Audrey Kawasaki
The shadow of death has bullied me for too long now. He’s made my favorite dead ancestors untouchable. I know there are ghosts standing around me, but I can’t see them. They would hug me and pat me on the back, but all I can feel is alone. I see something sometimes. But they are unrecognizable. Death changes you. There are words I can't translate without them. There are maps I can't read. Things are happening inside of me that I can't sort because I can’t hear the dead explain. When I became an orphan it was much later in life. As a child I felt like I was already sitting Shiva. It's almost as if my parents’ dead wouldn't let them live even before they were actually gone. Each of my parents followed the long black dresses and limousines. By the time I learned to breathe and let the sunshine fill me, they were gone. Of course. I mourned their dead, too, because it was the only way they would notice me. I got as much as they would give. My mother thought only of her father and her brother who both died in the taxi cab accident when she was a young girl. My mother's stepmother who abused because she already had too many kidssent her off to live in foster care still broke my mother in two when she died years later. It seems that even those who abuse us are missed when they are the last parent you have. The last connection to the dead whom you miss most. And my father had his grandmother who helped raise him from the time he was born. She was murdered by her husband who did not haunt my father. She is my name. And she haunts me. And now that my father is gone, they take turns darkening my doorway and slipping into my dreams just before the alarm goes off. And they always say the same thing but I can't say it. I don't know how to make those words. They are ancient words from another country. The country that my grandmother was convinced to leave by the man who would eventually fill her organs with poison. My father's father is the one who found his mother. And when he found his father he took care of him. And so he went away as well. My father's mother, who was the child of the woman who died, died inside that day. She lost her mother and eventually her husband. And my father lost it all. And so both my parents were raised in foster care for different reasons. And that's where they met, living in the same home with the same foster parents. The man of the house was cruel. And he was inappropriate with my mother. They also spoke the secret language. The language of the past. The language that they all love to speak to me now even though they never taught me how to speak it. But I have to listen. And I can distinguish between different forms of pain spoken in that peculiar language of theirs. There's a different pain that came from my mother versus the one that came from my dad. My mother's pain tried to find a way to paint or dance or sing. It cried while watching documentaries of the Holocaust. It would phone in daily orders to the liquor store. It passed out one night until it stopped breathing, and then when her pain eventually woke up she was no longer the same. All the fire was gone. All the passion was gone. And the only thing left was a wall of romance novels that she read everyday and the remote control to the TV where she would get every Jeopardy question right. Every night. My mother's pain was a lifelong irony that reaches up from the black and white photograph of her and her brother sitting on the back porch before everything went horribly wrong. My mother's pain finds its way into the large pot of vegetable beef soup that she would make for me anytime I'd come to visit. I ate so much of it that sometimes it felt like my stomach would tear open. That was her pain. The pleasure of her food was so great that it hurt me. That was my mother's pain. But my father's pain was a quiet long walk everyday no matter the weather. He'd walk to the bank or the post office or to the store to buy a newspaper. It made him healthy. Doctors always remarked how healthy he was. My father's pain was the fact that the walk helped him live long enough so that he never stopped feeling the pain. And the dead who speak to me spoke to him only he knew how to speak back. But he didn't. He never spoke back. On those long walks he would think of all the things he would have said if he would have. But by the time he got back home his lips were sealed so stubbornly tight.
Standing in the corners of my home, balancing on the window ledges, and hanging from hooks in the kitchen is my family of plants. My only family now.
As I look around this small two bedroom apartment, I am surrounded by verdure. It’s like a big green hug. It took some time, but I feel loved again.
I have plants that are taller than I am. I water them, and they grow for me. I talk to them, and they make new tendrils, new leaves. They have no doubts. I am the mommy now, and I will never let my darkness show. Not in front of them. I have seen someone smile through her darkness, but my smile for them is too big to hide my pain. Not from them. My plants can see my pain, so I scrub it until it’s gone. You need clean hands when you’re raising plants. Eventually, their dirt always washes off.
I live on the 14th floor. Once, I fantasized about getting vines and letting them grow over the balcony, straight to the ground below. I wouldn't need to jump. I could just say nice things, and climb straight down their green leaves.
Like Rapunzel’s hair? Maybe, but Rapunzel had been hardened. She’d been through trauma. She was close to breaking apart. Anyone could travel up and down her hair. She was a prisoner to her beauty. That's how my mother told me the story. She kept my hair short, like a boy, just to be safe.
My plants are sweet. They are not like their wild cousins who live untamed. Those plants are troublemakers. They are rough. They would attack people if they could because they have seen trauma, too.
I don't want my plants to experience such pain. I want them to live without grief. I barely understand it myself. No escape plan. No living ladder. I owe them more than they owe me, so "I have to stay alive." I repeat that, out loud and to myself. I posted it on my refrigerator door. I have to keep myself safe so that I am always here. If I'm not here, I don't know what will happen to them. They will be orphans. That's an awful thing. I know. So I stay safe and my plants grow and grow.
They wouldn't survive in the wilderness. They don't have the instincts. I tell them that daily. I have seen the fern look at me cross-eyed. A little disbelieving. But I know that my plants are not hard. They couldn't take the real jungles. They wouldn't know what to do with loss. Loss is hard for any living thing. I know that, too.
My philodendron needs to be dry before I water it. And my ficus likes light but not in its face. I know my plants. Now, who's going to do all that if I'm not here? They don't thank me. I don't need it. They are my reason. They are my pills. I take them instead, and we are all safe together.
I sing to them. I sing my favorite musicals. "Wouldn't it be Loverly?" spills out of me. I catch it in my spray bottle and wet their leaves with my songs. I know they love my singing because… look at them! They're thriving! I throw myself into my interpretation of "I Can't Say No." But they will only join me when I sing "Ooooooklahoma." We're like a little community theater here. I wonder what my neighbors think.
They pass me in the lobby or get stuck on the elevator with me. It was traumatizing for them. To see it. To hear it. Humans aren’t meant to fall so fast. I almost followed her, but now I have these green children. I must stay alive. I know that now.
I've had people ask me why I don't have more. More? Impossible. The investment is enormous. Each plant matters to me. I care. I know them. I name them. In fact I don't make up the names. I get their names from them. I ask, “who are you?” I listen to them.
When each plant first came to me, I turned off my music, I sat still while they cautiously told me. I took deep breaths. I undressed. I wanted the plants to know that I'm just as naked as they are, and that they can trust me. And I won't send them to the wild. I won't let them be a part of that nonsense. Sorry, Andy (the fern). I won't leave them unexpectedly. That's a terrible thing to do to your family. They are safe with me.
They swallow my carbon dioxide. I make plenty of it, but sometimes I have a small party just to have extra exhaled air. No one knows that. They think I am being social. “Good to see you… coping.” (Coping?) "Good to see you getting back to life after..." (Back to life?) If they only knew that I am using them for their air. I think they would laugh, too, and keep coming back.
I am coping just for them. They are all the love I need now. My whole existence is in the re-potting and the trimming, and the deep breaths.
I am most often alone in my hothouse. I take deeper breaths. I like to feel the oxygen they make. It's a connection that I don't think most people know. They are inside of me, and I am inside of them. Our relationship is reciprocal. Our relationship is life. Each time I inhale is just a few more seconds that I know I am alive. I breathe. I am still alive. Breathe. Still alive. It helps me fight the dark thoughts. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
I don't feel that way about the family I have left. They are all far away. My mother moved us here to the east coast when I was barely born. She wanted to be away from her own wilderness. The far-away family all sent cards. I didn’t open them. My most thoughtful aunt sent a beginner garden with my first plant ever. Oliver.
Oliver was just a seedling. He's a spider plant who hangs over my bed and has seen more of me than any man. He's a better partner because he listens to me. He gets what he needs, but he doesn't make a show of it. He doesn't demand. He doesn't sob from day to night. I know what he needs, and I give it to him. He's not going to leave me. No jumping. He's happy swinging gently in the air conditioned air.
His green fingers stretch down all the way to the pillow of a husband who does not exist. I don’t need anyone else. Oliver is it. His tendrils are thick and strong and I know that he is healthy. I know he is contented. He's mine. He brought me back.
He’s the only one allowed in my bedroom. It’s just the two of us. I close the door, and I sing something other than show tunes. I sing Janis Ian. I sing the Bee Gees. I sing the songs that my mother sang to me as she sat on the end of my fluffy pink bed, trying to put me to sleep. There were no plants in our home back then, not while she was alive. "It's enough work for me trying to raise you," she laughed "You are all the plant I need." She was tickled with her wit.
There was no man either. It was just the two of us in our tiny home. We used to sit on the balcony, sipping virgin margaritas, watching the sun escape another day. She would sit out there alone, too.
I tell Oliver everything. I tell him that I feel safer with him than I did with my own mother. I lean into a heartbreaker by The Carpenters. "Hanging around. Nothing to do but frown...." (Oliver laughs a little at the "hanging around" part, but I sing from the scraps and pieces of my heart.)
My mother’s warm voice broke my heart every night she sang to me before tucking me in. She broke my heart into tiny pieces just ten years ago. There was no Rapunzel's hair. There was no ladder of vines. The balcony was bare. She climbed over the railing and for a moment, she flew.
(Mother!)
I know that Oliver, like the other plants, sometimes gets tired of hearing me tell him that he's better off here with me because I know that's exactly what I felt when my mother said the same thing to me. I tried to leave her home, but she sang a fence around me. I never moved out. She jumped. I'm still here. There’s a new bed. Lots of plants. Still safe. Still fighting the black moods. Singing my heart out, day and night, breaking the pieces smaller and smaller until I can't feel a thing.
I am alive for them. I breathe for them.
It's terrible to be left behind. I feed my plants exactly what they need when they need it. I bury my problems in their soil. There was no soil for my mother. She had no place to put her sorrow. Except into me. I know that now.
I met you in awkward circumstances and kept you that way the entire time I've known you. I've never let us have something smooth. We were angels together. We served the needy. These were the people who could not get up out of their chairs or open their own peanut butter or even clean themselves completely. And so that's what we did. You were my angel. You were married of course. Of course you were married. I was never good at timing. But that didn't stop us. Nothing was going to stop this. This is what I call the inevitable for me. Putting myself into the footprints of the person who could be your lover. Wearing myself like gloves or a bodysuit. Or a hat. All of these things would eventually belong to you and cover you and sleep in your bed with you. And yet I would still be someplace. Because I would still find something else. Because I was always searching somewhere. And I put you through so much. I made choices. I found my crazy love someplace else, and that crazy love wanted me so I let you go. I did it for my crazy love. And you were my sunshine, love. When is the sunshine not in the sky somewhere? That was you. And when my crazy love made me crazy, I picked up the gloves again. I picked up the hat. And I came back to you. And we built and we built, and we made something with wheels. And we found the rest of the country together. We picked up friends. We picked up trouble. And we found a herd that we nurtured and cuddled and lived with until it became a mess. Naturally. What else was new. I went back to my crazy love. But I didn't leave you. This time I didn't leave you. I just left your bed. Because I couldn't be with the herd. I couldn't be with the wheels. I needed to be punished. And that was never your style. You could never punish me. That's why I won’t leave you. Because you are my sunshine girl. My kaleidoscope of Instagram hairstyles. My bud buddy. My talking without talking lover. My little girl. And when the crazy love had to go again, we moved west. We found another home. Without wheels. And you open your eyes when I am already awake and suddenly our bedroom is full of sunlight.
I've never had a worse lover than the moon. And if anybody is listening, he stalks me even to this day. Some people think of the moon as a woman, but he certainly didn't present himself as that to me. He said little but was always looking. You know that's a man. Eyes always open. Always inspecting. Always swallowing you. Stuffing his brain with the many pictures he's taking of you. Because he wants to see you. He wants you to be something that he can see. And when he sees you, he wants to see the things that make him glow. And he did glow with me. I'm not afraid of being seen. But I've never had a partner as selfish as the moon. A true narcissist, without a doubt. All of the red flags were there. It was a fast romance. He seduced me. It was one hell of a sweaty romance. It was day after day. Every night. Something new. He engaged me. And everything he said and everything he did was exactly what I wanted but didn't know. And every time I was with him I was reminded of just how inadequate every other lover had been. Because he opened me. He found my history. He made the connections. I wasn't afraid to confess the secrets I had. The desires that no one would let me speak much less have. He didn't see me as a victim. He saw me as a surprise. He saw me as something better. And he had seen them all. His list was long. And of all the bodies he could be touching each night, he touched mine. And it was what I needed. It was what I couldn't find. Because if I tell my story, I become fragile. I needed protection. But not the moon. He didn't protect me. He wasn't afraid to put his hands on me. It was as if he was unraveling the strands of my hair to the point that he was letting me free myself. Like I was being untied. And everything that I had been before was suddenly a costume, and I could step out of it with the moon. And in his light, it was okay that the line between the things that happened to me and the things that I wanted was barely there. And the brighter he would glow, the less the line could be seen until eventually it all was gone which is something I never found anywhere else. No one else ever let me hug the past with the present. But with the moon, it was all he could do. It was all I could do but to want to be what he needed. And that was where the moon became the dead rock that he actually is. Because in the end everything he did for me was what he did for himself. He freed me so that there were no ties. There were no connections. There was no one who could see me but him. I was so bright in his light. I was invisible. Maybe when you look at the moon you can see me as a faint shadow on his surface, but no one can see me whole. And that's the way it was between the moon and me. And then one day I told the moon that I wasn't going to see him that weekend. And I discovered that all I had to do was close my eyes. And the moon would disappear. The night I closed my eyes so tight that I felt the moon sink into the city was the first night in months that I slept without fear.
Just so it's straight, everything was ripped away and then you decided that even after your death you were going to stay and grow and feed off of me? Is this your plan? Because as plans go, I can say that this seems like a compelling one. See for many years you lived inside of me. You were in my head of course but you were also inside of many other parts of me. I was very young. And you found ways to get inside of me that have always been forbidden.You knew how to do it. And it was terrible to everyone, but it was never terrible to me. Somehow by being inside of me certain things that were supposed to grow up grew down and other things that were supposed to turn white turned yellow. Walking and talking I seemed just like everyone else, but having you living inside of me meant that so many parts of me never really learned how to work. You were my spine. You were my desire. You were my fear. And nothing was really mine. The only thing that was mine was my sense of devotion to you. I was devoted to the fact that you were invading me. And I got to the point where I couldn't live without it. I couldn't live without you being inside of me. And then one day out of the blue, there was no you. You were gone. And the only thing left inside me was the skeleton of you. But it turns out that the trick was mine. I became the magician. I became the necromancer because I found a way to keep you alive. And all of the things you used to whisper to me I could now whisper to myself. And all of the ways that you used to twist and turn me, I could now do it without your slithering body rubbing up against the insides of me. I could slither. I could rub and find others to rub. And so when no one was looking, I stole your skeleton from your grave and I put it back inside of me. And surprisingly it has continued to grow. It is still having an effect. It is still in control. And while it whispers and sings and guides and pushes, everything else about me falls apart. Because there is no plan other than you. You are all that makes sense. And yet no one else understands you. Somehow we developed a shorthand. And the language that you made up inside of me when I was so young is a language I can speak to myself. In fact I have brought on others to speak with me. We are a committee. And when I effortlessly switch back and forth between the different members, there are no misunderstandings. Not amongst each other. However, having you replace my skeleton with yours has indeed proven to be a problem because I can't live inside of myself the way you could live inside of me. And when I try to inhabit the body that no longer seems to be mine, I get myself into a lot of trouble. Because the world doesn't understand how that can happen. The world can't see you. The world can't hear you. And what the world knows of you the world condemns. I don't blame it. I understand it. But I can't make sense of any of it. And the world condemns you and ultimately condemns me. And there is no space for me in the world. And I can't make sense of what the world is trying to say to me. It looks at me with fear and horror and misunderstanding. And even those that would reach in and try to help leave me more damaged. It's treachery. Your skeleton is more painful than ever and yet I can't imagine my life without you. You became my life long ago. And even with you gone, you still are me. And I slither just like you inside of me with my tongue piercing anything that looks like it might still be alive.
Do I make myself beautiful or is this beautiful because I am? You with all the eyes will see this and you will think, I wish I was her. Really? Why would you wish that? What on earth could possess you to look at this thing that I've made out of myself and then come to the conclusion that you want to be me? I know that I can make myself into anything I want. I know that I show up here and there in everything I make. This piece or this part. When I look at this creation, I see bits and pieces of the other things I've created but I don't really see me. The markings are right. The expression of my face is certainly one that people who know me can recognize. The color. The shadow. The penumbra around the bun. I don't know? Still, I don't think it's me. It's a strange thing that I can do. I don't know how many people can do it. And maybe this is where the envy comes from. I can take everything that I am and make myself into the things that I am not. And I can put those things together and make something that's greater than anything I am. And it's less than anything I am. It's as if I am a flower that is blossoming inside out. Imagine the pedals are underground, heading towards the center. Towards the hot middle of the Earth. And yet the things that are above are sienna. Sepia. Brown. And the flower you see in front of you is an illusion of a flower. Because you can't touch it, can you? If you were to reach out it would just hit the surface of the canvas. And you would realize that everything here is the product of a creator. And who has ever thought of the creator is fair or honest?
Author: Derek Letsch
Artist: Audrey Kawasaki
Artist Bio
Audrey Kawasaki is a Japanese-American artist, born and raised in Los Angeles, where she currently lives and works.
Kawasaki grew up reading Japanese manga comics, which inspired her to draw from an early age. She started taking after-school fine art classes at Mission Renaissance in her late teenage years. There she learned the basic foundation of drawing and painting. She attended Pratt Institute in New York after graduating high school, but left after two years without completion of degree. She started professionally showing at various art galleries in the US and internationally since 2005.
Kawasaki’s work contains contrasting themes of innocence and eroticism, conveying the mysterious intrigue of feminine sensuality. Her sharp imagery is painted with precision onto wooden panels, the natural grain adding warmth to her enigmatic subject matter. The artist’s creative influences include eastern as well as western traditions such as Art Nouveau and Japanese Manga comics. She paints sultry, seductive and uninhibited female subjects with delicate beauty and provocative, direct eye contact. Their graceful gestures and ghost-like features carry mysterious expressions of melancholy and longing.
Audrey likes noodles, broth, audiobooks, video games, dancing, the paranormal, and white wine spritzers.
@2019 Audrey Kawasaki. All rights reserved.