earn the money ourselves, for paint, brushes, Varsol, and drop sheets. Luckily it was still winter, and we could shovel the walks of the neighbourhood. It took a month and four major snowstorms. One long weekend of round-the-clock painting and both rooms were completely white. I (Maki) did trim, while Colette (Rikko-san), being taller, managed the roller.
It looked so good when the rooms were empty we decided to leave out the furniture.
“Where will you put your clothes, your books, all your junk?” worried Sam.
“We’ll find a way.”
“Who do you think you are?”
Books could be arranged in a neat row on the floor against the wall, with an earthenware jar as bookend. Clothes were more difficult to hide, though we each had a small closet for hanging things. If we could just fit everything into the closets.
“You can’t, there’s no room.”
The halls were littered with bookcases, dressers, and knick-knacks. “We’ll find a way.”
We built shelves out of mandarin-orange crates to go inside the cupboards. Underwear went in one, shirts in another, and so on. Everything fit snugly in its new quarters.
The rooms started out looking nearly identical: white and spare. Then Rikko-san found a long feather; I arranged a tokonoma— alcove —containing a tiny vase with a single dried flower. Rikko-san pinned her kimono to the wall; I hung Japanese calligraphy prints. One day I got fed up and took everything down so my room was bare again.
“I like the emptiness,” I explained.
Martin called it the Cell.
“What do you do up there?”
“Think. Read. Dream.”
I sat in bed and pressed visions of Japan against the bare white walls; cherry blossoms and ancient twisted trees, the click, click of geta, and the shimmering cone of Mt. Fuji rising from a cloud of mist. Images shifted one into the other with the grace of a Noh play.
One day Martin came home with “presents” for both of us. Matching desks. Regular desks with vertical drawers and a map of Canada on top. Nothing you could saw the legs off.
“I thought you girls would be delighted,” he said.
We nodded sadly.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“They just won’t do, Father.”
He refused to take the desks back to the store. Down to the basement they went, with the rest of our oversized furniture.
“Until this nutty phase of yours is over,” he said.
“Tabemash’ta ka?” Have you eaten?
Rikko-san ladled the glistening snow peas onto a section of the plate, then arranged them in careful progression like fingers of a fan. The last pod she allowed to drop from six or seven inches above so it caused a very slight disruption in the pattern. A breath of wind from outside shuffled the leaves of the miniature orange tree.
The scoop of rice settled in the centre like a fist of snow. Pickled cucumbers and daikon— radishes —surrounded it like a necklace. Hashi— chopsticks—were laid carefully to the side of the plate.
She repeated the performance on a second plate and when both were assembled, nodded. She and I, clad in dark blue yukata, knelt at the low table, resting our buttocks on our heels. Pressing our palms together, we bowed, then, with the hashi, carefully picked off a grain or two of rice and placed it on the table. For Buddha.
“What are you doing?”
“I am meditating.”
“What on earth for?”
“Shh, go away.”
We began to practise zazen more or less regularly. I was more disciplined about it, setting the alarm for an unearthly 7:00 A.M. Immediately on waking, I tucked the round zafu pillow under my behind. I kept track each day of how long I sat and what came to pass. Always I wore the black cotton kimono for zazen, and after wrote something on a scroll of rice paper with a bamboo brush.
The passing of one cloud
marks the ravens.
Two abreast.
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