Keiko’s words snapped Michiko back to the Arsenal’s cafeteria, to the chipped gray paint of the walls, the worn wooden tables, the smell of steamed barley and cheap miso, and the clattering noises from the kitchen. She blinked, cleared her eyes, and focused on the dust motes drifting in one of the streams of light from the high windows. “All right,” she said. “Shall we go tomorrow morning?”
They left before dawn. Kure station was empty and looked abandoned in the gray beginning of the winter day. “It’ll take all day if we have to walk all the way,” said Keiko.
“But there’s nothing else to do,” said Michiko, and they set off for Hiroshima, staying parallel to the train line.
As it grew lighter, they realized that they were walking through fields of rubble and past skeletons of vast factories. When it was light enough to see well, they stopped for breakfast, eating part of what they had taken from the pantry.
When she finished eating Keiko stood, squared her shoulders, held her hand out for her friend, and said, “All those air raid drills, all those trips to the shelters. I guess we were lucky that they didn’t let us off the Arsenal’s grounds. We were living in happy ignorance, weren’t we?” Waving her hand at the desolate landscape all around them, she said, “Now we can see how lucky we are to be alive at all. How many people were lost here? How many more before it’s over? It really is time to get away from the coast, out of the city. We’ll be safe in the mountains.”
After two hours of walking they were able to squeeze onto a train at a tiny station from which it took only a half hour to Hiroshima station. The train from Hiroshima was crowded, and the smaller one they switched to at Kyoto was even more crowded and much slower as it climbed the mountains northeast of the ancient capital. At least the press of bodies—everyone wrapped in layers of patched and mismatched winter clothes—had made it warm.
It was almost dark when the train pulled into the tiny station in Haruyama. Keiko and Michiko stumbled to the platform and stood a moment to catch their breaths, their legs unsteady. The train slowly started up again. The station employee on duty turned to Keiko and greeted her by name.
“Kawamura-san,” said the short, stocky man with a big smile on his round face. “We didn’t know you were coming home.”
“Ogawa-san,” Keiko said, the relief of finally being off the train evident in her voice, “it’s so good to be home. Thank you. This is my friend Michiko. Michiko Shizuyama. She’s come to stay with us.”
Keiko led her friend through the village, and the two young women climbed a sloping path to an old house tucked below a hill. Even though it was really too cold to be outdoors, and there was only the last wash of light in the sky, a woman was sitting on the huge, flat stone that served as the doorstep for the house. She jumped up and ran to Keiko.
“Mama, they sent us home, and I brought my friend Michiko. I wrote you about her.”
Keiko’s mother pulled her daughter into a tight hug, laughed, and then began crying. Somehow, Michiko wasn’t sure how, she too ended up in the warm embrace of the older woman. When they separated, Keiko’s mother said, “I knew something was drawing me outside. I knew I was waiting for something.”
Michiko tried to express her gratitude, but she only got as far as saying “Kawamura-san, I’m so worried about imposing on you.”
Keiko’s mother said, “No, Michiko, that’s much too formal. You’re here with us now. You’re part of our family. You’re one of my daughters as long as you’re with us. Maybe ‘Auntie Kazue’ will do, but I’m definitely not ‘Kawamura-san’ to you.”
“Yes, Kazue Obasan,” said Michiko, trying it out.
“Well, that’s settled,” laughed Keiko and then shouted with joy as her younger twin sisters and little brother spilled out of the house and danced around the three women.
“Big sister is home! Big sister is home.”
The girls giggled and climbed into their sister’s arms as the boy jumped up at her side, “What did you bring us?”
“Come, all of you. We must introduce Michiko to Granny,” said Kazue Obasan. Everyone trooped into the house. Granny was standing on the wooden floor just above the genkan.
“So Keiko’s back,” she said.
“Yes, Granny, and I’ve brought my friend Michiko Shizuyama with me. She’s going to stay with us.” Granny nodded and narrowed her eyes as she inspected Michiko, but she didn’t say a word before turning and walking toward the large room with soft tatami straw mats in the center of the house.
Michiko was still smiling and bowing at Granny’s back when she heard Keiko start to lie. “No, Mama, we ate a big breakfast and then had meals on the trains. These are for everyone else,” she said as she took dried fish and barley from her satchel. Michiko emptied the food she had in her furoshiki and pulled out the three apples she had stashed in her pockets. She smiled as she handed them over to Kazue Obasan. Looking at her friend’s face, Michiko knew that Keiko too was remembering their raid on the Arsenal’s scant pantry. “What are they going to do if they catch us?” Keiko had whispered. “Force us to work day and night making munitions?”
Kazue Obasan, who was looking closely at her daughter, laughed, and Michiko laughed too. Then, with a hint of sorrow overlaying her amusement, Kazue Obasan said, “You two are too much, and all this wonderful food is too much. Thank you.” She understands everything, and she’s at peace.
They all sat in the tatami room around the family’s kotatsu. They were bundled against the cold, and everyone huddled together under the quilts spread on top of the table, with their feet dangling over the embers of the fire in the sunken hearth. Keiko’s little sisters snuggled in between the two young women, Kazue Obasan sat beside Keiko, and Granny kept the boy at her side. Kazue Obasan served hojicha roasted tea, a rare treat, and promised the children the food from Kure for dinner the next day. “You’ve already had your dinner. After we finish our tea, you have to go to bed. I want to catch up with Keiko and get to know her friend.”
When Kazue Obasan asked Michiko and her daughter what time they had started from Kure in the morning, Granny interrupted. “What I want to know is what you did wrong.”
“Granny,” said Kazue Obasan.
“No,” she said, “the two of them. I want to know what they did wrong. Why were they dismissed?”
“Granny, nothing,” said Keiko, “the Arsenal closed. Production is shifting to other areas.”
“If you hadn’t done something wrong you would have been transferred to one of those other facilities. Supporting the war effort is what you young people should be doing. That’s your job now, and it’s your duty.”
“Granny, they just sent us home. We didn’t do anything wrong. Michiko and I were always in the group awarded bonus points for productivity. That’s why we brought all this food. They told us they have nothing for us to do and told us to go.”
“My Masao did his duty,” Granny said, looking across the room at the portrait on the mini Buddhist altar atop a cabinet. “Your father was a hero. You should follow his example. I know your brother will,” she said, pulling her grandson closer to her but keeping her eyes focused on the altar. “You’re going to be an army officer too, aren’t you, sweetie?”
The little boy leaned into his grandmother and smiled. He was old enough to know that no answer was necessary. Kazue Obasan poured more tea. The old woman continued, “Your father’s a hero. You should be honoring him!”
When Kazue Obasan started to get up, Granny waved her hand in annoyance, upsetting her tea cup. “Not you!” she snapped. “Let his daughter show her respect. She should have done that as soon as she set foot in this house. Let her explain to him why she’s not doing what she should.”
Keiko got up and crossed the room to the altar while her mother went to the kitchen to get a towel. Keiko was bowing her head to the portrait of her father as her mother bowed over the dark table to mop up the tea that had settled into the crevices of the old wood. Keiko lit a stick of incense, struck the small
bell that sat next to the photograph and whispered, “Papa, I’m home. We miss you so much.”
Keiko and Michiko took the job of sorting the bedding. As they hauled the futon from the closet and arranged them in the room where they would sleep with the children, Michiko said, “Keiko, now that I’ve met Kazue Obasan, I understand where you got your big heart.”
“My Mama is the best,” said Keiko, as she knelt to push a mattress into place against the wall. “And,” she continued, turning her head in Michiko’s direction, but not meeting her eye, “don’t take Granny too seriously. She’s the classic mother-in-law when it comes to how she treats Mama. Granny’s lived in Haruyama her whole life. Mama grew up in Yokohama and met Papa in Tokyo when he was a student at the Imperial War College. So Mama will always be an outsider, and with Papa gone.…”
“It’s so hard to imagine what it must be like for your mother.”
“Yes,” said Keiko, “your parents were lucky in a way.”
Michiko thought of the day her father died, how she had been sitting with him in the tiny room behind the shop talking about the seventh-day memorial service that was scheduled for her mother the next day. He was smiling and laughing for the first time in that awful week because Michiko had reminded him of the time her brothers had persuaded their mother that they wanted to learn how to bake. “Oh, they were such scamps,” he said. “They just wanted her to make those fancy French cream puff pastries.”
“I helped Mom clean up the kitchen afterwards,” said Michiko. “She knew exactly what they were up to. She laughed about it the whole time we were washing the pans.”
“Oh, how delicious those pastries always were—but maybe that time more than any of the others.” Her father was still laughing when his face contorted. He was gasping for breath as he fell out of the chair. By the time Michiko had run around the table, he was unconscious. And dead before the ambulance crew got him to the hospital.
Keiko, still kneeling by the mattress, pivoted herself with her hands, turned all the way around and looked Michiko full in the face. Just her glance said it all.
How lucky I am to have a friend who doesn’t mouth platitudes. And now I have Kazue Obasan too. Keiko was right. I will be safe here.
“Poor Granny,” Keiko said as she turned away to shake a cover out over the mattress. “Don’t worry. She’ll come around—after all we represent two more ration cards. It’s been years since she’s had as much rice as she wants, which certainly hasn’t been good for her disposition.”
With the futon arranged, Keiko put the few extra clothes the two of them had brought into the chest of drawers. The only things Michiko had left were her photos and letters. She spread the photos out—one of her parents, one of her brothers, and a formal portrait of the whole family. The letters—from her brothers home to the family and from Sam to her—were stacked by her right hand. Keiko moved next to her and they looked at the photos together. She nodded when Michiko said, “Enough, it’s time to put them away.”
Michiko stacked the letters on top of the photos and wrapped them in the furoshiki, remembering the day her mother had stitched its sashiko pattern. Keiko took it from her and slipped it in the bottom drawer, under the clothes.
“You’ll know where this is,” she said, before standing and sliding the door open. “Mama, we’re ready. Time for the girls to go to bed.”
As it grew warmer, Keiko and Michiko worked in the garden and were extravagantly proud of each shoot they coaxed from the rough soil. They talked endlessly of how delicious their turnips and pumpkins would be come the harvest. The children were set the task of gathering the twigs and dried leaves the household needed for fuel. Everyone but Granny went foraging for wild greens. Keiko and Michiko often climbed high up the mountains. Most days there was precious little to be found. But there was always talk at dinner time of the berries they would find in the summer, the nuts in the fall.
In April, the nation was mobilized for a new patriotic effort. All citizens were ordered to gather pine roots so their resin could be distilled into aviation fuel. The job of filling the family quota fell to Keiko and Michiko. On the first day of this new endeavor, they set off very early. They tied their hair in scarves and wore the baggy mompe trousers that had been their uniform at the Arsenal.
They climbed higher and higher, digging the roots as they went and filling the baskets they had tied to their backs. Keiko joked that at least they didn’t have to worry about their hands—years of making munitions had made them tough. “We look like we’ve been manual laborers our whole lives. I can’t even imagine anymore what it would be like to wear a kimono or a nice dress and have my hair done and my hands smooth and really clean. I hate these mompe, and I’m sick and tired of having to be patriotic all the time. Patriotism now is just like the cloth for these ugly mompe. Remember how cloth used to be so nicely made, so pretty to look at when you went to the fabric shop, so nice to the touch?”
Michiko nodded, remembering a Bancho Elementary School class trip to the iyo kasuri workshop that produced the traditional Matsuyama splashed-pattern textiles. As she said “Yes” to her friend, she remembered how she had come home and announced to her mother that she wanted to be an iyo kasuri weaver when she grew up.
“Michiko, my dear, yes they make beautiful things, but those ladies work long hours and make very little money.”
“But Mom!”
“The ladies who work with the dye never really get the color off their hands or out from under their nails. And the ladies who work on the looms sit at them for at least ten hours a day.”
“I liked the clackety-clack. I liked watching the pattern form.”
“Oh Michiko, many of those ladies lose their hearing after years of the clackety-clack,” said her mother. “But, yes, what comes out of those looms is beautiful, in the best way—subdued and quiet. And I think I know how you—even now—can make something like that, make some beauty of your own. Then you can decide when you’re all grown up if you still want to learn how to weave. Once you learn this, you’ll have it forever. If you decide you want to be a teacher or a nurse or even a housewife, you’ll still have this.”
She walked to the cabinet where the family kept its clothing, knelt, and pulled open the bottom drawer. “This is from an old jacket of your grandfather’s,” she said, unfolding wrapping paper and spreading out a piece of indigo blue cloth. “You can see it’s the same blue as the iyo kasuri. Let’s see what we can do with it. I think we may be able to make a runner for the dining room table.”
Starting the next afternoon, her mother began to show her how to make the running stitch sashiko embroidery pattern, working a number of stitches at once. The white stitches on the dark indigo ground made the same contrasting color scheme as the iyo kasuri; what was missing in the complexity of the weave was made up for by the texture of the stitches atop the cloth.
“Michiko, darling,” her mother said, “see how the stitches make a pattern of stacked boxes? It’s lovely. You’re doing good work. Your dad will be so surprised when he sees this new piece of your work on the table.”
Her mother was right. She remembered her father’s lavish praise when the runner was finished and laid in the middle of the table for the first time. He ran his fingers over the stitches and smiled at her as he said, “Michiko, you did a great job.”
She squirmed with the pleasure of the compliment and ignored her brothers, who were saying, “Dad, enough about Michiko’s sewing project. We’re hungry. Let’s eat!”
Her father looked again at the stitches and then at his wife. “A lovely job. So beautiful,” he said slowly and gently before he picked up his soup bowl and chopsticks, cleared his throat, and said in his loud official Dad voice, “Now we eat.” The boys laughed, picked up their bowls, and elbowed each other out of the way reaching for the pickles. Michiko watched her mother and father. They were still looking at each other, ignoring the racket around them. Slowly her mother picked up her soup bowl and chopsticks. Michiko wat
ched her parents decide together that it was again time to pay attention to their children. Her father sipped his soup. Her mother looked away and smiled at the boys; the moment was gone.
“Now,” Keiko said, “we have ugly patched mompe made of cloth mixed with scrap paper and twigs. They’re as dirty and ugly and ill-fitting and uncomfortable as all this endless patriotism. “
“And I just hate seeing Mama dressed in these damn mompe too. She’s re-sewn all her clothes into outfits for the kids. I remember how beautiful she was when I was young. She shimmered when she was dressed up. My sisters will never have that memory. But now with ‘Extravagance the Enemy,’ I guess I’m lucky to have my extravagant memories, unless the kempeitai decide they’re dangerous too.”
They lapsed into silence, concentrating on climbing, listening to their breath and the sounds of the forest.
Ahead on the steep path, Keiko called out, “Ah, Michiko, you’ll love this when you catch up and see the view. It’s so romantic. You should be here with Sam, not with me.”
Michiko was happy to hear Keiko mention Sam. Just as she had told only Keiko the details of the deaths of her parents, it was only Keiko she had confided in after Sam’s visit to the Arsenal in October. The Matsuyama girls had hounded her for details, but Michiko knew that to them she was an object of curiosity—and perhaps a bit of pity—and most of all, a topic for gossip. Only Keiko knew what hopes she held on to and how futile she was sure they were. Even if both she and Sam survived the war, there would be no place for an “us” in Matsuyama. And for Sam, the only son of his proud mother, it would have to be Matsuyama, and the utmost respectability. No place for the orphaned child of sweet shop owners.
Michiko no longer saw her surroundings as she trudged upward. She was back in Matsuyama again, on Okaido, headed to the Prefectural Girls’ School at the end of the main shopping street. She was trailing behind a gaggle of her classmates, who were eyeing the Matsuchu schoolboys headed in the opposite direction. The girls moved in a cascade of giggles and whispered comments. Michiko didn’t care that she couldn’t hear what they were saying—she was busy sneaking glances at Sam. He was marching forward in his new elite Matsuchu uniform, back straight, chin thrust forward, pretending to ignore everyone around him. But she knew he was actually busy looking at her and hoping she was happy to be the object of his attention. She smiled as she had on Okaido, happy with her delicious secret, and smiled again when she thought of the pleasure of sharing her secret with Keiko.
A Thousand Stitches Page 16