1001 Cranes (8 page)

Mrs. O returns to the table to do some folding of her own. Her face is a bit greenish but her daughters-in-law are concentrating so hard on the origami that they don’t seem to notice.

The next hour and a half passes with more of the same. Sarah is like a machine; she produces one perfect crane after another. Helen, between sighs, folds one damaged, balled-up crane after another. I can just see Grandma Michi shaking her head.
We can’t use those. Unacceptable.
Mrs. O, meanwhile, sits for a few minutes, breathes in the scene at the table, and then goes away somewhere else—maybe outside by the trash can again?

It’s late, so I divide a stack of wrapped origami paper into two piles. Four hundred sheets for one daughter-in-law, and another four hundred for the other.

“How can I make four hundred cranes on my own?” The high pitch of Helen’s voice hurts my ears. As if responding to a dog whistle, Arthur comes to her side.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“It’s too much. I can’t do this. I never was good at crafty things.”

I totally understand how Helen feels, but she’s making a big deal out of nothing. So she’s bad at folding cranes—join the club. At least she doesn’t have Grandma Michi grading her work. Meanwhile, Sarah has her dozens of perfect A-grade cranes lined up in front of her like military jets ready to take off. Her husband is now standing in back of her chair, and I can easily read the look on his face:
My wife’s are better than your wife’s
.

“My parents could hire you to do these, right? Fold all the cranes?” Arthur says.

I nod. I am feeling a little overwhelmed, thinking about all the cranes I will have to fold.

Mrs. O returns to the table, and Arthur pitches his idea to her. “Mom, why don’t you have the Inuis handle the whole thing? Helen is busy with work, and so is Sarah—”

“I don’t mind,” Sarah interrupts.

“Well, anyway, most everyone is busy, so why don’t you let Angela do all the folding?”

This is obviously not what Mrs. O had in mind. “We’re supposed to work on these together. Like a quilt.” Mrs. O’s voice is steady and clear.

“Is that what this whole thing is about? Louise Takeyama’s family quilt?”

Mrs. O frowns.

“I saw it,” Arthur says. “It was on display at church last Sunday, right? So, is this again about how we can keep up with the Takeyamas?”

Mrs. O’s mouth quivers. She has lines around her lips, like my grandmother, but instead of being straight and defined, they are broken and dotted. “Excuse me,” she says, leaving the table again.

With Mrs. O’s exit comes the entrance of her husband. Even though he hasn’t been in the room until now, he knows everything that has been going on. “This isn’t about Louise Takeyama or anyone else. This is our anniversary, and you’ll make this for us. For me and your mother.” Jack Sr.’s voice takes on a serious and deep tone, a heavy blanket falling over all of us.

At this point I figure out that the whole project really has nothing to do with the 1001 cranes or even the anniversary celebration. And that they have brought me in because they believed I wouldn’t understand what was going on below the surface. And they were right; I don’t. But I can feel that something is wrong. I’m super-sensitive right now anyway; I can smell even a whiff of conflict.

Jack Sr. keeps talking. “So I don’t want to hear any more of it. No more
monku.
”

My dad’s special word. I look up, surprised. Jack Jr. must think I need a translation. His lips have been pressed together and he finally says, “Whining. My dad is sick of whining. And I am, too.”

His words burn in my ears, and I know that Helen must be feeling it as well. She blinks rapidly, freckles on her eyelids appearing and disappearing.

“You’re such a jerk,” Arthur shoots back at his older brother. I then close the tackle box. I know that our first 1001-cranes folding session is over.

I pack my things and then notice that I’m alone at the table. I don’t see Helen or Arthur. Jack Jr. and Sarah, deep in conversation, are huddled on the couch in the living room.

I look down a hallway, where the bathroom is. The back bedroom is lit and the door is open. Mr. O is massaging Mrs. O’s shoulders. Her chin is down on her chest. “Oh, that’s where it’s sore, Jack,” she says.

“Mom, you can’t overdo it, okay?”

I know that Mr. O’s calling her Mom doesn’t mean he thinks Mrs. O is his mother. Gramps does the same thing, only he sometimes yells out “Grandma” when he wants Grandma Michi’s attention.

“Oooh, there, there. That’s it,” Mrs. O says.

I stand and watch them for another minute. Somehow, seeing Mr. O massage Mrs. O makes me feel better.

Once I’m at my grandparents’ house, Grandma peppers me with questions. “So, what did it look like inside?”

“Michi—” Gramps says.

“After all these years, they never let me in. Just keep me standing in the doorway,” Grandma says.

“It looked normal,” I say. Normal like us in Mill Valley, but maybe not Inui normal. I don’t mention anything about the tension between the two brothers and their wives. Grandma Michi would relish it, I’m sure. But for some reason I remain protective of Mrs. O. “Mrs. Oyama wants me to come back every Friday night. Have dinner with them and then help the daughters-in-law fold.”

“Is she a good cook?”

“Of course she’s a good cook,” Gramps says. “Remember that casserole she brought when you had your gallbladder surgery?”

“It tasted different. Had eggplant and zucchini in it,” Janet remarks, as if there’s no other vegetable than iceberg lettuce.

“She had a cancer before,” Grandma says.

“They thought she was going to die,” Aunt Janet adds.

“I think she had both breasts removed.”

I start to feel a little sick to my stomach and tug my bra through my T-shirt.

“Miracle she’s survived this long,” Gramps adds.

“Well, cancer survivor or no cancer survivor,” Grandma declares, “if Ruth Oyama wants to take so much of my granddaughter’s time, she’ll have to pay extra.”

Crazy Kawaguchi

Gramps says that in business, when it rains, it pours. Sure enough, the next day another customer, in a suit, nylons, heels, and pearls, walks through the door of the flower shop. She tells us that her name is Lisa Kawaguchi. She comes with a bunch of extras, including a large leather Day-Timer and an assortment of high-tech gadgets.

“I heard that you also do one-thousand-and-one-cranes displays,” she says.

Grandma Michi gives her a once-over before speaking. She looks as if she can sense that this woman will be trouble. “Yes,” she says, and, probably against her better judgment, pulls out the 1001-cranes book.

After glancing at every plastic-covered page in our album, the woman seems satisfied. She introduces herself, pronouncing her last name “Ka-wa-GOO-chi,” like she’s a hungry grizzly bear on a food hunt. At that moment, to me she becomes Kawaguchi rather than Lisa.

She opens her Day-Timer to the back, releases the three metal rings to present a photocopied picture to Grandma. It is of a line of old men in black kimonos. She taps the circular design on the shoulders of their clothing. Aunt Janet told me that Japanese families wore their crests on their funeral attire. “This is my mother’s
mon.
” It is simple. A six-point star that resembles a pin I used to put on my Brownie sash.

“Fine. We can do that.” Grandma doesn’t waste any time and tells her how much it’s going to cost. Maybe she wants to scare off Kawaguchi.

“But the design is simple.”

But Grandma doesn’t seem like she’s going to budge.

They go back and forth and then Kawaguchi notices Gramps’s flower arrangements. She’s impressed, looks through our wedding flowers book, and says she’ll also order a bridal bouquet and boutonnieres if Grandma gives her a break.

The two women nod and the deal is struck.

“I’d like a drawing of the display. Maybe on graph paper. And I’d like you to prepare a swatch.”

“Swatch?”

“I just want to see how the cranes will look together. And I want it in silver. You can fax or e-mail me the drawing this weekend.”

“We don’t have a fax. And I don’t e-mail.”

Kawaguchi puckers her lips. She wears a tangerine lipstick that doesn’t seem to smear no matter how she contorts her mouth. She presses buttons on a digital device and then flips her Day-Timer past rows and columns highlighted in neon pink, yellow, and blue. Kawaguchi’s life is neatly categorized, stacked, and color coded.

“Well, I’ll be meeting the wedding coordinator at the Gardena Buddhist Temple on Monday. I won’t have time to come by here. Can you meet me there?”

This is a test of wills; I can just feel it. “My granddaughter, Angela, can deliver it. It’s walking distance from here.”

What? I think. I don’t mind being sent out from the shop, but I don’t want to deal with Kawaguchi on my own.

Kawaguchi gives me a look. I know that she doesn’t think much of me. I don’t care, because the same goes for me about her. “I guess that will be all right,” she finally says. “Two o’clock on Monday. I’ll be in the sanctuary.”

She then slaps her date book shut, as if warning me that there will be repercussions if I don’t show.

Wet Carnations

The next few days are filled with folding, folding, and more folding. Origami cranes as big as the Dumbos on the Disneyland ride even show up in my dreams. They fly past my head one after another. When I wake up, my fingers are moving above me, folding invisible cranes.

Gramps has told me that during dark times, it’s good to keep your mind on other things. I think that’s definitely true for Grandma Michi, because she’s constantly moving. She doesn’t watch much TV or many movies, and when she does, she’s either knitting or clipping coupons. She doesn’t talk about her dark times, but she wears them on her face sometimes when she doesn’t think people are looking.

Origami is my medicine for right now. The cranes are my distractions and I’m grateful for them. Now most of them go into the A pile, or at least the B pile. I make Cs when I start thinking about Mom and Dad.

Mom and Dad take turns calling me, so I figure that they talked to make sure at least one of them would touch base with me every day.

On Sunday afternoon I try not to think about the skateboarders—well, one certain skateboarder—at the middle school. He probably forgot about me, I figure.

On Monday morning I get up early to go to the flower market with Gramps. He goes to the flower market three times a week. He tells me that they are actually two flower markets that stand opposite each other in downtown Los Angeles, but most people think they’re just one. The one on the west side of Wall Street is the “American” market, and the one on the east is “Japanese.” We go into the Japanese one.

When I first heard of the flower market, I thought of a book I had read that took place in England during Victorian times. There was a drawing of an open-air market, with women with big breasts, wearing gauzy peasant dresses and flower wreaths in their hair, carrying baskets of daisies and roses. But the reality is completely different. The flower market is encased in concrete, surrounded by tents and refrigerator boxes where homeless men and women live, and run-down diners. We park our van in a paved lot and Gramps borrows a flat cart on rollers from a black man named Johnny. Johnny seems to be a good friend of Gramps’s. “You have a mighty pretty granddaughter there,” he says, and he looks at me hard, as if he means it.

Gramps seems to know everyone who works in the flower market. We go down in the elevator to a big open area filled with plastic containers of every kind of flower you can think of. There are stands throughout the room and Gramps tells me that he has “standing orders” with the best growers and wholesalers. At least half of the workers here are Japanese and have funny names like Jibo, Mamo, Itch, Taxie, Haruo, and Froggy. They smile at me and offer me flower bouquets wrapped in newspaper. “Next time you come, we’ll buy you some breakfast at the coffee shop,” they tell me.

“I like the flower market,” I tell him on the way home. His van is full of buckets sloshing with water and blooms.