Rain Song (19 page)
She didn’t return to the phone.
I guess the anticipated hot dog with the tiny pool of ketchup on the side took precedence over me.
I hung up and shortly after that got ready for bed.
Now, I sit upright, look in all directions around me, and gulp. Was I sleeping? Snoring even? I can’t fall asleep here before getting on the plane. What if the plane takes off without me?
The guy from Mebane is back. Standing in front of me with worry in his eyes, he asks, “Is everything all right?”
I was resting my head on my overnight bag while thinking about my fish and Monet and recalling the conversation with Grable and, goodness, I must have dozed off. I blink. None of that would mean anything to him because he knows nothing about me. I just reply, “I’m a little sleepy.”
He wanders off. Minutes later, when I’m turning the pages of my magazine, he comes back with two cups of coffee. “You look like you need coffee,” he tells me, thrusting one of the cups in my direction.
I wonder just how bad one who needs coffee looks. “Thank you.”
“Cream or sugar?” he asks, waving paper packets of each.
Since I’m not a coffee drinker, I’m not sure what to do, so I add a packet of sugar and one of cream. I stir the beverage with the wooden stick he provides. I sip the coffee, burn my tongue, and after a few swallows, realize my aching tongue and I are now fully awake.
———
A perky voice announces that the flight to Atlanta is ready for boarding. Smiles break out on the faces around me—faces I’ve grown quite familiar with over the past hours. Bags are lifted; other people snap shut laptops. An elderly couple ambles toward a forming line.
The man from Mebane says, “Aren’t you getting on this flight?”
“Oh.” I take hold of the situation by changing my tone from bewildered to assured. “Well, it will be good to get on board at last.”
I heard sometimes if you proclaim something in a positive way, you can actually convince yourself to be positive.
I stand on wobbly legs and swing my overnight kit and my purse—both so heavy with the jar of chutney and other items for that re-routed flight to Morocco or Mozambique—over my shoulder. Then I smile nervously at no one in particular and moisten my lips. I can do this. I can do this. It’s all working out. So far, so good.
And then, since the creek has not risen and the Good Lord is willing, I step onto the plane headed to Atlanta.
An airline attendant looks at my boarding pass and directs me to my aisle seat.
The guy from Mebane secures my overnight kit in the compartment above my seat.
I look around the cabin as I’m bumped by a few passengers making their way past me, and then decide the only thing left to do is to sit down.
“First time flying?”
I wonder why this seatmate, seated in the right window seat, is asking. I’ve glanced at her—a woman in her late forties, dressed in a gray business suit, with mauve lipstick and eyes hidden by a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. She holds a slick briefcase on her lap, takes a paperback from it, and then sets the briefcase near her shiny black leather shoes. Her nails are painted scarlet. True, she could be a hand model.
How can she tell? I pry my hands from the armrests where they’ve been glued. My feet are two blocks, stuck to the floor. My smile is forced and weak. I want to say yes, it is my first flight, but that’s not true. There was that time I threw up when Father and I returned from Japan.
The need to say anything leaves me as the plane picks up speed down the runway.
My seatmate looks out the tiny window. Then she opens her paperback novel and lets it absorb her.
How can she calmly read at a time like this?
My eyes automatically shut, and I hope the second Dramamine tablet I took will kick in quick.
This flight is only to Atlanta, I keep telling myself. This is cake compared to the thirteen-hour nonstop ride to Osaka yet to come.
The skin over my knuckles stretches tightly as the plane races faster and faster along the runway. I know for sure now that we are all going to die. There is no way that this plane is going to glide into the air like a bird. It’s about to collide with a wall and everyone will splatter like eggs in a hot pan.
I am unable to swallow. It’s humanly impossible to do so when I’m plastered against my seat and sure that soon my life— all thirty-one years of it—is ready to flash before me in a brief second. This is it.
But instead of my life, I see the faces of Ducee, Clive, Monet, and Iva. Then like a puff of smoke, their faces dissolve and I see the smile belonging to Salvador. Salvador, my new motorcycle hero. I will have to find some
bizen
in Kyoto to bring back to him as a souvenir.
I moisten my lips and consider biting a nail, and then wait to catch my breath. There’s a significant bump and then the plane is soaring, no longer on the ground, but suspended in the air, just like a bird.
I look around the cabin and see the heads of other passengers seated in front of me. Everyone’s still attached—arms to shoulders, knees to legs—and in the seats to my left, a couple is even laughing. Suddenly, without any notice, the aircraft coasts into the clouds, as smooth as a fish with fins gliding through water.
There, right outside the window, if I look over my seatmate, who has not bothered to lift her head from her paperback, is the most fantastic sight.
The sky is a canvas of orange threaded with wisps of pink clouds. The orange looks like the belly of a goldfish and the pink clouds, like ocean coral. Who would have thought the sky could hold similarities to the ocean? Who would have thought?
The Fasten Seatbelt light disappears, but I keep my belt secured around my waist.
Passengers are standing now, some heading to the restroom, others smiling, reading, talking. A few have headsets on, listening to music.
Like this is just another day. Like they fly all the time. No big deal.
I feel sleep fill my eyes, but I’m not ready to succumb to it. Outside, the sky is an array of orange clouds, a sea of the bellies of hundreds of goldfish, all crowded together so all I see are the shimmering orange undersides. It is as though the fish have taken over the sky, swimming in this sea-sky of tranquility.
Ducee’s words flow through my mind. The words she said to me that night when I asked, “How does the duck know she can swim in the pond?”
She doesn’t. But there is a good chance she can.
Am I swimming now?
I make a conscious effort to relax my arms and cross them against my stomach. I glance at my salmon-colored nails I painted last night after Kristine and Salvador left my house. I smudged one while waiting for the polish to dry and one got chipped when I placed my duffle bag on the scale at the check-in counter, but other than that, if I do say so myself, my nails look rather nice.
Did anyone ever tell you that you have hands like your mother?
“Pretty,” my seatmate says, looking over the edge of her book and out the window. As she starts to yawn, she covers her mouth with an elegant hand, returns her eyes to the novel, turns a page, and continues to read.
My ears pop, so I swallow hard. Harrison gave me this tidbit of advice. He also wrote that chewing gum helps ease the popping sensation that comes from being at a higher altitude. So I bought three packs of spearmint and two packs of cinnamon.
The captain of the plane welcomes everyone aboard with a cheery voice, as though he just ate a plate of pancakes covered in whipped cream and the sugar has him electrified. “Folks,” he says, “if you need anything, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask our flight crew. We thank you for flying Delta, and we hope you’ll enjoy the flight.” And for the third time this afternoon, he adds, “Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay. We’ll try to get you safely to Atlanta as soon as we can.”
Soon, two flight attendants push a metal cart loaded with canned soft drinks, bottled water, cups, ice, and peanuts.
I think I’ll ask for a Pepsi. Then I can tell my great-uncle that I drank his favorite soft drink at an altitude so high that I don’t even care to hear what it is.
Maybe I’m not going to throw up. Maybe I’ll be okay, able to enjoy a drink.
I tilt my head against the headrest and close my eyes.
Ducee should be home now, Iva by her side. Maggie McCormick will be braying so loudly with pleasure that I bet she’ll be heard all the way in Havelock. What will they do about preparing all the food for the reunion? Surely Ducee won’t have the energy to cook. And no one else has the time. What will happen? Will they bring in food from Howie’s sub shop?
I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out. After all, there is nothing I can do about it. I’m sort of suspended in the sky right now.
It gives me a jolt of amusement to think of the email message I plan to send from Harrison’s computer to the group gathered this week at the family reunion. I’ll send it to Aaron, of course. No one else has a computer.
I only wish I could see the expression on his face as he reads my words from thousands of miles across the ocean: “Arrived safely in Kyoto. Wish you were here.” And I might even add, just for his sake, “Decided it was finally time to get to know the Japan side of me.”
I picture them all around the new picnic tables, framed by the oak trees, cucumber and egg salad sandwiches before them, asking Ducee, “Where is Nicole?” They will make some comment that I wasn’t there for the Friday night dessert time, and that was unusual; however, not everyone makes it to the Friday night part of the reunion. But Saturday at Ducee’s. No one misses this event.
And then, just then, at the perfect moment, just like in the movies, the message will appear on the screen of Aaron’s laptop.
“Oh,” my cousin will say, “I just got a message from Nicole.”
Ducee’s lips will certainly be sealed with a grin, as family members look at her with bewildered eyes, wanting to grasp how Emma’s daughter could have something else to do and let it be important enough to take her away from this anticipated family reunion weekend.
Ducee will tell them, yes, she encouraged Nicole to make the trip. She will say, “Yes, yes, it was to be.”
Will they understand?
And if they don’t?
Actually, they should be amazed, and for two very good reasons. One, that I’m traveling to Japan and on a plane when I hate to fly, and two, that three of our relatives were able to successfully keep a secret from the rest of them. That’s something for the front page of the
Mount Olive Tribune
!
I rub my scar and then my neck, trying to ease the pressure in my ears. Opening a pack of spearmint gum, I chew a piece. I wiggle the toes on my left foot and then the ones on the right. If I can wiggle my toes on an airplane in flight, how bad can flying be?
The golden sky is perfect; I know we can’t be far from heaven.
Mama. Oh, Mama. Your little girl is daring, isn’t she? She is going to see the big wide world. She may not be ready, but are any of us humans ever ready? We’d like to think we are brave, capable, and strong. But the minute we lose our luggage or are delayed, we’ve been known to break into pieces.
I’m going to give it my best shot. Certainly, future generations will equate me right up there with bold Lizzy McCormick.
I breathe in an aura of reverence, “God, you have always been with me.”
And then, sure as the sun, I feel it. God’s hand, steady and tight, around my shoulder. It feels like warm fingers, warmer than even the ocean waters of my dreams, circling my whole being. It’s as real to me as my very feet, feet that are wiggling, no longer blocks of concrete. Feet eager to step onto Japanese soil.
My reflection in the plane’s small window is of a woman with confidence. Confidence that matches every one of her bitten polished nails.
My smile is as wide as the sun over the Carolina coast on a brilliant summer morning.
Just like Harrison wrote, Watanabe-san’s room at the Katsura nursing home has a small bulletin board crammed with pictures. In the center is a color photo of her, taken when she was much younger and more limber, dressed in pants, cap, and an orange fleece jacket, climbing a snowy mountain. In another, a blackand-white, she smiles while holding a little girl with frizzy hair. I look closely and my heart melts. “It’s me,” I whisper to Harrison.
He peers toward the photo to get a better view. “I remember you that way,” he says. His voice is deep, rich, and over the past days, one I love to hear—one reason being, it speaks a language I understand.
There are two black-and-white photos of Mama I’ve never seen before today. In one she has her arm around Father. Youth fills each of their joyful faces. The other is of Mama standing in the kitchen. On the burner beside her elbow sits a large metal pot.
I point to it, asking Harrison what Mama was cooking. He asks Watanabe-san in Japanese.
Still clutching the jar of chutney I earlier presented to her, Watanabe-san, seated in a wheelchair, rattles off a few lines.
“Pineapple chutney,” Harrison tells me. “That particular day your mother made it for a group of women she taught at a Bible study.”
How many times have I heard Ducee repeat that Mama brought pineapple chutney and the Gospel to Japan? Yet somehow hearing today and in this place that Mama did make chutney and teach the Bible makes it more real—much more real than hearing the tale in little ol’ Mount Olive, far from where it took place. Of course, I’d never let Ducee know this sentiment.
“You also helped,” Harrison continues to translate. “You liked to stand on a chair and mix the chutney with a large wooden spoon as your mother held on to you.”
“Did we wear aprons?” I think of how Ducee, Iva, and I always don our Mount Olive aprons when we cook up a batch of the delicacy.
The answer comes back. “Yes, green ones from your mother’s hometown.”
Some things never change, I think, and the thought makes me smile.
“She doesn’t have it on in the picture,” Watanabe-san explains in Japanese. “She took the apron off because she spilled pineapple juice all over the front.”
So Mama was clumsy like I am, I think. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The photo in the middle of the board is the same one I have in the silver frame at home. Mama, Sazae, and me, all in kimono, looking much more international in this Japanese setting than we look on my bedside table in Mount Olive.
Harrison stands next to me, studying all the pictures. He claims he spent much time looking over every photo during his past visits to meet my former maid at this nursing home. “I’ve often thought this one of you and your mom is cute,” he observes now with a grin.
“With Sazae,” I say. I turn to look at the real Sazae. My cotton doll is seated in the wheelchair with Watanabe-san this afternoon. Last night as the bullfrogs and crickets sang under a crescent moon, Harrison and I sat by his koi pond planning this visit to the home. I asked whether or not to bring the doll.
“Of course,” he told me. “She’ll be thrilled.” Then he gave me a few lessons on how to correctly pronounce my companion’s name.
I tried to say Sazae, enunciating every syllable like he taught me. Finally I concluded with, “I don’t know. All these years she’s answered to the way I’ve said her name. If I change, she might not know it’s her.”
“She answers when you call her?” Harrison looked at me with wide eyes, as if I had six heads.
He thinks I’m crazy, I thought, or badly affected by jet lag. I then tried to come up with some response.
Before I could say another word, he asked, “So does she answer in English?”
“Always.”
He grinned and I thought it was nice of him to play along with me. Really nice.
And Watanabe-san was thrilled. Tears welled in her worn eyes as she took my cotton doll and murmured a few words. My eyes filled, too. We took tissues Harrison handed us from a box on Watanabe-san’s bedside table.
“You are so beautiful and so grown-up,” Watanabe-san said between light sobs. “I remember brushing all that red hair.” With one hand over her heart, she repeated a number of times, “And you really are alive.”
As Harrison translated, a lump formed in my throat. Here I am, Mama. Did I ever think this day would come? I only hope it’s not a dream, that I am really standing in my former maid’s room, this woman who knew a part of you I am so eager to learn about. I’m not in a sea with fish, and Harrison looks human, so perhaps this is reality.
When I tried to answer Watanabe-san, no words came. Gently, Harrison placed his arm around my shoulders—the first time he’d touched me since hugging me upon my arrival at the airport three days ago. I felt my heart flutter and then I knew if it could, it would have turned a complete cartwheel, one of those spontaneous ones children do with sheer agility.
Now Harrison and I move together from the bulletin board to sit in chairs beside the older woman. She is still holding on to the chutney and Sazae. As we sit, she carefully secures the objects in her chair against one of her thighs. Pushing her wheelchair close to me, she reaches for my right hand, taking it, painted bitten nails and all, between her scarred palms. They are a dull purplish red, looking ugly, like bruises. These hands of hers— God used them to save me. And they cost her. I have never seen such beauty.
Observing that I am studying her scars, she speaks.
Harrison translates. “These wounds are superficial. The real longing has been in my torn heart. Oh, to see your mother again. She was such a kind woman.”
I note Watanabe-san’s wrinkled face, her gray head of hair pulled back into a bun, and imagine what it must have been like to have been rocked by her as an infant as Mama and Father smiled at each other. I breathe in talcum powder and a faint aroma of cold cream.
As much as I’m grateful to Harrison for being the interpreter, I only wish I knew the language to get the real gist of what Watanabe-san is conveying to me.
Yesterday at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant over a lunch of
unagi
, which is absolutely fabulous, Harrison explained something to me that makes sense. He said that even if I can’t speak the native tongue, my body language as well as the tone of my words in English will bridge the sea of the language barrier. “People know you are sincere and happy to be with them and be here. That’s what translates well.”
Sitting here with Watanabe-san, Harrison says, “She knows you have more questions about the past. Perhaps you want to know about that night. She says your father was a brilliant man. He loved your mom and you very much.”
I smile. I want to stop the conversation here, put a period at the end of her sentence, and not venture any farther. But I know there’s more.
So far this afternoon, we’ve talked about the house we lived in—what it looked like, the neighborhood with the market and the playground where I fell off the swing. I asked about the hospital where I was born and where Mama and Father worked. I learned Mama would affectionately kiss the top of my head each night at bedtime, just as I’ve seen other mothers do. She enjoyed watching children’s programs with me on the black-and-white TV in the living room. We’d both sit barefoot on the sofa with a quilt covering us as we watched the shows.
But yes, I did come here to hear more.
I listen as Harrison and the woman converse. Then my body tenses as Harrison translates again. “Your father became a shadow of his former self once your mother died.” Solemnly Harrison adds, “Apparently he and your mother got into a fight the day he left for the meeting in Tokyo.”
My skin feels clammy, and I have to take my hand away from Watanabe-san’s hold as she continues with the story. I stick a finger in my mouth, remove it, and then clamp my hands tightly in my lap.
Harrison explains, “The house was cold. There was no central heating, and earlier that day your dad had gone out to buy a kerosene heater. The oil stove in the living room only heated a portion of the house. After he returned with the heater, your mother asked him to stay and not go to the conference in Tokyo. She wasn’t feeling well. She had the flu and, as you know, was pregnant. She’d told few people about the pregnancy. She’d had a miscarriage the year before and wasn’t sure this baby would stay. Your father said, ‘I got you this heater, what do you mean I don’t do enough for you?’ He purchased the heater secondhand. I will always wish he’d spent the money for a reliable new one.” Here Harrison pauses, nods to Watanabe-san.
She continues in halted sentences. “Your father left in spite of the argument. He called a cab that took him to the airport. Poor thing, last time he saw her alive she was sad, coughing, and crying. He never got to apologize. But she would have forgiven him; he needs to know that.”
Harrison’s translation of the rest of the incident comes slowly. “The heater had a leak, and the firemen that came later said that was the cause of the fire. While your mother slept, the kerosene leaked and caught the rug and the curtains in her bedroom on fire. She woke and tried to get out of the room, but she had already breathed in too much smoke. Your mother died from the very heater your father thought would keep her warm.”
My throat feels as if someone has stuffed a towel inside it. I try to breathe, speak, swallow. In my mind I see Mama’s youthful body motionless on her bedroom floor. Mama, my poor mama. Harrison notices my struggle and places his hand on my arm. My eyes are clouding over again. I sniff, hoping to hold back more tears.
The old woman’s weathered cheeks are moist.
I reach out to squeeze her hand, and as I do, that place in my heart for Father starts to ache. “Sometimes,” Ducee has said to me over the years, “those who survive have the hardest burden. Survivor’s guilt is a weary load.” He bought a heater that killed her. As if that guilt—his heavy shackle—of not being at the house to protect her that night wasn’t enough. The thoughts make my head sting, along with my eyes. I rub my scar, as though the motion will ease my pain.
When my eyes meet Harrison’s, I note his deep-set blue eyes are watering, too.
He has to clear his throat before being able to translate Watanabe-san’s next statement. “I can die now, is what she says. I can die now a happy woman. God in heaven has answered my prayers. You are here.”
Suddenly, there is a knock on the door and an attendant in a white uniform quietly enters the room. She’s the same one who ushered us into Watanabe-san’s room an hour ago, rounding up extra chairs for us to sit on.
The attendant and my former maid talk as Harrison gently runs his fingers against my bare arm. “Are you ready to go?” he asks me. “We can come back another day.”
Before I can answer, Watanabe-san has shifted from her mellowness and is rapidly ordering the attendant to get something. The attendant bows, cries, “Hai!” and bolts out of the room.
I look at Harrison, questioning.
He translates. “Watanabe-san said it’s time for tea. You’ve come all the way across the world to see her and she has yet to serve you tea. What a terrible hostess she’s been.”
I start to laugh. The sound of my laughter is like a cascading waterfall—robust and full of life.
Just throw your head back and let it out.
Harrison joins me. I like the way his mouth curves upward and his eyes light like a warm, starry night. Sincere eyes, kind eyes. Eyes that have even glossed over when told a sad story.
Watanabe-san glances at us for a moment, as though she doesn’t know what to make of us. Or perhaps she is remembering those years, decades ago, when Harrison and I were both small and walked on narrow streets to the neighborhood park. She chuckles in her tender way.
After a moment she asks if I still sing.
“Sing?”
“The rain song,” Harrison interprets. “About the falling rain and the mother coming to pick up the child with an old Japanese-style umbrella.”
The song I sang that helped this woman know where I was so that she could follow my voice through the smoky house and rescue me. I wish I knew the words.
Watanabe-san’s face softens. “It is somewhere still inside you—the words.” She sounds like Ducee whenever I’d say I recalled nothing about my mother.
She is you. You are her.
When the
ocha
is served—steamy green tea in round pink cups painted with pale cherry blossoms—I taste more than I can imagine. It is the past and present all melding into one. It is understanding, truth, hope. I briefly close my eyes, trying to absorb it all.
And when I open them, through wet eyelashes, I smile at Harrison drinking his tea.
As he smiles back, I think that maybe I see the future.
I hear Ducee’s voice as clear as if she’s seated right next to me, nodding in the way she often does, eager to voice her familiar phrase.
Yes, that’s it, yes.