The Electrical Field (3 page)

I ran into the field. Seized, I wanted to be seized. Like that girl, like my Sachi was, instantly and firmly. I ran until my heart was pounding, but still I felt shallow and light.
Shot twice. In the chest.
I touched myself there; the beat was slowing. I held out my hand but it was steady.

I found myself at the feet of the giant, where Sachi had stood, among the weeds. Cool and dry. I leaned and the cold metal shocked me at my hip. I held the rail and squeezed. Yards away, smoke spiralled up. I could not mistake the acrid smell from the grass, how something that is moist with life held in it smells when it burns. Suddenly children swarmed the south end of the field. In the distance, the middle-school bell rang. I ran to the spot of smoke and ground my heel over Sachi’s stub of cigarette and the smouldering blades. The children were calling out to one another, rushing in as I backed away; quickly I returned to my porch.

I stepped inside the screen door in time to hear Papa’s
faint wail.
Sa, sa, sa.
A lulling sound that brought me back to my life. I was not Chisako. No matter how many times I had wished it. Nor was I that girl pining for her special friend. I took a last look at the sky through the screen, and the flood of schoolchildren, like gulls come in from the lake when it starts to rain. The sky was blue as ever, with white puffy dashes. As I tried to keep Papa’s call at bay, I kept seeing those dashes in blue, a ghost’s hoary eyebrows raised at me. Whose, I could not say.

I went into the kitchen to prepare lunch. I noticed that the clock on the stove already said 12:16. No wonder Papa was wailing for his lunch. The school bell must have gone off late.

“Chotto matte,” I called up to Papa. Just a minute. I heard my own voice, cheery almost, forgetful. Steady. There with my tray at the doorway. Then Chisako came to me again, the thought of her, and I had to set it down. Chisako. Dead. I’d have to say it to myself aloud, to make myself understand.

Some time later, I sat down to rest on the chesterfield for a moment or two; I did not go to my window. I noticed the newsprint that stained my fingertips, the pitch that had not come off through all the chores of washing and wiping and dusting I’d got on with. I marvelled at that, the consolation of my quiet life, the getting on: my calm. My grief, oddly removed from myself.

For I had long ago understood that you had to live in the midst of things to be affected, in the swirl of the storm, you might say. And once you did, only then could you be for ever changed. You couldn’t simply sit and watch, imagining from
time to time how such-and-such would feel, would be, what happened to others and not to you.

I hadn’t spoken to Chisako in a long while, or so it seemed. It felt as though months had passed, and yet it could only have been days, perhaps not even a week. I had not said what I would have wanted to be my last words to her.

S
TUM CAME HOME A
little later than usual that evening. I’d read that newspaper over and over, searching for clues, but nothing had come of it. Even the air was staler in the house, the way I could imagine the inside of an airplane, though I’d never been in one. Stum must have been sitting in the living-room for several minutes before I realized he was there. He was still sitting, staring at nothing, when I came in to tell him dinner was ready. At dinner, he began to mash the beans between his teeth.

“You cooked them too much,” he said, frowning. “And the rice.” He let the grains drop from his chopsticks.

“You were late coming home,” I said, calmly taking the dishes away. He groaned and pushed his plate back. The clatter of our two dinner plates against one another sounded more hollow than usual.

“You heard?” His voice popped out then, seemed almost
to disappear. I nodded and continued clearing. As I bent over him, I noticed the tiniest feather on his shirt collar, and it took my breath away; I felt it furry and sodden in my throat, blocking my passages. I reached down and flicked it off.

Stum brought down Papa’s dishes after feeding him. I was watching the window of Yano’s house, the blue Pontiac still missing. As it grew dark, the light burning in their empty living-room seemed harsh, almost obscene. All across that one block of houses, drapes were modestly shut, cars in driveways, shelved for the evening, including the Nakamuras’.

“They won’t be back.” Stum’s voice came in a hush, and for a few seconds I was inside Yano’s empty living-room, alone with nobody home. Standing like this, we were both trespassers, peeping Toms. I stepped away nervously. Where were the police? Why hadn’t they come around yet?

“Nobody’s coming home to close them,” Stum said, meaning the drapes on the window.

“There aren’t any,” I replied. In four years Chisako had never hung drapes. Not that Stum noticed such things. Briskly I closed our curtains, leaving us in darkness. “They’ll be back.”

“If you say so.”

“He took them some place safe. Safe from whoever did this.”

“If you say so.” Stum flopped down onto the chesterfield.

“Stop it.” I punched the cushions beside him, smoothing out the creases.

“Whatever you say.” He slid to the end of the chesterfield, sifted into shadow. After a moment, he got up, shuffled
towards the kitchen, his lazy feet snagging the carpet. “What do I know?” he muttered over his shoulder.

I turned on the lamp. Eiji’s portrait on the end table was lit beneath it. My nii-san, my older brother; I was so much older than him now. He didn’t look himself tonight, his young smile seemed callous. A thought struck me.

“How would you know? Did you talk to him?” I moved to the doorway of the kitchen. “did you?”

Stum shook his head, his back to me.

“Did you speak to Yano?” I stepped in front of him as he tried to pass, munching peanuts.

He held his hands up to his face like a fence, his shoulders slinking down in that imbecilic way he had. “You know I didn’t. I don’t talk to that weirdo.” As I took my place at the window, he added: “He’s a kamikaze Jap.” He smiled, a vulgar smile, sucking in his lopsided pincushion face. “You know that.” He wheeled out to the backyard, screen door twanging like a sinew in my heart. My brother, a fool, the foolishness of my life. The cold slapped against me.

It was sometime later in the evening when I sensed Chisako there with me, floating through my house in her vibrant colours. I was relieved to feel her presence, as if it were a sign—of what, I didn’t know. I could see her now as she had been when she visited me in my home two, perhaps three weeks earlier.

It must have been those colours she wore, like flower bursts, that convinced the neighbours she was the real thing, from Japan. While I had my quiet browns and navies. On one or two occasions I saw hakujin men slow down on the
street just to watch her, to try to catch her eye. A true Japanese lady from a samurai family. That was what she told me, her lowly lady-in-waiting. That was what I was, but I didn’t mind. The Saitos were samurai too, but I kept that to myself, letting her have her moment. I knew what it meant to her, for all her nonchalance. That day, she wore a cherry-red scarf at her neck, less fine than her usual style—tie-dyed by her daughter, by Kimiko, she told me. There were rings inside rings on it, all bleeding into the centre, staining the white parts. It seemed to trick my eyes, the rings heaving with tremors, and I couldn’t decide whether the red was staining a white piece of cloth, or the white was bleaching out the red. Then, stupidly, I realized she was sobbing, and her shoulders were convulsing.

“Chisako, what is it?” I flapped around her, not daring to touch. “You’re tired,” I said. “I’ve kept you too long.” I glanced at the front door of my modest home, which I now so wanted empty, to myself. Her sobs were too messy and loud in my ears. She waved her hands in front, as if groping for a wall in the dark, the edge of things, and her crying subsided. It was then that I heard Papa’s low whine resume upstairs, the buzz of some rickety appliance. For once welcome.

“No, no.” She shook her head, and a strand fallen out of her bun caught between her teeth—that thick nihonjin hair, strong as dental floss. In a second it snapped. “Asako,” she said, grasping my name tightly in her mouth, not wanting to let it go. As if it were the first time, the last time she would say it. “No, no,” she repeated. All I could do was stare out my window at the towers glinting in the afternoon sun, as Chisako began sobbing again. I urged her to sit down.

“It’s him,” she said. “Yano.” Even she, his wife, called him that. Not Masashi. Not Masa. “Hidoi hito,” she whispered, squeezing more tears from her eyes. “He’s a monster.” She groaned, clutching her left side, and bowed her head in pain.

“What is it, Chisako?” To my surprise, I felt tears in my own eyes; I shed them as if they belonged to a stranger, not knowing whom they were for, or why. When she saw my wet eyes, Chisako’s lips curled into a smile. “You are so kind,” and again she said my name, this time with tenderness. She moved closer to me on the chesterfield, as if wanting to whisper in my ear, though we were alone. I was about to assure her of that when her dainty fingers began to loosen the blouse tucked inside her skirt. I watched, unable to look away.

“Last night, when he came home, he was crazy. Hidoi hito,” she repeated. “Look.” She lifted her blouse and her fingers, yellowy-white at the tips, the nails barely tinged with blue, spidered over her ribs. The skin was white, pale as snow; it took my breath away. There were only faint marks where the band of her bra had bitten her skin. The orb of one mesh-covered breast hung over it, full for a nihonjin woman, I couldn’t help thinking. She heaved a sigh. “Well?” she said, suddenly impatient. I looked again over that paleness, and saw nothing, no blemish, no scar, no bruise or discoloration. I blinked, waiting, hoping for some sign. I murmured some noise, something, and she dropped her blouse like a curtain, those dainty fingers tucking it back in. She glanced at me, then turned away.

“Don’t worry. It’s not as painful as it looks,” she said, now quite matter-of-fact.

“I see.” I was about to offer her green tea when she sank back into the chesterfield. Limp. Not like her.

“Don’t worry yourself over me, Saito-san,” she said sharply. Then, soft and low, she added: “I know what I have to do.” That was so like her, to be harsh one minute, then kind the next: cold and hot. She looked down at the high-heeled shoes she hadn’t wanted to leave at my door, stared at them, digging their soiled pointy toes into my carpet. “I’ll leave him. I don’t care what anyone says.” Something must have shown on my face, for she smiled. “It’s all right, Saito-san. I know people say waru-guchi about Yano, even the children say bad things. The Nakamuras. Maybe your brother too. The people who never come to his redress meetings. All he does is talk about the war and the camps when they just want to forget. They think he’s crazy, I know.” A thought seemed to dawn on her. “But you couldn’t stand it either, could you? That’s why you chose to be on your own, isn’t it, Saito-san?” She didn’t wait for my response. “You’re brave, Saito-san. Kashi-koi, smart, ne?”

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t true, I wasn’t brave at all. I hadn’t chosen. What had I made of myself?

Chisako had made herself a beauty. Had grown into one, miraculously. She hadn’t been one in the beginning. When she first came, she was plain, almost as plain as me. To see her, I didn’t feel so badly about myself. Slowly it happened. It wasn’t difficult to put your finger on, like some changes. It was little more than a year ago, when she took a part-time job in the mail-order department of some manufacturing company. She withheld bits of information from me, like the company name, where she took the bus to three
afternoons a week, what precisely she did there; from the first day, it was to be her secret life. I dared ask if it was nihonjin she worked for, but “Oh, no, Saito-san,” she replied, with a touch of disdain I could not mistake. Pinning her hair in an upsweep, her black, black hair that had no grey. Dabbing white powder to her face, red lipstick and black eyeliner. At first it seemed too dramatic, to see her standing at the bus stop at noon in our little suburban neighbourhood. But I grew used to it, and the makeup that seemed to float over her features soon melded into them: her skin grew paler, her eyes more slanted and round, her hair a lacquered black. Little by little there were more changes. The hand cupping her mouth when she laughed, the downcast eyes, the dainty steps. I found it irritating, even laughable, in my living-room. But one day I saw her out on the street. She’d stopped to look at something, and the way she held her head just so, her bony white neck showing with her coat open, even in winter. Seeing her that time, I thought to myself that she didn’t belong here at all.

When I looked at my own face in the mirror, I found I could no longer bear it. My faults glared back at me: my eyes hidden and small, my mouth pinched and drooped. My plain self had grown ugly even as Chisako had blossomed. In my daily routine, I could not help watching my body as if it were apart from me, growing ugly and growing old: my stubby hands passing Papa’s yellowed sheets through the wringer, the crêpy pull of skin on my forearms when I reached into the high kitchen cupboard. I took baths in the dark to avoid seeing the changes happening to me. My thickening toenails, the short hairs that fell from my head to the
bathroom floor, more and more, some a wiry white. I was past the age for long hair, and it was now too thin. I no longer wondered, even in my most capricious moments, what man might touch my skin that was becoming dark and rough. Like nori, I laughed bitterly to myself; I was shrivelling to dried seaweed. And yet, seeing those men watch Chisako, I imagined how I might disgrace myself.

That day, Chisako paused in her sobbing and looked up; her makeup melted away to show skin almost as flawed as mine, and her eyes swam through, pink at the rims, and black and small as minnows in her face.

“What is it, Chisako?” I asked gently, though I’d wanted to push her out of my sight, to the bathroom, to fix herself up. Instead, she went to my living-room window, to my chair there. I stood at her shoulder as the light poured in, seeing through her eyes what I saw each day. My clear view of the houses on the other side of the field, including her own with its gaping front. I felt exposed, felt a small panic at being discovered. Afraid that Chisako might, in spite of being preoccupied with her own worries, grasp the little life spent here at my window, day after day, with only the comings and goings of others, of herself, to entertain me. Yet I was relieved that someone else might know, might perceive the worst of me. I did not mind if it was her. Papa may have made a noise then, crying out to be changed, but I ignored it, as Chisako graciously did.