Stories
Two days after my birthday, on July 6, I get my birthday wish and my prayers answered; Obaachan comes home.
She clings to Mom’s arm as she walks in and is so thin I can see her bones, like the skeleton of a frail tree. The treatment has made her lose her hair. “I am never going for tests again,” she tells Mom. “They kept me in there like it was a jail. No more doctors, Mayumi chan. I mean that.”
“I made up your bed,” Mom says in a cheery voice. “You must rest and get your strength back.”
I take her other arm. I remember when the room was a mystery to me and every object held a secret. Now it is as familiar as when it was mine. I peel back the covers on the bed. “I’ll make tea,” Mom says.
Obaachan offers me a weak smile. “Lin. I am sorry to be away for so long. You must catch me up on everything. How is Keisha?”
I tell her about Keisha and me taking a swimming class together and about Gregory’s family’s café, where we sit with Gregory and Nathan and hatch plans that we usually don’t carry out. And about my solo with the Junior Philharmonic and my conversation with Matt.
“This boy is special to you?” she asks.
I blush.
“I have missed so much. You are coming into your own.”
Then I tell her about me and Dad helping to find the autistic boy, Vincent Serrins.
“So he was there in the shed?”
“In Pawtucket. They took him to the hospital, but he was okay, just dehydrated.”
“Ah, it is wonderful when your gift can be used to help others. That is a rare thing.”
“Lin!” Mom comes in with tea. “Don’t tire her.”
“Let her stay. I need to hear what my granddaughter has been up to.”
“She hasn’t been cleaning her room. I can tell you that. She hasn’t been studying like she used to. Five minutes, Lin. No longer.” She goes out.
“She’s a very bossy lady,” Obaachan says.
I hold the tea to her lips. “This will make you feel better.”
“I am sorry to be such trouble.”
“I’m just glad you’re back. Were you lonely at the hospital?” It has been my constant fear.
“It is hard to be lonely at the hospital because they never leave you alone. The nurses come and go at all hours. They should learn that there is such a thing as being too cheerful. I’ll tell you . . . when your grandfather Tomo was sick, he wouldn’t go to the doctor. Instead, he went to Sensei Ohura, a local wise man. Sensei Ohura told Tomo that one of his ancestors was sitting on his chest and that this was why he had pain. The ancestor was a hungry ghost, one who hadn’t made it across to the other side.”
“What’s a hungry ghost?”
“A ghost who is so attached to this world by desire, they can’t cross to the next stage. They are called hungry because their throats are too small to eat or drink.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Well, I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought Sensei was a kook!” Her voice creaks like old music. “Your grandfather was sick because he smoked too much and drank whiskey. But Sensei gave him herbs and chants and Tomo followed every word of it.”
“Did he get better?”
“No, he went blind. This time, Sensei told him that the blindness was because Tomo had witnessed too much suffering. It was a blessing not to see the painful things in the world. Besides, it wasn’t true blindness, Sensei told him. True blindness was ignorance and cruelty.”
“At least your voice is still in working order.” Mom comes in with two cups of miso soup. “You eat, too, Lin.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I sip the soup.
“I was just telling Lin about your father, Mayumi chan. Once he was blind, he couldn’t bear any noise. I could whisper, but he said my voice sounded like screeching monkeys and my footsteps like a herd of elephants.”
“Dad never went blind.”
“You were gone by then.” Obaachan lays her head back and closes her eyes. “What do you know?”
“Nothing, apparently.”
“Tomo is waiting for me,” Obaachan mumbles. “I only hope his senses are put right. My mother is waiting, too. She will have wondered why I was away so long. . . .”
Mom motions me out. I follow her to the kitchen. “Why isn’t she better?”
“She will never be better.” A tear rolls down her cheek. “She has been sick a long time.”
“Mom.”
“Something’s in my eye.” She covers her face. “I’m sorry. It is all so sad. Her illness. And remembering.”
“Remembering what?”
“Childhood. How terrible it was. And stifling.”
“What was it like?”
“We lived in a tiny apartment. One room. My parents were always working, although there never seemed to be any money. My father owned a newspaper stand. Grandma sewed clothes. There was cloth everywhere. And straight pins on the floor that I would step on constantly. No one ever talked about anything. I always felt like I was born into the wrong family,” she says. “And rice balls.”
“Rice balls?”
“Rice balls, oily fish, and pickled cabbage and cucumber. That’s what we ate. Occasionally, noodles. Food was completely unimportant to my parents. They could have eaten the same bowl of rice every day for ten years and not cared.”
“She’s a good cook, now.”
“She wasn’t then. And the fish. It was scraps: oily and salty.”
“So that was what was terrible?”
“Everything was terrible. And them. All they could think about was a war that had happened twenty years earlier. They needed to get a life, but they stayed stuck like camels in quick-sand.”
“Were you sad when you left?”
“No. I was scared, but I was also thrilled. It was like one of those fairy tales: a poor girl stuck in a tiny apartment with her parents who don’t approve of her, meets a handsome soldier from the very place she longs to go more than anywhere else in the world. Your father was so kind. He asked me how I felt about this, or what I thought about that. No one had ever done that. When he brought me home to his parents, they were in shock.” She laughs. “All of them red haired and blue eyed like him. I was so shy, they didn’t know I spoke English. ‘What have you done?’ His mother pointed at me. ‘She’s . . . she’s . . .’ I was horrified to hear those words come out of her mouth. I thought she was going to say: Japanese. She finally got the words out. ‘She’s . . . not Catholic!’ Then I surprised everyone. In my best American accent, one I had practiced for years, I said, ‘Well, I’ll become one of those. Don’t you worry!’ And his dad bent over with laughter: ‘I’ll be damned.’ Then his mom started laughing, too. And I’ll tell you something. I had no idea what Catholic was. Your dad had never mentioned religion. But I wanted to belong. I would be Catholic. I’ve never regretted it.”
“Didn’t you miss your parents?” I can’t imagine ever being far from my parents or Sally.
“I felt guilty, like I’d escaped from a sinking ship and left them behind. But they wouldn’t have come. They would’ve gone down with the ship.”
“Is that why you and Obaachan don’t get along?”
“We get along fine.” Mom gets up and opens the oven. She pulls out a tin of cupcakes. “These are for your school bake sale. You can frost them once they cool.”
“What is wrong with Obaachan? What is her illness?”
“Leukemia. She has had it twenty years. It is a disease from the war, from radiation.”
“Is she going to die?”
“Who doesn’t die, every moment, changing from one form to another? What happened to that little baby, Lin, who watched everything and never said a word? Or the girl who studied all the time and didn’t have friends? Or the one who was afraid to perform and now plays solos with the Junior Philharmonic? Death is a constant part of life. We just try to pretend it’s not there. The unknown! That’s what we’re all afraid of. Well, I have news for the world. Every second of every day is the unknown.”
My mouth drops open. I have never heard my mom speak in such a way. “You sound like Obaachan,” I tell her.
“Coming from you, that’s a compliment.”