Obasan by Joy Kogawa

Author:Joy Kogawa [Kogawa, Joy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Canada war internment Japan
Publisher: Hunter Publishing
Published: 2012-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

eighteen

It is twilight, and Obasan and I are standing on the bridge watching a large school of tiny fish shimmering upstream like a wriggling gray cloud. We are on our way to the wake in the Odd Fellows Hall. It is all so strange. Grandma Nakane, Obasan tells me, is in heaven.

"Dead?" I asked Stephen. "Grandma Nakane?"

Heaven, I am told, is where old people go and is a place of happiness. Why then the solemnness?

I stare straight down into the water past my new wine-coloured loafers Obasan bought for me at Graham's General Store. Obasan is wearing her white summer shoes with a hole at the toe. Can Grandma Nakane see us from heaven? I wonder. Could her spirit be in the little gray fishes?

The last time we saw Grandma and Grandpa Nakane was a few weeks ago when they arrived by train. I know they wanted to stay with us. But an ambulance took them away. Stephen says it takes a whole hour to drive the twisting twenty miles from Slocan to New Denver, where they are.

Obasan held Grandma Nakane's hand tightly until the driver came to close the ambulance door. Grandpa Nakane strained to sit up and tried to smile as he waved goodbye to Stephen and me, the ends of his mustache rising and falling. None of us spoke.

It is always so. We must always honor the wishes of others before our own. We will make the way smooth by restraining emotion. Though we might wish Grandma and Grandpa to stay, we must watch them go. To try to meet one's own needs in spite of the wishes of others is to be "wagamama"—selfish and inconsiderate. Obasan teaches me not to be wagamama by always heeding everyone's needs. That is why she is waiting patiently beside me at this bridge. That is why, when I am offered gifts, I must first refuse politely. It is such a tangle trying to decipher the needs and intents of others.

This little bridge is where sad thoughts come. Memories of my doll. Memories of home. And thoughts now of Grandma Nakane. I remember the time she wore her kimono and knelt on the floor playing a slow sad tune on the koto, her graceful fingers plucking the strings.

I take Obasan's hand and we walk down the pebbly road to the Odd Fellows Hall, a building by itself at the side of the road in a field without any trees. On Saturday nights the building is filled with children, white and Japanese, who come and watch war movies and newsreels and Batman. The hall is long and heavy with darkness. Two light bulbs dangle from the ceiling. In front of the stage, far away at the end of the hall, there is the wooden coffin. Several people I do not know sit on folding chairs with their heads bowed. It is a long walk from the entrance to the front, our shoes echoing loudly on the wooden floor.

Obasan bows to the people as they come, thanking them quietly.

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