Burma Banyan: A Daughter’s Odyssey

By Dawn Fraser Kawahara

In BURMA BANYAN, A Daughter’s Odyssey, the reader is invited on an intimate set of travels as the author overcomes qualms about returning to Burma after a life span. Memories of Dawnie, her child self, besiege her. These memories are not set in the peaceful, civilized atmosphere of Dehra Dun, nestled in the hills north of Delhi, the setting of her notable first memoir–Jackals’ Wedding, A Memoir of a Childhood in British India–but in remote areas of northern Burma and in Mandalay, the capital of “Upper Burmah,” in an unstable atmosphere and generally unsafe surroundings.

The Burma sojourn of the author’s immediate family following Japanese occupation during World War II begins with a replay of their last days in India, continuing the compelling true story within a family story. Counterpoint with modern-day travels, the author once again revisits a long-locked past to probe the truth of romanticized early life. She reveals how she and her sister coped with expectations and warnings and absorbed the fears and insecurity of their parents in the aftermath of war to compound their own secret worries, how they became adept at assessing their grownups’ mood swings, and chameleonic in adapting themselves accordingly.

Entertaining stories of the generations before, ancestors who settled in India and Burma from faraway lands, flow naturally as the daughters’ parents, Pansy and William, return to live for a time in the country of their birth. Their resulting storm-and-sun relationship, the nucleus of the symbolic “jackals’ wedding,” continues as such in BURMA BANYAN.

Kawahara’s odyssey, which completes in an unexpected way, also takes readers from Hawai`i to the British Isles, and forays to Australia and New Zealand in search of “lost” family members. The search for a missing father–and a home–is the taproot of these journeys.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728323312

Dawn Fraser Kawahara

Dawn Fraser Kawahara during her years leading and instructing travelers to Hawai`i and island nations of the Pacific Rim, developed a pleasant, chatty way of imparting good and thoughtful information, definitely not “canned” tourist talks. These proved successful, and she continued that style while writing for and to her “Dear Readers” during her six years of bi-weekly “Green Flash” columns for The Garden Island, the newspaper of the island of Kaua`i. Any reader of her newly-collected “Green Flash” Calabash of columns is bound to be enriched by the author’s “talkstory” charm and subtle teaching style, her unique viewpoints. Kawahara’s informal essays were planned to be “think pieces” of people, places and events related to “her” beloved island of Kaua`i. Just so, they echo the love of travel and discovery set forth by such as Isabella Bird and Mark Twain in their sojourns in “The Sandwich Islands,” and a hint of reaching for a Utopian idyll a la Huxley’s landmark novel, Island. A love of green and growing things and nature such as expressed by May Sarton sounds an echo in these writings, as well as a whiff of Don Blanding’s romantic poems. The sometimes subtly humorous package is grounded and tidied up by the author’s practiced journalism and feature writing, with attention paid to the “Who, What, When, Where & How” rule to level interesting, unexpected leaps into memory and imagination. As all Kawahara’s readers find, a great deal of heart and vivid description comes through, as in the author’s compelling life stories: Jackals’ Wedding, A Memoir of a Childhood in British India; its sequel, Burma Banyan, A Daughter’s Odyssey; and her volume of modern chants and cultural information, “Behold Kaua`i ~ Modern Days, Ancient Ways,” all under the AuthorHouse/TropicBird Press imprint; Kawahara enjoyed her past assignment as Poet-in-the-Schools (Kaua`i). She currently hosts and guides the monthly meetings of the Kaua`i Live Poets’ Society, a follow-up to the Garden Island Arts’ Council “Poetry Fests” she created and curated. The author has focused her supportive interests within the Kaua`i community since the early 1980s. She has contributed as a long-term board director of the Hawaiian culture organization Ka `Imi Na`auao o Hawai`i Nei Institute and now serves as president. She was honored as an “Outstanding Older American–2019” by the Mayor and Council of the County of Kaua`i and the Governor and State Legislature of Hawai`i. She and her husband, a retired biology teacher, are blessed with six grown children and five grandchildren. They share a passion for books and travel. Kawahara’s books are available through Amazon and other outlets. You may write to her via the contact page of her “booklovers’ website,” dawnkawahara.com, or email [e-mail]

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Burma

Banyan

A Daughter’s Odyssey

DAWN FRASER KAWAHARA

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

Copyright © 2019 Dawn Fraser Kawahara. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the author (dba TropicBird Press,

[e-mail]).

Published by AuthorHouse    09/17/2019

Simultaneously released in Hawai`i

by Dawn F. Kawahara through TropicBird Press.

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2332-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2331-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019912161

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TropicBird Press

Kaua`i, Hawai`i, USA

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Prologue: ‘Cruel’ Work

On Banyans

Part One

Seedling

Scaredy-Cat Bones

The Bloody-Damn

Letter

Finding A Home

Talisman

Karma

Voyage To Rangoon

Burma Arrival

Part Two

Sapling

Shwe Dagon,

Two Words Or One?

‘Burma Adventure’

Billetted

Christmas Eve In Rangoon

A Pair Of Clunky Lorries

Tailgate Breakfast

Duty Bound

Tharrawaddy Welcome

Bully Beef Days And The Arrival Of Piki

Burma Travel Qualms

A Tipsy Farewell

Tharrawaddy Musings

Part Three

Aerial Roots

Tracking Billy Jim

Missing Person: Information Wanted

Segue

Karma Conductor

Exploring ‘Ye Banks

And Braes’

Traceries

‘Fraise’ To Fraser

Strawberries

A Day In Stirling Town,

And Aloha, Alloa

Part Four

Canopy

Lesson Time

The Chatti Jar

Musing On Mandalay Days

‘The Caddisworm Flies’

Dacoit Practice

Tropical Hibernation, And My Idol

‘Oz’ In Mandalay

Part Five

Nesting

Going Home

Sweet Water

Mekan, Or Opals Are Unlucky

One-Upped!

Box Car Days

Digging In

Album

A Glimpse Of Burma

Part Six

Roots

‘Maybe’ – Filling In

The Blanks

Closing The Circle

Zigzagging Toward Burma

Up And Away

Bagan Discoveries

Maymyo Returns

Pug Mark Of The Tiger

Grandfather Ghost

Recalling Sandyknowe

Part Seven

Fruits

Up The Garden Path

Cold Feet

The Changeling

Banyan Tree Trance

‘Be It Ever So Humble…’

Cocoon

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Permissions, Attributions And Chapter Notes

Author’s Credits

About The Author

To my dear

Uncle Ram, the late Ramsay Lord Harris

and my family

and in memory of my dad

William James Fraser

1909 ~ unknown

and my grandfather

James Fraser

1859 ~ 1929

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            O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road,

            And I’ll be in Scotland a’fore ye,

            But me and my true love will never meet again,

            On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

– traditional Scottish song (Roud No. 9598)

 first published in 1841

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Claremont, California, U.S.A. – 1991

PROLOGUE: ‘CRUEL’ WORK

A perfect plan: I’m invited to sleep over at Uncle Ram’s new home while Dee reunites with his college buddies on this trip to the Los Angeles area. With bare essentials, my journal and gift packs of chocolate-macadamia coffee from Hawai`i we head east on the Pomona Freeway toward Claremont.

I admire Dee’s strong profile as he concentrates on the multi-lanes of traffic, so different from the one highway that almost circles our island. Dee is a nickname, short for Delano, an uncommon name that gets pronounced several different ways. He’s the third man I’m taking to meet my uncle, my late mother’s elder brother, to get a sense of the family I come from. The first understood, or thought he understood about my family, and didn’t particularly care; the second, I thought would benefit from having time with this uncle who fathered me in many ways and set such a good life example. Delano Kawahara, the third one, is the charm, I think, smiling to myself. I glance at him again, catch his eye for a moment.

Cat got the canary? he asks.

Just thinking. I haven’t a doubt that Uncle Ram and Aunt Mary will like you immediately, and vice versa.

You think they’ll approve of me?

I do. How could they not? You’re a teacher, too. The Harris family not only spawns, but reveres teachers.

Hmn. . . I know your uncle taught history–classical history. What did your aunt teach?

Spanish.

Also at the Webb School?

No. Claremont High. She was teaching at Beverly Hills High when Ram saw her, and fell in love.

Nice.

He’s quite the romantic, or maybe I should say old world gentleman. Still pulls out her chair at the table, kisses her on the cheek after he seats her. You’ll see.

Ram, short for Ramsay–(the second Ramsay, the first being his father, my Grandfather Ramsay Harris)–is the remaining touchstone of the branch of my family that emigrated to America from Burma in the 1920s. The oldest of the siblings, my maiden Aunt Ruby Violet, is in her dotage, floating in and out of reality. She was a fun-loving aunt. I dearly loved her, but she was closed to talking about certain family subjects. My Uncle Glen lives farther away, in Seattle. Growing into my teens in Southern California, I came to know Ram better. He was the younger of the two brothers, and my mother’s favorite. I soon picked up that Ram was a far sight more dependable than Glen, although Glen always garnered more attention from his mother and sister Ruby.

My uncles are in their nineties; I haven’t the luxury of a long time for the answers to unanswered questions about our family to surface.

Driving toward Ram’s new retirement home, I rehash the questions. How exactly did our branch of Harrises end up in Southern California after leaving Burma? Did they contain a mix of black blood, as Europeans termed it when children were born from unions and marriages with East Indians? Where did all the other members of the family go following the Japanese invasion of World War II? What about after Independence, when Britain’s hold on India and Burma ended?

With his exacting memory, Ram is my link to my Burma-born father and the legendary Frasers, too–the life both families shared when they lived in Maymyo, Burma. I’d like to start searching for Dad, although the mystery behind his disappearance is a very cold case. No one knows where he went and what happened to him. Ram, who has exchanged letters with Dad’s older sister Ruby Tasma (my other Aunt Ruby) all these years, might hold some clue that would help me.

Since the invitation to visit and stay overnight came, I tucked my hopes of what I might be able to learn about my family hidden just below the surface of other pleasurable doings with Dee’s family, not unlike the extra stash of black licorice I used to hide from my children, or the occasional bag of M&M’s tucked deep in a pocket. The emergency rations were my insurance to stave off a desire for some hidden thing, darkly sweet and energizing, somewhat like what I’m experiencing right now wanting to fill in the blanks.

Questions continue to bubble forth as we draw closer and Dee exits the freeway. Maybe I could ask what Ram thought of Mom’s college boyfriend Joe, the Iowa farm boy she was engaged to.

Do you think he’ll remember him?

Yes. Uncle Ram knew Joe, or knew of him through her letters. Mom wrote to him regularly from the time she was a girl. I’ve wondered what happened when my dad, her girlhood sweetheart from Burma, suddenly reappeared on the scene.

Dee stops at the end of the off-ramp before making the turn. From what you’ve told me, your mother was a committed kind of person. Breaking the engagement must have been hard for her.

Yes, very hard. She must have been head-over-heels in love with Dad. Maybe she’d never forgotten him. Out of sight, as they say, but not really out of mind.

I could see that. In those days of travel by boat, the distance between America and Asia put them worlds apart.

Finding the new address Aunty provided, Dee pulls to the curb before one of a series of miniature cottages flanked by nicely trimmed juniper bushes. The drapes are drawn against the afternoon heat.

Maybe they’re napping, I say, searching for the shoes I’ve kicked off.

But they’re expecting you. . .

Yes, they said they were. Their place looks awfully small. . . I ease my red-jelly flats back on while feeling sad about this more-or-less forced change in homes. How could they have reneged on their promise?

What do you mean? Dee asks, confused.

Oh, I don’t mean Ram and Mary. I mean the folks running the Webb School, where Ram taught for eons. He was given that house on campus for life. It was in a great setting, which figures. Webb, as I told you, was an elite private school.

He leans close, looks out the passenger window. Looks pretty nice to me. Well kept.

But diminished, I say, kissing him. Life always comes to that.

Hey, think of the turtle.

The turtle?

Sure. It carries its home around with it. He kisses me back. This is going to be fun for you.

I take a deep breath. You’re right. I’m looking forward to this visit. Come on. I’m going to skip up the walk like Dorothy on the yellow brick road. I execute a little two-step.

Oh–I get it. ‘Oz.’ If you’re Dorothy, who am I?

The Wizard?

Not hardly. That guy was a fake.

We’re laughing as I press the bell. I have a heart now, I say softly. He grins, even though I can’t finish–(Heart. Do you hear? Not only brains, such as my mother valued. Not to mention courage. I’m gaining that.)–because the door opens. Ram and Mary welcome us, all smiles. They enfold us in hugs that smell of Pears soap and eau-de-cologne.

Once inside, I recognize their no-nonsense Danish-style furniture that’s come forward to this small sitting room; it has worn as well as the two standing before us. Both exude a happy, healthy mien that belies their ages. Naturally, in that sheltered academic setting they live in, Mom used to remark jealously as her own face and health withered. No. It’s love! I thought to myself, not wanting to trigger a diatribe of past injustices and comparisons that flushed up when Mom’s self-esteem sank low.

After we’re invited to be seated, we hear about the move from Webb, how the new Manor’s meal plan is a big help, how they still take breakfast on their own, enjoying their separate cottage as long as they’re able to stay free of the managed care facility. Ram is matter-of-fact in telling how their home in the live-oak grove on campus was commandeered by a younger master. He needed a house, he says, shrugging.

Mary frowns, saying what I’ve mentioned earlier. It was promised to you.

Now, Mary-darl. . .

For life.

What can we do? Never in their wildest dreams did they think I’d reach this age. But then, neither did I. He laughs, injecting some low-sounding Hindustani expression, and tells us he’s on the way to ninety-five. Shaking his forefinger, he says to Dee, You will see, tomorrow, in the dining room–(you remember you promised to return and lunch with us?)–when some of my ‘old boys’ come in.

Come shuffling in, he should say, Mary tells us, blank stares on their faces.

These were boys you taught? Dee asks Ram.

Yes, he says, grinning. They’re still only in their seventies.

I hope that day will come for me, sir, says Dee. Right now, I notice only paunches and thinning hair on some of the young bucks I’ve taught when I meet them here and there on island.

I jump in. They all say he was their favorite teacher. He’s keeping trim, I boast, and I’m told a banana a day keeps the gray away. Dee leans away from me when I riffle his dark hair, uncomfortable about being the focus of attention.

Bananas, eh? Is that the regimen? asks Ram. Mmm, probably the potassium, he adds, fingering his own generous tufts of remaining hair, still pretty dark.

As for your uncle, dear. When Glen let him down, he lived on soda crackers and oranges for years in order to save money to build the home in Redlands, where your grandparents came, from Burma, once your grandfather retired. The doctor says that’s why he’s got this bad tilt. She reaches to place a hand on Ram’s back.

Osteoporosis? Dee asks.

Mary nods. I’m worried.

Ram shrugs. What can one do so late in the game? It’s futile to worry, Mary-darl.

Extra calcium–that can help, Dee says.

Calcium, yes–and a slew of multiple everythings, says Mary.

Can’t go wrong with that. Dee glances at his watch. I’m afraid I must leave now, if you’ll excuse me. But I’ll be back tomorrow.

An evening of cards, is it? asks Ram.

Poker–a game I’m not good at. If it weren’t for the chance to see my old buddies …

Yes, yes. You’re a UCLA graduate, right? Pammy told us.

She is my Dawn, he says, rising. See you tomorrow, says Dee, with a kiss for me and for Aunt Mary and a handshake for Ram, who struggles to rise. I’ll let myself out, sir. Don’t worry.

After the door closes, Ram settles back. That’s a solid man you’ve got there, he says.

He does seem a fine man, dear, says my aunt. I liked his smile lines from the first moment.

Here, here! says Ram. When was the last time you brought him? Help me to remember. . .

Before I can answer, Mary says, How absolutely fine that you could fly over from Hawai`i again, dear. We’ll look forward to a proper visit with Dee tomorrow–you can count on it. But meanwhile, we’ve got you. She settles back in her chair, which is angled toward the sofa.

There is a sense of orderliness in this little house, and a spirit of happiness. Ram’s papers, books and clippings that surround his chair have overflowed the walnut side table but are neatly stacked. Mary’s had a hand in this organization, I’m sure. Her touch was there in their home in the live-oak grove near the Webb chapel before this. In my teens, when my cousins were young, I noticed she kept their ranch house neat as a pin, and very clean. Ram had helped to build it of adobe brick beside the football field on campus. I’d wished it were my home–everything minimal, understated, almost oriental in its chic simplicity. A few nice things were on display. My sister Wendy and I used to feel at peace there, and talked about it. Hmph! Mom would say, sometimes in tandem with Ruby, on overhearing us as Ruby drove us home to our cramped and messy apartment in her Morris Minor.

They would always find something critical to say about Aunt Mary after visiting Claremont, usually about Mary’s gentle manner, how she’d had her way paved nicely through Ram’s position. If not that, then it was the way Mary-darl ever-so-gently disciplined Laura and Andy, or how she never made enough rice, or that she treated them coolly, even after all these years. We girls used to roll our eyes, but knew better than to speak in our Aunt Mary’s defense. The one time we did, we were considered traitorous and reminded that Mary was the one who let Ram’s pet starling Rosy fly free, and then spun the story that it had escaped to cover her crime.

I shrug off the unsettling memories. Thanks, I say. It’s lovely, having you both to myself.

Mary beams. Now, tell us about yourself.

I catch them up on our travels, describe our island, and touch on my study of hula and Hawaiian culture. I’m pleased when Ram shows interest in the star-watching studies we’ve been doing to plumb the hidden poetic level of some hula chants. He mentions Milton’s poetry, rife with hidden meaning, then teases me about becoming a veritable Margaret Mead. I tease back, reminding him of the late anthropologist’s up-for-question study regarding the yam as a fertility fetish.

The conversation shifts. Wistfully, I say, How I wish Mother had found Kaua`i and settled there.

Ram lifts an eyebrow, looking bemused. And why is that?

The island people are–I search for the right words–more gentle, or what they call ‘laid back,’ and more in touch with the process of living instead of the push for success. Some people hold three jobs because the cost of living is high, but somehow life seems less hurried, like the descriptions I heard about how life was in Maymyo. Living on the island might have brought my mother’s spirit back to her.

Really, says my uncle. A statement. Then again, Really? The same far-off look creeps over his face that I remember Mom having any time she talked about her childhood haunts in Upper Burma.

Then there’s the air, I say. Soft. Smelling of flowers.

Aah. He nods, half smiling.

No smog. We do have occasional vog, though, I say, breaking his reverie.

Vog? Did I hear right? What is that?

It’s like smog, but vog is a mixture of volcanic haze and fog.

Vog, he repeats, slapping his knee. A coined word. I see. Smog–let’s see. . . A blend of smudge, from the orange grove smudge pots, plus fog, wasn’t it?

Uh-huh. Unlike the smog that afflicted Mom’s lungs in the San Bernardino Valley, vog reaches us only when the winds blow from the southeast, from the volcano.

We thought it was her smoking, Dear, Aunty injects.

That, too. Cigarettes and smog, a deadly combination.

Letting that go by, Ram says, What an incredible sight that volcano must be. I’ve always wanted to see such a thing, ever since Mama’, your grandmother, described to us what she experienced as a girl on the coast of India–tidal waves, and days turned into night by ash from the great eruption of Krakatoa.

Mom told me that story. It amazed me. Later, studying about that event in class, it amazed me again–especially because of Grandmama’s experience.

Fancy–hundreds of miles over the ocean, in Java. . .

Yes, Ram. But let Pammy finish catching us up now, says Mary.

Briefly, I tell them about the memoir I’m writing about my early life in India. I sketch news of my grown-up children, their interests and careers, and their families. When I mention my grandchildren, they say they can’t believe that I’m a grandmother.

Laughing, I say, Remember when you walked me down the aisle at my first wedding, Uncle Rammy? I was only just seventeen.

Ah, yes. To be that age again.

Honestly, I like this stage of life, being a grandma now. But what does seem strange is to hear my children report that they’re getting some gray hairs.

Mary nods. I remember feeling the same way when Laura had her girls. Let me tell you, though, dear, getting older–much older–is no laughing matter. She folds her hands in her lap and sits, unsmiling now, under her own neat helmet of white hair. How I miss my car and the freedom of being able to drive and get around at will. However, Laura is right: I am getting too forgetful to be driving. She suddenly brightens, much the way my mom used to giant-step over an emotional abyss. At least our empty, wee garage is a place we can store our books, she says. They’re still boxed. It’s impossible to fit them inside this small house.

She’d like to show me, but the garage door is locked and she can’t find the key. With that, Aunty says she’s going to pour us some apple juice.

Uncle Ram, I was hoping you’d tell me more about the family. You know, about your days in Burma, I coax as we hear the fridge door open and close.

Yes, dear, do, Mary pokes her head back out of the kitchen, shining her Glinda smile full-on at her sweetheart of many years, but don’t start till I’m back. We hear thonk! thonk! as she turns out ice cubes.

Flicking the corner of a blue aerogram atop a pile of correspondence and news clippings beside him, Uncle Ram looks beyond me, beyond this doll-house room furnished with the bare bones of what graced their former residence–beyond Grandpapa’s roll-top desk brought from Redlands, the Cloisonne’ dragon vases from Burma, and Laura’s upright piano on which he’s composed many a prize-winning song. His hands are capable-looking, like mine. His fingers end in straight-clipped, striated nails just like Grandpapa’s. Even on this hot day Ram wears a long-sleeved white shirt with the cuffs buttoned, ever well-presented as the schoolmaster in the family tradition, although thirty years into retirement.

Burma–it seems like yesterday. . . His chocolate chip eyes twinkle. He’s still the Ronald Colman look-alike, as his first wife Louise, the one-legged Stetson heiress, described him in her memoir, I think. Where, oh where to begin, Pammy-darl? asks Uncle, exhaling a long breath bordering on a sigh.

I wait for a story. Told in the Harris family style, of course, with all details painted by expressive voices that can segue effortlessly between poetry and literature, a low joke, and varied reminiscences, the telling embellished with gesturing hands.

To differentiate from his father, my maternal grandfather Ramsay Alfred Harris who remained hale in body and mind until close to his dying day at the age of ninety-seven, my uncle was named Ramsay Lord Harris. His question, where to begin, is rhetorical. I know what a wealth of stories Ram can spin, like my mother Pansy.

Mary, returning, takes the cue. Burma Jack, dear–that would be a good starting point.

Lawks! Ram, pretending consternation, shrugs. Substituting the adventures of my pal the famed tiger hunter for my own now, is she?

I absorb the humor, tenderness, the pervasive gentleness that nurtures me during each visit with Uncle and Aunty. Once again, I feel like one of those magic garden crystals I used to enjoy dropping into a bowl of water as a child, crystals that fanned out like coral, color upon color. In my youth, once settled in America, these visits occurred possibly once or twice a year. The hallowed halls of the Webb School, as I considered the campus and masters’ houses where Ram and Mary and my younger cousins lived, were some sixty miles from our garage apartment outside Colton. The main feature of that town was the Cement Hill, the Portland Cement mining operation that showered everything within a radius of miles with a gritty layer of dust with each earth-shaking explosion. Colton was also a railroad hub, so we could never go anywhere in the vicinity without stopping for a train–another strike against the town. I made sure to tell people I lived in the country, in Grand Terrace. That was true and gave a better impression, although the rural settlement situated above Colton’s plain was hardly grand. The land was farmed by Japanese-American truck farmers before and after the war, and the elevated bluff was accessed by the steep Jap Hill, a name that still reflected wartime bias.

Each drive to Claremont was considered a Major Expedition by Mom. In all fairness to her, I should explain that she learned to drive past the age of forty out of pure necessity. Watch out! should have been the warning any motorist approaching her little four cylinder, English-built Ford Zephyr as she zipped around. Her regular ten-mile territory included Redlands to our piano lessons, clothes shopping and doctoring, and to pop in on Grandpapa’ (Grandmama’ had died earlier) and Aunt Ruby; Colton and San Berdoo (Bernardino) for our school events, groceries and business; and sometimes to Riverside to pick up her favorite D’Elia’s grinders and picnic at Fairmount Park and, very occasionally, to visit her good friend Lee Coles, the secretary of her school–all the while grinding gears, pointing out where one of her students lived, admiring so-and-so’s curtains or flowering bushes as the case might be, while riding the clutch and, often, the brakes.

My sister and I became expert at putting on blinders during our mother’s bad driving, over which we had no control. Our lives were at stake, especially riding up front in the passenger seat, since this was in the 1950s before seat belts became a requirement. Amazingly, Mother could claim an accident-free record driving Zephy and, later, Blue Minx-y, her second and last car, the Hillman Minx. (Cars have to be named in our family. Why does she stick with English cars? I wondered when she bought the second one. We’re in America now.) That didn’t mean Mom didn’t cause some accidents; my guess is she caused plenty, in her wake.

Thirstily, I drink the juice Aunty serves from a lacquer tray. Uncle Ram clears his throat. You realize it’s decades past a half century since my feet trod the ground of Upper Burma, he says. But Pammy-kin, you have your own stories.

My uncle is using a form of Panny-kin, his brotherly endearment for my mother, so I keep my mouth shut about the affectionate form of Pamela he’s using. That inauspicious, if not unlucky, name was foisted upon me at birth. I don’t explain how I plan to do away with it in all its forms when Dee and I marry, moving Dawn, the name Dad chose, from second place to first. Beyond befuddling family members (and acquaintances and associates), the explanation of the planned demise of the name given me by Mom might disappoint him. I watch his kind expression as he talks. As always, I want Ram to think the best of me.

My stories date back before the 1920s–Old Stuff, he is saying, "whereas your mother took you and Wendy to reunite with your father in Mandalay as the war ended.

World War II is old stuff now, I say.

Myanmar, as they’re calling it, is a far cry from the country I knew, he says.

I can’t get used to calling it that, Uncle Ram.

Neither can we, dear, says Aunty.

Ram chuckles disparagingly. That’s right. It will always be Burma, to me. And Rangoon, not Yangon. Looking sad, he says, And all of it under military control. . . He pauses, then launches into the story.

‘Burma Jack’ is Jack Girsham, a school chum of mine back in Maymyo. Jack was a half-caste boy, born of a British gentleman and a Burmese lady. . .’

I settle back against the cushions.

One of Jack’s older brothers was headmaster of the Government High School, the same position my father, your Grandpapa’, held. Glen and I knew Jack from the seventh standard on. We admired him because he was a boxing champion. Later, he became famous for his tracking and shooting skill of tigers and elephants, in fact Jack’s jungle skills earned him a position as a guide to Merrill’s Marauders in the Burma Theater. He came out of that horror as an American Major.

Isn’t that unusual, for a Burmese National? I ask.

Yes, but remember, half British. The Americans felt he earned it. Following the war, I’m afraid that the unpleasant attitudes and circumstances for Anglo-Burmans with the new breed of politicians and pukka-sahibs sent Jack to relocate in India, to Assam, actually.

A connection. Where my father worked for Burmah Oil.

Yes. How Panny managed there after their marriage when he took her to live so far away, I don’t know. He frowns and rubs the prominent bump on top of his skull for a moment. Getting back to Jack, though, the position of game warden was open. As a half-caste, that official title was denied him in the aftermath of the new freedom. He did the work, though, tracking and shooting former teak elephants that were plundering the crops, and a tiger or two who had developed a preference for eating villagers.

An adventurous man.

Yes, Jack was a good chap, a rare fellow. Sadly, he died several years after our last visit.

Mary puts in her oar now. We had a reunion some years back. Jack brought his new wife, who was from Calcutta. Ram put him on the phone long-distance to Glen–if that wasn’t a surprise!

Ram chuckles, flicks his hands near his brow, meaning (as I’d learned early-on, in India), I’m dumbfounded, know nothing of this. How she remembers that, I don’t know, he says admiringly.

Nonsense, Ramsay, says my aunt, smiling broadly. Mary has always been the social hostess and, in her sharp-as-a-tack days, business manager of the home, freeing Ram to pursue his interests in his spare time, I realize. How else could he have written volumes of family correspondence, raised birdlings fallen from nests until they could fly, sought patents for his inventions and markets for the song lyrics he wrote, pursued woodworking, as well as running the clay-pigeon shooting club at Webb?

She rises and moves to the bookcase. Ram crosses one leg over the other on the footstool, watching as she runs her finger along spines and pulls out a book, which she places on my lap. Bold orange block letters spelling out BURMA JACK. By Jack Girsham, all right. With Lowell Thomas, a name I recognize. I own several of Thomas’ books about travel adventures in the Far East.

You should have this now, dear, says Mary, tapping the book’s jacket.

Are you sure? I ask after opening the book. He’s signed it to you.

We’re sure. We’ve both read it, says Ram.

Thank you, I say. They look as pleased as anyone feels when they know they’ve given someone something that they will particularly value.

I skim the jacket flap that says that Jack is a legendary figure in his native Burma and in the neighboring Indian province of Assam, where Wendy and I were born. Something within me awakens, stirred. ‘At twelve,’ I read aloud from the flap, ‘Jack was stalking marsh fowl in the Burmese hills around Maymyo.’ Like Dad, I say. By ten, he was herding cows back to the barn in the dead of night.

Sandyknowe, Uncle lingers on the name of the Fraser home and grounds. Your dad’s father, the doctor–he was quite the gentleman farmer–carved a beautiful place out of the wilds beyond Maymyo.

But the surrounding jungle was full of danger; tigers and leopards, and snakes–giant pythons.

How did we all ever survive? Ram laughs almost silently, his body shaking–exactly like my Grandpapa’ used to.

It’s a wonder you did, says Aunty, what with plague, and cholera, typhoid fever, not to speak of no refrigeration. . .

Now, now, m’dear, we Harrises lived in the very civilized town. Those things were a hidden element that only surfaced once in a blue moon. Besides, Mama’ was a superb household manager and cook–a veritable sergeant major. She always had at her side her unmarried sister, our Aunt ‘Moppy’ Ball, as adjutant. And we had excellent doctors, such as Captain Fraser. Then too, wild creatures usually steer clear of men and settlements.

Aunty’s mouth turns down in disbelief.

I wish Dad could have stayed on in Burma, or Assam, like Jack, instead of going to Australia, where everything. . .

Ram cuts in, looking very sober. At some point, Pammy, as you well know, all of us had to leave–like your father, the inimitable Billy. . .

Inimitable? I interrupt.

Oh, it was hard to match Bill Fraser–his looks, his physique, his brains and his style. That’s what Panny fell for, after all. We all did. All of the Frasers were that way–real stand-outs, noticed wherever they went. With their comely mother and their highly-respected doctor father, whites and blacks were always bowing and scraping to the Captain-Sir, the Fraser-sahib and his family. You would have thought he was gentry, a real Lord.

‘Charming Billy’, I say.

He charmed the socks right off her, Ram told me, Mary puts in.

More like the bloomers, chuckles Ram.

Ram! I’m shocked. Aunty sits tall and rigid, her mouth pursed into an ‘o.’

What? Oh–it was just a manner of speech. He’s flustered, and hurries to explain. I was just remembering a photo Panny-kin sent me from college. She was dressed in her field hockey bloomers, one of the most unprepossessing styles ever devised to cover the comely form of woman, I might add.

I’m about to ask about Joe, and how the news went when Mom chose Dad over Joe, but Ram plunges on.

But on with the story of Jack. He, as you’ve read, was also born and brought up in Maymyo. While still in school, Jack became a crack shikari. He was an excellent soccer player and general athlete, but best of all as far as we boys were concerned, I think I mentioned, he was a championship boxer. I myself hero-worshiped him for the six years we were in school together.

Mary passes me back several black and white photos of the reunion group, and then small Polaroid shots of Jack sitting with a Bengal tiger skin draped behind him.

The tiger’s jaws jolt my memories of piano recitals in Redlands, after Uncle Ram helped us relocate to America. Our Aunt Ruby Harris enrolled Wendy and me to study with the best music teacher in town and footed the first year’s fees. At our piano teacher’s home, a Bengal tiger rug positioned under the Bechstein grand near its pedals threatened to swallow my shaking feet with its huge stuffed head and open jaws as I met the challenge of playing by heart (which was beating fast) during recitals.

This was when I was about ten, while Mom was getting her bearings and re-certification to teach in the U.S. We lived with our grandparents in the house Ram built in the 1920s for his parents in their old age. The house was located on Brockton Avenue around the corner from Mother’s alma mater, the University of Redlands. Besides Grandpapa’ and Grandmama’, the small, two-bedroom Spanish-style casa sheltered within it the three of us along with Aunt Ruby and my bedridden cousin Vilda. Vilda was my Uncle Glen’s first child, born while Mother was still in college and living close by, working as a helper for Glen’s first wife. Vilda suffered from what is now known as cerebral palsy. In those days it was diagnosed as spastic paraplegia. This severely handicapped cousin outlived my grandmother, who would not allow Glen’s child to be institutionalized and abandoned as a toddler and insisted on caring for her over many years until shortly before her own death. Her sister, the Aunt Moppy Ram mentioned, had died in the bathtub of a stroke some years before we arrived (I learned much later). With the addition of Mother and us girls, the house was crammed to the point where Grandpapa’ slept on the sofa. But the living room also sheltered a tinny, upright piano, and Ruby insisted we learn to play it.

About Dad and his Burma origins, I say, I think he may have gone back. After all, it was home."

Oh no, dear. He never went back, I can assure you, says Mary, squaring her shoulders.

How can she be so sure? When Uncle Ram assures me Mary’s right, I wonder, Do they know something I don’t? It’s a shame, I say, that I didn’t know about your connection with this Jack Girsham. I mean, if I had, we could have tracked him down. . .

I could have put you in touch.

I don’t mean Burma Jack, Uncle Ram. I mean Dad. Dad liked to hunt, too; he was fluent in all the local languages and dialects. There was a network of tea and rubber, sugar and indigo planters–the white burrah-sahibs–stretching from Malaysia through Maymyo and Assam. Surely someone would have known of him.

Wait, says Ram, raising a hand. Let me get clear about this. By ‘him,’ you mean your father.

Right–my dad. Mother was not without clues to his disappearance–letters and documents Wendy and I riffled through after her death. She never followed the trail while it was warm and there was some hope of finding him.

Ram and Mary exchange puzzled glances. I forge on. Did you know, at the last, when their savings were almost gone in Australia, he bought a motorcycle? That was the last straw. It caused a terrible row. The motorcycle was supposed to help Dad get around in Sydney for his work, and also to come more easily to see us.

To see you? He wasn’t living with you?

Only on some weekends. We were in Collaroy at the beach cottage, living with our Grandmother Fraser. Dad had been living in town for awhile because of the ability to use public transport to call upon his Prudential clients.

Ram sits bolt upright. Mary’s eyes are wide.

Anyway, long after mother died, I found the application for Dad’s motorcycle’s license in her hat box. In the space marked ‘Occupation’ he’d listed ‘Traveler,’ not ‘Insurance salesman.’ Also, there was a letter from his clerk in Mandalay, obviously replying to a recent letter in which Dad had asked for information about the old network of Britishers, where to look them up and so forth. I’m convinced he was planning to return to Burma or Assam.

What are you saying, Pammy? Ram asks.

Yes, what are you saying? Mary repeats, wringing her hands.

I’m talking about Dad, when he disappeared.

Disappeared?

I’m startled to see the alarm on their faces. Yes. I wonder why Mom didn’t launch a full-scale investigation. I certainly would have.

Uncle sits forward and places his hand over mine. But your mother did investigate, she told us.

You should let all this go, Mary says to me, her flower face drooping.

I can’t help wondering, I tell them, swallowing hard.

Ram says, Your mother said the police dragged Collaroy Bay for his body.

A terrible, terrible thing, thinking that you’ve lost your husband to a shark, says Mary.

Wait a minute! I’m the one who sits bolt upright now. Mom told you that? As suddenly as it roared into me, the surge of energy washes away, leaving me feeling weak. Is that what. . .? I cover my face with my hands.

What’s wrong? asks Aunty. What is it?

I sit straight again, brush back my hair and compose myself. Ram and Mary exchange worried glances.

Is that what Mom’s story was, I continue, that Dad was taken by a shark?

Mary looks befuddled. Uncle says, A shark attack was quite a common thing there, she said. . . His voice trails away. After a moment, he says gently, Pammy-darl, she showed us the news clipping.

So, this is the myth my mother propagated with her family. I see instant re-runs of all the meetings over the years. Knowing what she knew, she couldn’t have come to believe the shark story she conjured. Or could she? With a sinking feeling, I remember the other myths that clouded the air we breathed, all ending in great question marks. It becomes clear to me: my mother created the lie–no, lies–to save face. She couldn’t have done this for any other reason.

The realization hits that this, then, may be the cruel crewel embroidery of my prescient childhood dreams, the lying lion that chased me around concealing curtains in recurrent nightmares: That my dad Billy Jim–William James Fraser, her Prince Among Men–was attacked and possibly devoured by a shark was the lie. It prevented my mother from getting the solace she needed from her own family for the real wound she’d received. I clutch Burma Jack like a life preserver, feeling sad to the marrow.

It strikes me that Mom never said, He deserted me. She never allowed herself to say, He left me homeless, with bills and obligations he’d created. He left me with no resources to fall back upon, except myself, and with two girls to raise. He left me, he left me … You mean, over all these years . .? I ask. The book slips from my hands, falls to the floor as my unfinished question hangs in the air between us .

O-my-God! Mother, herself, erected the barrier that prevented her from completing the mourning process–not only for herself, but for Wendy and me. She’d held her head pridefully high and clenched her jaws through more than three decades, right to the last gnashing of her teeth as she lay several months in a coma before her death.

I lean down to pick up Burma Jack and realize that if I vent what I’m thinking, I’ll upset these two people who mean so much to me even more than I’ve already upset them.

Let it go, Pammy-kin. It’s so long ago, so very long ago. Ram’s voice and his hand resting gently on my shoulder bring on the tears.

An uneasy quiet reigns until, after a time, Ram clears his throat and says, startling me, Mary-darl, I think that key you’re hunting may be in the Burma box. Take a look, do.

Aunty walks to the carved Burma box on the sideboard. Oh, Dear One, she says, sounding joyous, you’re right, Rammy–look! She triumphantly holds up the key she thought was lost.

Later, lying awake in Uncle and Aunty’s spare room well past midnight, sleep eludes me. Questions. Always, yet unanswered questions. . .

We didn’t get to what happened to the back-history of the family, the great holdings of land purchased generations ago when areas of southern India were offered for sale to the French and other Europeans? And what of the fabled Dharwar coffee plantation that the French line of my maternal grandmother’s family owned and administered in Karnataka, some distance from Bangalore? The intermarriage so frowned upon? And in present time, there was not one mention of Andy, Laura’s brother. Is my younger cousin in rehab again?

However, a most important matter I hadn’t counted on has been unlocked, but there is more. The key to the areas still locked to me may also lie waiting to be found in the Burma box, whatever that may turn out to be for me.

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ON BANYANS

Banyan

Ficus benghalensis

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Plantae

Division: Magnoliophyta

Class: Magnoliopsida

Order: Urticales

Family: Moraceae

Genus: Ficus

Subgenus: (Urostigma)

The seeds of a banyan (or ‘banian’), a kind of fig, begin their life as epiphytes, germinating in cracks and crevices of a host tree, or on other structures like buildings and bridges. Dispersed by fruit-eating birds, the seeds germinate and send roots towards the ground. These roots may envelop (cover) part of the host.

The banyan’s elliptical leaves, when young, have an attractive reddish tinge; later, they become large, leathery, and glossy green. The aerial prop roots of older banyan trees develop into woody trunks which, with age, can become indistinguishable from the main trunk. Old trees, using these prop roots, can spread out laterally, covering a wide area.

Once the roots reach earth and suck up nutrients, they grow faster and thicker, covering the trunk of the host tree. Their leaves and branches eventually cover the host tree, blocking light in the canopy, and causing its eventual death. After beetles, termites and fungi destroy the deadwood, there remain a huge cylinder of banyan roots, standing steady.

Genome analysis shows that, often, the banyan tree is formed from several different fruits which germinated on the same host tree.

PART ONE

SEEDLING

Scaredy-Cat Bones

The Bloody-Damn Letter

Finding a Home

Talisman

Karma

Voyage to Rangoon

Burma Arrival

DAWN

Kaua`i, Hawai`i - 2018

SCAREDY-CAT BONES

And what of Burma? The manuscript of my first book of exploration and memory, Jackals’ Wedding, A Memoir of a Childhood in British India, ended with this final question pointing to a sequel.

Burma Bound, the last chapter of that book, seemed a logical place to stop, as our family was about to board a ship sailing to Rangoon, Burma, from India. The young Dawnie (my child self) was torn about leaving her home in Dehra Dun in December of 1945 with mother, father, and older sister. Also, the adult Dawn (myself) was about to return home to Kaua`i from Delhi after the unforgettable Heart of India travels undertaken with my husband in September and October 2000, the account of which intertwined with early India memories in Jackals’ Wedding. I held back the first Burma chapters about Dawnie that I’d drafted and left Memoir I there on the cusp of the journey to Burma from India. I decided to complete the book manuscript by adding information about my missing father, William James Fraser, and an elegy for my mother, Pansy Katherine (Gooch-Harris) Fraser–this because, through some convolutions and cruel tricks of life, neither of my parents has a marked physical grave. Jackals’ Wedding (or JW, for short), I hoped might serve as their marker. The book also might bring some helpful information from readers after publication.

This story may be the elegy for my father. I continue to hope to receive information about how and why his life continued and ended after Dad eventually abandoned us.

My mother’s elegy opened with her girlhood photo taken with one of the original Teddy bears from Teddy Roosevelt days. This huggable, beady-eyed and very popular American bear made it all the way overseas to Burma well before