A Song for Nettie Johnson

by Gloria Sawai

  In thine arms I rest me, Foes who would molest me

  Cannot reach me here. Tho’ the earth be shak–ing,

  Ev–ry heart be quak–ing, Jesus calms my fear.

  Fires may flash and thunder crash,

  Yea, and sin and hell as–sail me,

  Jesus will not fai-ai-ail me.

  And here he was. Alpha and Omega. The Word. Sitting on my canvas chair, telling me the prairie’s nice. What could I say to that?

  “I like it too,” I said.

  Jesus was watching a magpie circling above the poplars just beyond the quarry. He seemed very nice actually, but he wasn’t like my father. My father was perfect, mind you, but you know about perfect people – busy, busy. He wasn’t as busy as Elsie though. Elsie was the busy one. You could never visit there without her having to do something else at the same time. Wash the leaves of her plants with milk or fold socks in the basement while you sat on a bench by the washing machine. I wouldn’t mind sitting on a bench in the basement if that was all she had, but her living room was full of big soft chairs that no one ever sat in. Now Jesus here didn’t seem to have any work to do at all.

  The wind had risen now. His robes puffed about his legs. His hair swirled around his face. The wind was coming stronger now out of the east. My kimono flapped about my ankles. I bent down to secure the bottom, pressing the moving cloth close against my legs. A Saskatchewan wind comes up in a hurry, let me tell you. Then it happened. A gust of wind hit me straight on, seeping into the folds of my kimono, reaching down into the bodice, billowing the cloth out, until above the sash, the robe was fully open. I knew without looking. The wind was suddenly blowing on my breasts. I felt it cool on both my breasts. Then as quickly as it came, it left, and we sat in the same small breeze as before.

  I looked at Jesus. He was looking at me, and at my breasts, looking right at them. Jesus was sitting there on the sundeck looking at my breasts.

  What should I do? Say excuse me and push them back into the kimono? Make a little joke of it? Look what the wind blew in? Or should I say nothing – just tuck them in as inconspicuously as possible? What do you say when a wind comes up and blows your kimono open and he sees your breasts?

  Now there are ways and there are ways of exposing your breasts. I know a few things. I read books. And I’ve learned a lot from my cousin Millie. Millie’s the black sheep in the family. She left the Academy without graduating and became an artist’s model in Winnipeg. And she’s told me a few things about bodily exposure. She says, for instance, that when an artist wants to draw his model he has her either nude and stretching and bending in various positions so he can draw her from different angles, or he drapes her with cloth, satin usually. He covers one section of the body with the material and leaves the rest exposed. But he does so in a graceful manner, draping the cloth over her stomach or ankle. (Never over the breasts.) So I realized that my appearance right then wasn’t actually pleasing, either aesthetically or erotically, from Millie’s point of view. My breasts were just sticking out from the top of my old kimono. And for some reason that I can’t explain, even to this day, I did nothing about it. I just sat there.

  Jesus must have recognized my confusion, because right then he said, quite sincerely I thought, “You have nice breasts.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked him if he’d like more wine.

  “Yes, I would,” he said, and I left to refill the glass. When I returned he was watching a magpie swishing about in the tall weeds by the quarry. I sat down and watched with him.

  Then I got a very, very peculiar sensation. I know it was just an illusion, but it was so strong it scared me. It’s hard to explain because nothing like it had ever happened to me before. The magpie began to float toward Jesus. I saw it fluttering toward him in the air as if some vacuum were sucking it in. When it reached him, it flapped about on his chest, which was bare now because the top of his robe had slipped down. It nibbled at his little brown nipples and squawked and disappeared. For all the world, it seemed to disappear right into his pores. Then the same thing happened with a rock. A rock floating up from the quarry and landing on the breast of Jesus, melting into his skin. It was very strange, let me tell you, Jesus and I sitting there together with that going on. It made me dizzy, so I closed my eyes.

  And I saw the women in a public bath in Tokyo. Black-haired women and children. Some were squatting by faucets that lined a wall. They were running hot water into their basins, washing themselves with white cloths, rubbing each other’s backs with the soapy washcloths, then emptying their basins and filling them again, pouring clean water over their bodies for the rinse. Water and suds swirled about on the tiled floor. Others were sitting in the hot pool on the far side, soaking themselves in the steamy water as they jabbered away to one another. Then I saw her. The woman without the breasts. She was squatting by a faucet near the door. The oldest woman I’ve ever seen. The thinnest woman I’ve ever witnessed. Skin and bones. Literally, just skin and bones. She bowed and smiled at everyone who entered. She had three teeth. When she hunched over her basin, I saw the little creases of skin where her breasts had been. When she stood up the wrinkles disappeared. In their place were two shallow caves. Even the nipples seemed to have disappeared into the small brown caves of her breasts.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Jesus. Fortunately, everything had stopped floating.

  “Have you ever been to Japan?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “A few times.”

  I paid no attention to his answer but went on telling him about Japan as if he’d never been there. I couldn’t seem to stop talking about that old woman and her breasts.

  “You should have seen her,” I said. “She wasn’t flat-chested like some women even here in Moose Jaw. It wasn’t like that at all. Her breasts weren’t just flat. They were caved in, as if the flesh had sunk right there. Have you ever seen breasts like that before?”

  Jesus’s eyes were getting darker. He seemed to have sunk farther down into his chair.

  “Japanese women have smaller breasts to begin with usually,” he said.

  But he’d misunderstood me. It wasn’t just her breasts that held me. It was her jaws, teeth, neck, ankles, heels. Not just her breasts. I said nothing for awhile. Jesus, too, was not talking.

  Finally I asked, “Well? What do you think of breasts like that?”

  I knew immediately that I’d asked the wrong question. If you want personal and specific answers, you ask personal and specific questions. It’s as simple as that. I should have asked him, for instance, what he thought of them from a sexual point of view. If he were a lover, let’s say, would he like to hold such breasts in his hands and play on them with his teeth and fingers? Would he now? The woman, brown and shiny, was bending over her basin. Tiny bubbles of soap dribbled from the creases of her chest down to her navel. Hold them. Ha.

  Or I could have asked for some kind of aesthetic opinion. If he were an artist, a sculptor let’s say, would he travel to Italy and spend weeks excavating the best marble from the hills near Florence, and then would he stay up all night and day in his studio, without eating or bathing, and with matted hair and glazed eyes, chisel out those little creases from his great stone slab?

  Or if he were a patron of the arts, would he attend the opening of this grand exhibition and stand in front of these white caves in his purple turtleneck, sipping champagne and nibbling on the little cracker with the shrimp in the middle, and would he turn to the one beside him, the one in the sleek black pants, and would he say to her, “Look, darling, did you see this marvellous piece? Do you see how the artist has captured the very essence of the female form?”

  These are some of the things I could have said if I’d had my wits about me. But my wits certainly left me that day. All I did say, and I didn’t mean to, it just came out, was, “It’s not nice and I don’t like it.”

  I lifted my face, threw my head back, and let the wind blow on my neck and breasts.
It was blowing harder again. I felt small grains of sand scrape against my skin.

  Jesus, lover of my soul,

  Let me to thy bosom fly.

  While the nearer waters roll,

  While the tempest still is nigh.

  When I looked at him again, his eyes were blacker still and his body had shrunk considerably. He looked almost like Jimmy that time in Prince Albert. Jimmy was a neighbour of ours from Regina. On his twenty-seventh birthday he joined a motorcycle gang, the Grim Reapers to be exact, and got into a lot of trouble. He ended up in maximum security in P.A. One summer on a camping trip up north, we went to see him, Fred and the kids and I. It wasn’t a good visit, however. If you’re going to visit inmates you should do it regularly. I realize this now. Anyway, that’s when his eyes looked black like that. But maybe he’d been smoking pot or something. It’s probably not the same thing. Jimmy LeBlanc. He never did think it was funny when I’d call him a Midnight Raider instead of a Grim Reaper. People are sensitive about their names.

  Then Jesus finally answered. Everything seemed to take him a long time, even answering simple questions.

  But I’m not sure what he said because something so strange happened that whatever he did say was swept away. Right then the wind blew against my face, pulling my hair back. My kimono swirled about every which way, and I was swinging my arms in the air, like swimming. And there right below my eyes was the roof of our house. I was looking down on the top of the roof. I saw the row of shingles ripped loose from the August hailstorm. And I remember thinking – Fred hasn’t fixed those shingles yet. I’ll have to remind him when he gets home from work. If it rains again the back bedroom will get soaked. Before I knew it I was circling over the sundeck, looking down on the top of Jesus’ head. Only I wasn’t. I was sitting in the canvas chair watching myself hover over his shoulders. Only it wasn’t me hovering. It was the old woman in Tokyo. I saw her grey hair twisting in the wind and her shiny little bum raised in the air, like a baby’s. Water was dripping from her chin and toes. And soap bubbles trailed from her elbows like tinsel. She was floating down toward his chest. Only it wasn’t her. It was me. I could taste bits of suds sticking to the corners of my mouth and feel the wind on my wet back and in the hollow caves of my breasts. I was smiling and bowing, and the wind was blowing in narrow wisps against my toothless gums. Then quickly, so quickly, like a flock of waxwings diving through snow into the branches of the poplar, I was splitting up into millions of pieces and sinking into the tiny, tiny holes in his chest. It was like the magpie and the rock, like I had come apart into atoms or molecules, or whatever we really are.

  After that I was dizzy, and I began to feel nauseated. Jesus looked sick too. Sad and sick and lonesome. Oh, Christ, I thought, why are we sitting here on such a fine day pouring our sorrows into each other?

  I had to get up and walk around. I’d go into the kitchen and make some tea.

  I put the kettle on to boil. What on earth had gotten into me? Why had I spent this perfectly good morning talking about breasts? My one chance in a lifetime and I’d let it slip through my fingers. Why didn’t I have better control? Why was I always letting things get out of hand? Breasts. And why was my name Gloria? Such a pious name for one who can’t think of anything else to talk about but breasts. Why wasn’t it Lucille? Or Millie? You could talk about breasts all day if your name was Millie. But Gloria. Gloria. Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ri-a in ex-cel-sis. I knew then why so many Glorias hang around bars, talking too loud, laughing shrilly at stupid jokes, making sure everyone hears them laugh at the dirty jokes. They’re just trying to live down their name, that’s all. I brought out the cups and poured the tea.

  Everything was back to normal when I returned except that Jesus still looked desolate sitting in my canvas chair. I handed him the tea and sat down beside him.

  Oh, Daddy. And Philipp Nicolai. Oh, Bernard of Clairvaux. Oh, Sacred Head Now Wounded. Go away for a little while and let us sit together quietly, here in this small space under the sun.

  I sipped the tea and watched his face. He looked so sorrowful I reached out my hand and put it on his wrist. I sat there a long time rubbing the little hairs on his wrist with my fingers; I couldn’t help it. After that he put his arm on my shoulder and his hand on the back of my neck, stroking the muscles there. It felt good. Whenever anything exciting or unusual happens to me my neck is the first to feel it. It gets stiff and knotted up. Then I usually get a headache, and frequently I become nauseated. So it felt very good having my neck rubbed.

  I’ve never been able to handle sensation very well. I remember when I was in grade three and my folks took us to the Saskatoon Exhibition. We went to see the grandstand show – the battle of Wolfe and Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. The stage was filled with Indians and pioneers and ladies in red, white, and blue dresses singing “In Days of Yore From Britain’s Shore.” It was very spectacular but too much for me. My stomach was upset and my neck ached. I had to keep my head on my mother’s lap the whole time, just opening my eyes once in a while so I wouldn’t miss everything.

  So it really felt good having my neck stroked like that. I could almost feel the knots untying and my body warmer and more restful. Jesus too seemed to be feeling better. His body was back to normal. His eyes looked natural again.

  Then, all of a sudden, he started to laugh. He held his hand on my neck and laughed out loud. I don’t know to this day what he was laughing about. There was nothing funny there at all. But hearing him made me laugh too. He was laughing so hard he spilled tea on his purple stole. When I saw that, I laughed even more. I’d never thought of Jesus spilling his tea before. And when Jesus saw me laughing like that and when he looked at my breasts shaking, he laughed harder still, till he wiped tears from his eyes.

  After that we just sat there. I don’t know how long. I know we watched the magpie carve black waves in the air above the rocks. And the rocks stiff and lovely among the swaying weeds. We watched the poplars twist and bend and rise again beyond the quarry. And then he had to leave.

  “Goodbye, Gloria Johnson,” he said, rising from his chair. “Thanks for the hospitality.”

  He leaned over and kissed me on my mouth. Then he flicked my nipple with his finger, and off he went. Down the hill, through the quarry, and into the prairie. I stood on the sundeck and watched. I watched until I could see him no longer. Until he was only some dim and ancient star on the far horizon.

  I went inside the house. Well, now, wasn’t that a nice visit. Wasn’t that something. I examined the clothes, dry and sour in the living room. I’d have to put them back in the wash, that’s all. I couldn’t stand the smell. I tucked my breasts back into my kimono and lugged the basket downstairs.

  That’s what happened to me in Moose Jaw in 1972. It was the main thing that happened to me that year.

  Acknowledgements

  Some of these stories have appeared previously: “The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts” in Cutbank (Montana); Grain (Saskatchewan); Best Canadian Stories, Oberon, John Metcalf and Leon Rooke, eds.; 3x5, NeWest Press, Douglas Barbour, ed.; Canadian Short Fiction, Oxford University Press, Margaret Atwood, ed.; The Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian Women in English, Rosemary Sullivan, ed.; From Timberline to Tidepool, Owl Creek Press, Seattle, Washington, Rich Ives, ed.; The Gates of Paradise, Macfarlane Walter and Ross, Alberto Manguel, ed.; Myths and Voices, White Pine Press, New York, David Lampe, ed.; as well as publications by European Education Publishers Group, Arhus, Denmark, Tina Bundgaard and Johannes Andersen, eds.; Iwanaami Shoten Publishers, Tokyo, Japan; and Alianza Editorial, Madrid, Spain.

  “Mother’s Day” appeared in New Canadian Writers, Doubleday, and in 3x5; “The Ground You Stand On” in NeWest Review (Saskatchewan), and as “Hang Out Your Washing on the Seigfried Line” in 3x5, and Alberta Bound, NeWest Press, Fred Stenson, ed.; “Haircut” and an excerpt from “A Song for Nettie Johnson” in Other Voices, Edmonton; “The Dolphins” in T
he Road Home, Reidmore Books, Fred Stenson, ed.; “Hosea’s Children” in Intersections, The Banff Centre Press, Edna Alford, ed.

  I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council, and Noboru Sawai, during the writing of these stories.

  Thank you to my intricately precise and ever encouraging editor, Edna Alford. And to friends who have read these stories and who, by their thoughtful criticism, have also helped to make them better: Ruth Krahn, Theresa Shea, and Merna Summers.

  Several of the songs that appear in this collection deserve particular acknowledgement: “Mid Pleasures and Palaces,” by John Howard Payne (1792-1852); “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth,” by Paul Gerhardt (1607 - 1679); “The Morning Star” by Philipp Nicolai (1566 - 1608); and “The Holy City,” by E. Weatherly (1848 - 1929); and “Jesus, Priceless Treasure,” by Johann Franck (1618 - 1677).

  ~

  Photo: Marilyn Tungland

  About the Author

  Gloria Ostrem Sawai was a fiction writer, teacher, playwright, and one time actor and theatre director. Her short fiction has been published in anthologies in Canada, the United States, England, Spain, Denmark and Japan; and her plays have had professional productions. This is her first book-length collection of short stories.

  Born in Minneapolis, she spent her childhood in Saskatchewan. As an adult, she lived in Japan, the US and Canada. She attended high school at Camrose Lutheran College in Camrose, Alberta, received a BA degree from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, and an MFA from the University of Montana. She taught creative writing at the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Saskatchewan School of the Arts, and at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton. Gloria Sawai passed away in Edmonton in 2011.