MICHAEL SEEMS RELIEVED, though he met Natsumi only once, five years ago at our wedding. He's told me how close he feels to her. Showing him the photographs of her from my childhood, I think how quickly we're no longer children ourselves, but wanting children of our own.
Natsumi looks directly at the camera, shielding her eyes from the sun. I am struck by her petite body, and her thick black hair pinned loosely. She's thirty-three and wears my outgrown clothes from summer camp; shorts, a blue and white T-shirt, and shoes with wedge heels to make her appear taller.
In another, taken when she visits me at camp a year later, Natsumi and I hold hands in front of a rowboat. Although I'm only thirteen, I am a head taller. The man holding the camera is Natsumi's boyfriend. A year later the boyfriend would return to Japan for an arranged marriage to another. Natsumi knew this but, in the photograph, her face is not unhappy, not a bit. The two of them spent the summer travelling through Quebec, crying when it came time to say goodbye.
"Arranged marriages are so stupid!" I said.
Natsumi replied patiently, "This is our way—the Japanese way." It would not be right to interfere with his young bride's happiness.
"But you love each other!" I exclaimed. "It isn't fair."
"This world not always fair," she answered. "Do you think life always fair?"
WE COULD BE GOING on a family outing, an August picnic. The three of us are exuberant. Natsumi looks older, her rich black hair grey now, though she still wears it pinned loosely. She has on a brilliant blue crepe dress that shimmers in the wind and, of course, shoes with wedge heels.
We've come to the park at Sandspit, a forty-five minute drive up the lake from where we live. The sun is hot, the sky clear, but the beach is nearly empty. Several families, probably people who live close by, are clustered together at one end on towels and blankets. Three or four children are building sand castles; other children run in and out of the water. Further on we pass an older couple in folding lawn chairs gazing at the mountains. As we walk along the shore, I stare at the box.
I've been reading about ceremonies: small rituals people perform at burials. I've thought about what we might say.
It has been over a year since we've had the box and I'm pregnant again, but not far along. As we sit on the shore listening to the loons call, I wonder if the child I'm carrying might someday play in this same place. Michael lays the box on the sand gently and looks at me. It's time to unwrap it.
First, the brown parcel paper, slowly removed. Underneath, a cardboard box. I'm disappointed; surely it should have been made of wood, something substantial.
A thin gold ribbon is tied on top. It pulls off easily. Inside, mounds of cotton stuffing stick to tiny white brittle pieces. I keep hoping to see ashes—but there aren't any ashes at all.
"What are these?" I ask.
Natsumi puts her hand into the box and takes some pieces from the bottom.
"Bones," she says, examining them. "My baby's bones must have been like this too."
I look at the tiny white pieces. Then it comes back, what she told me about her son. "There was no time, no time at all," she said. "Everyone was all mixed together, can you imagine? All mixed together in some cans and boxes." There'd been no time to mourn, or to identify. To prevent the spread of disease, the bodies had to be cremated as quickly as possible. Though some boxes were marked with the sites—schools, factories—where the dead were found, their names were unknown.
"Feel them. Rough, like sand." Natsumi holds the pieces out to me. "Now you can see it really was a baby."
All too real. I had planned to say a few words, something about love; something also about loss.
But now, seeing tiny shreds of bone, my words seem meaningless, abstract.
As the three of us take the tiny pieces in our hands, I scatter them in the water and watch everything disappear.
The box empty, we hold each other, then sit staring at the lake and mountains. Natsumi takes off her wedge-heeled shoes and wades into the water. I watch as a light breeze catches her dress.
Red Beads
"ALL MOTHERS WORRY, it's only natural," my mother assured me, as we rode home from the hospital. This, I suppose, was in response to my multiple worries—cracked nipples, not having enough milk, the baby choking in its sleep. We were marvelling at our both being mothers when I looked at my newborn daughter and exclaimed, "How beautiful she is!"
I heard my mother's distinct, "No, she's not."
Surprised, I turned around. My mother had taken a bright red ribbon from her pocket, and was wrapping it around Rose's tiny wrist.
"Your Grandma Eva," she said, "used to make me wear a string of red beads. She always said the evil eye was attracted to red, that the beads were a decoy. It would go after the beads and leave me alone."
"And when I was little, did I wear something red too?" I asked.
"Oh yes. And whenever anyone mentioned what a beautiful child you were," said my mother, "or how smart, I quickly put you behind me and said you weren't, in case the evil eye might hear and try to destroy you."
THE SUMMER I TURNED NINE I found out my Grandma Eva had cancer, and that the cancer had spread.
I remember being in my mother's bedroom before the funeral. As she put on a black dress she said for the first time in her life she felt truly alone.
I touched her on the shoulder. "You have me," I said. "You have Daddy and Grandpa."
"No darling, that's not what I mean. I took her for granted."
She was there in the hospital when my grandmother died.
"If only," my mother said, "I could have talked to her. I always wanted her to hug me. I never realized I should have put my arms around her."
I tried to picture my grandmother—she'd never laughed or smiled—but saw instead a toy she had given me. A red and white plastic chicken. You pressed down on the chicken and out came an egg.
THAT SUMMER MY GRANDFATHER MOVED from their tiny apartment in the city and came to live with us.
We were to host a party. In the morning I'd helped my mother prepare platters of pigs-in-the-blanket and dips from Lipton's onion soup mix and sour cream. Later, when guests began arriving, I found my grandfather in his chair under a tall oak at the edge of the yard.
"A good day to you, young miss."
He greeted me as usual, tipping an imaginary hat.
"Aren't you coming to the party?" I asked.
"It's all right," he said, "I'm quite happy here. You just run along."
"But grandpa," I said, "I'd rather be with you."
He bent over in his chair, picked up a smooth grey stone. Held it out in his hand.
"Julie, do you know what will melt even a heart of stone?" he asked.
I smiled: my grandfather believed in miracles. "Kooky" was what my father called him. That morning I'd woken up to their voices in the kitchen. Going downstairs, I heard my grandfather begin one of his stories. "Your grandpa lives in another world," my father said, turning to me with a sigh.
"I mean ‘stone' literally,"