The Misgiven/Wars/The mori case

    There are things hidden that are better left alone.  This statement I don't believe in and yet...
    The woman had come to me and sat not in the booth but had sobbed before we entered the booth.  Let me say this has never happened to me in the 3 years that I had been a priest at St. Mary's Holiness. I have seen a great many confessionals for that is what we are good at.

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Wars

    All Miriam Kitsushima remembered was herself tottering beside a beard. Then the flash from a camera.
    "Will you help me find your father's name?", Liz asked
    She could .  But why?
    "Sure, I will.  I'll go."  Miriam answered.
    The monument was in Little Tokyo.  A distance away from where she and Liz ived and worked in Alhambra. They would drive the shared car. So why had she agreed?  Her voice had sounded so resolute she surprised herself.  Part of it was to help her best friend and roomate, Liz Chen, complete her thesis on  Japanese-Americans in Los Angeles during WWII. Both of them had gone through divorce and were now re-inventing themselves.  They were in their fifties re-inventing themselves in college.  After that who knows what re-invention would happen in their seniorhood, as if there were such a word. 
    "Liz, do you remember when we were pregnant with the boys?"  She asked to make sure of the story, to re-affirm herself if not for Liz too.  Liz was driving.
    "What's this all about?", spoken to the windshield. Always the careful driver.
    "Are you angry? Don't be. "
    "I'm not.  And don't think that I am.  Listen,Mimi. Our boys are dead.  We can't bring them back."
    "I know. I know. Last night, though, I had a dream of Jake returning from Iraq.  That's all."
    They were someplace near the monument.  It was such a mess down here.  She had forgotten the city with its wilted edges near the Disney concert hall, the cop station, the seedy streets.  It hadn't improved.
    Miriam  coming to J-town felt like an offering of sorts.  But she couldn't pinpoint why it would be.  So, she moved on. 
    "Did I ever tell you about Tom.  About what he said once about his insecurities?  This was before the divorce." Miriam asked.
    "I'm sure you have but tell me again. No really, Mimi, I'm serious."
    "Ok.  But don't laugh. He said there were parts of him that forever would remain unexplored.  What people saw, what he showed us were the shallow parts but there was the unexplored deeper parts that would remain who he was.  He called it the Deeper Thomas.  The Deeper Thomas was not entertained by anything or anyone. He said The Deeper Thomas was singular, in need of no one, the sensitive being. He said he had a deep soul."
    In the parked car they were in silence for half a second then they turned to each other and could not help it.  They shook getting out of the car to the point of tears.
    "Cheez, Mimi, was it like that at the end?  Please don't say it was like that all the way through.", Liz said over the roof of the car.
    "Pretty much. And for you?"
    "Yes.  Different but the same.  But, Mimi, just maybe we should have gutted it out. I mean for the boys, just for Jake and John".  Liz took out her notebook and made sure both driver and passenger sides were locked.  She and Liz had both decided to keep their married names for the sake of their sons. For finally, all tolled, there would be this labelled attachment between them and their sons. That should be left intact.  The sacrifice was the losing of their maiden names. Didn't that count as gutting it?
    The 442nd monument stood beside the Japanese American Museum.  It was unattended. A light rain. The kiosk wasn't working. It probably wouldn't have helped had it been.  A Nisei was there, a patch over one eye.  He faced the granite surface.
    "You wouldn't happen to know where Kitsushima would be would you?", Liz asked him.  He turned his black patch to her.  He was on two canes.  He lifted the tip of the right one far above his head to the engraved letters.
    Miriam thought, how could he have known?  Does he stand here forever with his one eye, his cane pointing directions to visitors, and every name memorized?
      "It's too strange", Liz whispered to Miriam.
      "Not so," Miriam said in hushed reply,  "He probably came with the monument."
    When Dad grew too old she used to drive him to 442nd meetings at the Veterans Hall in southeast LA.  There in the sparsely attended hall with its echoing steel folding chairs, its high windows, there beside the flag of California and the Stars and Stripes Miriam felt a longing within.  Miriam felt it right now again standing in the rain. And she could feel the distance between then and now, the wonder of it.  She could remember seeing the presentation of the colors and the striking of them as four Nisei marched in time against the silence.  Their rubber soled shoes hardly made a sound on the grey concrete.  She had to tell Liz this. But how?  And why, when the exactness in the telling along with the meaning would evaporate.
    "I need some coffee", Liz said.
      They stopped at  the shop across from the imagawayaki place.
    "Jake had been the same age as my dad when he enlisted.  Don't you think it odd, Liz?"
    "I thought we promised each other not to dwell."
    "I'm just saying.  I know what death is and I know they've been taken.  I'm just saying."

    Jack Shea Chen.
    Miriam loved how the words floated off the tongue. 
    Jack Shea Chen.
    That would be Liz's son's name.  Miriam remembered making this proclamation from her to Liz when both of them were pregnant with their sons.
    "I don't know your son's name like you seem to know mine," Liz laughed.  But Liz didn't keep Miriam's proclamation anyway.  Instead, she named him with the ordinary, John.  But it was a good solid name Miriam had to admit.  As they grew they would be seen together and both familes wondered what kind of a mess they would get into once they became adults.  Once when Jake was an early teen both families had gone camping in Yosemite.  They were about to leave the camp grounds but they could not find their Jake and John.  The family searched and was about to notify the park ranger when Miriam, while scouring a nearby site, stumbled into a clearing where there was construction happening along the Tuolumne  River bank.  She saw Jake talking to some hardhats. John was sitting with the workers listening to Jake.  The yellow hardhats made a circle around the teen.  They were all laughing with Jake.  Early on Miriam knew her son could talk, sometimes thinking he was too glib with his classmates.  But this was the first time she saw his capacity to enchant adults.
    "Well, what is it you said to them?," asked Miriam.
    "He was funny, Mrs. Kitsushima.  He was telling them about the price of fish." John said.
    "I guess you had to be there," Jake said when Miriam didn't smile.

    Her coffee cup was cold and her mochi colder.  The rain had stopped.  They should return to the memorial to get a photo of the engraved name without the rain. The sun was out but still breezy.  Miriam remembered shortly after receiving notification of Jake's death and way before the divorce how everything in this life had seemed wind-blown, for lack of a better word.  She chided herself on the self-centeredness of it.  He was her child after all.  Of her flesh, her blood. Yet, she felt at peace about it , a rightness that bordered on blasphemy over how a parent should feel about a dead child. But it steadied her.  Once, Miriam had talked with Jake about how he had seemed to have slighted her in an overheard conversation with his friends. 
    "Jake, what did you mean when you said I was not your Mom?"
    "Being inclusive, Mom, just a figure of speech among friends."
    "But I felt hurt."  She felt odd baring this thought like a lover would.  They were in Alaska on a trip to seek the Aurora Borealis. The sky shone with the vertical scarves of light. She leaned on a railing and now he did too, keening there, so close to her, and she resolved a small piece of herself by this simple proximity.

    "Got a bone to pick with you, girlfriend", Liz said almost like an after thought.  They had already paid the check for the coffee and mochi.
    "O yeah? So shoot."
    "How come John's never included in your dreams?"
    "Say what?" 
    "Whenever you dream about Jake you don't bring in John.  You know they were inseparable."
    "I can't believe we're having this conversation.  Liz, it's a dream.  I can't control my dreams.  It's what dreams are.  Dreams."
    "No.  There's something ulterior here.  Some avoidance issue here."
    "Please, Liz.  Please.  You're not going Deeper Thomas on me are you?  I don't need Deeper Thomas.  Tell me you are not going Deeper Thomas."
    Liz snorted out her coffee into a napkin and coughed uncontrollably.  She recovered.
    "I just hate it when I do that.  This is your fault, girl. Everybody's looking."
    "No. You know, kind of irritated right now."  Miriam drummed at her paper napkin.
    "What. With me?"
    "With you," Miriam said.  She sat uncomfortably thinking of the increase in discomfort if one were to get up and leave. She knew Liz thought this too. Who would do it first?  Let it cool.
    "I don't intend to spend my life grieving over John," Liz said, "But I will not forget him nor allow you."
    "I never will."
    "That's not enough, Miriam. I need you with me on this, I do."
    Miriam looked at Liz , wondered how she would get home since Liz had driven down here.  How had everything gone South?  When had it? 
    Liz stood up with the screech of chair legs following.  Come back, Miriam thought childlike.
    "You know what happens if you leave," Miriam said without looking up.
    "Oh, I know.  No kidding, I know. Maybe I'm tired of hanging. I feel I've been supportive enough, way enough."    Liz gathered the 442nd material into her notebook and walked away from the table.  Miriam smoothed and smoothed the napkin on the table in front of her.  She smoothed it some more.  When she looked up, Liz was there.    Miriam straightened her back and started to rise but Liz only proceeded to hand her an envelope.
    "Forgot this. Belongs to you," Liz said and flipped the envelope onto the napkin.  She turned and walked out the coffee shop.
    Alone Miriam walked back to the monument with the unopened envelope into the recent sunlight.  Near the museum she saw a koi nobori caught in the lines of a telephone wire about 10 feet above green branches.  The colorful scales wavered stuck to the wire.  She watched for some time thinking it would dislodge and she would catch the kite in its falling.  It didn't.  It didn't happen because there were more important things to consider, urgent things to capture the attention, more important than getting a carp to fly again. There were pressures to pay bills, the rent, payments on that shared car.  What would it be like without them, without obligations?  Maybe the key was to have more obligations, but this time living obligations.  Liz would like having a dog.  Of course Miriam would have to feed it, bathe it, grooming the silly thing.  But it would be good to have some animal object totally dependent upon Miriam . Her absence could only prove detrimental to the living thing she had responsibility for.  She needed that; they both needed it, to be missed.
    When she arrived back at the monument the one-eyed Nisei was gone.  She didn't see the car they had come in.  Liz had probably gone.  Was it raining again?  The 442nd.  War seemed something committed by another species not of her.  A species with a behaviour to be scolded for.  Why can't you all just play nice?  And if you can't then the darker side was divorce.  If you can't play nice then what was left was time out.  Go back to your corner alone and stand there.  Be isolated with no companion to play with.  Now, you sulk.  For the rest of your life.  Axis powers sulk.  Middle East go sulk.  Miriam Kitsushima sulk in your divorce. 
    Miram suddenly felt a grave misgiving about the future.  She thought of war, divorce, arguments personal and global.  She thought of unpaid debts, duties to a dog and it all seemed like one ground swell which nothing could overcome and yet it seemed unaccountably linked to some grandness in themselves and even more importantly to some grandness in her, she being forever unaware of their beauty but only saddled with the misery of the moment.  This would be Miriam's war against terrorism.  She promised herself this.
    She stood quiet and alone for a moment.  She opened the envelope.  There was only a very old photo inside. It was recognizable.  It was the one taken at some sea shore carnival at eventide with a flash.  It was her and her bearded father standing as the water rose.  She felt the shyness of the girl in the picture and the fear of waves.  And then she remembered her promise. 

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The Namazu Case 
          He was in a bad mood.  It was 6am Thursday, and the telephone rang in its cradle like an exposed nerve at the dentist's office.  Jake Furose massaged his face from the thinining  crown of his head down.  He paused where the  palm of his hand cupped his mouth and yawned. He farted.  Still, the phone jangled.
      "What do I lose if I don't answer?  What do I gain?" He almost asked the questions out loud.  He weighed  the consequences of both.  If his old army buddies could see how far he had descended, how they´d laugh.  Lieutenant Jake Furose.  The leader of a battalion..  Look at him now.  Disheleved , perched at the edge of his bed, overweight,  half out of shorts and his mind.  What a way to go.  Maybe some of those guys wouldn't mind seeing him go.  He pushed them pretty hard at Anzio.. 
    The phone jangled again.  Maybe a job, Jake.  Might be a client whose check wouldn't bounce.  He picked up. 
    "Yeah. Furose."
    "Jake, help me out.  I'm in a bad way." It was a skitterish guy's voice..
    "Who is this?  And right off the bat I'm saying this'll cost ya"
    "I don't care.  You owe me one."
    Right then Jake knew who it was. He owed only a very few people. A very few people.  They could be counted on the fingers of one hand.  Halve that. The caller had saved his life in Germany.
    "Is this George Kashima?  I guess you got my attention, Joe.  Go on."
    "It's grandma, Jake.  You know her.  She's gotten worse.  After the war I mean.  She's gotten worse.  She's hallucinating.  It's all we can do to keep her in Kimochi.  C'mon Jake you owe me. 
    Furose reached for a cigarette, thought better and paused.
    George Kashima. Private George Kashima.  That'll teach you, Jake, to be rescued from drowning by a kid. A private at that. Will the kid keep drawing the Furose card whenever he gets in a tight spot?  Even aftre the war, here's this lingering favor. 
    "So, Joe, whattaya expect from me?"
    "Jeez, Jake, you got a Psychiatry degree or something don't ya?"
    "A lot of good that does me, buddy. Haven't had a steady job since '45.  But OK.  Bring her down to my place."
    "No.  I mean, you gotta go and see her.  Obaasan is around 70, Jake.  She doesn't go out.  She thinks something, someone's out to get her. All kinds of bad stuff will happen if she leaves her apartment or so she says.  Please understand , Jake.  Thanks Jake.  We're even after this."
    "Sure, Joe,"  like he believed it. 
    Jake Furose lived in J-town so he knew the area well.  Mrs. Kashima's place was in the old part of town, on the outskirts.  It was an old run down place up a hill.  It was amazing the Kashima's got it back after returning but they did. The mortgage had been paid up long ago. They leased it out to the Mendoza's during the war.
      No smile greeted Jake.  That was fine with him.  He didn't feel like baby-sitting anyone no matter the dire straits they were in.  Mrs. Kashima looked tired .The place looked destitute, rather barren.
      She was Obaasan if ever there was.  Greying hair in a bun, yet with escaping twills of it at her edges.  Forever in a grimy apron of bold strokes that looked sumi-e.  She had a walker and wiping her hands she motioned Jake to come in and take a seat.  Jake was wondering if she spoke English at all from the greeting that he got. 
      The room was damp with the exhaled breath of being very Japanese.  But there was something else about it, like the smell of raffia from the palms down the street. reaching for sunlight.  It was that kind of smell and not an odor, not a set thing but a sifting up within the nostrils the way steam rises in an ofuro. 
    Jake Furose couldn't hear Mrs. Akiko Kashima's voice because she lingered within her old house past the corner of her living room in the kitchen. But he was sure she was there. It was an odd angle of the house to be positioned in - a blind spot, and more accurately a deaf one.  So it was a shock to hear Obaasan Kashima speak English adroitly.
          "I think we can dispense with the truth," Mrs. Kashima said as she stumbled forth into view with her walker, continuing the conversation that had been, at its outset, inaudible.  Now she could be heard. "Lets begin with lies.  All I crave are lies.  Tell me a story and do not stop until we're both blue in the face. Speak."  Mrs. Kashima always spoke mixing Japanese and American English, hodge-podge.  She turned away from Jake, grabbed the baby bottle of water that sat within a faint circular water spot on the wood desk.  She sucked voraciously from the bottle, then put it back down with a will.  Jake swore he felt the house tremble. It was hot inside and outside the San Francisco victorian in Japan-town.. She sat down in a straight back chair across from him as he stood.
    Jake Furose took his hands out of his suit pants, hiked the seam of his trousers, and lowered himself into the easy chair near the table fan.  "OK.  You asked for it, Kashima-san. But first let me say, I don't particularly like being here. "  He was taking his cue from her abrupt manner.
    Kashima-san wiped the dribble of water from the corner of her mouth."Well, that's the truth and what did I just say about truth, Furose-san?  Lie to me.  Lie." 
    Jake leaned forward and took awhile to think. He was not very good at illogic. He was nothing but facts, had been and always would be.  He was made up of facts.  And he was good at keeping track. But Jake had made a promise to George Kashima that he would try.
        "OK. I was born in Alaska.  A half-breed, Japanese and Eskimo Piute. And by the way , I like being here with you."
    "Yes," Mrs. Mori whispered almost straightening and rising from her chair,  "Go on."
    "I was born in 1870 , so at 44 it was time for war.  The first World War."
    "You are my age," she smiled and sucked in her breath through her teeth.  She seemed to relax.
    If a stranger were to happen into this room at this moment, they would be forever surprised at the exchange the two of them were having, a crazy old issei woman and this 47 year old nisei, lying to please her.
    "Japan joined the war late. We learned a lot about war and how to conduct it.  We used it again in World War II."
    Kashima- san seemed to fall asleep.  Jake gazed around the room.  There were no pictures.  It struck him as strange.  Not to have family portraits was an oddity.  It was as if she were living in an era that had not learned to capture the living image onto paper.  This is how a house prior to the turn of the century would appear, sparse and without eyes from any photo. This was not a house in 1947. 
    "Who told you to stop.  Did I say stop.  How dare you."  She came forward with not so much an expression of her facial features but of sound. She struck the floorboards with her walker.That in itself was vacant,pleading and demading at once. Everything around them at that moment was stilled.
 
Jake had come to the Kimochi to transport the laundry from there to the     

"There were blood on the sheets. I don't re-call seeeing so much blood.  I was on the forcemaybe 2 years into it.  It alsmost made me change my mind. 
"  You poor son-of -a-bitch"
"What's the sympathy for?"
"Right.  Go on."

"Someones been coming into my house and taking things."
"Things."
"That's right and don't have to look at me like that."
    He turned to crush out his smoke.  "Mrs. Mori," he kept at the cig until it was finely ground. "Mrs. Mori, you don't need me.  I'm not your man.  Someone out there will be willing to take the job."
    "I could pay you more."
    "It´s not that.  I know some people woud be interested in matters like this." 
    "Hakujen?"
    "As a matter of fact, Korombo. "
    "Korombo, deshoo? 
    "A friend.  He's good. He won't make any trouble."
    She took her time responding, looking out the shaded window.  She pulled the blinds down about 6 inches."When we were sent to camp koroi-chan came and took our stores and homes.  I don't trust them.What if it's a black man whose been stealing things out of my house.  This friend of yours.  Would he catch a korombo and give him over to the police?  I don't think so."
    "It's your call.  He's good but I'm not going to sit here and defend him or his people. Besides, I don't know of anyone else.  Go to the police."
    "I have.  They don't care about an old Jap woman.  They give me the same look you give me. And  I'm not crazy."  She gave a hit to the floor with her cane.  It made it definite.  "Listen,"  she said.  "Hear that?"  There was silence but the cane noise made it's way along the floor boards of the old house.  Things shook.
      "Earthquake."
    "We're safe.  They have followed me all the way from Japan.  Right across the ocean they followed me.  Right to San Francisco.  They won't dare kill me.  I'm quake proof."
    "What are you talking about, Obaasan?  We have to get out."
    "I'm quake proof."
    "How do you figure?"
    "Didn't I just call up that quake with my cane just now.  Pay attention, boy-san.  Earthquake wouldn't dare touch me.  I give them commands.  Not the other way around.  Call me Onamazu, the catfish woman.  He came to America with me.  Followed me here to San Francisco.  The minute I stepped ashore.  Earthquake.  NO such thing as erthwquake weather.  Earthquakes come from below not the sky.  Namazu waits in the depths.  Sometimes comes up for a visit and lives among us.  Sometimes wags his tail and there.  Earthquake!



    He walked into the J-town apartment and stopped at the mail boxes.  It was a clean place.  But there had been other clean places he'd rather not re-visit.  Clean didn't mean anything at all.  And he didn't particularly like it.  Just a kind of fastidiousness that might be misplaced from a sordid life as if something had to be made up for.  He walked up the stairs instead of taking the elevator.  As he rounded the stairwell he saw a cigarette's crushed soft pack.  It seemed out of place.  The likelihood of a careless person in a clean place suddenly made a kind of sense. He picked it up.  They were Camels. Unfiltered.  Whomever he was tailing liked it that way.  One step ahead of Jake Furose. He had left the crushed Camel wrapping as a bread crumb trail leading to... where?  The witch's oven?
When the brace of ducks took to the sky Jake glanced over at her.  She shielded her eyes with her right forearm and breathed through her mouth during their ascension as if she, too, were climbing, breathless and cloud bound.

   
    "I need you to find this black guy , Jake and kill him.  That's all I want."
    "Keep it down George.  Keep it in check.  Just think about it."



Apple Red
"I'll miss the deep red of an apple", she said..  I turned to retrieve a bowl of them on the table behind us.  When I turned back to her, her eyes were shut.  and closed her eyes.

    Well, I´m not that close to the obaasan¨, he said.  He looked away and remained like that then sighed.  ¨Tell the truth, she gets on my nerves most of the time.¨¨
    ¨And the other times,¨¨
    ¨She raised me, Jake.  What am I supposed to do.  Deny that?¨¨
    ¨Guess not.¨ Jake took a drag from hi 
    I had a dream of carryiong the old man on my back across a slight steam.  He was surprisingly tight grip for an old man.  The trickly of a stream was enough for me to faulter.  He fell and tumble onto the neck near his spine. 

    In the end they had put their resources behind them and just walked out into the desert.  They didn't plan on any return.