by Ana Johns
They could.
Tears overflow to wet my cheeks. My lips quiver. My teeth lock hard against each other, and I suck in a fast breath. I will myself not to cry, but it is too late. I am on the vine, between two tigers. The hungry mice gnaw away to force my movement up or down. I do not know the direction I should go. Which tiger is worse? I lift my eyes and speak my truth. “No. I do not expect his return.”
I wait, staring at my father for some reaction. The air is too heavy. Too still. My heart pounds hard. Little Bird stirs in my arms. I pray she doesn’t fuss.
His jaw is tight. “And your plans?”
He is going to make me ask.
Insist I grovel.
Demand I beg.
I glance at my baby. I will beg for her. I bend low. “I would like to return home, Otousan. To help with Kenji and Grandmother. I would like to take my place as—”
“And what of her?”
My eyes lift and level with his. “She is my daughter.”
“She is sick.” He huffs and starts to pace.
“She will get better. We found a way for her to feed.” I do not mention how little she does.
“We cannot bear the weight of such a child. The required medical expense is too much.”
“I will take care of her!”
“You must also think of our family name, and if not that, think of this child. She’s small, sickly, could have developmental problems, and what of school?” He pivots on his heels, his voice picking up speed along with his stride. “Where will she go?”
“I will teach her myself.”
“She cannot expect a decent marriage or a job.” He continues talking as if I did not speak. “If she even survives, she will be a costly burden.”
I step in front of him, pleading. “She will be fine. I will make sure she fattens and is healthy. I will teach her and take care of her. Please, I need her with me.”
“Enough!” His hand slices the air. “You need. You will. You want. Enough!” Father’s face sours. “What you want is what brought you here. What you want now is of no importance, Naoko. This time, it is about what’s best.” Father steps toward the door but stops.
He speaks over his shoulder. “What is best for you and what is best for that child are not the same thing. You are welcome home. Do you understand this? You alone.”
Another step, the door slides, and Father is gone.
I understand he was the tiger, after all.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Japan, Present Day
Naoko took a deep breath and dabbed moisture from her eyes. “So now you know my story, Tori Kovač, and I in turn would like to know yours.”
The sound of my name snapped time like a wet towel. The sting jolted me from the vibrant colors and rich culture of 1950s Japan to the crisp, hard lines of present day. I blinked to align the young Naoko of seventeen—a girl ostracized for who she loved, cut off from everyone she knew, blamed for her mother’s death and forced to make an impossible choice—to the aging Naoko of seventysomething, the one my father wrote, loved, had a daughter with.
“Thank you for sharing it,” I said, aware she hadn’t shared it all. Of course, I hadn’t disclosed everything, either. I glanced to Pops’s letter still in my hand. To learn the rest of her story, I had to share what I knew of my father’s.
She gave a slow bow, eyed my near-empty cup and, lifting the pot, poured more.
My heart pounded my ribs. “I can see what you were up against. And while I’m confused by your father, I admit, I’m also confused by mine.”
My eyes drifted from her back to the letter. “Did my father write before?” I needed her to say yes. I needed to know he tried. His letter to Naoko had snuck in through the past and, like Wendy in Peter Pan, stitched a dark unruly shadow to my feet. I couldn’t shake it. Everywhere I went, it followed, whispered—What if he abandoned them? What if he’s to blame? It challenged everything I knew and trusted about my father, and after hearing all she went through, I needed her to set that shadow free.
She took a moment, searching through the past. “In the beginning, I think Hajime wrote. At least, I like to believe he did.” Her brows twitched, and her gaze returned to mine. “But I suspect if he had, Father and Grandmother would have kept his letters from me. And the few letters that came after, I never read.
“Instead, I buried them with my sorrow.”
My heart jumped. I leaned forward. “Why? Didn’t you want to know if he tried to return?” The question came out quick, forgetting myself.
“What good is knowing when it could change nothing.” She looked at the envelope I held as though seeing ghosts.
I saw my own and held the letter up. “Knowing changes everything for me. All I’ve done since I read this is question my father’s character because it doesn’t make sense.” My eyes searched hers. “How could my father, a man who lived for his family, leave another one behind? A young wife? A child? How could he do that and then never even mention it? That’s not my father. Something must have happened.”
“Then you already know and have answered your own question.”
I sat with her words, confused.
Naoko tilted her head. “Was Hajime a good father?”
“Yes. He was the best.”
Her brows creased. “Then how does knowing anything else alter that?”
And there it was.
A truth.
A personal one. And maybe the only one that mattered. “You’re right. It doesn’t. The man I knew was a great father.” I shrugged, frustrated at the emotion that strangled my words. “But I knew the man, Naoko. Not the boy that got him there.”
“And I knew the boy, not the man he would become.” She again threaded her fingers together in her lap. “So, you see? Knowing more does not change anything for me, either. It does not change how a young man from America loved me so much he practiced and learned my language and customs to meet my family for tea. It does not change how he rented a small thatched hut and planned a life with me there. It does not change how he professed his heart in a magical wedding under the trees.”
“It also doesn’t change that, for whatever reason, he didn’t return.”
“Yes, true, and yet...” Her eyes glinted. “Grandmother always said, ‘Man has a thousand plans, heaven but one.’ And heaven? Oh, how heaven laughed at ours, but...” Naoko tilted her head, her lips curved to a thoughtful smile. “Even heaven herself cannot change truth. Despite it all, we loved.”
I gave a nod and smiled, but then it faded remembering another truth. Their daughter. “According to this—” I held up the envelope “—my father didn’t know where his daughter was or what happened.” My pulse quickened. “Can you tell me? Please?”
We sat in silence then. Her, with Hajime’s daughter, and me, with the woman he once loved. The question of their baby wedged between us, unmoving.
“Okaasan?”
My chin snapped up at the familiar word.
Naoko’s glance flickered. She turned to the patio door where a woman appeared, then greeted her in Japanese. But the woman who called for Okaasan wasn’t looking at Naoko, she stared at me.
I sat frozen.
Blood drained from my head. I’m sure I was as white as the ghost I yearned to see. She was older than me, but of the right age? It was hard to tell. My emotions ran feral. I searched her face for my father’s, only to find she looked like Naoko, but maybe? At a certain angle? She had the same bone structure as Naoko and the same warm black eyes.
“Hello,” she said, and bowed.
The same lovely manners.
I managed a slight nod but couldn’t speak.
Hell, it was hard to breathe.
“Tori, this is Shiori,” Naoko said. “Shiori, this is my new American friend, a journalist who is doing a story about the house for the Tokyo Times.” It was Naoko’s
turn to give a sideways glance.
I held it, confused.
Did her daughter not know about Naoko’s past, or maybe she didn’t want to embarrass the guest who had lied?
Naoko looked back toward her daughter. “Oh, yes, the flowers.” She stood and retrieved the bamboo basket she’d placed at her side. “Every week I pick the best flowers for my daughter, so she knows her importance to me.” She nodded and handed it to Shiori.
“And enough for all of her friends,” Shiori said in English with a soft smile. She slid the basket to the crook of her arm just as her mother had earlier, and they again conversed in Japanese.
I watched, analyzed—stared. This woman could be my sister.
With a small bow Shiori spun to leave.
I watched her walk away, the obvious questions loaded and ready on my impatient, American tongue. When she stepped from view, I set it free. “Was that—I mean, is she...? I have to know... Please.” Tears blurred my vision.
Naoko didn’t answer, and instead motioned to the cushion.
I offered a trade and held up the envelope. “She needs to read this, to know my father, her father, thought of her. That he loved her. Will you let me do this for my father?” The last part hitched in my throat.
Naoko’s eyes glinted with moisture.
“Please, Naoko. If Shiori is my sister, I’d like to tell her about him. Ask her forgiveness on his behalf and...” I clutched my heart. “To forgive me for having the father she never had. But if she doesn’t know, and you prefer it that way, I understand. But then you should know...” I held it out, pleaded with my eyes. “I know it doesn’t change anything, but this letter means something.”
When she didn’t reach to take it, I extended my arm farther. “Please, it would mean something to me, too. Let me do this for my father.” My voice cracked, losing the battle of emotion.
Naoko eyed the tattered envelope, glanced to me, then with utmost care took it from my hand. She removed Pops’s letter as though the words were fragile and unfolded the single sheet to find the small piece of yarn. “He kept it.” She smiled.
“The red string of fate,” I whispered as the connection resonated from her story. “That’s the yarn you gave him in the note.”
“Yes.” She nodded, eyes glistening with tears. She squinted at the letter. “And he still writes so small.” She laughed, holding it for me to see. “He used to leave me notes, and I would tease, saying, ‘It is too small, Hajime, too small.’” She handed it back. “Maybe you can read it for me?”
Taking Pops’s letter, I glanced at his words. I cleared my throat to push down the emotional grip that constricted it, and with a breath, read it for the hundredth time, so Naoko could hear it for the first.
“My Dearest Cricket,
“I hope this letter somehow finds its way to you, and that it finds you in health and surrounded by loved ones and family. I pray that family also includes one of my own.
“Please, without any expectations, I wish only to know our daughter is well and, if it’s within your heart, for our Little Bird to know she’s always been in mine. Even now.
“I’m an old man, Cricket, at the end of my life when pain comes due. I need you to know, in loving you, I’ve never had a single regret. But in losing you? In the how and the why? So many.
“Your Hajime”
Naoko covered her mouth. This time, when I handed her the letter, she claimed it with both hands and clutched it to her chest.
I shrugged. “I know it’s short...”
“What else is there to say? He loved me, he wishes it were different, he remembers our Little Bird.” She nodded, took a deep breath and released it as though held for a lifetime.
We smiled at one another.
With a deep inhale through her nose, she looked to the sky. Then she squared her shoulders and, with knitted brows, her eyes found mine at last. She tilted her head, and I knew.
“Shiori isn’t Little Bird, is she?”
“No. I am sorry.”
“I think maybe I knew that.” There was nothing left to do but ask the palpable question that bridged between us. The same one that brought me thousands of miles around the world. “If Shiori isn’t my sister, Naoko, then where is she? I can’t leave until I know. I can’t.”
Her shoulders released. “I think maybe I knew that.” Carefully she folded the letter and returned it to the envelope in her lap. Then she took a sip of tea and regarded me from above the rim. “To just know such a truth is not enough. First, you must understand. And it requires bravery from two people. One to speak it. And one to listen.”
At the hospital, Pops’s had asked, “Are you listening?”
“I’m listening,” I answered.
She nodded. “My father gave me an ultimatum. Yes, he was the tiger, after all. His words repeated in my mind. ‘What is best for you and what is best for that child are not the same thing.’ The conditions of living in my father’s house allowed for only me. To live on my own didn’t allow for me to care for my baby. So, what was I to do? I hung on the vine, holding my strawberry between two tigers, and I had to hurry, as the mice were nibbling away...”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Japan, 1958
In the monks’ covered Zen garden, I sit with Little Bird and sort my father’s words. What is best for you and what is best for that child are not the same thing.
With my toes, I push the cool sand around. The garden is meant to be viewed from the surrounding corridors, but I am on the large, flat rock, smack in the middle, messing up the perfect lines with my feet.
A storm in the monks’ sandy sea of tranquility.
I stroke my daughter’s fine hair with my fingertips. It is soft and dark like mine. Though her skin is much lighter, she tinges yellow from jaundice. It almost glows against the black of her lashes. She is too thin and struggles to breathe.
I struggle for perspective.
I wish I could visit Okaasan’s burial site. A single erect slab with both Father’s and Mother’s names engraved in the smooth front. Mother’s name in black to signify she has gone, while Father’s remains red to signal he waits to join her. All graves are inked this way. It is as beautiful as it is disturbing.
The cemetery is a strange miniature city of stone, a sprawling metropolis for insects, but I would draw comfort there. I would ask for guidance. Wait for a sign.
Without money how will I protect my baby? Provide for her? Feed her? Oh, I will love her, but love does not nurse a baby back to health or keep one safe and warm.
Look how love has left me.
My father made a significant donation to the monastery and, for it, expects my quick return. The abbot believes my father yields. He doesn’t know it is a welcome home for only me.
“Naoko, is that you, child?” Hisa calls from the pathway.
“I am here,” I say as she does the unexpected and treads through the Zen garden, adding ripples of her own.
Sister Sakura surprises me more because she walks a step behind. “The monks will have a fit in the morning.” She laughs, noticing how I’ve disturbed their peaceful labor. She slides her glasses up as she gazes down at Little Bird bundled in my lap. “Has she eaten?”
I shake my head. I couldn’t get her to take the dropper of milk.
It’s as if she knows.
My voice cracks. “We have nowhere to go.”
“What do you mean?” Hisa asks. “Your father was here.”
“My father wants only me.” I stare at my baby, sad for his stubborn stance. “He refuses her, saying she has no place in our family. He claims she is too sick regardless, that health care will be costly and pointless.” My words stammer for breath. My heart aches for refuge.
Sister Sakura gives a heavy sigh. “In some ways, child, your father is right.”
“What?” My head snaps up. �
��How is he right?”
Sister Sakura lowers her chin. She threads her fingers, so the robe’s sleeves swallow them whole. “She is very sick and not eating.” She shakes her head. “I fear it is only a matter of time.”
“No...” Tears trickle down my cheeks. I don’t bother to wipe them. “She was eating.” I turn to Hisa. “Can she not just stay here with you? I will come back every day or I will stay. She will eat, I know it, and...” Emotion strangles my words, so I almost choke. “I will find a way to pay.” I nod, pleading back and forth between them. “I will pay. Somehow I will.”
“Naoko, it is not about a fee,” Sister Sakura says, sitting beside me. She wraps me with her arm. “I am sorry, child. There is nothing to do but wait.”
“What about the home?” I ask, sliding up and away. “The one in Oiso? The one for mixed-blood babies?”
Sister Sakura tilts her head. I turn to Hisa but she casts her eyes away.
“They will take her.” I’m crying now, squeezing my baby close. “Can you help me take her there? Please.”
Hisa wipes her eyes. “There, she’d only die alone.”
“No! You don’t know that!” I stand, shaking my head. A warm stabbing sensation builds. It rises and flares my nostrils with each clipped breath from trying to hold everything in. I have no words.
I have only anger.
It rips through me and releases a string of accusations. “How can you say that? Why did you pretend to care before, and now won’t help?” My shoulders quake as I curl into my baby. “Why will no one help us?” My cries make no sound because I can no longer breathe.
I can’t breathe.
“Naoko, please.” Sister Sakura and Hisa stand, trying to console me.
I’m beside myself. My lips peel back to release a cry of desperation. “No. No...” I spin and run from the Zen garden. I run to my room.
I run from their bitter truth.
* * *
In my room, I rock my baby. Hisa sits outside the door in case I call, but I won’t. I wish to be alone.
Curling on my side, I wrap around my sweet daughter. Tears roll down my cheeks one after the other. I let them fall. My insides are raw from deciding between such miserable fates. Everywhere I turn, no matter what I do, it is as though fortune has decided.