by Ruth Ozeki
My mom went to help Muji and the other danka ladies clean up in the kitchen, and then suddenly it was just me and Dad, sitting there in front of the family altar, alone for the first time since he’d found me at the bus stop. It was really quiet. Until that moment, everything had been so crazy, with all the nuns and priests and danka and services and chanting, and reporters asking questions, but now it was just me and my dad and all the words that were unspoken, drifting around like ghosts between us. And the one big word that Jiko had written was the scariest ghost of all.
It was a little awkward. From the kitchen I could hear the murmur of faraway voices and the sound of food being prepared and insects buzzing around the garden. It was spring and getting warm again.
“I wonder what’s in that box,” Dad said.
I think he was just trying to make polite conversation, but he was pointing to the shelf on the altar, where the box containing Haruki #1’s remains-that-were-not-truly-remains sat, and I was so relieved he’d asked something I actually knew the answer to that I ended up telling him the whole story. Of course he knew most of it already, but I didn’t care. I was proud because it was a good story, and Jiko had told it to me, and now I could tell it to him and chase the unspoken word ghosts away. So I told him all about how Haruki #1 got drafted, and the pageant in the rain, and about all the training and punishment and bullying he had to endure, but despite all these hardships, how he bravely completed his suicide mission, flying his plane into the enemy target. And because he was a military hero, completing his mission and fulfilling his duty, the military authorities sent Jiko the not-quite-empty box of remains.
“There was nothing left of him,” I explained, “so they just stuck a piece of paper inside that says ikotsu. Do you want to see?”
“Sure,” Dad said.
I went to the altar and brought down the box. I took off the lid and looked inside, expecting to see the single slip of paper. But something else was there instead. A small packet. I reached in and pulled it out.
It was wrapped in an old piece of greasy waxed paper, stained with mildew and eaten by insects. When I turned it over, bits fell off. I brushed away the dust.
“What’s that?” Dad asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It wasn’t here before.”
“Open it.”
So I did. I peeled off the oily outside paper, taking care not to tear it. Inside was a thin booklet folded into quarters. I opened it to the first page. It was covered with words, written in a faded blue ink, that traveled from left to right across the page. Not up and down like Japanese. Like English, only I couldn’t understand.
“I can’t read it.”
Dad held out his hand. “Let me see.”
I passed him the booklet.
“It’s in French,” Dad said. “Interesting . . .”
I was surprised. I didn’t expect him to know anything about French.
Dad leaned forward, turning the brittle pages with care. “I think it might be Uncle Haruki’s,” he said. “Jiko Obaachama said something about a diary once. She said Haruki always kept a diary. She figured it must have gotten lost.”
“So how did it get here?” I asked.
Dad shook his head. “Maybe she had it all along?”
That didn’t seem right to me. “No way,” I said. “She would have told us.”
“He wrote the dates, see?” Dad said. “1944. 1945. He must have been serving in the navy at the time. I wonder why he wrote in French.”
I knew the answer to that one, too. “It was safe,” I explained. “If the bullies found it, they wouldn’t have been able to read it.”
“Mm,” Dad said. “You’re probably right. It’s a secret diary.”
I felt pleased. “Uncle Haruki was really smart,” I said. “He could speak French and German and English, too.” I don’t know why I was bragging, like it was me who could do all these things.
He looked up at me. “Shall we take this home with us? Aren’t you curious to know what it says?”
Of course I was! I felt happy because I really wanted to know what Uncle Haruki had written in his secret French diary, but also because it had been so long since my dad and I had a project we could do together. I looked at him, kneeling by the altar, peering at the pages, trying to make out the French. He looked like my nerdy old studious dad, happily lost in another world. But then the image of him leaving the house with his shopping bag full of briquettes popped into my mind, and my heart flipped and sank. We were already in the middle of an unfinished project. Our last project. Our suicide project.
He must have sensed me watching him, because he looked up, and I turned away quickly so he wouldn’t see me trying not to cry. I had this sad vision just then of me and my dad, side by side in our dusty urns on the family altar, with nobody left to take care of our remains. It wouldn’t be long.
“Nao-chan?”
“What.”
I knew my tone of voice was rude, but I didn’t care.
He waited until he knew I was really listening, and then he spoke softly. “It’s like Grandma Jiko wrote, Nao-chan. We must do our best!”
I shrugged. I mean, sure, it sounded good, but how could I trust him?
“Ikiru shika nai!” he said, half to himself, and then he looked up and repeated it, urgently, in English this time, as if to make absolutely sure I understood. “We must live, Naoko! We have no choice. We must soldier on!”
I nodded, barely daring to breath as the fish in my stomach thrashed its tremendous tail and twisted up into the air. Then, with a great splash, it reentered the water and swam away. Slowly, the water settled.
Ikiru shika nai. My fish would live, and so would me and Dad, just like my old Jiko wrote.
My dad went back to reading. Chibi-chan was mewing from the veranda, so I got up to let him in. When I slid back the sliding door, he shot through the opening and between my ankles like he was being chased by ghost dogs from hell. The hair on his spine was standing straight up. A strong warm breeze followed him in from the garden, rattling the paper doors in their frames. It sounded just like Jiko’s chuckle. Dad looked up from the pages of his uncle’s diary.
“Did you say something?”
I shook my head.
Mom left the next day because she had to get back to work, but me and Dad stuck around to help Muji get old Jiko’s stuff in order. Not that she had much stuff. She owned almost nothing, except for some of Haruki #1’s old philosophy books, which Dad said he’d take. The only thing Jiko really cared about was the fate of Jigenji, but the little temple didn’t belong to her. It belonged to the main headquarters, and they were still hoping to sell it to a developer, but luckily, the real estate market had crashed on account of the bubble economy bursting, and moving all the graves was going to be expensive, so they decided to wait. This meant Muji would get to stay, at least temporarily, and we could keep the family altar there, too. Muji promised to take care of it as though it were her own, which it more or less was, in my opinion, because she was like an auntie, and I promised her I would come back to the temple in the summers and also every year in March to help with old Jiko’s memorial services. It was a good arrangement, at least for the time being.
Ruth
1.
The little cemetery in Whaletown wasn’t very far from their home, but Ruth didn’t get around to visiting as often as she should. She had planted a small dogwood tree next to her parents’ grave, but that first summer they’d had a drought, and she’d forgotten to water it, so although the little tree had survived, it had lost some limbs and its pleasing symmetry. She felt bad about this.
“Sorry, Mom,” she said, using a whisk broom to brush the winter’s accumulation of dust and dead leaves from the small granite plaque that bore her mother’s name. “I’m not very good at this.”
Of course, her mother didn’t answer, but Ruth knew she wouldn’t have cared. Masako never had much use for ritual, never remembered birthdays or celebrated anniversaries, and g
enerally thought occasions of this sort were just a bother. And Ruth generally agreed, but after reading Nao’s account of old Jiko’s funeral, she found herself wishing she’d done more to commemorate her mother’s passing.
Her death had been a low-key affair. In the last years of her life, she had developed mandibular cancer, but by then, even without the complications posed by Alzheimer’s, she was too old and frail to survive the surgery, which would have required removing half of her jawbone. Her oncologist recommended palliative radiation, which wouldn’t cure the cancer, but might alleviate her suffering. And it did. The tumor receded and the lesion healed, but by then she needed more care than Ruth and Oliver could provide on the island, so they moved her to a nursing home in Victoria, where she spent the last two years of her life. When the tumor came back, they tried another round of radiation, but this time her mother had neither the strength nor the will to recover, and she fell into a coma.
Death came quickly. It was late at night and the nursing home was quiet. Ruth and Oliver were by her side, reading. Suddenly her mother’s eyes popped open, blind and unseeing, and she struggled to sit up. Her breathing became shallow and jagged. Ruth held her mother’s small, rigid body in her arms. Oliver touched her forehead. She relaxed. Her eyelids fluttered as the light drained from her face. For a while she hung there, subtle and liminal, and then she exhaled one last time and was gone.
They stayed with her for a while, keeping her company, in case her spirit was still lingering. They held her hands, and they talked to her until her body grew cold.
That was on a Tuesday night. The cremation took place on Friday. Several days had passed, and Ruth was nervous about how her mother might look, but when they were led into the small anteroom of the crematorium where Masako’s body was laid out under a white sheet in a brown cardboard box, Ruth just felt happy to see her again. They’d brought some of her favorite things to send with her: photographs and letters and cards from friends and family; a crocheted lap robe from the Free Store that she’d especially liked; her favorite sneakers and her mittens; a couple of bars of chocolate. A calendar to help her remember dates. Emery boards. Scotch tape. A watercolor painting. Flowers. Oliver wanted to get tropical flowers, from Hawaii because she’d grown up there, so he’d bought anthuriums from Hilo and ti leaves for good luck, ginger and a big gaudy bird of paradise. They filled up her cardboard coffin and sat with her for a little while longer, and then not knowing what else to do, they kissed her goodbye. Ruth thought she looked nice in the box with all her things. Comfortable. The funeral director put the lid on the box and his assistants wheeled it into the retort chamber, lining up the gurney with the mouth of the oven. The doors opened and the box slid in. Ruth turned the dial to start it up. Her mom was so tiny, the director said, only seventy-four pounds. It wouldn’t take long. A couple of hours. They could pick up her ashes after two.
They took a walk around the memorial garden, which was next to the funeral home. It was a beautiful morning. The Pacific sky was streaked with clouds, but the sun was shining through, and everything was wet and sparkling and golden. Big Douglas firs, the kind her mom used to love, surrounded the garden. All the deciduous trees had turned colors, and their yellow and orange foliage looked brilliant against the darkness of the conifers. The grass was littered with bright fallen leaves. They walked around the pond, following the path until they could see the chimney of the crematorium. They watched for a while. There was no smoke coming from it, but they could see a dense column of shimmering heat, which was all that was left of her mother’s body as she became air. Oliver said that in this etheric form she could ride the trade winds back to Hilo and be there in no time. Ruth said her mom would like that.
They brought her ashes back to Whaletown, and Ruth talked to Dora, who, as secretary of the community club, was in charge of the cemetery as well.
“Anywhere’s fine,” Dora said. “Just choose a spot and dig a hole, but try not to dig anyone else up.”
“It’ll be small,” Ruth said. “It’s just for her ashes, and my dad’s. But I’d like to plant a tree, if I could. A Japanese dogwood. They both liked Japanese dogwoods.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Dora said. “As long as you don’t shade out somebody else. Just don’t forget to water it.”
The crooked little dogwood hadn’t grown much in the years since her mother’s death, but it did manage to produce a few blossoms every spring, although few people were ever around to notice. Ruth’s mother hadn’t wanted a funeral, and neither had her father. They’d outlived most of their friends, and the remote location of the island prevented any survivors from ever visiting their graves. Sometimes, though, Ruth found a dead rose or a small stuffed animal by her mother’s stone, which meant somebody was dropping by. She guessed the roses were from Dora, but the stuffed toys baffled her, although her mother would have liked them.
“I hope you guys aren’t too lonely,” Ruth said, giving her father’s stone a final brushing. She looked dubiously around at the other graves. Many of the oldest were just sunken depressions, marked by small decaying wooden crosses. The graves with stones were easier to locate. One or two of the older headstones had maritime themes, honoring fishermen and boat captains who’d died at sea. Some of the more recent graves were marked by rough stupas or wooden totem plaques carved by shamanistic hippies. A few of the graves showed signs of care, but most were untended. Old offerings of shells and stones, guttered candles and macramé dream catchers, lay scattered about. A torn Tibetan prayer flag hung from the bough of a cedar. It was a lonely place. Ruth’s mother, a solitary person, wouldn’t have minded, but her father had enjoyed company.
Ruth returned the whisk broom to her knapsack and took out a small hand scythe, which she used to cut back the dead grasses. She inspected the dogwood tree. It was still crooked, but it had put on some more growth. Little leaf buds were forming on the ends of the twigs, and she vowed to come back later in the spring to see it blooming. She had bought some incense at the local health food co-op, and now she took a stick from her backpack and lit it with a cigarette lighter. She pushed it into the soil, and then sat on the ground in front of the graves . . . to do what? She didn’t know. The ground was still damp from all the rain. A thin curl of smoke rose from the tip of the incense into the air. Overhead, the sky was blue and streaked with high clouds. She thought of Nao’s fake funeral and Jiko’s real one and wished she knew a chant she could sing. How did the words go? Gone, gone, gone completely beyond, awakened, hurray . . .
Something like that.
2.
“The Japanese take funerals and memorials very seriously,” Ruth said.
“Your mother didn’t,” Oliver replied.
They were standing out on the deck with Muriel, testing out the birding lens mount that Oliver had ordered for his iPhone. Muriel was hoping for another look at the Jungle Crow, and Ruth wanted Oliver to take a picture of it to send in, along with the GPS coordinates, to the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s Citizen Science database.
“Yeah, Mom was weird. She wasn’t very Japanese.”
“Neither are you.” He held up the long telephoto lens, onto which the iPhone was attached like an afterthought, and studied the little screen as he scanned the branches of a tall Douglas fir. The trees were dark against the blue sky, and he was having trouble with the contrast.
“I know,” Ruth said. “But I try. It was nice being at the cemetery this morning. The dogwood tree is looking a little less lopsided.”
He panned over to a grove of cedars. “The roots should be well established by now. It should be able to survive a few more years of drought and neglect.”
He fiddled with the lens, trying to bring the image into focus. Muriel had brought her own high-powered binoculars. She’d been surveying the branches as she listened to their conversation.
“I don’t think your mother was weird,” she said. “I really liked her. A lot of people on the island liked her. She had friends here, even if she c
ouldn’t remember who they were. It’s a shame you didn’t at least have a small memorial. If not for her, for everyone else.”
“I know, I know . . .”
“Did you know that Benoit visits her grave? He brings her little toys from the Free Store.”
Ruth fell silent. Benoit. Of course. Muriel was right, it was a shame. She changed the subject.
“Actually, my point was really about Nao and Jiko. The Japanese take these memorials really seriously. Old Jiko died in March, right? Nao promised to go back to Jiko’s temple in March every year to help with the memorial. The temple was located north of Sendai, near the coast and the epicenter of the earthquake, and more or less in the path of the tsunami. So the question is, was she there on March eleventh of 2011? I think the evidence is pretty strong. She was there, she knew the wave was coming, she grabbed some of Muji’s plastic bags and stuffed her most precious things inside—her diary, Haruki’s letters and the watch . . .”
“What’s the point in speculating?” Oliver asked. “You haven’t even finished reading.”
Muriel lowered her binoculars and looked at Ruth, aghast. “You haven’t finished reading?”