by Kyoko Mori
I put down my father’s letter and pick up Tatsuo’s. It’s addressed only to Fuku.
July 30, 1969
We had a long rainy season followed immediately by oppressive heat. The weather is hard to bear. I hope you are all well at your house.
Four months have passed since the tragedy our two families shared. You must have felt so much sorrow and pain. They say nothing compares with parents’ affection for their child. Only those who have suffered the same loss can understand the terrible grief you and your husband must feel.
I am one of the few who can understand. My second son was lost in the atomic explosion over Hiroshima. He was only in middle school. I have thus experienced the same loss and can truly sympathize with your sorrow about Takako’s death.
As you must have heard already, the woman who is to become the children’s second mother has been here since May. The children returned to their house as soon as she arrived. We were all worried about how they would get along with her. But she is cheerful and straightforward by temperament; she works very hard to build a good home for them and their father. As a result, two months later now, both children are living happily with their new mother.
The most important thing for the children is to forget that tragedy and begin a new life with their new mother. That is essential if the four of them are to find peace and happiness together as a family. Nothing in the world must be allowed to interfere with that happiness. With this in mind, I talked to my son on the day before the woman’s arrival. I told him that the four of them must forget the past if they were to have a good future together. For that purpose, though it sounds cruel, the children must not be allowed to see their mother’s family and friends until they are in college or even older. At present, if they saw their grandparents, uncles, aunts, they would not be able to forget their first mother. Remembering her would bring them only sadness and resentment toward their new mother. It is of utmost importance, I told my son, to prevent any conflict between the children and their new mother. Getting along with her is the most important thing in their lives now.
Of course, you must think of Takako daily and worry about her children. I feel your pain as if it were my own. Nevertheless, for the reasons I mentioned above, I ask you to give up the children for the next several years. I must, then, decline your invitation for them to spend their summer vacation at your house this year or any other time in the future.
It may seem heartless to make such a request to you and yours, who are related to the children by strong ties of blood. All the same, I ask that you understand and honor our reasoning. You will hardly disagree with me if you think of what is best for them.
Next month when the priest comes to read the sutras for Takako in the morning, I will notify your daughter Keiko to visit the altar. This same priest from my temple has been reading the sutras for my late wife the last eleven years.
Please send my regards to your husband. I hope he, too, will understand my position.
I pray that you take care of your health as the heat continues to be oppressive.
Respectfully, Tatsuo Mori
I picture Tatsuo in his living room, laying his hand on his chest every time he mentioned his heart problems. I am glad that I didn’t show much concern for him, that I didn’t even say it was good to see him. I can’t believe that he would actually use his own son’s death to justify his conduct, to appear sympathetic in such a false and insincere way.
“Grandmother,” I call to Fuku. But when she turns to me, I don’t know how to begin. She is more than twenty years older than when she received these letters. Maybe I shouldn’t even bring them up. What if she has forgotten about them? Wouldn’t she be better off? But it’s too late. She is staring across the room at the letters I’m holding up. “These letters,” I say. “They’re from my father and grandfather. Do you remember them?”
She gestures toward the drawer I have pulled out. “There are some more from your father.” She turns away to watch TV.
I pull out the rest of the envelopes and shuffle through them. She is right—I find three more letters. I yank them out of the envelopes and skim them. In one, he informs my grandparents of his upcoming marriage to Michiko. “When I think of Takako,” he writes, “I wish I could stay single for the rest of my life to honor her memory. But unfortunately, I am burdened with two children. The woman I am to marry has been raising them since last May, and the children both love her. For that reason, I thought it best to make our union official as soon as it was seemly to do so, after the one-year anniversary of Takako’s passing.” The letter is dated March 21, 1970. The others, from the spring and the fall of the following year, are short and to the point: he reports on the two-year memorial service for my mother, to which he did not invite my grandparents; he announces his promotion at Kawasaki and says that my brother and I continue to be quite happy with Michiko.
I put down the letters, wanting to destroy them. How could Hiroshi use my brother and me as an excuse for his remarriage when he had been seeing Michiko for years? How could he continue to lie about how everything was wonderful at our home? He had told Kenichi about Michiko in those few weeks they spent together after my mother’s death. He must have assumed that Kenichi would tell his parents at least some of what he knew. How could he, then, tell them such an obvious lie? I know that in Japan, a person is often excused for lying or concealing the truth if that helps to save face all around, if it spares both the teller and the hearer from scrutinizing the painful truth. Under the circumstances, lying is considered to be harmless or even desirable—a way of showing polite regard for other people’s feelings. But what my father wrote saved only his own face. His motive for lying had nothing to do with politeness; he wasn’t interested in sparing my grandparents from anything, true or false. He went out of his way to say that my mother had not given us a very good education.
“That’s not all I got from your father,” Fuku says. “I tore up one letter. I was so angry at him.”
“The one you tore up was worse than these?”
“He said I could never see you again, not even after you grew up. He said your mother was crazy, that he wanted you to forget her. I was so angry.”
“I’m sorry.” I pick up the letters and hold them up in her direction. “What should I do with these? Do you want me to tear them up?”
“No. Keep them if you want to.”
I hesitate, half wanting to get rid of them. But the letters are concrete and irrefutable evidence of my father’s and grandfather’s heartlessness. It’s taken me twenty-one years to come across them. I put the rubber band around them and drop them into the pile of things I’m keeping.
“I might burn them later,” I tell Fuku. “They’re full of lies. I’m ashamed to be my father’s daughter. I can’t think of anyone more dishonest or inconsiderate.”
Fuku is looking toward me, but she says nothing in reply. I cannot read her expression at all. She has never criticized my father’s character in my presence or in any of her letters. More than likely, she believes it’s my duty to show respect to him no matter how undeserving he is, because I am and will always be his child. I owe my life to him. If I were younger, she might even scold me for my bad manners, for speaking so disrespectfully. I wish she would, so I could protest and explain how I feel. I would tell her that I cannot show respect to people who I know will never return it—it’s one thing to humor an older person I love; it’s quite another, though, when the other person has never won my affection or respect in the first place. I want to talk about that difference to her. But she is saying nothing, and I don’t know how to bring up the subject on my own. So I continue to look through the drawers, now and then stopping to read the letters my younger cousins wrote in high school and college.
“Your father feels very badly now,” Fuku says suddenly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He came to see me and cried.”
I stop looking through the letters. “He came to see you?”
“He said he wanted to go up to the family grave and give some flowers to Takako and to your grandfather. He brought the flowers.”
“When was this?”
Fuku thinks for a while. “The year before last, in the spring. That was the last spring I could still walk up the hill to the cemetery. I can’t manage that now.”
“You mean you and he went up there together two springs ago?” That would have been the year before I saw him in New York. He never mentioned it.
“He stood before the grave and cried. Big tears were rolling down his cheeks. He said Takako was such a sweet, gentle person. He feels very badly now. He cried a long, long time. You shouldn’t be so hard on him.”
I don’t know what to say. For a moment, I think that Fuku might be wrong. Maybe she mistook someone else for my father, or perhaps she’s remembering him from some other time, though I don’t know when my father and Fuku were ever alone together.
“I wanted him to stay for lunch,” Fuku continues. “I didn’t have much in the house to make him a good meal. So I asked him if he wanted to go to that restaurant down the street. It was new then. I had heard they served good lunches. I thought we could eat together and remember Takako and your grandfather. I hadn’t seen your father for almost twenty years.”
“Did he have lunch with you, then?”
“No. He had to get back to the station to take a train. He had been on his way to Okayama on a business trip. But when the conductor called out Himeji, he suddenly wanted to come and see Takako’s grave here. He said he just jumped off the train, bought the flowers, and called a cab. It was like some spirit was telling him to do it, he said, but he had to leave in a hurry because he was expected at a business meeting.”
Now I know that he was really here. The part about leaving in a hurry for a meeting sounds just like him. My grandmother couldn’t have imagined or dreamed it.
“It was enough that he stopped by,” Fuku is saying. “Your father sure regrets the way he behaved. He feels badly. I understand.”
I pick up his old letters from the pile and put them down again. Aside from crying at the grave, my father has done nothing to show his remorse about my mother’s death or the way he acted afterward. Even by my grandmother’s account, he did not apologize to her. He only said that my mother had been a sweet, gentle person—as if this were news to anyone. He hurried off without having lunch. His crying doesn’t mean that much to me. After all, he had cried in front of Kenichi, too. That didn’t stop him from having Michiko move in a few weeks later. It didn’t stop him from behaving in the most thoughtless and self-righteous way possible toward my mother’s family. No matter how much he cries, he can never redeem himself in my mind.
I look up from the pile of letters and meet Fuku’s eyes. I would like to tell her my true feelings. It would be a relief to me. But I look away and say nothing. My grandmother is ninety-three. If she wants to believe that my father is sorry now, if that gives her peace, why should I bring up my own anger and stir up the resentment she has overcome? Why should I come back here after all these years to bring her anger and worry and hurt? She wants to remember her former son-in-law as a man crying at his wife’s grave, not as the writer of a letter that made her so angry she had to tear it up. By living so far away, by choosing not to come to Japan till now even to see her, I have done nothing to comfort her in her old age. How can I, then, fail to treat her with consideration on this short visit at least—to put her feelings before mine and try to reassure her that she need not worry about me? Why shouldn’t I pretend that my father is not such a bad man? Though it’s perhaps too late, I want to be a granddaughter who respects her grandmother’s wishes, even if it means not saying what I really think. But it’s hard. Going through the rest of the letters, I stop now and then to compose myself, to hold back from telling her how much my father has hurt me, how determined I am never to forgive him.
I put the drawers back into the bureau and ask Fuku, “Remember when Ken Nichan and Neine brought over some of my mother’s kimonos for you to keep?” I try not to dwell on how this, too, reminds me of the bad way my father acted, showing up without any warning at Kenichi’s house one evening to drop off my mother’s things.
“Yes, I remember that very well.”
“Ken Nichan said I should look for them and take them back with me. I would also like Grandfather’s diaries. Remember he said I could have them when I grew up if I kept a journal, too?”
Fuku nods.
“Do you know where these things are?”
“They could be anywhere in the house. But you’re welcome to them and anything else you want. They’ll be ashes soon when I die.”
I begin to open and close the drawers, trunks, and closets all over the house. I don’t come across the diaries, though I find four of the kimonos wrapped in thick white paper. Fuku follows me from room to room.
“Look at this,” she says, opening the drawers and closets after me. “I want you to look at this and remember.”
She shows me drawers full of new dish towels, stockings, underwear still wrapped in plastic.
“If something happens to me,” she says, “I want you to tell everyone where I keep things. Did you see? Everything’s new. I’m counting on you to remember. When people come to the house for my funeral, Sayo shouldn’t dry dishes with dirty towels. You know where the new ones are. You tell her.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll remember.” I don’t want to insult her by not taking her seriously, so I don’t say, “You’re not going to die for a long time yet.” There is no point in reminding her, either, that I live in a foreign country, that I might not be at her funeral.
“There were so many things I wanted to leave you,” she sighs. “But they all turned into rice after the war.” I know, from my mother’s stories, that Fuku had to sell her best kimonos to raise money to feed her family.
“Here it is.” Fuku pulls out a dresser drawer, takes a silver gray kimono, and holds it toward me in both her hands. “Takako felt sorry for me because I had been forced to sell my kimonos. So later, she sewed me new ones with her own hands. This is the last one she gave me. She came all the way from Kobe to see me on Mother’s Day to give me this kimono and some peonies from her garden. Here. You take it to remember us by.”
In my hands, the kimono is heavy because of its solid weave. It’s the color of the sky on days when it rains continuously but not hard.
“When did she give this to you? Which Mother’s Day was it?”
“It was the year after you moved from the apartment to that house. Your mother took the early morning train to come to see me and had to leave in just a few hours.”
That would have been May 1968, ten months before her death. She had gotten through the first winter in our new house and thought that whatever bothered her was gone. Every morning, she rose at dawn to clear the weeds and overgrown bushes from the yard. She planted lettuce, parsley, tomatoes, eggplant, zinnias, pansies. She didn’t foresee that in October, the red leaves falling from the maples would remind her of those red letters summoning people to the front during the war: sure invitations to die.
From another drawer, Fuku pulls out a black haori jacket and turns it so I can see the crest embroidered on the back in white silk.
“This is the Nagai crest.” She points to the embroidery. “It’s an orange blossom. Your great-grandmother Kayo made this haori. She spun the silk herself, wove and sewed the haori, and did the embroidery. I always meant to pass this on to Takako. Now I’m giving it to you.”
Fuku puts the haori on top of the gray kimono I’m holding. The silk is closely and evenly woven. I am not the first spinner and weaver in my family, though Kayo’s spinning wheel and loom would have been slightly different from the American models I use. I am pleased to know this about her—a great-grandmother I never met, who never imagined that her legacy would continue in a foreign country.
Still, the kimonos provide little consolation. I continue looking for the diaries,
for some more of my mother’s clothing, but I don’t find them. I’m sad for their loss and sadder still because nothing I take back will make up for the time I did not spend with my grandparents or the time my mother did not spend with us because she chose to die.
“I don’t know where the diaries are,” I say to Fuku.
“All turned into rice,” she mutters.
“Not the diaries,” I say, almost laughing because she is confusing the times. But I’m disturbed, too, by how her mind seems stuck on her losses—just as mine is. “Maybe Uncle Shiro knows where they are,” I say, trying to be cheerful. “He said on the phone that he went through Grandfather’s papers. I’ll ask him.”
I put the kimonos away and go out to the backyard with Fuku. It’s midafternoon—overcast and cool for this time of year. Fuku wants me to dig out the potatoes she planted in March. Digging carefully with her trowel, I pull out two of the plants by the stem. The potatoes are the size of children’s fists, almost too small to eat. I put them in a large aluminum pan from her kitchen.
“Dig those out, too,” Fuku says, waving her hand toward the four remaining potato plants. “I have no reason to save them.” She looks even smaller here in the yard, among the rows of plants. While I harvest the potatoes, she squats in the next row and picks the lettuce, breaking off the outer leaves and keeping the heads intact. “Aren’t you hungry yet?” she asks me.
“No. It’s only three.”
“I hope Keiko gets here soon. I want her to make supper. I don’t want to ask Sayo, and you’re my guest so you shouldn’t have to do it.”
“Supper is a long time away. Let’s not worry about it yet.”
The potatoes, the lettuce, and some beans are the only vegetables she is growing. The rest are flowers: garden pinks and lantern flowers, dahlias, zinnias. Purple chrysanthemums are already flowering in the corner where my grandfather Takeo used to plant his tomato vines that grew to be big bushes. After my swim in the river, I would bring a saltshaker and a damp cloth and sit between the rows to eat the tomatoes off the vine. I was allowed to eat as many as I wanted. They were among the few things I ate without being coaxed or threatened.
