Rain Song (3 page)
Putting on my short brown suede coat, I head outside to sit on the brick step by my front door. Sitting outside calms me. Some folks do yoga or listen to music; I watch the stars. Tonight they are out—shiny, glittering, beckoning, and so far away.
As a child, I used to watch the stars and try to determine which one was heaven’s doorknob. I’d usually pick the brightest, focus on it, and then wave. I hoped my mama could see me waving. Sometime around the age of eleven, I thought waving at the stars in hopes that Mama would look down from heaven’s perfection to see little ol’ me was ridiculous. That phase of my life didn’t last too long. It was sad to break my habit. What was wrong with waving, just in case? How did I know Mama couldn’t see me? Perhaps she could just feel me wave and the love from my heart would travel up through the air and meet her in heaven. Tonight, I lift my hand and give a small wave. And again I ask God to keep Ducee here on earth awhile longer. Like until after I die.
I’ve prayed this prayer for a long time. We may grow older, but our desires often stay the same.
My attention strays from the sky to across my lawn, where I hear noises from my neighbor Hilda’s garage. Hilda has never, to my knowledge, been seen without pink curlers rolled around her grayish brown hair and black boots on her size five feet. Through her lit garage windows, I watch the foamy curlers bobbing up and down as she putters in the large area, no doubt moving boxes and making decisions.
Hilda is known for supporting causes. Trucks, vans, and cars stop by her house at all hours of the day, bringing boxes of donated items for her to give away to whichever cause she feels is worthy. The community trusts Hilda to choose where the needs are—the homeless shelters, children’s wards of hospitals, boys’ and girls’ clubs—and to meet them. And willingly, Hilda loads her own vehicle, a spruce-colored minivan with the personalized license plate SHARE, and drives these items to organizations and individuals across our state.
The
Mount Olive Tribune
likes to write articles about Hilda; one editor named her a saint. Her tireless work gives us that ol’ hometown pride.
———
When my hands feel like ice, I come inside.
Suddenly I know why I haven’t commented to Harrison on his poem. I haven’t written back to him because it is clear he lives in Japan. The temple, the superstition, the outdoor pond with koi—it all adds up. Japan is where Mama died. Japan has been nothing but a mystery to me, producing eerie emotions and fear. All my life I’ve avoided anything that has to do with Japan. It’s decided, then: whatever idea I came up with earlier of a potential reply to Harrison, I won’t use. Because I’m not writing to Harrison again.
It’s okay, I think, as I peel off my jeans and sweatshirt and put on my flannel nightgown for bed. Chances are he doesn’t care to hear from me. He’s probably dating a petite Asian girl with almond-shaped eyes and silky black hair.
As I brush my teeth and eye my red hair in the bathroom mirror, I wonder who Richard will date next. The librarian with the tattoo of two crimson roses on her ankle? Last year at the annual Pickle Festival, he said he liked her tattoo. Just out of the blue while we were eating corndogs, he glanced at the librarian—who was standing by a banner that read, “Welcome to the Mount Olive Pickle Festival!”—and nudged me. “Wow, what a nice tattoo.”
I looked around and couldn’t see a tattoo. “Oh yeah,” I said, pretending I saw it, and finished my corndog.
At the library a week later, I actually got a view of her tattoo. I spent that Saturday morning doing research on domino damsels for an article for the Pretty Fishy Web site. The librarian was there stocking books on poets. Her tattoo was two delicate roses the color of Red Delicious apples. It looked okay—nothing special.
Now I can’t get that tattoo out of my mind. Why would a man leave a woman for another because of a tattoo? Where is the loyalty?
Before snuggling into bed with Sazae, my childhood doll, I look at Richard’s picture. I haven’t taken the framed color photo off my bedside table. I study his brown hair and matching eyes. I recall the first time he told me I was pretty. These same eyes I am looking at now were filled with life as he held my hand and said, “Nicole, you are so pretty.” The sky was a dismal gray, the wind scattered damp leaves over the sidewalk, and my heart wanted to leap out of my skin.
Now I feel nothing for him but foolish. I take the frame and throw it into the top drawer of my dresser. Facedown. I slam the drawer shut and listen to the noisy echo. I hope the glass broke, but I don’t check to see.
I think it’s time to give up on men.
Even so, I hope I dream of Harrison again tonight.
———
I dream of Harrison again, which makes it all the more difficult not to send a reply to his email. The school day has ended, and I’m in Aunt Lucy’s chair, watching from my window as two cardinals dart around the front oak tree. I’ve often wanted to be an angelfish or a regal demoiselle so I could swim in soothing waters. I’ve never desired to be a bird; flying is just too dangerous.
Drawing my knees to my chest, I loudly breathe in and out like my cousin Grable did hours prior to giving birth to the terror-child, Monet. In and out. Steady.
We timed Grable’s contractions with a stopwatch—laughing, smiling, as if it was a party—around Ducee’s kitchen table. Of course, after Grable’s water broke, the fancy breathing she learned was tossed out the window—somewhere between the Mount Olive post office and the door to Wayne Memorial Hospital. I remember her begging God for mercy, pleading with Him not to take her life before her child’s birth. Lying on the bed in the maternity ward, she screamed for Dennis. A Hispanic woman down the hall, also about to give birth, and those in the waiting room on the second floor heard, but Dennis didn’t hear a sound. He was at a lawyers’ convention in Seattle.
I sink my bare toes into the soft fabric of the chair and wonder what would possess me to dream in such vivid color about someone I’ve never met. One email message from him and the dreams started like ocean waves. I take a long breath in. Harrison Michaels. Slowly out. I’ve repeated his name over and over to my fish, using different intonations, and each gives me the same sensation—he has a name like a movie star.
I’ve never known anyone with the first name of Harrison. There was a freckly kid in my third-grade class in Richmond named Joey Harrison. He was the only child I knew with more freckles than I had. In seventh grade, I had a friend named Katrina Harrison. We used to take turns bringing oatmeal cookies and sharing them at lunchtime. She ended up liking the same boy I did—Leon Perdusky. He wrote her name on the cover of his math notebook, and after that I didn’t share oatmeal cookies with Katrina anymore.
Letting out a breath, I calculate. What I know about this first-name Harrison is little. He lives somewhere in Japan. He has an outdoor pond with koi. He wrote a poem that I can’t get out of my mind.
Why did he do that?
“Perhaps,” I say aloud as I pause from the steady breaths, “I could reply to him, and that’ll be the end of this correspondence. Just a short thank-you for the poem.” I run my tongue over a rough thumbnail.
When the phone rings, I prepare to talk with Iva. I expect to hear about Ducee’s failing health and how we must have cucumber sandwiches at the reunion. Only the voice on the other end is not raspy but firm—Grable’s.
“Nicole? I’m at McGuire’s.”
McGuire’s Pet World must be having a carnival, because I can barely hear Grable over the shrill ruckus of wild chimpanzees. At least it sounds like chimpanzees. Until I decipher a distinct shriek—Monet. Her voice is matched by another and that one does belong to an animal—McGuire’s one-legged green Macaw, kept in a cage by the shop’s front door. He squawks between Monet’s peals of laughter and high-pitched cries.
Grable’s voice rises in my ear as she says, “Monet won’t leave the store unless she can come see your fish.”
My fish. I carry the phone to my fifty-five-gallon tank sitting in the middle of my dining room table as the screaming from across the phone lines blares. I watch my aquarium of peaceful beauties sail through the water. I remember the time Monet stuck her hand into the tank, trying to grasp a clownfish with her small fingers. Then there was the Saturday she poured an entire container of fish food into the water. Once she tossed in a graham cracker. Another time a purple jelly bean. And now Grable is asking if this child can come to my house to see my fish—a ploy to get her to leave McGuire’s.
“Well . . .” I watch my eel bury his head in the gravel under the green-and-red ceramic pagoda. One of the angelfish glides over his head. If only I could bury my head in the sand.
“Nicole?” A familiar man’s voice is on the phone.
“Mr. McGuire! What’s going on?”
“The little lass wants to see you.” Joseph McGuire, even after all these years in North Carolina, still keeps his thick Irish accent. “She will only leave my store if promised a visit to your house.”
More shrill screams cause me to hold the receiver at a distance to spare my eardrums.
One thing is for sure: Monet at the store can’t be good for business. If the noise is sounding this loud over the telephone lines, it has to be twice as loud within the four corners of McGuire’s.
There is a rattling on the other end and then, in a thin voice, Mr. McGuire says to someone else, “Careful now, careful. Hold the phone like this.”
Suddenly Monet is talking to me in her slow, mumbled style. She asks, “Niccc hows? Pleeez. Nicc fisssz? Pleeezz. Pleeezz.”
And before I know it, with all the sincerity I can muster, I tell the terror child she can come to my house to see my fish.
There is shrieking and clapping of hands. My stomach knots. Then the phone is dead.
I begin to prepare for a visit from the wild one.
I turn off my computer, place students’ papers in my tote bag, and stick the bag in my bedroom closet. In the kitchen I check to make sure each cabinet is shut. Tightly. I stand over my fish tank and pray my three clownfish, two angelfish, and eel will live to see tomorrow. Then I hide the nearly empty container of fish food in my underwear drawer. There is no way she’ll be able to find it and overfeed my fish today.
Monet’s piercing screams still ring in my ears. Moments after her birth, her great-grandmother Iva reached out to embrace the newly arrived baby. Above the screams Iva cooed with joy, “Ah, you are a loud one. No doubt you belong to us.”
Now, three years later, her great-grandma’s pride has shifted to sheer annoyance. “Oh, God,” she will mutter, “please help me tolerate that child.”
To which Ducee will comment, “Monet is a treasure. You have to dig deeper, Iva, to see what beauty lies within.”
I groan as my front doorbell rings. I think the Beauty Within has arrived.
We watch Monet closely as she stands by my lit aquarium. In low tones, Grable tells me she is tired. She doesn’t need to tell me this. I can see
tired
written on my cousin’s face—under her blue eyes in the form of smudged circles and in her voice, which is slow and lacking its usual lightness. Her nails are still painted though, a creamy light pink today. They are like ten jewels, glistening, especially when she stands near the fish tank and the fluorescent light dances on them. I am afraid she will break into tears any moment, but she just keeps her eyes on Monet.
Monet, dressed in a denim skirt and green shirt, presses her nose against the aquarium and in intervals squeals, “Fiszzzzz!” Then she tilts her head full of brown curls to the left and to the right, stops, laughs, and says nothing. She jumps on one foot, lets out a “Niccc fiszz!” and then squeals again. Between her outbursts, I focus on Grable’s words.
“Dennis is going to Boston this weekend. Some lawyers’ thing. This means it’ll be me and Monet all alone.” Her words
all alone
sound hollow. She stiffly moves toward the aquarium and places a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Monet, please speak softer.”
Monet, with her mouth on the tank’s glass side, says, “Okaaa, Maaam.” Then she laughs.
I think of all the glass cleaner and paper towels it is going to take to clean the outside of the tank after she is gone.
“I don’t want my mama to know about Dennis. Not yet.”
“Have you told anyone?”
Grable whispers, “No, but Iva . . .”
“Iva?”
“She suspects. You know, guesses something is wrong.”
I nod, because I know she does and I know that she’s running with her suspicion. I don’t tell Grable that Grandmother Iva’s guesswork was blurted out to both Ducee and me recently. That she stated Dennis was no good from the get-go, just as Clarisa Jo, Grable’s mom, states. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole staff at the
Mount Olive Tribune
already knows about how Dennis is never home.
Grable studies her shiny nails. “Mama didn’t ever approve of Dennis,” she says as though to all ten of them. I see her diamond on her left hand, the diamond that once had all the relatives talking because it is two carats and all the way from South Africa. “Mama just thought Dennis was a playboy, you know. Still thinks it.”
“Oh.” It sounds like such a dumb thing to say. The alternative would be, “I know.” And how much dumber would that be? I could gush that Dennis is great, but that would be lying.
He did, at one point, seem good to me. Tall, broad shoulders, eyes that sparkle, and hair the color of coal. I must admit I was jealous of Grable the first time she introduced me to Dennis. He was too handsome. His eyes could melt butter. His smile showed rows of perfectly shaped teeth, an orthodontist’s dream. Then it happened. I turned my gaze away from those two beams of light and those flashing teeth to notice Dennis’s ears. They point at the tips. Not just a little, but a lot, like triangles. At first you don’t see beyond his face, but once you do, you can’t help wondering if he could wear a green cap and double as one of Santa’s elves.
Suddenly we are aware of the quiet. Grable speaks first. “Where’s Monet?”
“She’s probably on the floor.” Sometimes Monet likes to sit cross-legged on my dining room floor, rock back and forth, and try to whistle. My eyes scan the floor. When I don’t see her, I look at my aquarium, as though maybe she fell in there. All I see are the smudged glass sides. Every single side has been fingerpainted by Monet. This is the type of art the child enjoys.
I’ll have to buy more Windex.
I count; the fish are all there, even the eel, poking his tail out near the clump of swaying seaweed.
“Monet!” How could we have lost her? I stride to the front door and open it. Surely, she didn’t venture outside into the cold.
“Monet!” I glance around my lawn, even look up at the branches of the gnarled oak tree. Those branches are high up there, but part of me wouldn’t be shocked to see Monet swinging from one of the limbs, waving one hand, and honking like a flock of geese on an autumn day.
Grable is by my elbow. “She never leaves the house to go outside without her jacket,” she informs me.
Oh. Well, this is fascinating. The child will dump a whole container of fish flakes into my aquarium, but she doesn’t go outside on a winter’s day without her jacket?
———
Grable holds Monet’s violet jacket as though walking around the house with it in her hands will make her daughter appear from wherever she’s hiding. “Monet!” She uses her harsh voice, even though the doctors tell her she must always deal with her daughter calmly. “Monet, come here! Come here right now!”
I wonder if Monet can hear her mother. A year ago the child had a hearing aid attached to her left ear. But I didn’t notice it on her today.
Entering the kitchen, I look around, but it appears the same as it did an hour ago. The teakettle is on the stove. Next to it is a pan I boil eggs in. Boiled eggs with salt are another one of God’s finer creations. Pantry and cabinets are shut. I listen and hear nothing except for a neighborhood woodpecker that spends time in a tree across the street.
I join Grable in the hall. She checks the bathroom and spare bedroom. She opens closets and cabinets, but there is no threeyear-old in any of them.
There’s a light shining from under my closed bedroom door. I push the door open as Grable stands beside me. The door swings open to show us a small figure standing by my antique dresser, looking at her reflection in the mirror. In her arms is my cloth doll, Sazae, snuggled against her chest.
Grable sweeps into the room. “Monet!” Her voice holds relief.
Monet smiles at herself and turns from the mirror to say in a slow, yet loud tone, “Heellooo Maamm.”
“Come on. We need to get home.”
She squeezes the doll. “Okaaaa, Maaamm.”
Grable attempts to put her daughter’s jacket on as Monet grasps tightly to Sazae. “Put the doll down.”
“No!” Her teeth are clenched and her eyes narrow slits. Her hands clutch Sazae’s torso, and I am ready to grab my doll from her. She’s going to rip Sazae.
Grable tries again. Her voice is calmer this time. “Monet, put the doll down.”
“No!” Monet sinks her face into Sazae’s stomach. “My, my, my!” She lets out a monotone moan that evaporates into Sazae’s body.
Slowly, it dawns on me that this wild child thinks the doll belongs to her, or wants it to be hers. It’s a doll and she’s a three-year-old girl. The two go together. It doesn’t take a team of Duke doctors to figure this out. I hear myself thinking above my fear for the doll’s safety: Give the doll to Monet. Any other adult would let the child take the doll. Keep it. After all, why would a thirty-one-year-old woman need a doll in her room?
My throat clamps as I try to swallow the urge to rush over and snatch the doll from Monet’s little hands. Instead, I shoot a look at Grable. She’s the mom; she’ll handle this. She’d better.
Grable crouches down to her daughter’s level. Her polished nails rest against Sazae’s black hair. “We must leave the doll here.” She looks at her daughter, although Monet’s face is still covered by Sazae’s body.
There’s a muffled voice, and then tears. Screams follow, each one piercing. There’s movement—a kick and a stomp. And then Sazae is flung across the bedroom floor, her arm hitting the wall. She lands at the foot of my double bed.
I gasp. Twice.
In a heap in her mother’s arms, Monet sobs. Her face is now buried in Grable’s coat collar. Grable embraces Monet and stokes the child’s curls.
I step back, using the wall to support my body. Aware of my rapid breathing, I suddenly pretend I’m not here, not in this scenario. Instead, I wonder how Claude Monet would paint this scene and what he would title the portrait.
Peace After the Storm
?
Terror Child Breaks Down
? Perhaps just a one-word title—
Surrender.
Monet’s wails subside and change into words, words I have to stretch my ears to comprehend. “Ma . . . Mammm.” She wipes her red nose against Grable’s hair. “Homm. Pleeeze. Go go homm.”
Grable’s hands are steady as they ease her daughter’s arms into the sleeves of her jacket. “We will go home, Monet.” She zips the jacket and plants a kiss on Monet’s flushed, wet cheek. Taking the child by the hand, she glances my way and says with sincerity, “I’m sorry, Nicole.”
Words won’t form, so I just nod.
As they leave my house, I hear Monet calling for her doll. I watch from the living room window as Grable puts Monet in her car seat.
I lean against the wall and hope it will hold me. “Oh, Mama. Oh, Mama.”
If Mama were alive, I’d be normal. Instead, she’s gone and all I have from her is an old Japanese kimono doll. Mama gave Sazae to me way before I can remember. I have no idea why she chose this doll or why one of the silky kimono sleeves is shorter than the other. Most likely, I took scissors to it as a child. In the one photo I own of my mother and me—a black-and-white, wrinkled from the hands of time—only Sazae’s face shows. The doll’s kimono sleeves can’t be seen, but the doll is the same, only newer, for Sazae’s lips and eyes aren’t as faded as they’ve become over the years.
This photo sits in a silver frame on my bedside table. Mama’s in a kimono with flowers. I sit beside her, also in a kimono with matching cherry blossom print, and my hair is pulled back in a bun. Sazae’s face is snug against my left shoulder. Mama is to the right, her hair curled around her cheeks, one strand drooping under her chin. Both our smiles are as wide as dill pickles at a family reunion.
One summer day on the porch swing, I asked Ducee, “How do I know she was my mother?” I’d recently been given the photo of Mama and me. Ducee had found it in a ragged photo album and asked if I would like to have it as my very own.
Ducee stopped swinging and faced me. There was a sparkle in her eyes. “My dear,” she said to me, “she is you.” With richness in her voice she added, “You are her.”
“But how do I know she is my mama?” Exasperated, I cried, “I don’t remember anything!”
“You think you don’t,” Ducee said softly as she caressed my arm with her opened hand. “But the memory is there.” She nodded. Then she took my right hand and lifted it carefully so that it rested against my chest. “Inside your heart. Oh, yes. It is always there. Yes.”
Over the years I wonder what good it does to know that memories are there within my heart if they are so well hidden that I can’t recall any—not even one. I have no idea what Mama’s voice sounded like or what she smelled like. Did Mama bathe in lilac like Ducee always does? And what about pineapple chutney? Did she really make this family dish in Japan as Ducee claims she did?
Evening settles across my front lawn, and I am standing in the dark. The hum of my fish tank is like a steady procession ushering in the day’s end. I turn on a lamp, and its light melts the darkness.
A truck filled with boxes, children’s bikes, and other items I can’t decipher in the dark is being unloaded in front of Hilda’s. Hilda helps the drivers carry the goods into her lit garage. I see her bright pink curlers under the streetlight and, yes, her feet are, as usual, encased in black boots.
In my bedroom, I carefully head over to Sazae, now a pink and black ball on my floor. When I pick her up, I check to make sure she’s still intact. Black eyes, thin red lips, two white cotton arms, pink kimono with a sash, two white legs—all accounted for. Yes, still with that faint smell of moldy oranges. I embrace my doll. You see, Monet, I’m sorry, but she is
my, my, my
.
Sazae’s spot is on the right pillow of my bed. I set her there, pat her left cheek twice, run my finger over the left
geta
with the damaged heel, and trace the shortened kimono sleeve with my knuckle. Why is one sleeve shorter? Neither Father nor Ducee have ever been able to tell me why. The damaged heel of her shoe holds no mystery. It’s due to my teeth. I used to sink my teeth into it as a child, after dreams about burning buildings. I went through a phase of dreaming about fire and being chased by something that resembled Godzilla. When I asked Father why he thought my dreams were so violent, he shook his head and told me not to drink sugared drinks before bedtime.
No wonder I am enjoying my recent peaceful dreams of Harrison and tranquil waters. Perhaps if I want these dreams to continue, I’d better write back to him.
Tentatively, I sit at my computer. What should I say? I start by thanking him for the poem. Then I ask him about life in Japan. Which city does he live in? What does he do there? How long has he lived there? I give him plenty of questions to respond to. Of course, I do not tell him I have any connection to Japan. I certainly won’t let him know that Sazae, my kimono doll, is my prized possession. Or that my mother died in Kyoto. Or that I have a scar the shape of a polka dot in the middle of my forehead that Father says I got in Japan.
One has to be careful. And over the years, I’ve taught myself just how much to say and what to keep locked, buried, secret. Unlike my great-aunt Iva, early on I learned the value of secrecy.
