After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara

Author:Leslie Shimotakahara
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

At Yoneda Home, a surprising number of residents weren’t Japanese. Maybe they’d gotten a foot in the door by being married to Japanese folks. The old white men made little effort to hide their stares at the cheery Filipina girls bustling around in pink scrubs. Rita could feel their eyes on her own ass as she made her way past the wheelchairs huddled around the TV.

French toast, unwashed hair, and sandalwood incense filled the air. Shoji screens partitioned off a meditation area to the side, but it didn’t seem to be getting much use these days; this set was more interested in The Young and the Restless.

After signing in at the front desk, she was directed to a room in the new part of the facility, a long L-shaped addition that snaked off the end of the stone mansion.

The door was ajar. By the window sat a small figure swaddled in a pink-and-brown quilt. Rita barely recognized her. The last time they’d seen each other must have been at Rita’s wedding. Even then Aunt Haruko had looked frail and dozy, but at least her hair had still been gunmetal grey. Now it had turned so white it appeared blond, fine and staticky. Her skin had loosened in crumpled, discoloured folds. A hint of lipstick, applied in a smear. Or maybe it was grape-juice stains.

She seemed so alone, withdrawn. The poor woman had to be well into her eighties. At some point, it stood to reason, she’d go from being a top employee at Yoneda Home to one of the inhabitants.

As Rita leaned over to offer a hug, the shoulders flinched, pulled away.

“Is that you, Mary?”

“No, Aunt Haruko. It’s me, Rita.”

Her eyes had turned an opalescent blue-grey, milky with cataracts.

“Rita.” The lips compressed in a hesitant smile.

A small, sparsely furnished room. At least the violet bedspread matched the curtains. Her view looked onto a Japanese garden: all the miniature trees and bushes were beautifully pruned, black stones jutting up like tiny mountains along the well-swept pathways.

Framed pictures hung crookedly on the walls. Jesus in a meadow, surrounded by a flock of sheep. An ink painting of a wisteria tree. It must have been done years ago, when Aunt Haruko’s hands were still agile, capable of turning the brush in so many curves and turns to capture the gnarled solidity of the main vine and the delicate, springy, new shoots.

“You’re at art school, ne?”

“That was a long time ago. It didn’t work out. Now I’m a high-school teacher.”

Failure prickled Rita’s skin. She hadn’t done much with her artistic talent, but maybe she’d never been that talented to begin with. When had Aunt Haruko last painted? Those arthritic hands would be lucky to hold a toothbrush these days. It was terrible how she’d slipped off everyone’s radar. The fragility of their family — all their interwoven, wrecked lives. Surely this wasn’t how things were in all families? Kristen had once remarked that her friends had lots of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins, everyone running around, singing Christmas carols.

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