Obasan (Ayako Nakane) Character Analysis

Such an old woman she is. She opens her mouth to say more, but there is no further sound from her dry lips.

The language of her grief is silence. She has learned it well, its idioms, its nuances. Over the years, silence within her small body has grown large and powerful.

What will she do now? I wonder.

What choices does she have?

All our ordinary stories are changed in time, altered as much by the present as the present is shaped by the past. Potent and pervasive as a prairie dust storm, memories and dreams seep and mingle through cracks, settling on furniture and into upholstery. Our attics and living rooms encroach on each other, deep into their invisible places.

Out loud I said, “Why not leave the dead to bury the dead?”

“Dead?” she asked. “I’m not dead. You’re not dead. Who’s dead?”

“But you can’t fight the whole country,” I said.

“We are the country.”

Obasan was not taking part in the conversation. When pressed, finally she said that she was grateful for life. “Arigati. Gratitude only.”

[…] “In the world, there is no better place,” [Uncle] said.

It is always so. We must always honor the wishes of others before our own. We will make the way smooth by restraining emotion. Though we might wish Grandma and Grandpa to stay, we must watch them go. To try to meet one’s own needs in spite of the wishes of others is to be “wagamama”—selfish and inconsiderate. Obasan teaches me not to be wagamama by always heeding everyone’s needs. That is why she is waiting patiently beside me at this bridge. That is why, when I am offered gifts, I must first refuse politely. It is such a tangle trying to decipher the needs and intents of others.

And I am tired, I suppose, because I want to get away from all this. From the past and all these papers, from the present, from the memories, from the deaths, from Aunt Emily and her heap of words. I want to break loose from the heavy identity, the evidence of rejection, the unexpressed passion, the misunderstood politeness. I am tired of living between deaths and funerals, weighted with decorum, unable to shout or sing or dance, unable to scream or swear, unable to laugh, unable to breathe out loud.

(Keep your eyes down. When you are in the city, do not look into anyone's face. That way they may not see you. That way you offend less.)

Is it so bad?

Yes.

Do I really mind?

Yes, I mind. I mind everything. Even the flies. […] It’s the chicken coop “house” we live in that I mind. […] It’s the bedbugs and my having to sleep on the table to escape the nightly attack, and the welts all over our bodies. […] Or it’s standing in the beet field under the maddening sun […].

[…] I mind the harvesttime and the hands and the wrists bound in rags to keep the wrists from breaking open. […] I cannot tell about this time, Aunt Emily. The body will not tell.

I can remember since Aunt Emily insists that I must and release the floodgates one by one. […] I can cry for Obasan, who has turned to stone.

But what then? Uncle does not rise up and return to his boats. Dead bones do not take on flesh.

What is done, Aunt Emily, is done, is it not? And no doubt it will all happen again, over and over with different faces and names, variations on the same theme.

I know Obasan is praying. I’ve seen her before––the time Stephen leapt out of bed in the middle of the night yelling, “I’ve got to get out of here,” and ran down the road away from the farm in the dark. Obasan sat at the table and prayed till he returned. He said when he came back he’d had a nightmare. Something about a metallic insect the size of a tractor, webbing a grid of iron bars over him. (Later, he told me he had the same nightmare again, but escaped the web by turning the bars into a xylophone.)

The comments are so incessant and always so well-intentioned. “How long have you been in this country? Do you like our country? […] Have you ever been back to Japan?”

Back?

[…] Where do any of us come from in this cold country? Oh, Canada, whether it is admitted or not, we come from you we come from you. […] We come from our untold tales that wait for their telling. We come from Canada, this land that is like every land, filled with the wise, the fearful, the compassionate, the corrupt.

Obasan is small as a child and has not learned to weep.

Back and forth, back and forth, her hands move on her knees.

She looks at me unsteadily, then hands me the ID card with Uncle’s young face. What ghostly whisperings I feel in the air as I hold the card. “Kodomo no tame—for the sake of the children––gaman shi masho––let us endure.” The voices pour down like rain but in the middle of the downpour I still feel thirst. Somewhere between speech and hearing is a transmutation of sound.