How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [89]
I smoothed her hair, alarmed. “Rest, Mom, don’t talk.”
She gestured to the water pitcher on the side table and I gave her water out of a straw and cup. “First,” she said slowly, licking her dry lips, “I very proud you. Thank you for go Japan.”
“You’re welcome.” I sat.
She pointed to me. “You are beautiful. Smart. Now be happy. Okay?”
“Okay.” I looked at her monitors. Her heart had sped up a little bit. “Please, Mom, get some rest.”
“No. I need talk. I fine. Look me.” She cleared her throat. “What I want tell now is hard. Long, long time ago, I had another boyfriend. Before Daddy. Another I no mention. Ronin. The real, real reason Taro hate me.”
“He doesn’t hate you, Mom, not anymore. You can rest easy.” I moved my chair close to her. “Go back to sleep, now. You’re still tired.”
“I no can wait. One thing I know, I no change anything. But you no can tell Mike. He no can handle. Daddy no even want me tell you.” Haltingly, she began the story.
“Once, a long long time ago, there a young woman who wanted good life. New life. So this what she did.”
Mom shut her eyes, but she would not cease speaking. She talked for an hour, until I was back in Japan with her, with Ronin, until the whole story had spilled, hidden, gritty pearls out of an oyster. When at last she had finished, she opened her eyes again to look into mine.
I put my forehead on the edge of her bed. My brother was my half brother. What an enormous burden for my mother to carry all these decades. I looked at her. “Is that the only reason you married Dad? Because you were pregnant?”
“I love Daddy,” Mom said quietly. “Not then. I do now. Love can grow.” She touched my head. “No time in this life think ‘What if?’ Just got do. Okay?”
I wiped at my eyes. “Do you wish you had left with Ronin?”
She did not pause. “Not possible.”
I gazed at her, thinking about my brother and his biological father. “Does Dad know?”
She nodded. “Special kind man. He love Mike no matter what.” Her eyes clouded with tears.
I grasped her hand. “But Mike doesn’t know.”
“No.” Her voice creaked.
“Mom, you need to tell him.”
“How? He break.”
I thought of him showing up at the hospital, at the fire. “Mom, he’s not a little boy. He can handle it.”
She sighed. “Maybe you right, Suiko.” She shifted her weight. “I so lucky. You such good girl. Never thought I would have daughter. First thought daughter was no good, but you . . .”
I kept my gaze on her blankets. “Do you really feel that way, Mom? You’re not saying that because of the drugs?”
“No. Not ’cause drugs. Don’t be crazy, Sue.”
I inhaled, daring to ask one more question now, while she was open. “It’s just that it seems like you were so ashamed of me. Because of Craig. Because I can’t be everything you wanted me to be.”
Mom snorted. “Me? ’Shamed you? How can be? Don’t you listen what I did before you?” She hit her bed lightly with her hand. “You ’member, Suiko. You good, good girl. Things no work out way want, yeah?”
“I know.” I thought about my daughter, of how I was different and the same from my mother, of how Helena would be different and the same as me.
Mom looked out the window. In the distance, a pale moon was appearing. “Full moon come up.”
A giant, silvery moon. I was struck with a memory from my childhood. “Remember when you told me the story of the moon princess whenever there was a full moon, or if I couldn’t sleep?”
“Little bit.” She moved her legs around.
When I was a child, I was an insomniac, waking and sleeping in fits. My parents’ room was catty-corner to mine, and we always slept with our doors open. If going back to sleep took me an especially long time, I’d whimper and Mom would materialize beside my bed, smelling of cold cream and White Shoulders perfume. “What wrong?” she would ask. “Sick?”
“Tell me the story about the princess,” I’d whisper.
Mom would sit on my bed and tell me about the princess who came down from the moon. She would go