Tabbies
Norie Suzuki
Mother told me the story at the hospital, the day before her mastectomy. She was the only patient in a four-bed ward. Maybe it was the unexpected privacy she got, or the anxiety she felt, or the silence between us that got her going. Who knows.
Anyhow, it was one of those rare talkative moments when she was reminiscing about the time I was sent off for a year to live with total strangers. To be more precise and fair to Mother—I should clarify, with an uncle and aunt I’d never met before, both of whom are now long dead. Amen. According to Mother, the plan was to have me out of the way (yeah, out of the way like the old magazines scattered on my apartment floor that I’d kick around to make room when Mother visited me out of the blue) so she could land a decent job before I started primary school. Which she did. Mother became a life insurance agent and kept the job until she turned sixty, until the company let her go with a bouquet of pink Turkish bellflowers, oncidiums, and baby’s breaths, adorned with a happy retirement note. Many thanks go to the insurance policy Mother bought from herself, during her first year to up her sales record. Who would have thought the breast cancer provision she had added to the plain vanilla policy would come in handy long after her menopause.
“Instinct of a single mom,” she said when I didn’t hide my surprise at learning about her policy coverage. “Long-term vision. That’s what you need.”
Back in the ‘60s, even in Tokyo, single mothers were a rare breed, separately grouped from widows. Widows aroused sympathy and brought a continuous flow of hand-me-downs and offers of soy sauce-sautéed white radishes and carrots from neighboring housewives. None of that was accorded to single mothers. In hindsight, maybe that was why Mother positioned herself between those two groups when we made a fresh start in a coastal town cluttered with family-run workshops making screws and bolts.
I’m not saying that Mother is a liar. Far from it. She is a woman who cannot lie. She excels in elusiveness. Commas and ellipses are her connective tissues, and she can slip through any prying questions without giving definitive answers and still not make busybodies feel slighted. A talent I wish I had.
“That winter when you were gone, I lived in a women’s dorm right by the factory. A two-story building with ten rooms on each floor. Do you remember the matchboxes we had for our cooking stove? Imagine a room like that. All are identical, with two sets of bunk beds. You’d have to walk sideways to pass through the aisle. Petite girls were assigned the top bunks, and I was one of them.”
“I didn’t know you worked on a shop floor. What did you make?”
“Guess.”
Mother’s impish smile glowed under the light coming in from the bedside window. The sky was turning pale, flamingo pink.
“Curtains?”
She shook her head sideways and took a sip of barley tea from the cup on her tray, which was loaded with a half-eaten bowl of rice, a nibbled broiled yellowtail, and untouched slices of kiwi. According to her, no adult eats dinner at 5:50 p.m.
I named what came into my sight. “Fridges, clocks, slippers, TV sets?”
She gave me that elliptical smile.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“You’ll never guess.”
“Then forget it.” I was not in any mood to play her game. I had planned to help her get settled, sign the consent form, and return to work. The user’s manual of a to-be-launched disposable camera was sitting on my desk. The final edit was due today.
“Condoms,” Mother blurted out.
“You’re kidding.” I was surprised she gave up her gamer so readily.
“Don’t you remember me telling the neighbors that I used to work for a healthcare-related organization before joining the life insurance company?”
“Yes, of course. With all the clinical jargon you threw at them, they thought you had some medical background.”
“People are free to make any associations.”
I took the tray from her and placed it on a folding chair. “So what’s the story?”
“There was a stray cat. A tabby we all fed, even though we were not supposed to. The house cook, in particular, didn’t like us giving the tabby the leftovers of what she’d cooked. I suppose it offended her, especially when the tabby scattered some food in the backyard we dumped on a chipped plate.”
“What was the tabby’s name?”
“Just Tabby. None of us wanted to get attached to it. We knew we’d leave for a better job sooner or later.
“One winter day, the tabby sneaked into our basement and had four kittens. The cook found out and asked us to do something about it, as if we were the ones causing the trouble, not the cat. She said she’d give us a week. If the kittens stayed any longer, she’d notify the manager. That meant big trouble. Although none of us planned to work there forever, we weren’t prepared to get fired either.
“During the lunch break, we asked the commuting workers if they were interested in having kittens. Since most of them lived in apartments where pets were not allowed, we knew our chances of getting them adopted were slim.
“On the seventh day, we drew lots to decide who would abandon the kittens in a nearby park. Of course I was the chosen one. Dirty jobs landed on me like gum on a shoe. But that’s not the end of the story.”
“What do you mean? Don’t tell me those kittens haunted you like ghosts in those B-rated horror movies.”
Mother gave me an imploring puss-in-boots look, which meant you silly girl, your chain of thought hadn't changed since grade school--and cleared her throat, erasing my comment. “You won’t believe this. Out of all the identical rooms in the dorm, the mother tabby somehow knew where I slept and made her way to my bed to pee on it. Once would have been enough, but she did it for four days in a row and then disappeared. Completely vanished. I’ve never forgotten that odor. It was worse than a rotten fish. I tried spraying cheap perfume, opening windows, airing out the futon, but nothing helped.”
“How did the cat get in?”
“So easy. Depending on the work shift, people came in and out of the dorm. Not a problem for that tabby to sneak in. The mystery is why she knew it was me, knew my bed.”
“She might have been watching you throw out the kittens.”
“Could be. But how did she figure out which was my bed?”
“Your smell?”
“My smell? What did I smell of?” She looked at me as if the answer to her question were written on my face. I could tell she was connecting the moles on my face like a wacky fortune teller.
As abruptly as she had started her story, Mother ended it with the light thud of her plastic cup on the bedside cabinet table, as if she were closing a book, the mystery resolved. “So I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Now double-breasted, next single-breasted.”
She made her operation sound like a jacket alteration. As usual, I smiled half-heartedly and left the room with a see-you-in-the-morning.
* * *
For some reason, her story stayed with me like a piece of music that keeps repeating in your head.
There was no point fighting it. I let the tabby kittens keep emerging while I operated the disposable camera, following the three-step instruction I’d written. I take pride in writing very precise manuals that leave no room for interpretation. Throwaway cameras aren’t guns or grenades, but their misuse can blow up memorable moments. Elimination of even the slightest ambiguity was my job:
(1) Scroll the horizontal wheel embedded next to the viewfinder to the right until it won’t turn any further (a slight mechanical grating noise sounded like paws scratching against a cardboard box).
(2) Turn the flash on by sliding the button on the front of the camera (a high-pitched charging noise echoed like meowing).
(3) Hold the viewfinder up to your dominant eye and press the button on top of the camera (beyond the viewfinder, tabbies clustered to keep themselves warm and wriggled now and then, their eyes still unable to register the world around them).
“Done,” I said to myself and signed off on the document, hoping that the image of those tabbies would be filed away with the manual.
No luck. The tabbies were persistent. They came back the next day as I sipped coffee in the hospital cafeteria. They made me think of the morning I woke up at my aunt’s house only to find Mother was gone. I have no memory of that year except for that morning. It was as if someone had dumped a can of white paint over those days. What I remember is being strapped on my aunt’s back. I was bundled in a blanket, my legs dangling on her sides. She kept singing songs about rabbits and bears under the bleak winter sky to make me stop crying, stop shouting, I want Mama. Her upbeat songs had the opposite effect. I yelled at the top of my lungs to shut out her happy-go-lucky rabbits and bears. I have nothing against them, but those furry animals give me goosebumps to this day.
I didn’t get any goosebumps later in the day, when the doctor showed me Mother’s cancerous tissue he had resected. He was initially unsure whether I could see this piece of Mother without fainting or cupping my mouth with my hand. But as soon as he realized that I didn’t even flinch at the sight of her left breast laid on a stencil tray, still pink, full of life, he became articulate. With a pointer, he indicated the malignant legion and said that the surgery was a success, that they were able to extract the entire tumor, although there was a slim chance of cancer metastasizing to her lymph nodes. Probabilities always remain, he repeatedly said, as if he needed my assurance. I knew I should thank him, but the tabbies kept meowing in my head, and words got tangled up in my mouth. The only sound that came out was an ah, which could have been interpreted as awe, or the acknowledgment of probabilities, or a hallmark of my asociality. From the way he led me out of his room, I could tell that he had settled for option number three.
Mother was still under anesthesia in her ward, connected to an IV bag hanging from a pole stand. The pale mint-green curtain was closed, but the late afternoon sunlight seeped through it, making her face glow. She looked graceful. Despite the deep wrinkles on her forehead and age spots on her temples, she was still beautiful. Growing up, whenever people said I don’t look like Mother, she would always say, “Girls take after their fathers.” I had asked her to show me Father’s picture a few times, but she’d say, “What for?” She’d hold my finger and let it slide over my button nose, thin lips, and downturned eyes. Then she would bring my finger over her face to trace her upturned nose, full lips, and wide-set eyes. “Your father, you and I, we all have a nose, a mouth, and two eyes. What more do you want to know?”
What could a little kid say to that? So as soon as I had saved enough allowance, I bought photos of actors who had my eyes, nose, and mouth. Of course, not one had all my parts on one face. I had to make a photomontage, the way the police do for wanted posters, to see how I would turn out when I became an adult. Mother looked at the finished photograph and called me Little Picasso.
I sat by her bedside and watched her breathe. Her single-breasted chest rose and fell. It was too bad I had no memory of suckling milk from her breasts, no memory of how her milk tasted. If I did, maybe I could have shared her language, filled in the spaces between her ellipses.
She stirred slightly. Her right hand, placed next to her cheek, opened up slowly, finger by finger, until I saw her palm lines—love, wisdom, longevity, and fate—all there for me to read. When I took her hand, she closed hers like a pink touch-me-not flower.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“For what?”
I then realized that she was talking in her sleep. She would not answer me. Mother was Mother all the way through, whether double-breasted or single-breasted. What could I do but let her hold my hand and watch a teardrop flow down her porcelain cheek as if it were following a ladder of fate?
There was no point fighting it. I let the tabby kittens keep emerging while I operated the disposable camera, following the three-step instruction I’d written. I take pride in writing very precise manuals that leave no room for interpretation. Throwaway cameras aren’t guns or grenades, but their misuse can blow up memorable moments. Elimination of even the slightest ambiguity was my job:
(1) Scroll the horizontal wheel embedded next to the viewfinder to the right until it won’t turn any further (a slight mechanical grating noise sounded like paws scratching against a cardboard box).
(2) Turn the flash on by sliding the button on the front of the camera (a high-pitched charging noise echoed like meowing).
(3) Hold the viewfinder up to your dominant eye and press the button on top of the camera (beyond the viewfinder, tabbies clustered to keep themselves warm and wriggled now and then, their eyes still unable to register the world around them).
“Done,” I said to myself and signed off on the document, hoping that the image of those tabbies would be filed away with the manual.
No luck. The tabbies were persistent. They came back the next day as I sipped coffee in the hospital cafeteria. They made me think of the morning I woke up at my aunt’s house only to find Mother was gone. I have no memory of that year except for that morning. It was as if someone had dumped a can of white paint over those days. What I remember is being strapped on my aunt’s back. I was bundled in a blanket, my legs dangling on her sides. She kept singing songs about rabbits and bears under the bleak winter sky to make me stop crying, stop shouting, I want Mama. Her upbeat songs had the opposite effect. I yelled at the top of my lungs to shut out her happy-go-lucky rabbits and bears. I have nothing against them, but those furry animals give me goosebumps to this day.
I didn’t get any goosebumps later in the day, when the doctor showed me Mother’s cancerous tissue he had resected. He was initially unsure whether I could see this piece of Mother without fainting or cupping my mouth with my hand. But as soon as he realized that I didn’t even flinch at the sight of her left breast laid on a stencil tray, still pink, full of life, he became articulate. With a pointer, he indicated the malignant legion and said that the surgery was a success, that they were able to extract the entire tumor, although there was a slim chance of cancer metastasizing to her lymph nodes. Probabilities always remain, he repeatedly said, as if he needed my assurance. I knew I should thank him, but the tabbies kept meowing in my head, and words got tangled up in my mouth. The only sound that came out was an ah, which could have been interpreted as awe, or the acknowledgment of probabilities, or a hallmark of my asociality. From the way he led me out of his room, I could tell that he had settled for option number three.
Mother was still under anesthesia in her ward, connected to an IV bag hanging from a pole stand. The pale mint-green curtain was closed, but the late afternoon sunlight seeped through it, making her face glow. She looked graceful. Despite the deep wrinkles on her forehead and age spots on her temples, she was still beautiful. Growing up, whenever people said I don’t look like Mother, she would always say, “Girls take after their fathers.” I had asked her to show me Father’s picture a few times, but she’d say, “What for?” She’d hold my finger and let it slide over my button nose, thin lips, and downturned eyes. Then she would bring my finger over her face to trace her upturned nose, full lips, and wide-set eyes. “Your father, you and I, we all have a nose, a mouth, and two eyes. What more do you want to know?”
What could a little kid say to that? So as soon as I had saved enough allowance, I bought photos of actors who had my eyes, nose, and mouth. Of course, not one had all my parts on one face. I had to make a photomontage, the way the police do for wanted posters, to see how I would turn out when I became an adult. Mother looked at the finished photograph and called me Little Picasso.
I sat by her bedside and watched her breathe. Her single-breasted chest rose and fell. It was too bad I had no memory of suckling milk from her breasts, no memory of how her milk tasted. If I did, maybe I could have shared her language, filled in the spaces between her ellipses.
She stirred slightly. Her right hand, placed next to her cheek, opened up slowly, finger by finger, until I saw her palm lines—love, wisdom, longevity, and fate—all there for me to read. When I took her hand, she closed hers like a pink touch-me-not flower.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“For what?”
I then realized that she was talking in her sleep. She would not answer me. Mother was Mother all the way through, whether double-breasted or single-breasted. What could I do but let her hold my hand and watch a teardrop flow down her porcelain cheek as if it were following a ladder of fate?
Norie Suzuki (she/her) was born and educated bi-lingually in Tokyo, Japan, where she currently writes and works as a simultaneous interpreter. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Extra Teeth, Aloka, Heimat Review, CafeLit, Suspect, and Archetype Magazine. She is working on a collection of linked stories entitled Echoes of Silence.