Long ago, on the other side of the world, her father had taken her out on just such a jetty. As they’d started to walk above the water, he’d told her not to look down.

She had.

Through the gaps where the wood had worn away and the boards didn’t meet, she was certain she could see crabs. Huge blue ones with snapping pincers hiding in the black seaweed. This tangled mass was the hair of sea witches. If she fell, the crabs would grab her arms and legs, and the hair would wrap itself around her like an insect in a spider’s web. Then…

“My word, you’re such a mouse, Kathy,” her father had said, watching her stop, yet again, to gauge the distance and get her balance, her little plastic sandals poised and ready to jump. “Even if you could fit between the boards, there’s nothing down there.”

It wasn’t his fault that most of their rare outings, like a day at the beach, ended in her crying and him brooding. Her mother had died when Kathy was very young. Sometimes, when she felt sad or afraid, she wanted him to comfort her. But gentle words didn’t come easily to him. He was a farmer, practical and stoic, a man who understood animals, clods of soil, and brewing clouds. Human animals were tricky creatures.

“I’m not much good to you, luv,” he often said, ruffling her short, curly hair. “The way I see it, you have to be tough. Only way to get through the hard times.” They could be standing in a baked brown paddock under a clear blue sky. Or sitting in the ute after another failed driving lesson when she couldn’t reach the pedals or change the gears. She didn’t care if her cousins, all boys and all younger than she, could drive. “We’ll try again tomorrow. You’ll get the hang of it.”

Back inside, Kathy continued to live in the fantasy worlds of books. In her head, she travelled far and wide, living in pretty Dorset villages or on a prairie in Canada, even high up in the snow-clad mountains of Switzerland. In 1978, after training as a teacher and working for three years, she had enough money to align the pages with reality. She was nervous about leaving her father, but it seemed like a good time. Still in his fifties, Lance Wood was fit and healthy.

“I need to get out there, Dad. Be a bit more independent. That’s what you’ve always said.”

“Did I? Can’t you do that ‘round here? On the farm?”

She’d laughed. “Come on, Dad. You know I’m not a farmer.”

“No, I s’pose not. Just don’t go too far.”

They wrote to each other. Flimsy aerogrammes—his unpracticed, labored strokes sometimes piercing the paper, rarely filling one side. He seemed pleased to receive her news: descriptions of London and her temporary job in a pub, then in a primary school. Take care in those schools, Kathy. Bit rough, aren’t they? Still, it’s a credit to you, earning some money working for the queen. She was elated; she didn’t have to be his son anymore.

After she wrote that she’d decided to visit Japan, the tone of his letters changed. Can’t say I ever wanted to see Japan, he wrote. All those shrines and temples. People everywhere. But that’s up to you. She knew it had to do with his war service. He’d always refused to talk about it: “Best forgotten.”

Months passed and she remained in Tokyo. Writing to him was hard. She knew he wanted her home, but she didn’t want to leave. It’s a fascinating place, Dad. I have a good job and everyone’s very kind. There was more.  I think I told you I met a nice Japanese man in London. He’s back in Tokyo now and we’ve been going out together.

Her father’s reaction went well beyond a change in tone; he stopped writing altogether for several weeks. Then he sent half a page about the weather and his dogs. Kathy continued to write as if his replies had just gone astray in the post. It hurt when her letterbox was empty. But she was in love. Her father would come round. He wanted her to be happy.

When it came time to tell him she was going to marry her Japanese boyfriend and bring him back to meet everyone, she realized she’d hadn’t understood what he wanted for her at all.  As far as he was concerned, her husband-to-be was the enemy. You never know when they’ll stick a knife in your back, Kathy. I know. I fought them. They come creeping through the jungle. You can’t hear them, can’t see them, can’t even smell them.

She was distraught. Nothing had been said about the war, but here it all was on a cheap piece of flimsy blue paper. Unleashed feelings and emotions. Revulsion. Distrust. What had brought him to this? It couldn’t just be the war. It must be her, too. She’d betrayed him. Left him. Left him for a Japanese.

She mourned alone. Hid it. Showed no one. Especially not Aki. Two weeks later, there was a large envelope in her letterbox. A wedding card. Inside was an aerogramme. The card wished them both the best of luck and a happy life together. The aerogramme was an apology. He knew he had no right and he had no excuses. I guess I imagined us living in Australia, Kathy. You married to an Aussie bloke. Me on the farm. It’s not to be. I can’t say I’m not disappointed but it’s your life. If it’s all the same, I won’t get over for the wedding. I’m not that keen on flying and the war’s still a bit close for an old digger. Bring your new husband over here one day. I promise I’ll behave myself.

In the beginning years, Kathy went back to Australia by herself. She would take Aki when the time was right. When they had children. The visits between father and daughter were delicate things. There seemed to be an unspoken grievance. Hidden and protected by both of them, it was not to be underestimated.

“Aunty Joan says you’re not looking after yourself properly, Dad. What if I arrange someone to cook some meals for you?’

“Waste of money.”

“I’ll pay for it. We can afford it.”

“I’m sure you can. You married a rich man. If I need anything, I’ll let you know.”

Three years after his daughter had left him to go and live with the enemy, Lance Wood was sitting in his armchair watching the evening news. Suddenly, his cup of tea leapt from his hands. His chest felt as if it would split down the middle. He gasped for breath, his body shuddering, black tea and urine soaking his dressing gown, right through to his pajamas. He couldn’t call for help but it didn’t matter. He knew. His dogs knew. Chained up outside for the night, they went crazy. He was in trouble and they couldn’t get to him.

Aki drove her to Narita airport; Kathy had insisted on attending the funeral alone. It was the longest journey she ever made. Bending over the coffin left open for her at the back of their local church, she kissed his forehead for the last time. Then she touched his hands. The paper-thin skin, swollen veins and sun spots. There were no chances left. He would never know she thought she’d done what he wanted—become independent. Faced up to life.

“I had no idea I would end up in Japan,” she whispered. “I know it hurt you. I only wanted you to feel proud. Know that you’d brought me up well.” She rested her head on his stomach atop his folded hands. “I wanted to tell you.”

He was her father again. Patting her curls, saying goodnight. “Don’t forget your prayers now, Kathy. Ask Mum to take care of us.”

Her father. The man he’d always been. The man who loved her dearly.

 
               
She turned towards the shore. It was late to get back to the Home. “We don’t make schedules for fun,” Yamada san, the head nurse, always said as she looked her charge up and down—the disheveled hair, the crumpled yukata, feet covered in sand. “It’s for your own wellbeing, so that we know where you are.”

A sea plant, unfurling in the motions of the waves, pale green, almost transparent, caught her eye. It reminded her of the Giant White Serpent, a mythical creature living in the deep trenches off this coast. When it was angry, it lashed its tail from side to side and the ground shook. In modern times, it had become less daunting; little more than the excuse for an annual festival of traditional dancing and frenetic drumming. Its reptilian form gyrated wildly in the air as its young devotees, dressed in red happi coats, white shorts, and bandannas tied coquettishly around their foreheads, waved it about.

The next evening, Kathy stood on the jetty again, lost in the motions of the rising tide. Embedded in the jetty’s wooden legs were thousands of barnacles. Every time a wave swamped them, they resurfaced, clean and glistening. Ready for the next. Her skin crawled and she turned away. Began her slow walk back, feeling for cracks between the planks, reaching for her father’s hand.

“Are there any messages for me?”

“No, nothing, Mrs. Saito. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you. Just the room key.” She watched the young attendant putting her hand into the pigeonhole. There could be a message in there, pushed to the back. The girl could easily have missed it.

“I am sorry but there is nothing. Maybe tomorrow.”

Kathy nodded. What had she expected? Akira’s family could do anything. They had money, friends in the medical world. If they didn’t want him to contact her, if they had convinced him she was too sick and needed rest, of course, there wouldn’t be any messages.

Kathy and Akira had met in London. She was working in a pub, finding her feet; he was working for a well-known Japanese trading company. Due to return to Japan in a few weeks’ time, he’d hired a car and taken her to all the places she’d read about: Haworth,  where the Brontës lived; the Lake District, home of the Romantic poets. Places Australians take to their hearts, as if they are their own. When her guide suggested she come and visit Japan next, Kathy took Akira Saito to her heart, too.

Less than a year after arriving in Japan, Akira asked her to marry him. She said yes. The next time they visited his family home for dinner, he told his parents about their plans. At first there was silence. Then came a series of terse questions from his father, and exclamations of disbelief from his mother. This woman was a true outsider, not even someone from another part of Japan. She was from a country they didn’t know, a place where the people spoke a different language and ate different food. They didn’t look at her. Not that it mattered; Kathy barely understood what was being said.

Akira, flushed and adamant, refused to change his mind. His parents were overcome and, for a time, as silent as their prospective daughter-in-law.

Later, he told her everything that had been said.

Their son’s audacity in such an important matter was not something they had anticipated. She was not the bride they’d had in mind, not right in any way at all. Too foreign, too fair, too tall. They had also discussed women who were “suitable,” befitting the family’s social status and Aki’s achievements—his prestigious university degree, his position with an elite company. They had no idea what kind of farm this girl grew up on, where she’d been educated, who her parents were. Their son had not even met her father, and it seemed they wouldn’t either. Didn’t Akira know a marriage was between families?

“They must think I’m such an upstart,” Kathy said.

“Probably.” He turned away. “But I’ve made my choice. What my parents think doesn’t matter.”

But it did. It just took time.

It was hard to find a space on her bed. Things seemed to hide in the rumpled sheets—sachets of coffee sugar, broken rice crackers, an uncapped lipstick stuck to a tissue, dirty underwear, loose pills. A photograph. In it, a good-looking Asian man had his arm around a laughing blonde woman with rosy cheeks. Beautiful in a blue winter jacket. Behind them were the ruins of an ancient farmhouse.

“Heathcliff and Cathy.” She smiled. “I’m Kathy, too.”

As she had done many times before, she tried to smooth its crinkles. She used to keep it in her purse, but here in the Home she’d tried to remember to always slip it back into the sleeve of her haori, her outdoor topcoat. She put the photo back, took out a scrap of paper and dialed Reception.

“This is the number of my friend Monica in Tokyo,” she explained. “Please put me through.” The receptionist obliged. The conversation was in English, Kathy asking Monica to call Aki directly and ask him to contact his wife. It didn’t always work; this time it did.

“How are you, Kathy chan? What’s wrong?”

Aki had always used the diminutive, “chan” with her. She’d complained that it was treating her like a child. He’d replied that it was like “sweetie.” Cute.

It wasn’t a good start.

“I’m ready to come home. Please, Aki.” She chose her words carefully, anxious to sound calm. Reasonable. “I don’t like it here. I want to be with you.”

“I know, little bird, I know.”

“Little bird.” It seemed never to have crossed his mind that the fluttering, vivacious little bird he’d brought back from London had become trapped—her wings closely trimmed, her chirping muted. What could she do? A resentful foreign wife had few allies. She’d decided it would be wiser to become an insider. To become a good wife and mother.

Perhaps she would have, but their long-awaited baby died. Slipping away without her knowing, back into the mythical pond with the other babies not ready to be born.  Sadly, another had not come to take its place.

“Kathy, we have to wait until your doctor says you can leave. It’s not up to us.”

“No, that’s not true. They say that but they don’t know. Aki, listen to me.”

She could see herself, a white ghost, in the shadowy dressing table mirror. Glazed pupils in dark orbs, her yukata gaping, body thin, hair tangled and unwashed.

“I have to go to a meeting now, Kathy. I will get down there as soon as I can.”She wanted to laugh. Akira dreaded arguments; he always found a way out. Always said he’d be down soon.

“Be patient a little longer. Please, little bird.”

“Little bird?” She shouted at him. “Little bird?”  She knew her cries would attract the kind of attention she didn’t need, but she was past caring. “I’m not a little bird, Aki! I’m your wife. You can’t leave me here.”

“Please, Kathy. You’re not well. The baby…”

“The baby’s dead. Well gone. Back in the pond. It’s got nothing to do with this. It’s just an excuse to get rid of me. I know what your mother’s doing. I know she never…” She began to cry. “Do you want me to leave Japan and go home? Is that it?”

He wouldn’t like her threatening him. He didn’t like her crying. Never had. She waited. For words of reassurance, something to show he understood what she was saying.  Anything that might make her feel he still loved her. That she was still his wife and he would take her home. “Aki?”

No answer. Nothing to say.

She slammed the receiver down. Picked up a bowl of half-eaten rice, the remains of her dinner, and threw it against the mirror. Hard.  At night, the smashing of glass is an emergency. Attendants come running.

“Do it.” Lying on the bed, her arm stretched out, she was ready.

They’ll accept me, she’d thought, now that we’re married. Once I learn the language, learn to cook and clean as my mother-in-law does, practice writing kanji characters with my father-in-law, give them a grandchild…. They’ll see that I am the right wife for their son.

Aki’s parents bought them an apartment nearby so his mother could teach Kathy what she needed to know. She rinsed rice until the water ran clear, grilled dried fish, learned to make miso soup from scratch, and fell pregnant. They were all delighted. And she was young enough to have more than one.

When the smells of grilling fish and pungent soup made her nauseous, her mother-in-law came over and cooked breakfast for her son herself. In Kathy’s kitchen.

One night, some months into her pregnancy, Kathy felt sharp, fierce pains. Low in the abdomen. She called her husband. Her mother-in-law came first, then the ambulance. The attendants couldn’t get the stretcher into the tiny elevator so they sat her in a chair, and she and a paramedic slowly descended.  As they did, a warm, clear liquid ran out from between her legs. The anxious young man in his crisp blue shirt and navy trousers tried to reassure her. It didn’t work. How could it? Neither of them knew enough words in the other’s language to discuss the weather, let alone a medical emergency. She clung to his hand and cried out for her husband, her god, someone to come and stop the pain. Save her baby. Once on the ground, sirens, lights, shouting, and finally, oblivion. Hours later, when she awoke in a bed in a hospital ward, she wept. It was a ward for mothers and babies, but there was no cot beside her bed.

“If you’d quit work earlier and stayed at home, it wouldn’t have happened,” Aki’s mother said. “The baby belonged to us all. You didn’t take enough care.”

Kathy flinched. In the months of pregnancy there’d been a growing understanding between mother-to-be and mother-in-law. Kathy knew the baby belonged to the whole family, not just to its parents, but to be made responsible at such a time was a wound that would not be easily healed.

The following morning Kathy stayed in her room.

“I’m ready to go home,” she whispered, sitting on her bed, turning her sleeves inside out, searching for the photograph. “Please, Aki.”

Soon she got out of bed, pulling the sheet behind her. She thought she should drape something over the mirror; the glass had been removed and the backing was stained and dirty. She didn’t like it.  Aki shouldn’t have to look at such a thing. A broken mirror. She touched her face.

When it got late and dark outside, she curled up on the floor and waited for him to come. To switch out the light, to say her prayers with her.

“I won’t forget,” she whispered.

The next evening, while the home staff were occupied serving dinner, she slipped out of a back door, made her way to the jetty, and stood in her usual place, looking down at the sea. The sun was low, its dying rays reflecting murky shapes. Then she caught sight of something swimming, something translucent and beautiful. The White Serpent. On its way to its palace under the sea.

“Wait,” she called, pulling the sash from her waist. Long and narrow, it would fit perfectly. “Wait.” She bent out over the railing, stretching towards it, covering it. “Take me with you.”                                                     
 

A fisherman found the missing patient floating in a tidal pool. With black seaweed strafing her back, she moved like a sea creature—back and forth with the ebb and flow.

Later, a group of local men brought her up to the beach on a tatami stretcher. They covered her with a towel and waited. It would take time for her husband to reach their town. They spoke quietly, nodded their heads. The monster of the deep had claimed but not kept her.

Tears and Trombones

by Nanci Lee Woody

Readers will admire young Joey’s mother, Ellie, as she navigates around poverty and her abusive, philandering, alcoholic husband to help her son achieve his impossible dream of becoming a classical musician. She wasn’t sure what a symphony was and had never set foot in a concert hall, yet without her husband’s knowledge, she managed to scrape together enough courage and money for standing-room only tickets to a San Francisco Symphony performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Joey was in awe of the violinist and the orchestra and sat transfixed throughout this concert that set him at nine years old on his long journey to a musical career. Ellie is deeply proud of her son and does what she can to protect him from his father’s verbal abuse and attempts to dissuade him from a career as “some sissy horn player.” Joey uses his creativity to passively get even with his dad for his cruelty, but his self confidence suffers. He does have Ellie’s backing always, knows she will be there to rescue him if needed. She models for her son loyalty, persistence and hard work and allows no excuses when times are hard. Readers will follow Joey through high school where his musical talent grows. He falls deeply in love with a curly-haired beauty and is torn between his love for her and pursuing his musical dream. He chooses to marry another girl who courts him and offers to work to help him through college. This decision to marry puts Joey into a seemingly endless triangle love affair, even as his professional life explodes. He auditions for the Sacramento Symphony and is offered a position. He plays his horn in Hollywood with studio musicians, performs with The Beach Boys, Dorothy Dandridge and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Will Joey ever be able to right his love life? What will Ellie advise him to do? Nanci’s short stories and poems have been published in the California Writers Club Literary Review, A CWC Anthology, October Hill Magazine, The Fault Zone, Sacramento Poetry Society’s Tule Review, Your Daily Poem, The Monterey Poetry Review, the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and many other online and print publications. For reader reviews and samples of her writing and art, visit nancileewoody.com. To listen to the music in Tears and Trombones, from Shostakovich to Johnny Cash, visit bookcompanion.com. Watch on Amazon for Nanci’s new book of poetry coming out this fall. Tears and Trombones is available from Amazon, Bookshop, and your local independent bookseller.

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