Created •
an online story
by Tommy Schmitz
Chapter 4 - The past reappears to Obá-chan.
(here is the link to Chapter 3.)
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The girls did lightning fast rounds
of rock-scissors-paper
to divvy-up their chores,
and Obá-chan went into her bedroom
and sat upon the tatami mat
with her back against the wall
to let drain, "oh please let drain"
the ghost of fear and panic
now seizing her, body and soul.
The disappearance of Henry and Mieko O'Brien in Kasmir
would hit the news in 24 hours,
so say the two gentlemen from the Foreign Ministry of Japan.
It didn't matter to Obá-chan that it would hit all at once and all around the world.
The problem she simply could not face right now
was telling Katie and Susan.
She knew in her own life what sudden losses were,
and how they felt.
Loved ones, family. Here today,
Then here no more.
She was in her early teenage years
and living in Tokyo during the Second World War.
She pondered through the years
her memories of fear and of loss and of hopelessness.
Were they all the more hidden inside of her?
or wearing themselves away?
Tonight, the answer came.
For Obá-chan and every surviving Japanese
these were the utmost of private matters.
Not even with your older sister,
would you bring the topic up.
There was too much work to do.
And way too much to sort through.
And now this sudden devastation: poor Mieko and Henry missing.
Her sudden state of shock
was digging up fresh
her ancient despair and suffering and loneliness.
She escaped inside her bedroom
to gather strength
and just the opposite was now happening
How could she find and form the words
to explain to Katie and Susan.
Without invitation and without intention,
Her past was roaring itself to life,
and there was nothing she could do about it.
She cracked open a bottle of shochu - rice whiskey - and poured a half a glass,
And slipped her hand inside
her bottom chest of drawers
pulling a cigarette from a hiding place.
How could she find and form the words, she thought again,
to explain to Katie and Susan.
And her mind got captured by the past.
Obá-chan had three younger brothers and an older sister --
Five children in the household during the war.
The first two brothers came through the misery of those four years all right.
At the end of 1945 they were twelve and ten years old --
and now both leaders in an industry - television broadcasting --
how strange, she thought,
an unknown industry
suddenly made real by physics
as physics made real - like that! - The Bomb.
But it was a gradual and growing wreckage
that invaded the life of Kenji,
the family's baby boy.
Kenji was five years old at the end of the war.
Unable to talk... well he stuttered, stuttered himself speechless,
Unable to play with others.
Unable to demonstrate or even show signs of how or what he was feeling.
Not after the war.
Kenji was fine at birth, fine at three years old, a perfectly normal Japanese toddler.
So expressive, always smiling, ever sensitive for such a young child
to the needs and emotions of everyone -- family, friends,
even those in the neighborhood we didn't care for much.
Kenji got lost one night. It was summer 1944.
For safety, we were changing locations.
We were all walking to a cousin's house miles away,
to avoid what most of us long feared:
that our own neighborhood
might be the likely and imminent bull's-eye for new bombs.
Just so happened we were right.
And while we walked, little Kenji, four years old,
got lost along the way,
and somehow followed the tracks
we had made for miles
and found his way back home.
Neighbors returning the next day heard Kenji's voice buried in the rubble of the bombing of our house,
alone, severely hurt
and severely awake and aware of all that had transpired
from moment to moment --
the violence and destruction,
the flames and heat all around him,
the unceasing, deadly noise --
put viscously upon the only world he knew,
put viciously upon his tiny person too.
The events hit Kenji like a huge meteor
that disappears on impact
but leaves it's eternal footprint upon the earth.
(chapter 4 continued here.)
