“Call me Annabelle,” she said and let out a loud cackling laugh.
She then cocked her head, looked at Cathy and continued, “That’s not even my real name, you know. Maria Tucci, your everyday Italian immigrant. That’s who I really am. My parents moved here in 1961 to the Italian Harlem after some relatives helped us with accommodation and other immigration issues. They wanted to provide a better life for their children, whatever that means. Very early on, I realized my distinctive features set me apart from the other girls and it was easy being a pretty face, wherever I went. I’m sure you know what that’s like Cathy, to get away with anything you want because of how you look?”
Cathy smiled, “You wouldn’t be the first person to use your looks to your advantage. It does make your job easier and sometimes a little harder.”
As Annabelle looked out the window, she gulped some more wine. “I had big dreams. I started auditioning for movie parts, soap operas, Broadway ... anything that would give me just one shot at fame. And the closest I ever got was playing an extra in a rucksack commercial. We had to walk on a train platform and say ‘Bandano rucksacks for any girl, for any occasion’. I was convinced that it was my big break. After more than a year of auditioning, I was a muddled mess of broken dreams, with an even bigger hole in my purse. This was my last chance to make some money on my own or I would have to head back to Papa’s shop cutting sausages and marrying Aldo, a greasy and ugly family choice. I would have rather dug a hole and buried myself.”
She paused and swallowed more wine, this time glancing at her clothes. She looked down at her hands, placed the bottle on the table and rubbed her hands together as if trying to remove an invisible stain.
“The director screamed ‘cut’ even before I could say my line. He said the clients didn’t want a foreign voice. In the end, the commercial wasn’t even aired. When I found out, I had my last $10 and I sat in a cafe licking my wounds. A well-to-do woman sat next to me, and she was crying her eyes out. When I asked her what was wrong she told me that she and her husband were going through a rough patch. We talked for the longest time. I told her everything I knew about keeping a marriage together. She was so grateful for the company and for what I had said that she slipped a $100 bill in my hand. A week later, she brought her friend for some advice. Again, I told them what I knew. Everything I knew was based on my parents’ marriage. Fifty-five years they were married and until the day my mother died a few years ago, my father still called her ‘his everything’. People were paying me to share the love story my parents had ... ‘what do I do when my husband does this’ or ‘how do I react when my wife says that’. When people asked me about my own marriage and my husband, I left out as many details as I could, always telling them that my husband was away, working on some big, secret project. I was on a Caribbean cruise this one time and that’s where I met Colin. He was a miserable drunk in desperate need of a job and this seemed easy enough for him or so I thought,” she poured out her situation to Cathy.
“I know it seems like I’m prying but just out of curiosity, did you really think you could pull it off? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just tell people this was not your story?” Cathy asked.
“You naïve child. And you call yourself a media person! Do you seriously think I would have been this successful? Would you have paid for a marriage seminar from an unmarried marriage expert? It’s hard to explain, I don’t expect you to understand.”
“And it’s hard for your customers to understand the deception.”
“Is this your polite way of kicking me out, Cathy? Telling me that MoonStar does not want to be associated with me?”
“Not at all, Ms. Rice. You’re more than welcome to stay at any of our properties. But as someone that works with people on a daily basis, I would recommend that you tell them everything you told me. You would be surprised what people can accept."
“People are foolish. They only think they want the truth. Dress a lie up in an expensive suit, call it the truth and they’ll never recognise it for what it is. I have to get ready now. Clean myself up and whip up a press conference. If anything there will be more publicity after this incident and I have to be ready.”
“So, you’ll be telling them?”
“Not on your life. And if you repeat anything I have just told you, I’ll sue you and all of MoonStar, just you wait and see,” Annabelle shot back.
Annabelle paused at her bedroom door, striking an elaborate pose with her hands flung above her head as though reaching for the stars. Her eyes were glazed, almost forgetting that Cathy was even in the room.
“It will be simple. Colin was drunk and he wasn’t being himself. He will make a public apology to me. I’ll churn out a fabulous session on how a marriage can survive public humiliation, get a little sympathy and make loads of money. It’s all in the image. And I’m one woman who is always ready for her close-up, just like Norma Desmond was.”
TOKYO, JAPAN
April 2010
Exploring Japan’s history will offer a person two different spectrums, both equally gut wrenching and filled with horrendous violence and each carving their mark in history and into the minds of those involved.
On the one end, the United States was responsible for the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August 1945 and the latter on 9 August 1945. It was claimed that more than three hundred thousand people lost their lives, be it from being directly hit by the explosion of the atomic bombs or succumbing to other effects such as radiation and severe health complications. It took Japan six days to surrender, marking the end of World War II. Decades later, the affected areas have been physically rebuilt, but will probably never fully recover from these bombings.
More than seven hundred thousand Hibakusha (explosion surviving people) were recently remembered and commemorated when their names were listed in a memorial site in Nagasaki. Hiroshima was conferred the title of UNESCO World Heritage site in 1998 even after severe protests by the United States.
On the other side of the spectrum, are the bitter scars of mass killings that the Japanese military carried out from 1935 to 1945. To date, the horrifying death toll stands at approximately ten million people, who have been identified. At one stage, public posters had been placed in town areas and offered prizes and a promotion to any officer that could chop off the heads of one hundred people with a sword, while shooting competitions were held with blindfolded civilians as targets. It is reported that the military also used prisoners of war for experimentation with biological weapons and amputation of body parts, with some prisoners of war voicing out that it was during these “research” days when the Japanese had also resorted to cannibalism.
Numerous incidences had been recorded of people buried alive and left for dead which accounted for many “unknown” deaths, giving room for the approximate death toll to be far higher. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been thought to have put an end to all of this but have remained to this day, a fierce debate with USA and Japan offering each other compensation and assurances that history will never repeat itself.
Made up of more than six thousand islands, Japan is sometimes referred to as the Land of the Rising Sun. The capital Tokyo, is located on Honshu Island and home to thirteen million people.
Awarded the most number of Michelin stars than any city in the world, Tokyo is dotted with an array of nightlife, cuisine and tourist attractions. However, Tokyo precariously sits between two known tectonic plates, making it prone to earthquakes. It was a few weeks after one particular earthquake, that two women were seen looking around at the rubble surrounding them.
“You seem preoccupied,” Cathy gently said to the woman sitting next to her.
Jane offered a weak smile. “It’s so difficult being here. I’m just trying to come to terms with all of this, I guess.”
“I know what you mean. Of all the inspections and trips I’ve been on, this one is the most difficult,” Cathy responded, wrapped up in her own thoughts as well.
Three weeks earlier, a devastating earthquake measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale had torn through Tokyo and its surrounding cities. In an area prone to earthquakes with a fully functional warning system, locals were used to smaller quakes. A big one such as this was a first and had left behind a trail of destruction. As if the quake was not enough, residents were in for a worse shock when three hours after the quake, a massive tsunami with waves as high as twelve feet had rushed towards the shore. Houses had been torn apart, concrete buildings washed away and vehicles had floated away like little toys.
Moonstar Tokyo had evacuated all of their guests during the earthquake and when the tsunami warning was sounded, guests had been transported to various shelters around the city, as fast as the associates could take them. One particular group had made it just in the nick of time and had witnessed the waves crawling through buildings towards them. Moonstar guests, associates and their families had been spared from death but loss came to them in different ways.
In the wake of the disaster, the building owners of MoonStar Tokyo announced their inability to rebuild for another year and were undecided in proceeding with the rebuilding process as they estimated severe losses to their other business ventures as well.
Associates would have to be transferred to other MoonStar properties or given ‘severance packages’ while they looked for other jobs. Immediate needs such as food and clothing proved a major problem, despite large donations from other MoonStar properties within the Asian region. Even as the aftermath of the disaster unfolded, Cathy and her team had prepared to make a good will trip alongside the other Vice Presidents which included Operations, Finance, Business Development, Human Resources and other volunteers.
Their main focus was to lend a helping hand towards rebuilding some of the associates’ homes or providing alternate accommodation. Since their arrival two days ago, they had taken turns to inspect the surrounding areas of what was left of MoonStar Tokyo.
Cathy walked beside Jane who had maintained a stony silence since their arrival. Having previously worked with MoonStar Corporate as an office manager, she currently volunteered at several MoonStar charities and was always on hand to assist new associates with housing arrangements within the Las Vegas vicinity.
In her late sixties, Jane presented a cheery disposition which bore comfort to many associates, but none of these attributes seemed visible during this trip. Even earlier when they had packed the cartons of tinned food and clothing, Jane seemed uninterested and Cathy was certain that something was wrong. She watched and knew her hunch was right as the older woman seemed to grimace at the site of MoonStar Tokyo, and appeared to be dealing with an invisible pain.
“If you know someone needs your help and you push them away, because you hate them with every bone in your body, does that make you evil?” she asked shakily.
“No, it makes you human. Jane, whatever is bothering you, I’ll listen if you want to talk. You just haven’t been yourself. Is it something at home? Your granddaughter Elisa, is she okay?"
"No. It’s not family. It’s just ... Here, let’s sit down ... if the bench doesn’t fall apart. Let me tell you a story.
“Eons ago there was this lady, her husband worked as a watchmaker and she was a housewife. They were married in 1938 and had two young boys but had never been on a honeymoon. Her father gave them tickets for a cruise as an anniversary gift and they could take the boys along, of course. Things had been so difficult then, he had saved up for more than two years just so they could have a proper honeymoon. He knew his daughter had always wanted to see Asia and he had managed to get the tickets for a cruise that set sail from England to Singapore to India and back to England. The Empress of England’s Ocean ... that’s what the cruise had been called.
Jane paused and took a deep breath.
“Everything had gone smoothly until they had arrived within the Singaporean shore. The Japanese had invaded a few days earlier and all ships within the local port were instructed to dock or risk being blown up. Each ship had its passengers and cargo inspected. This was when they found the family huddled in their cabin. The wife was now pregnant with their third child, her two young boys were screaming and her husband was holding on to all of them with every ounce of strength in his body.”
A tear trickled down Jane’s cheek, her voice faltered slightly.
“They shot her husband because he resisted when the soldiers asked them to leave the cabin. Then, they made the woman and her children leave the ship with the other passengers and walk towards a prisoner of war camp located twenty miles away. She had on a pair of cloth sandals and a cotton dress, her swollen belly ached.”
Cathy felt goose bumps but knew that Jane was pouring out emotions she had kept confined all these years.
“When she asked the soldiers if she and her children could take a break, they would kick her, threaten to harm the children and made her walk on ... and she did ... to the point of labour. They were furious and told her that if she wanted to have the bastard child she would have to do so by herself. Nobody was going to help her and nobody would wait for her. She didn’t know what else to do but to lay by the side of the road, her two small boys bundled up and sleeping under a tree. She begged God to take her baby so the little one wouldn’t suffer what she knew was coming at the camp.”
Jane sighed and reached for Cathy’s hands, giving it a little squeeze.
“The baby came and so did a doctor who made her way back to the lady. She said she couldn’t live with herself if anything were to happen to mother and child. She was willing to risk any action brought on by the Japanese soldiers. The two women washed the baby at a nearby river, wrapped the little one in her mother’s dress and walked on, praying someone would spot them or help them before they made it to the camp. No one came of course. The prisoners were eventually released a few weeks later and put on a ship back to England.
"They arrived home, those who had survived looked a mere shadow of when they had left. The woman and her two boys disembarked the ship, her father was waiting for them, regretting the minute he had handed her the cruise tickets. He saw his daughter dressed in nothing but a filthy petticoat walking towards him and still she managed to smile, her boys were with her and her baby girl had survived wrapped in her arms. Cathy, I was that baby. All my life, I felt responsible for what happened to my mother.”
“But you gave her hope,” Cathy said gently doing her best to say the right thing in such a situation.
“You think so? I always felt that somehow I had made things worse for her on that day. Of course, she was never the same person after that. I hardly knew her when I was growing up. She was there and at the same time not quite there. My brothers and I were brought up by our grandparents. She died when I was twenty-two and I wasn’t at her funeral. How do you mourn someone you were told to love but never knew if she loved you?”
Cathy watched as the older woman tried to keep from breaking down any further.
“Deep down, I blamed and hated everything Japanese for the longest time. I refused to buy food, clothing and anything remotely made in Japan. The words ‘Made in Japan’ were never allowed in my household and when this earthquake happened all I could think of was ‘the sins of the fathers will be visited upon their sons ...,” her voice trailed off.
“Jane, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry ... for everything you have been through. If I had known ...”
“You wouldn’t have asked me to come? I don’t know, Cathy. After all this time, with children and grandchildren of my own ... I thought it would be easier. I needed to let go. Hate doesn’t eat at you, it swallows you whole and I needed to let go, but it has been difficult.”
“I don’t think it will ever get any easier, Jane. I’ve had things happen to me and it’s nothing compared to yours but I don’t think time completely heals us. We just learn to fix ourselves and we teach ourselves to move on.”
“Wise words from a young heart. But you’re right, Cathy.”
A soft bree
ze rustled through the trees and rubble. The light that dusk brought cast an eerie view of the pain that appeared around the city and inside Jane’s heart. The two women breathed in the view as they recollected the moment they just shared.
“I think it should be time for dinner soon. We need to freshen up and Lord knows you could use a break from listening to the ramblings of an old woman,” Jane said sounding more like her old self.
They took one last look at some of the ruined buildings around them, then made their way back to the local motel they were staying in. Sometimes tragedy made way for healing.
FIANARANTSOA, MADAGASCAR
May 2010
In 1986, when soft drink manufacturer Coca-Cola fine-tuned its beverage to contain less vanilla and sugar, the one country that suffered detrimental economic results was the largest vanilla exporter in the world, Madagascar. The change had been deemed small and insignificant but resulted in worldwide public backlash for the company and a steady downturn for the small island located on the shores of Africa. The beverage was altered again a decade later and the country was able to resume its vanilla and sugar exports.
Frequent Traveller (Cathy Dixon #1) Page 16
