One Bird

by Kyoko Mori

  Kiyoshi holds his head up higher and stiffens his back. “I’m not saying that my father is a narrow-minded person or a hypocrite. He is a very good minister.” He turns sideways and scowls into my face, his big nose turned up and his eyes looking very cold.

  What is wrong with him? He is actually getting mad at me, when I was trying to take his side and console him. He keeps giving me a cold look, his mouth drawn thin and hard. If we were children, I would punch him and run back home alone. Why did he decide to walk with me? He should have stayed home if all he was going to do was pick fights with me and talk about what a great Christian Keiko is.

  We proceed past the train station and then down a street lined with bakeries, delicatessens, boutiques. Neither of us speaks. At the end of the block, Kiyoshi stops abruptly in front of a bar that has a lavender-painted door. THE ORCHID JAZZ CLUB, the sign above the door reads.

  He stares at the sign as if to evaluate it and then starts walking again. “Toru and Takashi Uchida are back in town,” he says.

  “They are?” I ask. “How do you know?”

  “I saw Takashi at school. We have a gym class together.”

  I haven’t seen or heard from the Uchida boys for almost five years, since they went to live with some relatives in Tokyo following Mrs. Uchida’s death.

  Kiyoshi glances back and points at the jazz bar. “Takashi said Toru works there.”

  “At the bar?”

  He shrugs. “They don’t go to church anymore. They stopped being Christians when they moved to their grandparents’ house.”

  That wasn’t what I meant. I was thinking that Toru would not be old enough to work at a bar, but maybe he is. He is more than five years older than the rest of us. He would be twenty or twenty-one, a few years out of high school.

  “My father says that’s the problem with families where only the woman is a Christian,” Kiyoshi continues. “It’s hard for the children to keep up their faith. If he had a daughter, he wouldn’t want her married to a nonbeliever, the way your mother and Mrs. Uchida were.”

  We turn the corner and start climbing the steep hill of my neighborhood. Toru and Takashi must have come back to live with their father because they are finally old enough to take care of themselves and not be a burden. If Grandmother Shimizu had not agreed to rent out her house in Tokyo and come to stay with us, I might have been sent to live with her for a few years until I was old enough to keep house for Father. It makes no sense—that I am supposed to give up my mother, who can take care of me, and live with Father, who cannot even keep house for himself and is never home. “That isn’t fair,” Dr. Mizutani said about women having to leave their children. She is right.

  “My father was worried about you,” Kiyoshi says, “right after your mother went away. He was afraid that you might stop coming to church.”

  Though Kiyoshi looks sympathetic for the first time all morning, I am too stunned to answer. What a petty thing for Pastor Kato to worry about. He should have been concerned about me feeling lonely. Instead, he’s been watching my church attendance. It’s no use saying any of this to Kiyoshi, so I just look up at the sky. An airplane is flying overhead, trailing a jet stream like a white river. When we were in kindergarten, every time one of us spotted an airplane all the kids would run to the window, pointing and shouting. There must have been fewer planes flying over Ashiya back then. Seeing one used to be a special occasion.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” Kiyoshi says in front of my house. “You’re coming to the Bible study meeting, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll try. I may not if my father is home. He doesn’t like to see me going to church twice a day.”

  “Well, that’s his problem,” he says, already turning away.

  * * *

  The house is locked, with nobody home. My father came home late last night, only to leave early in the morning to play golf with his friends from work. Grandmother must have gone to the store, carrying her small woven basket in the crook of her arm. While other women from our neighborhood bring their shopping carts and return with at least a few days’ groceries, Grandmother goes every afternoon with her tiny basket. Then she complains about how she must walk several blocks to the store every day, how her back aches from walking up and down the hill. She could make her work simpler if she wanted to.

  I unlock the door and run up to my room to put away my mother’s letter in the desk drawer. It feels good to take off the church clothes and change into my jeans and T-shirt. Putting on my sneakers, I run out the door and up the hill to Dr. Mizutani’s.

  * * *

  A crow is making a racket inside a large pet carrier, cawing and screeching. His right leg taped around a splint, he staggers a step or two and almost falls over when he opens his ragged wings. He slouches down in the corner, his wings drooping shut. He reminds me of an old, beat-up umbrella.

  Dr. Mizutani puts on leather gloves that go up past her elbows. “He’s not a happy bird,” she says. Opening the carrier, she grabs the bird by the legs and stuffs him inside the cardboard box I am holding open. We hoist the box up onto a scale that hangs from the ceiling. Frowning, the doctor watches the needle swing.

  “Not too bad,” she says. “His weight is pretty good, considering.” She takes down the box and pulls out the bird, who seems temporarily dazed. “But he’s not eating much on his own. Let’s feed him.”

  We go over to the counter, where I have thawed and cut up some meat—from what sort of animal, I don’t want to ask. The first day I came to work, two weeks ago, I opened the freezer and discovered a bag of frozen rats, all of them with paws curled up and teeth sticking out in sinister smiles. I almost got sick right then. I tried not to let on. Dr. Mizutani must have seen my face, all the same. “We don’t use those very often,” she said. “And if we do, I won’t make you cut them up.”

  “Okay,” she says, grasping the crow by the legs in one hand and holding his wings shut with the other. “I’ve got him. He can’t jump out and bite you. Go ahead.”

  Picking up a small piece of meat with the tongs in my left hand, I walk up to the crow and place my right thumbnail in the corner of his mouth. Bristly black feathers cover the bottom quarter of his beak. They are thick and iridescent. His beak is the only part of him that looks completely healthy; it is solid and glossy black, slightly curved, like a handle of a treasure chest. Slowly, I insert the tip of my index fingernail in the other corner of his mouth and press until his beak opens up.

  “Great job.” Dr. Mizutani nods.

  Holding the bird’s mouth open, I shove in the first piece of meat, as far down his throat as I can, and quickly pull back the tongs. Then I hold the beak closed inside my fist so the bird cannot open his mouth and spit out the food.

  “Stroke his throat so he has to swallow.”

  With the smooth part of the tongs, I stroke his throat and neck. His small shiny eyes watch me warily.

  “I think he likes you,” the doctor says.

  I feed him five pieces of meat, until the bird opens his beak after the throat-stroking and spits back the last piece he had somehow been holding in his mouth. He caws and hisses at me.

  Dr. Mizutani laughs. “I guess he’s had enough.” She places the bird back into the carrier, where he caws for a while and then is quiet.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I hope so. He looks bad, I know. But I want to give him a chance.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Sit down. I’ll tell you.” She points to one of the hard-backed chairs along the counter. “A woman called me Thursday morning, right around dawn,” she begins, pacing back and forth in front of my chair. Even in her loose-fitting white lab coat, the doctor looks thin, though not exactly frail. “I was just waking up. I could hardly hear the woman; she was whispering. She kept saying something about bad luck. As it turned out, this crow was caught in a leg-hold trap in the woods, set for some other bird—owls, maybe, or hawks. People trap them illegally and mount them for decoration
s.” She crosses her arms, hugging herself as though she were cold. “The trap must not have been pinned down very well. The woman’s house was right next to the woods. So the crow came into the her yard, dragging the trap. The woman’s husband was outside trying to kill him because he thought crows bring bad luck. The woman thought so, too—only she thought killing the bird would bring worse luck, so she called me. Imagine that.” Dr. Mizutani uncrosses her arms and flings them down. “She only wanted to save him because she was superstitious, not because she was appalled by her husband’s cruelty. I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and drove over. The house was only a mile west of here. I got there in no time.”

  “You went up to the woman’s husband and told him to stop?”

  She nods. “He wasn’t alone. A few other men had come from the houses in the neighborhood carrying rakes and brooms. No one had a gun. The men were trying to hit the bird, to beat him to death, but he was putting up a good fight. He was screeching and hissing at them, and every time he moved, the metal trap made a terrible clonking sound. Lucky for him, the noise must have scared the men. Maybe they were superstitious. No one wanted to be the one to kill him. But they did hit him a few times. When I examined him later, I found some swelling on his back—that isn’t from the trap. He’s lucky they didn’t hit him in the head or break his wings.”

  I try to picture the doctor, this thin young woman, walking up to a group of men she had never seen.

  “I told the men they’d better back off. I threatened to call the police. People can’t kill wild birds in the city. Cruelty to animals is a crime. What I really wanted to do was to grab one of the rakes and hit back. I didn’t, of course. I put the bird in the carrier and left as soon as I could. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do much for him. If not, I wanted to put him out of his misery as quickly as I could. Now, I don’t know. He isn’t as bad as I first thought he would be. He only had one leg caught in the trap. That leg is broken, but it’s a clean break so it might heal. He must not have been in the trap for more than a couple of hours, so he wasn’t starved and dehydrated. I saw another bird last year, an owl, also caught in a trap. His feet and legs were crushed and he was almost starved to death. I put him down. This crow is in pretty good condition compared to that. Still, I hope I’m not just prolonging his suffering.”

  Inside the carrier, the crow is cawing again. His voice sounds sad, full of complaints. You were a lucky bird, I want to tell him, to meet a kind and brave woman.

  * * *

  At four-thirty, back at my house, the telephone rings while I am reading in my room. Grandmother is busy cooking in the kitchen. I run down the stairs into the front hallway to pick up the receiver.

  “Hello,” Father says. There is music playing in the background—a symphony. He must be at the clubhouse of the golf course. “How was your day?” he asks, his voice cheerful, in a forced way.

  If we were face-to-face, I would just shrug and not even answer. But we are on the phone, so I have to say something. “Fine,” I mutter.

  “You’re not in a sulk, are you? Are you upset about something?” he asks, half laughing.

  I am upset, about all kinds of things. I can’t talk to Kiyoshi anymore without one of us getting mad; it bothers me that he has been so easily taken in by Keiko’s new piousness. I’m mad at myself, too, for not having told him the truth about my loss of faith. As though that weren’t enough, my mother has written another letter full of platitudes, and she refuses to talk to me on the phone. And all over my city, people don’t care about animals—men try to kill an injured bird with garden rakes. But how can I tell Father about my unhappiness when he is the biggest cause of it all? If it weren’t for him, Mother wouldn’t have had to leave me or lie to me. If he hadn’t made her so unhappy, maybe she wouldn’t have become such a coward, afraid of hurting other people’s feelings—so afraid that she cannot be honest.

  In silence, Father waits for my answer, as though he really cared about my happiness.

  “No, I’m not upset,” I say through gritted teeth.

  He doesn’t notice the tone. “Good,” he says in his cheerful voice. “Is your grandmother home?”

  “Yes. She is in the kitchen.”

  “Let me speak with her.”

  After handing over the phone, I stay around in the hallway listening. Grandmother says very little except, “Yes,” “That’s fine,” “All right.” Though their voices sound nothing alike, she says the same things Mother used to say.

  As soon as she hangs up, I ask, “Father isn’t coming home, is he?”

  She makes a sour face. “He played golf later than he was planning to. He has an early morning meeting in Hiroshima, so he decided to go there tonight and take a hotel room. That way he doesn’t have to get up early and rush off.”

  Just like Mother, Grandmother Shimizu reports Father’s lame lie without comment. He has planned all along to leave for Hiroshima from the golf course. He must have left this morning with his overnight bag packed—unless he has clothes and shoes at Tomiko Hayashi’s. That’s more likely. Father must have a closet full of belongings at her apartment by now. I imagine a cramped tatami room above a bar, his clothes and hers crammed together inside a cheap dresser.

  Without speaking, I follow my grandmother into the kitchen, where she has been preparing the broth for the seafood stew Father likes. The broth is made by simmering dried fish heads and chopped vegetables for hours. No one likes the stew except him.

  In silence, Grandmother Shimizu begins to strain the broth, putting the liquid into a plastic container to save for another day. She empties the strainer into the garbage pail, tap-tapping it over the edge. The shriveled fish heads tumble out into the pail and clonk against the plastic.

  “Grandmother,” I call.

  She looks up, her eyes tired, almost sad.

  “I can make supper, if you’d like. It’s just the two of us. We could have something simple.”

  Immediately she stiffens; the muscles of her thin neck stick out as she tightens her lips. She snorts, a humph noise blowing through her nose. “There is no reason not to have a proper supper just because your father is too busy.” Without another word, she opens the refrigerator and begins to rummage.

  “Would you like some help?” I ask.

  Instead of answering, she grumbles, “Don’t you have some homework?” She doesn’t even turn around to look at me.

  My mother would have smiled sadly and accepted my help. When Father called at the last minute and stayed out, I made her supper or we went out to eat, and she was particularly nice to me, trying to listen to my chatter and laugh at the jokes I told to cheer her up. Maybe that was part of her being a coward—her pretending everything was all right when it wasn’t. Still, there is a big difference between her and Grandmother Shimizu or Father. Whatever Mother did wrong, she has never blamed me or been mean to me like Grandmother Shimizu, who won’t even let me cheer her up. Her back still turned to me, Grandmother picks up a head of lettuce and puts it down. I can imagine her face without seeing it: She is scowling at the lettuce as though it had intentionally disappointed her. It was stupid of me to try to cheer her up. She doesn’t want to feel better; she’d rather stay mad—just like she prefers to go to the store every day so she can complain about her aching back.

  I stand around for a few seconds and then go up to my room, leaving Grandmother to chop off the heads of carrots and tear up the green leaves of lettuce. I wish she were just a mean old woman and not my grandmother.

  * * *

  I start back for the church after supper. It’s six-thirty; the streets are dark though the sky over the mountains is still red with the afterglow of the sunset. The Bible study meeting begins at seven, in the living room of the rectory. There will be only six or seven people—two older women, a few college students, Kiyoshi, and me. With Easter coming up next week, we have been studying the Gospel passages about the Passion. Last week, we read the chapter in the Gospel According to John, about Pontius
Pilate questioning Jesus. The last thing Pilate asked was, “What is truth?”

  “What do you think of that question?” Pastor Kato asked, sliding his reading glasses off his nose to peer at us from his big stuffed chair. “Why didn’t Jesus answer him?”

  Everyone, sitting in the various chairs and couches scattered around the room, fidgeted for a long time. Finally, I said what seemed obvious from the start.

  “According to the Bible, Jesus is the truth, so Pilate’s question was stupid. He was standing right in front of Jesus and asking what the truth was, as though it were somewhere else. Jesus didn’t answer because the answer was obvious.”

  Pastor Kato beamed at me, nodding his head so vigorously that his thinning hair—what’s left of it—bounced up and down on his head. “That’s right. The Gospel According to John, the rest of you might want to remember, starts with a reference to the one true word that was always with God. That true word, of course, is Christ.”

  After the meeting, a college girl who had been confirmed with Kiyoshi came up to me. “You are so smart,” she said with a sigh. “I read the Bible every day, but my understanding is nothing like yours.”

  I stared at the girl’s high forehead and horn-rimmed glasses, wishing I could tell her the truth: Answers like that come easily to me, but they mean nothing.

  Walking down the hill now, I am irritated to remember her serious face. I’m tired of people telling me how smart I am. I hear that at school, too. “But you’re different,” many girls—though not my best friends—say to me. “You are smart.” Then they shrug in a half-hearted way, as if they had given up on themselves and had chosen me to go on being smart all by myself. In almost every class, these girls sit silently, waiting for me to give the right answer. The teachers call on me when no one speaks. I used to love raising my hand both at school and at church, waiting to be called on. Not anymore. I sit silently, knowing that sooner or later I will be singled out to give the answer.

  Though Kiyoshi seldom answers his father’s questions, he gets mad at me for holding back. Ever since he was confirmed, Kiyoshi has been irritable about religion. For years before that, we talked to each other about our faith, our doubts. Now he doesn’t ask me about when or if I plan to get confirmed. Maybe he already knows that I don’t believe anymore. I should just tell him the truth instead of pretending to believe week after week, month after month. I am the biggest hypocrite, I think, as I trudge down the hill. How can I accuse my mother of being a liar and a coward when, by waiting and pretending, I am doing exactly the same thing she did?