How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE - Jacaranda Street
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
PART TWO - Butter-Kusai
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
PART THREE - Tokidoki
Sue
Shoko
Sue
EPILOGUE
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
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Copyright © 2010 by Margaret Dilloway
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Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dilloway, Margaret.
How to be an American housewife / Margaret Dilloway.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-18924-5
1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.I4627H
813’.6—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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FOR MY MOTHER, SUIKO O’BRIEN, 1932-1994
PART ONE
Jacaranda Street
Once you leave Japan, it is extremely unlikely that you will return, unless your husband is stationed there again or becomes wealthy.
Take a few reminders of Japan with you, if you have room. Or make arrangements to write to a caring relative who is willing to send you letters or items from your homeland. This can ease homesickness.
And be sure to tell your family, “Sayonara.”
—from the chapter “Turning American,”
in TAMIKO KELLY AND JUN TANAKA, How to Be an American Housewife (1955)
One
I had always been a disobedient girl.
When I was four, we lived in a grand house with a courtyard and a koi fishpond. My father worked as a lawyer and we were still rich, rich enough to have beautiful silk dresses and for me to have dolls with real hair and porcelain faces, not the corn-husk dolls I played with later.
We even had a nanny to help my mother. One day, Nanny told me she was taking my baby brother and me on a picnic. We walked for what seemed like miles, until my small feet were blistered. In those days, people expected more from a four-year-old than they do now.
“Where are we going?” I asked Nanny.
“To rest from the heat,” she said. “By a pond.”
I did not like Nanny. I didn’t trust how she eyed my brother, Taro, like he was the last bowl of rice. She always hugged him tight, so tight