Lament

I've been going through boxes of my papers and my family's papers and photographs for the past few months. Dredged up a lot of memories, some of which I do not know what to do with. But I also found this little gem- my first published story in Voices 2000: We Remember, We Celebrate, We Journey on, "the 2nd annual anthology of student writings produced by the Women's College of the University of Denver." Seems fitting.

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TINA DREW

Tina Drew is a junior/senior communication major and music minor at The Women's College, hoping to graduate by Jun 2001. When she was a teenager, she wrote bits and pieces of stories that she shared with no one. This is her first "public" story, faintly inspired by her own life as an unmarried daughter of a rather traditional Japanese woman and her African American husband. May the following passage from Hugh Prather inform readers:

Ideas are clean. They soar in the serene supernal.

I can take them out and look at them, they fit in books,

they lead me down that narrow way. And in the morning

they are there. Ideas are straight-

But the world is round, and a messy mortal is my friend.

Come walk with me in the mud...

Noriko's heart fluttered wildly as she scrunched her eyes to stop the rush of tears. Her gown sighed as she balled her shaking fists into her lap and exhaled. She could hear the sounds of her mother's pushy baritone rolling over the quaking duet of her aunts somewhere in the back of the church foyer. At the same time, a little boy, sulking miserably, kicked his feet fiercely against the back of Noriko's chair.

"Look at Noriko!" exclaimed her cousin Sumi. "She's going to wrinkle that damn dress again!"

Noriko started as her cousin's cold hands suddenly grasped hers. Unable to lift her eyes, Noriko stared at the textured fabric around her wrists until it shimmered and faded to a soft white blur.

"Noriko! Why are you crying?" laughed Sumi as she squatted carefully in her spiky heels. As buttery wisps of organza settled to the floor, Sumi's smile froze and she hissed, "Oh my God! Don't tell me you're getting cold feet!"

"No! No!" Noriko laughed in tremolo, weakly squeezing the tiny hands. "No! It's so...well, I feel like...I...oh!" Noriko shook her head as a hot wave of tears gushed forth. She laughed again, pressing Sumi's quickly proffered tissues to her face. Noriko's shiny black hair quivered as it jostled about her head, uncertain of its new role for the day, stiff with the unaccustomed curls and lacquer.

"Oh, yes! I remember Aunt Kazi's hissy fits with my poor mama! She thought you were being so stubborn! Imagine that!" the smaller woman giggled with understanding. "Choosing to finish high school instead of getting married!" Sumi rolled her eyes and gave her gum a sassy snap. A loud belly laugh boomed through the small parlor, and Sumi peered slyly at Noriko beneath her spidery eyelashes and whispered, "You're-just-a-bad-girl-because-you-won't-get-married!" Gently touching forehead to forehead, the women collapsed with wry chuckles, hands tightly clasped, the wad of tissues forgotten in the sudden crush of affection.

"Oh, I remember that!" Noriko whispered as she gazed lovingly toward her mother. "But you better quit talking about it! Here she comes!"

Mrs. Kazi Jackson approached her daughter, her heavy steps rattling the windows in her wake. Hazy streams of light lit the silvery strands of her thin hair and momentarily erased the dep lines etched into her smiling face. She paused long enough to glare at her gum-snapping niece's quickly retreating back before she slowly eased her heavy bottom into the old, creaky chair next to Noriko. She awkwardly placed her hand, stiffly disfigured by the many years of dutiful labor, onto her daughter's lap.

"Nori-san!" The sound of the old woman's voice reverberated around Noriko's ears and faintly rustled the veil framing her pale face. "Mama beddy hoppy you now mar-rido, na! O-lai! Don't cry! O-lai!" she crooned as fresh tears pooled in her daughter's dark eyes.

"Oh no! Your dress neruta nata!" cried Mrs. Jackson as she gruffly swiped at the drops rolling down Noriko's bustline. She scolded her daughter for her foolish tears, and after checking for stains in the silk, she heaved herself to her feet and grunted, "Okimaso!" Clucking to herself, Mrs. Jackson spied her noisy sisters, who had cracked open the heavy double doors leading out into the sanctuary. The swelling moans of the old church organ filled the parlor, its melody unintelligible beneath the deaf foot of the ancient organist. Pulling her sisters back into the parlor, Mrs. Jackson shut the doors firmly before turning to shoo them away.

Laughing, Noriko pressed her palms to her eyes. If she didn't stop crying soon, she would look forty-seven when the time came for her walk down the aisle! Gathering the folds of whispering silk, Noriko moved to an oval mirror propped up in a corner and critically studied her face. Good. She didn't mess up her makeup too badly; she just needed a little powder under her eyes and on her cheeks. Straightening her tall, angular frame, she reapplied the creamy beige powder with quick, brisk motions, using a small foam pad. Her determined administrations slowed as the caught the reflection of her own eyes in the mirror.

"Forty-seven," she muttered to herself, "I can't believe how quickly it came!" She absently tossed the stained and powdery square next to a discarded napkin and slowly scanned the room from the mirror. Noriko saw that her mother had happily bossed her poor cousin into a corner. Cupping her hand like a club under Sumi's defiant chin, Mrs. Jackson was noisily demanding the offending wad of gum. Over by the doors, Noriko's wizened and gentle aunts, Midori and Shizuko, were cooing over Sumi's baby daughter, Jennifer, who had just dumped the basket full of pale yellow petals over the teal carpeting. Jennifer was wearing a very tiny red kimono, the very same one that Noriko had worn over forty years ago. Nestled in her father's arm that day, she had been twirling a miniature American flag between her palms, listening to the rise and fall of her mother's voice on the crowded steps of the state capitol building. The words her mother had spoken blended harmoniously into the choir of many foreign tongues, and Noriko had stared mesmerized at the diamonds that had glistened on her mother's ebony lashes.

Noriko absently stroked imaginary creases from her gown as her eyes roved over the reflection of her dark lips. Startled by the ribald laughter of her best friends, she spun from the mirror and glared sharply at the trio of bridesmaids clustered nearby, wondering what they were up to. So many times over the years, they had schemed and plotted to find Noriko a boyfriend, oblivious to the suffocating humiliating she had felt. it had always been so difficult for them to understand why Noriko refused to go out on the blind dates they pulled out of the air, difficult for them to sit still long enough to hear her fumbling utterances of pained angst. Instead, they would affectionately shake their heads at her and gaily apply bright lipstick and that awful blue eye shadow popular then. Noriko often leaned forlornly against the railing on the porch steps and watched as her friends roared off with their every-changing cast of beaus.

Ironically enough, they made something of their lives- putting first school and then careers at the top of their "to-do" lists before they married the men of their choosing. All three of them had done so. Rhea had graduated from the Colorado Women's College and had gone on to Harvard Law School, where she met her husband, Lawrence. They had started their own law firm in Philadelphia before Rhea found religion, got pregnant, and became a stay-at-home mom.

Louise was a tenured professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Washington, and married for the third time. She never did believe in relinquishing all of her passion and life on one man, although she seemed to be in love, really in love, for the first time in her life. And then where was May- tiny, vibrant, childlike, but deceivingly so. May was an outspoken feminist doll maker who had found herself suddenly widowed the year before. No one but Noriko had known that she had been planning to divorce her poor high school sweetheart quietly for the vibrantly colorful Rita, who used to be the Glorious! Brown Sugar! from the Red Supper Lounge Club. May was trying to re-educate Rita about how the real meaning of womanhood had nothing to do with the size of her breasts, but Rita was stubborn and quite proud of her 42DDDs.

Noriko herself had never planned for much. Assuming that she would fall in love, get married, and have one child, she had bided her time, working as a page in the public library as soon as she graduated from high school. When she turned forty-three, she gave up her dreams of a simple white dress and huge yellow roses. The bridegroom was not coming for her. With a cruel jolt of clarity, Noriko saw her folly in not formulating a better plan for her life. Still, she continued to shelf books for another three years, secretly peering into the faces of the men passing through the stacks.

The year May's husband dropped dead by his parked car, Noriko had decided to go to college, but only because she despaired of the thought of working another day for her boss, a woman with a mean streak a mile long and dizzying mood swings. It was on The Women's College campus that she met Matthew, the music student who had impatiently shoved her out of his way when she bumped into him. Noriko had found herself suddenly consumed by a black rage, and she shouted tearfully at the horrified cellist, battering his slender torso over and over again with her big black purse until the strap broke. When her peanut butter sandwich came flying out of the suddenly liberated bag, they both found themselves laughing rather hysterically. Matthew had apologized profusely for his rudeness as he scrambled around on the sidewalk, grabbing at the coins and rolling tubes of chapstick, touching the embarrassingly personal assortment of chewed pens and used tissues. They spent the rest of that late autumn afternoon talking for hours over styrofoam cups filled with lukewarm coffee. Even so, when his proposal came four months later, Noriko found herself unable to speak for five minutes.

Shaking her head at the memory, Noriko glanced across the room at her mother, who had marched over to one of the open windows and sent Sumi's bright green wad of gum sailing into the bushes. Noriko swallowed back a laugh and wondered again what her mother had been like when she was a young girl growing up in Japan. Meeting the gaze of her mother, she smiled tentatively before turning back to the mirror to rearrange her veil.

Years ago, Noriko's mother had been unceremoniously whisked from the stoic non-gaze of her parents by the tall American soldier wanting to shield her pregnant shame. Robert had brought his new bride and infant daughter home to meet his mother shortly after the end of the war. Although she never did forgive Kazi for stealing her only son, Elsie Jackson lost her heart to her quiet, dark-eyed granddaughter, Yuki, a tender-hearted child who cried easily and loved her grandmother dearly. They had often sat quietly together, and the elegant American woman told her stories of Jesus and the love of His Father. It was Elsie who taught Yuki to pray. Shortly after the birth of her third grandchild, Elsie had died early one morning in her garden. Yuki had found her grandmother laying in the dirt with a soft smile on her lips and sat quietly next to her lifeless body in the bright sun until her mother came looking for her. After the funeral, she surprised everyone with her serious profession of faith, and she began to attend the services at the small local Presbyterian Church on Sunday mornings while the rest of her family slept in late.

As she reminisced about those years, Mrs. J

ackson gazed at her youngest daughter's angular form. She herself might have defied her own parents in her rebellious love for the blue-eyed boy from the Air Force base, but she had always expected her own two daughters to carry on in a respectable way. Yet Yuki had married an older Japanese missionary, who immediately took her out of the country when she was just seventeen. They had no children of their own, but taught English and led Bible studies with the little children who played near their small house in Japan. Lately, they had been talking about adopting one of them, a young boy abandoned by his parents because of his overwhelming assortment of physical deformities. Not exactly what Mrs. Jackson wanted in a grandchild, but still better than nothing. And now, at long last, her wayward one, her Noriko, had found a man to marry.

Sighing, Mrs. Jackson thought about the tall man who was about to become her newest son-in-law. He wasn't much in the looks department, and she didn't understand why he always smiled at her like some strange beatific priest, but at least he was tall, and Nori-san was going to get married and stay here, too. Shaking her head, Mrs. Jackson wondered if either one of her sisters knew that Matthew was eleven years younger than her Noriko. It was not something she'd care to explain, not that Noriko was able to, either. She supposed that if Matthew didn't spend so much time smiling, no one would notice that he looked just like a little boy sometimes. In any case, her life's work was finally done. She had raised two daughters and married both off, and her only son was also married, although she didn't care for his wife at all. Suddenly feeling old and worn, she shuffled over to the side of her beloved husband, who had been sitting quietly in the shadows. With a look of wonder and awe on his face, he had sat unmoving for two hours among all the chattering females, displaying no sign of recognition for any of them. Taking his hand, Mrs. Jackson smiled uncertainly at him as he turned his head to meet her questioning look.

"Kazi" he whispered tenderly in a startling moment of understanding. "Isn't it amazing! Look at all the pretty dresses in here!" Abruptly, the light left Robert's eyes, and he turned away from the melancholy old woman. As Mrs. Jackson stroked her husband's hand, he fixed his gaze upon the bride by the mirror. He quietly asked, "Is someone getting married?"