Gaia Girls Way of Water Page 5

  “Kazuki-san,” the old man continued, directing his resonant voice to Ojisan. He started speaking slowly, but then sped up. Miho couldn’t pull out any words she knew, but she knew he was talking about her because as he spoke, he looked away from Ojisan and fixed his gaze on her. When he was done, he turned to the woman behind the counter and uttered a few more words. Then he sat back down and nodded his head as if to say, “There! I’m done speaking. You may all go back to what you were doing.”

  When they left the store, Miho asked Ojisan what the man said.

  “He no say anything important.”

  “If it isn’t important, you can tell me,” Miho countered.

  Ojisan stopped walking and gave her a strange look. He began to pat his jacket, seeking his cigarettes, but then stopped. His hand dropped to his side in a defeated way and he looked out over the water, squinting against the lowering sun.

  “He say, ‘You Ama.’”

  11

  I Am Gaia

  It was all Miho could do to hold her tongue as they walked back. Ojisan didn’t seem inclined to elaborate on “you Ama.” Instead, he handed her a bag of rice and showed her where the rice maker was kept. This was something Miho knew how to do. She had been making rice since she was a little kid. She watched Ojisan stir-fry the vegetables he had bought and heated miso, a type of broth that they sipped out of small bowls. They sat on the floor at a low table and ate in silence.

  Three times during their meal Miho asked what Ama was, but Ojisan remained silent. After Miho had cleaned the dishes and put them away, she smelled his cigarette smoke coming from outside. She followed the trail and found Ojisan across the road, standing on a large rock, looking out toward the blackness of the night sea.

  “Ojisan,” Miho began, but he held up his hand.

  “Come,” he said and set off down the road again.

  Miho walked behind him, her mind popping up questions the whole time. They followed the road until it rolled downward and curved toward the backside of the hill, toward Ago Bay. Ago-wan, Miho corrected her thought.

  Ojisan stopped and lit another cigarette, then pointed across the water. Miho could just make out the smattering of islands that dotted the bay. “In past, this water make wealth for Goza. This water and Ama—Ama are women.” He stopped and took a deep pull on his stinky stick. The glow from the tip lit his face and showed the creases around his eyes.

  “You Obasan—grandmother—she was Ama. Her Obasan too. Ama are women of the sea.”

  Miho felt like her heart had stopped. Women of the sea? Did they live in the sea? Were they some kind of mermaid?

  Ojisan continued. “Ama dive with just breath.” He patted his chest. “They find the best treasures in the sea: pearls and awabi. Ama only Japanese women to make lots of money!” He smiled a little. “Ama also find good dinner: oyster, seaweed, crab. My mother such good Ama.”

  Even in the dark, Miho could see a deep sadness wash over him. He continued to talk. “Not safe, being Ama.” He turned and looked down at Miho. “There shark, there dive sickness, some Ama don’t come home.”

  Miho waited. And waited. Ojisan spoke again, quietly, “Haha (Miho knew this meant “my mother”) was Ama sea took.”

  Miho started feeling cold all over. Her mother had never talked about family too much. She only said that her parents had passed on before she met Miho’s father and Miho had never thought to ask for more information. Now, on the eve of the festival of the dead, O-bon, thoughts of her unknown Japanese family began to crowd her head.

  Ojisan turned toward Miho, the glow from his cigarette glinting off small tears at the corners of his eyes. However, he smiled broadly for the first time since Miho had met him and patted the top of her head. “You and I same, Miho. No mother, no father.” He stamped out his cigarette. “You lucky, no sister.” And with that he turned and walked home.

  Miho lay on her futon, listening to the endless rhythm of the waves caressing the beach and turning over Ojisan’s story yet again. She turned it around and around, looking at her family on one side, the sea on the other, her mother, her uncle and even her father. Did he know about Ama? Was my mother Ama? That old man said I’m Ama.What does that mean?

  It could have been all the questions. It could have been jet lag. Either way, Miho could not sleep. She could only think of her grandmother, her mother and the ocean—the great mystery that seemed to tie them all together.

  Miho finally slipped from her futon and tiptoed to the kitchen to get a glass of water. She only wanted to smell the sea air. She really had no plans to do anything else. She went out to the veranda and sat cross-legged on the dark wood. In the dark, there were no children squealing, no radios playing, just the music of the Pacific Ocean reaching this Japanese shore. This might seem like a strange place, but at least the music is the same!

  That thought made Miho feel a little better. She tipped her glass up and found it empty! Her drinking water was now standing beside her, tall and shimmering; not spilled, but holding the shape of a drinking glass!

  Miho looked at the empty glass in her hand to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing! She got to her feet and began backing up from the oddity before her. The column of water began to quiver and shift and form itself into a new shape.

  The water now had short legs, a long tail, a long lithe body, short ears and quivering snout. When one of the short front legs raised and began to wave, Miho knew what she was looking at…the otter!

  Miho took another step back, right off the edge of the veranda! She landed with a thud and quickly got to her hands and knees. She raised her eyes just over the edge to see if the weird water was still doing otter-like things.

  Not only was the weird otter-water still there, it had dropped to all fours and was scampering toward her! Miho scooted backward faster than a crab. The water ran right off the edge of the veranda, balled up, and began to roll toward the front gate!

  Miho’s mouth was hanging wide in disbelief. The water flattened out and squeezed right under the gate. Miho jumped to her feet and ran to follow it! The silvery ball was now rolling like a liquid tumbleweed down the road. At the corner it paused long enough to rise up, assume its otter shape…and wave.

  When Miho closed in on it, the water balled back up and began to roll down the hill toward the beach, toward the dunes…toward the sea! Miho ran faster to keep up with it.

  Across a parking lot, over a curb and out into the sand the ball rolled. It zipped up the dune and Miho scrambled on all fours trying keep up. When she finally reached the top, the ball of water was gone.

  Miho scanned the wide beach. The wind stirred and Miho shivered, feeling the hair on the back of her neck rise. There it was, this time for real, fur and all—the otter. As before, on the day Miho would rather forget, the sleek otter stood on its hind legs. As before, it waved its paw.

  Miho always thought that if she hadn’t followed the otter, she might have met the same fate as her parents. She trembled with that thought. She desperately wanted to be with them, even if it was at the bottom of the sea or in the belly of a shark.

  Without thinking about how absurd it was to talk to an otter, Miho yelled, “This is all your fault!” She now shook with anger, remembering the puttering of the motor, taking her parents away as she, the stupid daughter, turned to follow the otter.

  “You are right,” the otter said, and dropped to all fours.

  It talks! Miho took a staggering step back and slipped down the back of the dune. She slid a ways on her bottom, sand piling up in her pajama shorts. The otter trotted along the top of the dune. Again, it rose up on its hind legs. Miho could see the moonlight reflected in its small dark eyes.

  “Oh dear,” the otter said. It sounded like the laughter of the little pipers that ran up and down the beach. “You will need to be much more careful if we are to get anything done.”

  Miho was at a loss for words, Japanese or otherwise.

  “Come,” the otter said, using Ojisan
’s command. It turned and disappeared over the dune.

  Miho got up, wondering if she was having a futon-induced dream. She scrambled up and over the dune and saw the otter jumping along through the deep sand to the water’s edge. Miho followed.

  “This is a special place, where the earth meets the sea,” the otter said; its voice had a lightness, a bounce to it, like a sparkling stream.

  Miho remembered her anger and placed both her hands on her hips, “This is all your fault! Why? Why didn’t you let me go with my parents?” The question seemed to rip out of her. It was a question that had been digging at her heart for months, but she hadn’t said it out loud.

  The waves, which had been lapping with a gentle rhythm at the sand, rose up. The otter jumped back as a dark hill of water crested over into thick white foam. Miho ignored the water swirling around her ankles.

  “Why?” the otter said. Again, it sounded like Ojisan, a bit perturbed at being questioned. “You chose! That is why. That is how it is. Every day some things live, some things die. That day you lived; your parents died. I did not do this. I simply came to you. And, I must say, it has taken me a while to find you again!”

  Miho was beyond mad, she was furious! She was so enraged that her ears filled with a rushing sound and, without thinking, she kicked toward the otter, sending wet sand and water flying at it.

  The otter shook hard, like a dog. The moon glinted off the sand and water flying off its thick fur. Miho kicked again and searched for words to express the deep loss she had been carrying, like her own ocean of grief.

  The otter shook again and said, “Okay, if you want to play water games.”

  The sea around Miho’s feet drained away. Along the whole shoreline, the sea retreated as if it were running away from the bizarre scene of a ten-year old arguing with an otter. Miho stared at the newly bared sand and the plethora of creatures flopping and hopping, wondering where their world went. Then Miho realized what the retreating sea meant.

  She only had time to look up from her feet and see the moon shining through the crest of an enormous wave. It was beautiful and terrible. Miho had bodysurfed waves as long as she could remember. Her body knew what to do when faced with one too big to handle—she dove.

  She dove into the monster and began to kick hard, hoping to kick her way through its power and emerge on the other side. But this wave was much too strong. It pulled Miho up into its foaming, forward edge. Miho felt the forward-pitching energy and thought, into the washing machine.

  She was lifted and dumped into the swirling, churning madness of this wave. It pushed her against the bottom and, just as a washing machine churns clothes, turned her over and over. Miho held her breath and waited to feel the bottom so she could push upward. This was not the first time she had been dumped by a wave.

  But her breath began to run out and still she was being ground and spun on the grit and gravel of the shore. The big wave rolled her all the way up to the base of the dunes and then left her, gasping and dazed. The wave pulled back and a smaller wave crashed and ran up to Miho as if, on behalf of the otter, to say, “There! You kick me, I’ll kick you back!”

  Miho sat up, pushing her hair out of her face and feeling utterly defeated. The ocean resumed its gentle, rhythmic lapping. The otter was there beside her, dark eyes glinting out from the light-colored fur. “Are you ready to listen now?” the otter asked. “This is harder for me than you.”

  Miho wondered how that could be, considering that she was wet and scraped and exhausted and the otter looked just fine. “Who are you? What do you want?” Miho asked.

  “Tonight, I will tell you who I am, but as for what I want, that will have to wait.” The otter began to waddle in a slow circle around the bedraggled Miho.

  “I am Gaia. I am the whole of the earth. I am every rock and raindrop. I am the wind and the waves. Do you understand?” The otter paused its circular pacing to look at Miho.

  Miho said, “Watashi wa wakarimasen.” (I do not understand)

  The otter sighed and kept walking, looking at the sand and speaking in a voice that sounded like the endless rising and falling of the tides. “I am Gaia. I am the very sand you sit on and the air you breathe. I am the great sum of all the parts.”

  Miho shook her head, trying to make space for such a statement. She was exhausted, partly from her ride in the rogue wave and partly from allowing her grief to swell to the surface.

  “Listen,” Gaia said. Her voice had a glint and a gleam, a moonbeam tripping across the water. “Listen. It is the way you will learn. Listen to your teachers.”

  And there, so low it was mostly a vibration Miho felt through the wet sand, came a single note of whale song.

  Miho jumped to her feet, eyes scanning the place where the black of the sea met the black of the sky. As expected, a great “whooooosh” came across the water. Miho saw the rising steam where the hot breath of a great whale met the cool of the night. A moment later a large, broad tail showed itself above the water.

  Miho was wild to be able to see better. What whale is this? A right? A humpback?

  In her mind, Gaia’s voice, sounding like the very sparkles made by the tips of waves in the sunlight said, “You still have family. Where your heart is, so is your family. They are calling you. I am asking you—come, woman of the sea, and help me.”

  12

  O-bon

  Miho stood shivering in the moonlight and waited for the whale to blow again. But it didn’t. Miho began to wonder whether she had heard a whale at all. The colder she became, the more she wondered if she hadn’t imagined this whole strange episode.

  She climbed over the dune and began to make her way back to the house where Ojisan slept, hopefully unaware she had ever left. At her back, the ocean continued its fine, measured lapping. Perhaps it too was unaware that she had ever come and gone.

  Outside the house, Miho began to brush the sand from her body and wondered how she could possibly get back into her bed, futon, like this. She decided to concentrate her efforts on her feet so as to not dirty the floor. Once inside, she went directly to the shower.

  The warm, fresh water felt as if it were washing the pain of the evening down the drain. She didn’t think of her parents. She didn’t think of Gaia. She didn’t think. She let the water clean her and clear her.

  BANG! BANG! BANG! “Miho!” Ojisan was pounding on the door! “Miho! Why you up? Why you shower?”

  Her first thought was to yell back, “No Why!” But her second thought was better.

  “Jet lag!” she yelled toward the door.

  There was a small space of silence. She could almost hear Ojisan muttering in Japanese. Miho had an image of him sleepily patting his pajamas, looking for cigarettes, and she smiled.

  “You go sleep more!” Ojisan yelled through the door. “Tomorrow O-bon—need sleep!”

  Miho finished up and climbed back into her futon. What would O-bon be like? It was a festival for the dead, but who wanted to be festive about such a thing? Miho only had time to turn that thought over once, before she fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

  Ojisan woke her again by shaking her foot. “Miho. Miho. Be up, we need to prepare for O-bon.” He left her room.

  Miho dressed quickly and found Ojisan hastily setting out breakfast. “After breakfast,” Ojisan said in Japanese, “we clean house and then we go get our family.” Miho was sure she misunderstood, but decided to follow his lead instead of asking why.

  Throughout the rest of the morning, Ojisan and Miho dusted the corners, polished wood and shook out every tatami mat in the house. As she cleaned, she tried to convince herself that the jet lag and the new home and the new uncle were making her a little loopy. She didn’t really have a water fight with a talking otter—that was definitely a crazy thing to believe. She must have dreamt the whole episode. She tried to convince herself, but the scrapes on her elbows, knees, and palms were no dream.

  In the afternoon, Ojisan went out behind the house. Across the small, negle
cted garden sat a low shed. He began to dig through it and Miho could hear what she was sure were Japanese curses. He pulled out what looked like a wooden tub and a sort of short metal crowbar. He handed the bar to Miho and went back inside with the wooden tub on his shoulder.

  He placed the tub on the floor under the shelf in the corner that had her grandmother’s picture on it. He motioned for Miho to hand him the metal bar.

  “What are these for, Ojisan?” Miho asked, hoping that it wasn’t too much like a why question.

  “This,” he motioned toward the tub,“is oke. And this,” he waved the bar, “is tegane.” He mimed poking and prying and tossing something into the tub. “Okasan’s Ama tools.”

  Miho wanted more details, but he was already up and off to the rear of the house. He came back with a small case. From it he pulled two medals, hanging from short, brightly colored ribbons.

  “These from Chichi (father).” He laid them on the small shelf.

  “Why are you putting them out?” Miho asked, her curiosity pushing away the hesitancy to ask why. Ojisan didn’t seem to mind.

  “The dead come back for O-bon. Must put out the things they loved in life.” He headed to the kitchen area with no more explanation.

  Miho didn’t hesitate. She went to her room and pulled the portable CD player, the CDs and the big photo album from her backpack—her mother’s recordings and her father’s pictures. She stood for a moment, staring at the objects, amazed that this was the way she could hold her parents. She swallowed the tears that threatened and went back to the main room.

  Ojisan had brought out a small table and set it next to the items. He returned to the kitchen. Miho took her parents’ things and laid them on the floor next to the oke. Ojisan came back with two sets of bowls, cups and haishi, chopsticks.

  He saw Miho staring down at her objects and went back to the kitchen. He returned with two more place settings. He poured sake into each of the four cups and rice into each bowl. Then he carefully piled up some tangerines and placed a wrapped sugary treat at each place setting.