“We are waiting for the truck,” Ko told her.
“May I come with you to the crematorium?” asked Mrs. Masuda. “I have been watching you ever since you arrived. I wondered where your mother went.”
“She went north to settle a few things,” Ko answered. “Mother would be glad if you would come with us.”
“There is a crematorium very near here,” Mrs. Masuda told Ko. “You do not have to ride for an hour and a half.”
“But aren’t you waiting for someone?” Ko asked.
“I have been waiting for my niece from Seoul, but she was not on the last train. I am on my way home.”
When the truck came the men lifted Mother to the board and slid it onto the pickup. Ko and I threw in our belongings and jumped on. Mrs. Masuda ordered the driver to go to Higashiyama Crematory, only a twenty-minute drive, and when we arrived there she paid five yen to the driver.
The man in charge at the crematorium was kind. He and his helpers carried Mother, on the board, and slid it carefully into the mouth of the furnace. Cremation is different in Japan. We were told we could light the fire if we wished. I cried and held on to Mrs. Masuda, but Ko courageously lit the fire at the mouth of the furnace. The flame spread quickly. I could not look.
“She will be ready in the morning,” said the man. “You may select an urn now.” But Ko said we would bring an urn for our beloved mother.
Ko, Mrs. Masuda, and I walked back to the station. As I went down the hill I looked back. Twilight was fading and the smoke rose slowly, spreading into the sky. Ko carried the wrapping cloth bundle, I carried the two rucksacks, and Mrs. Masuda held my hand as we walked, wordless.
Mrs. Masuda broke the silence. “Do you have a place to go?”
“No,” said Ko, “but my little sister and I would like to stay in the city for six months.” She explained about school.
Mrs. Masuda told us that she and her husband owned a small geta (clog) factory on the west side of town, and their warehouse had been robbed. She would be delighted if we would go there to stay and watch things. “Your schools would be much closer,” she said.
Ko thanked her and said we would like to go tomorrow after we claimed Mother’s ashes. “Then I shall go to the station to meet you,” our new friend said.
Strangely, this offer of a home did not excite us much. In our grief nothing else seemed to matter, and it had begun to seem normal to live in stations.
We did not sleep that night. Morning was bright. Ko told me to wash Mother’s mess kit and dry it well. “It will be Mother’s urn,” she said. When the clock struck nine we carried our belongings and headed toward the crematorium.
As I said, cremation is different in Japan, and not all of the body was destroyed. With chopsticks brought all the way from Nanam we gently placed the small remains of Mother’s bones in her mess kit. I sobbed. Oh, Mother! Then Ko paid the price for cremation and we carried the mess-kit urn away.
On the way to the station we stopped at a small temple and asked a monk to say a prayer for our dead. But the monk, wrapped in his sacred black and white daily robes, stared at us and said sharply, “I have no time.” He slammed the fusuma (panel) and vanished.
I held Mother’s urn close to my breast. “Damn monk!” Ko shouted. “A Buddhist monk should practice nothing but love. He is doing a fine job!”
I made up my mind that I would never step into a Buddhist temple as long as I lived.
Mrs. Masuda took us to the warehouse. It was beside the streetcar tracks. A path connected it with the factory and a stream ran behind it. Upstairs was a four-tatami-mat room with a small window and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She said we could cook outside and use all the scraps of wood from the factory. “The room has not been cleaned for ages,” she said, and she lent us a broom and bucket and rags.
Ko and I went to work. We removed cobwebs from corners. I washed the window while Ko swept the mats and wiped them with a damp cloth. We scrubbed the stairway and swept the entrance. When we had finished we went to the stream to wash our hands and faces.
Then we made a simple altar for Mother in our room. We folded her bath towel and rested the mess-kit urn on it. While I filled Mother’s canteen at the stream, Ko broke small branches from a bright maple tree and we arranged them in the canteen. Together we offered it on Mother’s altar. Then Ko placed Mother’s short sword in front of the urn and we bowed deeply to Mother’s ashes. I asked her to watch over Ko and me.
NINE
KO GRIEVED THAT SHE HAD NOT RETURNED to the station before Mother went. “If I had only been thirty minutes earlier!” she said, sobbing.
“Your smart idea was not that smart,” I said, crying myself and remembering how my eyes had searched the crowd for Ko. Then I said as an afterthought, “Mother told me to hang on to the wrapping cloth.”
“Naturally. It contains all our underwear, extra clothes, and papers,” Ko said. “They’re more important than our rucksacks.”
“But she didn’t sound as if she meant that.” I remembered how she had told me to hang on . . . hang on. “I think she meant the cloth itself was important.”
But now in her grief this was not important to Ko. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
“More tired than hungry,” I said, and lay down on the tatami mat. Although the straw mat was old and smelled musty it felt good on my back. The tiny room had only four mats but it protected us from wind and from thieves. Tomorrow is Sunday, I thought. I can sleep to my heart’s content.
“Do you know what I miss in the station?” asked Ko.
“What?” I was startled that Ko could actually miss those horrible surroundings.
“The clock. I don’t know what time it is now,” she replied. “It’s getting dark and cold.”
“And I am going to sleep,” I said, because I did not want to be reminded of the sadness at the station.
I spread one blanket on the floor and covered myself with two. Ko came into the blankets. She cuddled close to me and remarked that the room was much colder than the station because of drafts from downstairs.
“But we can sleep without worrying about thieves or being attacked,” I said, earnestly wishing she would never again bring up the word “station.”
I could not help going over and over the way Mother had died and her last words. In the darkness I faced Mother’s mess-kit urn and hoped it would speak to me. I tossed and turned.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ko.
“I can’t sleep.”
“I thought you were tired.”
“Mother’s last words haunt me.”
“She only meant to hang on to all we have in the cloth,” said Ko. “Now let’s sleep. I’ll cook you something good tomorrow.”
I persisted. “Answer this question. Every time Mother went to the toilet to change she took the wrapping cloth with her. Remember, she emptied everything from the cloth that time before she went to the toilet and made you put everything in again when she returned.”
“Because she had a unique way of taking off her underpants and putting her trousers back on. She used the cloth as a hip wrapper.”
“In the small toilet with the door locked?” I said.
“You never know about locks in public toilets. Besides, she was old-fashioned.” Again Ko snuggled against me. She felt warm and soon, as my cold body warmed, I went to sleep.
I woke when a streetcar passed, giving a long whistle, and shook the warehouse. It was dawn. Ko was snoring and I lay still. What would she fix us for breakfast, I wondered. Hot rice and soup with lots of fresh tofu and green onions in it would be a great treat. Mrs. Masuda had paid for the funeral truck, so Ko had that twenty yen. I hope she’ll use it today for food, I thought. The more I thought about good food the hungrier I got. I wished Ko would wake up.
When I turned I faced Mother’s altar and again her last words came back. I’m going to investigate that wrapping cloth, I thought, and slipped quietly out from the blanket.
“What ar
e you doing?” Ko asked. “It’s Sunday. Let’s sleep.”
“I’m going to check the wrapping cloth.”
“Do it later.”
But I could not sleep anymore. I crawled over to the wrapping bundle. It was a soft canvaslike material, double, and Ko had tied it so tightly I could not undo the knot.
“Honorable Sister! Please wake up.”
“I am awake.”
“Untie the knot and then I won’t bother you.”
She grumbled that I gave her no peace, but she untied the knot. I pulled out our socks, underwear, extra trousers, and blouses. At the bottom were the insurance papers, birth certificates, report sheets, and Father’s name seal. In Japan working people carry name seals, in jade or ivory perhaps, to stamp their names on papers. Father’s seal was jade.
“See, Little One. Mother meant these are the important things,” said Ko, picking up the seal. “This is very important. Maybe Mother wanted us to collect some insurance.” She looked at the policies, but somehow we both knew any insurance was valueless now.
“Now put everything back.”
She crawled into the blankets again and I put the papers back, then folded our humble garments neatly. I took one corner of the cloth and folded it over. The opposite corner felt heavier and stiff, and I heard paper slipping down somewhere between the two layers of cloth.
“Honorable Sister, get up!” I said. I stood up and turned on the light.
“Now what?” said Ko.
“Something is between the layers.”
Ko sat up then. She removed everything from the wrapping cloth and examined the seam carefully. At the corner of the cloth where I had felt stiffness was a zipper. Ko opened it and the cloth separated to two pieces. Here was a square pocket.
Ko had known of the other pockets but not this one. She pulled out thousand-yen and hundred-yen bills one after the other, then Hideyo’s, Ko’s, and my savings books. But the money had been drawn out on July 15, two weeks before we fled.
Now I understood why Mother had taken the wrapper to the toilet every time. She did not need to change, she needed money.
Ko counted a little over thirty-six thousand yen— a hundred dollars. We looked at each other in amazement. “Mother said she brought some cash from Korea,” Ko said. “This is where she hid it.”
She put back all the money. We were not going to use that money, she said. It would be for emergencies only—for when we became ill and had to pay a doctor. She instructed me to be sure and grab the wrapping bundle in case of fire.
“Let’s go outdoors and wash,” Ko said, folding the top blanket. The soft sunlight beamed through the window and felt warm on my back.
The water was icy, but we washed. Walking back around the factory building, we discovered an old abandoned fruit box that would make an excellent cupboard-table combination and also could be our study desk. We washed it and tipped it against our stairway to dry. There was a water faucet outside the warehouse and we filled our five canteens.
Although it was Sunday I heard people in the factory. The door was open and I saw Mrs. Masuda. She waved to us to come in. She was talking to a man on crutches, her husband, and she introduced us.
We bowed deeply to him to show our appreciation of their letting us stay in the warehouse.
“I’ve heard about you girls,” Mr. Masuda said. “Did you sleep well? Were you afraid?”
“No,” I answered. “But I woke up when a streetcar passed.”
“That’s the first car. Five-thirty,” he said. “It wakes me too.”
“If you girls need some pots,” said Mrs. Masuda, “I have some old ones. We live right over there.” She pointed across the tracks.
“Oh, thank you,” said Ko. “And is there a grocery near by?”
Mrs. Masuda said the general store was half a mile to the east, and we walked there. Ko bought four cups of rice, half a pound of miso (bean paste), and one cake of fresh tofu. My mouth was already watering. She bought needles, thread, a razor blade, and a bar of laundry soap too.
“What are you going to do with the razor blade?” I asked.
“After breakfast you are going to rip the soldiers’ uniforms apart, so I can make you a winter coat,” she replied.
She built a fire outside the warehouse and I went to borrow two cooking pots. Ko cooked a cup of rice and made miso soup. Just as I had dreamed, but with no green onion. It was the only decent breakfast we had had in almost five months.
“Eat slowly. Chew well,” said Ko. “What’s left will be our supper.”
She carried the utensils to the stream to wash them, and I sat against the sunny wall of the warehouse ripping the uniforms. As I clipped with the sharp blade I shivered, thinking of what would have happened to us if the airplane had not dropped a bomb and killed the Korean Communist soldiers. A fraction of a moment, I thought, had been the difference between life and death. The three uniforms became pieces and bits. I took them to the stream, rubbed the bar of soap on each piece, and pounded them with a wooden stick I had borrowed from a factory worker. I pounded especially where the material was stained with blood, trying hard to forget the ordeal we had gone through.
The workers in the factory listened to the radio as they worked, and I also noticed the factory had a small wall clock. They worked from eight to four. So we could guess what time it was. I got up by the first streetcar, and when Mr. Masuda closed the factory it was four-thirty. The last streetcar came by at twelve-thirty.
As the days rolled into December the frost grew heavier. I wore my summer trousers and blouse and my little red overcoat from Nanam, as Ko had not finished my overcoat from the soldiers’ uniforms.
When the first snow came I caped myself with my blanket. As I entered the classroom sixty eyes stared at me. I stared back. One girl said, “Rag doll! Aren’t you ashamed to come to school like that?”
“Ashamed of what?” I said firmly. “My tuition is paid. I have the right to come to this school.” I folded my blanket over the back of my chair, took out my English reader and began reading the sentences.
“Trash Picker and Rag Doll are good names for her,” another said. Then Mr. Yoshida came in and there was silence. They always stopped when the teacher appeared, and I was too proud to tell the teacher how they were treating me.
I wanted to scream at the whole class, to tell them they were stupid and had much to learn about life and death. I had a hard time controlling myself. I will show them how good I am at academic work. I will beat every one of them with my grades, I thought. The grades are the only weapon I have now.
Though I was terribly unhappy in the classroom, it was my joy to go to the furnace room and talk with the stuttering man, Mr. Naido. He was the only friend I had in the school. He saved for me books, glue, art pencils, crayons, India ink, and calligraphy brushes. I learned, while talking with him and picking up papers, that because of his speech handicap he had not been accepted in the Japanese navy. He had had a hard time finding a job as he had only a primary education. He had finally found this job.
“Because,” he said, “all the men were killed or wounded and the school could not find a normal speaking person.” Whenever Mr. Naido talked with me he stuttered less and less, which made me very happy. Maybe Father can cure him completely when he comes, I thought.
“If my father comes home safely,” I said, smiling at him, “will you meet him? He is a fine man and fun.”
“He will come home. He must come home.” He patted my back.
Mr. Naido had been on my side ever since I came to this school and I did not know how to thank him, but I decided that at the end of the term I would show him report sheets that said straight A plus!
As I left the furnace room one day I noticed a cart full of cans and empty bottles. What was he doing with them? I asked.
“I sell them,” he said. “The girls are very wasteful. Most of their fathers are prestigious and the girls are badly spoiled.”
“If I bring some cans will you sel
l them for me?” I asked.
“Bring cans anytime,” he said, slowly but without stuttering.
So, my walking posture changed. I developed the habit of looking down when I walked, to search for cans and bottles. Whenever I found one I put it in Ko’s rucksack and took it to Mr. Naido.
The price of everything had tripled. Ko and I continued to live poorly, for Ko would not touch Mother’s hidden money.
She was doing well at Seian University, majoring in home economics. The professors liked Ko’s sewing, and often they handed her kimonos to make for department stores. She did especially well designing women’s western garments.
The department stores did not want leftover material, so Ko kept it. She made babies’ and toddlers’ clothes and children’s play items. These she gave to me to sell from door to door on my way home from school.
“You can have that money,” she said. “Buy yourself a pair of shoes.”
For a pair of shoes I worked hard to sell the items Ko made. Whatever I earned I placed beneath Mother’s urn. I felt secure with Mother watching my earnings.
Ko began asking her classmates to save all their scraps. From them she made beanbags for girls, the traditional New Year’s toy. She showed me how to make them too and said I should make a couple of them each night when I had finished my homework.
Because New Year’s was coming many families with little girls wanted to buy beanbags, and I wanted a new pair of shoes badly. When I had enough bags I went to this house and that house one afternoon to sell. Then I walked home on the car tracks, jumping aside when a car approached. Whenever I came to a station and saw a newspaper flapping on a bench I picked it up for fuel.
Ko was already home and had waited supper for me. “What took you so long? I was worried.”
“I sold everything,” I said happily, and placed the money under Mother’s urn.
“You must come home before dark,” said Ko. “I don’t want you wandering around.”
I talked back. “I was not wandering. I want a pair of shoes!”
“Your safety is more important than shoes,” Ko said. “Let’s eat.”
So Far from the Bamboo Grove Page 10
