Hiroshima in the Morning (3 page)

“But when I got to Japan . . . there was no way I was Japanese either. If I just walked down the street, kids would run after me and say: ‘A-me-li-can, A-me-li-can.’

“And here I was, with a Japanese face. But they knew.”

—Aunt Molly

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR HIROSHIMA. I have never seen a photograph, yet I will know it exactly. The rocks there will sing to me, the grass will smell like home. Or maybe the sea will smell like home. There is a legitimate question of what home smells like, whether it’s the ocean I grew up fishing in in Hawaii, or the smell of cooked rice, or a flower, or a spice that I’ve never bothered to catalogue because, how do you record such a thing, like a heartbeat or a breath? I have become a New York mother, but I was a Hawaiian child, and though it surprises me, it is still my earlier home that comes back to me on this island nation: in the commonalities of ginger and nori, and the edge of déjà vu. It is only now, when that child reincarnates so clearly, that I first encounter the possibility that that self was ever gone.

Why am I here? And why do I keep asking myself why I am here? I have always scorned and disbelieved anything that can’t be articulated, and yet I must know that “
to collect data, to research . . . ”
cannot account for the joy I feel, and the terror. I need this journey, and that vague awareness leaves me in the unfamiliar territory of instinct. If there
is
more than meets the eye, I can relax, and yet, I must be sure. I glance out the window as I blast through tunnels. Each time I pull my ears out of the darkness and pop them, the world is a little greener, the roofs more pitched, more tiled. But each glance is also more of the same, more of the subtle
move out of the flatlands and away from the boxy grey cities that have flanked so much of my journey—subtle as so much of Japan has been so far, which is to say, so familiar and so different that I have no ability to judge. It is maddening: I cannot distinguish between what to keep and what to discard.

Could I be so ill-equipped, and after so many years of successful living? Or have I refused to equip myself, preferring to stand weaponless in my new world? I have moved from ignoring to blithely refuting. If you sat beside me then, I would tell you—in the same voice that I would use to regale you with the transformation of New York’s subway—that I am not used to trains. That there aren’t any in the US, or at least, that our distances lend themselves to cars and airplanes, nothing like this sleek
shinkansen
, with its red, roving bubbles on the LED sign in the front of the car that inform me I am now traveling at more than 330 kilometers per hour. Perhaps it’s the jet lag, or my growing sense of being unmoored, but I am suddenly back in the time, more than fifteen years ago when I was just out of college, when Brian and I went from Madrid to Barcelona on a crippled, backwoods cousin of this train, through an endless countryside of farms and hills lit up with the small quick flames of cypress trees. That was the last train I rode in; the last time I found myself moving, bodily, between places I’d yet to imagine. We had been heading for Italy until the standby travel company that had already taken our money gave us the choice between Madrid or another night in the airport, so I was loose, on my first trip to a foreign country, in much
the way I have been let loose now. Then, I had Brian beside me; the boy who grew up in Europe, who loved to please, to give. And what he gave was my first glimpse of a new world, my twenty-year-old hand in his, surrounded by his knowledge, navigated by him. If it seems too plump, too bright in my memory, that is what memory is—the youth and young love, the excitement of exploring, Jack and Jill, each amazing new sight a gift from him to me. I leapt then because he was leaping with me: going to Spain “because.” I can still taste the capers in my mouth, huge, grape-sized pockets of salt and puckering. I can still hear the old man who grew them asking if Brian and I had sex. I pretended not to understand the language, but the question made it clear: we were already married, from the moment we met. From age seventeen, we were together every minute that could be wrenched away from school or work.

 

WHEN THE TRAIN PULLS THROUGH the last ring of mountains, Hiroshima is suddenly new. In its buildings, in their height and orderly placement, newer than most of the cities I’ve seen so far. Of course it makes sense—the whole place was crushed by the atomic bomb in 1945 and then burned to the ground by the intense heat, so of course there are no ancient pagodas, no historically winding streets—but it is not what I expected. Not the home I was sure I’d see. It strikes me then, with the force of the first time, that I’ve entered a foreign world. Not foreign as in Japanese, but as in the fact that I can’t imagine what tomorrow will look like, let alone what I will do on that day. On this train, without a
fearless leader, I am experiencing a new sensation. A laxity, a sense of not being quite attached, head to spine to fingers; a sense of being too small to claim the vast space in my seat, or to walk the aisles of the
shinkansen
without tumbling over my toddling feet. If I had to put words to this new feeling, I would have to say it seems to approach the definition of “lost,” at least a little. Or maybe it’s the feeling of being lost that’s approaching me—there on the train, a seated target—maybe it is loss, not surprise, that ripples through my tongue every time a bite from my
ekiben
turns out to be salty instead of sweet, fishy instead of vegetable-based.

Perhaps loss has been with me all along.

I survived Tokyo. Saw sights, got my very first cell phone, met the people who managed my fellowship, and smiled the “making conversation with strangers at a wedding” smile. And now, when by rights I should be savoring this moment of time apart, of time alone, which has never truly existed in my life, instead, I am thinking of Ellen. As the train begins to wind down its journey, I understand that Ellen’s image is the last thing I recognized, my parents’ friend who accompanied me all the way to my seat on the
shinkansen
and then—having tucked my packages overhead and settled my lunch—stood with goodbye tears in her eyes until the warning signs flashed that the train would be leaving, until she could no longer resist the urge to tuck my hair behind my ears and hug me close. If I can no longer assume my way through Japan without articulation, then I must now
do
something to move forward, and I don’t know what, or how. I take out my contact numbers—the
only link I have with tomorrow—and run my fingers across them as if to straighten out the digits. I have two organizations listed, and two women: Jane Osada, the Japanese American ex-boss of a friend of my mother-in-law who has invited me to lunch tomorrow, once I am settled; and Kimiko Uchida. But Kimiko, who I haven’t even met yet, is already mad at me.

MY MOTHER-IN-LAW IS STANDING on the platform when my train pulls into Hiroshima station. At least, the woman in the middle of three, the one in charge of pointing and peering through the windows, looks just like my husband’s mother. The same salt and pepper bob, same broad mouth, high cheekbones. She is clearly equally exacting since the trio is waiting, not just where my car will pull up, but within two rows of my seat. This somewhat stern-looking ghost from my present has to be Kimiko Uchida.

I am no one Kimiko knows. Christopher, who administers the grant, had put me in touch with a friend from his somewhat distant past: a professor, close to eighty, the kind of gentleman who responded to my gift of a copy of my novel with a letter in perfect English, full of praise and apologies for his inability to understand the nuances of the
prose. He lived in Hiroshima, and though he did not experience the atomic bombing, he knew a few people who did—Japanese Americans, more to the point; people who speak English. But just before I left New York, the professor was diagnosed with stomach cancer and hospitalized.

Enter Kimiko, his former student and the founder of a volunteer organization that promotes “peace activities” especially for foreigners. I’d written to her at his suggestion, and she told me to get in contact with her when I arrived—conspicuously without the elaborate niceties he included in his letters. But a week or so before I was scheduled to leave, my usually silent phone rang in the middle of the night with the news, from Kimiko, that the professor was ill, followed by a slew of questions: Which hotel should she reserve for me? When, exactly, was I arriving? What was my budget? And my other requirements?

We battled the cell phone crackle, the long distance time delay, her humility, and the way her sentences trailed off into phrases like “and so” and “like that” before they could include the essential details of her thought. I thanked her profusely and told her please not to bother herself on my account, the hotel reservation was so much more than I could have hoped for. I would be sure to get in touch with her when I got to Tokyo. And then, while Kimiko continued to make plans for a greeting party at the train station, as she made lists of who would be doing what to help me—all unbeknownst to me—she stumbled onto a tiny piece of information I’d neglected to mention. Namely, that I had also contacted Jane Osada, and she was planning to help me too.

I’d thought Kimiko’s offer was simply a required formality so I politely declined because I didn’t want to be trouble. But what I would come to learn was, she had an obligation to help me—not just a request from a former teacher, but quite possibly a deathbed request—and she had absolutely no choice but to put everything else aside and complete many tasks to make my life easier. To her, my “please don’t trouble yourself” was not a refusal at all, it was simply a way to say
thank you so much for all the help that I know you will work like a dog to give me anyway
. And by not mentioning I knew Jane, by creating a situation where there was even the slightest possibility of someone else duplicating the strenuous efforts I didn’t know she was making on my behalf, well, I was just plain rude.

And my apologies, when all this came to my attention, still have not been accepted.

I can tell this by the tone in which Kimiko says it’s not a problem. I can feel it in the NASCAR pace we’re using to drag my luggage from the train platform to her car. When we can’t seem to find a working elevator to get me and my American-sized possessions to the parking lot, I am sure of it. I am one of those bad gaijin—the kind who, when someone doesn’t seem to understand her request, just repeats it louder, shouting if necessary, in English because these people around her must all be deaf.

At least I know better than to try to justify myself. I apologize. Keep apologizing. And whenever there’s a lull in the conversation, I apologize once more.

“SO, WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO LIVE?” Kimiko asks me. This is the third time around for this question. A foreigner in Japan needs to have a sponsor in order to rent an apartment. Kimiko’s candidate for sponsorship is the Japanese government, since it sponsors the overall grant, or perhaps the grant administrators. She is not pleased to hear that, once here, I am entirely on my own.

The repetition then, as I struggle to learn this cultural lesson: Is she asking me to suddenly remember I have a sponsor in my address book? Or to agree to stay in a hotel for six months? Or to take this problem to someone else?

We are having miniature cups of coffee in the lobby of the hotel she reserved for me. Me, Kimiko, and the other two women, who have been introduced to me as “choir members.” Apparently, the professor is a singer among his many other talents, and these women are connected to him through song. They are speaking to me in Japanese. This surprises me; it’s the first time anyone has tried to converse with me in Japanese. I am trying to follow and I imagine Kimiko is annoyed that I don’t understand
anything,
which might be why the English translations, when they come, seem to contain about four words for every forty. The two choir members are smiling and nodding as they choreograph a stationary dance of self-congratulation for having successfully completed their mission, which was to hand over the names and telephone numbers of three of the professor’s Japanese American friends who I might want to interview. I appreciate their help, but I’m feeling just a little needy, and the simple fact that the greeting party seems somewhat
outsized for the small bit of information I’ve been given makes me hopeful that there’s something more to come. But as the coffee cups empty, it doesn’t seem so, and on the truly important points—like where am I going to live for six months and could it really be possible I might not be able to find an apartment?—they fall silent.

They take stock. I have a cell phone, some yen in my pocket, and an adequate budget. The hotel reservation Kimiko made is for a week, so there’s a place for my enormous bag at least until our biceps recover. The interview contacts have been duly passed on, so unless there’s something else I need . . .

With this last good deed ticked off, with the gentle, closing snap of their notebooks, they palm the scalpel to cut the only cord I have and assume that now I can breathe and eat on my own. Probably, I can. Maybe I’ll be ready to try it tomorrow. But it seems I am not ready yet.

“Would you like to have dinner?”

Kimiko’s perfect lipstick is perfectly still, only her eyes move as she appraises me like a crocodile submerged in a river. I am sure she’s wondering why in the hell I can’t just live in a furnished hotel room for the next six months. My invitation to dinner is accepted, but it will have to wait until after eight, because she is very busy. Oh, and to get things straight, since I’ll be here longer than any other foreigner she has ever had to babysit . . .

Tonight and for always, dinner will be dutch.

IF I COULD ONLY GET MY MESSAGES, everything would be fine.

If the “simple menu” on my cell phone had not simplified out the English instructions for how to retrieve my voice mail, perhaps I would be coping, not reduced to tears in a faded
yukata
in a chilly hotel room with the rain outside my window. If I was still in Tokyo, I could have walked up to any bleached blonde, Starbucks-drinking Japanese person I passed on the street; any school girl in pigtails and uniform and extremely loose and baggy athletic socks that look like leg warmers, that drag on the ground and have to be held on the leg by special glue; pick one, any one, even one in black lipstick, white vampire makeup, or platform shoes that are taller than her head, and that person could surely have shown the poor foreigner with her first cell phone—how is it possible that a New Yorker in the twenty-first century has never even held one in her hand before?—how to access that little icon.