Chorus of Mushrooms Read online

“Otōsan, where does the wind come from?”

  “The wind comes from the clouds. They are making silly faces and trying to blow each other away.”

  “Otōsan, where do the storms come from?”

  “They come from the demons. There are not enough bean cakes to go around, so they are having a farting contest to see who is to win them!” Otōsan pronounced with a serious face and I was serious in my belief. Okāsan was sewing a yukata, but she dropped the films of summer-thin cotton to laugh and laugh, her hand politely covering her mouth. And baby Shige laughed with her, even though he was too young to know why.

  One hanko. Pressed in red ink. Dulled with rice wine. One hanko, and everything gone.

  Who has left that screen door unlatched? The wind is shouting against the door frame, hurling insults at this house, my home. Slap, bang. Slap, bang. Tomare! A cup in my hand. It has always been there, smashes against the door. Shatter. Keiko. My words are only noises in this place I call a home.

  “I thought that you didn’t learn how to speak Japanese until after you grew up,” you say, tapping your finger on your lips.

  “That’s right,” I answer. Pull the string for the blinds and crank open the window. The room is stuffy with our sleep breathing and the tang of love and sweat.

  “Then how do you know what your Obāchan said? I thought you couldn’t speak with her when you were growing up in Nanton. Or did I get it wrong?” You watch me dig through the laundry hamper for some not-so-dirty clothing. I turn a pair of panties inside out and slip on a pair of your jeans. Roll up the cuffs.

  “No, that’s right,” tug a white T-shirt with no logo over my head.

  “Then how can you be telling a true story if you never knew what your grandmother said?” you ask. You are still in bed, the blanket around your belly. I sit down on the edge of the bed to smooth doubt from your mouth. Lean in, and dip my tongue between your lips.

  “I’m making up the truth as I go along.”

  NAOE

  Keiko is dusting. Scattering dust so it settles everywhere else, polishing doorknobs, scraping the frame above the door. What for? No need, I say. There is nothing as silly as dusting when you live in a desert. But she ignores me. Keiko. My daughter who has forsaken identity. Forsaken! So biblical, but it suits her, my little convert. Converted from rice and daikon to weiners and beans. Endless evenings of tedious roast chicken and honey smoked ham and overdone rump roast. My daughter, you were raised on fish cakes and pickled plums. This Western food has changed you and you’ve grown more opaque even as your heart has brittled. Sliver-edged and thin as paper. I love you still. You are my daughter, after all, and this you cannot change. For all that you call me Obāchan and treat me as a child. I am not your grandmother. I am your mother.

  “Obāchan, please! I want to clean this hall. Can you just go upstairs so I can clean up this hall?” Keiko rolls her eyes backward so she is staring up inside her ketchup brain.

  “Nanio yutteru ka wakarimasen. Nihongo de hanashite kudasai,” I say and she grinds her teeth and refuses to understand the Japanese she spoke twenty years ago. Child after my own heart, I suppose. We are locked together perfectly, each pushing against the other and nothing moves. Stubborn we are and will remain, no doubt. She yanks the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and swirls the dust even more, trying to suck up everything in her path, cramming the head between the legs of my chair, running over my feet until I move them out of her way. I could laugh, I suppose, if I weren’t so stubborn. There is little hope left for you and me, Keiko. We choose our words and speak them with little time for thought. I know. I know.

  “You’re an old fool,” Keiko whispers, and clatters the vacuum cleaner after her stiff spine. I nod and smile. Onnajida yo, Keiko, onnaji. We are the same. Ahh, easy to lose track of days, of years, when a chair becomes an extension of your body. I wasn’t born in this chair, and I won’t die in it, that’s certain, but I have room enough to think here, and almost nothing can sneak past my eyes. I may be old, but I’m not blind. This chair can serve me still and I needn’t move at all. My words will rattle around me. I speak my words, speak my words, and I say them all out loud. I yell and sing and mutter and weep from my seat of power.

  The wind is not as strong today, so I needn’t shout. Only mutter. If there is nothing to obstruct the wind, would I still hear it? I wonder. I have a piece of dried salted squid in my pocket and I tear a bit off. I must chew and chew. Like beef jerky, but much tougher. I chew and the juices begin to fill my mouth. It gives me energy, this squid, the more I chew, the tastier it gets.

  “Where did that come from?” Keiko so mad. Always a peak to her obstinate upper lip. I nod and smile.

  “Keiko mo dōzo itadaite kudasai,” I offer and raise some shrivelled squid legs to her pointing finger. Her lips turn white and she slams the kitchen door behind her. There is enough slamming of doors with this constant wind.

  It is Shige and his wife who send me the packages, of course. Poor, yes, but kind and they send me a package now and then. I may be an old fool, but stupid? Surely not. I have my own box at the post office, but you don’t know, Keiko. I pay for it with the coins I collect from the couch cracks after dark.

  Naoe Kiyokawa

  Box 2909

  Nanton, AB

  TOL 1RO CANADA

  This pit of dust. This bowl of heat. Salted squid. They send me salted squid. Not always, because it is so expensive, and osenbei. Crisp rice crackers dipped in soya sauce, I crunch them in bed at 4:00 in the morning. It’s Muriel who sneaks the packages up to my room when everyone is asleep. My granddaughter, your daughter, Keiko. You taught her no words so she cannot speak, but she calls me Obāchan and smiles. She brings the packages and we crumble the osenbei together in my narrow bed. Muriel does not suit her, Keiko. I call her Murasaki. Purple. She cannot understand the words I speak, but she can read the lines on my brow, the creases beside my mouth. I could speak the other to her, but my lips refuse and my tongue swells in revolt. I want so much for someone to hear, yet it must be in my words. So stubborn, so clenched I spite my face. Damn you wind. Howl! Howl!

  Murasaki places her head in my bony lap and I begin to speak my words.

  Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi . . .

  A girl opened a door, balancing a paper brown parcel in one arm. An old woman sat in bed. A huge pillow propped her up, but her head hung low on her hollow chest, wheezed heavily with the breath of age. The young girl set the box on the floor beside the bed and reached down, touched her grandmother’s cheek with two fingers. The old woman nodded. Slowly opened her eyes. She smiled, stroked her granddaughter’s hand, gestured toward the box and said, Akete chyōdai. The girl knelt on the dust-creased floor and quietly picked at the tape on the package.

  Outside, the wind screeched and the seams in the walls funnelled the dust into growing wedges. The girl slid her thumbnail along the crease of the masking tape. Sound of tearing. The old woman watched, her eyes traceless of the sleep she had woken from. The young girl flipped the heavy cardboard lid back on itself, all four sides, and reached into the box. Plastic crinkles, crackers dipped in soya sauce, lightly fried, crackle crunch between teeth, and flat leather sea squid, tentacles twisted and wrinkle-dried so tough to chew until the ball, the socket of the jaw aches but the juices linger salt and sea. Tiny crocks of pickled plums, the brine so strong the mouth drenched with a passing thought and look! a bottle wrapped in plastic and paper and plastic and paper and black character on the label. The grandmother smacked her lips, Sake! and the girl looked up, saw the old woman’s eager mouth, and smiled because she could taste how sweet the sake was from her grandmother’s face.

  MURASAKI

  I could still taste the sake lingering in my mouth. Licked my lips again, to trace the last drops. Obāchan smacked her lips. Mom always ragged on her to cut it out, how rude she sounded, but it’s really appropriate to smack lips. It’s like a symbolic gesture of respect to what you’ve consumed—how truly wonderful it is to swill the s
ake in your mouth, rolling it on your tongue, letting it drip drop by drop into your eager throat. Smack, smack. Ahhh. That was good.

  Smack, smack! (Obāchan)

  Smack, smack! (Me)

  Smack! Smack! (Obāchan)

  Smack! Smack! (Me)

  “Obāchan, cut that out! We’re trying to sleep in here!” Mom yelled from her room. Dad groaned, only waking up because Mom was yelling across his face. Obāchan and I looked at each other and started cackling. She pulled the blankets over our heads and we snorted into her crumbly sheets until we ran out of air.

  “Obāchan, we’ve got to stop eating those rice crackers in your bed.”

  “Sonna koto kamau ka? Kōyatte Murasaki to isshoni iru koto ga ureshii no yo.”

  “Obāchan, why do you call me Murasaki?”

  “Anta ga jibun de imi o sagashite chyodai.” She smiled, reached for the sake bottle and tilted her head back to catch the last drops on her tongue. Soaked it up. I snagged a piece of squid from the box and popped it into my mouth. There’re two ways of eating squid. To chew and chew and chomp and chew and wring out the juices from the leather flesh, or to hold the squid in your cheek and let it soak up the saliva slowly until it swells and softens. Obāchan always chewed like mad, words falling out with each snap of her jaw. I held my words inside my mouth until they swelled and softened.

  We ate, we drank, in Obāchan’s bed of feasts. Now I was tired and all roasty toasty, covered in sheets of cracker. I snuggled my head in Obāchan’s bony lap and closed my eyes to listen. I couldn’t understand the words she spoke, but this is what I heard.

  Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi . . .

  Listen, Murasaki, listen. Do you wonder why the wind howls like a stricken woman? Do you wonder why the rain sometimes tastes like blood. Che! The Greeks. Forget the Greeks! And don’t quote Bible verses to me, child. There were stories long before Eve tasted fruit fit for women. Yes, stories in each blade of grass, flesh of worm, drop of dung. They linger and grow and only women to reap them. Let the stories suckle your breast, they’ll ease the ache within you. Don’t come to me for answers, child, these are only words. Nothing an old woman has to say carries much weight in this dust dry wind. Words will flake and wither. Yet I speak still, the words, they will spew even if I clench my teeth, meld my lips in revolt. But these stories are not for you I speak them, but for whoever I will. I am. Come, sweep the crumbs from my bed and lie down beside me. There, that’s nice. Much warmer with two and the words will keep us company. If someone should knock on the door, we’ll welcome them into this bed of tales.

  Of course, there was a time when I was grim and silent. It's only when you are truly beaten there is nothing to say but breath.

  When the wind wails like a woman and rain tastes of blood, it is time to remove your skin and fall naked from your body. This wind. So little rain when the wind is static dry. When I stoop and shuffle with the scritch of slippers, the electricity builds in my wire body, my hair floats, a white aura, and I’m afraid to touch. If I went outside, lightning would collect about my head, thunderclouds about my feet. But I’ve never left this dusty house, it hasn’t been the time.

  (Murasaki: How long have we been in bed, Obāchan?

  Naoe: I don’t know.

  Murasaki: How long will we stay in bed, Obāchan?

  Naoe: Child, I don’t know.)

  You wonder who sends me these packages, don’t you. These “mystery packages” you call them. You cannot read the characters, only trace the lines with your finger. Childhood sweetheart, you read. Aging lover. No, a woman whose life you saved when she flung herself off the platform and you grabbed the back of her coat and the train roared by, inches from her face. No, child, no. These packages, these gifts are sent to me from your great uncle, my brother, and his wife, Fumiko. Yes, there was a time when I was a child and had a baby brother. Now he is as withered as I am worn and his wife, Fumiko, no longer plants daikon and eggplant seeds in the garden. They pluck cobwebs with their fingers and weave the thread into tiny tapestries, light as breath, as thought. They tell each other tales, when they gather threads together. Bent of spine, silver hair yellowed by motes of dust, they stir like quiet mummies in the corners of the rooms. So lucky for them, they are two. One can begin forming the words, the other listening, and if the one who speaks should tire, the other is there to finish. They tell each other legends, myths. They re-create together.

  Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi, arutokoroni, ojiisanto obāsanga imashita. Kono ojiisanto obāsanwa taiso binbodattasōna— (Naoe: Do you hear what I say or only what you want?)

  Mukāshi, mukāshi, chisana murani, ijiwaruna bōzu ga imashita— (Naoe: Will you listen with an open ear and close your eyes to thought?)

  Mukāshi, watashi wa— (Naoe: What are you waiting for?)

  I can’t. I can’t. Ican’t. Ican’t.ican’t.ican’tican’tican’t

  I stop.

  I turned my head slowly in Obāchan’s lap, the fabric scratch and stiff. Inhaled dust and poetry. She stroked my forehead with her palm and her words, they flowed fluid. I snuggled close, curled my legs and stopped pretending to understand. Only listened. And listened. Then my mouth opened of its own accord and words fell from my tongue like treasure. I couldn’t stop. Didn’t try to stop. They swirled, swelled and eddied. The words swept outside to be tugged and tossed by the prairie-shaping wind. Like a chain of seeds they lifted, then scattered. Obāchan and I, our voices lingered, reverberated off hollow walls and stretched across the land with streamers of silken thread.

  NAOE

  Words, words, words, WORDS. Ahh, words grow heavier every day, upon my bony back. My body folds over itself under the weight. My back groaning, Akiramete. Give up. You crush your crinkled spine with the stones you drop from your mouth, hurl from your gut. I sew my lips together with a curved needle, but the words seep from my nostrils, my ears, even leak from my paper dry eyes.

  “You sit there and mutter and taunt me in Japanese just for spite,” Keiko hisses from the crack between the kitchen door and frame, one eye stabbing me through the tiny space. It is not so, Keiko, but the door has already clicked shut before I can explain. Why. Even I don’t know, sometimes. The words of an old woman can change little in this world and nothing of the past so why this torrent of words, this tumble of sounds such roaring, sweeping, chanting, sighing. Hummmm. I only know I must.

  Gawa gawa gawa gawa

  Oto tatete

  Are are mori no mukō kara,

  Soro soro detekuru hikōsen.

  Marukute annani hosonagaku

  Banana no yō ni fukuranda

  Fukuro no naka ni wa nani ga aru.

  We learned it in kindergarten. Yes, we had kindergarten, eighty years ago, in Japan, where I saw my first blimp. A zeppelin. Something huge and floating. A song to commemorate a blimp. We, filled with wonder at something so huge, so solid, floating above our heads with the roar of heated air. We clapped our hands and ran squealing after the silly brown balloon, our teacher chasing us. I asked her about the words in the song.

  “Sensei, the blimp is not yellow,” I said.

  “No,” agreed my teacher, “it is very brown.”

  “But why, in the song, does it say the blimp is filled up like a banana? The blimp is brown and it isn’t even shaped like a banana.”

  “It is only a song, Naoe-chan, and the words aren’t that important. We are happy to see the blimp and we sing a merry song,” she smiled.

  “But it’s not true. We are singing a song, but the words are not true.”

  “If you leave a banana out in the sun for a long time, it turns brown, you know, Naoe-chan.”

  Gawa gawa gawa gawa . . .

  There was not enough money for me to stay in school. Such a pity, the teachers said, you’re such a clever girl. Never mind, you’ll do all right, you’re such a clever girl. But there was not enough money for books.

  I went to work at a silk farm. They looked at my hands, my back, the size of my legs and sent m
e to the growing barns. There, the silk worms hatched from pin-prick eggs. We were their nurses. Fed them, changed their sheets of mulberry leaves, fed them, sorted them, fed them. When they were tiny, tinier than eyelash or breath, we had to mince the mulberry leaves with great knives. The leaves stained our hands green sweet. No one talked, this nursery of extravagance. Each woman, each girl keeping the unwritten silence, and the only sound thousands upon thousands upon thousands of miniscule jaws munching in ferocious appetite. Each night I dreamt my body was covered with squirming, munching, defecating worms, wriggling into my nose, my ears my eyesmymouth. Screamed. Until Okāsan came and touched my face with her cool hands. The dreams did not last. My body tuned to the rhythm of the worms, their weekly sleep, two days, then shedding skin and growing growing. I even grew to like them, hairless, cream white and soft as the skin on a baby’s neck. Sometimes, I cupped grown worms, thick as my finger, in my hand and lifted them to my cheek. Skin the scent of mulberry leaves. Thoughts of infant pigs and green rabbits. Our job was finished when they wrapped themselves up with their precious thread. We piled them on trays like so many quilted eggs and they were taken away. Our work was done.

  One cocoon in my pocket.

  I save winter moths from Keiko’s vacuum cleaner. I tuck them into the folds of my clothes, and when everyone is asleep I mix sugar with water and feed them from the cup of my palm.

  There are ages of silence and ages of roaring. When I was young and beautiful, my lips were an ornament upon my face. Now my face is crumpled with care and seams adorn my cheeks. My mouth bursts wide and the words rush out, a torrent of noise and scatters. An old woman on a wooden chair might not be much to look at, but step inside her circle of sound and fall into a tornado.

  I was married, once, to a man, then we divorced. Most unheard of, fifty years ago, in Japan. And Makoto was the one to cry when the final papers were signed. When it was he who sought the comfort of a priest’s daughter, so young and tender, she didn’t see the weakness around his mouth, his eyes, until it was too late. For her. He was not all to blame, of course. I can sit here now in this bowl of heat and touch the memories with cool fingers. I can see the attraction of a young girl’s love. A young girl’s adoration. Limbs so slim and breasts so young they would melt on your tongue. A girl too young in experience to know the weakness some men carry. I did not envy her youth or her beauty. I did her a wrong, because she gave me the reason to leave a marriage I never chose to enter. And she to enter the space Keiko and I left behind us.