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Shizuko's Daughter

Henry Holt and Company

HOUSEBOUND

(March 1969)

The village carpenter was standing on the bare rafters and throwing pink and white rice cakes to the crowd below. Shizuko lay on the couch in her living room in Kobe and dreamed that she was among the village children in red and blue kimonos chasing the hard, dry rice cakes that came down, like colored pebbles, from the sky. In the village where she was born, that was how people had celebrated the building of a new house. It was difficult to catch the cakes in midair. Shizuko stopped. She picked the cakes off the ground before the others trampled on them and wrapped them in her white handkerchief to take home for her mother to wash and toast over the fire. The other children were still running around. Shizuko noticed that they were not the children she had played with before the War, but her daughter Yuki's school friends. But where is Yuki? Shizuko wondered. She is not here because I am. She can't come until I am gone. The next moment, the house and the children had vanished. Shizuko was in a park. She was watching Yuki chasing the white cherry blossom petals that were blowing about in the wind. They were coming down like confetti. Yuki ran around and around the tree in her pink spring dress and caught the petals in midair. If she's not careful, Shizuko thought, she will fall. Shizuko tried to call her, but her voice would not come. Yuki continued to run in circles around the cherry tree.

* * *

The telephone was ringing in the hallway. Shizuko woke up and pushed aside her blanket. As she got up from the couch and walked slowly toward the noise, she thought: In a month, the cherry trees will be in blossom. It was strange to think that. Spring was late this year; the first week of March had been gray and damp. I won't be here to see, she thought. I wonder if the dead can see or smell the flowers. She thought of how her mother put fresh flowers on the Buddhist altar every week in memory of her son who had been killed in the War.

"Mama, can you hear me?" Yuki's voice sounded anxious on the other end as Shizuko picked up the receiver. In the background, a stereo was playing a symphony. "I'm calling from Miss Uozumi's house."

"What happened to your piano lesson?" Shizuko asked. "I thought you were supposed to be taking it now." She blinked and tried to clear her head. She was still thinking of Yuki running around the cherry tree in her dream.

"That's what I'm calling about," Yuki said. "Miss Uozumi's going to be about an hour late. Her mother let me in and gave me some tea. Miss Uozumi told her to have me wait. Is that all right?"

"That's fine," Shizuko said.

"I won't be home until five or five thirty, just in time for supper. Are you sure it's all right?"

"Of course," Shizuko said. "How was school?" She knew she was stalling. Let me hear her voice just a while longer, she thought. I can't let her go. Not yet.

"So-so," Yuki said. "I scored two runs in baseball. Two of the boys on the other team said I bragged about it, so I had a fight with them during lunch break. Don't worry, Mama. Nobody was really hurt, and the teacher didn't scold anyone. I scraped my knee a little when I fell down, but I punched one of them, right in the stomach. I was winning before the teacher came and stopped us. You're not worried, are you? I'm not hurt, really."

"You should be careful, Yuki," Shizuko said, remembering her dream. "You may get hurt someday."

"I don't think so. Most of the kids won't fight me anymore. They're afraid of me."

"Be careful all the same."

"Sure," Yuki said. "What are you going to do this afternoon? You sound kind of tired. Are you all right?"

"I just woke up from a nap."

"I didn't mean to wake you up. Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"No," Shizuko said. "I'm awake now."

Yuki seemed to hesitate. "You're sure you don't want me to come right away? I can fix supper."

"No," Shizuko said. "You should wait for your lesson. You prepared for it all week."

"But I can practice the same pieces another week. I'm sure Miss Uozumi won't mind. She's always telling me to practice more. I'll tell her mother I have to go home."

"Don't do that," Shizuko said. "I'm only tired. You'd better go now."

"All right. I'll come home as soon as I'm done. Maybe we can eat out — then you won't have to cook. I'm sure Father won't come home for supper. Can we go out to eat?"

"Maybe," Shizuko said. Her own voice sounded strange. She wondered if Yuki could hear it. "Yuki," she said. "Be good. You know I love you."

"I love you too, Mama. I'll see you later."

Shizuko held the receiver for a moment and waited for Yuki to hang up. When the click did not come, she hesitated for another moment and then put down the receiver. She pictured Yuki waiting on the other end for her to hang up first, her face puzzled and uncertain.

Shizuko went to the den, where she kept her sewing machine, ironing board, knitting basket, and a small desk for writing letters and taking care of the bills. Perhaps I haven't done so badly, she told herself as she thought of her fifteen years of marriage. Then she saw the cloth she had cut out for Yuki's new skirt and pinned to the sewing board. Triangular pieces of white cotton and maroon trimming, they reminded her of butterfly wings. She had meant to finish the skirt. But it was nearly three now; there was just enough time to write two notes — one for her husband, Hideki, and one for Yuki.

Somebody else will finish the skirt for her, Shizuko thought as she sat down at the desk and picked up her pen. She looked at the pad of blank paper and tried to concentrate. There was so much she had planned to do — she had even meant to clean out her closet and drawers, throw away some things and pack the rest to be saved for Yuki or given away to relatives. She had wanted to spare the others the trouble, the unpleasantness. She remembered the rainy morning after her mother-in-law's death, two years earlier. Her father-in-law and her husband had left her and Yuki, only ten at the time, to dispose of the clothes and jewelry and books. "This is an awful thing to have to do," Yuki had said as she poured mothballs into a box of clothes to be given away to charity. "Why don't they help?" "It's women's work," Shizuko had told her. It's always women's work, she thought now as she sat at the desk with a sheet of blank paper, to deal with the consequences of other people's deaths, their mistakes, broken promises.

She did not know how to begin her note for Hideki. She thought of how she had wasted the day trying to put her things in order. In the end, she had given up. Unable to continue with her packing, she had moved about the house, straightening the vases and pictures in the living room, cleaning the windows in the kitchen, polishing the mirror in her room — all aimless tasks now — until she had lain down on the couch under the blanket and fallen asleep. Even that had seemed aimless, her need for temporary rest, when rest was all that was before her. And now, it was past three and she had barely enough time to write the two notes.

Please forgive me, she started to write in large, bold letters, for my weakness, for the trouble I have caused you. As I have forgiven your coldness, she thought, all the hours and days you were too busy to spare for Yuki and me, even the nights you have spent with another woman. These things I have forgiven, have had to forgive. I do not do this rashly, she continued, but after much consideration. This is best for all of us. Please do not feel guilty in any way. What has happened is entirely my responsibility. This is the best for myself as well as for you. I am almost happy at this last hour and wish you to be.

She signed the note and took out another sheet of paper. She knew what she wanted to tell Yuki. In spite of this, she wrote, please believe that I love you. People will tell you that I've done this because I did not love you. Don't listen to them. When you grow up to be a strong woman, you will know that this was for the best. My only concern now is that you will be the first to find me. I'm sorry. Call your father at work and let him take care of everything. Shizuko stopped to read over what she had written. This is the best I can do for her, she thought, to leave her and save her from my unhappiness, from growing up to be like me. Yuki had so much to look forward to. At twelve, she was easily the brightest in her class; all her teachers said so. The art teacher had been particularly impressed by her watercolors. They reflected, he said, her bold intelligence and imagination as well as her skills. You are a strong person, Shizuko continued. You will no doubt get over this and be a brilliant woman. Don't let me stop or delay you. I love you. As she signed the note, Shizuko pictured Yuki running to her in her new skirt, the white cotton and the maroon trimmings fluttering in the spring breeze like the sail of a new ship. Only, I won't be there to catch you, she thought, but you will do fine by yourself. You will be all right.

It was nearly four o'clock. I must hurry now, Shizuko thought. She walked to the kitchen, closed the door behind her, and laid the two notes on the table. Through the clear windows above the sink, she could see the fir trees in the backyard. Their dark foliage loomed against the damp gray sky.

She hesitated a second before she turned on the gas. No, she told herself as she turned it on. There's nothing I've left undone that can be done now, there is nothing now, and I must sit down. She sat on the floor, with the table and chair legs rising above her head, and thought, This must be how the world looks to children, huge shapes, and lines going nowhere. The gas smelled almost sweet, but it was a foul sort of sweetness. The smell reminded her of the tiny yellow flowering weeds that had grown near her parents' house, on her way to school. The flowers, shaped like little stars, had smelled foul and sweet. She could not remember what they were called. In the fall, they would turn into white fuzz that flew about and got caught in her hair.

"I am almost happy at this last hour," she repeated the last words of her note to her husband, "and I wish you to be." No, she thought, suddenly springing up to her feet. I cannot say that. That is a lie. I cannot, must not, tell a lie now. She was dizzy. She groped for the notes on the table — it was hard to tell which was which now — found the right one, and sat back on the floor with it in her hand.

She could scarcely breathe. I can't light a match now, she thought. Shizuko held the note near her face for another moment, making sure that it was the one she wanted, and then tore it into tiny bits. Sick for breath, she tossed up the bits of paper and watched them come down like confetti, like the white petals of cherry blossoms, and the rice cakes falling from the rafters midway to the sky, before she gave herself up to the near-approaching darkness.

THE WAKE

(March 1969)

The men were rearranging the living room for the wake. Upstairs, her aunt Aya, just arrived on the afternoon southbound train from Tokyo, began to put the clothes into wooden storage boxes for the attic. Yuki took down her mother's blue housecoat from the bathroom door and brought it to her aunt. A whole day had passed since her mother's death. Her father had not touched a single thing that had belonged to her mother, as though he thought of death as contagious.

Aya took the housecoat from Yuki and put it away. "You can wear some of these when you grow up," she said, her hand sweeping over the clothes inside the box.

Yuki sat down and watched as her aunt went back to the open closet. It was already half empty. Aya continued to take the remaining blouses and dresses off the hangers, fold them, and lay them inside the boxes. Off the hangers, the clothes suddenly collapsed and hung limp from Aya's hands. Yuki breathed in the faint smell of sawdust from the boxes. The soft silks and cottons Aya was putting away still smelled of her mother. They were mostly in shades of green and blue. Soon, the closet was empty and the boxes were full. Her aunt poured out a handful of mothballs into each box and closed the lid on her mother's colors. Yuki imagined the smell of mothballs and dust filtering through them in the dark.

Aya shut the closet door and went to the bureau. From the top drawers, she pulled out a handful of silk scarves and jewelry and turned back to Yuki. "You've been so good," she said. "At your age, it must be so difficult."

Yuki looked away and at the photograph on the wall. On its glass frame the late-afternoon sun cast weak shadows of the fir trees outside, their branches swaying now and then in the breeze. It was like a double exposure: the moving branches outside superimposed on the still photograph of her family three or four years ago. In the photograph her mother stood between Yuki and her father, one hand on his arm and the other on Yuki's shoulder.

"Nobody would think you were only twelve," Aya said. "The way you've been acting, with such composure." She began to fold the scarves and stack them up on a pile of small articles to be distributed among friends and relatives as keepsakes. "You didn't even cry once."

Yuki was sick of such remarks: "You've been so good," "You're only twelve," "So brave." It seemed as though no one had said anything else to her since late yesterday afternoon, when, coming home from her piano lesson, she had found her mother unconscious on the kitchen floor.

She had dropped her books, turned off the gas, and called her father at work. He had told her not to call an ambulance and create a commotion — he would fetch a doctor himself and come home immediately. While she waited for them, Yuki opened the windows to let out the gas. Then she sat down and touched her mother's forehead. It felt surprisingly cool. The air from the windows might be too cold, she thought. She went and lowered the windows. Her mother was no longer breathing, and Yuki was not sure exactly when her breath had stopped. Now, a day later, the smell of gas seemed to cling to Yuki's clothes, her hair. She washed her hair over and over to get it out, but it lingered.

After the doctor had said that there was no hope, Yuki walked into the den and found the white cotton and maroon trimmings cut out for her new skirt and laid out on the sewing board. The triangular pieces, with silver tacks scattered over them, looked like the remnants of a shipwreck. And Yuki thought: When did you decide to do it? Just this morning you were trying to sew.

Even then, she didn't cry. She picked up her mother's address book from the desk and went to the hallway to phone her relatives and friends, absentmindedly staring at her mother's handwriting, while her father was in the kitchen with the two policemen who had been called by the doctor.

The sound of jangling metal made Yuki look up. Her aunt was now going through the jewelry and cosmetics left in the other drawers. They went in two piles, to be saved or discarded. Most of the jewelry would be saved, except for bracelets whose clasps no longer fastened, odd earrings that did not match, all the small broken things her mother had kept. The cosmetics would be discarded. As Aya swept a handful of lipstick and eye shadow off the pile into the wastebasket, one roll of lipstick slipped through her fingers and fell on the floor. The cap came off and the lipstick rolled to the edge of the carpet.

"Your poor mother," Aya said. She turned aside and pressed her fingers to her eyes.

Yuki picked up the lipstick. Its tip, cut at a sixty-degree angle, had scarcely been blunted. She put the cap back on and dropped the roll in the wastebasket, thinking of how the lipstick, too, smelled of her mother.

* * *

She had not been downstairs since the early afternoon. Yuki stood at the door of the living room, unable to go in. The room looked completely unfamiliar. She couldn't believe it was the same room where she and her mother had sat listening to music or drawing together, drinking tea after dinner and talking. Yuki stared silently at the makeshift altar, the coffin in the center, the white and yellow chrysanthemums drenched in the smoke from the incense sticks. White drapery was everywhere, covering the floor and the walls in large, billowy folds. Yuki tried to remember where each piece of furniture had been: the armchair where her mother had sat, the glass table on which they had put their cups of tea and plates of cake, the footstool where she had sat, always close enough to reach over and hand her mother a drawing to look at or a book to read, the piano she had played while her mother closed her eyes, listening. All these things had been moved out of the room or shoved behind the drapery.

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Excerpted from Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori. Copyright © 1993 Kyoko Mori. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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