chapter 12
“What a lovely yuzu arrangement!” praised Mrs. Asaki. She stood before the altar, ready to pray. Sarah sat at the low table and watched her.
Reaching into her clutch purse, the old woman drew out a set of mahogany prayer beads with purple tassels. She also drew out a formal monetary envelope, which she placed on the altar. Her envelopes always contained several crisp ten-thousand-yen bills.
Mrs. Asaki closed her eyes. Reciting rapidly under her breath, she manipulated the beads with deft fingers. Then, switching back instantly from the ethereal to the earthly, she smiled down at Sarah.
“A little shopping for you and your mama.” She nodded toward the envelope with twinkling eyes.
Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford entered the room with trays of tea and refreshments. “Won’t you stay, Granny?” they asked. Mrs. Asaki promptly took a seat at the low table.
Despite their private resentments toward the old woman, Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford seemed to genuinely enjoy these visits. There was, after all, a certain kinship in the women’s extroverted personalities. With Mrs. Nishimura out of the picture, they could all relax and gossip under the guise of religious duty. In no time at all, they were shrieking with laughter.
At one point the talk turned to Mr. Kobayashi. Mrs. Asaki took mischievous delight in exposing her little brother’s childhood trials.
“Some older boys across the creek called him over to play,” she told them. “So he trudged over the bridge, and they boinked him on the head. He came running back, crying. But then they called out their apologies and invited him over again. ‘Kenji, don’t go!’ I told him. But no, he trudged over that bridge yet again-” The old woman did such a good imitation of a little boy’s eager expression that they all burst into laughter. “And he got boinked yet again!”
Sarah, who had just come back from seeing her aunt, was annoyed to see them all having such a good time. They had wronged Aunt Masako. They had no right to be laughing and having so much fun.
Still laughing, the women turned back to their plates. Today was so hot they were eating chilled tofu. “This sauce is divine!” said Mrs. Asaki. “What is it? I can taste the citron zest…and…”
“Miso, and rice wine, and ground-up sesame seeds,” supplied Mrs. Rexford. “By the way, we picked some extra citrons for you to take home.”
A reflective mood fell over them.
“That Kenji…” Mrs. Asaki shook her head indulgently. “All he ever did was play around and dabble in things, right up till he got drafted to Manchuria. We thought he’d never settle down.”
“And then he turned out to be so good at art! Who would have thought?” said Mrs. Kobayashi.
“Now, his little brother,” said Mrs. Asaki, “he was successful from the start. Shoehei was the one people noticed.” Her voice was hushed; Shohei had been her favorite brother.
Mrs. Rexford looked pleased. Mrs. Kobayashi lowered her gaze modestly. It was not her place to say such things, but she was perfectly willing to hear it from her sister-in-law’s lips.
“Shohei was so smart,” Mrs. Asaki told Sarah, “so witty. Always at the head of his class. They picked him for the executive training program when he was only-what? Twenty-five?”
Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford, both smiling, nodded.
Mrs. Asaki grew expansive in her generosity. “It was entirely fitting,” she said, “that the first hieroglyph in his name-sho-stood for rectitude and integrity.”
Sarah recalled old photographs she had seen. Shohei was tall and handsome. Her step-grandfather, Kenji, was handsome too, but much shorter.
A girlish sparkle appeared in Mrs. Asaki’s eyes. “Your grandpa,” she told Sarah, gesturing vaguely toward the other end of the house where Mr. Kobayashi was tap-tapping away in his workshop, “had a secret crush on your grandma for years. But she only had eyes for Shohei.”
Sarah happened to know-she had overheard her parents-that marrying the second Mr. Kobayashi had not been her grandmother’s wish. She had been pressured into it, quite forcefully, by Mrs. Asaki herself.
Sarah had never seen the tough side of Granny; her great-aunt was unfailingly cheerful and charming. But she did remember that when Momoko and Yashiko were small, Mrs. Asaki used to punish them by touching a lit stick of prayer incense to the offending part of their bodies: the hand, if hitting had been the offense; the tongue, if one of them had talked back. It was the old-fashioned method from the country. Momoko had claimed airily that it didn’t hurt at all. “You can’t even see the mark,” she said. But the very idea had made Sarah dizzy with terror.
That night at bedtime, she broached this confusion to her mother.
“You know about uchi versus soto, right?” Mrs. Rexford said.
Uchi versus soto: inner circle versus outer circle. Daytime television was full of family dramas based on this concept. Uchi meant the few allies in whom a woman could place absolute trust. Soto was everyone else-social acquaintances, in-laws, sometimes one’s own children-around whom it was best to remain vigilant.
“Smart women know who’s inside and who’s outside,” Mrs. Rexford said. “Wishy-washy women get confused and make poor decisions.”
“Granny’s outside, right?”
“Of course. And your grandma and I never forget it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy her company. Or feel compassion and affection, like civilized human beings. Just as long as those feelings don’t interfere with our true loyalties.”
“But that’s hard,” said Sarah.
“Well, you learn.”
“It would be easier if people were enemies or friends, with nothing in between.”
“That’s a child’s way of thinking,” said her mother. “You’re a young woman now.”
chapter 13
Sarah sat outdoors, trying to remember how it had felt to be a child.
She was perched on the shallow step leading up to the Kobayashis’ visitor gate. The gate had slatted sliding doors, set upon grooved sills that were raised slightly off the ground. If she twisted around and pressed her face against the vertical wooden laths, she could peer in at the walkway of stepping stones and bamboos that led up to the main door. From this vantage point the garden looked bigger, more imposing, the way it used to when she was little.
She sat attuning herself to the afternoon silence. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the smells of the lane: the aged, musty undertones of wood, mellowed with moss and warmed by the sun; hot cotton hung out to air; banks of perspiring leaves in the carefully tended gardens; and floating in from somewhere (someone was cooking a late lunch), a faint bitter whiff of grilled sardines. Mixed in with it all was some complex, private scent inseparable from early childhood.
“Big Sister! Big Sister!”
Sarah looked down the lane toward Mrs. Asaki’s upstairs balcony. Momoko and Yashiko were leaning over the railing, waving at her with all four arms. “How come you’re sitting there all by yourself?” Momoko called. “We’re coming right down!” The two girls vanished from the balcony.
Soon they were all squeezed together on the Kobayashis’ stone step. Rolling their sandaled feet back and forth over the gravel, they discussed ways to amuse themselves. A wind chime tinged, sounding muffled in the humid air.
They decided to play American Emotions. They had invented this game shortly after Sarah’s arrival, while they were playing at the Kobayashi house. Sarah, wanting to seem as Japanese as possible, had been parodying American movies. “I love you, son,” she said in a deep voice. “You are very special to me.” Momoko and Yashiko had been delighted; they recognized this kind of dialogue from Hollywood films that occasionally aired on Japanese television.