How to Be an American Housewife (16 page)

“Charlie,” I said, “when you come back from Vietnam, were lot people sick?” Charlie hadn’t talked about the war much to me, or about his job in the Navy.

“No,” Charlie said. Always the short answer.

“Seem like lot of people sick here.” I crossed my ankles, which swelled more each day. I hoped my surgery would be soon. I was getting uncomfortable. My doctor said I should use a wheelchair, but I hated doing that. Charlie could never push me up hills.

I smoothed out my outfit. Cashmere tan sweater, brown wool pants. Usually I wore my brown-and-white spectator pumps with this but I couldn’t get my feet into them now. I had to wear black flats, old ugly ones. I might as well be wearing pajamas and slippers. I still put on the Mikimoto pearls Charlie had given me shortly after we married, and the dangling pearl earrings he gave me for my birthday. I’d only had my ears pierced because Charlie wanted to buy me earrings. In my time, only prostitutes pierced their ears. But now was different.

Charlie tossed the magazine onto the side table. “Mommy,” he said, “I’ve been talking to Bishop Johanssen.”

“Uh-oh.” This was the guy in charge of his local church, or ward, as they called it.

“He said that maybe before this big surgery, when you could die”—Charlie looked uncomfortable—“I should ask you if you’re ready to join us.”

I laughed so loud several vets looked at me. “Be Mormon? You know answer.”

“Well, maybe after you pass,” Charlie said, “you’ll change your mind in Purgatory. If you do, come tell me. It won’t be too late to be baptized.”

I gave him a hard look. It was true that both Charlie and I believed in ghosts—it was part of my culture, as natural as breathing to me—but this Purgatory business I did not believe. Besides, only the unhappy came back. “I haunt you night and day, Daddy,” I said. “Boo!”

He shifted his body away from me, picking up the magazine again.

I could have become a Mormon a long time ago, but it was too secretive for me. When I went to my father’s Konko church, I had to sit before my father, who at that moment ceased to be my father and was my priest. We did something called
toritsugi
, a meditation. My father sat at the altar, with one ear toward that and the other toward you. You sat in front of the priest and simply said whatever you wanted to—a hope, a wish, whatever—for help with your problems, and the priest relayed it to our Tenchi Kane no Kami. Then you sat and thought about your problem and the priest gave you a message back.

The funny part of that was, of course, telling my troubles to my own father. When I was old enough to realize this, I was afraid. “Do not be, Shoko,” Father said, “because I am also your priest. Whatever you say is between you and Tenchi Kane no Kami.”

And indeed, Father acted like he never remembered what I said, whether I said I wanted to run away or had boxed Taro on the ears.

Once, as an adult, right after I’d married Charlie, I’d gone to see my father as a priest. “I am scared,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t know if this will turn out well.”

Then I closed my eyes, searching for the solution.

It was at least five minutes before Father spoke. “You are right to be afraid,” he said, “but where does this fear lead you? Nowhere. You must let go of fear.”

That was my last meditation with my father. He never mentioned that, either.

 

 

CHARLIE HAD WANTED to make our children Mormon. “At least let me take Sue to the youth group,” he had said. “They do activities. She doesn’t get to do anything.”

I refused. This was difficult for me to say no to. In Japan, community is everything. Here I had nothing, no one, only my immediate family. I spent my years growing up poor, but we still attended every picnic and festival with the whole community.

Sue had had nothing until high school, when she was old enough to have friends who drove her to events. I felt bad for her, but I felt more strongly that I couldn’t let Charlie make her into something I didn’t believe in. I didn’t know how the Mormons felt about Charlie being married to me, but since he was already married, they couldn’t very well tell him to get rid of me.

Mormons were an okay bunch, on the whole. They helped each other out. Old Man Tattinger, who lived across from us, was a Mormon, and when he became unable to landscape his front yard, a big group of them came to do it. Free. I told Charlie he should ask Mormons to help with the floor, but he refused. Maybe they wouldn’t come because of me. More likely it was because Charlie hated to get help from anyone, freely given or not. I didn’t know. There were some things I would never know about Charlie, just as there were things Charlie would never know about me. This was how it should be.

An orderly in a lab coat appeared. “Mrs. Morgan?”

I got up slowly. A young veteran moved his cane out of the way for me. The orderly rushed forward to help me.

“You can stay here,” I said to Charlie, who hadn’t moved. “Be right back.”

“Want to get an ice cream after?” Charlie asked.

I shook my head. “No good for you.” I took the orderly’s arm. “Diabetic, want sugar more and more.” The orderly nodded sympathetically, moving slowly with me along the narrow hall to the tiny bright room where they would take my blood.

A
few days after Sue and Helena left for Japan, I began having trouble sleeping again. At first I thought it was because I was worried about them. Neither had ever been out of the country before. Anything could happen, I fretted. Charlie had been right.

This morning, I sensed something was wrong. My body knew it. All night I sweated, pain deep in my joints, unable to turn over or call out to Charlie, who slept deeply beside me. Finally the sun broke through the horizontal blinds and Charlie got up to use the bathroom. When he returned, my eyes were open and staring at him. I floated outside of myself.

“You all right?” he said in alarm.

My lips and mouth were parched. “No,” I whispered.

He put his hand on my forehead. “You’re paler than a ghost.” He felt for my pulse in my neck. “We better go to the hospital.”

They put me in the ICU, oxygen tubes stuck up my nose, a machine helping my heart pump, an IV shooting fluids and medication through me.

Dr. Cunningham arrived and didn’t say much. He wrote something down on my chart and put his hand on my leg. “Feeling better now?”

“When can I go home?” My voice sounded weaker than I expected. It felt like a weight was on my chest.

“You’re going to stay for observation.”

I kicked my feet under the thin blankets. I hated staying there. “When you going do big operation? Pretty soon, huh?”

“Let’s get you stabilized. Then we’ll worry about that.” He gestured to Charlie to come outside with him, probably to tell him I was really about die and to make me as comfortable as possible, let me think I was going to be okay.

I wanted to scream,
I can know, too! I am an adult!
Anger caused my blood pressure and pulse to shoot up, and the on-call nurse rushed in. I didn’t need to be told what was wrong. It was my heart, same as always. They would give me some new drug mix; I’d stay a couple of days and then go home. It would get stronger again. It always had. I had to keep believing that. I pushed all my doubts away.

Charlie came back in and sat down next to me. He patted my hand. “What did the doctor say?” I asked anyway.

“Not much.” Charlie looked at me sideways. He was honest—my father had been right about that. A terrible liar.

“What, he say I gonna die today?”

Charlie leaned back, his eyes on a far wall. A nurse walked by. There was no privacy here. “He said you had to stay so they can run some tests.”

“Great.” I stared at my husband, willing him to tell me the truth. We’d been through so much together. True, I didn’t love him when we first got married. But love can grow.

 

 

DURING ONE PERIOD in the Navy, Charlie went to Alaska with a spy group every few months. He stayed on the ground while pilots spied on the Russians. Charlie had said there was nothing much to do but sit around and wait for the planes to come back. He was there in case someone got hurt. The worst thing he ever treated was a runny nose.

He went walking on the beaches there. One morning, he found some jade. Real, deep-green jade. He took it home and had it made into earrings and a necklace for me. I knew that was how he showed his love.

In Vietnam, he rode in helicopters with the Marines through enemy fire to retrieve wounded men out of the jungle. But he never told me about the details, never wrote, “You wouldn’t believe how many times we got shot at today! I saw the intestines coming out of five Marines!” Instead, he wrote, “You wouldn’t believe how cheap the silver is here!” He brought back tortoiseshell bracelets, ebony salad bowls, hammered silver cuff links. Only once did he talk about it. Sue’s hair got singed while she was blowing out birthday candles and Charlie got a faraway look in his eyes. “Nothing’s worse than the smell of human hair burning,” he said. “Smelled that and human flesh all the time in Vietnam. Put me off steak for a long time.” Then he shook it off and smiled. “Not forever, though.”

 

 

DEATH LY ILL PEOPLE filled the ICU. The man in the next bed died that night—from what, I didn’t know. I never saw his face, only heard his machines and his rasped breathing through the thin polka-dot curtain separating our beds.

Charlie went home only once in two days. I told him I was fine, that all I needed to do was sleep. “But you can’t stay alone,” he said fretfully, reminding me of an old woman. In fact, he looked more like one every day, his angular features filling out and softening, breasts forming under his shirt. I could not remember the last time we had been intimate. Years. In his religion, intimacy was for the purpose of baby-making, not for fun. I didn’t know if the church had told him this or if he had decided on his own. I used to miss it, taking care of myself with the Hitachi magic wand that Charlie thought was a shoulder massager.

“I stay alone, Charlie. There nurses here.”

“They take a half-hour to answer your call button.”

“Only since they know you stay.” He was annoying me, always hanging around rattling his newspaper or dozing off. He had never spent so much time staying close to me at home. I had had enough. Charlie never listened to me unless I was brusque. “I better faster if you go away.”

He scratched his chin. He hadn’t shaved in days. It looked awful, all salt-and-pepper whiskers that scratched my face when he kissed my cheek.

“But they should know . . .”

“Go home and sleep!” I said, wanting to get up and push him out. “Call Mike. I go home tomorrow. Too much fuss, eh? What matter with you?”

He paused a moment, and I thought he would tell me what the doctor said in the hallway.

I made a shooing motion at my husband. “Go away,” I said, as fiercely as I could. “You want make me better? Leave me alone!”

He still stood there. “I’ll call Mike,” he said slowly.

“Yes.” I didn’t know if he would come. You never knew with Mike.

Charlie kissed my forehead, then left. Right away I wanted him to come back, but I didn’t call for him. Now there were just machines beeping at me and Navy nurses sweeping by, some nice, some acting like hell demons. I felt like crying.