by Kyoko Mori
“It’s unhealthy how she locks up everything,” she had complained to her husband. “Your daughter’s growing up to be a close, sly person.”
Hideki had said nothing. He did not deny that it was unhealthy, but he did not offer to do anything about it. That was what she hated most about him—he did nothing to discipline Yuki. It wasn’t that he took her side. Trying to save the tea set was the only thing he ever did for her. But even that, he must not have done really to please his daughter. As far as Hanae knew, he never told Yuki that he was saving the tea set for her. Instead, he avoided her altogether. He did not exchange more than a few words with her every week, and those few words he managed came out of absolute necessity. This, Hanae knew, was not as it should be. If he were a better husband, he would interfere on her behalf and exercise his authority over his unruly daughter. Instead, he thought only of his own convenience and avoided her.
Hanae walked away from the neatly cleaned desk and correctly made bed toward the closet. She opened the closet door and finally found something Yuki had not done properly.
The closet was full of the old summer clothes she had told Yuki to throw out—skirts that were too short, dresses whose patterns were too childish, blouses with too many frills and embroidered flowers. Yuki had grown taller in the last three years but stayed so thin that she was able to wear most of these old clothes. Still, they made her look ridiculous. They had all been made by her mother when Yuki was in grade school. At the end of last summer, Hanae had told her to take them to the garbage dump. Some of the skirts were so short that they exposed her bony kneecaps. People would see her dressed this way and know that Hanae and Yuki did not get along. They would say that Hanae, a horrible stepmother, let her stepdaughter go about in rags. Hanae’s hands sweated at this thought. It was unfair. Every year, she went out by herself and bought Yuki sensible clothes she did not need to try on—white blouses, black or blue skirts, brown and gray pants with elastic waists, all of them long and roomy enough to last her a few years even if she continued to grow. None of them had been put out. The only new clothes on the hangers were the things Yuki had bought for herself with the money she made last summer shelving books at the city library. They were ridiculously bright cotton dresses made in India, T-shirts with rainbows or flowers painted on them. Hanae grimaced at them. Still, many girls Yuki’s age wore such clothes. The neighbors would think nothing of her wearing them. But all the handmade clothes should go.
Taking a deep breath, Hanae began to rip the clothes off the hangers. The large, sweeping motions of her own arms soothed her so that her breathing became a little easier as she continued. When she was done, she bundled them firmly under her right arm and squeezed them hard, feeling nothing but contempt. Yuki’s mother must have spent hours embroidering flowers on these dresses and blouses to be worn only by a little girl, a good-for-nothing tomboy at that. No wonder her husband stayed away. As she sat alone night after night, sadness and craziness must have accumulated in her mind like dust, till her clogged-up mind made her turn on the gas in an empty house and suffocate to death.
Clutching the old clothes, Hanae began to descend the stairway. The bundle blocked her vision. She had to be careful not to lose her footing.
She was so absorbed in not missing the steps that she did not hear the door open. Halfway down the stairs, she noticed Yuki standing in the doorway, staring at her. Yuki had put down her school things on the floor. Hanae thought of the dust or dirt she might have tracked in. Dirt sometimes clung to the bottom of her bag and was carried into the house.
“Please don’t take them away,” Yuki said. “They’re all I have left. You’ve thrown out my winter clothes already and everything else.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hanae said. “These clothes are too short and childish for you. You might have considered what people would say about me if you went around looking like a little beggar girl.”
“I won’t wear them then. Let me at least save them.”
“What for? They’re absolutely useless.”
“You know my mother made them for me. They’re all I have left now.” Yuki covered her face with her hands.
Hanae stood on the stairway, looking down at her. She had seldom seen her cry. Many mornings, though, Yuki came down with her eyelids all puffed up, and Hanae despised her for crying in bed. Even her crying, it seemed, was secretive. She was doing her best to suppress it now.
“You are a close, sly girl, Yuki. Why must you pretend that I’m such a horrible stepmother? I buy you clothes every year. You go about pretending that I don’t even do that much of my duty.”
“I pretend nothing,” Yuki said. “You are the one who pretends. When other people are around, you pretend that you like me. You pretend that we’re all happy together. I don’t pretend. I hate you.”
Yuki was coming up the stairs slowly.
Hanae remembered her wedding. She could still see Yuki’s hands bringing down the bowl of sake against the tabletop. Her knees felt weak.
“You must give me back my clothes,” Yuki said, looking Hanae right in the eyes. She was only a few steps below her now. The wedding bowl had broken up into small, jagged pieces, and the pungent smell of sake had spread through the room.
Yuki took another step and reached out her hand. Hanae flinched and almost lost her balance. For a moment, they were both looking at the clothes in Hanae’s arms. When their eyes met again, Hanae leaned forward and gave Yuki a hard push.
Hanae screamed. Oh, she thought to herself, she would have killed me if I hadn’t pushed her just in time; there was madness in her eyes.
Yuki lost her balance and began tumbling down the steps, but somehow she managed to grab hold of the banister and break her fall. She slid down a few more steps and stopped. Slowly, she moved her hands and feet until she was kneeling on the steps and leaning against the wall. Her hand was curled tight around her right ankle. She said nothing. She just looked at Hanae.
“You almost hurt me, Yuki,” Hanae said. “You would have pushed me down the stairs.”
“You pushed me down.”
Neither said a word for a while.
Then suddenly, Yuki leaned her head against the wall and began to cry. Her shoulders were heaving up and down, choked-up moans escaping her mouth. She didn’t even cover her face with her hands as most girls would. She did nothing to restrain the gasping noise of her breaths.
There, Hanae thought, again was a sign of violent temper, craziness. Someday Yuki would become as crazy as her mother had been. She could already predict what kind of end Yuki’s life might come to.
Cautiously, Hanae descended the stairs. Yuki was leaning hard into the wall. There was just enough room for her to pass by.
As Hanae inched past her, Yuki suddenly stopped crying.
“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice harsh and low. “I won’t tell Father about how you tried to push me down the stairs. He won’t believe me. But I’ll never forget it myself.”
“I didn’t push you, really. You fell down while you leaned forward and tried to push me.”
“That’s a lie and you know it. Your whole life is a lie.”
Yuki began to climb up the stairs, not turning back toward Hanae once. She walked painfully, as though she was trying not to limp.
Hanae heard her go into her room and shut the door. She didn’t slam it as any other girl might have done. She shut it quietly, deliberately. Hanae climbed down the last steps. Yuki had left her bag and books by the door. They were scattered about in a most disorderly way. Yuki had no sense of keeping her books neat. Their pages were bent, their covers scratched. As she watched the things Yuki had left, Hanae felt a sharp wedge inside her chest. She squeezed her arms hard around the old clothes and walked out the door to the shed. There, she crammed the clothes in a battered cardboard box. They would stay there till the next garbage day, becoming infested with spiders and moths.
Hanae went inside the house. She walked directly to the kitch
en and stopped in front of the cabinet. The wedge inside her chest grew sharper. She opened the glass door and gathered all the persimmon-colored pieces into her arms. The cups and saucers clattered against each other in the crook of her elbow. She took them to the sink, set them down on the counter, and shattered them one by one. The broken pieces filled the sink while Hanae counted her grievances against the living and the dead.
9
HOMEMAKING
(November 1973)
Cooking the rice was Yuki’s responsibility. With her hand, she stirred the raw grains in the pan of cold water, exactly twenty-five times. The powdery white coating came off and clouded the water. She drained the pan and measured the correct amount of water into it. The other girls in her group were peeling and cutting up the vegetables. She watched the girl nearest her cut open a green pepper and scrape the seeds and white membranes into the garbage pail. As always, her group was the slowest. The other five teams already had their rice cooking, their vegetables cut up. They were mixing the tempura batter and heating the oil for deep frying.
The homemaking class met the hour before lunch. The teacher, Miss Sakaki, made each group set a table and eat in the classroom-kitchen during the lunch recess. The students then had just enough time to wash the dishes and run to their fifth-hour classes. Today in Yuki’s fifth-hour class, they would dissect frogs. That thought and the smell of grease made her sick to her stomach.
She had tried to get out of the dissection. She had talked to the biology teacher, Mr. Wada, while he was straightening out his desk after class the day before.
“I don’t want to dissect the frog,” she had said to him.
“Why? Are you afraid?”
“No. I don’t think it’s right to take things apart when you already know what’s inside them. There’s no point. Look.” She opened her textbook to the color photograph of a frog under dissection. “I already know this is what I’ll find inside. I don’t have to cut one open.”
“Last year in your sophomore class, you dissected an earthworm and an oyster,” Mr. Wada said. “You didn’t have any problems then, did you? Those things were alive. The frogs will already be dead when you get them.”
“That makes no difference. Besides, I shouldn’t have dissected those other things last year.”
“Why not?”
Yuki couldn’t answer. She remembered the oyster, a shell the size of a wristwatch. She had pried it open as casually as if it were a machine she could put together again. Inside, the flesh was soft and wet. The small parts she sliced away and identified already smelled of decay.
“You’re not bothered about killing earthworms and frogs, are you?” Mr. Wada asked her. “I always thought that students enjoyed the dissections once they got over their squeamishness.”
She thought about the earthworm, the way her scalpel had sliced it neatly in two, its outer skin turning transparent, almost beautiful.
“But that’s what’s wrong,” she said. “Our enjoying it. I realized it’s wrong to cut open something and enjoy it. Especially when there’s no need to because we already know what’s inside.”
“I’m sorry you have gotten to be a high school junior without learning to enjoy the scientific process. To me, that has been the most important thing, the process of learning. I’m disappointed. I always thought you were a good student.”
Yuki had nothing more to say.
“Be sure you don’t skip the lab,” Mr. Wada said. “If you don’t come for the dissection, you’ll have to make it up some other time by yourself.”
He had turned his back and walked out of the room, giving her no choice. She had been thinking about the dissection for a whole day now. Even the cut-up green peppers reminded her of the frogs.
Miss Sakaki was standing at their table.
“Let’s not dawdle,” she said. “Yuki, the rice doesn’t have to soak for the rest of the hour.”
Yuki took the pan out of the sink and put it on the gas stove. Miss Sakaki was inspecting the cut vegetables. Yuki struck several matches before the fire caught. She held her breath to avoid the smell of gas. She felt dizzy.
“You have to hold the match close enough for the fire to catch. Didn’t I tell you that several times?” Miss Sakaki said.
Yuki looked away and pretended not to hear.
“Now the fire’s too strong. Turn it down. I’m speaking to you, Yuki.” Miss Sakaki’s voice was loud enough for the whole class to hear. Several girls turned away from their tasks to look at Yuki. Their glances seemed sympathetic.
The first time the class had met, at the beginning of the second term in September—almost two months ago now—Miss Sakaki had divided them into six groups and instructed them to bake various kinds of cupcakes. The cupcakes Yuki’s group made overflowed in the oven. Through the glass door, they could see the batter bubbling up and spreading. Some of it started trickling down to the broiler. Yuki took out her sketchbook and began to sketch the overflowing batter. She was just finishing it when Miss Sakaki took out the pan and slammed the oven shut.
“How irresponsible can you be? Don’t you see it was ruining the pan and the oven?” Miss Sakaki said, addressing only Yuki. When the batter hardened, the pan looked like the craters of the moon. Yuki took it to her advanced painting class. She painted the ruined pan against the background of a perfectly set table and called it Homemaking. Her art teacher hung the painting in the hallway where he displayed the best work by his students every term. Miss Sakaki told Yuki’s group to come back after school to bake another batch of cupcakes before the three-week unit was over. Yuki didn’t go because she had cross-country practices after school. She got an F for the unit. Now everyone in the class agreed that Miss Sakaki had a special dislike for Yuki.
Miss Sakaki was walking away toward the center of the room. While Yuki was watching her, the rice began to boil over. She turned down the burner sharply. The flame went out and the smell of gas stung her nostrils. Without turning off the burner, she quickly struck a match and thrust it as close to the metal ring as possible. The flame almost burned her fingertips.
Miss Sakaki clapped her hands several times.
“Look over here a moment, class,” she said. She held up a picture of a table setting. It showed a large white platter filled with tempura-fried vegetables and decorated with bamboo leaves and yellow chrysanthemums.
“Presentation of the food is as important as its taste,” Miss Sakaki said as she put down the book. “Color is a vital factor. What you are making today—tempura and rice—will be very dull in color, just brown and white. So we have to think of how we can make it look appealing. I want one of you to go outside to the woods behind the gym and gather enough leaves, flowers, or berries for all of us. Then each group will arrange its own platter. This project will be graded on the presentation as well as the food itself. Now, who would like to volunteer?”
“Let me go,” Yuki said, so loudly that everyone in the class looked at her.
Miss Sakaki frowned. No one else raised her hand.
“Will someone else volunteer?” Miss Sakaki said. “Yuki, I don’t think you should go. You have so much to learn in the kitchen yet. I want to send someone who can already cook.”
Still, nobody else volunteered. They were all watching Yuki.
“You have to let me go,” Yuki said. “I feel dizzy. I could use some fresh air. It would be unkind of you not to let me go.”
Miss Sakaki was silent.
“Please let her go,” a girl who stood near Miss Sakaki said suddenly. “She’ll be good with colors, don’t you think? She’s an artist. Besides, she can get to the woods and back faster than any of us. She runs faster than any other girl in the whole city.”
“Yes,” another girl said. “If you send anyone else, our tempura could be stone cold before they come back.”
A ripple of laughter went through the class.
“You have to let me go,” Yuki said again.
Miss Sakaki stood pursing her lips for a wh
ile. Then she said, “You must come back within ten minutes. If you are not back in ten minutes, I can’t give you credit for the meal.”
One of the girls in her group handed her a white colander. Yuki took it and ran out of the kitchen.
* * *
Yuki stood on the edge of the woods and gathered red Japanese maple leaves into her colander. Since the leaves that had fallen to the ground were dry and brown, she snipped the bright red leaves off the branches. Each leaf, smaller than a child’s hand, had a perfect webwork of veins.
About an hour northeast of Kobe by car was a mountain famous for its maple trees and wild monkeys. When Yuki was ten, she went there with her mother in mid-October and walked on the mountain paths. All around them and above them, wild monkeys screeched among the blazing red leaves. Yuki felt as though she and her mother were walking through fire without being burned. At the bottom of the mountain, an old man was selling maple leaves dipped in batter and lowered for a brief second into the hot oil in his portable cooker. Yuki had never heard of eating maple leaves. She and her mother shared a plate of them, all the time trying to describe to each other what they tasted like. Finally, her mother said, “It’s like eating air, delicious mountain air.” “Or maybe a wind,” Yuki said. “I’m eating a south wind.”
As she continued to snip the leaves, Yuki wondered if she would be better at homemaking if her mother were still alive. During the first term, when all the junior girls had to take sewing from another homemaking teacher, several of her friends smuggled their sewing out of the classroom in their knapsacks. When the class met the next time, their crooked stitches were straightened out, their tangled threads untangled and wound neatly around the bobbins. Her friends had gotten their mothers to help, though all of them complained about their mothers very often. “My mother is too old-fashioned,” one of them would say. “Mine too,” another would add. “She gets angry if I come home after nine but lets my brothers stay out until eleven.” “That’s nothing,” the first one would say. “My mother and I had a big fight last night because I forgot to do the dishes. She said she won’t help me with anything anymore since I didn’t help her.” Listening to their talk, Yuki wondered if she and her mother would have had similar fights. Maybe they would have. Still, she wouldn’t have asked her mother for help and then criticized her the way her friends did. That was unfair. She would have tried to appreciate the good things about her mother. Her mother could have straightened out any of her crooked seams, untangled any knotted thread. She could have shown her how to treadle on the sewing machine without being distracted by the needle going up and down. Her mother had been very good at making things.