A Song for Nettie Johnson

by Gloria Sawai

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the trainer calls. “Meet our four Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins, here to play, have fun, show you their tricks.”

  He throws an orange ball into the water. In one slippery flash the dolphin has it on the end of his beak, is pushing it forward, swiftly, so smoothly, holding it steady with his snout. He flicks it off, twists, grabs it with his flippers and around and around the pool he goes, bouncing it up and down and up again.

  “Look at him look at him look at him go. See him dribble that ball down the court. He’s heading for the basket,” the trainer yells.

  Everyone claps and someone shouts, “Oh oh see that dolphin go.” The ball slips, the dolphin swirls around, nips it with his beak, and pushes it toward the basket sitting on the edge of the pool. He eyes the hoop, flips the ball with his snout and misses. On the second shot the ball circles the rim around and around, “Come on come on,” and falls just outside of it. “Oh oh isn’t that too bad.” But on the third try the ball sails over the rim and plunks into the bucket. The crowd cheers. Someone whistles.

  “Did you see that?” Hannah asks.

  “My goodness,” Emily says.

  “A slam dunk!” the trainer yells.

  And the old woman in red boots says, “My, what these dolphins can’t do.”

  Emily stays awhile at Hannah’s house. She and Hannah are standing at the kitchen counter spreading peanut butter on slices of white bread. They’re swirling the mixture into hills and valleys on each slice, letting broken pieces of nuts emerge like jagged stones on the brown surface. They laugh at their clever designs.

  Hannah’s mother is also at the counter, at the far end. She’s stirring rice in a large bowl. One arm circles the bowl, holds it tight against her chest. With the other she mixes the rice. The counter is too high for her. Her arm sticks straight out from her shoulder, bent at the elbow like the stiff wing of a bird. She stops stirring, sprinkles vinegar over the mass, stirs again, then with her hand fans the mixture until it glistens. She does this over and over. She’s making sushi for a family outing tomorrow at the Devonian Gardens.

  Mr. Shimizu is sitting at the kitchen table in the centre of the room. He’s reading the paper and drinking coffee from a thick mug. The Devonian Gardens is his idea; he’s a botanist. He’s wearing sweatpants and an old sweater. Sits easy, seems to feel at home here, to like it here, in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading, not saying much of anything. Emily notices these things. Upstairs, Hannah’s brother and his friend whoop and thump at some game or other.

  Hannah leans toward Emily and says in a low voice, “My parents don’t know anything about dolphins.”

  “Mine neither,” Emily says. “Well, I’ve told my dad one or two things.”

  Suddenly Hannah turns and moves to the refrigerator across the room. She moves in an arc, around her father sitting at the table. She stands with her back against the fridge, her hair sharply black against the white door.

  “I would like your attention,” she says. She stands straight, her hands resting on her narrow hips. She stands like Mr. Murray, the sixth grade science teacher.

  “Today I will teach you about dolphins,” she says.

  Her father looks up from the table. “A lesson on Saturday?” But his eyes smile. Her mother looks up too, but she doesn’t stop working the rice.

  “We recognize the intelligence of dolphins by what they do,” Hannah says. “One. They make friends. That’s important. Two. They play and have fun. Not like some people I know – I won’t mention names. Three. They take good care of their children. You may want to think about that for awhile.” Mr. Shimizu makes a face at Hannah, but he’s enjoying the speech, Emily can tell. “Four,” Hannah continues, “they come to the aid of other dolphins in their time of need. They’ve even been known to help creatures not of their own species. Like humans. There’s another, but I can’t remember.”

  “They mourn the death of loved ones,” Emily says.

  “Yes,” Hannah says. “They feel sorrow.” She looks intently at her father, then at her mother. “In conclusion, these are the signs of intelligence.”

  Mr. Shimizu claps. Mrs. Shimizu stops stirring and wipes her forehead with the palm of her hand.

  “I know something about dolphins,” she says.

  “What,” Hannah says. “What do you know?”

  “In winter, in the north, in Hokkaido, Ainu fishermen stand on the shore and look out to the sea. The water’s cold and black, and they stand there on the rocks and call out. ‘Iruka kujira,’ they say.”

  “What’s that?” Hannah asks.

  “And sometimes,” her mother continues, “these fishermen can see one of them way out there, alone, lost, left by the others, jumping up and down like they do, in that icy water.”

  “What does it mean, iruka kujira?” Hannah asks again, but her mother still doesn’t answer. Hannah goes to her, leans her chin on her mother’s shoulder, speaks loudly into her ear. “Mother. You can’t just not tell us. What does it mean?”

  “It means dolphin,” her mother says. “Dolphin whale.”

  “That’s it? That’s all it means?” Hannah says.

  But her mother doesn’t answer. She’s standing alone on a rock somewhere in Japan, looking out.

  Hannah’s room is full of stuff – shelves of dolls, games, furry animals; a dressing table with photographs on it and little bottles of perfume, a long-handled mirror, a crystal bell. Hannah clears a space on the dresser. Emily puts the plate of bread down. She picks up an old brown photograph in a silver lace frame.

  “It’s my grandfather,” Hannah says. “My mother’s father.”

  “He looks young,”

  “He was young.” She turns on the red lamp suspended over her pine Ikea desk. “He died of leukemia.”

  “Really,” Emily says.

  “After the bomb. A long time after. He lived in Nagasaki.” She adjusts the light to shine closer to the clippings and coil notebooks that litter the desktop.

  “Some blew up, some burned up, some just blistered all over. My grandfather got leukemia. Where do you want to sit, on the bed or on the chair?”

  Emily sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed, on a pink quilt, ruffled and rippling like a small sea, Hannah on the chair by the desk. “I’m glad this war is over,” Emily says. The War in the Persian Gulf ended only short weeks before. “I don’t think it did much good.”

  “Not for people anyway,” Hannah says.

  “Especially not for little children.”

  “Mothers either for that matter.”

  “Are there dolphins in the Persian Gulf?”

  “I guess.”

  Hannah leans forward and raises her head. “Iruka kujira,” she calls. She reaches to the dresser for a slice of bread. “I told you, didn’t I? My mother knows nothing about dolphins.”

  Emily takes the long way home, following the Mill Woods ravine. The evening sky is overcast but strangely bright. A harsh light. It has an edge to it, like tin. It lies sharp on stones and dirt, on mouldy scraps of paper stuck on branches, on dead leaves packed in ditches. Scattered flakes of snow drizzle down on her. She buries herself in her jacket.

  She thinks of the Shimizus at the Devonian Gardens tomorrow. She sees them walk among the trees and shrubs, stop to look at branches, to examine small buds. They comment, ask questions, make jokes. They don’t hurry. Then she sees them sitting on a bench outside. They pass around the box of sushi and everyone takes and eats. Mrs. Shimizu pours tea from a tall thermos into small cups without handles. They hold the cups in both hands, their hands like bowls. And everyone’s there, not somewhere else. They take time, don’t always look at their watches. Some families are like that.

  When she gets home, the car is not in the driveway. Her mother must still be shopping. She walks around to the back, digs in her pocket for the key, but the door is unlocked. She pushes it open and climbs the four steps into the back hall. The light is on. She removes her jacket, hangs it in the
hall closet, and opens the door to the kitchen. She stops. Her breath freezes in her chest.

  Her father is sitting at the kitchen table.

  He sits rigid, chin on chest, one arm stretched over the formica top, one hand holding an empty glass. Nothing else is on the table, just one thick empty glass. Emily knows that somewhere in the house – on a ledge in the basement, behind some books in the bookcase, on a closet shelf – his bottles are hidden. She knows her mother will find them, will gather them up in green plastic bags and carry them to the alley. She will do this at night when no one can see her.

  Emily watches her father. Maybe if she moves behind him lightly, ever so softly, as quiet as a robin’s feather, her feet hardly touching the floor, she can get to the corridor and to her bedroom at the end of it, without his notice.

  “Hold it. Just hold it right there.”

  He turns in his chair and, barely lifting his head, raises his eyes and looks at her. His face is wrinkled, the whites of his eyes lined with pink threads. He’s wearing a brown bathrobe, open at the neck, and his neck is very thin.

  “No greeting? No salutation?”

  “Hi, Dad,” Emily says.

  “Hi, Dad? Is that it? Hi, Dad? I’m your father, remember. Honour your father, don’t forget. Sneaking behind me, creeping like a scared caterpillar.” His Adam’s apple swims and bulges under the loose skin of his neck. He leans back in the chair. Emily shifts slightly.

  “Hold it.”

  She breathes in thin strips of air.

  “What’s going on? Where’s your mother? Who’s in charge around here anyway?”

  Emily shrugs. He lets go of the glass. It sits alone in the centre of the table. “Hey.” He raises his hand to her, a limp benediction. “Can you answer the questions of eternal life?”

  She’s stuck. She knows her father’s drinking pattern: first religion and poetry, then anger, more like rage, finally a whimpering self-pity. The last is worst.

  “Where did you come from? Why are you here? Where are you going?” He says the words slowly, overarticulates. He eyes her slyly. “Well? Answer me.”

  “I’ve been to the dolphin show,” she says, “and I live here.”

  “Damn,” he says. “I forgot about that. Oh, I am sorry, very very sorry. Truly I am. I do repent.”

  “It’s all right,” she says.

  “The living womb of the sea of creation and I forgot. Come here. Give your father a kiss. Apollo was a dolphin, you know, when he carried poor damned souls to the land of the dead. Did you know that?”

  “It was me who told you.”

  “Come. Right here. One kiss.” He curls his finger, inviting.

  Emily goes to him and bends over him. His skin is yellow. She touches his forehead with her lips. It feels damp and cold.

  “You’re my dolphin,” he says. His eyes are wet.

  She turns to go.

  “Hold it. Stay right where you are.” His hands clutch the table’s edge. He lifts himself up, lets go of the table, stands alone, stretches tall. “They’re whales you know.” Slowly he slides back into the chair. “Stunted whales. Runts. Not in the big league. No leviathan.”

  His eyes slits, he gazes at Emily standing quiet in front of the refrigerator.

  “Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? Tie a rope around his tongue and pull him out? Well? Canst thou?”

  “No,” she says.

  “Canst thou put a hook in his tongue and a chain on the hook and swing him around in the deep?” His voice rises. The veins on his forehead stand out.

  “Canst thou pierce his skin with barbed irons?” He coughs, gurgling, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Emily leans hard against the refrigerator door. Her hands are fists against her thighs.

  “Hey, I asked you a question, Miss High and Mighty. Canst thou?”

  “I said no, Dad. I already said no.”

  “Hold it. No talking back, like Job, right? Getting God all riled up.”

  He shakes his head, puzzled. “But God didn’t know, did he? The Heavenly Father such a refuge e’er was given just didn’t know. He thought he knew, but he was mistaken. That’s the problem right there. Mistaken. Isn’t that the whole problem? Isn’t that the trouble? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  He sits up, makes his hand a gun, and points it at his daughter. “Ra-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a,” he croaks. He bends his head back. “Ra-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a,” he shouts to God somewhere above the roof. “Have you heard the latest?” he says. “We can fill his skin with iron. We know how to do that now. We can crush his huge whale heart and smash his liver to bits.” He tries to raise the gun, to point it up, to wave it in the face of God, but his hand falls limp onto the table.

  Emily is quiet, unmoving, watching.

  He looks at the empty glass in front of him. His voice turns to crooning. “Don’t cry,” he says to God, now floating just above the glass. “Don’t cry,” he says, and strokes the rim with his finger. “Hey, fathers make mistakes too, you know, they’re not perfect, they have their weaknesses. But we try our best, don’t we?” He sucks in his breath, makes small whimpering sounds, then large ragged sobs, his body shaking.

  Suddenly he’s up, his arm extended, his hand clutching the glass. He aims it at her. Emily ducks. The glass smashes against the fridge door, falls in chunks, pieces, powdery crystals onto the tile floor. He walks slowly, only a little crookedly, very carefully, into the living room.

  “Fathers are a piece of shit.” He groans, falls into the sofa, and snores almost immediately.

  For now it’s over. Emily can breathe.

  In the alley, she stands beside the back gate. She has emptied the dustpan of shattered glass, replaced the lid on the aluminum garbage can that leans against the fence. She is holding the empty pan in her hand and looking down the alley at the houses: at the roofs and doors, fences and gates, at the windows letting out the light from inside, at Bornemans’ next door, whose little kids run naked in the yard in the summer rain, at Hallesbys’, where Sarah is probably right now practising her cello for church tomorrow, at the house at the end of the alley, with the huge kennel in the backyard, where sometimes dogs howl in the middle of the night. The sky has darkened. The rim of a narrow moon hangs below a grey cloud. The wind settles into quiet ripples about her, and Emily turns back to her own house.

  The front doorbell rings. Emily doesn’t answer. She’s setting the dustpan on the floor in the kitchen closet. It rings again. She sits down on the edge of the chair beside the table in the darkened room. There’s a knock on the back door, loud and persistent, then a voice.

  “Anyone home?” it says.

  “Are you there?” it says.

  Gladness. Comfort. Hope. Richard is back. Emily rushes to the back door to welcome him in.

  “How the hell are you?” he says, his big hand on her shoulder. In the dimness she looks up to where his face is, brown and shiny, to where his welcome eyes are, his smile.

  “Hi, Richard. When did you get back?”

  “Thursday,” he says. “Can I sit down? Aren’t the lights working? Did you blow a fuse or something?”

  Emily flips the switch by the refrigerator. The room glows. They sit at the table, facing each other.

  “So. What’s new?” he asks.

  “Not much.”

  “Where’s Papa Sam and Mary?”

  Emily jerks her elbow toward the living room and Richard strides into the room, his long feet gliding over the tiles.

  Richard is a friend of her father. In the old days they were together often. They’d stay up nights singing, talking, drinking. Later, fighting. Then Richard disappeared for a year and when he came back two years ago he was different.

  He returns from the living room. “I put his leg up,” he says. “You can’t sleep very well with one leg dangling. Where’s the coffee?”

  He goes to the counter, pulls out the filter from the coffee maker, empties the soggy grounds into the sink. He rummages on a shelf f
or a clean filter and fresh grounds.

  “So did you like Australia?” she asks.

  “Did I like it? Do I like blue skies? Do I like strawberries and cream? Do I like a warm bed in winter?”

  “You’ve got a tan. Did you see any dolphins? Me and Hannah Shimizu are doing a report on dolphins.”

  “Is that so?” he says. “Well, I’m sorry to say I didn’t see the dolphins. I heard a story about one though.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Fish.” He plugs in the coffee maker and sits down across from her. “Water and fish. I learned to dive with one of those tanks on my back and a mask on my face. Get this – in the Pacific. Ocean. Deep, eh? And I saw fish. Huge, tiny, fat, skinny, pink, purple, polka-dotted, fish with spikes on them, honest-to-god, like nails sticking out all over, and little yellow fish that looked like flat canaries, really cute, and blue fish and silver. I’d hang there in the water, tons of it, thousands and millions of tons on all sides.” He leans toward Emily, his eyes intent and personal. “Water’s so powerful you know. And there I’d be, suspended in all that power. And the fish would swim up to me, right up to my goggles, and they’d look in at me with those bulgy eyes, and they’d say hi Richard, and I’d say hi fish, and then they’d take off, who knows where.” He gets up from the chair.

  What’s the story?” Emily asks.

  “Story?”

  “About the dolphin.”

  “Well.” He pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down again. He holds the cup in both hands. “It’s about this dolphin called Opo, not in Australia, in New Zealand actually. People used to go out in the ocean and swim with her and touch her. She even let children ride on her back. They all loved her. But one day someone found her in a coral pool near shore. She was dead. And when the village people heard, they became very sad. And that evening at dusk, some Maoris dug a grave by the town hall and carried the dolphin there and buried her. And they covered her grave with flowers.” He sips the coffee. “That is a true story,” he says.