How to Be an American Housewife (29 page)

THIS SIDE TRIP had been more exhausting than the flight from America. I stretched out on my futon. Helena lay next to me, sketching away. “This is my sketchbook of Japan,” she said. “I’m writing down everything we did and trying to draw pictures, but they look weird.”

“Try drawing from life first,” I suggested, turning on my side. “It’s usually easier.”

I closed my eyes. Mom’s image danced across my eyelids. I wanted to tell her everything that we had seen.

About her brother. Forgiveness.

Helena had fallen asleep, the sketchbook splayed across her chest. I asked Sumiko if I could use her phone, then dialed our parents’ number.

It was six in the morning there, so by now Dad should have been up, listening to his morning radio and having his hot chocolate. It rang ten times—no answering machine. My parents hated machines in general. Finally Mike picked up.

He sounded funny; there was a delay across the ocean. “Just calling to see how things are going.” I did not notice I was balling my pants into my fist. “I have a number now.”

“Sue.” Mike cleared his throat. “I, uh, have some news. Mom’s in the hospital. In the ICU.” He sounded calm. Mike always sounded calm, though. “They’re looking at doing surgery, but only if they can get her stabilized.”

I felt like I had been in a car wreck.

“Sue? Are you there?”

“Can they get her stabilized?”

Mike paused. “It doesn’t look good, Sue. I think—I think you may want to come home. Mom won’t tell you to, Dad won’t tell you to. But I am.”

I frowned. Helena appeared, awakened by my voice, her face nakedly concerned. I steeled myself. “Yes. Thanks.” I hung up abruptly and sat on the floor.

My whole life, my life spent with a sick mother, I had braced myself for this moment. She had warned us that it would come. But now that it was here, I couldn’t move.

“Mommy?” Helena’s voice was small, as mine had been earlier. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

Finally I gathered enough air in my diaphragm to breathe, forcing myself to think. “We’re going home.”

A
s we packed the next day, Taro stood over me. “Suiko-chan,” he said, eating another chocolate croissant, “maybe you come back and visit one day, yeah?”

Taro-chan shoved a fistful of action figures into my bag. I took them out. “I will.”

Helena dragged her big backpack into the room. “I didn’t buy anything, but I had to sit on it to get it closed.”

“I put some stuff in there. Sorry.” I zipped my bag closed.

Taro tapped his watch. “Boat time.”

“We will always have these memories.” Sumiko produced her camera. We went to the edge of their property, the ocean sparkling in the distance. “Stand by Ojīchan. Suiko, you, too.” Taro slung his arms over us. He smelled of salt and chocolate and soap.

“Cheese!” Sumiko said gaily, snapping away. Now we would be part of their shoe-box photo collection, amid all the other Japanese relatives.

Taro poked us teasingly in the ribs. “You turning Japanese. You’re not so butter-
kusai
now.”

Helena giggled. “You should talk, with all those croissants.”

He grunted. “Good. We match.” He held up a hand. “Wait. I have something for you.” Taro left, returning with a square gift tied up with a piece of hot-pink silk. I bowed back and accepted it.

“Open it,” he said.

I untied the material. Inside was a black lacquered box.

“That was your mother’s. She left it,” Taro said. “Of course, she threw away all the pictures she had in there when she married your father. These are ours.”

I took the lid off. Inside were photographs. Many photographs, all the ones that Sumiko showed me. “I can’t take these,” I said. “What will you have?”

“It’s okay. I have the negatives.” Taro crossed his arms. “Take these to your mother. It will lift her spirits.” He picked up the top two photos and showed them to me. “These you haven’t seen.”

In one my grandparents posed in front of their old house with a thatched roof, looking serious, their hands folded in front of them.

The other was of a Japanese toddler in a white Western dress, with puffed sleeves and a huge satin bow at the waist, holding a baby in a white dress in her lap. “That is your mother and me. Take them home to her.”

The images were printed on card stock like the one Mom had of her old boyfriend. The one of my grandparents was high-contrast, their faces so white they had lost all definition. In Mom’s, a crack ran through her face. I gingerly put them down on the stack.

I turned to him. Mom’s face flickered across his. In the strong light, every wrinkle was cast into high relief. How much time had passed without us knowing him, and this family. “I guess it’s time to say good-bye, Uncle. Or
sayonara
.”

“We don’t say
sayonara
.” He inclined his head. “
Sayonara
means good-bye forever. We say
dewa mata.
See you later.”

“Yes.
Dewa mata
.” I hugged him.

He held me tight, then patted me strongly on the back.

“I’m glad you didn’t throw us out, Uncle.” I stepped back and bowed.

“I never threw anybody out. Sometimes they leave because of what I say.” He smiled ruefully, then bowed back. “Say hello to Shoko for me. I will see her soon.”

I did not know if he was talking about here on earth or in the afterlife. “I’ll tell her you say hi, Uncle.”

D
ad’s thousand-yard stare was trained on the TV in the hospital waiting room. Mom was still in the operating room, where she had been for the past ten hours. I had come straight from the airport, leaving Helena at her other grandparents’ house.

I had not told my father anything about Japan. It was as if I had come to the hospital from my home, and not another country. Somehow, I wanted to save it all for Mom. This trip belonged to her.

I yawned loudly.

Dad never took his eyes off the television. Out of nowhere, he said, “Mommy didn’t breast-feed you kids.”

I shifted in my seat. “I know. She said she didn’t have enough milk.”

“She did.” Dad tsked softly. “She didn’t want her breasts to sag.” Finally he looked at me, his eyes intensifying into aquamarine. “I wanted her to. It would have been better for you.” He stared at his hands. “I wanted you to go to church, too, meet other kids, do activities. She wouldn’t hear of it.” He spread his arms, then crossed them. “She did the best she could, though. I should have done more.”

“It doesn’t matter now.” I gave him my best cheerful smile. “I turned out fine.”

He smiled back. “Are you happy, Sue?”

“Of course,” I said automatically. “I have a steady job and a great daughter. What else do I need?”

“If you wait for happiness to find you, you may be waiting a long time.” He reached over and patted my hand.

“Now you sound like a fortune cookie. Go home and get some sleep.” I didn’t want advice from Dad. Not now. “Mom won’t be ready to see anyone for hours.”

He leaned back. “I can sleep sitting up, you know. Haven’t you ever seen me watch TV in the evenings?” My father continued to sit there, stubborn as ever, content to suffer through the hours until Mom awoke. He finally drifted off halfway through a soap opera. A kind nurse put a blanket over him.

A figure entered the room and I looked up, expecting, dreading: Mom’s surgeon. But it was Mike, bearing two cups of vending-machine coffee. His wild hair was neatly tied back and his eyes were clear. I blinked. “Hi,” I said in a small voice.

He nodded, sitting down with the coffee. “I accidentally got one with sugar. Want it?”

“Thanks.” You couldn’t pick Mike out of a crowd as my brother. He was a stranger off the street. I had never run out to the tree on Christmas morning with Mike, to see what Santa had left us.

But Mike was there when we needed him to be. Once, when I was six, a wildfire burned up the mountain behind Jacaranda Street, and we were evacuated.

“It’s only a precaution,” the firefighters told us. “Go across the street.” The fire wouldn’t jump the street, they said; it wouldn’t even come close.

Dad was still at work, but he called and told my mother to grab a few clothes. She did not comply. Mom ran around, crazed, throwing stuff into boxes. Mike came home to help.

“Take this next,” she barked at him. He moved everything to a neighbor’s yard—all my mother’s Japanese possessions, suitcases, some food, my garbage bag full of stuffed animals. The neighbors watched benignly.

The last load consisted of only a Japanese-English dictionary. Mike took my hand and walked me across to where the neighbors had set up lawn chairs to watch the fire’s progress, amid all of our stuff.

A TV news reporter and cameraman caught up with him. “Here we have someone escaping with only the few possessions he could grab,” the reporter intoned, thrusting the microphone into my brother’s face. “What do you have there, sir?”

Mike hefted aloft the book. “A dictionary.”

The reporter looked startled. “And what will you do if your house burns down?”

Mike shrugged. “Rebuild. We’re insured. Maybe it’ll be two stories this time.”

“Oh,” the reporter said, turning back to the camera.

Even I was old enough to giggle at the absurdity, us standing in the middle of the street holding a dictionary while a fire raged on the mountain.

 

 

I LOOKED AT MIKE, the mystery, here once again when family was required. “Do you like your new job?” I ventured.

“It’s all right.” He nodded. “Except for people buying reptiles and not knowing how to take care of them. Idiots.” He shook his head. “How was Japan?”

I listened for jealousy, but heard mild curiosity. “We saw Taro.”

He nodded again. “The uncle who hated Mom? She told me that’s why you went.”

“Yup.” I smiled. “Has it been crazy here?”

“A little. But it’ll be all right.” He sounded convinced. “Mom’s too stubborn to give up, you know?” He slurped down half his coffee in a gulp.

“I know.”

Dr. Su appeared, wearing pale blue scrubs and paper shoe covers making whispery rustling noises.

Dad was alert immediately, his eyes bright.

“It was successful.” Dr. Su sat next to Dad. He went on about recovery and infection and how she wasn’t out of the woods yet. “She’s in the recovery room.” He put his hand on Dad’s shoulder. “You can go in and look at her if you like. She’s not awake.”

“I’ll go see her.” Dad got up and limped down the hallway. We followed, overtaking him. Mike and I slowed our pace so Dad wasn’t walking behind us. Whenever we went anywhere as a family, Mom would creep along, and Dad would walk quickly in front of her, saying, “Hurry up, Mommy!” as though she were a dawdling toddler.

“Go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Dad was embarrassed, exactly as Mom had been.