“An’ of course, everybody in dah business was there: Mr. Lee from the Good Fortune and Prosperity store, Reverend Hwang from dah Palolo temple, even dat oddah fortune-teller, dah Laotian one in Kaimuki, she came. Was one good turnout.” Reno sighed and patted her belly, as if she had just feasted on a good meal.
“So, Reno,” I asked, “nobody knew? Nobody asked to see her one last time?”
Reno scowled. “Whatchu tinking? Dis one funeral. People get mannahs, you know. Most dey did was kiss the coffin lid, bow coupla times in front dah picture I put on top. Get one, though, wen trow herself on top the coffin, crying louder dan one cat. Geez, I no even know who she was, too.”
And on their way out of the chapel, all of the mourners showed how much they loved my mother and the daughter most didn’t even remember she had. In her memory, they dropped envelopes stuffed with money and miniature frogs into the Wishing Bowl for the family she left behind, for a final blessing.
I had picked up my mother’s ashes the morning of Reno’s ceremony. After flipping through an album filled with pictures of urns offered by Borthwick—from the elite faux-marble canister to the Borthwick basic, which sold for seventy-five dollars and looked like a plastic candy jar with a screw-top lid—I decided I would bring my own container. I emptied out one of the drawers in her jewelry box, scattering ropes of necklaces, fistfuls of gold and jade charms, rings. I sifted through the rings until I found one that I had especially pined for as a girl—a braided gold band studded with pearls that my mother called “ocean tears”—and slipped it onto my wedding finger.
When I presented the drawer from the jewelry box, expecting the mortician to fill it with my mother’s ashes, his mouth dropped open. “Ah, ahh, umm,” he stammered.
“I know this is unusual and it doesn’t have a lid, but look,” I said, waving a box of Saran Wrap at him. “Just cover the top with this.”
“No, well, you see,” the mortician said. He took the Saran Wrap I thrust into his belly and stared at it, then at me. He hadn’t gelled his hair back, as he had the last time I saw him, and the sun-bleached tips dipped into his eyes. He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“It’s just temporary,” I snapped, thinking he wanted to try to sell me one of his urns. “I plan to scatter the ashes.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “It‘s, well, it’s too small to hold everything. Try wait. I’ll get her; you’ll see what I mean.” The mortician walked to a display cabinet and selected a squat black vase.
I swallowed and shoved the drawer and the plastic wrap into my bag before he returned. The mortician slid the vase onto the counter between us, and when he lifted the lid, I could see that the urn was filled with ashes. More ashes than I thought there would be. Gray soot flecked with bone and silver.
“Fillings,” the mortician said, almost apologetically, when he noticed me staring at the bright specks.
I started to cry, thinking there was more to a body than there should be, and less.
“Don’t worry, no worry,” he said, sounding worried himself. “I take care you. Wait, wait, okay? You can have one, watchucall, complimentary urn.” He bent down to open one of the counter’s drawers and stood up, popping open a fold-out gift box like the ones on sale at Longs or Payless for a dollar fifty.
About to sprinkle my mother’s ashes in the garden behind our house, I heard the song of the river. The music had always seemed faint to me, but now it drummed in my ears. I carried my mother through the break in the fence and traveled the path we took the year she blessed my wandering spirit.
I stepped into the stream, letting the water bite through my shoes, the cuffs of my jeans, with its cold teeth. Bending down, I cupped a handful of my mother’s river and held it over her box of ashes. “Mommy,” I said as the water dribbled through my fingers. “Omoni, please drink. Share this meal with me, a sip to know how much I love you.”
I opened my mother’s box, sprinkling her ashes over the water. I held my fingers under the slow fall of ash, sifting, letting it coat my hand. I touched my fingers to my lips. “Your body in mine,” I told my mother, “so you will always be with me, even when your spirit finds its way home. To Korea. To Sulsulham. And across the river of heaven to the Seven Sisters.”
Later that night, I stepped into water again. In my dreams, I swam a deep river, trying to reach the far shore, where my mother danced around a ribbon of red. I swam for hours, for weeks, for years, and when I became too tired to swim any longer, I felt the pull on my legs. I struggled, flailing weak kicks, but when I turned and saw that it was my mother hanging on to me, I yielded. I opened my mouth to drown, expecting to suck in heavy water, but instead I breathed in air, clear and blue. Instead of ocean, I swam through sky, higher and higher, until, dizzy with the freedom of light and air, I looked down to see a thin blue river of light spiraling down to earth, where I lay sleeping in bed, coiled tight around a small seed planted by my mother, waiting to be born.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My love and thanks to the following people who helped make this book a reality:
My mother, Tae Im Beane, for her stories, true or not.
My sister, Dawn Myung Ja Chamness, and her friends who had a good time correcting my Korean.
The Bamboo Ridge Study Group, for helping me see the novel in a short story.
Cohorts Cathy Song, Juliet S. Kono, and especially Lois Ann Yamanaka for advice and inspiration on matters both professional and personal.
Leslie Bow, Elena Tajima Creef, and Laura Hyun Yi Kang for their sharp, savvy, and fast responses that helped pull everything together.
Alice Chai and Elaine Kim for their scholarship and activism in Korean and Korean American communities.
Keum Ja Hwang for speaking out.
Youngsook Kim Harvey for her research on Korean shamans, including her book Six Korean Women.
Susan Bergholz for keeping an eye on the small details and the big picture.
Kathryn Court and Beena Kamlani for their intensive readings and necessary tweaks.
My husband Jim, for his steadfast support and determined love, through the highs and the lows and always.
A PENGUIN READERS GUIDE TO
COMFORT WOMAN
Nora Okja Keller
INTRODUCTION
In Comfort Woman, Nora Okja Keller tells the devastating story of Akiko, a young Korean woman who was sold into prostitution in the Japanese “recreation camps” of World War II, and Beccah, her daughter by an American missionary. Throughout the novel, Keller explores the legacy of Akiko’s pain, the manner in which she represses the wounds of her past, and its splintering effect on her relationship with Beccah.
Desperate to escape the scene of her torture, Akiko marries someone she does not love—an American missionary who takes her away from Japan, but mistakes her silence for devotion, and neither understands nor properly cares for her. Soon, she gives birth to Beccah, the child that she loves passionately, but to whom she will never reveal her traumatic past. As the novel unfolds, the two women are living in Honolulu, where Beccah must fend for herself when her “crazy” mother slips into trances, communicating with spirits of the dead. Akiko and Beccah are mother and daughter, but they have traded the roles of nurturer and nurtured. They speak the same two languages yet rarely communicate their true feelings. Akiko buries her pain, a choice that keeps her from enjoying a fully loving relationship with Beccah. In turn, Beccah resents her mother and isolates herself—so much so that while she spends her days writing the obituaries of strangers, she feels little when the time comes to measure the value of her own mother’s life.