The Buddha in the Attic (6 page)

WHENEVER WE LEFT
J-town and wandered through the broad, clean streets of their cities we tried not to draw attention to ourselves. We dressed like they did. We walked like they did. We made sure not to travel in large groups. We made ourselves small for them
—If you stay in your place they’ll leave you alone
—and did our best not to offend. Still, they gave us a hard time. Their men slapped our husbands on the back and shouted out, “So solly!” as they knocked off our husbands’ hats. Their children threw stones at us. Their waiters always served us last. Their ushers led us upstairs, to the second balconies of their theaters, and seated us in the worst seats in the house.
Nigger heaven
, they called it. Their barbers refused to cut our hair.
Too coarse for our scissors
. Their women asked us to move away from them in their trolley cars whenever we were standing too close. “Please excuse,” we said to them, and then we smiled and stepped aside. Because the only way to resist, our husbands had taught us, was by not resisting. Mostly, though, we stayed at home, in J-town, where we felt safe among our own. We learned to live at a distance from them, and avoided them whenever we could.

ONE DAY
, we promised ourselves, we would leave them. We would work hard and save up enough money to go to some other place. Argentina, perhaps. Or Mexico. Or São Paulo, Brazil. Or Harbin, Manchuria, where our husbands had told us a Japanese could live like a prince.
My brother went there last year and made a killing
. We would start all over again. Open our own fruit stand. Our own trading company. Our own first-class hotel. We’d plant a cherry orchard. A persimmon grove. Buy a thousand acres of rich golden field. We would learn things. Do things. Build an orphanage. Build a temple. Take our first ride on a train. And once a year, on our anniversary, we’d put on our lipstick and go out to eat.
Someplace fancy, with white tablecloths and chandeliers
. And when we’d saved up enough money to help our parents live a more comfortable life we would pack up our things and go back home to Japan. It would be autumn, and our fathers would be out threshing in the fields. We would walk through the mulberry groves, past the big loquat tree and the old lotus pond, where we used to catch tadpoles in spring. Our dogs would come running up to us. Our neighbors would wave. Our mothers would be sitting by the well with their sleeves tied up, washing the evening’s rice. And when they saw us they would just stand up and stare. “Little girl,” they would say to us, “where in the world have you been?”

BUT UNTIL THEN
we would stay in America just a little bit longer and work for them, for without us, what would they do? Who would pick the strawberries from their fields? Who would get the fruit down from their trees? Who would wash their carrots? Who would scrub their toilets? Who would mend their garments? Who would iron their shirts? Who would fluff their pillows? Who would change their sheets? Who would cook their breakfasts? Who would clear their tables? Who would soothe their children? Who would bathe their elderly? Who would listen to their stories? Who would keep their secrets? Who would tell their lies? Who would flatter them? Who would sing for them? Who would dance for them? Who would weep for them? Who would turn the other cheek for them and then one day—because we were tired, because we were old, because we could—forgive them?
Only a fool
. And so we folded up our kimonos and put them away in our trunks and did not take them out again for years.

BABIES

W
e gave birth under oak trees, in summer, in 113-degree heat. We gave birth beside woodstoves in one-room shacks on the coldest nights of the year. We gave birth on windy islands in the Delta, six months after we arrived, and the babies were tiny, and translucent, and after three days they died. We gave birth nine months after we arrived to perfect babies with full heads of black hair. We gave birth in dusty vineyard camps in Elk Grove and Florin. We gave birth on remote farms in the Imperial Valley with the help of only our husbands, who had learned from
The Housewife’s Companion
what to do.
First you bring the pan water to a boil …
We gave birth in Rialto by the light of a kerosene lantern on top of an old silk quilt we had brought over with us in our trunk from Japan.
It still had my mother’s smell
. We gave birth like Makiyo, in a barn out in Maxwell, while lying on a thick bed of straw.
I wanted to be near the animals
. We gave birth alone, in an apple orchard in Sebastopol, after searching for firewood one unusually warm autumn morning high up in the hills.
I cut her navel string with my knife and carried her home in my arms
. We gave birth in a tent in Livingston with the help of a Japanese midwife who had traveled twenty miles on horseback to see us from the next town. We gave birth in towns where no doctor would see us, and we washed out the afterbirth ourselves.
I watched my mother do it many times
. We gave birth in towns with only one doctor, whose prices we could not afford. We gave birth with the assistance of Dr. Ringwalt, who refused to let us pay him his fee. “You keep it,” he said. We gave birth among our own, at the Takahashi Clinic of Midwifery on Clement Street in San Francisco. We gave birth at the Kuwabara Hospital on North Fifth Street in San Jose. We gave birth on a bumpy country road in Castroville in the back of our husband’s Dodge truck.
The baby came too fast
. We gave birth on a dirt floor covered with newspapers in a bunkhouse in French Camp to the biggest baby the midwife had ever seen in her life.
Twelve and a half pounds
. We gave birth with the help of the fish seller’s wife, Mrs. Kondo, who had known our mother back home in Japan.
She was the second prettiest girl in the village
. We gave birth behind a lace curtain at Adachi’s Barbershop in Gardena while our husband was giving Mr. Ota his weekly shave. We gave birth quickly, after hours, in the apartment above Higo Ten Cent. We gave birth while gripping the bedpost and cursing our husband—
You did this!
—and he swore he would never touch us again. We gave birth at five in the morning in the pressing room at the Eagle Hand Laundry and that night our husband began kissing us in bed.
I said to him, “Can’t you wait?”
We gave birth quietly, like our mothers, who never cried out or complained.
She worked in the rice paddies until the day she felt her first pangs
. We gave birth weeping, like Nogiku, who came down with fever and could not get out of bed for three months. We gave birth easily, in two hours, and then got a headache that stayed with us for five years. We gave birth six weeks after our husband had left us to a child we now wish we had never given away.
After her I was never able to conceive another
. We gave birth secretly, in the woods, to a child our husband knew was not his. We gave birth on top of a faded floral bedspread in a brothel in Oakland while listening to the grunts coming through the wall from the next room. We gave birth in a boardinghouse in Petaluma, two weeks after moving out of Judge Carmichael’s place up on Russian Hill. We gave birth after saying good-bye to our mistress, Mrs. Lippincott, who did not want a pregnant maid greeting guests at her door.
It just wouldn’t look right
. We gave birth with the help of the foreman’s wife, Señora Santos, who grabbed our thighs and told us to push.
Empuje! Empuje! Empuje!
We gave birth while our husband was out gambling in Chinatown and when he came home drunk the next morning we did not speak to him for five days.
He lost our entire season’s earnings in one night
. We gave birth during the Year of the Monkey. We gave birth during the Year of the Rooster. We gave birth during the Year of the Dog and the Dragon and the Rat. We gave birth, like Urako, on the day of the full moon. We gave birth on a Sunday, in a shed in Encinitas, and the next day we tied the baby onto our back and went out to pick berries in the fields. We gave birth to so many children we quickly lost track of the years. We gave birth to Nobuo and Shojiro and Ayako. We gave birth to Tameji, who looked just like our brother, and stared into his face with joy.
Oh, it’s you!
We gave birth to Eikichi, who looked just like our neighbor, and after that our husband would not look us in the eye. We gave birth to Misuzu, who came out with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck like a rosary, and we knew she would one day be a priestess.
It’s a sign from the Buddha
. We gave birth to Daisuke, who had long earlobes, and we knew he would one day be rich. We gave birth to Masaji, who came to us late, in our forty-fifth year, just when we had given up all hope of ever producing an heir.
I thought I’d dropped my last egg long ago
. We gave birth to Fujiko, who instantly seemed to recognize the sound of her father’s voice.
He used to sing to her every night in the womb
. We gave birth to Yukiko, whose name means “snow.” We gave birth to Asano, who had thick thighs and a short neck and would have made a much better boy. We gave birth to Kamechiyo, who was so ugly we feared we would never be able to find her a mate.
She had a face that could stop an earthquake
. We gave birth to babies that were so beautiful we could not believe they were ours. We gave birth to babies that were American citizens and in whose names we could finally lease land. We gave birth to babies with colic. We gave birth to babies with clubfeet. We gave birth to babies that were sickly and blue. We gave birth without our mothers, who would have known exactly what to do. We gave birth to babies with six fingers and looked the other way as the midwife began to sharpen her knife.
You must have eaten a crab during your pregnancy
. We contracted gonorrhea on our first night with our husband and gave birth to babies that were blind. We gave birth to twins, which were considered bad luck, and asked the midwife to make one a “day visitor.”
You decide which one
. We gave birth to eleven children in fifteen years but only seven would survive. We gave birth to six boys and three girls before we were thirty and then one night we pushed our husband off of us and said, quietly, “That’s enough.” Nine months later we gave birth to Sueko, whose name means “last.” “Oh, another one!” our husband said. We gave birth to five girls and five boys at regular eighteen-month intervals and then one day five years later we gave birth to Toichi, whose name means “eleven.”
He’s the caboose
. We gave birth even though we had poured cold water over our stomachs and jumped off the porch many times.
I couldn’t shake it loose
. We gave birth even though we had drunk the medicine the midwife had given us to prevent us from giving birth one more time.
My husband was ill with pneumonia and my work was needed outside in the fields
. We did not give birth for the first four years of our marriage and then we made an offering to Inari and gave birth to six boys in a row. We gave birth to so many babies that our uterus slipped out and we had to wear a special girdle to keep it inside. We almost gave birth but the baby was turned sideways and all that came out was an arm. We almost gave birth but the baby’s head was too big and after three days of pushing we looked up at our husband and said, “Please forgive me,” and died. We gave birth but the baby was too weak to cry so we left her out, overnight, in a crib by the stove.
If she makes it through till morning then she’s strong enough to live
. We gave birth but the baby was both girl and boy and we smothered it quickly with rags. We gave birth but our milk never came in and after one week the baby was dead. We gave birth but the baby had already died in the womb and we buried her, naked, in the fields, beside a stream, but have moved so many times since we can no longer remember where she is.

THE CHILDREN

W
e laid them down gently, in ditches and furrows and wicker baskets beneath the trees. We left them lying naked, atop blankets, on woven straw mats at the edges of the fields. We placed them in wooden apple boxes and nursed them every time we finished hoeing a row of beans. When they were older, and more rambunctious, we sometimes tied them to chairs. We strapped them onto our backs in the dead of winter in Redding and went out to prune the grapevines but some mornings it was so cold that their ears froze and bled. In early summer, in Stockton, we left them in nearby gullies while we dug up and sacked onions and began picking the first plums. We gave them sticks to play with in our absence and called out to them from time to time to let them know we were still there.
Don’t bother the dogs. Don’t touch the bees. Don’t wander away or Papa will get mad
. But when they tired and began to cry out for us we kept on working because if we didn’t we knew we would never pay off the debt on our lease.
Mama can’t come
. And after a while their voices grew fainter and their crying came to a stop. And at the end of the day when there was no more light in the sky we woke them up from wherever it was they lay sleeping and brushed the dirt from their hair.
It’s time to go home
.

SOME OF THEM
were stubborn and willful and would not listen to a word we said. Others were more serene than the Buddha.
He came into the world smiling
. One loved her father more than anyone else. One hated bright colors. One would not go anywhere without his tin pail. One weaned herself at the age of thirteen months by pointing to a glass of milk on the counter and telling us, “I want.” Several were wise beyond their years.
The fortune-teller told us he was born with the soul of an old man
. They ate at the table like grown-ups. They never cried. They never complained. They never left their chopsticks standing upright in their rice. They played by themselves all day long without making a sound while we worked nearby in the fields. They drew pictures in the dirt for hours. And whenever we tried to pick them up and carry them home they shook their heads and said, “I’m too heavy” or “Mama, rest.” They worried about us when we were tired. They worried about us when we were sad. They knew, without our telling them, when our knees were bothering us or it was our time of the month. They slept with us, at night, like puppies, on wooden boards covered with hay, and for the first time since coming to America we did not mind having someone else beside us in the bed.

ALWAYS
, we had favorites. Perhaps it was our firstborn, Ichiro, who made us feel so much less lonely than we had been before.
My husband has not spoken to me in more than two years
. Or our second son, Yoichi, who taught himself how to read English by the time he was four.
He’s a genius
. Or Sunoko, who always tugged at our sleeve with such fierce urgency and then forgot what it was she wanted to say. “It will come to you later,” we would tell her, even though it never did. Some of us preferred our daughters, who were gentle and good, and some of us, like our mothers before us, preferred our sons.
They’re the better gain on the farm
. We fed them more than we did their sisters. We sided with them in arguments. We dressed them in nicer clothes. We scraped up our last pennies to take them to the doctor whenever they came down with fever, while our daughters we cared for at home.
I applied a mustard plaster to her chest and said a prayer to the god of wind and bad colds
. Because we knew that our daughters would leave us the moment they married, but our sons would provide for us in our old age.

USUALLY
, our husbands had nothing to do with them. They never changed a single diaper. They never washed a dirty dish. They never touched a broom. In the evening, no matter how tired we were when we came in from the fields, they sat down and read the paper while we cooked dinner for the children and stayed up washing and mending piles of clothes until late. They never let us go to sleep before them. They never let us rise after the sun.
You’ll set a bad example for the children
. They never gave us even five minutes of rest. They were silent, weathered men who tramped in and out of the house in their muddy overalls muttering to themselves about sucker growth, the price of green beans, how many crates of celery they thought we could pull this year from the fields. They rarely spoke to their children, or even seemed to remember their names.
Tell number three boy not to slouch when he walks
. And if things grew too noisy at the table, they clapped their hands and shouted out, “That’s enough!” Their children, in turn, preferred not to speak to their fathers at all. Whenever one of them had something to say it always went through us.
Tell Papa I need a nickel. Tell Papa there’s something wrong with one of the horses. Tell Papa he missed a spot shaving. Ask Papa how come he’s so old
.

AS SOON AS WE COULD
we put them to work in the fields. They picked strawberries with us in San Martin. They picked peas with us in Los Osos. They crawled behind us through the vineyards of Hughson and Del Rey as we cut down the raisin grapes and laid them out to dry on wooden trays in the sun. They hauled water. They cleared brush. They shoveled weeds. They chopped wood. They hoed in the blazing summer heat of the Imperial Valley before their bones were fully formed. Some of them were slow-moving and dreamy and planted entire rows of cauliflower sprouts upside down by mistake. Others could sort tomatoes faster than the fastest of the hired help. Many complained. They had stomachaches. Headaches. Their eyes were itching like crazy from the dust. Some of them pulled on their boots every morning without having to be told. One of them had a favorite pair of clippers, which he sharpened every evening in the barn after supper and would not let anyone else touch. One could not stop thinking about bugs.
They’re everywhere
. One sat down one day in the middle of an onion patch and said she wished she’d never been born. And we wondered if we had done the right thing, bringing them into this world.
Not once did we ever have the money to buy them a single toy
.

AND YET
they played for hours like calves in the fields. They made swords out of broken grape stakes and dueled to a draw beneath the trees. They made kites out of newspaper and balsa wood and tied knives to the strings and had dogfights on windy days in the sky. They made twist-up dolls out of wire and straw and did evil things to them with sharpened chopsticks in the woods. They played shadow catch shadow on moonlit nights in the orchards, just as we had back home in Japan. They played kick the can and mumblety-peg and jan ken po. They had contests to see who could nail together the most packing crates the night before we went to market and who could hang the longest from the walnut tree without letting go. They folded squares of paper into airplanes and birds and watched them fly away. They collected crows’ nests and snake skins, beetle shells, acorns, rusty iron stakes from down by the tracks. They learned the names of the planets. They read each other’s palms.
Your life line is unusually short
. They told each other’s fortunes.
One day you will take a long journey on a train
. They went out into the barn after supper with their kerosene lanterns and played mama and papa in the loft.
Now slap your belly and make a sound like you’re dying
. And on hot summer nights, when it was ninety-eight degrees, they spread their blankets out beneath the peach trees and dreamed of picnics down by the river, a new eraser, a book, a ball, a china doll with blinking violet eyes, leaving home, one day, for the great world beyond.

BEYOND THE FARM
, they’d heard, there were strange pale children who grew up entirely indoors and knew nothing of the fields and streams. Some of these children, they’d heard, had never even seen a tree.
Their mothers won’t let them go outside and play in the sun
. Beyond the farm, they’d heard, there were fancy white houses with gold-framed mirrors and crystal doorknobs and porcelain toilets that flushed with the yank of a chain.
And they don’t even make a smell
. Beyond the farm, they’d heard, there were mattresses stuffed with hard metal springs that were somehow as soft as a cloud (Goro’s sister had gone away to work as a maid in the city and when she came back she said that the beds there were so soft she had to sleep on the floor). Beyond the farm, they’d heard, there were mothers who ate their breakfast every morning in bed and fathers who sat on cushioned chairs all day long in their offices shouting orders into a phone—and for this, they got paid. Beyond the farm, they’d heard, wherever you went you were always a stranger and if you got on the wrong bus by mistake you might never find your way home.

THEY CAUGHT TADPOLES
and dragonflies down by the creek and put them into glass jars. They watched us kill the chickens. They found the places in the hills where the deer had last slept and lay down in their round nests in the tall, flattened grass. They pulled the tails off of lizards to see how long it would take them to grow back.
Nothing’s happening
. They brought home baby sparrows that had fallen from the trees and fed them sweetened rice gruel with a toothpick but in the morning, when they woke, the sparrows were dead. “Nature doesn’t care,” we told them. They sat on the fence and watched the farmer in the next field over leading his cow up to meet with the bull. They saw a mother cat eating her own kittens. “It happens,” we explained. They heard us being taken late at night by our husbands, who would not leave us alone even though we had long ago lost our looks. “It doesn’t matter what you look like in the dark,” we were told. They bathed with us every evening, out of doors, in giant wooden tubs heated over a fire and sank down to their chins in the hot steaming water. They leaned back their heads. They closed their eyes. They reached out for our hands. They asked us questions.
How do you know when you’re dead? What if there were no birds? What if you have red spots all over your body but nothing hurts? Is it true that the Chinese really eat pigs’ feet?

THEY HAD THINGS
to keep them safe. A red bottle cap. A glass marble. A postcard of two Russian beauties strolling along the Songhua River sent to them by an uncle who was stationed in Manchuria. They had lucky white feathers that they carried with them at all times in their pockets, and stones wrapped in soft cloth that they pulled out of drawers and held—just for a moment, until the bad feeling went away—in their hands. They had secret words that they whispered to themselves whenever they felt afraid. They had favorite trees that they climbed up into whenever they wanted to be alone.
Everyone please go away
. They had favorite sisters in whose arms they could instantly fall asleep. They had hated older brothers with whom they refused to be left alone in a room.
He’ll kill me
. They had dogs from whom they were inseparable and to whom they could tell all the things they could not tell anyone else.
I broke Papa’s pipe and buried it under a tree
. They had their own rules.
Never sleep with your pillow facing toward the north
(Hoshiko had gone to sleep with her pillow facing toward the north and in the middle of the night she stopped breathing and died). They had their own rituals.
You must always throw salt where a hobo has been
. They had their own beliefs.
If you see a spider in the morning you will have good luck. If you lie down after eating you will turn into a cow. If you wear a basket on your head you will stop growing. A single flower means death
.

WE TOLD THEM
stories about tongue-cut sparrows and grateful cranes and baby doves that always remembered to let their parents perch on the higher branch. We tried to teach them manners.
Never point with your chopsticks. Never suck on your chopsticks. Never take the last piece of food from a plate
. We praised them when they were kind to others but told them not to expect to be rewarded for their good deeds. We scolded them whenever they tried to talk back. We taught them never to accept a handout. We taught them never to brag. We taught them everything we knew. A fortune begins with a penny. It is better to suffer ill than to do ill. You must give back whatever you receive. Don’t be loud like the Americans. Stay away from the Chinese.
They don’t like us
. Watch out for the Koreans.
They hate us
. Be careful around the Filipinos.
They’re worse than the Koreans
. Never marry an Okinawan.
They’re not real Japanese
.

IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
, especially, we often lost them early. To diphtheria and the measles. Tonsillitis. Whooping cough. Mysterious infections that turned gangrenous overnight. One of them was bitten by a poisonous black spider in the outhouse and came down with fever. One was kicked in the stomach by our favorite gray mule. One disappeared while we were sorting the peaches in the packing shed and even though we looked under every rock and tree for her we never did find her and after that we were never the same.
I lost the will to live
. One tumbled out of the truck while we were driving the rhubarb to market and fell into a coma from which he never awoke. One was kidnapped by a pear picker from a nearby orchard whose advances we had repeatedly rebuffed.
I should have just told him yes
. Another was badly burned when the moonshine still exploded out back behind the barn and lived for only a day.
The last thing she said to me was “Mama, don’t forget to look up at the sky.”
Several drowned. One in the Calaveras River. One in the Nacimiento. One in an irrigation ditch. One in a laundry tub we knew we should not have left out overnight. And every year, in August, on the Feast of the Dead, we lit white paper lanterns on their gravestones and welcomed their spirits back to earth for a day. And at the end of that day, when it was time for them to leave, we set the paper lanterns afloat on the river to guide them safely home. For they were Buddhas now, who resided in the Land of Bliss.