Rachel was another story. Rachel hadn’t ever learned to keep to herself well. She’d always step in, tell Killian he was wrong, or do the things he told her not to do—and that was just like dangling a goat in front of a tiger. She pushed him too far.
Still, Drew thinks that Rachel should have gotten over their childhood by now. Sure, their father’s kind of a sociopath. Sure, he was intelligent enough to know better, but it was just his personality. He couldn’t harm Drew or Rachel.
Rachel’s almost forty, a full-grown woman with a loving, devoted husband and two smart, capable children. Her sister has so much more than most.
She turns up her stereo, tuned to her iPod, to her current favorite song. “Time Won’t Let Me Go,” by The Bravery. They could make a musical out of her life and this song would be playing right now, she thinks, then laughs at her own melodrama. But still.
Drew shuts off the music.
MIYANOKOSHI
SHINANO PROVINCE
HONSHU, JAPAN
Spring 1160
Her father, Kaneto, ate the last of the rice. Tomoe waited, willing herself not to speak. Would she be punished for her actions against her brothers? Outside, her mother and her brothers laughed. At last Kaneto pushed away his empty rice bowl and spoke. “Tomoe, I have left off your education for too long. When the men are away, it is you who must defend our home.”
Tomoe blinked, surprised.
Kaneto rose and went to the large oak trunk in the corner of the room. This trunk held his possessions from his time as a retainer. None of the children were allowed to touch it. The boys did, of course, when their parents weren’t around, so Tomoe knew what the trunk contained: swords and armor.
But it wasn’t the trunk Kaneto opened. He shoved it aside and bent to the floorboards, prying one up with his fingertips and reaching into the depths of the house. Kaneto fished around for a minute, then straightened. He held something Tomoe hadn’t seen before. It was a curved blade about two feet long, glinting in the dim light, set atop a wooden pole much taller than Tomoe herself.
“A naginata.” He gestured for Tomoe to come closer. She took the pole in her hands, holding it up. It was heavy, but she could manage. She hefted it and took an experimental swing. With this, one could reach far. It was like having an eight-foot-long arm.
Kaneto grunted approvingly. “You may think this is a sword for women and therefore less useful, but this is what the fierce warrior monks use.” He looked at her appraisingly. “Your being female has advantages, Tomoe. You are nimble and light. And you have more natural fortitude. You will make the boys work harder. They will fear being shamed by a girl.”
Tomoe swung the sword up, stopping short of the ceiling. She had no wish to shame anyone.
Kaneto knelt and looked her in the eye. “You understand, Tomoe? I give you permission. Be yourself. Be the best. Nothing done by half.”
Permission to be herself.
A weight lifted from her shoulders, a weight she hadn’t even known existed. Her breath came easily. She smiled up at Kaneto, and he touched her cheek gently as he stood.
Her father glanced toward the door; Chizuru had gone. The boys chased a squawking chicken. Tomoe couldn’t tell which was making more noise, fowl or boy. Kanehira slipped and fell on his face in the mud, laughing and pulling Yoshinaka down with him. Kaneto sighed. “Tomoe, go clean them up.”
Tomoe handed the sword back to her father and bowed.
Three
SAN DIEGO
Present Day
Rachel’s minivan pulls up behind Drew’s car, and Drew watches as her sister kicks open the door with her sneakered foot. Though she’s wearing just yoga pants and a tank top with her hair pulled back, she’s still as beautiful as ever, with her lean, curvy build. Drew supposes this is the eternal way of younger sisters, to admire the elder. Rachel had always seemed so poised, holding her head erect and regal like the ancient Nefertiti bust. Drew was certain she could never be as great as Rachel. When Rachel grew breasts, eight-year-old Drew had been awed, stuffed her own shirt with oranges, wondering when it’d be her turn. “You don’t want your period,” Rachel said flatly. “Do you think it’s fun to bleed out of your vagina for a week?”
“I don’t know. Is it?” Drew asked, not knowing. Bleeding without dying seemed kind of miraculous. Maybe it was fun, too, in a way she couldn’t understand. After all, she was only eight.
“Dope.” Rachel shook her head, laughing. “You’ll believe anything.”
Drew has always looked at her sister and hoped it would be her turn next. Drew’s turn to leave. To fall in love and get married and have kids. Some things didn’t happen.
Drew opens her car door, waiting for Rachel to leave hers. Would Rachel still be her champion? From the stiff smile on her sister’s face, Drew suspects not.
• • •
My sister sports dark hollows under her eyes that I don’t think have anything to do with her makeup. She looks like she could use a big bowl of soup and a long nap. I wonder if she’s taking care of herself, working too much or partying too hard. With Drew it could be both. If I had nobody to take care of, I think, I’d sleep for about twelve hours a night. I put my arms out. “Hey. Thanks for coming down so quick.”
“No problem. I’m sort of dying to know what book Mom’s talking about now.” Drew steps forward and we hug awkwardly, leaning into each other like old fence boards crushed by wind. Neither of us were huggers. I splay my fingers along her back, the way I do with Quincy. Secretly checking the meat on their bones. Yes. She needs soup and probably a big juicy steak. Drew’s always been a grazing, forgetful eater. A handful of baby carrots here, a few peanuts there. Ever since she was a toddler, Drew was more interested in action than in sitting down for a proper meal. I want to ask if Drew’s taking a calcium supplement, if she’s getting enough vitamin D, if she’s sleeping well. Drew releases me abruptly.
Once I left home, I rarely talked to Drew. I rarely talked to her in the last years I was still home. But she had her music and Killian’s good graces. It could be worse. Sometimes she’d call me when nobody was around, or I’d pick her up someplace so my father wouldn’t find out. After I had a baby, we could barely relate. I knew we’d never be as close as we were when we were little. No matter how much either of us wanted to be.
Mom brought her to see me for my twentieth birthday. Drew was sixteen, and all she could talk about was high school, the music competition coming up.
“Dad said he was going to buy me a car. He wants me driving in something safe and new,” Drew said, and though I knew she wasn’t specifically saying it to brag or hurt me, it was just a fact, I still felt a raw pang. Killian didn’t care if I had something safe and new.
“Not an expensive car,” Hikari said.
“He said Mercedes.” Drew ate a piece of pizza. “He said that’s the best. Built like a tank.”
The pizza cheese turned to glue in my gut. Drew and I were in such different places in our lives. I shared an ancient Maxima with Tom, which he drove to work. If I wanted to take Quincy anywhere, I walked or took the bus, which in San Diego is like waiting for a covered wagon. “Good,” I said quietly. “Good for you.” I put my fork down. At that moment, I realized how much of the carefree high school experience I’d missed. How I was jealous of Drew for still being able to go have fun at the drop of a hat, have no responsibilities. I looked over at Quincy, shoving pizza in her mouth with her chubby hands, and told myself you can’t have everything.
Mom reached over and touched my hand.
Drew frowned. But my mother was just letting me know she understood me—I was never her favorite, like Drew thought I was. Parents can’t have favorites, I thought. Shouldn’t, anyway. Mom was just trying to make up for my father.
My sister shoved a fat slice of pepperoni into her mouth. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did I tell you? I got into the Juilliard summ
er program.”
“That’s wonderful.” I meant it. I’d always loved hearing her play. I’d often wondered where the musical talent came from—perhaps some people way back in our lineage.
I waited for Drew to ask me how things were going, how things were for me, but she just talked about herself without taking a breath. Now, as an adult, I know that I was hoping for too much from a teenager. But our relationship had begun its downhill slide.
So my sister and I stand on the street in front of my father’s house. Eighteen years later and nothing’s changed. “Fog’s not burning off here,” I remark. Drew nods. A silence settles between us. “How’s work?” I ask, to fill it. “Any new gigs?” Drew works with some big-name bands sometimes, whenever somebody wants to add a bit of classic zip to rock, which seems popular now. She posts pictures of herself on Facebook posing with the band members, with captions like So much fun! “How’s the dog-washing business?” Even this job is interesting—Drew’s washed the dogs of some actors. Not A-list, but regular working actors you’d still recognize.
“Fine. Got a few days off.” Drew blasts me with one of her smiles, looking like the old Drew, shaking off any hint of exhaustion. “And how are the kiddos?”
I inhale, thinking of Quincy and her fiancé. Chase and the bake sale. Drew doesn’t want to hear all the boring nitty-gritty. “Great. They’re great.”
“Your kids are perfect.” Drew walks briskly in front of me. “I saw Dad jetting out of here. It’s safe to go in.”
I suspect that my father is heading downtown to yell at his attorney. Hence his e-mail to me. I wonder all over again what he could be talking about. Is there a secret will? Maybe it’s enough to overturn the decision.
But I will carry out Mom’s wishes as best as I can, no matter what. Right here and now. I swallow down the rising acid in my throat. Everything is fine. I’ll do this and I’ll go back home to my own house, my own family, whom I love and who loves me.
Drew watches me expectantly, a key in her hand. My younger sister doesn’t understand all that is between me and Killian. The way I still feel so helpless where he’s concerned. She thinks it’s all in my head, because she’s his favorite, and she can still call him and ask for help whenever she gets in too deep.
The house where we grew looks so American, so Leave It to Beaver. From the outside, you’d never know our mother was from Japan. Or the inside, for that matter.
Drew jiggles the key in the lock and swings the door open into the living room. Everything’s quiet, dust floating in the air. I look over the dark, heavy leather furniture, the brown paneling that’s unchanged since the 1970s. My father’s tastes. He’s wealthy, but frugal. The only sign of modernity is the eighty-inch television screen that hums lightly against one long wall.
I switch on the light in Mom’s sewing room, then sneeze four times in succession, big sneezes that threaten to empty my bladder. I stand perfectly still, clenching unseen muscles, until the fit passes. More than a decade after my last child, you’d think I’d be totally recovered from pregnancies, but sometimes it feels like my body’s This Old House: creaky and leaky.
“Are you all right?” Drew pushes past me.
“Fine.” I sniffle, too embarrassed to tell Drew the truth. No kids—she won’t understand.
This room is packed to the brim with boxes. White cardboard file crates, big plastic bins. A bulletin board holds fabric squares. The sewing machine is set up on a long table below, navy blue thread ready to go. I pick up a quilting project, hanging off the sewing machine. She made wedding ring quilts for Quincy and Chase, big enough to fit on king beds, given to us five Christmases ago. “For the future,” Mom had said. It was almost like she knew she wouldn’t be around long enough to see them get married.
Drew has a wedding quilt in here someplace, too. Mom made it for her right after I got married. Drew didn’t want it. She said she wasn’t ready for it, but she clearly hated it. I was there when Mom gave it to her on her twenty-first birthday. The stiff smile on Drew’s face. “Gee, Mom, it’s so beautiful, but I’m a long way from getting married,” Drew said, putting the pink and yellow and purple quilt back into its enormous box. “Maybe you could keep it for me until then.”
“Sure,” Mom had said, an identical polite smile on her face. Why was I the only one who knew what they felt and didn’t hide behind this mask? All I could do was watch and pretend, too.
I exhale a long, slow breath and let the quilt fall. “I’m surprised Dad hasn’t packed up her stuff yet.”
“He says by Christmas.” Drew slides the closet door open. “If you want any of it, I could probably ask him for you.”
I make a noncommittal noise. Drew lives in a different city, but she knows more about our father’s day-to-day existence than I do. He may as well be a stranger. “Are you going to help him?”
“Dad and I aren’t close, no matter what you think, Rachel.” Drew sounds irritated. I stop talking. If I pretend that Drew and I get along, then we will. It’s my coping method.
The closet’s just stacked with boxes, too, no clothes hanging from the bar. I can see the clear boxes are full of material, so I take out a cardboard one and look inside. Papers, ancient water bills and warranties. “Great. Looking through all these is going to take about six months.”
“Are you sure Mom didn’t give you more of a description?” Drew glances at me from where she’s dug out boxes.
“I would have told you if she had,” I retort, taking out another box. I’m not going to bicker with my sister, as if I’m twelve and she’s eight again. Be calm! I can’t tell whether you’re fighting or playing, Mom used to say. It all sounds the same—like somebody’s going to get hurt. My kids have a bigger age gap, six years, and Quincy’s almost like a second mother to Chase. From the time he was born she was able to carry him and change his diapers. Drew and I were either best friends or bad rivals. Nothing in between.
An aroma like a museum storeroom, musty and woodsy, wafts up. I take out a different box. This one has recipe clippings and citizenship awards from elementary school, fading Mother’s Day construction-paper flowers and other random bits. Swimming medals for me, fancy embossed certificates for Drew’s viola competitions. I hadn’t known Mom was so sentimental. I run my hand over it. “Drew. Did you know Mom saved all this?”
Drew glances in. “Junk. Not important.”
I put my hand around a heavy bronze medal. First place, CIF state champion, freestyle. The trophy for the team is still displayed in a glass case in the high school office. “Mine are.”
“Well. I don’t need mine.” Drew turns away with a shrug.
She’ll want them one day. Drew often talks first, thinks later. I dig into the bottom layer of the box. A sturdy but slightly crushed brown cardboard shipping box, about eleven by fourteen, held together by disintegrating brown packaging tape, emerges. It’s covered in stamps and postmarks with Japanese writing as the return address, and my mother’s name and address printed in careful English. I wish I could read the Japanese, but as I said, I’m Asian in heritage only.
Who sent this to her? My mother kept in contact with nobody in Japan; as far as I knew, her whole family was gone. Her parents died when she was a young adult, in a train accident, I think. No siblings. Not even any cousins.
The shipping box is postmarked June 20, 1972, the year my parents married. I open the side and slide out the contents. A book. Or a big antique photo album, brown leather softened by the touch of hundreds of hands, bound with delicate red silken thread. A book, I realize, turning it over. The back of the book to us is the beginning in Japan. I’d learned that from looking at Chase’s manga, Japanese comic books.
“What is it?” Drew peers over my shoulder, her breath on my ear, loud and moist. I twitch in annoyance, the way I did when she used to read over my shoulder. Whatcha reading, Rachel? You’re not really reading, because your mouth is
n’t moving. You’re pretending. Stop ignoring me. Why won’t you read to me?
“Recognize it?” I say.
Drew opens the cover with an awful crackling sound. We freeze. “Let’s be careful.”
We sit on the floor and hold the book between us, resting each side on one of our knees. The cover features an embossed horse with a samurai astride it, accented in gold leaf, no color. The samurai has long, flowing hair and waves a sword. A story about a warrior? A history book?
“It looks vaguely familiar,” Drew says. She twists her mouth into a pout and taps her chin with her left index finger, the Drew thinking pose she’s had ever since she was about two. She used to do it for the drama, and it stuck. Sometimes I do it, to imitate her.
I open the album to the first page. It’s made of yellowed parchment, the edges rough, and smells of ink and old paper. The characters are handwritten, each symbol a work of art in and of itself. I, of course, have no idea what it says. I turn the page.
On this one, all by itself, is a painting like an image out of an illuminated manuscript. A young Japanese girl holding a sword stands in front of a full-grown samurai, as if she’s fighting him. Two little boys are in the background, grinning. Farmland stretches behind them to a nearby mountain range.
I turn the page. A beautiful Japanese woman in a red kimono rides a white horse wearing fancy crimson dress regalia. The woman holds a bow and arrow. Another arrow speeds toward a frightened monk in an orange robe. A whole crowd of monks stand before him, seemingly ready to turn on their heels and run. Behind the woman is a male samurai on a big black horse, his face contorted into a scowling mask, an army behind him. The woman is in the lead.
I’ve never seen anything like this. A woman warrior, in Japan?
Another picture, the same woman. Now her horse leaps, her dark hair flows in a banner behind her, as if the hair itself is the battle standard. A Mona Lisa–like half smile tugs her lips. A man cowers below her, a severed head, drawn in gruesome detail, rolls off a body and under the horse. I gasp.
Sisters of Heart and Snow Page 5