THAT SIDE
Once in a while I sweat into the sheets dreaming that I've been found out here and am about to get canned. So I keep watering down the content, but that becomes boring, trying to spin a web around what actually needs to be blurted out (good at watering and spinning. better at blurting.) We'll call him Eddy and her Uli and we won't talk about what is done for bread. Better yet, we'll just leave Uli out of it. She's the one and only, and that's all that needs be said.
**********
On April 15, 1945, the neighborhood my grandmother lived in was firebombed. She was sixteen, already orphaned, and apprenticed to her aunt who taught tea ceremony in Tokyo. This aunt, who was only distantly related, had no children of her own, and had plucked Aya at the age of nine from her desperately poor parents in the countryside, in the north.
Aya's parents made tofu and lots of children, seven of whom survived. I asked her why the rich aunt chose her, and she says without hesitation that it was because she was the smartest. Aya's parents had borrowed so much money from Aunt Sue (pronounced Su-eh) they couldn't say no, and they believed they would be giving their daughter a better life.
Somewhere I wrote down how this once affluent family lost all their wealth, but I forget the details. Had something to do with the Ten-Ri religion. An honored son went off to war in China, and the priests promised his safe return for a bundle of money. He came home safely, so the next time he had to go off to war, the family gave an even bigger bundle of money. Then he disappeared or was killed, but the family couldn't let go. It dwindles down to the circumstance of Aya's father having to work for pennies in the same mines that his grandfather owned, and dying young with black lungs.
When Aya left with Aunt Sue, she has no idea she was going for good. She'd been told that she was going to visit Tokyo, and she was excited. Aunt Sue owned five houses, and had what would have been an unconventional lifestyle for the time. She never married, had lovers, and filled her house with luxuries from different parts of the world obtained from her brother who was captain of a ship.
She had the first Singer sewing machine imported to Japan, and had taught the Empress's ladies in waiting how to use it. I think the latter detail is an exaggeration; you can't tell with family stories. Grandmother Aya is honest to a fault and rigorous as steel, but my mother just makes things up when she can't remember, and it's my mother who translates to me. For example, on a previous telling of the story, the ship's captain was Aunt Sue's lover. Then last summer Grandma Aya had to correct my Mom. The captain of the ship was Aunt Sue's brother, and he went down with it in the Genkai strait when it was torpedoed during the "Chugoku War", the last war with China. Aya was ten at the time.
All five houses burned to the ground while my grandmother and Aunt Sue huddled with a mass in the gymnasium of a school. My grandmother says she was sure they were going to die.
I have to write down all the questions I still have.
Once in a while I sweat into the sheets dreaming that I've been found out here and am about to get canned. So I keep watering down the content, but that becomes boring, trying to spin a web around what actually needs to be blurted out (good at watering and spinning. better at blurting.) We'll call him Eddy and her Uli and we won't talk about what is done for bread. Better yet, we'll just leave Uli out of it. She's the one and only, and that's all that needs be said.
**********
On April 15, 1945, the neighborhood my grandmother lived in was firebombed. She was sixteen, already orphaned, and apprenticed to her aunt who taught tea ceremony in Tokyo. This aunt, who was only distantly related, had no children of her own, and had plucked Aya at the age of nine from her desperately poor parents in the countryside, in the north.
Aya's parents made tofu and lots of children, seven of whom survived. I asked her why the rich aunt chose her, and she says without hesitation that it was because she was the smartest. Aya's parents had borrowed so much money from Aunt Sue (pronounced Su-eh) they couldn't say no, and they believed they would be giving their daughter a better life.
Somewhere I wrote down how this once affluent family lost all their wealth, but I forget the details. Had something to do with the Ten-Ri religion. An honored son went off to war in China, and the priests promised his safe return for a bundle of money. He came home safely, so the next time he had to go off to war, the family gave an even bigger bundle of money. Then he disappeared or was killed, but the family couldn't let go. It dwindles down to the circumstance of Aya's father having to work for pennies in the same mines that his grandfather owned, and dying young with black lungs.
When Aya left with Aunt Sue, she has no idea she was going for good. She'd been told that she was going to visit Tokyo, and she was excited. Aunt Sue owned five houses, and had what would have been an unconventional lifestyle for the time. She never married, had lovers, and filled her house with luxuries from different parts of the world obtained from her brother who was captain of a ship.
She had the first Singer sewing machine imported to Japan, and had taught the Empress's ladies in waiting how to use it. I think the latter detail is an exaggeration; you can't tell with family stories. Grandmother Aya is honest to a fault and rigorous as steel, but my mother just makes things up when she can't remember, and it's my mother who translates to me. For example, on a previous telling of the story, the ship's captain was Aunt Sue's lover. Then last summer Grandma Aya had to correct my Mom. The captain of the ship was Aunt Sue's brother, and he went down with it in the Genkai strait when it was torpedoed during the "Chugoku War", the last war with China. Aya was ten at the time.
All five houses burned to the ground while my grandmother and Aunt Sue huddled with a mass in the gymnasium of a school. My grandmother says she was sure they were going to die.
I have to write down all the questions I still have.
