To Listen is Inheritance

My cat Blue could operate a door handle and would jump at it for hours until he could pull the thing down. The only problem was that he could not pull it open. He was a frustrated being until I owned a home with a cat-door. He was smart obviously and I thought we were remarkably close. He spent hours laying in the sunshine at my feet while I worked until one day he disappeared.

My heart broke as weeks went by without him.

It was three weeks later that Blue came home combed for spring and smelling like sweet perfume. I finally understood the phrase “catting around.” He was a handsome Flame-Point Siamese cat, cream-colored with orange ears and orange stripes on his tail. He had the brightest blue eyes you ever saw and black freckles on his pink nose.

I had to go further to claim him than just feeding and watering him. I clipped and ground down his nails. I gave him a bath. I considered locking down the cat door, but I didn’t want to make him hate me. Instead, I gave him a blue collar with tags clearly stating his name and my phone number and address.

Tuesday, though, I received a phone call from a stranger. She had the voice of someone sweet and old, “Please forgive me. I had no idea he had a home. He showed up so dirty and bedraggled.”

It took me just a moment to realize that Blue had already left me! “Oh! Thank you so much for calling.”

“I would bring him over to you myself, but I’m not really walking or driving these days.”

“I can come and get him.”

“We are close to each other. I am just in the next block.”

She gave me her address, and I told her I would come within the hour. I had a white paper to finish and send, and this event would have to wait just that long. I also had to think about how I would get him, Blue, to come home and stay.

Her home was the second home away from ours. It was a one-story Spanish Colonial with a beautiful, if over-trimmed for my tastes. She opened her door as soon as I rang her melodious bell. The front door led into a round foyer, laid with rosy Saltillo tiles, walnut bookshelves built into the walls and displaying an array of Asian knick-knacks and tall windows allowing light to flood into the small space generously.

It smelled like that sweet perfume when she welcomed me in, wearing a housedress and slippers. Her graying hair was styled, and her face was in an elegant smile. “Come in,” She introduced herself, “I am Janet. Welcome!”

I introduced myself and there was Blue, wrapping himself in a sinuous figure-eight between us. We both laughed.

Janet offered tea. Blue and I followed into a darkened living room full of memorabilia, mid-century modern furniture with no square edges and upholstered in a dusty rose. Oriental rugs were generous and lay over walnut-stained tongue-in groove pegged floors. She showed me a spot on her sofa to sit, and she took a seat in a commanding armchair. Blue immediately sat in her lap. She apologized, but I raised my hand and explained, “He has always had a mind of his own. I’m very relieved to know he hasn’t gone that far away.”

“His name is Blue?” she asked as she stroked his back. “I had named him, “Bishonen.””

I asked her what language it was, and what it meant, and she answered, “Oh! It means ‘attractive boy’ in Japanese.”

We smiled at each other awkwardly, and she looked at the silver tray of tea and biscuits on the Asian style coffee table. She gently pushed “Bishonen” off her lap and reached out her old, but delicate, perfectly manicured hands, and poured green tea into beautiful China teacups decorated with cherry blossoms.

We looked into each other’s eyes and smiled as we drank our tea. We were suddenly the best of friends and Bishonen Blue was satisfied with his work enough to wander back into the foyer to stretch out on the warm Saltillo tiles.

At the same moment we asked, “Tell me your name again…” and laughed again. Her full name was Janet Saburo King, and she easily fell into conversation about herself. She had lived in her home fifty years.

I asked her first, “You sound like you might be from the East Coast?”

“Yes,” she gleamed, “I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1897.”

I thought quickly, she is 99 years old! She is still beautiful.

“I met my first husband in Brooklyn. He was a Navy Officer for the Japanese Navy in 1913, when they brought the Cherry Blossom Trees to New York in a diplomatic trade. I was a 16-year-old dancer in the welcoming ceremony. I saw him watching me when I looked over my fan.” And my new 99-year-old friend giggled with delight.

“Was he handsome?” I asked.

“Oh, yes! He was a dreamboat as we used to say.”

The young man snuck branches of cherry blossoms to his favorite dancer, and that was the beginning of their true love story. Once all the trees were planted properly, Janet’s father gave the young couple permission to walk in Sakura Park before the young man’s ship set out to sea. They corresponded faithfully and whenever his ship was in New York City’s harbors, he visited Janet’s family. It was seven years more before her father permitted her to marry Kurusu Saburo. He had left the Navy and joined the Japanese Imperial Diplomatic Service. It meant she would be traveling with her new husband wherever he was sent.

The first place was in California. He was the Consulate-General in Los Angeles, and they made many friends before he was called to move his new family to Jakarta, Indonesia in 1926. She smiled, and I could see that she was tired. Blue Bishonen walked over to her in a knowing way and jumped up on her lap. She hugged him with joy.

“I am so happy you gave him a bath. He really needed one.”

He jumped down swishing his tail to make sure we both knew the word “bath” was very bad. We watched him together and laughed.

“He really did.”

“Do you mind if he visits me?”

“Good friends are the best friends for him and for me.”

“You must come and visit me again, too,” she said as I rose to follow my cat. I nodded.

“I’m near and a full-time writer at home. You can call me anytime,” and I pulled out a sticky note that I always carried with me in case I was struck by brilliance and wrote down my telephone number. We grasped each other’s hands at the door. Her skin was so smooth and delicate, and I was afraid I would crush them.

I noticed my chipped manicure and thought about my moppy hair as I carried my Bishonen Blue home. There was no hope for me to be like Janet or my mother, but I could admire them. I thought about what Janet must have seen throughout her lifetime. I was so curious.

She called me just days later and squealed on Bishonen Blue and invited me for lunch. I offered to bring something, but she replied that she just enjoyed having company. I cut the better roses from a few of my bushes and brought them wrapped in paper towel and plastic bag.

She opened the door and was happy to receive them. She grasped my hand and led me into her kitchen, which was pristine 1960s. She pointed to a jade glass vase on an upper shelf and asked me to bring it down for her. With two hands she carried it to her sink and rinsed it twice and filled it with water the third time. Then she pulled shears from a drawer and cut the stems at an angle. She taught me that the more of the stem that is exposed to water, the longer a flower will survive.

I asked her if she also arranged traditional Japanese vases or bonsai trees. She smiled and nodded, “I arranged ikebana far more often in my younger years, one or two arrangements in every room, but with arthritis it is difficult.” She brought me into a den at the home’s back, “But here is my bonsai collection. Many are 50 years old!”

The gnarled willows and junipers were familiar to me, but she also had a miniature flowering tree, and maples with tiny, tiny leaves. I’m sure I gasped before I said, “I would love to do that someday. Though now I’m taking care of full-sized trees. Last year I planted six gingko trees in my back yard, and a dozen other kinds of trees. I live on a hillside, and I am hoping the trees will keep rivers out of my living room.”

She pulled me to a small table where she had set our lunch. There was miso soup to begin with in small hand thrown clay bowls with hand-painted glaze. Next, she served a Japanese Curry over rice perfectly molded in small balls. She politely ate her lunch with a fork, but I braved picking up the chopsticks and managed to eat my curry without making a mess of myself.

She took the plates back to her kitchen on a small cart. When she returned, she had a teapot and two China cups on top. She gracefully pointed to the leather sofa, rolling the cart behind me. She poured my cup first and handed it to me, then placed her own up on an accent table beside a small pile of interesting things and a small photo album.

We sipped our tea and spoke more about her time in Jakarta, Indonesia in the late 1920s. I asked her if she wore a kimono in those days. I wondered if I crossed a politeness boundary when she hesitated.

“Oh, my dear, I wore all sorts of costume and fashion as the Ambassador’s wife. Yes, I did wear a kimono on special occasions. However, growing up in New York City, I was also aware of modern fashion, and to be fair and true, I loved it!”

Jakarta in the 1920s was still under the Dutch East Indies rule, she explained, so the purpose of their stay there was to create good relations with them. They threw grand parties, and opened a Japanese school while they were there. She had an Indonesian nanny for their son who was a small child then. Janet had the opportunity to get to visit local villages. She said they had not evolved to the 20^th century. In fact, to her they were stuck in the Middle Ages.

At this point she gathered her collection on the table to share. First, she showed pictures of her son and his nanny. She smiled so proudly at her little boy, who had a perfect round face, held by a darker young woman with long hair and wearing cloth wrapped around her sort of like and Indian sarong.

There was a beautiful photo of Janet in a formal kimono, her hair shellac into a perfect coif. Her white and red make-up was modest and perfect. She wore those wood platform shoes, which seemed a good idea there. She added here, “They called the city ‘Batavia’ and indeed it was more garden than city. This was before WWII by two decades.”

Janet looked pained for a moment, and only very slowly did I begin to realize what that meant.

Next, she pulled a cloth onto her lap and unfolded it. Inside were brass miniatures of a type of village building, one large and one smaller. The roofs came off, so that they became little boxes. Also, there was a small cart and a donkey or mule pulling it.

“Now this is from a village where men women and children lived in separate housing. It was where our nanny was born and raised. This building is where the women and children lived,” and she opened the larger brass building with a pointed-thatched roof. Then she closed that and put it on the table, and then opened the smaller box, also with a pointed-thatched roof, “and, of course, this is where the grown men lived.”

She giggled and said she thought that was an excellent idea. Then she pulled out of her pocket a very small house, “and, this is where the newlyweds lived and couples without children.” She wiggled her eyebrows knowingly.

I smiled back at her knowingly, and asked, “Who owned the cart?”

“The entire village owned the cart, so they could bring these to Batavia to sell in the market.” She held out the cloth the village had been wrapped in. It had a batik pattern on it of mustard yellow, brown, and a tiny bit of blue outline. She opened it and shook it out so that I could examine it.

I clapped my hands and asked, “Is this batik?”

She nodded, and asked, “have you been to Indonesia?”

“No, but my mother is a textile artist and showed me how to batik when I was a child.”

“This is perfect then. I want you to have this village and batik cloth.”

“Won’t your children want to inherit this history?”

“No. They are very American and not that interested in the past.”

“Don’t you want it?”

She smiled, “It is time to pass these pieces onto someone who will care for them.”

“Arigato. Thank you.” I bowed as deeply as I could when Bishonen Blue and I left soon after that.

I sent a thank you note rolled up and tied to Bishonen Blue’s collar. I hoped that she would get it when he came home later without it and smelling sweet with her perfume, and we visited several more afternoons over the next month.

Then I didn’t hear from her again for a week. I became worried, and Bishonen Blue wore off her perfume and took to bringing me lizard tails again.

One day he returned smelling like her perfume. I was relieved that Janet was up and about, and I made banana bread to celebrate with her. I went over and knocked on her door with my gift. When she answered the door, she was less put together for her standards, and let me in, nevertheless. She was clearly upset as she looked outside before closing the door.

“What is wrong, Janet?” I asked before thinking, “Is it all right for me to ask?”

She looked into my eyes, clearly upset, “My children want me to live in a nursing home! I had a little fall on my hip, but nothing was broken.” I did see that she was limping to her parlor. She was glad to sit down and pointed me to the sofa after she made herself comfortable.

“Can I get you some tea, or water?” I asked. “Would you like a piece of banana bread?”

“Perhaps, later,” she said and reached down to pet my cat, talking to him, “I heard you got yourself into trouble, Bishonen Blue.”

“Yes, he was stuck in a tree during the rainstorms,” I told her.

She scratched his chin, “I heard him yowling.”

“Naughty boy. I had to wash him in peanut butter to get the sap off him!” I told her.

She didn’t seem to want to waste time chatting that day. “On the bottom middle shelf in the foyer, there is a large plate. Will you bring it here?” she pointed to her lap.

“Of course,” and I went to get the plate, and laid it gently on her lap. She grasped it with both hands and looked at me.

“This not worth much because it has broken and been fixed many times, but it is incredibly special to me. I want you to have it before they send me away because I have so enjoyed our time together.”

I swallowed hard and asked, “But why are you giving me something so important to you?”

“This Arita platter belonged to my parents and passed to me when I became a wife. It is to serve sushi on. But it broke as I moved from Jakarta back to Tokyo before World War II. I had it mended and kept it close. It would have been wise to leave it behind as my story became darker before I emerged mended myself. It is like a physical Haiku. Do you know what that is?”

I nodded and looked down at the pikes swimming in a blue porcelain ocean that had golden rays interrupting it.

“I will tell you more about my time in Manchuria and Tokyo tomorrow, if you’d like?”

“Arigato, Janet. May I help you in any way?”

“I have a home nurse coming later today. We will share banana bread then. Arigato. Arigato is the best word in Japanese to know.” And she smiled.

Late that night, I heard sirens blaring, and dressed, running to the door as fast as I could and ran to the next block where the firetruck and ambulance were parked.

I looked at Janet lying on a stretcher, but they were wrapping her body in a bag. I burst into tears. She had marked my heart.

I felt Bishonen Blue wrapping himself around my legs and I was so grateful to have him there when he jumped in my arms with that sweet perfume and looked at the body bag and then up quickly, swatting the air and purring. I buried my face in his and walked slowly home.

Time can be so generous and so stingy.