Plum Rains

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  In any case: you made the most of what you were and what you had.

  The first Japanese man Angelica had ever met, a recruiter visiting Manila and Cebu, had said everyone knew that Filipino nurses were naturally more empathetic. Angelica was surprised: Did people abroad really say that?

  She was glad to have an advantage for the first time in her life: to be part of a group held in some special kind of esteem, a sort of reverse prejudice, however simplistic or overstated. Even her reluctance to keep up with the latest technological toys that had come to Kuala Lumpur and Seoul but not Cebu had become an asset. Some international nurses had retinal implants, but their glazed-over expressions and inability to resist entertaining distractions in the presence of their clients was no benefit. Some nurses refused to do even the lightest lifting without the help of robotic suits, but Angelica did not like the slip-on exoskeletal jackets, their look or their feel or the delays from using tech to do the kind of job she’d managed just fine, even as a nine-year-old girl, rolling her grandmother over in bed. In this way, being a little backcountry conferred a special status. Angelica looked like a nurse from the previous century. Her clients appreciated that.

  Of course, the recruiter had assured her, there would always be jobs for women like her in Japan, especially with the aging of their own population: an imbalance more extreme than in any other nation, and the subject of deep national anxiety. But will there ever be too many foreign nurses? No, the recruiter had assured her. Supply can’t meet demand. Job security. Respect. Good salaries, especially since work visas are so limited.

  But why are the visas limited?

  Because they need you, but they don’t want to need you. A rare moment of recruiter honesty. Certain nations are like toddlers or very old people. They say “I do it myself.” And “Go away” when they are most vulnerable. Never take offense. It is another type of pain you are treating: the pain of lost independence.

  She hadn’t been allowed to leave the Philippines for three years after graduating from nursing school, in accordance with the pledge she had voluntarily signed—the government’s latest effort to staunch the flow of expertise from a country whose medical system was collapsing. Out of a conflicted sense of national loyalty, she had chosen to stay even longer than required—fourteen years. As long as she could bear. The guerillas taking the hospital staff hostage had been the last straw.

  That made her suddenly ready to go and face the next challenge: debts mounting as she shared an apartment with Yanna and five other healthcare workers, earning nothing at first and then still not enough to cover her bills. The good times, wandering Tokyo like tourists, marveling at the skyscrapers bathed in constant light and animated motion, and the toilets with buttons that brought forth waterfall sounds; the less cheery moments, like submitting to virus puff tests in the subway and long weekends of ramen noodles and exam study; the bad times, like saying goodbye to Yanna as she boarded the train for Narita Airport.

  Then Angelica saw the listing for the job, working for Itou-san, taking care of his mother.

  My mother does not have much time left. Wrong, as it turned out.

  But if you are willing to take a job that might be short or long, no telling. Of course.

  You have heard of the preference of Japanese for harmony? Yes, it had been drilled into them in nursing training, preparing them for future jobs all around the world: that while Americans and Europeans preferred personal control, and even needed it to achieve well-being and good health, the Japanese prioritized lack of relational strain, harmony, interdependence. Well, my mother must not be typical Japanese then. She does not always choose harmony.

  Itou had laughed, then. Angelica had found his statement charming, even encouraging. A little spunk could make a person interesting. She’d never fully believed in the myth of perfect harmony, anyway.

  Itou had offered his final warning. She is strong-willed.

  More correct than ever. Strong-willed enough to refuse sleep or supervision.

  Usually by the time Angelica was ready to start the day, Sayoko was already awake. This morning, when Angelica entered her room with a cup of green tea, Sayoko was motionless, white hair fanned out across her pillow in the shape of a soft-edged ginkgo leaf. Her head was turned, her mouth open. Angelica leaned forward to make sure she was breathing. Indeed. It smelled like she had done a poor job brushing the night before. Too distracted by the strange new present that had taken up so much of her time.

  She took Sayoko’s hand, noting the feel of the skin, and when Sayoko’s eyes flickered open, she rubbed her forearm briskly.

  “Time to get up,” Angelica called.

  “Not yet,” Sayoko mumbled.

  “Let’s get you to the toilet. Breakfast is waiting.” Aside from in her chemo days, Sayoko usually had a big appetite in the morning and expected her favorites: grilled fish, broth, and rice porridge, sometimes with a sour plum on top, if Angelica was trying to coax her into a good mood.

  At the nursing home where Angelica had first worked in Tokyo, everyone got the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And yes, the nurses often referred to the patients by room number, especially during shift changes: 25B isn’t responding to the bladder medication. Her stink follows me home.

  Angelica had liked the no-nonsense collegiality, a tonic for the long hours, but not what it did to the patients, reducing them to items to be managed. Long after vitals were taken automatically, and even at the risk of getting a reprimand for inefficiency, Angelica still liked to sit bedside, two fingers placed across the patient’s wrist: Eighty-one this morning. A touch on the shoulder. Your color looks good. Leaning close, allowing soft sounds and smells—raspy breathing, a sugary aroma—to confirm what was already in the digital charts.

  One time, a young new trainee from Singapore saw the stethoscope around Angelica’s neck and said, “What’s that?”

  “It’s an old device you set on their backs, to listen to them breathe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s simple and it works. Besides, they won’t usually ask, but they like their backs touched. Breathe. Good. Again. Sometimes that helps more than medication.”

  The young trainee had laughed, assuming Angelica was pulling her leg.

  Remembering that conversation, Angelica put Sayoko’s cold hands between her own now, heating them up. Even warm, they still trembled. “Ready for the walker?”

  Sayoko shook her head. She was weak this morning. Tired.

  “We’ll dress after breakfast, maybe?”

  “After,” Sayoko mumbled.

  “All right. Wheelchair, then. And something to eat first. I don’t mind if your broth gets cold, but you have to take your pills. Did someone stay up too late last night?”

  “He needed company.” Sayoko frowned. “You can’t just let them wail.”

  “It’s your device. It should listen to you. Tell it not to wail.”

  Sayoko had been staring into space, but now she returned Angelica’s gaze with surprising intensity. “They told me to let him cry, but it always hurt to hear it.”

  “The technician told you?”

  “No, the neighbors. And my husband. They said it was all right for me to sleep. He’d stop crying.”

  “Ah, you mean Itou-san. Long ago.” The image of her elegant, self-disciplined employer as an inconsolable infant made Angelica smile.

  Holding Sayoko by one elbow as she guided her into an upright position at the edge of the futon, Angelica said, “And he did stop crying, finally, didn’t he? You must be thinking about your son, when he was small. I bet you were a wonderful mother.”

  “I was a very bad mother.”

  Angelica paused, the comment hanging between them, waiting to see if Sayoko would say any more, or change the subject, or toss her head as she sometimes did, as if to say, Never mind all that. But this wasn’t such a moment.

/>   Angelica chose her next words carefully. “I’m sure Itou-san would disagree. Look how much he cares about your comfort and health.”

  “No, he knows the truth. He doesn’t know why I couldn’t bear to touch him, but he knows his childhood was lacking.” Sayoko’s eyes were misting over. She thrust out her chin with defiance, lower lip quivering.

  “Sayoko-san—” Angelica started to say. But Sayoko didn’t want trite consolation.

  “They said it was all right not to go to him, but then when I didn’t, they took him away.”

  “Who did?”

  “My mother-in-law first. She said I was too tired. But really, she didn’t trust me. She thought I was ruined for good, and not because of the baby. She never wanted her son to marry me. She suspected things.”

  Angelica had moved to a kneeling position in front of Sayoko, tugging slipper socks onto the old lady’s chronically icy feet. Now she looked up, waiting. Sayoko’s eyes remained averted, her chin tucked down into her chest.

  Angelica resisted prying. It was not her job to pry. At the group home, she had never been one of those nurses who tried to be a sassy jokester or a gossip-craving confidant. When she’d felt close to a patient, it was often for unnameable reasons. When she’d felt a moment of connection, it was rarely through chatter, more often through touch. It was what she herself felt was changing too rapidly in this world: the loss of human touch, cold technology in its place.

  Angelica was touching Sayoko again now, massaging her lower legs a moment to stir the circulation. She finished off with a light tap on the ankles, as if to say: Ready for breakfast?

  But Sayoko was still deep in thought. She was in no hurry to be hoisted into her wheelchair. “After they took him, I finally got myself up and dressed. I went to my mother-in-law’s house. And she had already found another woman to watch my son.”

  “And this woman raised him?”

  “No, he came home again later. Maybe two months later, by which time my milk was long dried up. It had been decided: I wasn’t to be trusted. I agreed with them. Fine, I said, let me be useless. I felt sorry for myself. Why not? But it wasn’t pretty.”

  Angelica didn’t know whether to keep encouraging the story or distract Sayoko from it. She didn’t even know whether the memory was reliable. Perhaps Angelica didn’t want it to be true; she wasn’t a mental health expert, only a nurse. This new and stronger yet more self-critical Sayoko—more talkative, less hobbled by dementia but more burdened by memories—threw off Angelica’s routines. Before, Sayoko had made less sense. Now there was no telling.

  Sayoko took a deep breath, shoulders trembling as she slowly exhaled through pursed lips. “I’ve thought about it. I believe that after two or three weeks, I would have felt better. I think he needed to cry and I needed to hear it. It certainly made my milk come down, and that’s the point, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have ignored him forever, just as I couldn’t have ignored the robot last night. But my husband and his mother didn’t trust me. They didn’t give my son a chance to love me, and I didn’t have a chance to love him.”

  Angelica didn’t know what to say, or what to think. She didn’t want Sayoko to be sad. She wasn’t sure that revisiting these memories was helpful. She knew that Sayoko would feel better after a warm breakfast, a cup of hot tea, another massage if needed, the distraction of a television program. Those were the things Angelica could offer, easily. But Sayoko seemed to want something more—something Angelica wasn’t sure she could give.

  “I was supposed to know everything all at once,” Sayoko continued. “But that isn’t always how it happens. Do you see how the robot learns, a step at a time?”

  “Okay,” Angelica said, distracted for a moment as she tugged the seat of the wheelchair closer to the edge of the futon.

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  “No, not okay. This is important.”

  “I’m sorry.” Angelica tried to focus. She touched Sayoko’s knee, bony under her thin sleeping robe. “The robot is like a baby. I understand.”

  “Then you don’t understand anything. Yes, he is like a baby, but I was also like a baby. I had to make mistakes. I had to learn how to do things for the first time. I was childish. I didn’t like a man touching me. I didn’t like a baby touching me.”

  Sayoko’s wrist monitor squawked. Elevated pulse and blood pressure. When Angelica’s phone quickly sounded its own alarm, she reached over to push the silencing button on the wrist monitor itself, but this closeness only made Sayoko more agitated. Angelica tried anyway: tried to set comforting arms on Sayoko’s shoulders, and then began to slide her hands under Sayoko’s armpits, preparing to pull her up and into the wheelchair.

  But Sayoko still wasn’t ready. She shrugged away, wrapping her thin arms around her chest. “I hadn’t been needed by another person in so long. Pawed at, yes, but not loved or needed. Sometimes you have to be confused. Sometimes you have to figure it out together.”

  Angelica didn’t know what to make of this outburst, and perhaps her sleep deprivation blunted her sensitivity. Or perhaps her tank was simply running dry, like those struggling tricycle drivers who sped around on teaspoons of fuel, sputtering from one fare to the next. She was too close to empty too much of the time now.

  To be honest, even as Sayoko spoke, Angelica’s mind was flitting to her own problems: the phone, and why she hadn’t heard from Datu. It wasn’t right, but it was true. She had a hard time worrying for more than a few moments about this wealthy woman’s problems—memories of a long-ago past that had resolved itself, seeing as how Itou was a successful, kind man—when she and her brother had immediate problems of their own.

  But at least she recognized this failure of empathy and focus. At least she acknowledged her impatience and tried to fight it. The standard advice was, Simply listen, and that advice was sound. But other things had to get done simultaneously.

  Angelica said, “You can tell me more, but let’s get your breakfast first.”

  Sayoko snapped, “You don’t want to hear.”

  “I do. I’m listening—”

  “Same as my son. He knows nothing about his own family. No one knows anything, because they don’t want to know the bad things.”

  Angelica had never seen Sayoko so determined to be self-critical. Was it her coming birthday, with its promise of sentiment and its threat of retrospective appraisal? Was it only her fatigue? Was it that obnoxious machine, pulling on her emotions with its psychological tests and its emotional triggers, its videos of kindness and hurt, lovers sparring and babies entering the world? Yes—the tactless birthing video. That must have started her worrying about her days as a young, confused mother.

  “What don’t people want to know, Sayoko-san? Can you give me an example?”

  Sayoko set her hands on her knees, wrinkled fingers worrying the fabric of her robe. “When I was born. The robot asked me that.”

  As soon as she said it, a look of momentary relief swept across Sayoko’s face, as if to say: There. I’ve said it.

  “When you were born?” Angelica laughed. “But we don’t ask because we already know.”

  The look of relief vanished, replaced by clear-eyed disappointment.

  Losing patience, Angelica said, “The robot doesn’t know anything, so it asks pointless questions. I think all the questions are tiring you out.”

  Angelica tried to recall where she’d put the technician’s contact information. He had responsibilities, too. He would have to help her manage this problem. And if he didn’t, she’d somehow just get rid of the thing. Itou-san couldn’t possibly imagine how the arrival of this so-called gift was upsetting his normally stoic mother.

  The answer arrived from Ryo Itou, first, and it wasn’t what Angelica expected. Not fully trusting her phone but habit-driven and desperate, she’d dashed off two messages, one to the technician, and one to Itou, explaining about t
he delivery. In minutes, her employer replied. The first line of text said only, “Douzo.”

  Go ahead? Meaning?

  She’d worried at first that Itou-san would reply at length and she wouldn’t be able to see the full message just as she’d been unable to read more than the first words of Junichi’s recent texts. But she should have known better: Itou-san was always terse. His entire texts—one word, maybe two—fit on the preview line. There was nothing else to see.

  Was he surprised that there was a social robot in the house? Excited? Worried?

  Douzo.

  She wrote a longer message, explaining that she was concerned about the package’s contents, that Sayoko had insisted on having the robot assembled, that it was some sort of experimental learning model and that it was imposing excessive demands on Sayoko’s attention. She didn’t want to tell him that her text app was acting up—any kind of communications problem on the job seemed unprofessional—but she specified, as politely as she could manage, that he should call rather than text to discuss Sayoko-san’s problem further.

  Even as she struggled to compose the message, she thought of the times Junichi had teased her. She did not know all the latest lingo, the abbreviations that required an understanding of hiragana and katakana and Latin alphabets, the phrases reduced to numeric codes, slang. Hshs, www, 888. Heavy breathing, laugh out loud, clapping. I remember that stuff from middle school, Junichi had said about her early texts to him, oblivious to the fact that the lingo was different country to country, that this was another area in which she was trying her best to catch up. And then, when she omitted outdated abbreviations: Why are you writing me an entire book?