Mrs. Asaki’s grief for Shohei had been intense, for the siblings were close. After their mother died, she had cared for him like her own son.
Now she said helplessly, “It’s a terrible thing. A terrible thing.”
Mrs. Kobayashi nodded.
If only she would cry, thought Mrs. Asaki. In the old days, her sister-in-law had trusted her enough to cry in her presence. Together they had sobbed over Shohei’s death. It was the first time Mrs. Asaki had felt close to her. Until then, she had secretly resented this young woman who had captured her brother’s heart so easily and completely. She wasn’t proud of her feelings, and luckily Mrs. Kobayashi never suspected.
Mrs. Asaki’s dislike went deeper than just Shohei; she had felt it in her gut the first time they met. Her sister-to-be had worn a Western dress of sky blue, with a purple sash and a small bunch of violets pinned dashingly at the base of her V-neckline. She had an air-not arrogance so much as a kind of bright self-satisfaction, typical of girls who had been sheltered all their lives.
“What a fashionable dress,” Mrs. Asaki had said.
“Oh, it’s just cheap fabric…I’m embarrassed, seeing the beautiful kimonos here in Kyoto.” It was a perfectly correct response, but her expression belied the words.
Mrs. Asaki, confined to the Kyoto area all her life, had never had met anyone like her. She had never visited a dance hall. She had never worked outside the home. Every morning she followed her husband out into the lane, where she sent him off to work with a deep formal bow. Every Monday, he discreetly slipped her an envelope containing the household allowance for the week.
For the first time, the older woman had a dim sense of what she had missed: an unfettered, independent youth in which she might have tried out her own powers. Her envy was like physical pain. This would have surprised her Ueno neighbors if they had known, for in their eyes Mrs. Asaki’s beauty surpassed anything the newcomer had to offer. Locals compared her to the popular actress Sono Fujimoto, for they both had a doe-eyed beauty and drooping distinction. She was admired by men and women for her graceful way of sashaying in a kimono that made her look liquid, almost boneless.
That was a long time ago.
“I think I’ll lie down for a bit,” Mrs. Kobayashi said.
“Soh. Soh, of course. Would you like me to pull down some coverlets for you?”
“That’s very kind, but there’s really no need.”
Reluctantly, Mrs. Asaki took her leave. She hurried home to break the news to her daughter, the shopping bags banging against her legs.
Only then did she wonder what this might do to the carefully calibrated balance between the two houses.
In the Ueno neighborhood it was often said that Mrs. Asaki and her daughter made a picture-perfect pair. “Never a cross word between them, ne…,” they said with wistful sighs. “So respectful of each other-a pleasure to see.” One housewife had remarked, “They’re so polite. You’d almost think they were in-laws.” Only a careful observer would have noticed a certain thinness of flavor in their relationship, not unlike their cooking.
No one was more conscious of this than Mrs. Asaki herself.
How it started, she could not have said. She was better at acting than at reflecting. At any rate the process had been so gradual as to be invisible, like the growth of a child.
There was a time, decades ago, when Masako had been like any other child, with eyes only for her mother. Those early years still glowed in Mrs. Asaki’s memory for their simplicity, for their lack of the emotional ambivalence that would haunt her in later years. One of her favorite memories was the day she had taken little Masako to Umeya Shrine for her traditional Seven-Five-Three Blessing. She could still see it: a crowd of children aged seven, five, and three, dressed up in their best kimonos and tottering about in their shiny new slippers like bewildered little dolls. And among them was her precious Masako, the only girl to wear a tiny white fur wrapped around her neck over her pink silk kimono. Mrs. Asaki had sewn the entire outfit herself, sacrificing the last of her prewar finery.
And it had been worth it. “Look, Mama, I’m pretty,” little Masako had breathed, eyes shining as she reached up to pet the unaccustomed fur with the clumsy, reverent fingers of a five-year-old. And Mrs. Asaki had known a moment of keen joy.
That night at the Asaki house, dinner was subdued. Cooking was out of the question, so Mrs. Asaki phoned in a sushi order for both houses. The delivery boy had just come by on his bicycle, balancing on one hand a precariously high stack of lacquered wooden boxes. As usual, only the women and children sat at the low table. Mr. Nishimura didn’t come home until almost 9:00 P.M., a typical hour for a salaryman in middle management.
“I doubt if she’ll have any appetite,” said Mrs. Asaki. “But the sushi from Hideko is her favorite. If she can swallow even one or two bites, that’ll be better than nothing.”
There was a murmur of sympathetic agreement around the table. With guilty expressions, Momoko and Yashiko tried to eat more languidly. But it was hard, for sushi from Hideko was a rare and delectable treat.
“Probably Grandpa Kobayashi will make sure she eats,” said Momoko.
Mrs. Nishimura wasn’t eating much-just three pieces of sushi on a condiment plate-but that was normal. As a proper traditional wife, she ate just enough to tide her over until it was time to eat with her husband.
“I’ll go over first thing tomorrow,” Mrs. Nishimura said. Her eyelids were puffy. “She needs help in the kitchen, and the parlor has to be set up with the white cloth and everything, for when Sarah-chan brings home the ashes.”
She said this dispassionately but Mrs. Asaki, her antennae sharpened over the years, caught the hint of eagerness that still brought a bitter taste to her mouth. Their history was made up of such moments: her daughter irreproachable in her behavior, she jealous and wounded but unable to find fault. It was frustrating because on some deep, fundamental level, she knew she was being wronged.
“Soh, that’s a good idea.” What else could she say? With a tragedy like this, boundaries went out the window. She wished she could help Mrs. Kobayashi herself, but this was a job for a young, able-bodied woman.
“She could use the help,” Mrs. Asaki continued. “At least until her real family gets here.” As a subtle reminder, she put the faintest of emphasis on the word real.
Mrs. Nishimura busied herself realigning the condiment cruets in the center of the table: soy sauce, chili oil, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, sesame salt. After some time had passed she picked up the teapot-“Some more tea, Mother?”-and refilled her cup with a filial gesture. Something about the patient droop of her neck gave Mrs. Asaki a pang of remorse. She knew her daughter felt guilty, had always felt guilty, for not cleaving to her the way she should. To compensate, she treated her adopted mother with such kindness and politeness that it alienated them even more. There was nothing to be done for it. The heart wants what it wants. If circumstances were different, Mrs. Asaki would have sympathized with her dilemma.
She drank her tea. She was grateful, shudderingly grateful, that her own Masako was safe and alive. Even now she could hardly wrap her mind around this awful news. What irony: her own child was alive and Mrs. Kobayashi’s wasn’t. There was a story she had heard around the neighborhood: a man had donated a kidney to his sick brother, then died of complications while the sick brother went on to thrive with the kidney that wasn’t his.
Should the sick brother have given the kidney back?
No, she thought, biting into a slice of red tuna. It was rich and fatty on the tongue, the freshly ground wasabi warming her sinuses.
“Poor Sarah-chan, ne…,” Yashiko remarked to the table at large.
“Soh, poor Sarah-chan,” agreed her grandmother. “Think how lucky you are, both of you, that your mother’s right here beside you. It’s a sad thing indeed when a daughter takes her own mother for granted.”
chapter 24
There is something bracing, almost exhilarating, about a cat
astrophe. Like a typhoon, it sweeps away the small constraints of daily existence. It opens up the landscape to bold moves and rearrangements that would be unthinkable in normal times.
It was in such an atmosphere that they buried Shohei. The war was escalating. Shortly afterward, American bombs fell on Kobe, Mrs. Kobayashi’s birth city. Vast areas of the city burned down in the fires.
Mrs. Kobayashi’s family, the Sosetsus, barely escaped with their lives. Hitching a ride on a farmer’s oxcart, they made their way inland to Kyoto with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “We ran through the city with our coats over our heads,” Mrs. Kobayashi’s mother told them. She was freshly bathed, dressed in one of her daughter’s kimonos. Her air was so refined that it was hard for Mrs. Asaki to imagine her running at all. “Look,” she said, “where the embers burned through.” Everyone stared in awe at the scorch marks on the Sosetsus’ padded silk coats.
“What about your ships…?” asked Mrs. Asaki. The Sosetsus’ import business was the mainstay of their wealth.
“Gone,” said one of the sons bitterly. “All except two that were out at sea. Our entire fleet was in that harbor.”
Mrs. Asaki was enthralled in spite of herself. An entire fleet, destroyed! Her in-laws had sunk from wealth to poverty in the blink of an eye.
“I can’t get over it,” she said later that night to her husband. “What a change of fortune!”
“It could have been us,” he said in dazed wonder.
“Yes, it could have been us…” They were silent, pondering the upheaval the war had brought. The Asakis were doing better than their neighbors, even in this time of food rationing. Mr. Asaki was a high school superintendent. His public office gave him access to black-market channels in the prefectural bribery system. And Mrs. Asaki had farming relatives out in the country, a fact that had once embarrassed her.
“They can’t possibly squeeze into that little house,” Mr. Asaki said.
“Of course not!” There were six of them: Mrs. Kobayashi, her mother, three siblings ranging in age from thirteen to twenty, and four-year-old Yoko. When Mrs. Kobayashi delivered her baby, there would be seven in all. “She and Yo-chan should move in with us,” she said, “till that family gets back on their feet.”
She ran her eyes over the too-large house-the wide expanse of tatami matting, the long empty halls. She and her husband had always hoped for children. But now, on the brink of forty, she knew it was never going to happen.
“It’ll be nice,” she said, “having small children here.”
The months passed. Japan surrendered in 1945. Mrs. Kobayashi gave birth to a baby girl called Masako.
One day Mrs. Sosetsu paid the Asakis a formal call and announced they were moving back to Kobe. “We have a hard road ahead,” she said, “but Kobe is our home.” Her bows were deep and controlled, but the emotion in her face was real. “We can never repay you for what you’ve done,” she said. “We’ll never forget your kindness.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Asaki. He and his wife bowed back in unison. “We wish you all the best.”
“We wish you all the best,” echoed Mrs. Asaki. This house was going to be lonely without little Yoko and the baby.
That night at dinner she asked, “Will you be moving back to Kobe as well?” Her eyes shifted from her sister-in-law to the baby strapped on her back. Masako was fast asleep; her cheek, round and soft as a dumpling, lay against her mother’s shoulder.
“I’d like to,” said Mrs. Kobayashi wistfully. “But there aren’t any jobs in Kobe for someone like me. My children and I would just be a burden.” She paused. “No no, Yo-chan,” she told the little girl, who was reaching across the table with her chopsticks. “If you want more radishes, say, ‘Please pass the radishes.’”
“Please pass the radishes,” said Yoko obediently.
“When this rationing is over,” said Mr. Asaki jovially, “we’ll have meat again! And fresh fish from the coast! What do you think about that!”
The child looked at him blankly, then turned her attention to the boiled radishes.
“I’ll move back across the street and get an office job,” said Mrs. Kobayashi.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Asaki, “and I can look after the children.”
Mr. Asaki, who came from a traditional Kyoto family, looked up sharply from his rice bowl. “Times may be bad,” he said, “but not so bad that a woman under my care has to go out in the workplace to be ordered about by strangers. What you need to do is get remarried.”
Mrs. Kobayashi looked young and trapped. Mrs. Asaki’s heart went out to her. Ever since Shohei died, the two women had become close. But Mrs. Asaki’s sympathy was still tinged with a smug sort of pleasure in knowing that her sister-in-law’s charmed days were now behind her.
Her husband, as if thinking along these same lines, continued. “You’re not a privileged young girl anymore, working for pocket money.” Then, more gently, “I know something of this world. I know it isn’t kind or respectful to women over a certain age who work for their food. And you’d barely support your children on what you’d make.”
“He’s right, dear,” said Mrs. Asaki. “Servitude in some office isn’t the answer.”
They were silent. Baby Masako flung out an arm in sleep. Little Yoko hunched over her bowl, picking out one grain of rice at a time with her chopsticks.
“Besides,” said Mr. Asaki, “how many multinational companies are there in Kyoto anyway?” He leaned back and took a swallow of tea.
“Let’s think on it, ne, dear?” said Mrs. Asaki soothingly. “We’ll put our heads together and come up with a really good plan.”
It was then that the wheels in her mind began to turn.
chapter 25
The morning after Yoko’s death, Mrs. Nishimura headed down the lane with a bulky bundle-food and various supplies-wrapped in a purple silk furoshiki cloth. Mrs. Asaki stood on the upstairs balcony, hanging up socks and handkerchiefs to dry, and watched her go. Her daughter looked up and waved with her free hand. She waved back.
Later that day Mrs. Nishimura came home with a wealth of information. She recounted it all in painstaking detail, as if to ease her mother’s mind by being as transparent as possible.
There would be no funeral, she said. Since Yoko had married into the Rexford family, it was technically not the Kobayashis’ place to give her one.
“I’m sure the funeral in America will be very nice,” Mrs. Asaki said.
Momoko looked doubtful. “I heard they don’t even have cremation ceremonies in America,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter. At least they do cremations.”
By all rights Mrs. Rexford’s ashes should have stayed overseas as the property of her husband’s family. “But it’s not as if there’s a Rexford cemetery,” Mrs. Nishimura explained, “or even a Rexford family.” Apparently Mr. Rexford had always planned to have his ashes scattered over the ocean. While that option was fitting and right for her father, Sarah had thought it wrong, somehow, for her mother. Although Mrs. Rexford had never actually stated her burial preference, other than to say she wanted cremation, Sarah felt sure she would have wanted to be buried in her homeland.
“Well, naturally!” said Mrs. Asaki.
Over the next few days, Mrs. Nishimura took charge of the wake preparations. While Mr. and Mrs. Kobayashi dealt with the voluminous paperwork for the temple’s genealogical records (they were complex and highly accurate, going back for centuries), Mrs. Nishimura transformed the parlor. She set up a long low table, covered with a ceremonial white cloth, in front of the tokonoma alcove. She sifted through family photographs to find the most recent picture of Mrs. Rexford, which she framed and decorated with a black funerary band. This would stand on the low table, along with the cremated remains when they arrived. She bought incense sticks and small prayer candles for visitors to light when they came to pay their respects. Since incense had to be burned round the clock until the burial, she stocked up on special twelve-ho
ur sticks that would burn through the night. She placed an order to have a personalized tablet made; this would be placed in the family altar after the burial.
More news followed. Mrs. Kobayashi had made private arrangements with the temple authorities to have her daughter’s ashes laid to rest in the Kobayashi family plot.
“How did she manage that?” cried Mrs. Asaki in astonishment. “Yo-chan married out of the family line!”
“No one knows,” said Mrs. Nishimura in her soft voice. “But a bereaved and determined mother can do surprising things.”
Mrs. Asaki laughed and clapped her hands. “Well, that’s Yoko for you,” she said. She had always been fond of her plucky niece, and she felt extraordinarily pleased that Mrs. Kobayashi had managed to pull this off. “Even in death, she doesn’t follow the same rules as everyone else!”
The burial, at least, would be traditional. It would take place thirty-five days after death, following a formal sutra ceremony. In the meantime, the Kobayashis were holding a monthlong wake in their home. Sarah would arrive in two weeks and stay until the burial.
Mrs. Asaki dropped by the Kobayashi house every so often, prayer beads tucked into her clutch purse, to offer up a prayer and discreetly check on the situation. She brought little gifts: flowers for the funerary table, a monetary envelope to help pay for So-Zen Temple ’s sutra services during the wake, a plate of altar-worthy fruit. It wasn’t that she expected to catch them at anything. After this many years, it was unlikely that anything would happen. Even if it did, they would be far too careful to risk being caught. So it was a masochistic exercise, really. But the old woman had always believed in the power of prevention.
Today she approached the Kobayashi house with an armful of peach blossoms. The air in the lane had a caressing, restless quality peculiar to spring, as if it had just floated in from distant, sun-warmed fields. She sniffed with appreciation but also a little sadness, for this year she didn’t feel part of it. A new physical weariness had been dragging at her lately. The changing of seasons was always hard on the body, but this tiredness was different. In the last few weeks, she had increasingly felt the full weight of her eighty-three years.
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