Flash Non-Fiction

Kindergarten. Day one:

 

“Joshua Sensei! Joshua Sensei!”

“Oh! Hello!”

“Hello.”

“How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say, ‘How are you’. You say, ‘I’m happy!’ Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, you say, ‘I’m happy’!”

“I’m happy!”

“Yeah. Good job! One more time. How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say ‘How are you’, you say, ‘I’m happy! Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“Uh. Okay. Let’s try colors. What color is this?”

“Ba-roo”

“Good! Blue! What about this?”

“Led”

“Nice. Red! What about this?”

“Gu-leen.”

“Green. Awesome! Good job! Okay, see you!”

“See you.”

“Bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye.”

 

Avalanches and Poison Ivy

I am my father’s son.

Last year my father told me that he was in an avalanche. He said that he set it off on purpose in order to test his knowledge of avalanche safety. When he jumped down hard onto the top of a cornice, it calved. He went down with it. In the tumult, he practiced what he had learned about surviving an avalanche. He back peddled his arms, like a swimmer, kept his head high, and tried to stay above the wet snow that poured down the mountain. When it was finished he was buried up to his neck, with one arm free. He dug himself out of the snow, looked up at the slope he just ridden down, then at the avalanche that he had caused, and assessed the event. Yes, he thought, I guess I do know about avalanche safety.

I have often returned from climbing at the boulders in the forest with a rash on my ankles and arms. It bubbles, turns a light, mostly inoccuous pink and spreads over the area for a few days before it gives up and retreats. It is always itchy but not painful. I asked a local forester if he knew what was causing it. He said lacquer trees. I looked up lacquer trees online but could not find anything that resembled the trees in the forest.

Returning to the forest I saw a vine that looked like poison ivy. Could this be the culprit, I wondered. I decided to test my knowledge of poison ivy by plucking a leaf from the vine, ripping it in half to expose the inner liquid, and dabbing it on my shoulder. The next morning a red rash appeared. Success, I thought. I know the plant that has been causing the rash! My experiment proved correct. But as the week progressed the rash grew worse, bubbling and pussing, turning deep red and black. A dark red line formed precisely where I had first dabbed the split leaf. The area itched and hurt and oozed yellow puss that wet my shirt sleeves. And though painful, I only thought, with pride, of the success of my experiment. Yes, I thought, definitely poison ivy.

Kindergarten, Day Eight

“Joshua Sensei!”

“Hello! How are you?”

“How are you?”

“I’m happy. How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say, ‘How are you?’ You say, ‘I’m happy?’ Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“Forget it.”

“Joshua Sensei- nan jin?”

“Okay, Japanese now? America-jin da yo.”

“How did you get here?”

“I came by car. Stop picking your nose and grabbing my shirt. That’s gross.”

“By car from America? Isn’t that far?”

“No, I didn’t come by car from America. I came  from Ishikawa-machi, where I live.”

“Oh, I see.”

“From America, I walked.”

“Eeeeehhhhhh??”

 

 

Bike Ride

The light of late afternoon is meant for me, it seems. It illuminates the street corner and the garden that extends like an annex connected to my apartment window, where I watch. Out there is my late afternoon Japan.

 

It’s not much to look at beyond the garden—a grocery store parking lot, the dull, cubed grocery store itself, and rural houses with tiled roofs whose corners curve up like burning paper. Each house has a garden and neatly trimmed trees, manicured like evergreen poodles. It’s all in perfect order.

 

I cannot see the sun low in the west. I watch the light growing on the tips of the cedar branches in the hills to the east instead. I can hear the laughter of young girls and the stamping of their feet. They’re chasing after their father, shouting at him to slow down while he peddles his bike away, pretending escape.

 

“No Papa, slow down!” they shout.

 

“Never! I am running away!” he shouts back.

 

“Don’t leave us papa,” they giggle, running after him.

 

The youngest daughter is in a child’s seat on the bike, behind her papa. She slaps at his back. “No papa! Wait for sister!” She laughs and doesn’t stop slapping his back. He laughs and keeps peddling.

 

He turns the corner where the garden ends and he too is illuminated by the comforting light of the sunset, the sun forever lowering in the west. His daughters dash and smile and laugh and run and say, “Slow down papa! Slow down!”

 

“Never!” he laughs, full of love and goodness and the warmth of the sun.

 

“Never daughters! I am running away!”

 

And they move past my view, down the road, as if running away.

 

 

 

 

Kindergarten, Day Twelve

 

“Joshua Sensei! Joshua Sensei!”

 

“Hello! How are you?”

 

“How are you?”

 

“No ‘How are you’ ‘How are you’. You say, ‘I’m happy!’”

 

“I’m happy!”

 

“Okay good. Now, How are you?”

 

“How are you?”

 

“Right, let’s speak in Japanese instead. Are you happy?”

 

“Yes, I’m happy! Joshua Sensei, guess what?"

 

“What?”

 

“I went with my papa to Koriyama, and my papa said that Mickey was going to be in Koriyama, and when we got to Koriyama Mickey was there!”

 

“Really? Cool! Did you take a picture with Mickey?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Cool!”

 

“And guess what Joshua-Sensei.”

 

“What?”

 

“Joshua-Sensei, I like, uh. I like ghosts. And I like zombies.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah. I like ghosts and I like zombies. And that’s it.”

 

 

Eriko’s Question

 

Eriko makes dinner. I used to cook, a year ago maybe, when we first met, but now she cooks. I am tired at night and do not want to cook. I will do the dishes. Besides, she is a better chef than I, and we both enjoy her food more.

 

“This is delicious,” I tell her. “What’s your secret?”

 

“No secret. It’s just Japanese flavors—soy sauce, sake, sugar. You can put that with anything and it will taste nice.”

 

“But this is amazing. You must have some tricks that okaasan taught you. Your mother is a cook after all.”

 

“No. No tricks. Japanese cooking doesn’t have tricks.”

 

I’m not convinced. I eschew the etiquette I have acquired since being here and shovel juicy, thin sliced pork, and saturated eggplant and soft tofu into my mouth keeping the bowl just under my chin, scraping the chopsticks against the sides. Eriko sits beside me and looks up at me and smiles.

 

“Honto ni, oishii?” she asks.

 

“Yes, delicious.”

 

 

We climb the wooden ladder up to my loft and sit on the futon on the floor. We drink tea. Carla Bruni sings French to us from my phone. I don’t understand the French and only pay enough attention to let it relax me. It is a relief to care nothing about deciphering language when the hours are late in a foreign country; better still when there is a pretty woman sitting on my futon.

 

“Did you climb today?” Eriko asks.

 

“Yes. For three hours.”

 

“Do you want a massage?”

 

“Of course,” I say. “I always want a massage from you.”

 

I lay down and she begins to grab and knead my back. It is painful and it is good. When she started giving me massages she told me that she enjoyed giving them, that they relaxed her. She worked as a masseuse and enjoyed the work so much that she wants to start her own massage studio. I joke with her when I want a massage and ask, “Do you want to relax a little now?”

 

She kneads and pulls and stretches my back for twenty minutes or so. When she finishes I do not want to sit up. She leans back against the wall and drinks more tea.

 

“I think that you’re being so good to me because you don’t want me to leave,” I tell her.

 

“Of course,” she says. “I want to marry you.”

 

“You would be a great wife,” I say. “But you know that I don’t want to be married.”

 

“I know,” she says. “But I still want to marry you, and to have a baby.”

 

“A son,” I say.

 

“Yes. A son would be nice.”

 

“But I want to take my son to remote mountains," I say. "And teach him about those mountains and camp there with him for many days. There are not mountains like that in Japan.”

 

“I know,” she says.

 

“And he must be a rebel. In Japanese schools it will be hard for him to become a rebel,” I say.

 

“I know,” she says.

 

“But you would be a great wife, Eriko. And when I leave, you will be a great wife for a lucky man. And you will have babies and they will make you very happy.”

 

She smiles, thinking of her future children.

 

“And what will you do?” she asks. “When you leave, what will you do?”

 

 

I am not sure what I will do. I will not marry her, nor have that son, nor take him to those mountains. And Eriko will become like South America did-- where real experiences faded into illusory memories, dreamlike. I will wonder how real Japan was as I wonder now about the lake I camped at in Cochamo, and about the Quechua villagers in Peru, and about the sunset in El Chalten. And when I leave Japan I will wonder about Eriko, whether a woman like her existed, and whether we loved each other like I believed we did.