Early evening, almost dark, and raining again. “The windshield has tears,” Masumi says, laughing. We’re going to visit Masumi’s aunt and uncle. Dropping down from the highway to her aunt’s rented garden plot on the river, we take photographs of the tall sunflowers that separate her vegetables from other plots. “Growing food is what she knows how to do,” Masumi says.
The last time we visited their temporary house, only Masumi’s uncle, Kazuyoshi, was there. Now, only her aunt Kayuko is home. She greets us with a smile. Lines radiate from her eyes like sprays of light. Her hair is cut short and hennaed reddish-brown; her freckled tan looks permanent. She has only one upper tooth. It twists and pushes forward, pointed like a short spear. She apologizes that Kazuyoshi isn’t around. Perhaps we don’t want to bother talking just to her, but I protest: “No, no, we’ve come to talk to you!”
The apartment is spacious but almost bare. Just a low table and a few cushions. Grandmother is tucked in an alcove in a hospital bed. “She arrived today,” Kayuko explains. Masumi’s mother and I pay our respects and sit down.
Kayuko fumbles with tea and hot water, eventually serving us only sayo—hot water—because, somehow, she is unable to get the tea made. Grandmother appears to be sleeping, but she’s not. As soon as she hears a cookie being unwrapped, she bends her hand into the shape of a horn and bellows out: “I’m hungry!”
Kayuko smiles, and informs us that she has a feeding tube and should be full.
We sip hot water from tea bowls. Kazuko gives Kayuko an apron from Fujisaki—one of Sendai’s fancy department stores. She shakes it out and holds it up high, smiling and thanking her sister-in-law. More hot water is poured: our small cups are full.
“I’m really hungry,” Grandmother calls out again.
Kayuko says: “She does that. She yells all the time. She doesn’t mean to. It’s just how she is.”
The mood changes and Kayuko speaks quietly: “We lost our house and all our machines, and everything was covered in four feet of mud, so we can’t be rice farmers anymore. Now Kazuyoshi works and I grow vegetables. Once a week I deliver them to the grocery store on my bicycle. We tried to plant at the old place, but no matter how deeply we dug in the old rice field, we still found debris. It scares me to think of what we might find. And we are afraid the tsunami will come again.
“I rented a plot from my uncle above the river. I’m growing radishes, eggplant, and arugula. But growing vegetables on someone else’s land isn’t the same. Kazuyoshi and I think of starting fresh, but we don’t know where. Anyway, there’s a rumor that there’s a ghost roaming around Idohama, near Grandma’s washed-away house. In the night you can see it. When we told Grandma about it she said she was scared. Now she says she doesn’t believe in ghosts.
“I grew up near here in a big farmer’s house. I didn’t apply for temporary housing. I want to settle down. That’s why we’re here. I don’t care that the government isn’t paying. We just need to be settled. Sometimes I’m angry at people who are trying to get more than they deserve from the government. So many suffered and need money. If I went to them and said I had six family members, I could get three houses, three televisions, three refrigerators, three air conditioners. Some people are doing that, but I don’t like it. It’s wrong. I feel my one treasure is to help those who helped me.”
Grandma yells: “What are you eating? I’m so hungry!”
Kayuko: “The tsunami has huge power to take things from people. It’s different between those who don’t have a house and those who do. We will never be the same as they are. To be honest, I don’t know what I want or need. I don’t want to live anymore. I feel hopeless. I’m doing every day the living-things that I have to do … but … it’s not enough. We are talking about building a house. House is garbage. I’ve seen so many things turned to garbage, I don’t want a new house, because the tsunami will happen again.”
Masumi goes to her grandmother’s side. They talk in hoarse whispers. Masumi tells her that she has been fed dinner. Grandmother protests: “I’m still hungry.” Masumi unwraps a tiny piece of chocolate from her purse and puts it on Grandmother’s tongue. “Just let it melt there,” she says. Grandmother smiles and sucks the chocolate down.
Kayuko puts four more cookies by our teacups. “Ideally I’d like to have a small house with a garden plot in front, but I don’t know if that’s possible. Young people don’t understand: I have to do whatever Kazuyoshi decides. He is the head of the family. Maybe I’m too negative, but to pretend to be happy is too hard. I think Kazuyoshi feels the same way. It’s behind his happiness.”
Kayuko’s hands are big-knuckled and she holds them in the air when she’s listening or trying to say something for which she has no words. “It’s hard for me to express myself,” she says, squinting and laughing. “If Kazuyoshi was here he’d talk more—but it is good he’s not. I’ve said things that may be too negative.”
When the door opens and Kazuyoshi bursts in, Kayuko’s beautiful smile freezes. She goes silent. When she lived with the extended family she was treated in a traditional way—as a servant. She worked the land and did household chores, but was not allowed to eat at the table with the others. Now, husband and wife sit together at the low table. She looks at him expectantly, but there are no jokes tonight, no sharing of peanuts, no opening of beer after beer. He talks of his short-term government job cleaning debris. “It’s hard. The heat goes up and down and wearing a helmet makes it hotter. The tsunami took all the trees; there is no shade.”
His eyes narrow and he rubs his stomach. The work, he says, makes him dizzy and sick to his stomach. The debris is toxic and he’s suffered several times from heat exhaustion. It’s been 90 to 100 degrees. To relax, he goes to the public bathhouse with friends, drinks beer, and eats dinner because Kayuko rarely cooks. She never learned how. She worked the land and her mother cooked the meals.
Tonight, Kazuyoshi says he only wants to sleep. Like all Tohoku survivors, he and Kayuko are internal exiles. Their traditional loyalty to family and place works for them: they know how to make do in a cooperative way, yet they have no land on which to enact their obligations. The geographical constraints of island life can further go against them: it makes it almost impossible to move away. Social and religious traditions here keep families place-bound, as if those ideas about how and where to live had been shaped by the landscape.
We stand to leave. Many bows, smiles, promises of return visits, and questions about Kazuyoshi’s Ping-Pong championship later, we find our shoes and step backwards out the door. At the last moment Kayuko thrusts a bag filled with eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, and green onions—vegetables she’s grown on her rented patch of ground—into Kazuko’s hands. As always, giving more than they receive.