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Authors: Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
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barely thicker than a winter quilt. I will be writing in my own home. Tomorrow, I’ll learn how to take out my own garbage. Kimiko is worried that it’s too complicated, that I’ll never remember which things go out on which days and how to wrap them, but she doesn’t realize that I want to learn. I’m looking forward to taking out my own garbage, because that was Brian’s job. Until I got here, I never realized that, in sharing our lives for so long, Brian and I each grew to excel in some things and to allow other talents to atrophy. If garbage removal doesn’t seem like a talent, still I want to bag it, wrap it, tape it, and set my alarm to make sure it goes out sufficiently early on the right day.
And on the mornings when there is no garbage collection, what will I think when I open my eyes? Of course, I’ll
be doing my research, but still I imagine a morning when I might not have to get up at all. This wasn’t possible in the hotels—too much transience—and before that? In all my thirty-seven years, as a daughter, a wife, and a mother, I’ve never had the luxury of waking with my eyes closed and thinking, without any recrimination or guilt, without any other person’s needs to consider:
What do I want to do today?
JULY 12, 2001
ON THE RIVER at low tide, in the rain, there is a small sampan swinging on a pole. The pole is about twenty-five feet long and bamboo, considerably longer than the boat or the man who leans his shoulder against it. He is standing, in a rain jacket and hat and a white towel tucked under the hat to protect his neck, in a soft warm rain on the wide, muddy river—he is leaning on water that sighs when the rain hits it but otherwise does not move. The boat and the man are equally still. They are worn, and veiled by rain and clothes and tarps and towels.
There is a black dog sitting in the bow of the boat.
Behind them, there’s a bridge, weighed down with morning traffic. Miniature cars for the narrow street—minivans half the size I’m used to, narrow but high, like a single serving
loaf of Wonder bread. They are lined up, stopped and yet revving with the energy of the day that’s just beginning. They are going somewhere. You can feel it. The cars link the twin flanks of boxy, concrete apartment buildings that zigzag down each river bank. It’s an uninspired landscape, if not downright ugly, and very much in opposition to the stereotype of Japanese “good taste” I keep hearing about; the stereotype that wrapping is everything and no one cares what’s inside. And it would be easy to condemn them if you didn’t know that every single structure in this area had been shattered and burned in 1945. Windows becoming scatter bombs, beams becoming guillotines, beds becoming funeral pyres. The remnants covered in ash, buried shortly by a new layer. This time of bodies. Flayed, ruptured bodies . . . bodies that survived for hours—powered mostly by shock and by habit—before falling wherever they stood.
Women, babies. People once.
And in the shallow river that they might have been heading for, the river that was once so full of people desperate for a deadly drink of water that you could walk across their bloated bodies to avoid the fevered bridge ties, there is now a man and a dog in a sampan.
Fishing for clams.
PART II
IN THE MORNING
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
—Ralph Hodgson
ON THE HILL
H OW SIMPLE TO ERASE. It starts with a small, stubborn no, and Japan could be its birthplace: here, they have perfected the barely perceptible smile, the sliding maybe I’ve become so familiar with. If I’m making inroads now, if I’m gaining trust, I am still offered exactly what the person in front of me wants to give. Buckets for washing myself; a memory of grasshoppers. In Japan, you can refuse a sweet and still be presented with it, and with the great expectation of your satisfaction.
I have been invited to the headquarters of the Atomic Bomb Casualty
And on the mornings when there is no garbage collection, what will I think when I open my eyes? Of course, I’ll
be doing my research, but still I imagine a morning when I might not have to get up at all. This wasn’t possible in the hotels—too much transience—and before that? In all my thirty-seven years, as a daughter, a wife, and a mother, I’ve never had the luxury of waking with my eyes closed and thinking, without any recrimination or guilt, without any other person’s needs to consider:
What do I want to do today?
JULY 12, 2001
ON THE RIVER at low tide, in the rain, there is a small sampan swinging on a pole. The pole is about twenty-five feet long and bamboo, considerably longer than the boat or the man who leans his shoulder against it. He is standing, in a rain jacket and hat and a white towel tucked under the hat to protect his neck, in a soft warm rain on the wide, muddy river—he is leaning on water that sighs when the rain hits it but otherwise does not move. The boat and the man are equally still. They are worn, and veiled by rain and clothes and tarps and towels.
There is a black dog sitting in the bow of the boat.
Behind them, there’s a bridge, weighed down with morning traffic. Miniature cars for the narrow street—minivans half the size I’m used to, narrow but high, like a single serving
loaf of Wonder bread. They are lined up, stopped and yet revving with the energy of the day that’s just beginning. They are going somewhere. You can feel it. The cars link the twin flanks of boxy, concrete apartment buildings that zigzag down each river bank. It’s an uninspired landscape, if not downright ugly, and very much in opposition to the stereotype of Japanese “good taste” I keep hearing about; the stereotype that wrapping is everything and no one cares what’s inside. And it would be easy to condemn them if you didn’t know that every single structure in this area had been shattered and burned in 1945. Windows becoming scatter bombs, beams becoming guillotines, beds becoming funeral pyres. The remnants covered in ash, buried shortly by a new layer. This time of bodies. Flayed, ruptured bodies . . . bodies that survived for hours—powered mostly by shock and by habit—before falling wherever they stood.
Women, babies. People once.
And in the shallow river that they might have been heading for, the river that was once so full of people desperate for a deadly drink of water that you could walk across their bloated bodies to avoid the fevered bridge ties, there is now a man and a dog in a sampan.
Fishing for clams.
PART II
IN THE MORNING
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
—Ralph Hodgson
ON THE HILL
H OW SIMPLE TO ERASE. It starts with a small, stubborn no, and Japan could be its birthplace: here, they have perfected the barely perceptible smile, the sliding maybe I’ve become so familiar with. If I’m making inroads now, if I’m gaining trust, I am still offered exactly what the person in front of me wants to give. Buckets for washing myself; a memory of grasshoppers. In Japan, you can refuse a sweet and still be presented with it, and with the great expectation of your satisfaction.
I have been invited to the headquarters of the Atomic Bomb Casualty
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