How to Be an American Housewife

by Margaret Dilloway

  “Thank you.” Helena hugged him again impulsively. “So far you’re my favorite person in the country! I wish you could come with us.”

  Yasuo laughed. “I wish I could. But I must work. I hope we will meet again.” He gave me a piece of paper. “Here is my e-mail and home address. Please, if it doesn’t go well, come back again. Stay with us. Good luck to you.” We squeezed onto the water taxi with the other people heading to Shikoku, and waved as it roared away, the front of its hull lifting out of the water.

  ACCORDING TO MY GUIDEBOOK, Shikoku was the least visited of all the Japanese islands. The main attraction was an eighty-eight-stop Buddhist temple tour, or pilgrimage, which the book said took between one and two months to complete.

  As the sun broke through the marine layer, the sea revealed itself to be a gorgeous turquoise, dotted by small islands with mountains. The air was warm for March, humid with salt. I inhaled, feeling sunshine on my eyelids, a spray of seawater hitting my face. This I could get used to. Helena was absolutely green. “Please tell me we can drive back.”

  “Lean over the rail if you have to.” I stroked her hair.

  We docked in Masaki, north of Uwajima. A white lighthouse perched atop a hill in the distance. We straggled off the boat and waited for Helena to get her land legs back. Up the shore stretched white sand beaches bordered by evergreen trees beyond. In America, there would be mansions replacing the trees.

  Helena recovered, popping a piece of mint gum into her mouth. “Is this it?” The shrine had a wooden platform and torı̄ gates, which were two poles with two beams across. Tourists milled about, cameras at the ready, spilling out from three tour buses parked nearby.

  “No, Yasuo said it was down the road. Maybe this one is part of the temple tour.” I looked at the bus schedule. Half an hour to kill. We climbed up the steps to investigate.

  Helena got to the top first, and jumped back. “Holy cow!”

  There was an enormous wooden penis, carved out of a giant tree, laid on its side, complete with monstrously sized veins. I flushed and grabbed Helena’s shoulders, spinning her around. “Okay, Helena, it’s just a tourist trap. Let’s go see if we can find a snack stand. I’m starving.”

  Helena twisted out of my grip. “What is that thing? A tree?”

  “Yes.” I headed down the steps, hoping irrationally that she would follow. Instead she ran back to the top.

  “That’s a penis!” she shouted.

  “Shh.” Try to remain calm, I told myself. I returned to her and made my voice clinical. “It’s a fertility shrine, obviously.”

  “So that’s what one looks like,” Helena murmured.

  “Helena!” I was the panicking mother that I never wanted to become. “Calm down.” I was really talking to myself.

  “What?” She crossed her arms, blushing a deep red. She pulled her short-sleeve cardigan together over her tank top. “I didn’t say I wanted to see one, you know. Sheesh, Mom.”

  I pulled myself together. She was almost thirteen. It was natural to have that curiosity. “It’s a bit—exaggerated.”

  Helena rolled her eyes. “Obviously,” she repeated.

  I took out my little guidebook and found the shrine entry. “Those who want to be blessed with fertility, or who have been blessed as a result of a previous visit, write their notes or prayers on little white papers and fold them into the dry splits of the wood,” I read aloud.

  Helena backed away. “These people are so superstitious.”

  Her tone was contemptuous. “These people,” I said tightly, “are your people.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that, Mom. But you’ve got to admit, Obāchan’s a big fan of old wives’ tales.”

  I smiled. “I would admit that.”

  To my mother, the number four was bad. “Never take four,” she admonished me when I took four dumplings once at dinner. “Mean death. Or two. Bad manner. One or three or five.” Same with sticking your hashi straight up and down in the rice bowl. “Only at funeral!” Mom admonished.

  Mom also advised me to clean the toilet bowl when I was pregnant, “so have pretty baby.” Spiders shouldn’t be killed in the morning; they were good luck. At night it was okay. Flowers had to be arranged in a trio. “It for balance. Sun, earth, sky.”

  People were putting coins into a wooden box and pulling out small sticks with writing on them. “Sumimasen. What is that for?” Helena asked an older man, pointing to the stick in his hand.

  “Dai-kichi.” He bowed with his stick, his face crinkling into a smile. He gestured at the box.

  I dug into my pocket. “It means good fortune.” Five hundred yen. I dropped the coins in for both of us. We each took a stick.

  “I can’t read it.” It was in kanji, the symbolic alphabet. I could barely read the phonetic alphabets. “We can ask Taro to translate.”

  “Are they like a fortune cookie?” Helena stuck hers into her little knapsack.

  “I would assume so.”

  “I can’t wait to see what mine says!” She whipped out her small digital camera and took a photo of the penis. I mentally groaned. “Imagine seeing this in America, right next to a cross. There’d be so many lawsuits your head would spin.” She took a picture of me next to it. I set my mouth in a disapproving line.

  “Let’s walk,” Helena said, shifting her traveling backpack. “It’s only a couple of miles, right?”

  “If you can make it, I can.”

  A sign pointed to the sex museum up the street. I steered Helena away. “Let’s get going before this fertility magic rubs off on me.”

  “Don’t you want to give me a sibling?” Helena asked as we walked back to the road. “I always wanted one.”

  “You did?” Helena had seemed content on her own, a mini-adult among us. “But you’re too old to have a sibling now. Look at the age difference between me and Mike. We’re not close.”

  “That’s not because of age difference, Mom. It’s because he doesn’t like kids. Or people.” Helena stopped to tie her shoe. “I’m different. I’d babysit and everything.”

  “I decided to stop with perfection.” I gave her a hug.

  “Why didn’t you ever marry somebody else?” Helena straightened. “Like a billionaire hedge-fund trader.”

  I laughed, a hollow sound. We began the walk down the road. “Guess not many men are in the market for a single mom.”

  She gave me a hurt look. I squeezed her shoulders. “It’s not that, really, honey. It’s me. I’m—me. Nothing special. I go to work and I’m your mom and that’s enough.”

  “Mom.” Helena shook her head. “Everybody’s always told me what a beautiful mother I have. I always dreamed I could be like you.”

  I laughed again, genuinely. I could not believe this for a moment. After all I’ve taught her, she would still want to be like me? “You don’t want to be like me, Helena. You’re already different. That’s a good thing.”

  She huffed a little as we got to the steep part of the hill. The sun had come out hot. On our left, a meadow led to a mountain; on the right, a drop down to the ocean. “You’re always telling me how extraordinary I am, but what about you?”

  My shoulders slumped. Everyone had dreams when they were young. But they slumbered, were put off, and sometimes they died. I could not confess this to my daughter, with her face upturned to the sky. I could not tell her the truth. “Helena.”

  “What about you?” Her voice echoed forlornly across the meadow.

  I spoke quietly. “I do the best I can, Helena.”

  Helena stopped moving. “That’s just it. You do—just enough. Enough to get by. You’re”—she jammed her finger into my chest—“lonely.” She started moving. “I worry about you, you know.”

  “I don’t want you to.” I wished that she were a little girl again, un-bothered by my worries and ambitions, unaware. I wished I could pick her up and distract her with a lollipop and a kiss.

  She walked faster. I caught up. “Did you ever have any dreams?”


  I paused. From up here, the waves churned tiny foam. “Of course I did. But they changed.” My words sounded hollow even to me. Helena was right. This life was not enough. Soon enough, my child would be off. And I would have nothing.

  Helena sat, too. “I ruined your life.”

  “Of course not.” I reached for her and she pulled away.

  “You should have just had an abortion.”

  “I wanted you.” I remembered the day I found out I was pregnant. “You were a surprise, but I wanted you. We both did.” I took the pregnancy test in the bathroom with its old pink bathtub and toilet, Craig and I waiting in anxiety. It wasn’t the first pregnancy scare we’d had, but this was the first time we’d had real cause for alarm. A vacation when I’d accidentally left my birth controls pills in my dresser drawer at home.

  “What is it?” Craig’s boyish face leaned over the toilet.

  “Two lines.” I spoke too softly for him to hear.

  “That’s a positive.” He put his arms around my waist and kissed my neck. I looked at us reflected in the mirror, our faces unlined, slender, in love.

  I leaned into my knees and searched for the right words for my daughter. “Things don’t always go the way you plan when you’re young, Helena. But I want you to know.” I cupped her face with my hands. Her eyes gleamed. “You have never been a sacrifice to me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  I dropped my hands. “Don’t you forget it.”

  “I won’t if you won’t.” She glanced at me sideways. We continued our walk, quiet, each of us staring off into the expansive sea.

  WE CAME TO TARO’S CHURCH after a twenty-minute walk. It was similar to the one in Ueki—tiled roof, guardian statues on either side of wooden steps, a wooden pavilion-like structure. A garden, a weeping willow bending low over a koi pond, was visible to the right. I felt the urge to do some plein air painting, though I hadn’t attempted such a thing since college art class.

  A Japanese woman in a big straw hat, on her knees, weeding near a small pine, was the only other person around. She wore overalls and a long-sleeved white shirt with cotton gloves. She rose and saw us. She smiled. Her skin was very fair, her eyebrows and hair charcoal against it. “Hello,” she said in English.

  I waved. Maybe she knew where to find Taro. We approached. In the pond, koi in brilliant fall colors swam. The young woman took a plastic bag filled with pellets out of her tool basket. “Food.” She pointed. “Like to feed?”

  “Arigatō.” I took the pellets, unsure how to proceed. Helena pinched some in her fingers.

  “No, no.” She forced Helena’s hand open, the pellets in the middle of her palm. “Put hand by water.”

  Dubiously Helena knelt, dipping the back of her hand into the water. A gold-and-cream koi stuck its head out and plucked the food from her hand. I tried it. The fish sucked gently at my fingers.

  “It’s like feeding the bat rays at Sea World,” Helena smiled. She turned to the woman. “How long do they take to get this big?”

  “Many years,” the woman answered.

  “Ojı̄chan and Obāchan used to have a koi pond,” I said. “When I was a kid.” Dad dug and cemented it; a bonsai pine stood over it, cut into flat levels. Most of the time the water was so brackish, we couldn’t see anything, unlike this crystal-clear pond.

  “We had goldfish in there. Koi were too expensive.” I sat back on the grass. “We had one for seven years; he was about eight inches long. Then something, probably a raccoon, got him. There was nothing left but a pile of scales.” I fed the koi a few more pellets. “Mom said she’d never have fish again. We filled in the pond.”

  The woman listened with interest. “How very sad.”

  “Guess raccoons have to eat, too.” Helena fed the fish more, too. “You should have put something around it to keep the critters out.”

  “That would ruin the nature of the pond.” The woman gestured around her. “No fence here. Sometimes we lose a fish. You cannot control.”

  I smiled at the woman. She seemed in no hurry to return to work. She knelt near me and wiped at her brow with a handkerchief.

  “Do you come for services?” Her accent was much thicker than Yasuo’s. “There are none today.”

  I plucked a blade of soft grass. A clump of dirt clung to the end. “I am looking for the priest.”

  “Which one?”

  “Taro.”

  “Yes, yes.” She nodded. “Not here, down road. Not far.”

  “I’m his niece,” I said in Japanese.

  The woman’s inky eyebrows shot up. “Sō desu ka?” she exclaimed. “Watakushi wa magomusume!”

  “What?” Helena asked.

  I stared at the woman’s face. She grinned at mine. “She’s his granddaughter,” I repeated in English, disbelieving. Another blood relative discovered.

  “Hai.” She bowed, then spoke in rapid Japanese. I had a hard time following her. She had heard a little of us. A very little—she knew that we existed. Through Aunt Suki, until Taro had his falling-out with Yasuo and, consequently, Aunt Suki.

  “Come,” the woman said in English. “I am Sumiko. Come meet him.”

  American households do not have the tatami mat as Japanese households do. Nor do Americans remove their shoes before entering a home, the result being that their floors become filthy as all manner of mud, grass, and unmentionables are tracked inside. It is a common problem for American Housewives to be ashamed at the state of their floors; do not let yourself become one of them! Floors absolutely must be dry swept on a daily basis, to prevent the overwhelming accumulation of despicable dirt. At least weekly, your floors should be thoroughly cleansed, not by mop, but by hand, the Japanese way, as proper husbands should expect.

  —from the chapter “American Housekeeping,”

  How to Be an American Housewife

  Eight

  We followed our newly discovered cousin to a tiny maroon Honda. wedged myself in the back, next to a car seat. Helena got in the front. “Do you have a child?” I asked.

  “Three-year-old boy.”

  “How cute!” Helena clapped her hands. “Japanese children are adorable. They look like little squishy apples!”

  “And you say I’m weird.” I folded my knees up to my chest. I wondered why I didn’t take the front seat. I was the parent. Maybe it was a holdover from my self-sacrificing mother’s example, who would give herself the chipped plate at dinner and the piece of meat with the gristle. If my daughter could be comfortable, I would make it so.

  Sumiko bumped the car down the country road. I gripped Helena’s seat. Sumiko could have been a New York cabbie.

  A mile or two later, she ground to a halt in front of a wood-framed house. Behind it stretched a square acre of land planted with a large vegetable garden and fruit trees.

  “Ojı̄chan!” Sumiko called as we entered the home. I took off my shoes. “Ojı̄chan! Visitors!” She spoke the word in English. “Welcome, welcome, have a seat.” Sumiko pushed indoor slippers toward us to use on the hardwood floors.

  The inside of the house consisted of one very large room, separated into smaller rooms by sliding shoji-screen panels—rice paper and wooden lattice in a honey color. The main room had a low dining table set on a mat, with red cushions set around it. Light came through a screen printed with the silhouette of a bonsai tree. Two round white paper lanterns hung down over the table. In the corner, there was a flat-screen TV. One wall had a large tansu unit of dark wood—cubes and drawers for storage and display that stair-stepped toward the ceiling.

  Through an open screen, I saw a small room whose floor was covered in tatami mats, and a big window looking to the garden, providing most of the light in here, as well.

  “Why the English, Sumiko-chan? Gaijin imasu ka?” a jovial voice said from another room that I couldn’t see.

  “Foreigners, he’s asking,” I whispered.

  “I knew that from the first five minutes we were here, Mother.” Helena smiled and
sat on a red cushion.

  “Iie,” Sumiko responded in the negative. She glanced to us, at a loss for what to call us, then flashed a quick, reassuring smile.

  A chubby-cheeked boy wearing Spider-Man underwear whipped open the shoji screen and ran screaming into the room. “Okāsan! Okāsan!” he screeched, leaping into her arms.

  “Taro-chan!” A man in his late sixties rushed after him, holding a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He stopped at the sight of us.

  We took each other in for a moment. His gray hair was thick on his head, and his eyes were deep brown and nearly disappeared under his bushy black eyebrows. His cotton kimono was dark navy, with a white kanji symbol repeated all over.

  He bowed, covering up his surprise and turning to Sumiko, then back to us. “Hajimemashite. Amerika no kata deshō ka?”

  “He-llo,” I stammered, forgetting my Japanese altogether. Helena clasped her hands together and, instead of bowing, dipped into a low, dramatic curtsy.

  “Hello,” Taro said in English. “Nihongo ga dekinai,” he said to his granddaughter scornfully. They don’t speak Japanese.

  “Sukoshi,” I said. A little.

  Never before had I seen one of my mother’s immediate relatives in person. I couldn’t stop staring at his face, which looked a bit like my mother, and a lot like the photos of my long-dead grandfather. He was more stoutly built than my grandfather had appeared, his chest a barrel and his legs thick, his feet flat and wide. Peasant stock from my grandmother, my mother would say. Hard to push over.

  “I will speak English, then,” Taro said. “Sumiko, these are your friends?”

  “Yes. No.” Sumiko pulled Taro-chan’s shirt over his head. “It’s a very strange occurrence, Ojı̄chan. These are your nieces.”

  Taro’s brow furrowed.

  “Shoko’s daughters.”

  “This is my daughter, Helena,” I corrected Sumiko. “I am Shoko’s daughter.” I bowed now. It seemed the right thing to do.

  He glowered. “Why do you come here? Money?”