Requiem

by Frances Itani

  When I told Lena, she said, “It’s because you went in with him. You could be bothered. You went into the sea, which he loves, and you jumped those fabulous white waves alongside him, and he’ll never forget.”

  But I was thinking of the mirror, of the reflection that had stared back at me, the one I could not escape as a child or a young man. The hope that by the time I grew up, somehow, in some miraculous way, the mirror would turn me into someone else.

  CHAPTER 17

  1944

  “Follow,” said Father.

  It was mid-morning when we left the shack for our end-of-summer picnic, our big outing before school started up again in the fall. We walked single file, Hiroshi behind Father, then Keiko, then me. Mother was last in line, keeping an eye on us from behind. We waved, called out to Ba and Ji, and fell silent after we crossed the dirt road. We walked past the communal tomato gardens, past rows and rows of eggplant and radish, carrot and cucumber, melon and squash. We skirted the edge of the cliff and made our way through foliage and undergrowth, and found the zigzagged trail that descended the embankment. Down and down we went, always in shadow of the mountain, the sounds of our progress echoing back as we stumbled over gravel and root. The day’s heat pressed against the earth; the air was still. Sun poked through slits in the treetops and planted blotchy patterns of shadow and light over the trail. The lower parts of the path were hot and dry and sandy, and shifted each time a foot touched down. At the bottom, there was river, only river. That, and a small island in the midst of rushing water.

  The moment we reached the chosen spot, Mother began to clear a space for our picnic. Father set down the bundles he had carried and he stood, hands on hips. We fell silent while he examined the river with a fisherman’s eyes.

  “I thought the banks would be more exposed,” he said. “This water is dangerous and high. Higher than it should be so late in summer.”

  He looked out again and I had a moment’s worry that he might lead us back up the trail without the picnic happening at all. But he did not look tense or angry, and it was clear that he, too, enjoyed being here, close to the great river.

  “My arms are aching badly, really badly,” Hiroshi complained, filling the silence. He knew the complaint would get him nowhere, but he made it anyway. He had carried the gallon water jug all the way from the shack. Father glanced over at Hiroshi, but he did not reprimand. Carrying water was Hiroshi’s job, whether he wanted it or not.

  Keiko’s job in this season was to help Mother with the canning and preserving, but she also worked in the gardens, picking tomatoes. There were no more classes held by Keiko on the slope above camp, but she continued to find and share materials for drawing and copying, and she helped me with reading and printing lessons. She and her friends had also persuaded an eighty-four-year-old woman in camp to teach Japanese dancing. At night, when the chores were done, the girls went to the community room to learn from the woman, who had once been a dancing teacher in Vancouver.

  My own chores were not difficult these days. I, too, picked tomatoes. I also carried armloads of wood into the shack for the stove, and I stacked wood outside after Father had finished chopping. Most of the time, Father was after me to stop daydreaming. Sometimes he rapped my head with his knuckles because I wasn’t paying attention. “When you aren’t so scrawny, when you grow taller and bigger, you won’t be spending hours over your scribblings,” he said. “You’ll be taking your share of family responsibility, like everyone else.”

  But he kept me busy, all the same. There were summer days when I worked for hours stacking wood into tidy rows behind our shack. If even one log or piece of kindling stuck out crookedly, he came out and knocked the woodpile apart and made me start over again.

  Despite Father, I did find time to draw. Mother helped by putting away bits of cardboard for me, and these were hidden under the edge of the mattress. Sometimes, during the summer months, I was able to get away from the whole family and climb the trail to the Bench. I sat up there by myself on a tree stump on the side of the mountain, and I looked down over sagebrush and rolling tumbleweed, the outhouses, the rows of shacks, the gardens on the far side of the dirt road, the water tanks with wooden bungs in the sides and the river in the deepest part of the ravine.

  From high up, it was easy to tell which shack belonged to my family because of the neatness of the woodpile and because of the crooked window at the back. Sometimes I would see Hiroshi come around the side of the house with our bows and arrows, and he would look in all directions, searching for me. If I didn’t feel like playing in the woods, I ducked back into the shadows before he had a chance to look up. And there were others to watch, too. Our community was in perpetual motion: people walking or standing in different attitudes and postures; sixty-one shacks to observe and draw, some with oddly proportioned additions—lean-tos, wooden bathhouses, overhangs to keep woodpiles dry, pits dug for earth cellars, tiny rooms or shelves added to the side or back of a shack when there was extra space and spare lumber. There were many chicken coops now, too, including ours. Chicken manure was never wasted, and was used as fertilizer on the gardens. Because of the smell, the coops were kept at a slight distance from our homes.

  I watched children my own age and younger playing on pathways and in the open space beside the schoolhouse. I once saw Hiroshi rolling a large stone down the hill below me, then hiding when it crashed into the roof of one of the outhouses. I saw Auntie Aya sitting dully on the low stool beside her door, her head tilted back as if to trap the sun on her face, her bright, lacquered combs shining as her head moved forward and back. There were days when she banged the back of her skull rhythmically against the tarpaper of the outer wall. I watched Uncle Aki come outside and soothe her, or sit beside her for a few moments and take her hand. I watched him climb a homemade ladder and replace boards on the side of his bathhouse, all the while keeping an eye on Auntie Aya, never letting her out of his sight. When he was working in the garden, he brought her to stay with Mother, who helped her with meals and with the preserving of vegetables for winter.

  People greeted one another in the camp and I observed how slowly their bodies moved in the oppressive summer heat. I watched the way they crossed the road, and I watched the angle of their backs as they bent over plants in the garden plots. Voices could be heard in the mountain air: some in laughter, some in argument or irritation. Always, there was a murmur of rising sound.

  When I returned home with pictures on cardboard or wood or bark—rarely on paper—Father reminded me again: “Drawing will not put rice in the pot. Drawing will not buy food from the back of Ying’s truck. Everyone in the family must contribute. Everyone must work, no matter how young.”

  In fact, earlier on our picnic morning, before breakfast, I had painstakingly drawn two wild horses on a piece of boxboard, but my drawing was yanked from my hand. It disappeared and was probably tossed into the stove. I was sorry Father had taken it away from me, because I’d wanted to make it better. I had drawn the eye of the larger horse to make it look alert and ready to bolt if startled. The head of the smaller horse was tucked under the neck of the larger, but the nose of the small horse had turned out looking like the fat, long beak of a giant goose. I knew everyone would laugh at a horse that looked like a goose; I knew my drawing was a complete failure.

  But on this once-a-year day, I was not going to worry about a picture that had been yanked out of my hand. Everyone in the family, including Father, was taking a holiday, and our day at the river was meant to be enjoyed.

  Father completed his careful study of water conditions and now pointed downriver to fallen rocks that jutted out near the base of the cliff. These, he said, would provide shelter from the current. He led the three of us away from Mother and showed us a gravel bar where we were permitted to play in the shallows. He chose this place not only for safety; a bit farther along, he planned to throw out a line for sturgeon.

  We followed again, and watched in silence while he selected a branch from
the bushes and sank it into the sand. He tied a length of fishing line around the tip so it would twitch up and down if a fish was hooked, and then he anchored the line to the trunk of a cotton-wood tree. Two feet from the end, he attached bait to a large hook, and then weighted the line with an oblong-shaped rock. He lobbed it out in a high arc, and the rock sank down into the deepest part of the river.

  “Now,” he said, and he was even smiling, “we will attract a big fish. Agreed?”

  Hiroshi and Keiko and I nodded agreement, and then we went back to the gravel bar to play while he returned to the picnic site along the bank.

  When it was time to cross to the island, Father stood and called out to us. Because I was youngest, I was left behind in care of Mother on the main shore while Father swam breaststroke alongside Hiroshi, eldest and tallest, and helped him across. Mother put her hands on my shoulders from behind, and we watched while Father returned for Keiko and swam with her to the island, where she stood beside Hiroshi. Finally, he came back for me. Because I was small and he was big, he hoisted me onto his back and began to swim through the dark current, out and out to the island and the swiftest part of the river.

  But I was already slippery from playing in the shallow water, and because my arms did not reach all the way around to his chest, I was terrified that my fingers would let go. If I put pressure on his neck, he would be sure to make an angry noise. So I hung on and hung on, certain that I could do nothing to save myself if I slipped off. I knew that Father was strong, and I willed the muscles of his arms to push the swirls of treacherous water behind us. At the same time, I knew that I would never forget this moment, and my exhilaration became tangled up with the fear of sliding off my father’s back.

  While one part of me believed that the journey to the island would never end, another part of me was watching the colours of the river. Ever since that day, I have been able to describe them as if I were once again in its middle. First, there was a surprising change from muddy brown to marble green. Then from marble green to sparkling turquoise. We neared a second gravel bar and I was relieved to see the river bottom, clear and close. Before I had time to be thankful, I was lifted in one strong movement and set on my feet in shallow water. For a few seconds I stood, lightheaded, and then I realized that while I had been worrying about slipping off Father’s back, I had forgotten to think about Mother.

  I turned to look, and I was surprised to see that the dark channel of rough water had so easily divided our family into two parts.

  “Mother!” I called out. “Swim across. I’ll wait for you.”

  But she only smiled and waved, and stayed where she was.

  The midday light had made its way down to the clearing, and when I scrunched my eyelids almost shut, golden needles of sun glinted against the blackness of Mother’s hair. Her hair was long but she had bangs and, always, the two curls, one on either side of her forehead. She seemed to be thinking about something when I called out, but she shielded her eyes with one hand and motioned to me with the other. Her fingers flicked forward to tell me to follow Father, who was striding off, leaving me behind. Hiroshi and Keiko were already out of sight; I could hear them talking and laughing as they explored. I turned again to glance over my shoulder, but Mother was small now, far away. She had leaned forward, perhaps to unwrap one of the food parcels she’d carried down the embankment, perhaps to stare at the ground or to look at a rock or an insect that had caught her attention. I knew I had to join the others, and I reluctantly followed their voices and rounded the curve of the island. Sharp rocks jabbed the soles of my feet, and I tried not to yelp as I ran to catch up. I pushed the image of Mother away. Just because I was the youngest didn’t mean I was a baby. Nothing could make me look back again.

  When I caught up to Hiroshi and Keiko, they were splashing about in the water on the far side of the island, turning over clams and pebbles to search for treasure, specks of fool’s gold they hoped to scoop up and carry home. I lagged behind and then waded the few feet back to shore. I reached up to a low tree and snapped a branch that felt exactly right to my palm. I returned to the water and poked the end of the branch under a flat rock, flipping it over so that I could see the array of living creatures attached to its underside. The rock, I told myself, had extended an invitation, had offered protection, a shadowy place to hide. And some of the river’s smallest creatures had accepted the invitation and decided to stay.

  The summer before, during our annual end-of-summer picnic and while we were still on the main shore, Father had explained to me that a flat rock in the river was always a guarantee of something beneath: tiny minnows with large heads and protruding bead eyes, minnows that darted towards my toes and could take me by surprise; cased larvae bonded with grains of sand and bits of pebble and stick; raised black dots that might be some sort of egg.

  What sort of egg? I had asked at the time.

  But Father didn’t know.

  I wanted an answer. A year later, I still wanted an answer. Thinking back, I kicked at loose gravel and watched my feet disappear as the bottom turned to murk and cloud. I inhaled the smell of river deep into my lungs.

  “Are! Are! Come see! Come see!”

  My concentration was broken by the shouts of my brother and sister, and by the terse voice of our father. I was curious to know what they had discovered, but I stayed where I was because I had found treasure of my own: a resting caddis fly, its wings folded in the shape of a peaked tent, the tiniest tent imaginable. I squatted to stare, and I marvelled.

  When at last it was time to leave the island, Father called me to his side. I might have been last over, but because I was the youngest, I would be first to go back. I thought of Mother again, and looked anxiously across the channel, relieved to see her sitting on a rock shelf, her legs stretched out. So seldom did I see her outside, sitting idly like this, I wondered for a moment if the person on the far bank was the same one who stayed inside most of the time, cooking, baking, sewing, knitting, washing and mending clothes, sweeping, keeping our place clean. Indeed, it was Mother, and she was staring downriver as if her eyes were following the current as it swept along on its journey to the coast.

  Father hoisted me up with a single hand, as if to remind me that I weighed no more than a dried and brittle clam. Back we went, over turquoise and marble green and muddy water, until I was handed into the outstretched arms of my mother. She wrapped a towel tightly around me and began to rub at my heels because she knew, without being told, that my feet were stinging with pain from playing in the cold river. Father returned to the island and swam alongside Keiko, and then he went back for Hiroshi. Finally, we were all safely returned to the main shore.

  Mother had set out picnic food, knowing how hungry we would be, and she lifted a square of damp cotton to reveal thinly sliced strips of omelette. Earlier in the morning, Keiko had helped to make nigiri sushi—balls of rice pressed to diamond shapes, with black sesame and dried seaweed sprinkled overtop. There were homemade pickles, tsukemono; thick radishes from the garden; and for dessert, a large hot cross bun for each of us, decorated with thin lines of white icing. Hiroshi was sent to fetch the jug that had been set in scooped-out gravel at the outlet of a cold spring that fed into the river. I watched as Mother added sugar to the water and then poured in the contents of a corked vial, which she shook end to end, dispersing a thick and oily lemon extract. She tilted the jug until the yellow colour had spread throughout the liquid, and then she held it to the sun. Satisfied, she poured the lemonade into our waiting cups.

  Father kept urging us to eat, to finish every bite of the food we had carried down the embankment. With his chopsticks, he passed me an extra helping of sushi, and then he offered me half of his hot cross bun. He had never done this before, and I glanced up at Mother to see if I should accept. She nodded yes, and looked towards the river while I ate my own and then half of my father’s dessert. Hiroshi and Keiko looked on in envy.

  As soon as we finished eating, Father told Keiko to stay
with Mother to help clean up. Hiroshi and I were to follow him along the bank while he checked his fishing line. As we approached the cotton-wood tree, we could see that the line he had attached to the branch was badly shredded.

  Father nodded darkly and said, “Only a great fish would break such a line.”

  Hiroshi nodded, assuming the same expression.

  I looked up at Father and saw a quick flash of anger, but I saw something else, too. Respect for the great fish. The summer before, I had watched him and several other fishermen haul in a large sturgeon, longer than my own body. I had shrunk back, out of the way, awed by its gaping gills and slow-moving tail, by the ridge on its back, by its mottled, purplish-pink skin. I had seen respect then, too, on the faces of men who were no longer permitted to fish in coastal waters. They fished below camp in the mighty Fraser and with makeshift equipment—their own having been stolen or auctioned off. But this was not the ocean.

  In the late afternoon, our picnic came to an end for another year. Fatigued, sated with food and sun and fresh air, we began the slow, steep climb up the sand-and-gravel trail towards our shack. My head was filled with images of rock and canyon and river below, though the picnic site could not be seen once we had crossed the garden plots and the dirt road.

  Mother seemed preoccupied when we were home again, but she warmed some green tea and gave us a snack and, just before sunset, sent us up the trail to the Bench so that we could pick berries before bedtime.

  I knew exactly where to find raspberries and currants on the plateau, and I scrambled up behind my brother and sister, knowing that other children would be there, too. We spread out, intent on filling our buckets, and I wandered away by myself until I came to a thick clump of raspberry canes. The silence of the mountain settled around me, though I was aware of occasional spurts of laughter and a low murmur of voices drifting in and out of the evening air.

  I tried to remember all that had happened since early morning: the excitement of waking on picnic day; the walk down the steep trail; the wriggling, darting creatures of the Fraser; the changing colours of the big river; the scent beneath the cottonwoods; the feel of the branch in my palm when I poked and prodded under rocks. I thought of Mother’s arms reaching for me when I was first to return across the channel on Father’s back. I thought of the way she had rubbed at my heels to warm my feet. I thought of the perfect yellow lemonade and the sticky-sweet taste of hot cross buns and the extra portion I had been given by my father. I looked down over the fast river, which could be seen from the height of the Bench, and I told myself that this had been the happiest day of my life.