The Electrical Field (6 page)

“Miss Saito,” she said, still crouching. Something had changed; the panic was gone, the pleading. Her voice stole up. She stepped gingerly among low-lying bushes, circling. “You’ll miss him, won’t you?”

My heart stopped. Eiji? Stum? I wasn’t sure whom she meant. All I could do was stare into the mess, my feet in Mama’s soiled shoes. Could she mean Yano? I straightened up abruptly, brushed off my skirt. “What are you talking about?” I would not fall into her trap. I turned towards Mackenzie Hill. There it was, what I could see of it through tree trunks straight as bars. The sparse fringe of leafless trees along the top. I felt my heels sink into soft earth, anchoring me here, with her, my tormentor.

“Why did you make me come?”

“It’s not like it’s the first time.”

I cringed at that, hoping she’d say no more. Leave it unspoken, all she knew, all I knew. Leave me be. “You could have come on your bicycle, by yourself,” I said. “You seemed to know your way.”

“I wanted you to see.”

“Sachi, there’s nothing,” I said. “Nanni mo nai,” I murmured. I felt safe behind those words. “Why would Tam leave something here?” With that I strode back to the car, my heels punching holes in the ground with each vigorous step.

“He knew about this place, he might’ve,” she called out, not letting me escape.

Cold fell over my shoulders. So Tam knew. I didn’t wish to ponder that, what it could mean. I stopped myself from rushing into the car, kept my pace even. I got in and started it up. Through the windshield I saw Sachi scoop up the
handbag I’d left behind and scurry towards me. Already I was pulling out.

“I wanted you to come, Miss Saito,” she said, breathless as she slipped into the moving car and slammed the door. She was nervous again. “I thought it would help you remember something that might help.” She gritted her teeth, and the morning sun knifing between trees flashed over her braces. “Because sometimes you forget,” she said.

Whatever she’d meant by that, by any of it, I pushed to the back of my mind. I would not hold her responsible for things said in the heat of the moment. We rode in silence. I let her off at the corner, and when I reached home I collapsed on the chesterfield. The fresh air had taken my energy. I reached for Eiji’s picture on the end table beside me. His smooth-lidded eyes lifting, a question there, no answers. No sympathy, no solace.

I was left alone with my shuddery thoughts of Chisako, reduced to a trace of red on the asphalt. The burst of her colourful presence I’d felt floating about my house, gone now, ground to dust.

A loud moan came from upstairs and for once I was grateful. Slowly I made my way up. Papa’s lips had dried to a cracked purply brown. I held his head and made him drink water.

“San kyu, san kyu,” he murmured, then sank into his pillow. He was frail, just bones under a veil of skin, but he’d survive for years like this, hardy and persistent. As the powder trace of Chisako’s blood was blown to the wind.

I saw them stretch out, the years of my life. Alone. Not
that Chisako ever concerned herself with my loneliness. I’d learned to live with it, knowing that soon enough I’d be deserted by everyone around me; everyone except Papa.

I was calm though. In the past I used to panic. The summer we brought Papa home from the hospital after his second stroke, Stum carried him up to the bedroom and a breeze was fluttering the curtains at the window, the air was warm, the afternoon felt so idyllic. I knew then he’d be perched up here for ever, and he’d never come down again.

In the beginning I woke in the middle of the night and squatted outside his doorway, my nightgown pitched over me like a tent and, underneath, my knees hugged cool to my breasts. I was listening, afraid he’d leave me, wretched to hear him above my own breathing. I heard the gurgles his body made, the fervent protests. I crept in and put my ear to his throat, his clogged chest. The noise was muted but powerful—like a crowd roaring. Now it was that steady fragile hum.

“Lunch, hoshii, Papa? You want?” I patted his hand and went downstairs. I’d left a trail of dirt on the cream carpet covering the steps and living-room, and once I’d fed Papa, I vacuumed, then wiped it clean.

It was long past noon when I finally got to my morning paper. I turned to the local news section knowing what I’d find. There it was, at the bottom corner of the front page: a photograph of the Yano family sitting in a row on their chesterfield, Tam and Kimi flanked by Chisako and Yano.
Son, daughter of woman shot still missing; husband sought
, strung over their heads. Yano leaning as if he’d slid into the frame after setting the shutter timer, a lock of hair fallen in his face, shirt bunched at his armpits as always, his flitting eyes captured
for once. I could imagine him as he rushed in front of the camera and glared into its single eye, impatient for the click. There was Tam, Sachi’s Tam, curved protectively around a sullen Kimi. His narrow shoulders, that ribbon of a body; I knew how it could move, glide through the high summer grasses of the electrical field, day or night, cross the marshy ground by the creek, the rough gravel leading up to the hill. Those tufts of hair jutting above his forehead, like crab grass; his eyes downcast as usual. Eyes that, when they looked up, hardly blinked, as if seeing in a gifted way.

It was the old Chisako there, the ugly duck with her twin ducklings. Her eyes dull behind thick glasses. Her hair, too coarse and heavy, as Japanese hair could be, hiding part of Kimi’s face, straggling out like hardy roots that could grow anywhere. It was disappointing, really, for the world not to see Chisako as I had, as the woman she had become. As on one late afternoon in December, when I had stepped off the bus to find her sitting on the bench, unable, it seemed, to go home, despite the cold and the snow that had begun to fall. Waiting for I didn’t know whom. Her skin looked very white that afternoon; her hair, in its elaborate roll, blacker than usual. She resembled a doll, a doll dropped in the snow, forgotten by its owner. No sooner had I stepped down than she was patting the bench for me to sit beside her, as if it were spring, as if the seat were warmed by the sun. I dusted aside the snow and sat, setting down my groceries.

“I’m so glad you came, Saito-san” was what she said, as if I’d shown up by invitation, but I caught the distracted tone in her voice. She stared into the electrical field for what seemed a little eternity. I cleared my throat, about to rise, to
mention getting back to Papa, for it was nearing dinner time. I’d grown fond of her, that was true, but also hurt, I suppose, that she’d confided nothing to me of her new life at work, that secret life: what had transformed her so. She sensed the irritation in me just as I was gathering up my bags, and quickly, deftly, she drew out a small thing she’d been cradling in her palm, inside her bag.

“He gave it to me,” she whispered, a little out of breath. It was a glass dome filled with water; a pink rose blossom floated in it. A small bloom, really, a lovely hybrid tea, I guessed, but at certain angles it became monstrous. As I held it I saw beads of air cling to the petals, so tiny, less than a sigh held in them. Chisako snatched it from my gloved hands.

“A gift from Mr. Spears, my supervisor. For working late.” She drew the dome to her open mouth and puffed on it, clouding the glass with her warm breath until the pink inside disappeared. Instantly it was visible again as the glass cleared in the cold air. “He picked it himself.”

“He should pay you instead,” I said.

“This means much more, Saito-san.” She breathed on it again, so close her teeth touched the glass, as if she might swallow it. It disturbed me seeing her with it; already it was precious to her, this insignificant thing.

“It means nothing,” I said. “It costs less than the overtime pay he owes you.” I felt compelled to say this, so she would not be taken for a fool. “Give it back to him,” I said. I heard how harsh and commanding I sounded. Best to be firm, I told myself. For Chisako’s sake.

She held it away then, no longer trusting me, that I might not damage the silly thing. “You have no feeling, Saito-san,”
she said, stroking the glass, then tucking it into her bag. “No feeling at all.” With that, she got up and headed down the road; no goodbye, not so much as a thank-you. I could only ponder her behaviour, her ingratitude, taken aback as I was. I sat for some time, long enough for another bus to pull up and open its doors. At my feet, my groceries were sprinkled with snow. I waved the driver on and headed across the field, thinking what a silly woman she was, how naive. For the matter had nothing at all to do with feeling, with the feeling I did or did not have. Slowly I made my way home, marking the snow with each careful step.

I pasted the newspaper article beside the previous one in my notebook, wrote the date neatly across the top of the page, matching the one written two days earlier. I glanced down at Chisako once more. I tried not to think again of that afternoon at the bus stop, of how I’d failed to nip things right then, in the bud.

I left the book open on the dining-room table for the Elmer’s to dry while I went on with my afternoon chores. I could never clean this house enough, there was more dust than ever. It wasn’t an old house, although it wasn’t new like the bungalows across the field; yet it was disintegrating little by little, I was convinced, turning to dust, like so many things. The walls were thinning on all sides, and sound leaked in and out.

I knew Sachi would be sitting at her window watching through the night, or at least until Keiko chased her from it, but I refused to look out. I refused to let her sense me there, keeping her company.

While dinner grew crusty and cold on the table, waiting for Stum’s arrival, I changed Papa. His gibberish would cease when I cleaned around his chimpo. There was a silence then that frightened me. Frightened me for him.

When I was a girl, my eyes were always drawn to that hitch of fabric in his trousers. The cork glimpsed through the half-open bathroom door as he stood at the toilet. I imagined a row of them pointed down into the pits at the camp benjo. There was a time when I could not move from the crack in the doorway, could not look away. I dreamt such dreams. Yet the truth, when I learned it, its plainness, the common sense of what it meant to be a man, did not shock me. Once Papa’s hips grew rickety and his bowels went, I had to clean there with my striped washcloth every other day, and it became a little lever on an old machine; I lifted it easily and set it to one side, then to the other.

Finally I drew the drapes and served myself dinner in the dim dining-room, while Stum’s empty plate lay opposite me with its watery sheen.

There were never many chances for me. I knew that from long ago, from when we first got here. “On-ta-ri-o,” Papa kept saying with his pitiful accent. He’d wanted to come east to the city but all he could do was huddle behind me with Mama and Stum. With Eiji gone and Stum just a baby, I was the first-born, born here; they pushed me out to the big city, to the world, thrusting my homely face to it when they were afraid. Now that it wasn’t just nihonjin in the shack next door or down the road of the camp. Ask this, say that, while they hung back. I didn’t know the right words to say, in English or in Japanese. I cringed at how I stumbled along,
each sentence gaping like a mouth with missing teeth. It was then that I sat myself down with my books and crosswords and word jumbles. I became clear in my own mind just what I could expect of myself. Exactly what I could desire from life, even in the day to day, so I would not be disappointed.

I was refilling my cup with green tea when Stum came in. It felt late in my dining-room, hours past sundown, yet it was only early evening, and the light from outside cut into my left eye. He carried a rumpled brown paper bag under his arm, hugging it close to his side, the top rolled over.

“Dinner, hoshii?” No “where have you been, why didn’t you call.” It was easier this way, not to nag, only to refer to our shared routine. To remind him.

“Your favourite,” I said, swishing the spoon in the stew. “Nishime.” He was shuffling about in the dark hallway but going nowhere, head down, shaking it.

“No, no.” He placed a hand on the rail. “I’m tired,” he murmured. “It’s too much trouble.” He had one foot on the first step. But I wouldn’t let go, not yet.

“I’ll heat it up.” I rose with the bowl in my hand. “No trouble.” I flicked on the living-room light and glanced back. He looked startled. I expected some change to have come over him, a sign. He stepped forward. His lips were chapped, pink and swollen. His eyes tired, nearly folded double from no sleep.

“No, Asa. Not hungry at all.” He said it with an adult weariness, a weariness with me, my name barely said. I had not heard quite that indifference before.

“Go then. Go on,” I said, more harshly than I intended. I switched off the light and bustled into the kitchen. “And
take off your shoes,” I shouted. “I just cleaned the carpet.” He said something back but I couldn’t hear him above the running water I’d spun on for the dishes. I couldn’t stand to see his face a second longer. From the corner of my eye I spied him disappearing up the stairs, then I heard the unmistakeable clunk of his bedroom door closing.

What a waste, I muttered to myself as I emptied the leftovers into the garbage. Mottai-nai. I scraped away the last of the nishime. It was Yano’s phrase. His refrain. After clearing the rest of the dishes, I went to the dining-room table, where my notebook lay open. I felt the springy thickening of its rippling pages, a living thing in my hands as I closed it and replaced it in the bottom cabinet drawer.

The ceiling quaked from Stum pacing upstairs. After a while he settled down. I heard the toilet flush in the bathroom, the rush of water through the pipes across the ceiling. I sighed, glancing at Eiji’s portrait again, unmoved from its spot on the end table. I sat down beside it. I know, I thought. No one but myself to blame. Indulging Stum like the baby he has always been, looking after every little thing all these years. As I would do for Sachi, if she’d let me.

I heard the rush of water close, almost inside me. I was riding Eiji as before, playing seahorse in the ocean at Port Dover, holding on. He swam in the black water, arms knifing in and out. Too tight, he cried, throwing back his head. I was holding him too tight, my hands a crab at his neck; we began to sink, both of us, my hair tangling dark under our mouths.
We won’t die, we won’t
, I whispered to myself. The air was prickly on my skin, there was the strange slapping noise,
our flesh, the only sound. The shore was far away, where logs, Papa’s logs that he stood on and rolled by the mill, floated like broken-off fingers. I dipped down into the dark then, inside a glass jar, and I saw the sun dropping into the shore, the fingers drifting away. Eiji kicked and kicked without making a sound and we came up at last, water shattering over our heads. We rode on a wave and tumbled ashore, my crab hands never letting go.
Nii-san, nii-san
, I was calling, holding onto my big brother, my strong big brother.