Radiance (33 page)

“As you say, as you say.” Dean stood up. “I’ll talk to her in the morning. I’ll do what I can do,” he said, meaning he would do nothing. Meaning she was dismissed.

The summer sky was bright when Daisy emerged onto Fifth Avenue. The leaves above her head were fat and full of spores. Walter wasn’t there, and she couldn’t bear the idea of looking for him, so she began to walk: it was all she could do. She couldn’t bear the idea of flagging a cab to the station either, or of locating Walter in some coffee shop and taking the train home together, to their ugly haunted house. She felt ashamed, but underneath, like the mother that she was, she was thinking about Keiko.

She didn’t know if it was true, or if they had made Keiko say it, terrorizing her with lights and questions. She might have cried out for Daisy, in the car, in her hospital room, as she was wheeled down the corridor, until Dr. Carney and Irene and Dean concocted this story and twisted it into Keiko’s mind. She imagined Keiko sitting up, calling from her hospital bed, and Daisy felt panicked, as though Keiko were a defenceless child shut up in her room on the seventh floor. She imagined bending over that hospital bed to look as deeply as she could into Keiko’s eyes.
Are you afraid of me? Are you, are you? Or have they done this?

She imagined Keiko holding up her hand to block Daisy’s gaze, then turning away towards the wall. Daisy could only see half of her face, the scarred half, the half illuminated by her stare: the other half, deceptive and slippery, was blotted out by shadows.

    FIREBIRD

P
EOPLE WHO SAW
K
EIKO
K
ITIGAWA
on television in the fall of
1952
—and there were many of them—noticed several things immediately. First, they noticed her clear skin, which on television showed not a hint of a scar. Then they noticed her eyes. Always remarkable, they were especially startling on television. They might also have noticed her clothes. She dressed like Irene Day, skirts and jackets in the height of fashion and beautifully cut, often belted or flared to show her small waist, or cut dashingly at the neck to reveal her delicate collarbone. Lastly, they might have been struck by her poise: she was at ease in front of the camera, or had the ability to seem at ease. She had the winsome charm of a quiz-show participant; in fact, she reminded many viewers of the returning champion from
Winner Takes All.

The interviews began with
Ask a Doctor,
an enormous crosscountry success, launching Dr. Carney on his television career, and launching Keiko as an anti-bomb spokeswoman. But there were many appearances that fall and winter, and each followed the same pattern. The interviewer would ask if Keiko was comfortable.

“Oh, quite, thank you,” she would say in what sounded to Daisy like a new, trained voice. It had a bit of the Eastern Seaboard in the vowels.

“Now tell us, Miss Kitigawa, if you would, about the events that changed your life. I’m speaking, of course, of the events of August
6
,
1945
.”

Keiko spoke deliberately, looking either at the interviewer or directly into the camera, depending on what she had been told to do. When she reached the part about the flash—
“pika-don,
the children called it”—the interviewer invariably stopped her.

“Can you describe it in more detail?”

“It was brighter than the sun,” she said. “And it seemed to turn everything white. I heard a terrible roar, and then I felt pain, like pins inserted in my skin.”

“And then you turned?”

“I raised my hand to block my eyes, and my palm covered one cheek, which is why only one-half of my face was scarred.”

“Remarkable. Now tell us, Keiko, in vain you searched for your grandfather in the rubble. He was close to the centre of the bomb and died instantly. Your mother also died in the bombing. Now I understand that you, too, had intended to go downtown, in which case you would have been instantly vaporized when the bomb exploded.”

“Yes I did. But we schoolgirls had to work hard, doing physical labour, creating firebreaks in the downtown. I was tired and so I told a fib to my mother, said I felt sick, and so she let me stay home.”

“A fib that saved your life, as it turned out. Do you remember other details of the bombing?”

“Indeed, I do.” Staring into the camera, she told details that scorched the imagination. She told of looking down at the city a week after the bombing, and seeing plumes of smoke rising
along the riverbanks where bodies were being burnt, and how the scent was still in her nostrils. She told of looking for Mama’s bones downtown near the Aioi Bridge, finding three buttons and a burnt collarbone, which she and Yoshiko brought home in a box, and how they never found Ojii-chan’s bones, though they looked for weeks. She told of the child with his head on fire and of the burning corpses in the river. She described the injured woman clutching her baby at the end of the bridge, begging for water. As the firestorm swept towards them, this woman, faceless and terrible, beckoned to Keiko.

Daisy, standing with a duster in her hand, watching the television, felt a chill run through her. Surely Keiko would not tell this last story.

“And what did you do, Miss Kitigawa?”

“I was frightened,” she said. “You see, at first I thought the woman was my mother, but then I realized that she couldn’t be. My mother had been wearing a civilian outfit, trousers and a cotton shirt, the kind the government issued, but this woman had been wearing a kimono. I could see its pattern burnt onto her back.”

“Now tell us what you did.”

Don’t, Daisy thought, sitting on the couch.

“A firestorm was nearing—all the wooden houses burning.”

“You had only minutes to escape.”

“I saw that the woman held a child, a baby—it was dying, or perhaps even dead. Blood ran from its ear. Its body was burnt. The woman was bent over, weeping. But when she saw me she gestured for me to come close.”

“Did you?”

“As I say, I was frightened. But yes, I did as she asked.”

“And then what?”

Keiko had stood in front of the woman, who raised her
face—it was pink, skinless. “The woman said, ‘Please. Take my baby. Take my baby. Run.’ Because of the firestorm.”

“She wanted you to carry her baby to safety?”

“Yes, she did.”

“And what did you think then, Keiko.”

“I thought the woman was from a nightmare.”

“But you took the baby?”

“Yes, I took the little thing in my arms—as I say, it was dying—I saw that, but I took it, and I was about to run towards the city, but the woman—the faceless woman—she held out her hand, the skin hung from her wrist like a glove, and she said, ‘No—go back.’ Because of the fire, you see. So I ran. I ran and ran until I got to the park near the military grounds.”

But this wasn’t how it went. Daisy shook her head, hardly believing what she heard. Keiko had told her—bandaged face turned to the wall—that she had run from the woman and her burnt child, too terrified to stay another second, to heed the woman’s pleading request. “Forgive me,” Keiko had whispered. “I can’t. I must find my mother.”

Forgive me.

“And what did you do then?”

“I undid the bundle, and I saw that the little thing was dead. So gently, I covered its face with the cloth it had been wrapped in. And I said a ritual prayer.”

Here Daisy shook her head in disbelief. That’s my story, she thought. That’s my secret. My baby. My ritual prayer! She watched Keiko’s face for some sign—some signal that she knew she had slipped Daisy’s story in—right there—at the heart—but the girl continued bravely on, answering the interviewer’s questions.

Ever excellent in what she did, Keiko closed each interview by thanking the Hiroshima Project for her surgery, turning her face from side to side, to show the lack of scarring. Then she
urged the American people to give their generous support to the next group of Hiroshima Maidens, who even now were readying themselves for the voyage to New York.

“And what is your hope for the future, Keiko—you who have seen so much?”

“I hope we can raise our voices—all of us—to stop the madness of the hydrogen bomb.” She said this lightly, like a chant, her voice pure and clear. Watching television, you would have to know this girl very well to see, as she glanced away from the camera, her milky eyes betraying the smallest hint of contempt. It was on her face an instant only, and then it was gone.

I
NDIAN SUMMER GRIPPED
the Five Boroughs that fall. Fran, waddling and huge now, set out her sprinkler and Junie and Jimmy Jr. and the other neighbour children ran through it, slipping on the grass. Daisy watched through her window, a feeling of betrayal moving, anew, at the sight of them. She walked away, down the hall, but caught a glimpse of herself in the smoky mirror, hungry and overwhelming, just as Keiko had said. Her massive needs, her frightening desires. She felt a furtive presence behind her down the hall, which, when she turned, was nothing at all.

She made tea and forgot to drink it. She ran a shower and washed herself with the sandalwood soap—Keiko’s sandalwood—using all the water, as Keiko used to. She would have given Keiko the soap, if she had asked. All she had ever had to do was to ask.

That night Daisy found the Goldenloaf Cheese box, pushed far
beneath Keiko’s bed. Everything was still inside—the brooch, the lighter, the ebony elephant. Why leave it behind? Daisy sat on the ugly brown carpet, remembering Keiko’s clear, urgent voice, telling her story on television:
Yes, indeed I did. I covered its face with a cloth. I said a ritual prayer, to ease the passing of its soul.
You would have had to listen so closely to hear—no, nobody could hear it, there were simply no seams to show where she had let drop her own, unimaginable, untellable story, and inserted Daisy’s.

I covered the dead baby’s face.
Oh, it was coolly done. It was impeccable. I gave her that story, Daisy thought, staring at the tiny golden brooch, its perfect antennae, the dusty pansy markings on each wing. She listened and I told her. I wept! And then the girl told that story instead, because her own—her own was too awful. And why leave the Goldenloaf Cheese box behind? Because Daisy had told her she had seen it, of course. It was no longer secret.

When Walter came home, he found her sitting on the floor, holding Keiko’s box. He asked what was in it and Daisy said a few things—a few things the girl had left behind. Then she burst into tears. Walter took Daisy in his arms, cradled her, which was awkward to do in that position. Eventually, he sat on the bed and patted it.

“Sit,” he said, and she sat down obediently.

He traced the line of her nose with his finger, kissed her cheeks, one then the other. “You’re a good woman, Daisy,” he said.

“I’m not! I’m a monster.”

“A good woman. Remember that.”

He put his arms around her and comforted her as best he could.

In those days after Keiko left, Fran did not give up hoping for her return. She brought more magazines, and she kept asking questions. Did the skin match perfectly? Was Keiko happy?
Daisy dreaded hearing the phone ring, or seeing Fran at the back door, panting, red faced, knowing she would have questions that Daisy could not answer. Seven and a half months’ pregnant, hips loose and wobbly, belly huge, it took a concerted effort for Fran to go through the back gate, up the steps. When would they see her again? When would she come to visit? Wasn’t she wonderful on television? A celebrity! Who would have thought it.

It was not as it had been when Daisy had lost the baby. Then she had hated the women of Riverside Meadows and felt removed, sealed behind her piece of glass. Now she felt that all her limbs were heavy, filled with a bulky remorse. Sometimes, thinking about the pouches and aches and loneliness laced into her cells, she would shake her head, realizing that the person who would most understand these sensations would be Keiko. But Keiko had been ripped away from her. No, that wasn’t right. She still had to correct herself, remember what had happened.

The girl had taken what she could and then fled.

I
N THE MOVIES,
anti-Communist agents travel around in ominous-looking Oldsmobiles with big running boards and hoods shiny as black beetles, sinister and immediately identifiable. But, in fact, the cars agents drove in
1952
were undistinguished-looking vehicles, rusted and weather-beaten, with windows that didn’t close all the way and milky stains on the leather seats. The agents were undistinguished too—a new breed of itinerant man hunter, Pinkerton detectives down on their luck, or veterans with shell
shock and no job prospects. They were hired to gather information on suspects and then submit it to the FBI.

Daisy saw a car just like that, parked in front of their house, as she turned the corner onto Linden Street. She had come from the grocery store, taking the path through the fields. The corn leaves were sticky and huge, cobs frothing with hair, and she had been thinking about a story that she had heard, long ago, at Sacred Heart, about a corn blight. One of the older girls had told the story, trying to frighten the little ones. Farmers had peeled back the leaves of their cobs, one bad year, to find baby mice nested there, in purple-blue amniotic sacs. But some farmers hadn’t realized, and had sold their cobs to the markets; some mothers hadn’t realized, and had served the cobs steaming onto the table; some mice had been buttered; some had been eaten.