by Lee Welles
He shuffled back and poured a bit of water into the well in the block. With the black stick he began to pull water up from the well and rub the stick up and down the slope. The water began to blacken!
“Why…” Miho began.
Mr. Tomikoro put his hand over her mouth. “No question. No Engrish,” he said.
He handed her the black stick and made the rubbing motion. Miho understood and began to wet and rub the stick, making the water in the well ever thicker and blacker. She still wasn’t sure why she was doing this. Was this part of O-bon? But she rubbed and rubbed. Mr. Tomikoro went to the back of the room and brought up two small rocks and some small rolls of paper. He unrolled a piece and used the rocks to hold it in place.
“Motto.” He made the rubbing motion again.
Miho kept rubbing and wondering. Finally, Mr. Tomikoro produced a small brush and dipped it into the well, now filled with a deep, dark black. He drew a single line down the edge of the paper. “Motto.” He made the rubbing motion again.
Miho kept wetting the stick and rubbing it, watching the dark ink slide down into the well. She knew what she was doing now. She was making ink to do Shodo! Mr. Tomikoro was going to teach her Shodo!
He tested the ink again. Satisfied, he said “Watch,” in Japanese and made five lines come together in a kanji that looked like this:
“Ei,” he said, pointing to the kanji. “Wakarimashtaka?” he asked. Miho knew he wanted to know if she understood the meaning of this kanji.
“Mizu?” She guessed. She thought it looked like the kanji for water.
“Machigata.”
Miho knew this word from her classes at the Consulate. Machigata meant wrong.
Mr. Tomikoro closed his eyes. His mouth turned down and the creases deepened in his forehead. Miho waited and resisted the urge to talk. She could hear the wind moving through the tree in the garden and the distant, rhythmic hiss of the ocean.
“Ahhhh!” Mr. Tomikoro exclaimed, his eyes flying open and filled with delight. He pointed to the kanji. “E-tern-ity!” He began to speak, and Miho had to focus intently to understand his Japanese. She heard, “one, two, three, four, five.” Watching Mr. Tomikoro do the kanji that meant “Eternity” again, she understood it was important to do the strokes for eternity in that particular order. “Ei,” she corrected the thought to Japanese.
He handed her the brush and a fresh sheet of paper. She dipped the brush in the ink and began. Her first attempt had big blots of ink at the end of each stroke. The second had wavy lines where there should be none. The third try looked better, but simple and dull.
She sighed. This was harder than learning cursive! Why did Mr. Tomikoro want her to write, “Eternity?” A noise distracted her, and she looked up to see her new teacher come into the room with an armful of cut grasses and bamboo.
“Work! Work!” he said in Japanese and Miho bowed her head back over her work, determined to make Eternity. “Ei,” she again corrected her thought.
As she did the five strokes over and over, she began to think about O-bon and her parents and how, although they were gone, she would carry them forever with her—in her memory, in her mind, in her heart. Forever. Ei.
Miho took a fresh sheet of the grainy paper and thought of forever, eternity, Ei. She sat back from her latest attempt and smiled. She looked up to call Mr. Tomikoro and was surprised to see that he had fashioned the pile of grasses and bamboo into two small boats! Each was about the size of a shoe box, fat in the middle and twisted up into a curved point at one end.
Miho stood and almost called out, “What are those for?” But she remembered that he had said no questions, no English. She remained standing as Mr. Tomikoro walked slowly to her desk. He picked up and examined each sheet of practice paper. He finally picked up her last one, smiled, and began to nod.
He took that piece of paper with him back to his desk, rolled it up and tucked it into one of the boats. Then he came to retrieve the items from Miho’s desk. He motioned for her to follow him to the sink where he showed Miho how to properly clean the brush and the stone.
Miho watched the water run down the drain. It started off black with ink, but slowly, the water swirling down the drain began to clear. Finally, the last hint of gray left the water. The brush was clean and you couldn’t tell that the brush had ever been steeped in the inky blackness.
When they were done, Mr. Tomikoro handed her the little boat that had her paper rolled up inside. “For tonight,” he said. “You ask Kazuki-san.”
Miho cradled the delicate little boat and followed him through the garden and back inside the store. He set his boat on the counter and smiled at her. Miho took a step back and bowed and said, “Domo arigato,” the polite way to say ‘thank you very much’. She started to leave and then turned back and added, “…Sensei.” This was the Japanese word for teacher. His smile grew wider.
She turned to leave again and then remembered her front pocket. She pulled the crumpled empty cigarette package out and put it on the counter. She looked at Mr. Tomikoro, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Ojisan likes those.”
She walked back to the house feeling hopeful. She had her O-bon boat, even if she didn’t know what it was for and she was going to make a good Japanese dinner—no pizza this time! She knew she could make her Oji like her better.
18
Eternity
Miho dropped off her grass boat and checked on Ojisan. He was still snoring like an outboard motor. She headed over the hill to Ago-wan. The sun was high and fierce and sweat trickled down the back of her neck. Even the steady ocean breeze did little to cool the afternoon heat.
She went directly to the area where fishermen set up stalls in the shade of a long pavilion. As she got closer, the smell of fish and the sounds of talk and laughter filled the air. She walked slowly down the row, looking at the wide variety of sea life set out in large trays of ice. Some of the day’s catch still swam in buckets of water.
A young man with a wide smile was arranging several large fish in his ice. She decided she would try to buy her fish from him. “Sumimasen,” Miho said. He looked up (And he did have to actually look up; Miho was taller than he!) He looked surprised, then covered his surprise with a polite, “Konnichiwa.”
“O kudasai,” she began; that meant, “I would like.” Miho pointed at the fish and octopus she wanted.
He wrapped her selection and handed the packages to her with another smile and a quick sentence in Japanese. Since he spoke fast, most of the words were lost on Miho. Again he spoke, even more quickly and a little louder. People around them were looking, and Miho could feel her neck and face getting hot. She knew that they all knew she was a stranger, gaijin.
She wanted to run away, but made herself pay, bow slightly and say, “Domo,” before she turned to escape the fish market.
Miho hurried back up over the hill and didn’t slow down until she was at Ojisan’s and had the fish safely in the refrigerator. Then she got herself a large glass of water, went to the front of the house, and sat to gaze out at the sea.
She watched more fishing boats make the return journey around the tip of Goza, into the safety of Agowan. At the beach, many families had laid out blankets; the laughter of children playing in the foaming waves mixed with the cry of seagulls. Part of her wanted to go down to the surf and meet those kids. But she knew how easy it was to lose track of time when you were playing in the water. Better to stay close to the house.
She watched a small flock of pelicans take turns folding their wings, plunging down into the blue sea and bobbing back up. They tilted their long beaks high to swallow their catch. How could Ojisan live in Nagoya?
She leaned against the door frame and closed her eyes. The puffs of warm air lifting up from the beach felt like a caress on her face and the sea smells made her feel so at home. The combined laughter of kids and gulls was like music, the sea providing the steady beat. Miho dozed.
When she rose, she went to the kitchen determined to make such
a wonderful meal that Ojisan would never want to leave. For the next hour Miho worked hard in the kitchen. It was a test of her chopping and stir-frying skills and, as she adjusted her grip on the knife, she wondered if cooking weren’t a bit like Shodo.
Ojisan’s house filled with wonderful smells. As Miho dumped the last of her preparation into a serving bowl, a frumpy Ojisan appeared. He seemed a bit more rested and was looking from her to the table with a mixture of confusion and surprise. Before either one of them could say anything, a voice called through the door.
“Kombanwa, Kiromoto-san!” Sensei stepped over the threshold. He immediately frowned at Ojisan and barked a few quick phrases at him. Ojisan looked down at himself and blushed. Miho suspected it was a bit of a reprimand to Ojisan because her uncle frowned a bit, bowed quickly, and turned to head to the bathroom. When he emerged, he was clean and smelled a great deal better.
He also was patting his shirt pocket and glancing around the room. Sensei motioned to the small bag he had set on the counter. Miho fished out the new pack of cigarettes and took them to her uncle.
Now Ojisan really looked surprised! He looked over her shoulder at the table filled with bowls of rice, fish, and vegetables. He rubbed his eyes and looked back at the cigarettes, then back at her. A smile crept across his face.
Sensei gave them both a wink and turned to go out the door. He paused to pick up Miho’s small boat. “Kiromoto-san,” Sensei began. Miho figured the rest of what he said was something about bringing the boat to the ocean that evening. Ojisan went to Sensei, thanked him, and bowed as he took the boat.
“Itadakimas,” a sort of Japanese grace, was all her Oji said during the meal. Miho was also silent. She knew better than to ask what the boat was for, or how he knew Mr. Tomikoro, or when they would go back to Nagoya, or if he liked the food, or if he ever tried to quit smoking, or any of the other questions that swept through her mind.
After dinner, Ojisan stood at the front door with the grass boat tucked under his arm. “Come,” he commanded and they set off down the hill. The sun had left the sky. The horizon was lit from below with an astounding array of red, yellow, and orange. Great flocks of seabirds were silhouetted against the fiery sunset as they came to land for the evening. Below, the beach was filled with the same families Miho had seen at the cemetery and at the dancing celebration. Most had paper folded into square boats, but some had grass and bamboo boats, like hers.
The same priest that had sung his song at the temple was there, chanting and holding a lantern. An assistant was with him, and as each family approached, the assistant would take a small candle from a box at his feet and light it from the lantern. One member of each family took the boat and the candle, then waded out past the point where the small waves tipped and broke and rolled to shore. The candle was placed in the boat and then the boat was pushed out toward the horizon.
By the time Ojisan and Miho got their candle, the sea was dotted with at least two dozen floating lights. Ojisan handed the boat and candle to Miho and said, “We must send our family away again, until next O-bon.” He nodded toward the ocean.
Miho kicked off her shoes and waded in. Around her were other people, some with tears in their eyes, pushing their little boats off into the deep. Miho wondered if anyone else there had really seen their family disappear in a boat as she had. She set the candle in the flat bottom next to the rolled paper that said, “Ei…Eternity.” She took a deep breath and pushed the boat toward the flaming horizon.
It bobbed off after the other little lights. Miho stood in the water and watched it drift away. It was as if Goza disappeared and she were back at the rocky cove in Alaska, watching her mother waving and calling to her to get a tape recorder if she found the otter.
Her heart felt like it was cracking open; the sadness that spilled forth was like the black ink that she had squeezed from the brush earlier that day. She kept her eyes on her own little light and wished the ache could somehow begin to lessen, to clear like the water from the brush.
Ei. She reminded herself. Eternity. They will always be with me, even if my boat is swallowed by the sea like their boat was. I am Ama and I will be in the sea with them. Always.
She came back to shore where Ojisan stood, frowning down at her. He patted her back and simply said, “Come.” They trudged back up the hill to the house. Ojisan stopped to huff out the light in the lantern hanging from the fence, and they went inside the house.
It did seem emptier, as if people had left it. Ojisan took his mother’s tools back to the shed and put his father’s medals away. Miho took the dishes to the kitchen. She gathered the CD player and the photos from the table and took them to her room. She kissed them before tucking them into her backpack.
Ojisan watched her from the doorway. “Tomorrow we go home,” he said. Then he repeated himself in Japanese and added, speaking very slowly so she would understand, that she should be ready in the morning.
Miho nodded and said, “Hai.”
19
Teachers Are Everywhere
Leaving Nagoya had been so exciting, but returning to it…wasn’t. However, there was a bright spot in the leaving. As Ojisan locked the front gate, Mr. Tomikoro came walking down the road. He had a book tucked under his arm. Ojisan bowed and said good morning to the old man. Miho stared at the ground.
When she looked up, she did her best to tell him, in Japanese, that they were going back to Nagoya and that she couldn’t learn more Shodo. Sensei laughed and handed her a book.
Miho couldn’t read the title, but inside there was page after page of kanji and many ways to draw the beautiful figures. She smiled and thanked him in the most polite way she knew.
“There are teachers in Nagoya,” Tomikoro-Sensei said in Japanese. “Teachers are everywhere. Not just Shodo teachers. Watch. Listen.”
Sensei glanced at Ojisan, who was puffing impatiently and looking out at the ocean. The bent old man held his staff and leaned forward a little to be close to her ear. “I think I see you soon!” He straightened up and winked. Ojisan turned and commanded, “Come!”
Miho bowed quickly, said goodbye, and hurried off after her uncle. She looked back twice. Both times Sensei was still standing, leaning on his staff and watching them go down the road.
The first day back in Nagoya, Ojisan muttered about Miho getting lost. She told him that she could read a compass and a GPS and maps pretty well. When you are on a boat in the open ocean, there are no street signs or landmarks to tell you where you are! Her father often let her try to figure out their position and help choose the heading to return home.
Ojisan only grunted at this information. But that evening, he pulled a surprise from his pocket. It was a cell phone! He flipped it open and showed Miho that not only was it a phone, it was a camera, could take video and, best of all, it had a GPS positioning system in it! He had programmed the phone with both his work and cellular numbers and the exact position of the apartment building. Miho couldn’t get lost as long as she had the phone with her.
“So, there it is,” Ojisan said, fishing a cigarette from his pocket. “Now you can go to store and find way back.”
Miho used that phone as both a teacher and a guide. She went out in the morning and sat next to people talking at bus stops, stood behind them in lines and followed them through the market. She palmed her phone and captured short videos of people talking. Back at the apartment, she could play the videos over and over and use her Japanese/English dictionary to figure out any words she didn’t know.
She knew that it was probably wrong to take videos of people without them knowing, but she also knew that most of the bus stops had video cameras in them already. In a city like Nagoya, someone was always watching. She learned much more about speaking Japanese from those candid conversations than she did from the boring workbooks she had. Sensei was right; there were teachers everywhere.
Using the GPS, she could venture out into the city and find her way back. She was thrilled to find a large gr
een park about 10 blocks from Ojisan’s apartment. It had a big pond, a little creek, and lots of trees and grass. The park felt about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of Nagoya. The summer sun was turning the city into a cement oven and Miho preferred the cool grass, water, and fresh air to the air conditioning in the apartment.
She also sat by the pond and wondered about the otter, about Gaia. She watched the reflection of clouds bob across the pond and worried. How would she ever find out what Gaia meant by talking to the whales if she couldn’t get back to the sea? What could she do in Nagoya? Learn to talk to the turtles that crawled up on the rocks to sun themselves? Miho doubted they had much to say.
Throughout the week, the temperature climbed to mind-boggling heights. Ojisan’s shirt was soaked with sweat as he came through the door. The heat made everyone move slow and become very grumpy. One evening, over dinner, Ojisan was grumbling about needing an apartment with two bedrooms. He said Miho couldn’t sleep on the couch forever.
“Ojisan,” Miho said, seeing an opening, “The house in Goza has lots of room. We could live there and you wouldn’t need to get a different apartment.”
Ojisan only frowned at her and said, “Goza!” with a snort, as if it were the silliest idea in the world.
That night, as she washed the dishes, something happened that made her desire to get back to Goza even stronger. She was watching the stream of water fall from the faucet and thinking about the strange creature that had come into her life when it happened.
“Learn the way of water,” Gaia’s voice echoed through her mind, “and you will learn all my secrets.” Miho stood, unmoving, transfixed by the sight of the silvery, bubbling water running from tap to drain.
“Could you help yourself if someone cut off your hands?” Miho held out her hand and looked at the scar. She curled her hand around the column of water that was falling into the sink. She drew her hand back out and uncurled it.
