The Electrical Field (5 page)

I watched her from my window as she waded into the field. For an instant I thought about calling Keiko to say her daughter had been with me, in case she was worried, as I’d be, wondering why Sachi was late. But Keiko wouldn’t like it, not one bit, me knowing more about her daughter than she, even for an hour one afternoon.

Sachi dawdled through the field that day, stopping to gaze up at an electrical tower gleaming in the light. She slid
her hand along the rail, along its edge. If Keiko could see, she’d be yanking the girl away from the tower, back home, disgusted with her brooding and dawdling.

The memory of her in the field, looking a little lost, looking everywhere but back at me to find her way, stabbed at me. I kept telling myself that it was Tam and Kimi who were in danger, not her, but I couldn’t help fearing that something was happening to her, at this very moment, when I couldn’t be with her. I couldn’t help telling myself that if I had kept Sachi close, these terrible things would never have happened—a ridiculous thought that made no sense. My living-room, where I always waited for her visits, felt empty without her; even the sound of Papa upstairs became a comfort I’d had and lost: a bridge that once held my weight, now collapsed. I felt useless.

Slowly I made my way up to his room. He was sleeping deeply, his breathing clear and even with the drops Dr. Honda had prescribed over the telephone last night. “You fuss too much, Saito-san,” the doctor had said. “He’s old.” I sat down on his bed, careful not to wake him. I always stood, bustling around him with something to do; I never sat. The mattress had grown too soft, like sponge-cake. He shifted and groaned and I sprang up. I would not want him to find me like this. But he slept on.

My chest began to ache and I realized I was holding my breath. This room made everything stop.

In the bathroom, I sat down on the cold seat under the open window. My shikko came out slow and warm, a deep yellow almost like green tea, and took for ever—a relief I’d
withheld from myself all morning, until I’d finished my chores. Downstairs there was a banging on the screen door, then Sachi calling me. I looked in quickly on Papa; I shut his door partway, then hurried down. At the sight of her lurking outside the screen door, some feeling welled up in me—gratitude, relief, I wasn’t sure what, but I was happy to see her. I was careful, though; she’d detest me if I let it show. She seemed fine, rested even, and she was wearing a little pink T-shirt with jeans. I let her in. Without the mesh between us, I saw that her eyes were actually puffy as though from too little sleep. But this time her face wasn’t stained with dirt or food. She smelled of soap; Keiko must have made her take a bath. She looked neat, but she was ticking away.

“Miss Saito.” Her eyes were black and searching.

“Sachi, you’re right,” I started to say, “Tam is fine, he’s—”

She stopped me cold. “I need you to take me in your car, Miss Saito. Right away.”

“My brother takes the car in the morning. You know that.” I chided her as if she should know my life, the smallest details of it, by rote. She stood there, aloof, tolerating me, without a word in answer. Cold to me. Cruel to me. She must have noticed something, my uncombed hair, my eyes; she seemed to soften. She was such an adult, the way she could change just like that, like Chisako in a way. Mask her feelings, her disdain for me; humour me for the moment. She tugged me close, knowing the effect that had. She drew me up to the screen door, as if to let me in on something.

“Miss Saito!” she hissed, wiggling a dirty fingernail at the driveway. There it was. I rarely saw it by day. It was
hideous, really, an eyesore, with rust spots that scabbed the fender. Sachi was wringing her hands.

“Miss Saito, your brother got in at two this morning and went right back out. He left with somebody in another car.” She said it like a little wind-up machine.

“How did you know?” My mind was clicking too but nothing engaged. Stum staying away all night, not calling. My sleeping straight through. Without the snap of the inside door lock to let me sleep once he got in from Sunday-night shift. The night passing with only Papa and me in the house. It was true: I hadn’t seen or heard Stum leave this morning. I’d only thought I had, out of habit.

“I was watching for Tam, and I saw. Can we go now, Miss Saito?” She tugged at me, the sleeve of Mama’s good mohair sweater. “Please? I’m sure your brother’s okay.”

“Where?”

“You know.” But she didn’t move.

“For how long?” I glanced up the stairs. Sachi waited several seconds before answering, so we could both listen for the quiet rhythm that came from up there.

“Half-hour, that’s all.” Her wilted mouth turned up at the ends but it wasn’t a smile. I scurried upstairs. Behind me I heard “He’ll survive.”

She sat in the passenger seat, her flat shiny forehead rising a little above the dashboard, her eyes darting again. She was small, like Tamio and Kimi. Sitting there, punching her fists on her legs as she watched the streets pass. Chiisai. I saw the curve of Chisako’s lips saying it.

Sachi had brought me away from my place at the window,
out of my routine. Made me do what she’d wanted. Outside here, I was lost. I saw myself wandering by the feet of those towers, back and forth for years to come, until they took them down. No Yano to trail after me, no Sachi to watch after. And now, no Chisako to come to me with her dramatic stories. What would I do with myself? The thought of Stum being gone even for a night made me queasy with panic. Where did he go? Who was his friend? Hadn’t I known all along that Stum would one day leave? Even he wasn’t afraid not to come home.

I hadn’t driven in years. But this I could manage. Seeing the world pass on either side, my foot resting steadily on the pedal. I remembered that I liked driving, keeping between this line and that, watching for signs that warned you what was ahead. I held the steering wheel firmly at ten and two o’clock; it felt good in my hands, familiar. I pulled out to the concession road and the electrical field slid past. In my rearview mirror, the towers were shrinking into toys. Mackenzie Hill loomed ahead to the right.

“I’m sure he’s all right,” I said again. “His father must have taken him and his sister some place safe.” I avoided saying Yano’s name. “Soon the police will find—”

“Faster!” She pounded on the dashboard. “No, wait!” Sachi bolted up in her seat, twisting. “That way.” She pointed right, to the gravel road that led to the hill through a flat field. I overshot it and had to back up.

“How could you miss it?” she cried as we bumped along. She gripped the dashboard with her little fingers. I’d wanted to miss it. I’d wanted to go on just like this, rolling past, behind the haze of the windshield, so that no news, good or
bad, could ever reach us. At least until we were safely past the hill, that dark lump of coal on the smooth sky.

“This isn’t going to help.” I heard the pleading in my voice, the tinge of desperation. We were slowing down.

“Keep going! Keep going!”

My foot was now dangling off the pedal, I saw that. I saw my shoes, Mama’s old shoes that I wore out of stinginess. My ankles were thickening, my fluids pooling, Dr. Honda had said. He said I couldn’t stop it, I could stand on my head and it wouldn’t make them slim again. The car grew sluggish, everything sliding down.

“Speed up!” She pounded the dashboard.

“Urusai!” I muttered, coming to a full stop. Nuisance. I should be doing my chores, I thought.

“Then go home. Where you belong!” She flew out the door. I called after her but she ran and ran towards the hill. She didn’t turn back and I could tell from the way she plunged her body into the wind, the way it grabbed her hair ragged, she didn’t care if I was watching and waiting, not this time. From this side of the hill I saw the ski lift, closed for the season, red needles stuck in the ground. I felt a shiver. Something bad. The girl running as she always was: away from Tom, from Keiko, away from me; to Tam, only to Tam, lashing her thin body with all her might. I didn’t want to follow, but I couldn’t let her go alone. I accelerated and, with the open door flapping, came up so close behind that I saw the workings of her shoulder blades beneath her shirt. I smelled the acrid smell that came from Mackenzie Hill from time to time; it was a hill made of garbage. It reminded me of another scent from long ago, of burning flesh.

“Sachi!” I slowed the car and stopped, but she kept running, even sped up. This time I pulled in front, stopped, and stepped out.

“Get in!” I shouted. Abruptly she marched up to the car and did as she was told.

We drove along the north-east side of the hill to where trees sprang up and thickened around an abandoned parking lot. The overgrown driveway came into sight yards ahead. She sat quietly panting beside me. I stopped and pulled her arms to me, rougher than I meant to be because I thought she’d resist, and I held out her hands. The criss-cross of scars took my breath away but there was no blood, no fresh cuts. The skin was dark in parts, brown and dull from not healing properly. Her hands looked weathered, old. She yanked them away. I thought of the game I’d seen children play with one another, palm to palm, sliding them away fast to slap the tops of one another’s hands. Squealing from the excitement of it, the violence.

“Satisfied?” she blurted. She balled up her hands and tucked them in her armpits. “Now go,” she ordered, as if she knew the place, had been here before.

I inched the car into the lot, branches scratching at its sides. The first time I’d driven right in. It was barely big enough for ten cars; the parking lines were long faded or ground in with dirt. We rolled over roots of trees that broke the asphalt like grasping fingers.

“Over there,” she said, pointing to the farthest edge. The trees fractured the light coming in. The ground was dappled where Sachi pointed, whitish in spots over the gravelly asphalt. She opened the car door and fresh air drifted in, a slow invasion.

How I longed to be back on my porch with Sachi, feeding her milk and cookies, whispering a harmless word in her ear. “There’s nothing here,” I said.

“What if Tam left something?” She raked her fingers in rows across her palms.

“Don’t be silly. Tam wasn’t here. Why would he—”

She slammed the door before I could say more, leaving me alone with my hasty words; alone in this private place, a forbidden place where too many things had happened. Who else had known about this spot? Only the boy and dog who’d found them, Chisako and her hakujin friend. Now the rest of the world. From a distance it was just a cluster of trees at the side of the hill; in winter it was an island frozen over. The trees drooped down now, the bushes curled in thickly, knit up the sky except for a circle at the very top. A place where the sun was kept out and the wind was buffered.

Sachi was tiptoeing carefully between two trees opposite one another, looking for something; the tattered ends of the yellow police ribbon trailed from their trunks waist-high. I was queasy thinking of Chisako, remembering the stretch of unmarked skin over her ribs she’d shown me that afternoon weeks ago, what I hadn’t seen. Whatever it had been, it was too late to know. She and her Mr. Spears were dead.

I didn’t want to know what had happened to them here that day. I’d warned her, I could hear myself telling Chisako, exactly what I’d dared to say. At the time worried that I sounded like an old busybody schoolteacher with no life of her own.

I looked down through the steering wheel I gripped; my feet were still perched on the pedals. Inside, the air felt close.
Through the dirty windshield I saw Sachi crouched low to the ground, her head twisted back with one eye masked by her hair; she stared straight at me. She wanted me to come to her, I knew. She needed my help, she wanted it. Without a word, she was asking me to. I didn’t know what she was looking for or why I had brought her here where Keiko never would, would not have let her out the door if she’d known. I looked back.
Yes, I’m coming.
I grabbed my handbag and fumbled for the door handle.

When I reached her she was crouched to examine a spot by her foot, a rust-coloured stain. She recoiled from my outstretched hand the tiniest bit, high-strung as ever. “Sachi?” My voice a whimper. All around the stain were overlapping footprints, even a dog’s paws stamped into the dirt-covered asphalt. In the early morning just three days ago the police had arrived, ambulance, newspapers, the boy with his dog, pointing, leading them in. There were traces of white powder sifted in with the dirt in no particular pattern. Sachi shuffled forward on her haunches, sniffing at the ground as the dog must have. I grabbed her elbow and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled back.

“You can’t do that to me!” She shook herself free, then snapped to the ground again. She dragged her finger across the stain, a delicate arrangement of dust that dispersed easily. I tried to grab her wrist but she sprang back. She held her finger in mid-air for a moment, then wiped it on her pants. I backed away. I didn’t know she could be like this, this possessed, this crazed.

“What are you doing? Stop it.”

“It’s her blood,” she said. “Tam’s mom.” I thought of the
black smudges on my fingertips from reading the paper the day of Chisako’s death, the greasiness that wouldn’t wash off.

“How do you know it wasn’t … her friend?”

“He came out the driver’s side.” She pointed a few yards off.

“We shouldn’t be here.” When I reached for her again, I noticed my hand was trembling.

“I’m not going.” She was peering through the trees and down at the footprints that trampled over and over themselves.

“I’ll leave without you!” I stamped my foot childishly but she ignored me, waiting out my tantrum, as I would hers. She rubbed her thumb and finger together, the finger she’d traced through Chisako’s dried blood. Why didn’t they clean things up? She terrified me but I couldn’t leave.

“I thought, of anybody, you’d understand,” she said, a quiet reproach, but there was panic underneath. “Because you’ve seen Tam and me.”

“I don’t know anything!” I snapped. I would not encourage these ideas of hers, this feverishness. Perhaps I was too harsh. I saw now how she was, how desperate for some clue to find Tam. I wanted to shush her, to take her scarred hands in mine and hold her, but that was not what she wanted. So instead I set down my handbag and slowly began searching the ground for something, anything, I didn’t know what, futile as it seemed. To show her I cared. She did the same, circling the spot where the bodies had lain, moving out wider and wider into the woods. We continued for some time, in silence, I afraid of what I’d see in the snarl of twigs and leaves and dirt. For I did know some of what went on in this place.