“You are located in a very exciting area of Tokyo.”
“Oh? Tell me.” She just wants the woman to keep talking.
The woman rattles off some names, then says she’ll send a packet of information in the mail.
“Wonderful,” says Hanne, gobbling up everything the woman says. She keeps the woman on the phone a bit longer, asking how many attendees will be at the conference, from what countries, and a sample of the topics that will be discussed. Finally the woman apologies, but says she must go. A million things to attend to before the conference.
“Of course. Can you tell me if Mr. Yukio Kobayashi will be there?”
“He will, indeed.”
“Good. Wonderful.”
She looks forward to meeting him. Though he grumbled about the early chapters, after he reads the entire manuscript, he’ll see she worked hard and gave him a beautiful translation, virtually guaranteeing him an English audience for his novel and all his future work. She imagines him asking her how she did it. What’s her secret? Maybe he’ll take her out for a celebratory drink or dinner. He’ll set his glass down and wait. She’ll tell him she’s never understood a character as well as she did Jiro. It was uncanny. The longer she read, the more Jiro seemed to stand in her presence and speak to her directly. When she finished, she felt she had an intimate recognition of him. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. Like an old married couple. She’s certain he’ll request her to translate his next book. When a writer finds a translator who understands his work, it’s like finding gold. And after all she’s been through, she’d welcome the praise.
“I strongly advise against it,” says her doctor. The Japanese medical student is on another line, interpreting. “If something happens to you, you’re at the mercy of the Japanese medical system. It’s not bad, but I won’t be there to help you.”
As she circles through the rooms of her apartment, her legs restless, she says she appreciates his candor, but she’s sure she’ll be fine.
“I can’t say how it will or won’t affect your condition. I just don’t know. You could be taking a huge risk, but then again, it might be fine.”
That’s how she sees it too. How different is that from staying put? She loops twice around the living room.
“Let me be clear: I’m not giving my consent. But I can’t stop you.”
Her son is not so wishy-washy. “Don’t go.”
She pulls her suitcase from under the bed. “I’m an adult—”
“That’s not what I mean. You don’t have your languages back, which means something is still not right.”
She doesn’t want to bother him with her money concerns. “I’m looking forward to this trip. I haven’t been there in years.”
“I’ll visit again. We’ll take a trip together. Napa. We’ll go drink wine.”
He doesn’t have time, she knows. “No, you’re busy.”
When she stares at her clothes hanging in the closet, her gaze lands on the boxes pushed to the far back corner, boxes of Brigitte’s things. In one is a teddy bear with a loose felt eye. And a sweater she knitted for Brigitte, soft pink with milky white buttons. Brigitte picked out the yarn, and it took Hanne months to finish, unraveling row after row, knitting it again to make it perfect. She can still see Brigitte heading to kindergarten in that sweater buttoned to her neck. Her kindergarten teacher. What was her name? Mrs. Lapensko? Lapensker? A horrible woman. Hanne had fretted that Brigitte would be too bored. What would she do when the others were stumbling over the alphabet? Slowly spitting out the simplest of words? Brigitte already knew how to read—and not just in English. Hanne wanted Brigitte to skip a grade, but the school advised her to wait and see.
Not long into the school year, Brigitte’s kindergarten teacher called Hanne and asked her to come in for a parent conference.
Hiro couldn’t make it, she can’t remember why, so Hanne showed up the next morning. Bright gold stars made out of construction paper decorated one entire wall. The letters of the alphabet were stapled around the perimeter, along with the numbers, 1 to 10, and self-portraits done with tempera paint hung above the blackboard. As Hanne took a seat across from the teacher’s desk, she tried to spot Brigitte’s.
The teacher said Brigitte was clearly bright, but too easily distracted; and during individual study times, she had trouble focusing. And she was always interrupting her classmates.
That was it? Hanne was relieved. “She’s bored.”
The teacher was probably in her mid-fifties and couldn’t curb her sing-song voice intended to motivate, discipline, and guide five- and six-year-olds. She’d dyed her shoulder-length hair dark earthy brown, but near the temples the gray refused to be stamped out. “May I ask, are there problems at home?”
In an even tone, Hanne said that Brigitte had a stable, happy household with a loving father and mother. Who was this woman to pry? What gave her the right?
The teacher opened her mouth, as if she were about to ask another question. When she finally spoke, she said Brigitte never raised her hand. “It’s strange. I know she knows the right answer. Maybe she’s shy or she’s afraid she’ll say the wrong answer. Or maybe no one at home listens to her, so she thinks why bother.”
What a thing to say!
“But that’s not the biggest problem.”
At least once a day, Brigitte wept—a girl who refused to sit beside her or play with her at recess; a toy she wanted, but was too late to retrieve from the box; a reprimand not to talk while the teacher was talking. Any failure went terribly deep, too deep. She falls apart. “I was hoping I could enlist your help.”
“Once a day? Really?” Hanne couldn’t keep the surprise and alarm from her voice. In the early weeks of school, Brigitte had cried in the car on the way home. Something about a girl who didn’t want to play with her at recess. Hanne had a long talk with Brigitte, how, of course, these things hurt, but tomorrow was a different day, and she could make it better. Brigitte should find someone else to play with. “Don’t bother with this girl who refuses your company,” Hanne told Brigitte. “She doesn’t sound like a very nice girl.” How could she put this delicately? “Some girls are not worth the trouble.” Brigitte nodded and dried her tears, and after that, Hanne never heard another word about it. Or any of the other things the teacher had mentioned.
Hanne finally spotted Brigitte’s self-portrait. She’d painted herself wearing her pink sweater and a big red bow in her hair. A huge face but with a tiny body, as if the latter were an afterthought, squeezed in at the request of a teacher. Her eyes were slanted lines, her mouth wavy, not a smile, but not quite a frown either. To Hanne she looked hesitant to join the fracas of accompanying faces, her so-called peers.
At home, the teacher advised, Hanne shouldn’t reward this infantile behavior. When Brigitte cried, Hanne should minimize the event. “Or don’t even acknowledge her. Ignore her, the crying jags. The tantrums. Just go about your business as if nothing is happening. She will learn that this kind of behavior is not rewarded.”
“I don’t reward that kind of behavior,” said Hanne, not restraining the fury in her voice. “Did you know my daughter speaks four languages? She comes from a very intelligent, hard-working household. At home, she basks in so much attention, and she never cries. She’s happy. You’ve never seen a happier child.”
Surely the woman was exaggerating about crying bouts once a day. And if Brigitte occasionally broke down and cried, it had to be out of boredom.
The teacher sighed. “I’ve been teaching kindergarten for sixteen years. I’ve seen a lot of children.”
“And I know my daughter.”
Hanne grabbed her coat and purse and marched out, vowing to find another school. What did this woman know about her Brigitte? Brigitte, who, as a baby, clamped her hands to her ears and cried whenever she heard a loud sound—a siren, the vacuum cleaner, the stove alarm, a person with a booming voice. The pediatrician had recommended that Brigitte’s keen hearing be normalized—wha
t was his word?—desensitized—or she’d have trouble negotiating the world. Every outing would be an ordeal for Hanne. Expose her to new sounds gradually, slowly raising the volume, and soon she would be fine. But that acute ability meant her daughter could hear and almost instantly speak different languages. Hanne would not crush her daughter to fit some terrible average, some awful norm.
Now still on the phone with Tomas, Hanne pulls out the robin’s-egg-blue dress. Is it too early for a dress intended for spring?
“Come stay with us,” says Tomas. “You won’t be in the way.”
Of course she’ll be in the way. Anne and her granddaughters don’t speak Japanese. She will be reduced to a ghostly presence, a museum relic, glued in a chair.
He sighs. “What did your doctor say?”
She chooses a cream-colored dress and puts it, along with the blue one, in her suitcase. “He gave the okay.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“It could be a wonderful time. He said to enjoy life. He’s never been to Japan and wishes he could go.” She gives him the name of the hotel and the phone number. “It’s a marvelous hotel,” she says. She hears him tell someone to wait. “I understand all the risks.” She opens her top drawer and counts out pairs of socks, underwear, pantyhose. “It’s a paid engagement to speak.”
He groans. “You’re so stubborn. So damn stubborn.”
If he thinks he’s reprimanding her, he’s wrong. Stubbornness is one of her greatest strengths, she thinks. She can always be counted on, no matter how difficult the task, no matter the number of naysayers.
For the first time in a long while, she feels giddy. She showers, puts on makeup, and dresses in a white silk blouse with ivory buttons and a black skirt. A string of pearls. She’s never let herself go. Not during pregnancy, not after Hiro’s death. She always kept her figure; she still wears a size eight.
She takes a taxi to Japantown and heads to her favorite restaurant, Mifune. The place is crowded with Japanese, slurping noodles. She’s seated in the corner. A young Japanese couple sits beside her, and she quickly learns that they don’t suspect she speaks their language. She has watery eyes, they decide, a sharp nose that makes her look like a hawk. “At least she’s not fat like most Americans,” says the young man with a greasy sheen to his hair. And she doesn’t have many wrinkles. It’s hard to guess her age. Hanne listens with a mixture of horror and voyeuristic thrill, peering into her own life as if she, too, were viewing it, assessing it, finding it, on the whole, lacking.
“She sits alone,” says the girl with a shine to her forehead. “No husband. No friends. It’s so sad.”
“That’s how most Americans look to me. Lonely and sad.”
“But this woman seems like she sits alone—lonely, sad, and also angry. Maybe she sits there, angry with her life.”
She can’t be quiet any longer. “Sits?” says Hanne, turning to them. “A present participle would be a better choice. ‘She is sitting alone.’”
The woman covers her mouth with her hand. A few seconds pass, and Hanne hears a mumbled “Sumimasen,” sorry.
She knows she should have let it go. The waiter brings Hanne her bowl of wakame. While she eats, the couple sits stiffly, not saying a word. When the waiter walks by them again, the young man shoves the bill and money at him, and they quickly leave.
Chapter Six
“Hajimemashite. Dozo yoroshiku,” says the young Japanese woman who greets Hanne at the gate. How do you do? I’m very glad to meet you. A limo will take Hanne from Narita Airport to Tokyo. Stocked in the limo refrigerator are Hanne’s favorites—inari, salted sea bream, and cold sake. Along with pears, mandarin oranges, mamakari fish, and sweet liquor. The young woman has a high, soft voice, made softer by a slight lisp and the dip of her head at the end of her sentences, as if apologizing for what she just said. Hanne will have the limo to herself. She must be very tired from the long plane ride, says the woman, whose name is Amaya. Amaya will follow in her own car and check Hanne into the hotel. The young woman bows low, lower than Hanne’s bow. “We are honored to have you here.”
“I’m very honored to be here,” says Hanne.
d
As the limo speeds along the freeway, Hanne gazes out the window at the bleach-white sky, the billboards for every possible consumer product, the blur of cement tenement buildings. It’s late winter, but soon the windows will be open, laundry on the line, fluttering like birds. She has mostly fond memories of living here as a teenager. After five years living with her Oma, who, by the end, wouldn’t leave the house, who refused to let Hanne out, except for school and errands and while she cleaned, Hanne had finally been fetched by her mother. Her mother had secured a lucrative translation position with the German government, which was trying to make inroads into the Japanese car industry. They were moving to Japan.
Coming here felt like stepping out of prison. Now Hanne is filled with memories of feeling alive, vibrant, in the mix of things. In her mind, Japan is associated with the hot thicket of her teenage years when she discovered sex, and, more significantly, her power to allure by the simplest of gestures, a wetting of her lips, a tilt of her head. With her round eyes and brown hair, she was a desirable anomaly, sought after, at first tentatively and then more aggressively, by the Japanese boys. They thought she was American, but when they discovered she was from Europe, she became even more exotic, a real catch, but she was the one doing the catching. Hanne’s mother saw only a bookish, studious girl, so she let Hanne at the tender ripe and ripening age of fifteen do what she wanted, go wherever she wished. It was a very safe country, her mother told Hanne. Her mother was so busy working, she had no time to watch over Hanne or realize what Hanne was doing. Hanne welcomed the neglect. She roamed and explored and the world was alive and vigorous and so was she. Her mother never suspected Hanne’s afternoons were spent with Japanese boys from her school, one in particular, his shiny-shampooed hair falling into his dark eyes, like a veil. She sees them wrapped around each other on the corduroy couch in the cramped living room, like lush vines, as she plunges her hand into the deep territory of his trousers, touching his rubbery penis, coaxing it into a hard shape. Not just once. His hand fumbling under her blouse, lifting her bra, stroking, fondling. When he pinched her nipple, she told him to cut it out.
She cracks open the limo window—cold air, mingled with car exhaust, the stink of rotten eggs, and tar, fills the car. Not much has changed since she was last here—more buildings, more cars, the same polluted air. She closes the window again and kicks off her shoes, stretching out her legs, soaking them in the cool blue light from the darkly tinted windows.
That Japanese boy wanted to keep going, but she had no desire to lose her virginity to fumbling hands and an awkward, boyish body. She wanted her first time to be better, more extraordinary; she had someone else in mind. He worked behind the counter of the café where she stopped after school and drank black coffee and smoked Sakura cigarettes. Five years her senior, he was tall for a Japanese man, smooth-skinned. He rarely smiled, so when he did, it felt genuine.
She began wearing short skirts to show off her long legs, and scarlet lipstick, and her hair curled so it outlined her ear, like a picture frame. Smiling at him a little too long, as if seeing deep into the dark core of him. After a month or so, she knew his shift ended at 3:30, and that he slouched outside on the porch to smoke and scribble in a small blank notebook. He liked D. H. Lawrence; a tattered copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was always on the counter beside him. During a lull, he’d pick it up and head out back. She began joining him on the back porch to smoke, talking about Lawrence, his boldness, his sex scenes. One day she invited him to her apartment. Not in love, Hanne was curious about sex and mildly smitten with his cool exterior. When they entered the apartment, he wrapped his hand around her wrist and took her, as if he’d been there before, straight to her bedroom. He knew how to make love; it was why she’d picked him.
But then he started showing up at her a
partment door, saying he had to see her, he missed her. She was irritated that he’d arrive, uninvited. What if he showed up when her mother was there? She told him she’d see him at the coffee shop. The third time he showed up uninvited, she lied and said she had another boyfriend, then closed the door. But at the end of the week when she stopped by the coffee shop and he barely looked at her, she softened. She went outside on the back porch with him, took his hand in hers. In her bedroom, she made love to him one more time. It was good, as good as the other time, but then the swelling, the nausea; not a good pick in the end, for he was no help. She took care of it immediately; took such good care, her mother never knew.
After that, her interest in boys waned. It rattled her, the possibility of her life derailing just because of a boy, because of what could happen from sex. What took its place was mastering the Japanese language.
The limo delivers her directly to the front steps of the imposing Imperial Hotel. A quick dash from the car to the high-ceilinged lobby, she escapes the crush of humanity that is Tokyo, though she can hear it all around her, a mesh of cars, taxis, buses, scooters, the metro. The density of this city is the main reason why she so rarely visits. Hiro, too, preferred more space, more breathing room. Because of that, he had no interest in living in Japan, especially Tokyo. Before she enters the fray, she needs to rest.
Amaya is already at the front desk and the bellhop carries her bags to her room. The other speakers are also staying in the hotel, Amaya says, handing Hanne a glossy conference program, opened to the page that shows Hanne will lecture tomorrow, the first day of the conference. “Please ring if you need anything,” she says.
In her room, she opens the curtains and drags a bulky chair over by the window to sit in a patch of winter sun. Across the street is Hibiya Park. A cherry tree sapling looks like it was recently planted, a skirt of fresh dirt surrounding its small trunk. She watches it sway with the breeze. How peaceful. Already San Francisco is quickly becoming remote, receding into the past. Unable to speak to anyone, she was slowly disappearing in San Francisco. Here she feels she’s someone again. Not just anyone, someone held in high regard. They are honored she’s here.
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