Butcher Knife

by Naomi Atwood

Jayne only vaguely recalls her grandfather coming to their bedroom door that evening, asking her and Evelyn to come to his bedroom. She does remember that it was not the first time.   She, five years old, and Evelyn, age seven, were already in their pajamas and had gone to bed together in their double bed. Their room was just down the hallway from their grandfather, in the basement of the duplex where their family lived in a small city in Alberta, with their parents’ bedroom upstairs.

Their father and grandfather had always lived together, since their father was the eldest son, and according to Japanese tradition, the aged parent lives with him. Grandpa had come from Japan to Canada in the early 1900’s, to seek his fortune. He later sent to Japan for a wife, married, and then had four children. However, their grandmother had died a horrible death from ovarian cancer, leaving their grandfather a widower for many years.

When their mother, Hannah, married their father, she had moved into the household, taking over as “woman of the house,” to tend to the needs of the three men in the household: their grandfather, their father and their uncle. Hannah had relieved their Aunt Cherry, their father’s younger sister, who had taken on that responsibility after the elder sister had married and left home. Cherry wanted to get married and move away, but this would mean leaving the men to fend for themselves, a situation that would not stand in a Japanese household. 

Cherry was desperately in love with Hannah’s brother, Sam. The two couples had double-dated—sister and brother paired with brother and sister—and Hannah was a close friend toCherry, and sympathetic to her desires to get married.  Hannah had actually met her husbandas they were designated as chaperones for their siblings, since it was not seemly for couples to be dating one-on-one in those days. The obvious solution seemed to be that the older brother, her father, should get married first, which would result in Hannah taking Cherry’s place. This would leave the way clear for Cherry and Sam to get married, and for Cherry to leave the home. It was such a simple solution to such a difficult problem, and Hannah had welcomed the idea, showing no hesitation when she received the marriage proposal. 

Hannah had always felt a little intimidated by her new in-laws. A little older than usual for brides in her day, she had married an eligible bachelor, whom she said she “caught on the rebound.” Hannah thought of herself as unattractive and ungainly, since she was big boned, with generous facial features, rather than being tiny and delicate, like her sisters-in-law. Hannah had large eyes, different from most Japanese. Her own mother even called them “cow eyes,” instructing her to keep them half closed, to appear more culturally appealing. 

Jayne’s father had been forced to give up his Irish girlfriend when all the Japanese Canadians were moved inland during World War Two. Immediately after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, anyone of Japanese origin was labeled an “enemy alien,” and suspected of being a spy. But, with the rounding up of all Japanese people from the west coast, people from different prefectures in Japan were thrown together. Jayne’s parents never would have met and married, had it not been for this turn of events, which turned out to be fortuitous for them, and for Jayne! Hannah had lived on Vancouver Island, and their father on a farm near Surrey, British Columbia.

However, once she was married, Hannah had to make many adjustments. She had to learn a higher class of the Japanese dialect, since her own family were what she called “hillbillies” in Japan. Hannah also had to learn to refine her cooking skills, since her own mother had been a haphazard cook, who didn’t bother to measure ingredients, and whose cooking was acceptable in any state it was presented. As a result, Hannah did not have the benefit of learning cooking skills from her mother.

In her new role, as woman of the house, Hannah had to do her best and follow along with whatever her husband and father-in-law deemed correct and necessary in the household. One of those things was to put three meals on the table each day, and in the process, to accommodate her father-in-law’s food requests and peculiarities. Like many people raised in Japan, Grandpa ate rice three times a day. For the morning meal, his rice needed to be specially cooked, softening leftover rice from the day before, by cooking it with extra water— what the Japanese called okai. Eggs were then dropped in, and it was all steamed together in a saucepan on the stovetop. Having a good appetite, he would eat large plates of food for lunch and supper, sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper, then doused with copious amounts of ketchup and mayonnaise. This was in total disregard for whatever seasoning or flavoring had been carefully applied in the cooking process, as Hannah made laborious attempts to serve appetizing and nutritious meals. He also had a disconcerting habit of using his fork and knife in some bastardized version of chopsticks, often eating off his knife. Hannah strictly forbade any of her four children to even lick off their knives while eating.

But Grandpa’s morning coffee routine was the real test of the family’s fortitude. They all winced as he dipped his peanut-buttered toast into his mug of day-old, cold coffee. The rest of the family looked on with askance, but since he was the patriarch and the nominal head of the house, everyone went along with his eccentricities.

The children’s relationship with their grandfather was not close. His English was limited, and his presence reminded them of their Japanese heritage, which was embarrassing to them. They thought he had weird ways of doing things, so they ignored him as much as possible. As a gardener for other families, as well as tending the family’s lawn and garden, he always seemed to be untidy and dirty. He didn’t pay much attention to his grandchildren, except to instruct them occasionally in the correct way to wring out a washcloth, or how to dig dandelions. His particular way of digging dandelions involved kneeling on the lawn, and grasping a linoleum knife with string tied around its handle for a good grip. It featured a hooked blade, and sharp tip, and was designed for another purpose. Yet he liked to use it to dig deeply into the soil, revealing the tender white dandelion root, cutting it, and then tossing the leaves aside. 

Grandpa liked butter rum-flavored Lifesavers. He usually had a half-used roll in his pants pocket and would sometimes offer them to his grandchildren. They didn’t care for the flavor, and thought it was unsanitary, seeing the wrapper dangling from the roll. However, they would each take one to be polite. It felt a little like taking candy from a stranger, something they were never supposed to do. 

So, that night, following family protocol, and trusting Evelyn’s judgment, as she usually did, Jayne followed along to their grandfather’s bedroom. The next morning, Jayne remembers being rudely awakened by her mother’s shouting. This was especially surprising because Hannah was a mild-mannered person who rarely raised her voice. Hannah had come into Grandpa’s bedroom and found Jayne in bed with him. Jayne had automatically looked around for Evelyn, but could not see her, which was puzzling. Jayne was sure they had been there together earlier, one of them on each side of Grandpa. Jayne had been reluctant to go with their grandfather in the first place, but had followed her sister, on whom she typically depended for security. Panic-stricken, Jayne hastily got up to go. She can still remember the sticky feeling, as she disengaged the skin of her grandfather’s bare thigh from her own leg that had been intertwined with his. 

Her mother was livid! Jayne had never seen her so angry. Hannah shouted at her father-in-law in Japanese—something Jayne could not understand—and directed Jayne, in English, in no uncertain terms, to go to her own room immediately. Furthermore, Jayne was “never, ever to get in bed with Grandpa again.”Jayne was chastened. Somehow, though a mere child, she seemed to be at fault.  She didn't even know what sin she might have committed.

In the years afterward, Jayne doesn’t remember there ever being any conversation about the incident. She knew it was a taboo topic that she couldn’t broach on her own, with her parents, or anyone else. There was very little discussion in their household of anything remotely intimate or sexual. Her parents never displayed any affection for each other, and Hannah would become visibly uncomfortable, avoiding eye contact, and skirting around any subject that involved sexuality. 

However, one time—many, many years later—Jayne’s mother let it slip that if she ever had to be alone in the house at night with her father-in-law, Hannah would sleep with a butcher knife under her pillow.