CUTTINGS
a zuihitsu for father

My younger sister and I, cleaning father's house before he returns from a
week in intensive care, rush to dispose of mother's cosmetics, store her
jewelry for a later date, and phone a woman's shelter to pick up bags of
dresses, size 4, and shoes, 4 1/2, even stopping to laugh at the platforms
from "the mod era" she swore would come back. We collapse into each
other's arms and cry mommy mommy as if she could hear us if we wept
loud enough.


I look out the taxi window at everyone else's life. Certainly all the people
in all the little apartments have gone about their business making money
off other people's mortgages or addictions, without the knowledge my
mother died last week, someone who found pleasure in baking oddly
shaped biscuits with her granddaughters.

I keep my father talking about his boyhood—his passion for deep-sea
diving though he grew up on Lake Michigan, his going AWOL for art
courses, the four books at the Naval Library on "Oriental Art." Here we
turn, always return, to Maude who wasn't supposed to go first. He said he
had her convinced.

I ask Marie how to tell the girls, Miya now six and Rei, four. She advises
we speak to them separately, to allow each their own reactions.

The funeral director says, "She doesn't look 68, but then oriental women
never look their age." He then reminisces about "The War."

I want to throw out as much as possible—a half-jar of expensive cream, a
suede jacket—belongings my sister wishes to hold on to. I go to the
Funeral Home. I find comfort in The 10 O'clock News; she resents the

superficial, even stupid resemblance of normality.

Two weeks now since mother died. Tuesday nights, I stay with father now

a man who can barely contain what, in a second, became memory. He
lurches from each small room testing himself against souvenirs: animal
puppets from Rome, 1956; a Noh mask, Kyoto, '64; silver rabbit, Phnom
Penh, '65; hotel towel, Chicago, '70. Even after discarding her dresses and
middle-class perfumes she inhabits every corner of every project—collage,
painting, carving. He recalls telling her when they first met at the Art
Institute that art would always come before any thing and any one.

We toast Maude at a neighbor's, drinking what we like since she couldn't
tolerate liquor. Janet remembers the day she knew they'd be friends: "We
were looking at the peonies by the stone wall and your mother said, Know
what these remind me of ? Penises." Our laughter resembles sobbing.

She reread stories as often as I demanded.

Convinced and convincing me through my early twenties I could not sew
or cook despite home ec. classes and odd advice, she cooked and froze
stews, checked if I ever baked potatoes and the last day we saw her, sent us
home with turkey leftovers. It's true I've never roasted one.

The first thing I saw when I returned to clean their house were my three
skirts, pinned and draped across the ironing board.

How suddenly grievances against father evaporate, steam rising from an
icy river. He even corrects himself, calling mother, a woman.

Why is pain deeper than pleasure, though it is a pleasure to cry so loud the
arthritic dog hobbles off the sunny carpet, so loud I do not hear the phone
ring, so loud I feel a passion for mother I thought I reserved for lovers. I
insert a CD and sing about a love abandoned, because there are no other
lyrics for this.

Pulling off a crewneck sweater I bend my glasses and for the next few days
wear the frames off-center not realizing the dizzy view is in fact physical.

Theresa, David, Liz, Mark, Sharon, Denise, Carmen, Sonia, Susan, Lee,
Cheryl, Susan, Jo, John, Jerry, Doug, Earlene, Marie, Robbin, Jessica,
Kiana, Patricia, Bob, Donna, Orinne, Shigemi‑

Suddenly the tasks we put off need to get done: defrost the freezer, pay the
preschool bill, order more checks.

For 49 days after her own mother's death she did not eat meat. I didn't
know, mother. I'm sorry, I didn't know.

The sudden scent of her spills from her handbag—leather, lotion, mints,
coins. I cannot stand.

She had marked April 28 to see Okinawan dancers.

He has not yet slept in their bed, because the couch in front of the
television feels firmer to his seven broken ribs.

At dinner we play a story game; the youngest one asks, "about grandma?"
then corrects herself quickly "about bunny rabbit" as she momentarily
trips on her own preoccupation.

Father tells me there is a Japanese story about a mask maker who has a
daughter renowned for her stunning beauty. Upon her untimely death,
how he does not recall, the father sits by her side to sketch the exquisite
features. Poetic license. Though mother did look beautiful I had never
seen a face devoid of any expression, an aspect even a painting would
somehow contain.

The children notice he has taken off his wedding ring.

At a favorite cafe I hear a newborn in the next booth wailing for, probably, the
mother's breast, as if his life will end this second. It is my cry.

Shrimp. An image of my parents at a card table shelling shrimp the night
before my sister's wedding, the peels translucent pink as my mother's finger
nails. Primitive and reassuring.

At the house in Paia where grandma washed other people's laundry and
raised her chickens, and grandpa sat in his wheelchair, we had a toilet inside
but also the old outhouse, a rickety two-seater. I would go in, close the gray
painted door, latch the hook and sit on the edge holding my breath against
the frothy stench of shit. You could hear your waste hit bottom. The dim
light lent privacy against peeping cousins.

She taught me to pluck or cut flowers near the roots for the long stems.
Recut under water. She taught me to rub my finger and thumb together over
the silver dollar sheath, to rub off the brown membrane and scatter the seeds
on my skirt. Gently so as not to tear the silver inside. I see them and think
of her name, not Maude, but Mother.

Father and I bring the ashes into the City and plan to drop them off at the
temple. Mrs. K has Buddhist robes over her blue jeans and suggests she recite
a sutra. We light incense in the half-light. I forget tissues. My face and sleeves
are covered with tears and mucus. My shoulders shake silently as listening.

Three months have past. I count the days from March 10th to the 100th day
for another memorial service.

lotus suture

As if a metaphor for mother's death the Rodney King verdict and rebellion
in Los Angeles breaks open urban areas across the country. It is a complex
set of issues where some Korean shops and whites are attacked as the
emblems of the establishment. But what is the establishment? Why not the
actual property relations? Who actually owns the buildings, makes the
laws—I feel helpless. Embittered.

Cuttings she had placed in tumblers in the kitchen and bathroom offer
their fragile roots.

Rei discusses mother's death with me. A babysitter told her not to talk
about it. Another told her it is like sleep. I tell her to talk. I tell her it is not
sleep although the person looks asleep but he or she will not wake. She
wants to talk to grandma and asks if she can. I tell her if she wants to she
can; then I ask her what she wants to say. She wants to tell her to wake up.

People who have died but were revived speak of a dark tunnel with a fierce
light at the end. Is it a passage or is it the memory of birth?

Miya speaks of dying—to see grandma again. I am shocked and try to say
something.

I can see her body, not her, her body lying in a pine box, hands folded,
black and white hair combed back, the funeral home odor saturating the
drapes and carpets of the respectfully lit parlors. I said goodbye but it was
really to myself.

I wish I had snipped off a bit of hair. I recall the braid she kept for a while
in her drawer.

I purchase an expensive "anti-wrinkle defense cream" at the discount
pharmacy. The third morning my skin really feels smoother though the
burgeoning lines have not faded. I think something I've only thought the
night before the plane trip: will I live to see the bottom of this jar.

Miya has shelved her grief and when admonished she declares: everything
was fine until grandma died.

For the first time father harvests a half-dozen bamboo shoots from a small
grove on the side of the house. Mother had spoken of gathering them as a
child in Hawaii, soaking then boiling then sizzling them. He finds a recipe
and experiments. He sends some home with me. They taste like artichoke
hearts. We all think of mother. And I think of a poem from the Manyōshu
about a trowel.

He plays her lottery numbers.

The lawyer of the kid who broadsided their car sends a letter threatening
to sue father if he does not respond in five days with information. We feel
naive, in a state of disbelief at the vulgar tone of the letter.

I wear the silk pants she altered for me: a forgotten pin, sewn into the hem,
sticks into my ankle.

At any moment of the day I can hear her admonishment: oh, Kimi. She
especially disliked spills.

I do not want to write about her death. But I do not want to lose these
strong feelings.

Rei does not stop chattering about her: We have no one to make slush. She
always had gum in her handbag. She read to us in Japanese and knew "cat's
cradle" backward.

The 100th Day Anniversary. The weather is already warm. Her brother
from Honolulu tells about her letters to him during World War II when he

was in the 442nd.

We vacation on Fire Island. A few deer walk by the porch so close we can
see how fuzzy their antlers are.

I keep recalling the diagram of the accident scene. Mother's body lying on
the highway where medics attempted CPR. I imagine the wet black road,
the traffic signals changing despite the halt.

Christmas ornaments last packed away by her: the balls she and father
decorated with cherubs and glitter, old wooden angels and soldiers from
my childhood, tinsel carefully rewrapped.

Some days I have a thought to write down but let it go.

During a week-long visit to the snowy fields of Vermont, I hear of a car
bomb explosion at the World Trade Center, killing and injuring many
people. The world continues outside this quiet. And the death of those who
happen to step in its ordinary traffic.

I stop writing altogether. And when I must—postcards, single lines after a
commute—the writing ends with mother.

Afraid father is "seeing someone" and hopeful. I extend mother's jealousy into
the afterlife. It becomes my own hell.

I begin to feel impatient with father over little things like whether my hair
is trimmed evenly. I wonder if my annoyance indicates we are moving on.

Father finds an envelope of marigold seeds mother saved and lets the
children scatter them. The composted earth smells fertile like the pail
she kept with egg shells and melon rinds.