How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [86]
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.”
No word in English has the same connotations as the Japanese sayonara, so you can use the term “good-bye.” In English, you can say “good-bye” even in casual departure situations as well as in situations where you’re unlikely to see the person again. “See you later” is even more casual, and regionalized variations may be acceptable.
—from the chapter “Turning American,”
How to Be an American Housewife
Twelve
As 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