One Bird

by Kyoko Mori

  After the final verse, I mouth the word “Amen” but do not sing it. Amen means “so be it.” How can I say that when I won’t be participating in Communion? I am not eager to accept God’s gifts, the way the hymn says. I glance sideways to see if Kiyoshi has noticed my omission. His face turned straight forward, he doesn’t notice anything but his own eagerness for the holy supper.

  The folding chairs squeak and scrape as we sit down. Mrs. Wada and Miss Fujimoto go up to the altar, take the silver tray Pastor Kato has blessed, and begin to pass it back and forth down the rows of chairs. When the tray comes to me, I hold it in my lap for a second. Though only a dozen people take Communion every month, Mrs. Wada has prepared at least thirty doll-sized glasses of grape juice and a mound of bread, cut into thumbnail-sized cubes. The bread reminds me of the crumbs my mother used to scatter on the back porch for the birds. Only sparrows were bold enough to come so close to the house; still, we never tired of watching them, especially in the spring, when the birds brought their babies and fed them beak to beak. Fat and fluffy, the babies fluttered their wings as if to stay balanced, just as swimmers move their legs and arms to keep afloat. The sparrows grew fast. By June we could not tell the young birds from the rest of the flock; by then, every bird ate alone, minding his own business.

  Passing the tray untouched to Kiyoshi, I watch him pick up a piece of bread and put it in his mouth. His throat moves when he swallows, his mouth closed tightly. Lifting the tiny glass to his lips, he drains the few drops of juice. I imagine his soul—a small sparrow flying inside his chest, wings fluttering against his rib cage. Last Christmas, while Kiyoshi declared his faith in front of the congregation and was confirmed, I sat in the back applauding and trying to feel sincere. I wanted to be happy for him, but I was embarrassed more than anything. As the pastor blessed Kiyoshi, I could feel the older people in the congregation wondering why I wasn’t up there with him. Even my mother, who was sitting next to me at the service, seemed a little sad. Watching Kiyoshi up there, she must have thought about when he and I were babies.

  In my album, there is a picture of Kiyoshi, Takashi Uchida, and me wrapped in identical white baby shawls for our baptismal blessings. The same picture must be in the boys’ albums, too. Our mothers often told us that Kiyoshi and Takashi cried when Pastor Kato sprinkled water on their almost-bald heads, while I gurgled with laughter, as if I were delighted to be blessed. Kiyoshi turned out to be the one to renew those blessings by choosing the Lord on his own, as an adult. Sitting next to my mother at the confirmation service, I couldn’t help wondering if she was disappointed in me. Though I hadn’t been sure about God for years, I never said anything to her. She had more than enough things to be sad about. I couldn’t make her stay awake at night, worrying about me not going to heaven with her and the Katos.

  Kiyoshi bows his head for a moment, offering a silent prayer. Miss Fujimoto is leaning over to take the tray from him, to pass it to the people in back. She glances into my eyes; immediately I look down. Miss Fujimoto used to teach Bible study classes at Christian Girls’ Academy—she was once my mother’s, Mrs. Kato’s, and Mrs. Uchida’s teacher. She was also my Sunday school teacher a few years ago. Her favorite Bible story was about Jesus leaving his ninety-nine sheep to go and look for the one sheep that was lost. Every time Miss Fujimoto sees me at church these days, she must think of that lost sheep. She doesn’t know what I really think. If I were that sheep, I would tell Jesus and the rest of the flock, Go on your way and don’t mind me. I like being on my own.

  As Miss Fujimoto moves on down the aisle, I look up at the hothouse flowers. My mother, who used to arrange flowers for church, would never have used these. In April, she would have chosen budding branches of cherries, pansies, and jasmine from her own garden, a large bouquet of white tulips. Mother always found something natural and appropriate to the season. Flower arrangement, she told me, was all about being in harmony with the seasons, with the natural world. Last year, in the middle of February, she brought bare cherry branches and a handful of peacock feathers shed in autumn. The bright green and blue eyes floated among the dark branches like planets suspended in the sky. If she could have stayed with us and kept bringing flowers, I might have been able to believe in God. I might have felt more hopeful when the pastor talked about the beauty of the world and the grandeur of God’s plans.

  * * *

  After the service, I follow Kiyoshi across the churchyard and up the steps to the rectory. In his family’s kitchen, he hands me my mother’s letter. While I am opening the envelope, he goes to the refrigerator, pours a tall glass of milk, and tips it toward his face.

  “Do you want some milk?” he asks, already finished with his.

  “No, thanks.” No girl would pour and drink her own beverage before offering some to a friend.

  Kiyoshi stands by the table, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I unfold my mother’s letter; my hands are beginning to shake. This is her first letter in more than a month—ever since I asked her if I could talk to her on the phone. The words run top to bottom in the old style, written in black calligraphy ink on white paper. There is only one page. My eyes skim through the brush strokes, looking for bad news.

  Dear Megumi,

  I hope you had a good spring break and started the new school year feeling well rested. You must be excited about your new classes. Whatever you do, though, please be careful not to overwork yourself. I have always been proud of how well you do in school. But remember, your health is more important than any achievement. Try to study in moderation. I worry about you.

  Everything is fine here. My father has gotten some substantial orders for wedding gowns. He and I are busy embroidering every day. He has hired back Mrs. Toda because his fingers are getting too stiff for some of the detailed work. His designs, however, are as beautiful as ever. I especially like his cranes, pine groves, and peony blossoms. We wish you could see them.

  My father and I think of you every day. I am praying that God will comfort you. My father prays at the Buddhist altar, asking the spirits of your grandmother, my brother, Susumu, and all our ancestors to watch over you. I used to think that I had disappointed my parents by turning away from their religion, but these days, I feel at peace. In a way, my father and I are praying to the same God even though we have different names for Him. We respect each other’s form of devotion and know that you are in good hands.

  Now I must give you my answer, which I know you will not like. About your calling me on the telephone—my answer, I’m afraid, is no. Megumi, I cannot bear to hear your voice when I know we cannot see each other. I know you will feel the same way. Writing letters is another matter, since we can collect our thoughts in private and compose letters that encourage each other to be strong. If we were to talk on the phone, we would not be able to remain so calm. We would both cry and be more miserable than before. Trust my judgment on this.

  I apologize that this letter is so late in coming to you. I wanted to write immediately and give you my answer, once and for all, about the telephone calls. But I couldn’t. I kept thinking of how disappointed you would be, and I could not make myself write. I thought about it over and over, and prayed, too, for guidance. My answer is still the same. Forgive me. Please know that I am thinking of you day and night, that I miss and love you.

  Good-bye for now. Please send my regards to the Katos.

  Your mother, Chie

  I fold up the letter and stick it in the pocket of my skirt. “I’d better get going,” I say, my voice sounding weak and unhappy. My mother is a coward. She is afraid to talk to me on the telephone because we might cry. She couldn’t answer my letter right away because she was afraid of upsetting me. By waiting she has only wasted her time and upset me even more. If she was going to say no, she should have said it right away, instead of keeping me in the dark for a month and starting her letter with unimportant news. Why doesn’t she understand that I would rather know the truth—even if it’s bad news—than be pacified wi
th lies?

  “This is a terrible letter,” I blurt out while following Kiyoshi down the steps. “My mother won’t talk to me on the phone because she thinks it will make us sad. But she can’t even come out and say that right away. She has to first go on about embroidery and tell me to study in moderation because my health is more important. How could she write such a stupid letter?”

  Kiyoshi stops in the middle of the stairway and whips around to face me. “I’m sure your mother means well,” he admonishes, frowning. “She wants to say only the positive things. She doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. It’s selfish of you to blame her for that.”

  I am too surprised to speak. My friends at school would have said, “That’s awful. I’m sorry to hear your mother’s being so unreasonable,” or “I’m sorry. I would be upset, too.” Though their remarks may mean little, I would have been comforted by their sympathy. Why can’t Kiyoshi, too, say something kind? I would have been happy to know that he cared about me and worried about my feelings even if he doesn’t understand everything I’m going through. I know for certain that no girl would criticize me when I am already feeling bad. Kiyoshi didn’t always do that, either. But in the last year or two, he has often contradicted me when I have been upset with something or somebody—going out of his way to take the other person’s side and insisting that he was trying to be fair, that he only wanted to tell the truth.

  “What do you expect her to say?” he presses, in a loud, angry voice.

  “I don’t know. Something other than platitudes.”

  He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be so judgmental. You know your mother feels lonely. Why not be more sympathetic?” He spins around and runs down the steps before I have a chance to tell him that he is the one who’s being judgmental.

  Following him down, I’m glad I have not told him anything more about Mother’s letter, that she thinks being a Christian is the same as being a Buddhist. Kiyoshi would be appalled to hear that. Pastor Kato would assume that Mother was losing her faith, and even Mrs. Kato would be shocked. Whatever Mother really meant by her words, I know I should never tell anyone. Lately, my mind is filled with things I cannot tell anyone. No matter how much my friends care about me, almost everything I think about is beyond their true understanding. The best they can do is to offer small consolations.

  Outside, the sun is shining on the white gravel of the parking lot. A few cars are left. Some old people must still be drinking tea in the fellowship hall, downstairs from the rectory. When Kiyoshi and I were in grade school, there were other children at our church—boys and girls whose mothers, like ours, had converted to Christianity in their school days during the war. But the women have stopped coming, and so have their children. Every year our congregation is smaller. Now it is mostly old people and a few high school and college students who come for a few months and then stop, to be replaced by others like them.

  “Come on,” Kiyoshi says at the gate. “I’ll walk you home.”

  Don’t bother, I want to tell him. I can walk by myself. But if I said that, he would think I was sulking because he was right and I was too proud to admit it.

  He is already walking out the gate. I shrug my shoulders and quicken my steps to catch up.

  * * *

  From the gravel path by the Ashiya River, the water looks low, as it has been for the last few years. It’s hard to imagine the floods and tidal waves we learned about in our civic history classes. A kingfisher skims the surface and then flits out of sight. Up on the hill to the northeast, our old grade school juts out of the green pines. The small windows glitter in the sunlight against the cream-colored facade.

  “Your neighbor Keiko Yamasaki is in my biology class at the new high school,” Kiyoshi says as we walk side by side on the path.

  “What?” I say, hardly concealing my surprise. Kiyoshi and Keiko had gone to different public junior high schools. I had forgotten that they would both be attending Ashiya North for senior high. “How is Keiko?” I ask, trying to sound casual. I have never told Kiyoshi the particulars of our falling-out, though he must have noticed that I never mention her anymore.

  “Very well. She says she started going to church again recently—a small church in Kobe that emphasizes studying the Bible.”

  “That’s good.” I wonder if he notices the sour note creeping into my voice.

  “We decided to be lab partners,” Kiyoshi continues. “Our teacher said we could choose anyone.”

  “I didn’t think you and Keiko would remember each other so well. You only knew each other because of me.”

  “Of course we remember each other. Don’t be silly. Anyway, we already had a lab session, on the second day of school last week.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We tested our blood types.”

  I wince in spite of myself. We did the same lab work last year at my school, during the winter term. While Mr. Sugimoto, our teacher, was handing out the clean needles, I started feeling queasy. Still, I cleaned my right index finger with the cotton ball and held the needle in my left hand, trying to work up my courage. I didn’t want to be squeamish or silly, but I couldn’t help the icy, numb feeling that made my fingers curl up tight. I thought about the sharp tip piercing through the skin, digging across a few millimeters of flesh, and then making a tiny hole in the wall of my vein. My hands began to shake, and I felt hot and cold at the same time. When I finally pushed the needle in, though, no blood came out. So I had to prick my finger again, then again—three times—before I saw a tiny speck of blood through the skin. My ears started ringing with a sound that reminded me of faraway waterfalls. It was impossible not to think about rivers of blood. Taking a deep breath, I squeezed my finger in spite of the sick feeling that was starting in my chest and stomach. Blood slowly beaded up like the heads of the fancy dressmaker’s pins in my mother’s sewing box. Next thing I knew, I was in the nurse’s office, unable to remember how I had gotten there.

  “You think too much,” my lab partner, Mieko, laughed when I tried to explain why I had fainted. Mieko is one of my two best friends at school. She is a sensible person, but she was wrong this once. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it, either,” she said, her round face dimpled with laughter, “if I had thought about every detail the way you did. You should have just taken a deep breath and pushed the needle in. It was easy if you didn’t think.”

  What she said made no sense at all. I can’t blank out my mind the same way I would clear off my desk. It’s one thing to stop thinking about something that happened a long time ago or something that might happen in the future. If I try very hard, I can even take my mind off an annoying incident from yesterday or a worrisome event scheduled for tomorrow. But how can I, or anyone, not think about something that is happening right at the present moment? That is simply impossible.

  “I hated that experiment,” I confess to Kiyoshi. “I fainted.”

  “Keiko was afraid at first, too,” he says, smiling. “I told her that I would poke her finger for her if she didn’t want to do it herself. But she wouldn’t trust me. In the end, she could overcome her fear because—this is what she said—she thought about Jesus. When she remembered how much Jesus had to suffer on the cross, she realized that pricking her finger was nothing.”

  Without thinking, I burst out laughing. “What a silly idea,” I say.

  Kiyoshi shoots a sharp glance at me. A hard line forms along his big square jaw. “What’s so silly about that?”

  His brown shoes are coming down flat and hard on the path. They are too tight across the instep, and they look wrong for his black pants and pale blue shirt. I am suddenly sick of the way he is dressed, and the way I am dressed, too—in my pleated blue skirt and white blouse, clothes I wear only to church.

  “I don’t think there is anything wrong with thinking about Jesus at school, do you?” Kiyoshi presses. “God isn’t just for Sundays, at church.”

  For me, I want to shout, God isn’t for any day of the week. I don’t be
lieve anymore. I keep coming to church out of habit, or just to get out of staying home with my grandmother. But the words shrivel up in my throat and refuse to come out. Maybe this is how Kiyoshi felt when his voice was changing and he could only speak in whispers and croaks. My throat hurts as if it were sticky and full of lumps, crammed shut with words that had been stuck there for years.

  In silence, we walk away from the riverbank, toward the commuter train station. Most of the houses we pass in this stretch were built before the war. They have new additions in the back or over the garage, the shiny stone and concrete stuck on top of old wood.

  “Keiko says that the pastor of her church is touched by the Holy Spirit,” Kiyoshi announces after a while. “He can speak in tongues.”

  I nod but say nothing.

  “Keiko is asking the Holy Spirit to touch her. She wants the gift of speaking in tongues someday.”

  How can Keiko be a religious person? Only two weeks ago, she was sitting on her patio in a flimsy spring dress, vain as ever.

  “My father doesn’t believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit,” Kiyoshi declares.

  “That’s not true. Your father is always talking about the Holy Trinity. Every Pentecost Sunday, he preaches about the Holy Spirit descending on the disciples.”

  “But he doesn’t think those gifts are for us. He said people who try to have visions or speak in tongues are wrong. They are asking God to prove His existence through signs rather than believing without seeing. He was mad at me for bringing up the subject. We had a big fight.” Kiyoshi sighs, shaking his head. His small eyes are scrunched up, looking tired and sad.

  “That’s too bad,” I offer, trying to speak in a soft and comforting voice. “I guess Pastor Kato can be a little stubborn sometimes. He shouldn’t get mad at you for wanting to talk about your faith, even if you two don’t always agree.”