How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [71]
We walked around the back to an open-air pavilion. Yasuo extended his arm toward it. “Many rites take place here. It is open to nature, to kami. Kami is everything sacred.” He gestured to the landscaped grounds of pine trees, grass, and flowers. “In the back is the cemetery. I thought you would like to see where our grandparents are.” We followed him down a path that veered sharply left.
Hundreds of headstones and short stone lanterns were built into a hillside and on a small, flat piece of land below it. Yasuo tapped a lantern. “These are torı̄. They are the gateway between sacred and profane. Between our world and the next, I should say.”
He stopped at a headstone marked with a plain gray torı̄. “Here are our grandparents.”
“Are those their names?” I pointed to the symbols.
“Yes.”
I put my hand on the stone, feeling the coarseness of the unpolished granite scratch my palm. “Our grandmother died well before I was born, but I knew Grandfather. He was a fine man,” Yasuo said. “He always had time for me, to take me fishing, tell stories, play ball. He taught me to observe, and how to draw.”
I had never known a grandfather. Yasuo’s gentle smile reminded me of what I would never have. What would he have done with me, his granddaughter? I thought of what Helena’s grandfathers did with her. Bounced me on his knee, told me stories? “Did he give you candy?” I asked, my voice low.
Yasuo’s grin broadened. “Always. Foil-wrapped chocolates. Why do you ask?”
My father liked to have butterscotch candies for Helena, producing them from his pocket to hear her delighted yelps. “I’m trying to get a picture of him, know what he was like.” Know what he would have been like with me.
Helena smiled at me and put her hand on my arm. “You okay, Mom?”
I nodded. Swallowing hard, I asked, “Did he ever talk about our mother?”
Yasuo nodded, dusting off the top of the headstone with a handkerchief. “He was always sorry that Taro and Shoko didn’t get along. Grandfather would have been glad to see her again. We all would have. But America was too far and expensive for us to visit.”
Our mother had never seen her parents’ graves. On the anniversaries of their deaths, Mom always said a prayer for them and put their favorite fruit—tangerines—in her shrine. She said they spoke to her in her dreams. No one spoke to me.
“You have a camera? I’ll take your picture.” Yasuo motioned for us to stand by the headstone. “In Japan, we take pictures at funerals. You know that?”
“Yes, sometimes relatives send them to my mother.” Until recently, it had been Aunt Suki’s duty. Now I supposed it belonged to no one, unless I asked Yasuo to do it.
He snapped the photo, then checked his watch. “Time to go. Hiroshisan’s famous sukiyaki will be ready soon.”
Returning home for visits is not a business for the faint of heart. The culture shock you will feel upon returning to Japan is as bad as when you left it. We do not, therefore, recommend returning unless absolutely necessary. Visits may lead to symptoms such as melancholy and longing for things which can no longer be.
—from the chapter “Turning American,”
How to Be an American Housewife
Seven
Over Hiroshi’s delicious sukiyaki—a pot of thinly sliced beef, vegetables, and broth simmering in the middle of the table over a gas flame—I told Yasuo more about how we got to Japan and how we went to his old house.
Yasuo shook his head. “The man you saw at my old house is named Kobe. He and I broke up. He was very angry about it and told Taro. Luckily, Taro was no longer the principal, or he would have fired me.” Yasuo sighed. “I had kept this secret from the family until then. Now Taro has disowned me.”
I had thought my mother would disown me for getting a divorce. She had told me from a young age that marriage was forever. At the very least, I expected an “I told you so.” When she found out—in a crying