Rain Song (17 page)
The word at the nurses’ station is that my grandmother, Mrs. Dubois, was not a happy camper last night. She complained of being uncomfortable and told a nurse that it was time for her to go home to her soft and familiar bed. She talked nonstop about Maggie and baked potatoes. The nurse on call did not know that Maggie is a donkey with a white hoof. Apparently, Ducee tried to convince this nurse that not only was she needed at home, but that her family was flying in from Wyoming and from all over North Carolina, actually, yes, yes, that was right, and she needed to go home to take care of everything. Right now.
“And so,” my grandmother said sometime around three in the morning, “if you will just sign me out of the hospital, I’m sure I can get someone to come pick me up and drive me home.”
To which the nurse promptly stated, “Mrs. Dubois, we will get you home. But first take this pill.”
Ducee took the pill, and the pill put her out. Just like that.
This morning Violet warns me, “Your grandmother may be a bit groggy and sleepy today. But don’t worry.”
She is asleep as I slip into her room, her room still packed with flowers.
The stool beside her hospital bed is probably as uncomfortable as the bed, I think. I take a towel from the adjoining bathroom, cover the top of the stool, and sit. Much better, just like a bit of padding helps make my computer chair at home tolerable.
Ducee’s heart rate is still being monitored, but the IV bag has been removed. Surely, that’s a good sign. Unless you’re dead.
Every part of me aches, even my bitten fingernails. I will never know what Japan looks like in the summer. I will never know if Kyoto feels as humid and hot as Mount Olive can in July. But the truth is, I used to know. I just don’t
remember
what it was like.
Ducee stirs. When she opens her eyes, she seems alarmed.
“Ducee,” I say in my reassuring voice, “you’re in the hospital.”
“Oh,” she breathes. “I dreamed I was in heaven.” She reaches up to touch my face. “Child,” she says, her eyes focused on mine, “please don’t miss your flight. You have the adventure of a lifetime before you. Be ready to go. Don’t let anything get in the way.”
“I love you.” Sometimes saying these words can make your eyes fill with tears. Using the back of my hand, I wipe a tear from my cheek. She is my mother and grandmother, all wrapped in one. I can’t lose her.
She murmurs from dry lips, “Risk. Risk.” Then she says, “You have considered the birds?”
Yes, I have. I know God cares for all of us. I know He supplies wisdom to those who ask. And, dear Grandmother, the wisdom I have been given is, how can I leave you at a time like this? All I say is, “I have.”
“Good. Because God came down here and talked to me last night.”
Tentatively I ask, “He did?”
“Yes, yes.” She motions toward the water pitcher, and I pour her a drink in a paper cup. After taking a few sips, she runs her tongue over her lips. “He said you were asking for wisdom and that I was to tell you something.”
“What?”
She closes her eyes and in a few minutes, I hear faint snoring. I guess I will never know what God told Ducee when He came down to talk to her last night.
Ducee’s mouth moves. At first I hear nothing but the sound of her lips brushing the air. Then ever so clearly her words pierce the silence. “Don’t miss the adventure.”
I watch her breathing as she sleeps. The rise and fall of her chest gives me hope.
As I leave her room, a doctor I’ve never seen before meets me at the door. He asks a nurse who is standing nearby for Mrs. Dubois’s chart.
She finds it in a pile at the nurses’ station.
He flips it open, studies it for a second, and then his eyes meet mine. “She is going to be just fine.”
Do I see a twinkle in those eyes? I walk down the hall wondering just who is he talking about.
Ducee?
Or me?
———
At home I take my new clothes out of the shopping bags and carefully cut off the price tags and labels. I fold the new pair of Levi’s jeans, the green-and-black sundress, and two T-shirts and arrange them in my Samsonite suitcase. I feel the softness of the suede belt and remember how nice it looked in the belt loops of the new jeans when I stood in front of the mirror in Julianne’s dressing room.
As I toss a small load of underwear and socks into the washing machine, my mind repeats itself like Flannigan the macaw.
Is going to Japan the right thing to do?
I dump in a capful of liquid detergent, and then another.
Is going to Japan the right thing to do?
Before I let a third capful dribble into the machine, I catch myself. What am I going to do, overload the machine with detergent so bubbles will ooze out of every crevice?
I really, really want to go to Japan.
Turning the washer on, I close the lid, stare at a pair of tennis shoes, and realize I don’t know whether to take them or not. Maybe just a pair of sandals and a pair of low-heeled black pumps. No, leave the pumps behind. They give me blisters after a few hours. They make my legs look nice, though. Fine, I’ll take all three pairs of shoes.
On the edge of my bed, I curve my body into a ball and wonder what I’m doing. My grandmother is in the hospital. She had a heart attack.
And I am going to Japan.
I feed my fish and realize I haven’t arranged a caregiver for them while I’m away. Ducee was going to ask Grable if Grable could bring Monet over to do the honors. Grable has a host of problems due to the divorce. Her plate is full. Why would I want to add to it?
I sit outside on the step this hot summer night, raise my face to the sky, and scan the glittering darkness for the Big Dipper.
“Mama?” I call out. My voice sounds thick, weary. It would be too much effort to attempt my usual wave.
A soft haze circles the near-full moon. The murkiness of the circle is like a reflection of my mind, boggled with uncertainty.
A howling dog is the only response I hear. The night is lonely; Hilda isn’t even in her garage.
I fill my bathtub with hot water and sprinkle in a cup of lilac bath salts, the ones Ducee gave me. As I soak in the water and breathe in the scent, calmness settles upon my head and inside the marrow of my bones. Solace penetrates each pore. Closing my eyes and leaning back in the tub, I want to call my grandmother and tell her she’s right, as usual—lilac is the scent of peace.
Harrison says one of the pleasures of the
ofuro
is that the water temperature never cools. Heated by gas, the water in the Japanese tub remains hot no matter how much time passes. I think what a good concept that is as I leave my chilly bathtub and dry off with a striped towel.
I hear the phone and race into the kitchen, my towel falling down around my knees. I never learned the fine art of tying a towel above my chest, just under my armpits. It is one of those things that I’m sure Mama would have taught me if she had lived.
With panic in my veins, and a tremble I try to shake off, I pick up the receiver and say, “Hello?”
A raspy voice on the other end. “Nicki?”
Yes, Iva, you know it’s me. “Yes. What’s wrong?”
Then there is silence, some muffled tones, a few words spoken in the distance and soon Ducee is on the line. In a weak voice, barely audible, she says my name.
Hot tears form in my eyes. “Yes?”
“Will you be sure to bring me back some tea? Green would be appropriate, don’t you think?”
The phone goes dead and while at first I am puzzled, I finally figure it out. My grandmother won’t disclose more because Iva is there in her room and Ducee’s still trying to keep my trip to Japan a secret.
“We can drink it together,” I say, even though I know Ducee is no longer on the line. I just stand in my kitchen like a stone.
In my room, I fall onto my bed in a heap. I feel like Monet, sad, hurt, afraid. I wait for the inevitable—tears, streams of them.
They don’t come.
I smell the lilac on my skin and let its perfume soak my lungs. Clutching Sazae, I pray, “Oh, dear God, what have you asked of me? I’m afraid of flying.” After repeating this over and over, I decide I’d better find some other words. “Help,” I say.
———
When my eyes snap open, the clock lets me know I’ve been asleep for an hour. I turn over on my side to face Sazae. “Sazae,” I say, “do you want to go back home to Japan for a while?”
My stomach grumbles, and before Sazae can answer, I’ve pulled on some clothes and made my way to the kitchen. It’s been hours since Iva and I ate turkey sandwiches for lunch in the noisy hospital cafeteria.
I make a bowl of grits, add a few tablespoons of butter, swirl the mixture with a spoon, and eat. I will always be grateful for grits. But grits will soon be replaced with Japanese food. My stomach doesn’t know what to do with that information. You once ate eel, I tell it.
I wander around the house like I’m lost. I sit in Aunt Lucy’s chair, stand, go to my fish tank, step outside to view the sky, come inside to the cool house again, and chew a nail. It’s a fact; I don’t know what one is to do the day before embarking on an adventure.
Do I shake myself and say, look at you, look, do you know what tomorrow brings? Tomorrow is the first of July, the day you’re to get on a plane, take Dramamine, and start your journey to Japan. Are you ready?
Tomorrow is going to arrive whether I’m ready or not.
My overnight kit, a square floral cloth bag, contains shampoo, conditioner, brush, comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, new nail polish, perfume, and lipstick. My plan is to take this on the plane as a carry-on, never letting it leave my sight. I can fit a magazine in, just under where the bag zips. There are some blank notebook pages inside the magazine cover in case I’m able to pause from motion sickness and compose my August column for the Pretty Fishy site. A week ago I sent my July column, six-hundred twenty-two words on the best kinds of gravel and rocks for a marine tank. It’s to be posted in three days.
I squeeze in a pair of underpants and a T-shirt. The addition of the clothing to my kit is in case my suitcase ends up in Mongolia and I end up in Madrid. At least I will be able to brush my teeth and change my underwear while waiting to be reunited with my belongings. I heard that these things can happen. Iva reads about them in the newspaper all the time.
“Japan,” I say to my fish. The word doesn’t make my spine chill or nerves shake as it once did.
I close both the overnight kit and the Samsonite and am assured that at least my possessions are ready for this trip. From my closet I take out the Mount Olive T-shirt with a drawing of a jar of pickles on the front pocket. It’s hard to believe that in less than forty-eight hours I’ll be giving this shirt to Harrison. Handing it to him while my feet stand on Japanese ground— ground where Mama once stood. Could it be that as I look into his blue eyes as he comes to meet me, something will trigger from the past? Perhaps when I see him, some repressed memories will start to find their way out, like the early shoots from daffodil bulbs.
Am I diving off the deep end? Of course nothing will trigger. I was two years old.
There is a gift for Watanabe-san, too. I’ll carry it in my purse, attended by me at all times, because I can’t bear to think of this gift being tossed around in my suitcase. It’s in a pint-sized glass mason jar. I sure hope this sweet yellow delicacy will taste as good to her as she remembers it did. Back when Mama stood in her kitchen in Kyoto, back when she brought the Gospel and pineapple chutney to Japan.
I carry my suitcase, overnight kit, purse, and passport to the hall. I set the passport on top of the suitcase.
What will two weeks away be like?
Then I feel my stomach drop.
I need to call Grable about feeding my fish. What if she says no? And who is going to make the Mount Olive centerpiece for the reunion? And how am I going to get to the airport?
Airport. I see a huge building with dozens of revolving doors, all covered in flames, Panic sets in. I must have had a nightmare about an airport, for I’ve been to Raleigh-Durham International to pick up the Wyoming relatives and don’t recall fiery revolving doors. Who can drive me to RDU tomorrow? Great-Uncle Clive comes to mind, but he’s out of commission with his arm in a cast. Of course I didn’t call him immediately after seeing the Check Engine light come on the first time. I waited until the car started to rumble and rock when I shifted gears on the way home from the hospital. Clive told me he’d be by to take a look at it, but he hasn’t come yet. “Don’t drive any more than you have to” was his warning. “You could damage the transmission.” That scared me because I know from past experience the high cost of service to transmissions.
A sigh lifts from my lungs and circles the dining room. The secret keeping is going to have to end earlier than Ducee and I planned. I’ll have to call someone and ask for a ride. It’s almost two hours to the Raleigh-Durham airport. That’s a long roundtrip drive. Who would question me the least about where I am headed and why?
I could call a cab. A cab driver wouldn’t care to know what I was up to. As long as I paid him. I cringe at that cost, calculating whether or not I have enough cash in my wallet for a cab. I lift the snow globe on my dresser. I used to keep a few dollar bills under it, but only a penny sits there now, mocking me.
And then the doorbell rings and I open it to see a smiling Salvador and a giggling Kristine, both in motorcycle helmets that gleam in the early summer moonlight.
“We brought you back a gift from the beach!” says Kristine, wearing a jewel-studded pink tank top and a pair of tiny white shorts. She holds a striped orange-and-teal paper bag in her hand. Her tanned skin is now almost identical to Salvador’s.
Salvador, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, takes off his helmet, exposing a head of thick hair. His smile shows rows of pearly teeth and a tiny dimple in his left cheek. “Kristine wanted to bring you a souvenir.”
I figure the proper southern etiquette thing to do is to invite them inside.
We stand in the cool hallway as Kristine hands me the bag. She then lifts her helmet from her head and swings her hair, spilling the scent of peach. I open the bag to find a metal wall plaque in the shape of a clownfish. The stripes on it are painted orange and white. The two eyes are tiny bleachedwhite seashells. “Thank you,” I say.
Kristine gushes, “Isn’t it cute? I know how much you love fish. Your students tell me that all the time in science class, you know.”
I had no idea. I figured my students wanted nothing to do with me once I was away from them. Out of sight, out of mind.
“We found the fish at a cute little store where we had lunch on the way home from Emerald Isle.” Kristine’s jade earrings jingle as she speaks. “We ate the best chicken and dumplings. Salvador had never eaten that before.” She squeezes his arm.
Salvador looks as if he isn’t sure they were the
best
.
I wish I could gush in the style of Kristine, going on and on about this gift they’ve brought me. Tell them it was thoughtful and kind. But the more I look at the bleached seashell eyes, the less I can find to say.
Salvador looks at my suitcase arrangement, picks up the passport, and asks, “Where are you going?”
“Oh . . .” What do I tell them?
“Overseas?” asks Salvador.
Kristine giggles. “How fun!”
“Well,” I murmur. “Yeah.”
“Where to?” asks Salvador.
I take a breath. I guess telling them isn’t really exposing the secret. They aren’t family; they won’t tell anyone expected at the reunion. “Japan.”
“Way cool! When?” Kristine flashes a smile.
“I’m supposed to leave tomorrow.”
“Are you going by yourself ?”
By myself. I feel like a little kid sitting at the big people’s table. “Yeah.”
Kristine giggles. “There must be a guy involved. Someone you’re going to meet once you get there.”
She says it like a statement, not posed as a question, so I don’t feel I have to answer.
“Japan.” Salvador says with a wide smile. “There’s a potter there named Miyako.” He nudges Kristine. “Some of his pottery was for sale at that shop in Asheville we went to, remember?”
Kristine does remember the shop they found during their trip to the mountains over Easter. With a frown, she recalls the teacups costing over two hundred dollars each. “Except for that toothpick holder. It was thirty dollars, but it was so small.”
“It was a
sake
cup,” her boyfriend reminds her. “It’s really nice stuff,” he adds.
“Bizen.”
I have no idea what
bizen
means but can tell he’d like to be able to afford one of this Miyako’s pieces, even if it is only the tiny
sake
cup.
“Is the boy cute?” Kristine asks as Salvador returns my passport to the top of my suitcase.
I want to say, “I knew you’d ask. I knew all along if I told you about Harrison, you would want that question answered above any other.” I take them over to my computer and soon they are looking at a photo of Harrison on my screen. Harrison seated beside his outdoor pond. So many times I have wondered what it will feel like to be seated right next to him on that stone bench, the summer sun in my eyes and the smell of the koi pond beside me.
Kristine bends closer to get a better look. “He is cute. Nice eyes.”
Cute? I want to shout. He’s traffic-stopping gorgeous. He has become simply one of the most handsome men I have— Salvador interrupts my thoughts. “So when are you leaving?”
“I have a flight from RDU tomorrow . . . but . . .” I hesitate and stick a finger in my mouth. “Well . . .”
“What’s wrong?” asks Salvador.
“My grandmother was going to take me to the airport, but she’s in the hospital.”
“Is she okay?” asks Kristine.
Such a good question. Is she? “I could drive to the airport and leave my car in the parking lot while I’m gone.” I add, “But my car is acting up. I don’t think it’s safe to drive that far.”
“Salvador,” says Kristine, tapping his arm, “you could take her to the airport.”
He nods, runs fingers over his chin, and asks, “What time tomorrow?”
“My flight’s in the afternoon. Two-twenty.” I’ve memorized the departure time for all my flights, including the length of time for each layover. Harrison says there is bound to be some delay or change of airlines along the way; never has he flown across the ocean without at least one, what he calls, glitch.
“I can pick you up at ten-thirty or eleven,” Salvador says. “That should get you to the airport by one. Will that be enough time?”
I realize I am smiling ear to ear.
But the relief leaves when Kristine says, “You’ll love riding on his motorcycle.”
Motorcycle?
In the hallway, Salvador takes another look at my luggage. Running a hand through his dark hair, he notes, “This suitcase is too big to carry on the back. My luggage rack won’t hold it. Do you have a different type of bag?”
I don’t. My attic holds a gigantic green suitcase with a broken handle and a straw beach bag with a frog on it, and that’s it for luggage.
He turns to Kristine. “Do you have something?”
“Besides a suitcase?” She twists a lock of hair. “I don’t think so.”
The three of us cross the lawn to Hilda’s. She’s in her lit garage, as usual. I’m convinced the woman lives inside it. She looks up from a box of plastic insects to greet us. Spiders, grasshoppers, crickets, and worms sit motionless inside the cardboard. I know people donate all kinds of things, but who would donate a box of toy insects?
I ask if she has something I can borrow for a trip. Something to carry my clothes in that’s more flexible and compact than a suitcase.
Hilda stands and adjusts one of her pink hair curlers. “Let me see . . .”
We all stand in her garage, waiting as she thinks. The air in the garage is stuffy and thick, with a mixture of odors—from old shoes to insect spray.
Hilda takes her hands from her hips and then points to a large row of metal shelves to her left. On the very top is a silvercolored duffle bag. “Is that what you had in mind?”
Salvador stands on a crate and pulls it off the shelf.
“Will that work?” Hilda asks.
Salvador examines the bag. He nods. “This should fit on the cycle. We can strap it on the back along with that other small bag you have.” He looks at me for approval.
In the warm night, I feel a chill rise up to my neck. Am I really going to ride on a motorcycle? And get on an airplane? And go to Japan? Lord, my faith is only a seed in the ground. . . .
I thank Hilda. “I’ll bring it back in about two weeks.”
“You can have it,” says my neighbor. “A woman from Hickory donated it. It’s in good shape. The china dishes, silverware, and linens she also brought by a month ago are in those boxes over there.” Hilda waves a hand at a stack of brown boxes in a corner of her garage.
“She donated a lot,” says Kristine.
Hilda brushes her nose against her sleeve. “She did. She has breast cancer and doesn’t think she’ll be around much longer. Ah, they say you can’t take it with you. . . .”
As Hilda’s voice trails off, we just stand there looking at each other.
“I’ll go see her soon,” Hilda continues as she sniffs. “I’ll stop along the way at a group home in Winston-Salem to deliver some blankets and jackets.” She fingers a plastic green caterpillar. “Maybe they’ll like these things.”
“What are they?” Kristine exclaims.
Hilda lifts a spider and squeezes it. “Fun,” she cries. “Silliness. We all need more of it, wouldn’t you agree?”
You are a saint, Hilda. You are a saint.
Kristine eyes the plastic creatures inside the box and exclaims that they look too real for her to think about
fun
.
I express my thanks again and then follow Salvador and Kristine back to my driveway. My driveway where the Harley sits, shiny and scary.
“See you tomorrow,” says Salvador, handing me the silver duffle bag. He places his helmet back on his head and smiles. I see his dimple in the moonlight.
“You are gonna love riding on the Harley,” Kristine tells me as she buckles her helmet’s strap under her chin. “After the first thirty or so miles, your heart won’t beat as fast.”
I run my teeth over a thumbnail and clear my throat. I can’t smile; I don’t even bother to try.
Sure as the sun, tomorrow is going to arrive, whether I’m ready or not.
Removing my thumbnail from my mouth, I take a long look at the moon. Tonight it is a moon of flickering shadows.
Perhaps I will get to see if a rabbit is visible inside.
Harrison says the Japanese don’t see only a still rabbit. Oh no. There is more. The rabbit is pounding rice into
mochi
. For them, that is what lives in the moon.
Clutching my new possession, the duffle bag, I head up the brick steps and into my house. The next time I enter this house I will have seen Japan. Again.
———
In my dining room, I watch my fish swim peacefully, wishing my stomach would quit spinning. What a long way I have come, I think, as I study the pagoda at the bottom of the tank, the gift Aaron gave me years ago. I kept the pagoda because it was a gift given in kindness, even though Aaron held the hope it would make me want to connect to my past. All these years I managed to deny the Japan part of my life. Now I am ready to accept it.
These thoughts make my stomach spin into a knot.
Rubbing my scar, I make a cup of Earl Grey to calm me.
At midnight I repack the items from the Samsonite into the lady-with-cancer’s duffle bag. I spend a few minutes debating about what to wear tomorrow. I choose a green cotton shirt and a pair of khaki pants instead of a sundress because I can’t see myself on the back of a red Harley in a dress. Face it, I can’t picture myself on the back of any color motorcycle in any kind of clothes.
As I stroke the velvet of Aunt Lucy’s chair, I think of Ducee dreaming of heaven in her hospital bed, Clive out of commission with his arm in a cast and anger boiling inside him, and Grable exhausted from another day of being the sole caregiver to a child with high needs. It is as though an Irish ballad is playing beside my thoughts, a soft melancholy tune.
Then I think of Father.
I wish he would call.
Strange as it may sound, I want him to give me his blessing for this trip across the sea. Ducee wants me to go. Why can’t he just relent and tell me I have his permission to go?
Closing my eyes and sinking into the chair, I pretend I hear him say, “Nicole, it’s okay to go. I am just afraid you’ll be too overwhelmed. But you are not me. You don’t have the guilt I live with. You didn’t leave a pregnant wife and toddler to go to a conference. Nicole, don’t blame yourself. You walk a different path, so Japan won’t be the frightful demon of my nightmares for you. Go child. You want my blessing; I give it. Go to Japan with my blessing.”
It’s a little peculiar and hard to explain, but somewhere in my heart I do believe he could say those words. He never will say them to me. But he could. Just like he could get off the sofa and go back to being a respected physician at any hospital of his choice.
Wishful thinking?
Maybe.
I compose a short message to Harrison, my last one before meeting him.
Harrison,
I have been busy. Ducee’s in the hospital and I’ve debated whether or not to even continue on with my travel plans. But she insists I go, and like I’ve told you before, my grandmother is a tough cookie to fight.
I will see you soon. It will be easy to spot me at the Osaka airport. I will be the redhead with her fingernails all bitten off.
Nicole