She doesn’t remember her father working eighteen-hour days, hammering nails himself, meeting with potential clients. That period when nothing seemed to work.
One night, Tom got home after ten. He had big bags under his eyes, though he was only in his early twenties. It’d been an especially hard day, one of those in which I questioned every life choice I’d ever made.
It’d been a rainy week, and my mood matched. No car, the grocery store too far to walk, I felt like putting Quincy in her stroller and running someplace until I couldn’t run anymore. But it was too cold for her to be out in the wet.
Earlier that afternoon, a man from the electric company had knocked on the door and presented me with a pink bill. FINAL NOTICE. He informed me they’d need payment right then, or the electric would be turned off. I wrote him a check, praying there was enough in the account to cover it, knowing we were still three days off from Tom’s payday.
I suppose when I married Tom, I thought he’d take care of me forever. I’m not sure why I thought that, exactly, except that of course I was really young. Why I thought I could skip the paying-your-dues time and go directly to the place where my only job would be taking care of my baby. That I’d spend my days driving to playgroups and lessons and preparing gourmet meals and not worrying about anything except my child’s development. Instead, we were hard-pressed to afford mac and cheese. We had a house, but we’d been here for three years and it still looked like we’d just moved in. A card table for the dining room, beanbag chairs in the living room.
I should have finished college before I got married. I should have been more careful. I watched my daughter stack blocks over and over, tried to get her to color with the crayons. This is a crappy life for her. I walked her to the park every day and schemed with the other mothers about moneymaking opportunities. Having Tupperware parties and whatnot all required start-up capital, and I didn’t know of many who wanted to buy anything, much less extra stuff. The pay from any kind of job I could get would be eaten away entirely by childcare expenses.
I lay in the middle of the floor, half-naked dime-store Barbie knockoffs and blocks strewn around me, like a body in a toy crime scene. Three-year-old Quincy slept on the floor next to me. She was in the throes of the Terrible Twos, that period of defiance that pretty much stretched from eighteen months to, oh, seven years. She kept breaking out of her room, refused to be potty-trained, and caused general mayhem. That night, she finally passed out in the living room.
Tom locked the door behind him. “Why isn’t she in her bed?”
I shook my head. “I can’t go on like this.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Tom sat on one of the beanbag chairs that served as a couch, whispering, too. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”
My stomach growled and my head throbbed. Either I was going to cry, or I was going to get really angry. I chose anger. “It’s all your fault,” I said, not bothering to whisper. “That family business is going to kill us. You have to get a regular job.”
Tom looked stricken. I didn’t care that he’d been up since dawn. That even if he got another job, it’d be entry level and probably pay even less than what he made now. My throat choked tight as I continued. “And did you forget to pay the electric bill?”
“Shit.” He shook his head. “I thought we had more time.”
“It was three months’ overdue! It was humiliating!” I said, too loud. Quincy started in her sleep, her limbs flailing. “The neighbors all saw it. My God, Tom, why would you do that to me?”
“Oh, yeah. I did it on purpose. Against you. Just to spite you.” He stood up and stuck his hands into his jeans pockets and stepped on a block. “Ow!” He kicked it, pinging it against the wall. “I’m working my ass off all day and you can’t even be bothered to pick up the room. What the fuck do you do all day?”
I glared at him. “What do I do all day?” Both of us, frustrated, exhausted, wanted the release of a fight. “Let me see. I cleaned shit off the bedroom walls, because Quincy is an artist. I read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom literally forty-two times. I kept your daughter alive, Tom.”
“I’m keeping her alive, too. I’m working.” He sat down again. “I don’t even tell you half the crap that goes on, Rachel, because I don’t want you to worry.”
“Do you think your parents would help?” I sniffled.
Tom crossed his arms and all the emotion fled from his face. Stoic. I hated it when he turned into a wall. “No.”
“No?” My voice rose. Hysteria. Not a good look. “I know your dad’s sick, but they saved while the business was doing well. We can pay it back. We need a little help. We have no food.”
Tom turned on the television to the news, and muted it. “I can’t. They can’t help us, Rachel, and it’ll destroy my mother if she knows.”
Quincy tapped my leg. “Mommy?” Her little face had marks from the carpet pressed into it, and her rosebud mouth turned down. “Mommy okay?”
“I’m okay.” I put my arms around her neck, inhaling the smell of generic baby shampoo.
Tom’s shoulders slumped. He got on the floor and crawled over to us. “I’m sorry, Rach.”
“Stay ’way!” Quincy said, holding her little hand in Tom’s face, her voice loud and distinct. “You are a bad man. Don’t make my mommy cry.”
I rocked her. “It’s okay, Quincy,” I said into her ear. “Mommy’s fine. Daddy’s fine. We just had a tantrum.”
But Tom’s face collapsed. It was too much for him. Too difficult to keep this family going. He’d put on weight—too much work, not enough sleep, not enough healthy food. My Tom, the happy-go-lucky Tom from biology class, was gone.
He picked up his car keys.
“Tom, wait.” My heart pulsed in my throat. “Don’t go away mad.”
Tom walked out the door.
I closed my eyes into Quincy’s hair and said nothing. Not only had I failed myself, I’d made Tom into a failure, too. How much better he’d be without us, I thought. With only himself to worry about. He’d go back to being his old self instead of this defeated golem. Quincy fell asleep in my arms again.
I called Mom, crying. Told her everything. The electric man. How we had nothing to eat now but half a jar of peanut butter and a bag of plain pasta. “Dad was right,” I said. “I’ll never be anything. It’s too hard. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I can take Quincy away, go to college, get loans. They have financial aid for single mothers. Scholarships.” I was babbling.
Mom hesitated. I heard Killian’s show blasting in the background, some announcer shouting scores. “You wait,” she whispered.
She showed up not an hour later, her arms full of groceries, a raincoat thrown on over her pajamas. I couldn’t believe she’d snuck out away from my father. In the rain and dark.
“I can’t do it,” I said later, at the kitchen table. I was feeling better, finally, with a belly full of canned chicken noodle soup. “He wanted to take care of us, but we’re a burden.” I teared up again. “It’s too hard.”
Mom leaned over and took my face in both her hands. “Rachel.”
I looked into her dark eyes. “What?”
She held on to my cheeks. “You’re young. Pretty. Maybe you can find a rich man. Like I did. I have a roof and food and clothes. I can buy all the material and thread I want.” She releases my face and looks away. “But look. I have to sneak out to see my own daughter and grandbaby.” I heard her swallow hard. “I have to be quiet when he’s home. Even though he’s not.”
“Will it get better?” I asked.
“For you, yes.” She smiled, her nose widening. I hadn’t noticed that before. Like a Buddha. “You must be strong. Stronger than I am.”
I didn’t ask her what that meant. I buried my face in my arms. Now I wished I’d asked. Maybe she would have told me about Tomoe.
After Mom took off, I found a wad of twenties tu
cked into my silverware drawer. It got us through.
I went to the grocery store near our apartment the next day and applied for a job. Every night, from ten to three, I stocked the shelves. Mopped the aisles. I went home and slept for three hours until Tom went to work. If I was very lucky, Quincy slept in until seven or eight. Usually she didn’t. I did this for a year, until Tom’s dad recovered and they were able to get the business back on track.
If Quincy only knew how much harder getting married before they’re established would be. Doesn’t she know how grateful I feel every time I can fill up my car all the way to “full,” without worrying about the card going through? I wanted to spare her that kind of anxiety.
I wish for a crystal ball that could see into her future, all the possibilities of all the different paths.
But maybe it’s always hard for everyone, in different ways. I don’t know of a couple that’s never had problems. I know people married to attorneys who complain about long hours, and I think they should be grateful, because at least they’re not working twenty hours a day making minimum wage. But everyone seems to have a unique situation. I only know about my life.
Or, maybe nobody knows how to be happy with what we already have. That’s the whole problem. No fortitude.
Tomoe had it harder. Twelfth-century Japan? No modern conveniences? How did she deal with her period, I wonder. And now Yamabuki, who seems far too pale and weak to survive for a day in the world of Yoshinaka and Tomoe. You needed to be tough back then, both in will and in body. All I need is the will.
• • •
Hikari sits facing the window, her eyes closed. Should Drew wake her up? That might startle her. Then again, if Hikari wakes up to find some random person in her room, that might scare her, too. Drew never knows quite what to do around her mother these days.
She never did.
It was Drew who told Hikari that Rachel was pregnant. She’d gone into the quilting room. Her mother was bent over the machine. As usual. It seemed to Drew that most every important conversation or fight she’d had with her mother had taken place there. “Do you have any baby quilts?” Drew asked casually.
“Of course I do.” Hikari stopped the machine. She looked at Drew, who leaned against the doorframe. Her usual position. At fourteen, Drew was tall and skinny, barely requiring a bra. She kept her hair short. She could pass as a boy and was sometimes mistaken for one. “Why?” Hikari asked, her voice alert. “Do you know someone who’s having a baby?”
Drew nodded, playing with the drawstring on her sweats. From the living room, the roar of a football game blasted. Killian. Drew stepped into the room, shut the door.
Hikari grabbed Drew’s hand in both of hers. “Tell me.” Her mother’s hands were icy. Despite all the labor. “I’ll help you, Drew.”
“Mom.” Drew suddenly understood her mother’s worry. “It’s not me. It’s Rachel.”
Hikari squeezed Drew’s hand once, then released her. “Does she know who the father is?”
This shocked Drew. “Of course she does.” But then, her mother hadn’t interacted with Rachel in almost two years. She had no idea how Rachel had changed. How hard she worked. Drew wondered what her parents thought her sister did—did they believe her to be a prostitute, entertaining johns in between puffs of marijuana? Didn’t they want to know?
Hikari stared at the fabric on her machine. “What will she do?”
“It’s her boyfriend, Mom. They’re getting married.” Drew spoke rapidly. “Don’t worry. He’s really nice. Boring, but nice.”
Hikari smiled sadly at Drew. “Ah, Drew. How can you know what nice is?” She let go of Drew’s hand and rubbed her eyes.
Drew swallowed. She felt like she was strangling. Anger flared up, unbidden, at her mother. “You should’ve just stayed in Japan.”
“Yes.” Her mother shook her head. “I thought my old life was too hard. Now I’m not so sure.”
But then we wouldn’t have been born, Drew thinks, and waits for her mother to say she was glad she had her daughters. Hikari pressed the sewing machine pedal, whirring it to life. Drew went back to her room.
At the nursing home, the window’s open, the wind blowing cold air straight on Hikari’s face, her hair wild. Drew touches her mother’s arm. Cold. Maybe Hikari just liked being cold.
Why did Hikari want them to have the story of Tomoe Gozen? It seems to Drew that Hikari’s more like Yamabuki. Out of her element, always. Not belonging. Perhaps Hikari thought one of her daughters was like Tomoe, and one like Yamabuki. Which would Drew be?
She feels like Yamabuki, too.
Drew shuts the window. At the sound, Hikari’s eyes fly open.
“Hi, Mom.” Drew sits down again. Hikari’s mouth moves, but she says nothing. She cocks her head to the side. Stares at her. Hard, assessing.
A memory stirs. Senior year of high school Drew was on the Academic Decathlon team. Their mother was pressed into chaperone service to the state competition in Sacramento. While the other chaperone parents quizzed their children and the teammates with practice questions, Hikari sat in the corner of the hotel room, reading. Always quiet. During the tournament, Drew would look up occasionally to catch a glimpse of Hikari in a powder-blue Chanel suit and her hair in a ballerina bun—so striking that everyone asked Drew if that was really her mother—her ankles crossed, a pillar of stoicism in a sea of hyperinvolved parents.
“In 1180–1185, the Genpei War came at the end of what long era in Japanese history that began in 794?” the announcer asked.
Drew was supposed to know this. Her teammates swiveled their heads to look at her. The girl with the Japanese mother sitting only a few feet away. Little did they know that she knew no more about Japan than the average American.
Hikari stared at her hard. Was she saying the answer in her head? Her white throat moved up and down as she swallowed. To Drew, her gaze looked cold. Disappointed.
“Five seconds,” the announcer said.
Drew stared back at her mother, trying to read her mind. Abruptly, Hikari got up and left the auditorium.
And then Drew knew what Hikari was thinking. Her mother was ashamed. Of her. The blood drained out of her body. Even if she knew the answer, she could not have reached the buzzer. She watched the blue suit retreat into the darkness, the light of the hallway. The buzzer sounded.
“The Heian Era,” the opposing team captain said smugly.
Of course. Drew felt markedly stupid. She hadn’t needed her mother to tell her that; she remembered it from her notes. Her teammates patted one another’s backs and they filed into the lobby.
She saw her mother waiting for an elevator and ran across, jumped in. One other person was on the elevator, a middle-aged bald man. Drew ignored him. Hikari pressed a number.
Drew inhaled. “You left.” She tried to keep the hurt out of her voice. Her mother walking out, Drew realized, felt worse than losing. The elevator walls were a shiny brass, like a mirror. She watched her mother’s face in them.
Hikari raised her head. “When I lose, I do not like people to see me. I thought you felt the same.” Her mother’s eyes were wet. “You had your chance and now it’s gone.”
Drew was so far from understanding this woman’s motivations that she thought Hikari might as well be another person’s parent. “Why didn’t you ever teach me about Japan?” Drew asked quietly.
Hikari drew an audible breath. She examined her reflection in the elevator, patting a hair that had escaped her tight bun into place. The man with the ear hair shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Why don’t you ever say one word about Japan?” Drew’s voice rose. “I don’t know where you came from. I don’t know your family. It’s like you’re an alien who got beamed down here. How did you end up in the mail-bride catalog?” The man’s eyebrows jumped. He met my mother’s gaze in the mirror and she looked away. When th
e doors opened, he stepped out quickly.
The doors slid closed again before Hikari answered. She turned to Drew. Not angry, not sad. Just the same as always. Closed off. “Drew,” she said carefully, enunciating the R too hard as she always did, “living in the past does not benefit anyone. Japan is nothing to me. I’ll never go back. You’ll never go back. There’s nothing there for people like us. There’s no point in talking about it.”
People like us? “What do you mean?”
The doors slid open. Hikari shook her head and stepped into the hallway. “The only thing I want you to remember, Drew, is that you come from samurai blood. You have that in you. That is all you need to know. No matter what else anybody says.” She gestured to her daughter. “This is America. You are what you make of yourself. Come on.” Hikari set off down the hallway, walking fast.
Drew looks at Hikari now, in the nursing home room. Her face looks the same as it did then, except for some softening of the jowls, wrinkles between her brows. “You did tell me about us being from samurai,” she says excitedly. “Is that why you left the book for us?” She will have to look up the Sato name.
Hikari blinks at her. “I said,” she mumbles, “I had the strangest dream.”
“Mom?” Drew kneels beside her mother. But Hikari still looks at her blankly. “What’s your dream, Hikari?” Drew touches her arm. Her mother’s arm is well moisturized, a sign of the good care she receives here.
Hikari looks out the window. “Where is my sister of heart?”
The waves pound the sand. In the hallway outside, a passing wheelchair rattles, a nurse whispers comforting words to someone.
Drew waits for her mother to say more, but Hikari does not.
Sisters of Heart. The book. Or is she talking about the woman who sent her Tomoe’s story? “Who’s your sister of heart, Mom? Hatsuko Minamoto? Somebody you knew in Japan?”
“Japan?” Her forehead wrinkles.
This isn’t doing any good. They have to write to Hatsuko.
Someone knocks on the doorjamb. “Snack time.” The nurse has a tray of applesauce and graham crackers. She smiles pleasantly at Drew. “You must be her other daughter. Such pretty girls you have, Hikari.”
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