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Cave

Mika Yamamoto

    My father walked two blocks from his house—my childhood home—snow falling on jet-black hair. He knocked on the unlocked door, opened it, and walked down seven steps into my basement apartment, where my children and I have lived since my divorce.
    I cooked some brown rice and miso soup. My father brought dried mackerel to roast and two tangerines for the children’s dessert. Earlier in the day, the children threw their ham sandwiches away, only half-eaten. I scolded them. Raised by parents who grew up in post-war Japan, I could not tolerate food waste.
    “Tonight, ask your grandfather about his childhood,” I said.
    When we sat down to eat, my daughter did.
    “My childhood? Okay, I will tell you about my childhood,” my father said. Then he told the story of how he helped his mother in the sugarcane field, a basket on his back. No candies or cookies, but he could suck on sugarcanes. One of his chores was to grind the grain... a boring job for a little boy. He motioned with his arm how he did it. He wore a grimace on his face. My children laughed.
    “We didn’t have a lot to eat, but I was happy. I had a nice family. Not all my friends did,” he said. He told us about one such friend.
    “Her father was an alcoholic and didn’t work, but her mother was very hard-working and clever, so when she was alive, the family lived in a nice house and had food to eat,” my father began. “Then, the mother died. Creditors took their house, and the girl and her father had nowhere to live, so they slept in a cave. At gym time, the girl never participated. Afterward, someone’s lunch was always missing. Everybody knew who it was, but nobody got mad. We knew she was hungry.”
    Called forth by my father’s words, the cave sprung up howling in my mind. The pine trees around it lashed in the wind, lacerating the sky. Below, waves keened. Black, white, green, gray. Bang, bang, bang. Loud, loud, louder. Boulders fell into the water to be devoured. Whole boulders, a kilo high, ten around. Waves reached for the cave—but plunged back and became froth.
    I saw the girl, a hungry speck at the mouth of the cave. The little girl, alone. Alone, an only child. Alone, an orphan, but worse. Alone—thieves have no friends. Alone, alone. Her loneliness called to my loneliness, collapsing time and space. Here she is, here I am. I look at her, she looks at me. We stand, hands empty, mouths open, facing—each other, ourselves.
    “Is she still poor?” my son asks, back at the table.
    “No. She became a very hard worker and married a man who is also a very hard worker,” my father said.
    My children were happy at the happily ever after and ate their tangerines. Then it was bedtime. After saying goodnight to the children, my father prepared to leave. As he squatted to slip the shoehorn into his shoe, I asked, “Is it true?”
    My father looked up.
    “Is your classmate happy now?”
    He nodded. Then, his shoes properly on, he stood up. He looked into my face and smiled. “Yes, it’s true. I see her at our school reunions.”
    His words comforted me.
    “Thank you for a nice evening,” he said.
    “Thank you for the fish and fruit,” I said.
    We hugged each other good night. He walked up the seven stairs, opened the door, and walked the two blocks home, snow falling on his jet-black hair.

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