The Shut Ins

by Katherine Brabon

  ‘My back aches,’ her mother says.

  ‘We can go to the baths.’

  Her mother nods once and motions for Hiromi to help her to the floor.

  They sit down to the breakfast Hiromi has prepared. She bought fresh fish yesterday, and vegetables, feeling shame that her mother mostly eats tuna or sardines from a can even though she lives at the mouth of the sea. Her mother moves slowly but reasonably well for a woman her age. In fact, Hiromi suspects her mother doesn’t need help getting down to the table, but that the opportunity for gentle dependence appeals to her.

  The sento close by is a small one, just a single bath for women and another for men. Hiromi and her mother scrub their bodies before they bathe, and Hiromi wonders how many times they have done this. She helps her mother up off the low wooden stool where she sits to wash and together they walk to the bath. It is somehow less of a shock to see her mother’s withering body when it is naked; she has seen it so many times before, seen so many bodies of women in public baths in Nagasaki, in Nagoya, that it is perhaps more troubling when the body is clothed. They lower themselves with quiet ceremony into the water. Hiromi finds peace in this moment. The heat of the water miraculously comforts after the heavy humidity of Nagasaki’s streets.

  After twenty minutes they leave the bath. They walk back through the wash room, where the air is warm and thick, while Hiromi thinks simultaneously of all the things that might have helped Hikaru over the years—perhaps she should have been tougher, or got her husband involved—and what they should eat today. And then, a few steps in front, her mother slowly collapses to the ground, like a snake shedding its skin in soft scale-flesh folds. Her head collides in apparent silence with the edge of the tiled shower area. The head is quick to bleed. When Hiromi reaches her mother, trails of blood already intersect with the water on the floor and in the showers. Her mother is conscious, her eyes open and looking up at Hiromi, and there is something bewildered in her look. She is naked and streaked with blood; Hiromi takes her mother in her arms, as soft and wrinkled as a newborn.

  Later, in the hospital, Hiromi relives her shock at seeing so much blood coming from her mother’s head, as if she’d thought the body would dry out with age.

  A doctor in middle age tends to her mother’s wound. He tells Hiromi the stitch will dissolve and the glue will form a scab and peel off with time. Her mother sleeps deeply.

  ‘You’re her usual carer, I assume?’

  ‘No, actually, I don’t live in the city anymore.’

  ‘Who is her regular carer?’

  ‘The neighbours look in on her. I visit. She does well by herself. This is the first incident.’ Hiromi is aware that her voice is tinged with a plea for forgiveness.

  The doctor nods and writes something down. ‘It might be worth considering some form of structured care for your mother. At this age, a fall can leave the body with a lot of trauma; sometimes things go downhill quickly.’ He has a full head of thick, healthy black hair, with just a few grey streaks that Hiromi finds striking.

  Hiromi nods and thanks the doctor. She wants to tell him how well her mother looks after herself, how agile she is for her age. But she cannot overcome the ancient shame of failing to care for a parent in old age.

  The doctor leaves and Hiromi sits with her mother. In the afternoon she tells the nurse she will go home to fetch some of her mother’s belongings. The nurse is young and smiles at Hiromi, fixing the edge of the sheet, pulling it tight over the bed.

  Outside, the afternoon heat greets Hiromi like a wave. She cannot find her bearings in this part of the city and has to ask for directions several times. Finally she takes the tram through the old Chinatown.

  The house is still and hot, coated in the particular softness of a house in the afternoon, when all the inhabitants are gone for the day. She walks into the room adjoining the living area and kneels in front of the small shrine. Her palms sweat as she rests her hands on her thighs and bows her head.

  The next days pass slow and strange; the humidity has horrifying strength. Hiromi visits her mother in the hospital in the morning and then again before dinner. The time in between she mostly spends alone. Sometimes she calls in on her mother’s neighbour, a woman in her sixties who is a childless widow. They have tea and brief conversations about the city and Hiromi’s mother, about the woman’s husband who died of cancer five years earlier. Hiromi hopes that this woman will help her by checking on her mother now and then, once Hiromi has gone back to Nagoya. Her act of desertion. And so she knows that these visits partly have that motive, or hope, lurking behind them. It is probably shameful, but Hiromi feels this so often, feels shame’s red cloud around her constantly, even as a girl when she failed in some way to do as well, to be as smart or fast as the other children, and especially as the mother of a failed son, and because the cloud is always with her it numbs, as if it is made of some drugging gas that dulls what a person feels. Coward son, she loves him. She feels a feverish despair while Nagasaki boils.

  Hiromi takes early walks when the air is warm but not yet unbearable. She likes to think of the times when Hikaru was very young, those strange twilight images from before he started school. They are thin memories, fragmented as a broken web, the time before the acceptable social role was laid out for him, with all the obligations, requirements, expectations—he only had to pick it up, put it on, live inside it.

  All this changed, of course. When her son reached the final years of high school, he started to be a refuser. No longer would he pretend to go. Hiromi would learn of his absence from the frustrated phone calls of his teachers. Soon he did not leave his room. He put a bookcase in front of the door so it was all but impossible to open. He only emerged sometimes during the day, when he was hungry, and would eat cold leftovers from the fridge. When his father was home, Hikaru refused to emerge at all. This is a disgrace, her husband yelled. You need to fix him. It was impossible to force him to go to school. Her son’s limbs had become stronger than her own; he could overcome her easily now. He would not open the door, he would not be forced out of his room.

  Hiromi was close to despair when she had the idea to send him to her brother’s house on the other side of Nagoya. Hikaru had always liked his uncle. Perhaps the change would instil in him an appreciation of hard work. Hikaru agreed to go.

  I hope you will learn the good feelings that come from working hard. Your uncle Koji is a good man. He started his shop from nothing, just like your grandparents started from nothing in Nagasaki. You will return and continue to work hard, and preserve the good face of our family.

  He returned in a matter of months, unable to cope with working, interacting with customers, living with his uncle. The red cloud of shame lived with her always. After that time, he retreated into his room, making only a few attempts at work. And then he went inside with a sense of finality. Three years now. Failed son, she loves him.

  She entered his room only once. Bitch, bitch mother, her son spat at her. His creamy sad mouth like that of an infant. Hiromi wondered whether her son had the capacity to inflict terrible violence. He jumped at her, wild with all kinds of fear, violated by the world that threatened him on the other side of his door. Her son’s long fingernails dug into the skin of her forehead as he clutched her face and screamed, trying to force her out of his room. Hiromi tripped backwards and they fell together, mother and son, her small frame first to the floor, Hikaru’s tall body helpless and crushing. His knee hit her stomach and then he fell to the side, rolling away from her. Hikaru had then stood up, his face scared and alert, as if waiting for her next move. Hiromi felt a kind of grey anger, a deep anger older even than she, long solidified and incapable of hot fire. She was silent; she understood. He had crossed the gate to the other side, but Hiromi did not know if he had entered the sacred or the profane world, or which one he had left her in.

  Hiromi’s thoughts go back earlier, to the time when he was alive, inside her, not yet of this world.

  Her pregnancy with Hika
ru had started well. She did not feel sick. In fact, she felt unusually well. She felt flutters of anticipation and deep affection. Her husband was pleased. He continued to work until late in the evenings, but now in the mornings he wished her a good day, standing on the threshold holding his briefcase; he looked her in the eye.

  In the fourth month she went to Nagasaki. It was the end of summer. Her father had recently retired, and her mother cared for Hiromi in ways she never had when her daughter was young. An early autumn breeze had finally reached the city, ridding the air of the worst of the humidity. One afternoon they went on an excursion to Konpira Shrine. They took a train to Urakami and then a taxi to the park.

  Her mother had packed lunch and they ate in a public picnic area. Hiromi had begun to feel tired as the afternoon wore on, and they made their way out of the forest. In her memory now she hears a shiver of shifting leaves, but that is perhaps something she has invented to foreshadow what happened next, the piercing sting on her lower calf. Her mother cried out as Hiromi crumpled to the forest floor, her leg aching. Her father hurried over. Hiromi had seen the snake sliding away over the earth but she could not say a word. Her father tied his belt over her leg and pulled it tight. Her calf bulged. Sweat coated her body as she held her growing stomach.

  In the hospital they gave her antivenom and said the bite was not life-threatening. They ran tests on the baby. There was still a strong heartbeat; everything appeared to be normal. Hiromi’s mother called her husband, assured him there was no need to come to Nagasaki. Hiromi stayed in the hospital overnight. In the blue glowing ward she lay wide awake in fear that she would lose her unborn child.

  For the next week at home in Nagoya she was terrified every time she felt the urge to urinate or felt any moisture in her underwear—was it blood, was the baby leaving her, too traumatised by the snake bite to stay growing inside her? She had a panic attack in Nagoya Station, paralysed and alone until a storekeeper noticed her. From then on the pregnancy was plagued. She had nightmares and several more panic attacks. A doctor prescribed her a sedative. Her husband became frustrated. Why did she have to make so much trouble?

  Hiromi thinks of this time now. She has never told Hikaru about the snake bite. He was born and she wondered what effect it would have on him in life. A child absorbs all of their mother’s nutrients, her nightmares. What she eats they grow on, what she experiences they feel. She wonders now if that fateful summer afternoon did in fact poison the course of his life in ways he will never know. Her guilt swells, a constant wave.

  Hiromi leaves the house early one morning to do the shopping before the heat is at its worst. Carried by old memories, she gets off the tram at Nagasaki Station and boards a train. The short ride to Urakami is over before she has time to think too closely about where she is going. Suddenly she is in chaos and heat. Crowds of tourists descend on the Peace Park. Of course, it is August, and this is when most tourists come here. Why do they want to visit on the anniversary of the bombing? As if, in this shocking humidity, their bodies can come close to knowing the molten air that melted children in their uniforms, that turned people into black shadows in the last place they stood. Her father always went quiet at this time of year. But he did once speak, with unnatural cynicism, of the ten-metre bronze statue of a male god now housed in the park—so Western, so crass, he said. Nowadays, tourists pose in front of this huge man, striking the same pose as he: one arm up to the sky, one reaching out over the horizon.

  Hiromi walks towards the Peace Park. She does not have the energy, in this heat, to go all the way to Konpira Park. And what for? To see where she and her boy were together attacked by the snake? It would not achieve anything. It does not do to get so caught up in the past, as though some silly nostalgic.

  There is a low stone wall at the Peace Park. Hiromi read just this year that the wall is the remains of an old prison used to house Korean and Chinese labourers. Her parents would not know this. She had not known when forced to walk here as a girl in her uniform skirt, stockings, black shoes.

  Hiromi returns to the station at Urakami. The tourists and the heat overwhelm her. Bags and feet jostle and press at her body; every surface of her skin is sticky with sweat that has dried and shiny with the moisture that is continually leaking from her. Her breath is shallow and for a moment she feels the old sensations of a panic attack: the quieting of the external world, the compression of her ears, the loudening of her internal horror. She plunges forwards into the train carriage. There is one seat remaining and Hiromi accepts this as a sign of mercy; she sits down. There are advertisements for Urakami Cathedral outside the train’s window. Only the facade was left after the bombing, the cathedral was entirely rebuilt. Any trace of the damage is hidden by the new.

  Hiromi is exhausted by the time she reaches the hospital with the shopping. Her mother is awake.

  ‘I bought plums, okaa-san.’

  ‘Good girl,’ says her mother. She has begun to say this a lot. Hiromi is a girl again. Her mother now asks for help more often. Hiromi knows that the fall has changed her. It has changed the dynamic of their relationship. But she wills her mother not to progress further along this path, not to cross a threshold, becoming so feeble in body that she needed Hiromi full-time, as if she had become a baby. She is not ready for this. She cannot have two bodies demanding her care, her mother and her son, and endure. The images this conjures are as if from a dark fairytale, babies born looking like eighty-year-olds, grown children forcing themselves back inside their mother. What has become of the world?

  The smiling young nurse comes in and greets Hiromi. Hiromi’s mother offers the young woman a plum. She takes it and smiles. When the nurse leans over to check the tubes and drips leading into Hiromi’s mother, Hiromi sees a gold cross on a chain hang for a moment in the air and then rest again on the young woman’s chest. Only in this scarred city would anyone think twice about such a symbol. Hiromi wonders about the girl’s ancestors. Did her distant relatives burn on pyres down on the coast of Nagasaki? Did they hide in caves, or did they live in town and pretend they weren’t Catholics, to save themselves from violence?

  Hiromi returns to her parents’ house. She opens the windows and makes tea. As evening comes, in a slow dimming of the sky and cloudy orange light, a volunteer from the dormitory calls.

  ‘I’m afraid your son has relapsed. He won’t leave the dormitory room. He says he wants to return to the apartment of his parents.’

  Hiromi feels something cold and heavy turn over in her: a snake adjusting its position in her internal organs. ‘I’m not at home. I’m in Nagasaki. My mother is unwell. She’s in the hospital.’

  ‘He cannot stay here, Mrs Satō.’

  ‘It’s not possible for me to leave her at the moment.’

  ‘Is there anyone else who can take care of Hikaru at home?’

  ‘My husband is busy, he works a lot. Can he stay at the dormitory for now? I can return next week.’

  The volunteer hesitates before answering. ‘It’s not our preferred way. Enabling old behaviours may affect the other residents. They share a dormitory, after all.’

  ‘One week, please.’ Hiromi is hot with shame.

  The volunteer relents but his disapproval is clear. ‘After this time, he must return to your care if there is no improvement.’

  ‘I understand.’ She nods and nods although the volunteer cannot see her.

  In a week she will return to her son, and he will return to the apartment. Time has re-entered their lives with all its quiet violence, carving up the unformed mass of days and hours of three years inside his room.

  Three days later, Hiromi’s mother is brought home in a patient support vehicle. Hiromi follows behind in a taxi. Three days after that, Hiromi makes preparations to leave Nagasaki. A nurse will come every morning and evening to help her mother with necessary medications, and to check on her condition and change her wound dressing. The neighbour will look in on her mother during the day. Everything she can do is done, and so Hi
romi heads to the airport.

  On the plane she looks out the window at the countless suburbs spreading into the distance. The plane television plays a news channel with the weather report. One of the JR train lines on Kyushu is closed due to the summer floods. This happened many summers when Hiromi journeyed to see her parents. Each year the heavy rains fall through the hot days, amplifying the claustrophobic air.

  The journey gives her a chance to accustom herself again to the care of Hikaru. The care of her mother was part of the natural course of things. Her fragile bones, soft and wrinkled skin, withering body; it was normal to become the carer of such a person. To care for Hikaru, whose body is young and in otherwise good health, makes Hiromi feel she is complicit in a profane act against nature. What god would punish this, she doesn’t know. What god could comprehend this profoundly modern situation, in which a grown child has moved as if back into the womb? But the return is inevitable now. Hiromi is entwined with her son.

  The police station in Showa Ward is a poorly built prefabricated building with a white tile veneer. Hiromi breathes in and then crosses the threshold into the station. A young officer stands behind a glass partition, the kind she has seen on television shows but not, she now realises, ever in her life. The officer nods and greets her formally. It is not clear from his face whether he is surprised to see a woman of her age, her appearance and dress, in the police station. Hiromi Satō wonders how she appears to this young man, who must be the age of her son: she dresses reasonably well, today in a crisp white shirt and light blue trousers, flat black shoes, her hair tied back in its low bun. Hiromi returns the greeting and he asks the inevitable question—what is she here for?—and she tells him she is concerned about a friend who has not been seen in a month. The young man remains impassive, either through training or because he has cultivated this in himself. He asks her for the essential information about herself and then about Mai Takeda: her name, usual address, occupation, marital status. Hiromi can only answer some of his questions.