How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [70]
“Nagasaki,” Yasuo replied.
I leaned forward. “Her doctors always say the cause could have been any number of things.”
“You never told me that.” Helena’s eyes became huge. “She never told me that. She told me about other stuff from Japan—happier stuff.” She stared into her cup of tea. “Poor Obāchan.”
“She doesn’t think of herself that way, Helena. You know her.” My mother, persisting with her garden and her backbreaking laundry chores. “She never gives up.”
My mother and her iron will, forged during World War II. The most I had ever had to contend with was minuscule in comparison. “You have easy life,” Mom would tell me often.
“So you think she won’t survive.” Helena looked at Yasuo. Her voice was flat.
Yasuo’s chest moved up and down. He glanced at me instead and said nothing.
I reached out and gripped his hand. “I need to do this for her.”
Yasuo smiled briefly. “I do not want to give you false hope.” He gazed pensively over his teacup. What was he leaving out? “I have Taro’s address at home. If you have time, I will take you.”
YASUO LIVED in downtown Kumamoto City. His apartment was two rooms, separated by a sliding rice-paper wall. We took off our shoes and padded across the light-colored hardwood to a low table. “I like traditional Japanese design,” Yasuo said, inviting us to sit on cushions, then going into the kitchen. “Clean, simple, nothing to dust.”
I agreed. I had always liked what I knew of Japanese design. Westerners put the colors all over the room; the Japanese were more monochromatic, with colors concentrated in one spot. The Japanese way seemed so much simpler: a framing of views, using what you had, not creating clutter to tire your eyes.
We heard water running. A door opened and a man appeared. He was Yasuo’s age, his dark hair clipped in a buzz cut, wearing a white button-down, untucked over trousers. “Ah, sumimasen.” He bowed, backing up. “Yasuo, you didn’t tell me we had company,” he said in Japanese, then switched to English. “I am Hiroshi.”
“Sorry. I am Suiko and this is Helena, my daughter.” I shook his hand. “We’re Yasuo’s cousins.” He had to be Yasuo’s roommate.
Yasuo returned with a tea tray and set it on the low table. “They want to know about Taro. They are on a mission from Shoko.” Hiroshi looked doubtful. “Tomorrow, I can take you to the boat to Uwajima, on Shikoku, where Taro lives. It is only an hour from Kyushu. I do not believe the boats run late in the day.” Yasuo poured tea and offered little cakes resembling green Twinkies.
“Are you Yasuo’s boyfriend?” Helena asked.
“That’s not any of our business,” I whispered. Helena clamped her mouth shut and blushed.
Yasuo froze. Hiroshi inclined his head. “You are observant, little girl.”
I gave Helena a cake. She put it in her mouth, still blushing.
Hiroshi changed the subject. “Have you kept in touch with Taro?”
“Not at all.” I sipped some tea.
Tomorrow we would see Taro. My stomach fluttered. I was not used to meeting relatives. I had only met my Maryland relatives once in my whole life, during a trip to see my dying grandmother when I was four. It had been a long time since Dad went home, too.
All we had was our immediate family. No one visited at the holidays. No one even bothered to send Christmas cards anymore. Not even me.
Hiroshi leaned over. “Yasuo, you did warn them about the terrible ogre, no?”
Yasuo looked at us. “I did, but they still want to chance being eaten.” He smiled. “Today, I thought you might like to see where our grandfather was priest, and where your mother grew up.”
THE KONKO CHURCH WAS IMPOSING. Stone steps, guarded by two creatures that looked like lions crossed with dogs, led up to a traditional Japanese building with a red tile roof curving toward the sky. I touched a statue that I remembered from a photo of my grandparents, taken on these steps. Had my grandparents touched it, too, or my mother, when she was a child?
I imagined what my mother looked like as a child. The only photos of my mother from grade school were of her entire school group, and