My Courtesy Aunt

by

Terry Watada

EVERY FAMILY HAS A RICH AUNT. Mine was Aunt Sally. Living in an exclusive area of Toronto, so exclusive it didn’t have a name, she was what my mother called haikara (snob), a proud member of the Curators’ Group at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Music Director’s Circle of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Canadian Opera Company Conductor’s Club. Maybe a snob but she was a lady; such a lady in fact that one of her working-class nephews never wanted to visit her in her exclusive duplex up Mt. Pleasant Avenue North, north of Lawrence Avenue, naturally.

“Never felt like I could swear around her,” he claimed.

“You like to swear at your aunt?” I questioned.

In any case, I suspected he was right. A good loud vulgarism would’ve broken her in half.

Aunt Sally’s real name was Satsuki Tanaka (née Jikemura), “Sally” an obvious substitute in a “Canadian” world. Confusing me as I grew up was the fact that she wasn’t my real aunt. My parents were alone in Canada and worked for the Jikemura logging company in British Columbia before WWII. So, they became my family in everything but common birth.

She was my Courtesy Aunt and so I called her “Aunt” out of respect. Her father was Grandpa, her mother Grandma, and her husband Uncle Eizo, which seemed logical. The strange thing was that her two sisters were not my “aunts.” Furthermore, her eldest sister (Sachiko Kawai) was Oneesan, meaning Oldest Sister, to my older brother, and the youngest called my mother “Auntie.” To top it off, my father considered Satsuki a daughter and called her an affectionate but perhaps improper Sat-chan even in polite company. She didn’t call him anything. If I had thought about it, I might’ve guessed we were victims of a deranged inbreeding. Fortunately, I didn’t dwell on it.

Aunt Sally had a slender build and excellent posture, which made her seem taller than she was. Her kind face with an open and toothy smile expressed deep pleasure when inspired, though it seldom appeared because most things ran contrary to her high standards. She was my Audrey Hepburn with her elegant looks, short coiffed hair, impeccable manners, and unerring good taste.

“Teruo-kun, would you like some coffee? It’s a French blend.” Her slender fingers picked up the ornate carafe, decorated with flowers of an indistinct kind, and poured the thick black liquid into a matching cup.

I gladly accepted. “Coffee time” was such a wonderful tradition in her apartment.

EVEN THOUGH HER DICTION WAS PERFECT, Aunt Sally had a definite accent, a Nisei accent. Only Japanese North Americans have such an accent, not quite Japanese and not regional English. Apparently, something that she considered a curse, exacerbated by the fact that my brother was “afflicted” with it only slightly – a side benefit of his advanced education and his “youth” (he was ten years her junior) no doubt. In any case, Aunt Sally spent her entire life trying to be as “Canadian” as possible. But try as she might to affect a high tone, there was no mistaking her roots.

Such a pretension may have started after World War II when all Nisei tried to distance themselves from other Japanese Canadians. They were “enemy aliens” after all. Thus, they refused to live near one another, avoided gathering too conspicuously, and prohibited their children from fraternizing with other Japanese unless related. Many even denied their Japanese background. I’m Canadian!

None of that mattered to me because Aunt Sally was someone to admire and emulate. She lived for art and beauty. Her choice of style was faultless, only haute couture for her; she ate haute cuisine or nothing at all. She went to the cinema to see a “film”; she never went to a movie or, as she put it, a “picture show.” She never watched television and only agreed to buy one to keep her parents entertained. And Uncle Eizo wanted to watch the hockey game.

She did occasionally sit to watch. Whenever a commercial came on, she raised her hand and shouted, “Silence!” Uncle Eizo immediately stood up to lower the volume to nil. He later thanked the Buddha for the remote control with a mute button.

Her favourite piece of music was Chopin’s Etude, Opus 10, No. 3. The soft and gentle flow of piano notes blended into what she called the “romantic ideal,” describing it as the melancholy of passion. A Deutsche Grammophon vinyl copy of Tristesse or Sadness (bought at Sam the Record Man by one of her nephews – downtown of all places!) revolved round and round on her mahogany stereo console seemingly all the time. Tasteful Hokusai woodblock prints adorned her walls, her only acknowledgement of her Japanese background. She was the soul of sophistication and gentility.

“COFFEE TIME” AT AUNT SALLY’S was something I treasured. It took place around nine o’clock during the evening of an event, usually a significant birthday, like Grandpa’s eighty-eighth, or some anniversary, or New Year’s. Dinner was at Kwong Chow, China House up on Eglinton Avenue (the preferred uptown location), or the Golden Dragon in Chinatown. Afterwards, the old friends who had attended the celebration meal gathered at the well-appointed duplex in North Toronto to play catch-up with their lives. Grandpa and Grandma vacated their upstairs apartment that “smelled Japanese” as my aunt scoffed, to sit around their daughter’s Ridpath dining table, drinking green tea or Canadian Club whiskey (on coasters, naturally) with those of their BC logging camp days, her oneesan, her husband, and my parents included. Aunt Sally held court with her favourites on the front-room couches: her younger sister and her Italian Canadian psychologist husband, her favourite nieces and me. Uncle Eizo usually hung out with my brother in the games/TV room donburo (down below).

We spent the rest of the evening discussing books, art, and film. What I liked about her most was the fact that she accepted and maybe celebrated my choice of studies. Mom and Dad knew nothing of literature as a discipline; they were just happy I was in university. It was something they could brag about to the Japan relatives. My brother, twenty years my senior, had no interest. Since he had a doctorate in chemical engineering and hated reading highbrow books, he had no respect for that kind of education. He constantly asked where my studies were leading me.

“Are you going to be a lawyer? A professor? Maybe a doctor. You’ll have to change majors. What then? A BA in literature means no job, no wife, no life,” he often chimed.

When I finally said I wanted to be a writer . . . well, he despaired for me.

Chopin played discreetly in the background, even if the “old folks” broke out in song – some old Japanese song – from time to time.

Aunt Sally sat poised in that lady-like pose, ignoring as best as she could the cacophony. Her face grew tight with the effort. I personally liked the spontaneous singing. Sounded like Japanese blues to me, but I never said anything to my aunt. That would’ve been a betrayal of a sort.

In any case, she tried to listen attentively as I told her about my studies in English literature or about my attempts at getting my poetry published.

Once the “noise” subsided, she patiently commented encouragingly even though she never asked to read any of my poems. I wasn’t Shelley or Keats after all. She seldom asked after my parents or my brother though they had been childhood companions.

Though I knew Aunt Sally didn’t approve of the Japanese, I never imagined she thought herself above my family. We were close courtesy relatives after all.

BUT THEN AUNT SALLY’S “TRUE” NATURE was revealed to me when Grandpa turned eighty-eight years old in the 1970s. Uncle Eizo took on the chore of organizing a celebration at Kwong Chow, the best restaurant in Chinatown and favourite of the Jikemuras. Lichee Gardens was classier (white tablecloth and French service), but I imagined Aunt Sally thought it too good for the likes of her parents’ guests.

The Japanese demand that certain milestones be observed: forty-second, seventy-seventh, and eighty-eighth birthdays. There are dire consequences if one is missed.

Kwong Chow was owned and run by the Lumb family; the matriarch and hostess, Jean, could have given Aunt Sally a run for her money. She was as charming as a royal and had enough influence to save Toronto’s Chinatown from the wrecking ball. Prime Ministers, political princes, and CBC prima donnas came to her restaurant, which was beautifully appointed with lacquered furniture, an extensive bar and indirect lighting. There was even a washroom matron for the ladies. The menu was extensive using the best and freshest ingredients, as Mrs. Lumb boasted. Ever since we were kids, several courtesy cousins and I loved the elevated colour television set in the corner. Bugs Bunny never looked better.

We sat, maybe twenty in the party, at a long white linen-clothed table in a segregated part of the dining room. It made me feel like some VIP. The dishes in front of us held a myriad of Chinese courses, appetizing in their glisten and aroma and fascinating in their other-worldly strangeness. Aunt Sally always made sure I had my own bowl of wonton mein or soba as Japanese Canadians had called it. The soup was extra to the bill and a specialty I never had unless I was with my aunt. My family rarely went to a Chinese restaurant, venturing only when invited. Too expensive. The closest we came on a day-to-day basis was ordering from Eden Chinese Food, a take-out place, and only Cantonese chow mein and char siu (barbecue pork) with tofu to complement whatever Mom was cooking for guests.

Grandpa sat at the head of the table, somewhat oblivious to the celebrations. As long as I had known him, he was a quiet man. He played with me as a toddler, but as I grew, he seemed to withdraw and seldom spoke, even with his close friends from the old days. Then again, the man was eighty-eight. Grandma was the hostess, even with her failing memory (Aunt Sally kept a watchful eye), socializing animatedly with all the guests. The rest of us “young folks” paid only cursory attention since few of us could speak Japanese.

It seemed to be Grandma’s time. She held court much in the same way Aunt Sally did with her favourites. Grandpa maintained his silence even when Grandma would hurl insults at him.

“Him? Him no good,” she said in broken English before switching. “Just sits all day doing nothing. Can’t even take the garbage out. Doesn’t know what’s going on. Weak in the knees and in the head.” She then laughed at him as her friends nodded in agreement. Even my mother.

Why she was so mean to him was beyond me. And why he tolerated it or rather was resigned to it was equally mysterious.

After the celebration, we proceeded down the stairs towards the street. Aunt Sally held me back for a moment to invite me to her place for “coffee time.”

“Great, I’ll tell my dad in the car.”

“Oh no, dear,” she cautioned. “Let’s limit it to a few.”

By “few” she meant her favourites. It was the first time I was invited exclusive of my family.

I thought lamely but quickly, “I’m sorry Aunt Sally, I’ve got a Joyce paper due next week and I’ve barely started.” I had lied. “I just remembered.”

From then on, I wondered what she had against my family. Perhaps the answer lay in long-ago incidents.

ABOUT SIX MONTHS AFTER that eighty-eighth birthday party, Grandpa died. He was reported to have gone peacefully in his sleep, but a conversation in the house revealed much. During my weekly visit from school, I was in the family kitchen quietly enjoying my mom’s Saturday lunch – hot dogs, with fried onions, dayglo green relish, and tomato slices, and Lipton’s chicken noodle soup – when I heard my parents conversing in the front room about Jikemura-san. My mom’s voice was animated as if telling my father some long-buried secret. It was all in Japanese, so I understood only a little of it.

When they finished, they came into the kitchen.

“What’s up?” I asked casually.

“I was talking about Jikemura-no oji about something,” Mom informed me in Japanese. (Old man Jikemura)

“About what?”

“Nem mind,” she said and left the room.

I was surprised at her reaction. Dad waited until Mom was on the telephone in the hallway, pressing a gossip advantage no doubt. Only then did he speak to me in a quiet voice. Seems Grandpa was quite remorseful on his deathbed. He begged his wife to forgive him.

“Why?” I asked.

Dad was uncharacteristically forthcoming. Maybe he thought I should know.

IN THE DAYS WHEN THE PACIFIC OCEAN, a strait, and rivers were my lumberjack father and his crew’s path to the virgin forests of Vancouver Island, Grandpa was the owner of a small but thriving lumber camp. The men were weathered, simple and hard working. During their down times, they drank and played hard, most times in Vancouver. Canadian Club whiskey, games of pokka (poker), and painted ladies occupied their visits to the Powell Street gambling establishments operated by Black Dragon gangster kingpins like Etsuji Morii and his bodyguard Rikimatsu.

Dad avoided such pleasures, but Grandpa had money and was given to temptation easily. Whenever Grandpa stumbled home drunk, sometimes in the clear light of day, an embarrassed Grandma would grab him by the hair, drag him out into the street and throw him to the pavement. She would proceed to throttle the man, swearing and spitting at the same time.

I didn’t understand. Okay, the man may have been a drunkard, but for Grandma to take it out on him like that seemed a little over-the-top given the fact that she herself was not a teetotaler and encouraged guests to drink to excess at gatherings. But after I thought about it, such public displays of inebriation must’ve been an enormous humiliation to Grandma. She hated gossip, and so, had to do something. The Jikemura children, too, probably ran away to hide. The family’s reputation in the community was at stake.

According to Dad, his best friend, Kawai-san – the company’s timekeeper and Grandpa’s future son-in-law (hemarried the eldest daughter) – came to him one day concerned that $100,000 was missing from the business accounts. Upon investigation, they discovered that the “old man” had siphoned off the amount over the years to pay for ten mistresses. Ten! Many at the same time, Dad claimed. Grandpa was a stronger man than I had thought. Legendary. Etsuji Morii, the gangster boss, had set up a system wherein men could sponsor women to come from Japan, clothe and feed them, and put them up in hotels, while they worked in one of Morii’s Powell Street clubs in exchange for sexual favours. They were euphemistically referred to as “wives.” All it took was money.

At the time, everyone, it seemed, knew of my grandfather’s proclivities. Hence Grandma punished him in that very public way. He never retaliated.

THEN CAME WWII. Japanese Canadians were considered “enemy aliens” and exiled from the coast. My dad went to a forced-labour camp and my mother and brother went to Sandon, a camp for Buddhists. They were assigned to a ramshackle cabin and lived out the war in impoverished conditions.

The Jikemura family, according to Dad, didn’t have it as bad since they could afford to be “self-sustaining” – to live on their own as a family in a deserted mining town called Minto, BC. All they needed was $1500 to sustain themselves. My mother and brother soon joined them (housed in a crude cabin, mind) after Mom begged Grandpa for help. Mom certainly didn’t have that kind of money. Another obligation.

So, Aunt Sally was spared further humiliation from a degenerate and drunken father, for a time.

But she couldn’t escape the racism, especially when her family resettled in Toronto, a once restricted city. Besides the “Canadian” attitudes she encountered, she was snubbed by the Nikkei social clubs and organizations around town.

“She wouldn’t be happy among us peasants,” said a woman at the Buddhist Church.

Aunt Sally’s childhood came back to haunt her in adulthood. She was alienated from her community.

Tuberculosis didn’t help either. How she contracted it was anyone’s guess. The disease was considered a curse. People shunned patients and whole families. You were presumed to be contagious, and victims often took on a deep-seated sense of shame over it. She must have seen the sneering looks though again she had no control over it.

Her life was punctuated with the indignities of an embarrassment of a father, legislated racism, and alienation through disease. It was no wonder she denied her past, loathing the Issei for their crude behaviour, their lack of compassion, their insensitivity. Her only respite was art and culture – wrapping herself in a cocoon of beauty kept her safe.

Then a bright light shone on her: she met Eizo.

AUNT SALLY AND UNCLE EIZO had met in the full blush of youth a year after relocating to the Spadina Avenue area where most Japanese Canadians in Toronto settled after the city’s restrictions on Japanese Canadians were lifted in 1949. If you were a Jap, you weren’t welcome. As fate would have it, they both found themselves in the same sanitarium for tuberculosis. Uncle suffered the double whammy of TB and polio. Despite her own treatment and convalescence for TB, Aunty was attracted to Uncle’s handsome face, easy-going nature, and perpetual smile. She soon attended to his needs, voluntarily propping up his pillow, bringing him water and soothing his soul by sitting with him, reading Shakespeare aloud (he was extremely tolerant) and smoothing his hair. Love blossomed.

Yet it was not an easy time. Uncle Eizo nearly died several times. When I asked about that period, my aunt stared blankly ahead and just said to me, “Dying is the last indignity” – something I never fully understood until much later in life.

Upon release, Aunt Sally found no friends within Japanese Canadian organizations like the Downtown Nisei Club at the University Settlement House or the Toronto Buddhist Church. She had been tainted by her disease and was “royally snubbed.” Instead, she worked in a music store (classical records only), attended the ballet and concerts by herself, and waited for her beloved to be cured and released.

After recovering, Uncle Eizo completed his engineering degree at the University of Toronto, became a rising star in an uptown firm, and proposed to his wonderful, compassionate girlfriend.

It was soon after the wedding in the early 1960s that Grandma and my mother got on Aunt Sally’s case about having a baby. They were brutally frank. “I know Eizo’s not the ideal man you’d want a baby with,” my mother said, “but he’s the only one you could get, and he is your husband.” Grandma concurred.

Uncle Eizo had lost the use of his left leg because of polio, and I thought that Aunt Sally couldn’t bring herself to become impregnated by a “cripple” (Grandma’s term). I was stupid and wrong of course. The truth was Aunty couldn’t have babies as a side effect of her condition, so perhaps the matriarchs were suggesting adoption – a heinous and improper suggestion for my aunt. It was bad enough she had suffered the shame of TB, shunned by the community, making it impossible to meet a “proper man,” but there was no use adding insult to injury. She must’ve cringed with discomfort.

Every time the story was recalled after that day, my mother smiled a little, or so I thought.

WHEN DAD HAD FINISHED THE STORY, I gathered the harassment was the declaration of war between Aunt Sally and my mother. The animosity escalated when Mom was pregnant with me in 1951. My parents and brother lived in the third-floor attic of a slumped house near Dundas and Spadina in Little Tokyo (Chinatowntoday), though no one called the area by that name. That room was so small their only visitor in summer was stifling humidity and, in winter, frigid frost. My parents wanted to move badly. Mom insisted on a bigger place with the growing family.

They found an ideal house in Toronto’s working-class east end – a two storey, three-bedroom, semi-detached single-family dwelling – but they needed a $1000 down payment. The Jikemuras had always been rich, the patriarch owning and operating a Vancouver Island lumber company before the war. Grandpa made my father the foreman, my mother the cook, and, as a result, we were beholden to him, the oyabun (boss) and his family. We became their kerai. It was understood that we owed them our loyalty, on, and in return they had a duty to us: we were their giri, their obligation, their burden. Very Japanese.

So, one bright day in the time of 1950s prosperity, Dad went hat-in-hand to ask for a loan. To his surprise, Aunt Sally had advised Grandma to oppose it. She allegedly said, “We’ll never get the money back. You just can’t trust them.” Her warning was a slap to my father’s face, a betrayal against one so loyal and trustworthy, a denial of giri, a denial of obligation. Grandma agreed, and Grandpa said nothing, instead giving into the pressure. My parents had to delay buying the house to save the money by other means. Dad worked as much overtime as was offered to a construction labourer, and my mother took in sewing – a lot of it. It was lucky that the house was still available by the time the money was saved. Once the place was purchased, my father shrugged off the Jikemura slight, putting it out of his mind quickly.

Whenever my mother brought it up (even during my childhood), my father promptly admonished her.

“Damare!” he shouted in Japanese. Shut up! “Not Sat-chan.”

So, my mother internalized it until the next time the incident became “talk.” As time wore on, the slight became a tumour only to be cured by revenge.

BY 1980 GRANDMA WAS DEAD. Aunt Sally was now free to indulge her true self.

Oshogatsu, New Year’s Day, was a profound time of year – it shone brightly during the gloom of overcast skies, plunging temperatures and the post-Christmas letdown. Mom and Dad spent most of New Year’s Eve preparing the Japanese delicacies for the next day. Plump shrimp set in a curved arrangement for tempura; ingredients like shiitake, maguro, nori, unagi (mushroom, tuna, seaweed, eel), cucumber and egg waited to be rolled together into makizushi (rolled sushi); and pork, chicken, and beef marinated in readiness for the fry pan.

With the dawning of the New Year, friends past and present visited each other all over Toronto to pay respects and partake of the sumptuous feast. There was always laughter, singing, and reminiscing. As the men (and only men made the rounds while the women waited to greet the peripatetic) emptied the celebratory bottle of Canadian Club whiskey, they laughed harder and grew sentimental. “You didn’t know your father was such a tough man, did you bozu?” (young boy) asked Rikimatsu in his characteristic craggy voice. He was the oldest of Dad’s cronies, a gambler connected to Morii’s notorious Black Dragon crime gang in prewar Vancouver. He always gave me a crisp five-dollar bill to do with as I pleased. “Buy something nice,” he growled. My parents frowned but never took it away from me.

He was scary looking, especially to me as a kid. His head reminded me of a skull with brown pegs for teeth, resembling wooden grave markers. Tall for a Japanese, his wiry body seemed ready for the coffin without much prompting. But the Grim Reaper was always welcome in our house.

I often felt sorry for my mother who dutifully stayed behind, while my father and I ventured out into the cold weather, searching for the golden shrimp, glistening char siu, and the rare kazunoko konbu, herring roe on seaweed, a personal favourite – the crunch was everything. Dad looked forward to the old stories told and retold by Tohana, Kawai, Rikimatsu (someone Aunt Sally loathed to see), and others. My mother consistently ignored my exhortations to come with us, even when it was obvious the tradition was dying, and the number of visitors had dwindled to next to nothing.

The Oshogatsu after Grandma died, absolutely no one dropped by; still, Dad at some point prepared to go to his old boss’s house. I encouraged Mom once again to come. “No need go,” she declared in her best broken English.

“You know why I can’t,” she said to my father.

BACK IN 1930, during their first Oshogatsu in Canada, Dad took his new bride to pay their respects to the Oyabun, the boss. A suitably kerai thing to do.

When they showed up at the Vancouver detached house on Main Street, Grandma scowled at Mom and scolded, “Why aren’t you home waiting for guests?”

She had no answer even as Grandma tore several strips off her. Mom never left the house on New Year’s Day again.

After learning the story, I wondered if this was the original cause of her resentment toward the Jikemura family. Dad wouldn’t hear of it.

MOM WAS ALSO VERY TIRED that last Oshogatsu and not up to dealing with Aunt Sally. Dad grunted and left determined to visit his “daughter.” I quickly followed him.

When we arrived, the two-storey duplex was completely dark. I had a sinking feeling, but Dad gamely walked up to the front door and rang the bell. No answer and he rang again. Still no answer. He kept ringing until I had to stop him.

“No one’s home, Dad,” I said glumly.

“No, that can’t be. It’s Oshogatsu. Sat-chan . . .” His words failed him.

I could see the disappointment, the sadness, on his face – the defeat in his eyes. The fatigue of old age came over him quickly and profoundly as I led him away.

I was furious. How could she have done this? She and her smug favourites probably were in some smart downtown bistro chuckling over glasses of white wine and reveling in her victory over the uncivilized. The snobbery, the elitism, the arrogance, the betrayal grabbed at my throat like I’d taken in a fetid odour.

She had to have known my father was coming. Why hadn’t she called at least? I was deeply offended and couldn’t forgive this insult, this betrayal. My family was always there at Oshogatsu, always anticipated, always welcomed. Obligation is a two-way street, even down through the generations.

My father was stoic about the whole thing, but he walked a little slower, his back stooped at a sharper angle, his body grew steadily frailer.

I refused to see Aunt Sally after that; the insensitivity drove me to distraction. In later days, I was invited for “coffee time” every time I saw her or Uncle Eizo at some Nikkei community function, like the Buddhist Church Holiday Social or Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre bazaar. It was as if nothing had happened. I gave them a perfunctory, “Sure, sure.” Yet I couldn’t face her – couldn’t have it all out. She was my elder. I guess I was truly Japanese deep down.

THEN MOM DIED of complications from diabetes. Grief gripped me. I attended more funerals in those days than a funeral director.

At the Buddhist church, I was cordial with Aunt Sally and certainly with my uncle that bright day in May. My brother for some unfathomable reason asked Aunt Sally to deliver the eulogy during the evening service. It was clear he didn’t like her, her superciliousness being a stumbling block, but he must’ve felt an obligation given their history together during Vancouver days and in the internment camp.

Aunt Sally smiled as she spoke glowingly of my mother’s kindness and the close relationship our two families had. She even mentioned how much like a mother Mom was to her.

My brother was outraged. “She never acted like she even liked Mom.” He was stung recently when he learned he hadn’t been invited to the weddings of the two youngest nieces – opportunities for our family to pay our respects and possibly to re-establish or reaffirm our position in the hierarchy. Perhaps her speech was a way for Aunt Sally to make amends to my brother. But the insults multiplied for him with every word she spoke. “She’s such a hypocrite,” was his final judgment.

I, on the other hand, was confused. What did he expect? Was he looking to find fault in her? Who was the hypocrite here? I understood Aunty, and I would never have asked her to deliver a eulogy.

SHORTLY BEFORE MOM DIED, I had to put my father in a nursing home, a task I found a necessary evil at best. His mental health was quickly on the decline. Fortunately, there was a “Japanese floor” at Castleview Wychwood, a Seniors’ Home on Christie Street in the west end of the city. He seemed happy there with familiar looking people and one Japanese meal a week provided by a generous restaurant well-known in the Nikkei community.

The staff were mostly African or Jamaican Canadian, which disturbed the residents to no end. I heard the term kurombo or black boy (gender was not a factor) uttered now and then. Good thing the caregivers didn’t understand the term. The volunteer administrator was Dick Takimoto, a Nisei retired principal. A bit stiff but he was a good man and very patient.

It didn’t cause my father any distress. I often saw him laughing with staff members. Most days, however, he could not remember my name. During those times, he often was “waiting” on a Vancouver dock for a local ferry to take him to the lumber camp “on the island.” He would then recall the war.

And yet guilt crept into my soul. By all rights, my brother, as the eldest, should have taken him in and cared for him. But he had long ago renounced such an obligation.

Dad passed about a year after he was in the nursing home. He went peacefully enough, went to sleep and never woke up – unlike Grandpa, with no sins to plague him. My brother and I buried our father after a private ceremony – no friends were invited. My world had rapidly and sadly eroded and reduced to nearly nothing.

It was time to do something to hold on to whatever I could of the past, or at least, honour it. I decided to swallow my pride; I would forgive my aunt, but I could never forget.

Through the community grapevine, I had heard that Uncle Eizo was dying. I had to see him out of respect and love. I called to ask after him. Aunt Sally’s voice was frail, raspy, with a telltale wheeze, but brightened when she heard my voice. Aunty, forever gracious, invited me to what was to be her final salon.

Uncle Eizo did not look healthy. His face was drawn, the strength in his arms all but gone. Though suffering from cancer, he had rallied recently. When he saw me, he smiled his characteristic smile.

I immediately noticed that the colours of the woodblock prints had faded. The defunct stereo console sat mute – the mahogany topped with dust in swirls and friction scars, evidence of crude attempts to clean it, Chopin stilled. The couches were ragged and worn. Aunt Sally too seemed as decrepit as her furnishings. Miss Havisham’s eyes no longer shone brightly – her voice was faint and her posture stooped. All that was missing were cobwebs draped over everything. She was exhausted from taking care of Uncle, like the old sanitarium days but without the vim and vigour of her youth. Still, she maintained the pretense as she served coffee and tea biscuits from a cracked carafe and chipped porcelain jar. We, including her sister and Italian Canadian brother-in-law, engaged in casual conversation. There was no mention of Uncle’s condition. That would have been improper. For his part, Uncle Eizo tried to maintain his demeanour.

“Have some more coffee, dear. Help yourself to the French cookies.”

I thought about bringing up the past indignities and transgressions, but I felt the words catch in my throat whenever there was a lull in the conversation. I looked at Aunt Sally and then the others and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t do it. My heart broke as the evening lurched and waned.

AT UNCLE EIZO’S FUNERAL a few months later, I was devastated by the further deterioration of Aunt Sally. She had become morbidly thin. She had always been slender, but her arms, shoulders and face were gulag-skinny – the cheeks sunken, the eyes grey and rimmed with mucus, the skin translucent. I swear I could see her veins and bones. Still, she played the valiant hostess.

The Buddhist church was filled with familiar family friends from the past. Rikimatsu, the nightmare of my childhood, nearly embraced me and tried to give me that crisp five-dollar bill.

“Go ahead, bozu, take it,” he growled in Japanese, his aged cheeks wobbling. “Buy something nice.”

I demurred. “I’ve got a job now. I’m a professor. Sensei, you know?”

He didn’t, but he insisted.

I took the money.

He then gingerly turned on his heels, with cane in hand, and hobbled towards Aunt Sally as I surreptitiously placed the money in the church’s donation box.

Aunty’s eyes widened at the sudden rush, the motion nearly knocking her down. She managed nevertheless to take Rikimatsu in stride, even if she found his presence disturbing. They spoke for a time, she constantly shaking her head, he remaining adamant about something. What they talked about was a mystery. Was he trying to give her five dollars? I did see an envelope in his hand. Perhaps it was koden, funeral donation money.

When she finally agreed, accepting the envelope, Rikimatsu bowed deeply, nearly falling, and creaked away.

My brother let me know later that the old gangster had given my aunt $1000, his life savings, to be kept safe for his funeral. He had no family, and it made some sense that the burden of his burial was given over to the Jikemura family.

Aunt Sally’s agreement spoke volumes to me. Though she had to be talked into it, she had in the end accepted her place in our community. She may have been embarrassed by her father’s behaviour but not his obligations. She unfortunately was too weak by the time the money came into play and so assigned the duty to her sisters.

Maybe now it was time for me to talk to her about my feelings, about our failures, about our pain. Seemed like the perfect opportunity, but again, I hung my head as I approached her and stayed quiet. I walked out of the church, barely saying anything to her.

AFTER UNCLE, AUNT SALLY NO LONGER CARED to attend a ballet or opera. She no longer took care of herself. She no longer cared. She eventually developed severe osteoporosis, her bones becoming weak and brittle until her hips collapsed from the weight (slight as it was) of her own body. She was consequently bedridden at home. That’s when she gave up food altogether. Miss Havisham sat infirmed and decayed amongst the ruins of Satis House.

True to form, she would not allow visitors. If “dying is the last indignity,” she would have no witnesses. Only her older sister and oldest niece tried to make her as comfortable as possible. And so, she died and was cremated immediately as per her wish.

WHEN I HEARD OF AUNT SALLY’S PASSING, I sat alone in my apartment. “Too late, too late,” the words kept grinding through my mind. Thoughts and memories swirled and flooded, building to a crescendo. I finally screamed out my frustration. My knuckles turned white; tears flowed. I should have visited her, despite her objections, in her final days. I was furious that I didn’t attend more of her “coffee times”; furious that I never really forgave her. I receded into darkness and kindled with shame until the recriminations subsided and lingered as a quiet sorrow. A long and endless sorrow.

Aunt Sally, my courtesy aunt, had bestowed upon me the gift of art with all its excesses, beauty, hubris, diversity, and profundity. The only one who understood my own explorations. And what did I give her in return? Indifference smeared over a burning but unexpressed anger. I’m sure she felt my ire over the past years.

We could’ve shared so much more if not for my own ignorance, my pigheadedness, my own vanity. If only we could’ve had everything out in the open; I and perhaps she didn’t have to suffer in private.

But we weren’t like that. I hated that part of me; I hated being Japanese. It was the curse of my existence. Hers too, I imagined. Secrets, gossip, denial, evasion, rejection as a way of life. I couldn’t look in the mirror, threw out every one of them in my place. Maybe that’s where we could’ve connected. Where we should’ve connected.

BUT TOO LATE, ALL WAS LOST. I only hope that a quiet interlude of Chopin’s Etude played in the background as she slipped into her       beauteous                                    

                                                                  and divine

                                                         dark-ness.