Dreaming water Page 5

  But the words that my parents had spoken would return to haunt us in Daring. For the first month, we tried to ignore the initial stares and occasional whispers of slant eyes and Jap lover. Once off campus, it was a typical small town — closed and tight-knit, wary of anyone or anything different. Not only did Max and I stand out when we walked down the street together but when I went out alone to buy groceries I was still an outsider. People seemed to stare and size me up by my differences. I walked in long, confident strides. And instead of shirtwaists, I wore capri pants with bateau-neckline blouses. My bangs and straight hair spelled radical when every other woman in Daring seemed to have a short bob.

  A few weeks after we arrived, there was a loud bang against our living room window just as we were sitting down to dinner. My heart jumped as Max sprang up to see what it was. "You stay here," he cautioned, but I followed him to the front door, praying nothing would happen to him. After a few moments, he returned carrying a small brown bag in his hand.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  Max's face was drawn and serious. He handed me a coarse burlap sack, dense and heavy with sand. "Someone threw this at our window."

  "Did you see anyone?"

  Max shook his head. "No one."

  For days after, similar sudden attacks happened at different hours. Sometimes I heard the screeching of tires rounding the corner and at other times, nothing after the loud, dull blow. When I said we ought to call the police, Max said there was no damage or injury to report. I was a wreck by the time Max came home from teaching. One afternoon he returned to find me packing boxes.

  "We're leaving!" I said, my voice tight and dry.

  "We can't, Cate." Max sat down beside me.

  "Why don't they just throw rocks or bricks and break the damn window?" I cried, my nerves raveled.

  Max held me. "It'd be too easy. This way they can torment us to their hearts' content without doing any physical damage. We can't run away, Cate. Then they'd win. This is our home and I refuse to be pushed out again."

  I weighed the Japanese ceramic vase in my hands, then stood up and placed it back on the mantel.

  At last, Max called the sheriff and filed a complaint.

  "Probably just some kids," the sheriff said. "You know the kind, pranksters." He looked away and rubbed his puffy cheek, then glanced over at me as he spoke, never once looking Max in the eyes.

  After the sheriff's visit, whoever was throwing the sand-filled bags stopped. Days passed without problems, but just when I finally thought we'd settled into a life of our own, another incident tested us.

  One mild evening as walked along Main Street after dinner, we were harassed by four or five teenage boys, James Dean wanna-bes, with hair slicked back and cigarettes dangling.

  "Go back to Jap Land, where your kind belong!" one of them shouted at Max as we passed.

  I stared fiercely back at them, as a couple of them pulled the corners of their eyes into small slits.

  "You lost the war, Nip. You got nipped in the butt!" They all laughed.

  I felt my mouth go dry, my stomach knot up. Did they think they were being funny, making such fools of themselves? I felt my anger taking over, the adrenaline rising inside, as if they were making fun of me.

  Max kept walking, ignoring them. "They're just kids," he mumbled under his breath, though we both knew their hateful words had originated at home.

  "How can you be so calm?" I hissed, angry with the boys for being so stupid and small-minded and irritated at Max for accepting it. I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket, but he pulled away.

  Max stopped when we reached the corner and turned to me. "What would you have me do, Cate? Beat them up? Yell back at them? Then I'd be no better than they are. I've grown up with this, you haven't."

  I looked away> fighting back tears. I knew he was right, but I couldn't stop feeling furious at a world that wouldn't accept someone as good as Max.

  That night I stared into the bathroom mirror and saw my mother's auburn hair and fair skin, my father's deep-set eyes and full, thick lips. Would it have been the other way around, I wondered, if we'd been walking down a street in Japan?

  HANA

  In the Beginning

  During the last few months, I've become more and more curious about my past, like Max, who always seemed to be searching for something. The more Cate wants me to live in the present, the more I seem to be holding on to history. How can I explain it to her? The longer I'm trapped in this wheelchair, the more I see my past as a way of forgetting the present. I find myself sifting through the years, putting things in order, looking for those moments that may reveal some rhyme or reason as to why I'm on this earth. My past is alive with memories, while the future is only an empty hope, a mysterious void.

  My questions have been coming fast and furious, mostly when we sit down to eat or when we're walking in the park.

  "What was it like to come here in nineteen fifty-nine?" I asked Cate when we sat down to dinner last night. "And why Daring?"

  "It was a small town, with a small-town mentality that took some getting used to. It was difficult at first, but we settled here because of your father's teaching position," she answered, placing a plate in front of me. On the table were two pieces of poached salmon, baked potatoes, and a bowl of peas.

  "But he could have taught anywhere."

  "It wasn't so easy in nineteen fifty-nine. There weren't that many teaching positions available. You had to go where there were openings." She cut open her baked potato and dropped a bit of sour cream into the slit.

  "So he risked being the only Japanese in a small town during the late fifties? Wouldn't it have been much easier in some big city?" I asked.

  "Yes," she answered, "but your father wanted to live on the coast. His childhood was filled with hot, dry climates. He wanted to live by the ocean. And he wanted us to have a fresh start."

  I nodded my head and smiled. "Sounds just like him." I could see Max now, young and filled with conviction, ready to take on a new life by the sea.

  Once more I was that child again walking along the beach beside him. He often drove us to Falcon Beach when I was young, and those summers at the beach are some of my happiest memories. My mother and I read and took long walks. Sometimes Laura came along and we spent all day building sand castles. It was a place where my tall, wavy-haired father became playful, where his imagination moved to stories of explorers and their discoveries. He could always see some great adventure happening before his eyes as he stared out at the ocean.

  "Imagine the first ships that sailed over the seas to a foreign land." He smiled at me, inventing a tale. He pointed out to the endless sea, which on that afternoon appeared like a pale blue blanket. "Imagine a young captain named Hogan, who was commissioned to take a ship and crew and sail from America to Japan for the first time. Think of the fear he felt, not wanting to upset his family or his crew, yet not knowing what to expect each day as he stared out to the sometimes turbulent, unforgiving sea, praying that his ship and crew would survive the long, dangerous journey."

  I was just seven or eight years old, filled with energy, and only half paid attention to his words, focusing instead on the rubbery, tubular-shaped pieces of seaweed that had washed ashore, searching for any hint of a seashell peeking up through the white sand.

  "How young?" I asked, wanting him to think I was paying full attention.

  He looked down at me.

  "How old was the captain?" I clarified.

  "Not even thirty," he answered.

  My first thought was that he wasn't so young.

  "Think of what it must have been like," he continued, "all the strange foods and mysterious smells, the different colors and customs in the way people looked and dressed. I remember how my own grandmother — your great-grandmother Miyoshi — thought Caucasians were barbarians with all the hair they had on their bodies."

  I held my dad's hand tightly and could see how his skin was virtually hairless, while Dr. Truman's hairy wrist only
appeared darker against the sleeve of his white doctor's jacket. "And would Captain Hogan fall in love with a beautiful Japanese girl?" I asked.

  My dad laughed. "Yes, of course. Why go all that way across the ocean, if you're not going to fall in love?"

  Then I laughed.

  "What kind of world would it be now if these brave men hadn't sailed across the seas to make that first connection with other people in foreign lands?" He asked me this, talking more to himself than to me, running his fingers through his thick, black hair, his dark eyes squinting against the sun.

  I suddenly stopped and thought about what my dad was saying. "Is that why you drove all the way across the country when you were young?" I asked. A glimmer of white shell in the sand made me let go of his hand, but I didn't run toward it.

  My dad smiled. "It was to discover your mother."

  I laughed and thought how I wanted to marry someone exactly like him when I grew up. We walked slowly onward until we reached the spot where I glimpsed the shell. I squatted and plucked it from the wet sand, a small, white shell shaped like a Chinese pointed hat, with a brown spiral encircling it. I ran down and washed it off at the water's edge, then ran back to my dad and placed the shell in his hand.

  "— so you should eat more peas," Cate said, spooning more onto my plate, bringing me right back to the dinner table. "They're good for you. Lots of fiber."

  I laughed. Occasionally such comments remind me that Cate is the older one — well past the age of fifty, when the word fiber becomes central to one's vocabulary. But I didn't have the heart to tell her that eating peas wouldn't help me now, and a rush of sorrow stirred inside of me.

  "Tell me more," I said, as I shook off the gloom and lifted a forkful of peas to my mouth.

  She took a bite of potato and smiled. "We had some rough moments when we first moved here. I was ready to hightail it out of Daring. I was already packing when your dad talked me out of it." She looked up and smiled. "He was right. When you came into the world a few years later, it made a big difference."

  "Where would you have gone?" I asked.

  "To San Francisco, or to Los Angeles to be near your grandparents."

  "They would have been ecstatic," I said, thinking of my grandparents, Henry and Midori. I imagined the joy I'd have had playing in their greenhouses day after day.

  "At one time, my parents would have given me big bucks not to marry your father." She laughed, a comfortable laugh that's grown deeper with the passage of time.

  "Just think if you'd taken them up on the offer," I said. "How different your life would be."

  Cate put down her fork and looked over at me. "Different doesn't always mean better. If I'd never married your father, we'd never have had you."

  "That's what I mean. It would have been so much easier," I said quietly.

  "I don't need it to be easier," she said, reaching over to me and giving my hand a squeeze. "I like it just the way it is. The way things were intended to be."

  "You can't know that," I said, wondering what God intended when he saddled me with Werner, and my mother with me.

  "Maybe not." She leaned back in her chair, and I could see a glint of pain in her eyes, for just a moment, before it disappeared. "But what I believe is that there wouldn't have been much point to it."

  "To marrying Dad?"

  "To my life," she said, looking over at me with a smile that carried a world of sadness in it.

  CATE

  Miracles

  The day Hana was born brought two miracles. The first one involved the pure beauty of birth, which finally came almost four years after Max and I married. The overwhelming realization that this beautiful, dark-eyed, fair-skinned child with a full head of black, downy hair was a part of Max and me. She was so fragile, so beautiful. Suddenly sentimental, I understood that we had created her together, that part of us would live on through her and her children. Max loved to bathe Hana. He came home every day from teaching, rolled up his sleeves, and gently set her into the baby tub, her chubby limbs splashing in the warm water. I felt such joy every time I looked at her perfect fingers and toes.

  And the second miracle was that Papa came to visit us for the first time since Max and I married. Mama had flown out from Boston for Hana's birth and stayed with us for two weeks afterward. Six months later

  Papa broke down in tears of happiness at the sight of his granddaughter's exquisite smile and sparkling eyes. He even went so far as to hug Max. From that day on, Papa sang Italian lullabies to Hana and was completely devoted to her until he died of lung cancer almost thirteen years later.

  On Hana's third birthday, Max's parents drove up from Los Angeles to meet my parents for the first time. They had all been instantly charmed by their vibrant and energetic granddaughter, who appeared much more Japanese than Italian. Already at three she seemed to recognize the cultural difference between her two sets of grandparents. She sang "O Sole Mio" with my parents, and Papa chased her around the house, yelling out "Gotcha!" while he grabbed for air, as her giggles and screams rang throughout the house. But with Max's parents, she kept her voice calm and soft, even while learning to fold gold and silver origami cranes or eating her favorite plump pork and vegetable gyozas at the birthday party.

  "Ravioli in another form," my father teased, standing in the kitchen popping another gyoza into his mouth.

  "Only better," Max's mother, Midori, responded, without missing a beat.

  Papa laughed. "Wait until you taste my Anna's spaghetti bolognese. You'll think you're in Italy."

  "It's a place I always wanted to visit," Midori said softly.

  Papa looked at Max's mother, and I could tell he wanted to hug her, the way he hugged Hana every time he saw her. "My little flower," he called his granddaughter, even before I explained to him that Hana meant the same thing in Japanese.

  "What's going on in here?" Max's dad, Henry, came into the kitchen.

  "Midori and I are going off to Italy," Papa boomed.

  Henry smiled and said, "Have fun!"

  I watched them having such a good time and thanked God for this child who had brought us all together.

  I don't believe any little girl could have been better loved by her grandparents than Hana was. Max and I had hoped to have more children, but it never happened. "God's will," I could hear my mother saying yet again. Still, at one point, I worried about Hana being lonely as an only child, having been one myself. But more than that, I had my own selfish reasons for wanting more children, innately fearing the fragility of life, knowing that at any time something could go wrong.

  But in that third year of Hana's life, there were no signs that anything might go wrong. She was a healthy, beautiful child in a yellow dress blowing out pink candles on a chocolate birthday cake. I remember it all as if it were yesterday — all of us surrounding Hana at the table — Louis and Anna, Henry and Midori, Max and Cate — a real family, frozen in a black-and-white photo that still sits atop the piano.

  Papa died ten years later, just before we learned something might be wrong with Hana. It was a blessing in a way, since his death would have been much crueler had he known that the granddaughter he so loved would never live a normal life. Our lives, too, changed. Max and I were no longer just ordinary parents of an ordinary growing teenager. We both felt helpless at the time and somehow to blame, even before Hana was officially diagnosed with having Werner's syndrome in her twenties. The child we'd vowed to love and protect from her first breath would suffer because of a gene one or both of us might have passed on to her. The thought of it nearly destroyed us. I blamed myself for thinking once too often that she was a perfect baby. I'd read how the Chinese purposely demeaned their babies, calling them little pigs or scrawny dogs, in order to keep the gods from taking them away. I couldn't help thinking that I had somehow failed to protect my child.

  I remember driving past St. John's Catholic Church more than ten times that first week after we learned something might be wrong. I ached to be in the cool, dark
interior of the beautiful stone building. I wanted to be surrounded by the brilliant colors of the stained-glass windows, the kind and serene-looking gaze of the statues, the scent of burning candles. I wanted to kneel down and pray so hard that when I reemerged into the daylight it would have all been a silly mistake. I wanted a miracle to happen, but I couldn't park the car and go in, and I couldn't help thinking, Dear God, why have you forsaken us?

  HANA

  God's Children

  I click on the CD player, slip in a disc of Gregorian chants, and the silent house fills with the perfectly modulated voices of the Benedictine monks. With my mother outside gardening, I turn up the volume until the speakers vibrate. Their unified voices create a kind of spiritual serenity in me, a calm I'm looking for this morning. The monks fascinate me. Every day of the year they sing their chants seven times, re-creating within the walls of the cloister they live in some of the oldest music we have. They have freely chosen a life of meditation, contemplation, and confinement. I close my eyes and listen to their praise, and their meditations on the power of faith. And in their perfect voices, I can believe that there is a God.

  I was raised Catholic but went to public schools on weekdays and, beginning in the fourth grade, to catechism on Saturday mornings. Being with Laura made it bearable to miss Saturday morning cartoons while sitting in a big, empty classroom with the handful of other public school Catholic kids. I was a fresh-faced little girl of nine and still seemingly healthy. My mother still went to mass almost every Sunday and prayed every night that I would grow up to be happy and strong. My father was never religious, and though he was raised Buddhist, he once told me he had ceased practicing any kind of religion a long time ago.

  After the possibility of Werner came into my life at thirteen, my mother attended mass less and less. By the time I turned eighteen, she no longer went at all.