art credit: Jeffery Dale Starr
 

The train leaving Nishifunabashi station is packed- a tin can of sardines. Cackling teenagers cram the perimeter. Old women haunt the end-seats, ready to fight, daring anyone to crush meticulously assembled grocery bags, or disturb a strand on their blue-tinted hair. Exhausted office assistants dot the school of people, pink and plum scarves conscientiously tied around their thin necks.  Wilted businessmen wrestle sleepiness, gravity pulling at the bags under their eyes. The train roars across the water to suburban gardens and murals in Chiba, the Tokyo skyline grudgingly disappearing, damning them all for escaping its grip.

Trina is standing in the middle of the boxcar, heaved between black Armani suits and the hard edges of Prada bags. And since there are not enough handles overhead to maintain her balance, she must depend, reluctantly, on the chest cavities of three people eclipsing her personal space. She is tall, and shoots above the mass of black hair, a steeple in a field. As the boxcar shakes, through the bedrock of homogeneity, Trina’s big eyes and Afro hit the crowd like seismic shock waves. Her skin crisps golden brown under their stares, incessant glances crawling over her like red ants.

But the end is near, Trina thinks, tomorrow in fact being graduation day, though the idea circles her head like smoke, its final meaning just beyond her grasp. And she is not sure what the finished painting of her stay in Japan will look like, what she will see when she stands back and contemplates the strokes and shades in all their entirety. On days of extreme exhaustion, such as this one, she misses anonymity, longs for the cold, uninterested eyes of Washingtonians. And yet, standing in her blatant state, Trina is clandestine, an agent out in the open, yet cloaked in mystery.

Two businessmen, waterlogged from rounds of sake, discuss the stranger. “Where do you think she’s from?” one asks, gawking, a smile spreading across his flushed face. He is secure in his drunkenness, ensconced in island mentalities, sure that the foreigner cannot understand a word he is saying.

The other man shrugs. Molecules of his smelly breath snake around them. His head bobs as he snaps to an imagined song, jaundiced eyes raking over the anomaly. “Maybe Africa? Like Nigeria? Nah, probably not. Most of these blacks come here from America.”

Trina imagines him awkwardly dancing on the stage of a karaoke bar in Ginza, rap video vixens gyrating behind him on a fifty-two inch screen.

Belching, the inquisitor leans even closer to the specimen, studying dark crystal. “She might be a model,” he says.

Trina smirks behind an emotionless face.

His buddy snickers, voice dropping an octave.  “Ask her.  I dare you to ask her.”

Dragonbreath shakes his head. “It’s no good. My English is no good.”

“Do it,” the other snarls.

Trina thinks about allowing them to go on, while everyone is pretending not to be listening. But she pauses in the blackness of stealth, a desire to stun them growing in the crevice of her bra. All these long days she has kept silent. She has learned the weight of custom and restraint, and how words spoken too quickly sink to unknown depths. But couldn’t she say something just once? Say it. “I’m an exchange student at Waseda,” she quips in Japanese, instantly becoming holy. Only children born on beds of emerald ivy go to Waseda University. They swing eight-foot Kendo poles on black volcanic sands, the Japan Sea crashing behind them. They are the alchemists of tea ceremonies, a shower of pink cherry blossom petals kissing their shoulders. They are the anointed, seated squarely on the maroon leather seats of parliament, confident half-smiles dressing their faces.

At Trina’s words, the businessmen are aghast, suffocating, their minds trying unsuccessfully to reconcile the holy with what is standing before them. And there is nothing left in their Lucky cigarette-choked lungs to reply beyond, “Eh?” And they look down because, of course, there is no room to back away, no point of egress for at least four minutes and thirty-eight long seconds. And even the bickering and yammering of the teenagers has crashed to a halt, a bushy-haired boy stopping mid-sentence. The atmosphere has thickened into cement, crushing the can into silence and disbelief, the boxcar reeling from the fallout of Trina’s utterance. In the arrested din, Trina listens to the howling wind rattling the loose window slats, catching a glimpse of Tokyo Disney World across the bay, the lighted Ferris wheel twinkling.  

The old women guarding the exits suck their teeth, grumbling about the poor example the men have set for the alien. One bluetop admonishes the inebriated with an icy glare. “Crying shame,” she says, straightening the leg folds of her dress to their original severe crease. At the next stop the dispossessed quickly tumble out of the smeared doors. As the train rolls by the platform, Trina watches them through the window, shaking their heads, gesticulating wildly. 

But now, in addition to the watchtower from which her looks announce themselves, Trina is something even more inexplicable. The office assistants look at her, gripping the straps of their purses, betrayal burning their pupils. Mama-san, Trina’s host mother, tells her Japanese people like special things. You are special, Mama-san says, in their long afternoon conversations. Trina clings to her words, her cover voluntarily blown. Closing her eyes, she thinks of the Blue Mountains of Hakuba she visited over Spring break, how crescent moons sailed indigo skies and rainbows arched lakes after rain. The train jerks, and she thinks of the pickaninny dolls in the gift shop at the Hakuba visitor’s lodge, their protruding eyes begging for deliverance from key chains and stickers.

A sickeningly sweet voice cuts through the squeaking of steel on tracks. “Makuhari Hongo,” chimes the automated attendant.  As the train slows, she chatters politely, incessantly, warning of the dangers of not watching one’s step, her pleas to collect umbrellas and newspapers dipped in syrup. Trina empties onto the platform with the throng of others and heads for her bicycle parked below. Mounting, her body cooling from the burn of the spotlight, she is thankful for the cover of darkness en route to her host family’s house. Her stomach grumbles furiously at the smells of restaurants nearby.  Weight gain is unthinkable in Tokyo, the body on constant watch for enough calories to make it through the day.

Trina cycles quickly through quaint, tree-lined roads, delighting in the fresh air of late evening, skidding to the last house on a charming dead-end street.  It is a beautiful home, carefully built near a natural spring well, the water jetting from the sweating kitchen faucet breathtakingly delicious.  There is a pretty Zenish garden out back, and on clear, quiet days she can smell the Makuhari Sound and glimpse Mount Fuji far, far away.

“Tadaima,” Trina tolls at the front door, hurriedly kicking off her shoes and sliding into slippers.

Mama-san awaits her at the dining room table. She is sprite, well into the golden years, her plump cheeks flanking a pouty smile. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she swims at the local community center, after which she counsels young neighborhood mothers. ‘New mothers sometimes need help with things and understanding what needs to be done,’ Mama-san tells Trina, patriotic responsibility edging her proclamation. Trina dumps her heavy bag in the corner and collapses into the dining room chair.  They begin a ritual, one of many.

“How was class today?” Mama-san says, knowing the question is colorless now, but unwilling to part with the habit of asking. She sits a cup in front of Trina and fills it with green tea. “Drink just a little,” she says, as she always instructs Trina in the evening because the tea is laced with caffeine. Mama-san settles into her seat, smiling, ready to hear the details of her ward’s day.

Trina takes a few sips, melting as it slides down her throat. She is amazed to be graduating tomorrow, her experience a kaleidoscope of impression and memory. “Class was good. Everyone’s excited about the ceremony,” she says. The table is decorated with snacks of all kinds. She rips into sheets of dried seaweed and shrimp-flavored crackers. “Can’t believe it’s finally here,” she says, crunching.

Mama-san looks at her, rolling the tape in her mind back to the first day when she wondered how they’d get along. In her house. Eating her food. With no English. At the university orientation, the other host mothers had looked at the pair standing together in the green quad sympathetically, nodding their heads, offering salutations of good luck and best wishes framed in dread, all of them unprepared for anything more exotic than blonde hair. But since those awkward first days, Mama-san’s pride in Trina has plumed into peacock splendor, though she looks upon it only in the twilight of her private thoughts.

Mama-san thinks of all the times she led Trina through the labyrinth of her studies, how together they decrypted nuance and ground through the substratum of innuendo, how they stood on the cliffs of the meaning of things, gazing into the blue. She thinks of how she has stopped worrying about whether the rice is washed and ready in the cooker for the next day’s meal, since Trina does this without being asked, and how she has come to instinctively include Trina’s favorites on the grocery list. In the backwaters of her mind, she has woven a lively home again.

And when the old woman thinks of Trina’s graduation tomorrow, she is reminded of the cruelty of brevity. In her long years, she has come to know its spiteful hand, how it cuts through delicate vines painstakingly strung, slashing what is cherished without deference. And she has grown less sure if there really is a beginning within an ending, as the proverbs and fables of her youth have told her. And a shadow descends on her when she thinks of tomorrow, something she isn’t proud of.  “You’ve done well,” Mama-san says, cracking open a container of warmed tofu squares. “Eat more,” she urges, setting a plate and spice shaker in front of Trina.

And there is a hollow sound in Mama-san’s voice that Trina has never heard before, but dismisses as the fatigue of old age. Trina looks at the shaker of hot spice, thinking of Papa-san. “Piri Piri” he calls it, for the sound it makes when it is sprinkled, turning everything it touches into soul food. On the rare occasions Papa-san is home at a decent hour, the two of them sit at the table together in lovely silence, grinning and chewing. Thinking of him, Trina picks up the shaker and seasons the tofu heavily.

“Papa-san won’t be too much longer,” Mama-san tells Trina. They both know this is a lie. Mama-san will be sitting there until well after midnight awaiting her husband, when he will hobble into the living room, dizzy from ten hours of supervising his staff and three more hours of showmanship over cocktails.

Trina glances at the empty adjoining living room, straining to hear activity upstairs. Nothing. “Where is Mariko?” she asks.

A long silence. Venetian blinds roll down Mama-san’s face, closing sharply into a white facade. “She’s not home yet,” she says.

“Oh,” Trina says, feeling guilty again for asking. Mariko had dropped out of high school, was not in college, as her parents felt she should have been, and spent the better part of her time reveling in postmodern nihilism. ‘I’m not going to marry,’ she likes to say when they browse fashion magazines on her bedroom floor. She is a beautiful girl by most standards, and thinks that should be sufficient for all she might end up doing in life. ‘I’m sick of that shit about everything being over, if you don’t marry by twenty-four,’ she often says. She is probably out partying right now, Trina thinks, and Papa-san will end up sending Mama-san to bed in the witching hours while he keeps watch for her to come home.

“Nine o’clock,” Mama-san announces, the blinds lifting, her voice returning to its soothing gurgle. Mariko’s storm cloud has passed over, temporarily, and she gets up to turn on the news. A severe looking man is reporting rapid fire about student protests at a university in Seoul. The news cuts to footage of students clashing with police, smoke bombs and flaming bottles flying through the air.

“Those Koreans are always fighting,” says Mama-san. “Their hearts have always been too quick to anger, you know. And there’s so much heat in their diet, what with all the Kimchi and strong flavors on everything,” she says, sighing heavily. “It’s not healthy. Keeps the blood pressure up.” She shakes her head and pours herself another cup of tea. “That’s why,” she says, eyeing the Piri Piri, “we Japanese don’t eat too much peppers and such. Our diet is basically plain, you know.”

Trina chopsticks another mouthful of tofu, thinking about their weekend family trip to the Japanese National Museum in Ueno Park (Mariko wasn’t there). She and Papa-san had stood on the gleaming marble, looking at a tenth century special exhibit of ancient Korea. A prehistoric map of the Asian continent hung behind a row of colorful attire like a papyrus, the Japanese islands drifting on the Pacific Ocean. ‘This garb looks like the kimonos,’ Trina said in wonder. Papa-san was quiet for a moment. ‘Well, they should,’ he said, running a hand over his balding head. Mama-san had moved on to the Ainu masks without saying a word.

Trina looks at Mama-san and grabs the remote. “Isn’t Tokyo Love Story on now?” she asks. It’s a decidedly silly show; full of tearful women named Yuki and the furrowed brows of men forever misunderstood. But the dialogue runs at an easygoing clip, the melodrama entertaining in a mind-numbing sort of way. Mariko and Trina sometimes giggle through the show together with tall glasses of iced Oolong. Trina watches for fullness. Mariko watches for emptiness.

Mama-san gives Trina a look. “Maybe,” she says, which means she would prefer she not turn it on. Trina flips through the channels, passing Tokyo Love Story, pausing on a medical channel. A baby has just been born and screams heartily when the doctor holds him up. Half listening, Trina catches the narrator say, “Koku-jin,” meaning black person. After the first few days of life, the now pale baby’s skin will begin to change color, turning brown….

“Really?” Mama-san exclaims, looking at Trina incredulously. For her, there is no end to the wonders of black people and she relishes this kind of chance encounter with astonishing bits of information.

When the two of them sit down for their Sunday afternoon ritual of tea and sweets, they exchange comments and questions until dinner. Last Sunday, after months of getting up her nerve, Trina asked Mama-san what she thought about Hiroshima. Mama-san stared at the cocoa powder atop the slices of Tiramisu for a long time without saying anything. She is from a southern prefecture, the youngest daughter of a traditional kimono-making family. She is of the generation that has lived both during the happening and afterwards.

In the long silence, Trina was a bit ashamed of her curiosity, but it had been tugging at her since she hit the ground at Narita Airport. ‘Papa-san said the American soldiers used to give out Hershey’s chocolate bars to the children during the occupation,’ she offered weakly, fidgeting in the old woman’s muteness.

Mama-san put another slice of Tiramisu on their pastry plates without looking at Trina. It was a question she had expected eventually, but the heaviness of it took her breath nonetheless. ‘I was a little thing, but what I remember the most were the holes,’ she said at last. ‘Where my cousin was, when we finally did go out to see where she might have been, they told us the women ran further into the countryside, that they had tried frantically to find cover, digging holes to put their children in the ground. Trying to protect them from the beast that had killed even the Lightning God, they said.’ Her face tightened. ‘The grass was still white, and there were holes everywhere,’ she said. After that, Mama-san and Trina sat quietly together for a long time, staring out into the ocean of things they found difficult to understand.

The narrator on the television show continued about craniums and birth weights.

“Really?” Mama-san asks Trina again, louder.

“Really,” Trina says.

“Incredible,” Mama-san says, taking in the thought. “But some of you are darker and some are lighter, huh?”

Trina thinks about engaging her in the other layers: ice ages and geography; the horrors of plantation life; race mixing; recessive genes; high-yellow fixations and that sort of thing. But she is stuffed. “That’s true,” she says.

They look at each other. And Trina is certain that the old woman can tell from her tone and the shine in her eyes that there is so much more to the story, but that she does not have, or is unwilling to expend, the energy to drill down through history and pain. It is a conversation for Sundays, and they agree on this without saying so.

“Why don’t you get some rest?” Mama-san says, more a command than a request.

The chair feels stiff now, and Trina is ready to stretch out, but not ready to go to bed. She puts down the remote and wanders to the couch, sinking into its plush leather.

“Grab a pillow,” says Mama-san, pointing to a stack of silk-embroidered cushions on the floor by the bookcase.

Trina lumbers over and picks out a green one, pulling the stack forward. There are photo albums on the bottom shelf behind the pillows.  “Can I look at these?” she asks.

Mama-san is engrossed in medical terminology. “Look at what?”

Trina picks up a few dusty albums, showing the faded covers.  “These.”

“Sure,” says Mama-san.

Trina settles into the couch with a throw blanket over her lap, flipping through the pages. There are pictures of porcelain-faced women wrapped in elaborate kimonos adorned with butterflies. There are scenes of Mama-san and Papa-san smiling in front of temples, Mariko’s cherub face staring from a stroller next to them. Trina comes to a picture that she thinks is Mariko, but realizes is Mama-san as a young woman, her eyes electric, beaming through the cracked plastic sheets. “When was this?”

Mama-san yawns.  “Huh?”

“How old were you when this was taken?” Trina asks.

Mama-san comes over to the couch and sits next to Trina. As she stares at the picture, her face is illuminated from a light not in the room, the low current in her eyes intensifying. “Ah. Yes, that was me, wasn’t it? Twenty I think, about your age.  My modeling days.”

Trina tries to fathom how a woman who orders the items in her cupboard alphabetically and keeps a petty cash envelope in the credenza could ever have done anything as orchid-like as modeling. “Really?” she asks.

Mama-san’s unspoken thoughts settle over them, mixing with the dust. “Trina, whatever it is you decide you want to do, make sure you do it,” she says, rising. She points to a little ship entombed in a bottle on the end table, and says, “Remember the boat.” The old woman returns to the television, leaving a trail of echoes. And Trina remembers Mama-san saying one Sunday that sometimes life can be like that boat in the bottle, that once a thing is constructed, and all of its pieces are brought to their end, it becomes only what it is.

The cat scratching Trina’s bedroom door awakens her in the morning light of Graduation Day. She hears the clinking of dishes and silverware downstairs, the sports report on the television in full swing.  She goes down the hallway, pausing at Mariko’s door. A radio is playing whimsical songs, indicating she has made it home at some hour in the night. Trina pads down the steps with anticipation, wondering how the day will unfold.

The dining room table is decked in majesty, food of all sorts punctuated with opulent bowls and the chrysanthemums of hand painted plates. In the center of the table there is a box wrapped in silver paper, topped with a brilliant red bow. 
Papa-san comes in from the kitchen. “Oh, so you’re up.” He pours them both a cup of tea, his smile a bit nervous.

Trina does not notice this and she is lost in the spectacular display. “This is just lovely. Look at all this!”

Papa-san sits down, motioning for Trina to join him. “Mama-san did put on a show, didn’t she?” he says.

And it is only then, looking around and hearing nothing but the television, that Trina notices the absence of something that is almost an appendage of the dining room. “Where is she? The post office? The market square? I thought she said something about us all going out later, after the ceremony.”

“No,” Papa-san says, looking away. “She’s not going.”

“The square?”

“The ceremony.”

A long silence. And Trina cannot believe what she is hearing, cannot understand why Mama-san would not wish to see this event, a culmination of something she had so much of a hand in making. Disappointment routs her throat, and she is only able to manage one word.  “Why?”

“It’s difficult,” says Papa-san. “Sometimes,” he says slowly, staring at the green leaves drowned at the bottom of his cup, “we don’t want to see a thing end.” He looks as if he wants to say something else, but folds it up and puts it away.

The two of them float quietly at the table, and Trina distracts herself with thoughts of plane tickets, of the boy she hopes will be waiting for her when she comes out of the gate, of Redskins and pumpkin pie, of white monuments and the black Potomac River. And when this falls away, she thinks of all of the afternoons she walked moonscapes with Mama-san, looking into craters full of surprises and realizations. And she thinks of all the species of roses in the garden of their friendship that they, after her leaving, will not have the opportunity to examine and discuss. All of it gone.

“But I’ll be there,” says Papa-san, trying mightily to smile, knowing Mama-san has gone to the murky waters of the sound to think about things they no longer discuss, knowing Mariko will remain in bed. He picks up the box and hands it to Trina.

“She wanted you to have this.”

Trina tries to share in Papa-san’s feigned cheer, nodding and smiling, saying thank you profusely. She opens the gift, an extravagant assortment of chocolates with a card inside. Mama-san’s elegant calligraphy dances across the ivory. “For your other Sundays,” Trina reads, bursting into tears.