to listen but not speak, and this habit became her way of coping. If she spoke at all, she whispered, and gradually she felt her throat drying up, her voice pulled thinner and thinner like a strand of toffee. She would have liked to stop talking entirely, but it was still necessary to reply if someone spoke to her. Neighbors and shopkeepers peppered her with questions: “Where are you from?” “How long are you staying?” “Where’s your mother?”

  “Don’t tell anyone anything,” her father had said right after they arrived. “People here are nosy. This is a country of busybodies.” Inside the house, he and Aunt Ritsuko clashed constantly. Whenever he complained about how bad things were in Japan, she would snap, “Well, what did you expect? Why did you come back?” Outside the house, Aya’s father had many different voices, depending on whom he was talking to, sometimes formal, sometimes obsequious, sometimes carrying on about topics he knew nothing about. But Aya noticed that the times when he was the most polite to a person to their face was usually when he would turn around and curse them behind their back.

  “Not good enough, never good enough,” he muttered under his breath whenever yet another odd job abruptly ended.

  Everyone here was busy, always rushing. Aunt Ritsuko did everything fast. Despite the way her feet turned inward, pigeon-like, so it looked as if she might bump into herself with every step, she could actually walk faster than anyone Aya had ever known. Dawdlers, it seemed, were viewed with suspicion. Outsiders even more so.

  “Don’t expect me to translate for you,” Aunt Ritsuko said, pushing the loose strands of her wiry gray hair back into her tight bun. “I don’t have time. Don’t expect me to guess what’s on your mind, either.”

  Sometimes Aya understood, often she didn’t. It seemed to depend less on what people said than on how. If they spoke to her slowly and gently, the way her mother always had, then the words were like drops of warm rain that dissolved magically into her brain, and she understood every single word. Aya’s mother had come to Canada as a young picture bride to marry Aya’s father. She had never learned much English and spoke to Aya only in Japanese. Aya could still hear her mother’s soft cadence. “Aya-chan, ii ko desu, ne. Aya-chan, you’re a good child. You help me with everything. Aya-chan, what would I do without you.”

  But none of that mattered now. Hardly anyone here spoke like her mother. Everyone was in too much of a hurry. Even after she and her father moved to their own place, Aya found that most people she met sounded just like her aunt, so cross and impatient that it was impossible to understand them. Their words swirled around and around, circling her head like angry black crows.

  After the incident with Fumi, Aya was afraid to return to school, but she was more afraid of not going. The other option—explaining to her father what had happened and exposing her shame—struck her as much worse. Her shame would become his shame. She decided she had no choice. She would go back to school, hang her head, and pray. Pray that Fumi would ignore her, pray that the teacher would disregard her, pray that no one would ask her anything, pray that the time would pass and that each day would eventually come to a close. Anything could be endured, she had discovered, if she could only package the time into discrete little packets. She imagined taking the minutes, each one like a pellet, and wrapping them up—one minute, five minutes, fifteen, thirty. Once she had managed to survive a full hour, she could put the packets of time into a box, tie it with string, and push it down a conveyer belt. Just one more minute, one more hour, one more day.

  Fumi ignored her. Although this was exactly what she wanted, Aya found herself so confused by the activities at school, she became desperate for someone to ask. Except for the bell and the loud yelling that announced lunch or the end of the school day, she didn’t know how to anticipate what was going to happen next. The rhythm of the classroom was erratic. One minute the students were called to the blackboard to write complicated kanji in large exaggerated strokes, the next minute everyone was doing calisthenics in the aisles beside their desks, stretching their arms wildly or jumping up and down. Sometimes they recited aloud. Sometimes they sat in silence reading quietly to themselves. The textbooks were old and the pages inside were covered with thick bars of black ink, long passages the students had been ordered to censor themselves.

  By the end of the first week, word had gotten out about Aya, the repat girl, and after class the boys in the lower grades followed her. They called her names and threw handfuls of sand. She was always relieved to reach home until she looked around at her surroundings. The tatami mats were so old and moldy they sank with each step she took, and the wooden walls so full of holes, the dust blew right in. To cook they had to use the charcoal shichirin in the outdoor hallway. The communal sink was downstairs; the shared toilet was a hole over which she had to squat, holding her nose and hoping she wouldn’t fall in. The other residents of the nagaya—tenement house, she learned it meant—were strangers. Through the walls Aya could hear an old lady cackling loudly to herself. A middle-aged man who sat at home all day kept telling her father he should put Aya to work. “Why bother sending her to school? That’s a waste of time.” Aunt Ritsuko had said more or less the same thing. It was yet another reason why Aya and her father had moved out and found the place where they now lived in the center of Tokyo.

  Three weeks passed, then four. Kondo Sensei announced one morning that they would have a short test. Aya sat with her hands in her lap, aware that she had forgotten to bring anything to write with. It didn’t really matter, as she would never be able to understand the test. Beside her she saw Fumi reach for her threadbare cloth pencil case and take out a short pencil stub. Then she watched as Fumi pulled out a second stub, just as short as the first, and without turning her head, slid it over to Aya’s side of the desk. The stub was less than two inches long, but the tip had been whittled carefully with a knife into a clean sharp point.

  Aya didn’t know if this was meant to be an apology, but it didn’t matter. She took the pencil. She would take anything.

  3

  Saturday classes were half days, and Kondo usually liked to conduct review lessons to wind up the week. But today the girls seemed more tired than usual. He’d given them an arithmetic test two days ago, and they’d all done poorly. He wondered if it was as demoralizing to them as it was to him. This was his first year at Minami Nishiki, and sometimes he felt as if he were starting all over again as a freshman instructor instead of the experienced teacher that he was. Few of the girls looked up; most kept their heads down, staring either at their fingers or at some blank spot on the top of their desks. The new girl, Aya, was the worst. She never raised her head in class, and so far she hadn’t spoken a word.

  The school had recently received a donation of maps for the new geography program, and he decided this was a good time to open the kit he had been given.

  “I have a surprise for all of you.” He could tell by the way they shifted their weight that he had caught their attention. “It’s for your social studies lesson. Would you like to see it?”

  “Yes, Sensei!”

  It was hard to tell if they were genuinely interested or simply humoring him.

  “In t
he past when we studied history and geography, we mistakenly studied bad history and bad geography. We don’t want to study bad things anymore, so that’s why we have a new program called social studies. As we know, American children are more democratic because they are taught social studies.” He cast his eyes around the room. Most of the students were looking down at their desks again. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Sensei!”

  “Very well. This will only take me a moment.” He went to the cupboard in the corner of the classroom, pulled out a long thin box, and carried it back to his desk. From the box he took out several long metal tubes. After a few minutes of fiddling, he managed to snap them together into the shape of a stand. He reached into the box again and pulled out a large roll of canvas that he attached to a hook at the top of the stand. Carefully he unfurled the map.

  Kondo took a step back and examined his handiwork. The metal roller running across the top was bent so the map hung slightly lower on one side, and the edges of the map were frayed. In the bottom left corner, he could make out “Property of Iowa District School Board” stamped in light blue letters. Everything was in English, but the girls couldn’t read English yet except for a few rudimentary words and phrases. Of course the map also looked different in more significant ways. Japan was no longer in the center and the vast stretch of red that had once represented the empire across Asia was entirely gone.

  “Class, this is a map of the world,” he said.

  There was a long silence until a small voice at the back of the room asked, “Sensei, where is Japan?”