How to Be an American Housewife

by Margaret Dilloway

  “Not too hot for me.” I put my hand in to show her. “Hot water get off gunk, see?” I dipped a plate that had dried beans on it into the water to show her. “Now take rag and scrub.”

  I watched her make mounds out of the soap. “Mom, this is boring,” she said in a whiny voice after a second. “Besides, it’s still too hot.”

  “You get used to.” I showed her how to clean the plates in a circular motion. “Then feel plate, see if all food got off.”

  She tested it again. “It’s cooler now.” She washed a few, rinsing them in clean water and clattering them onto the drying rack.

  I examined these. “No. Food on. Do again.”

  “Where?”

  I pointed to a speck.

  “Can’t you just wipe it off with the dishtowel?”

  “Learn do right.” I put the dish back into the sink. I would not let her get away with doing things halfway as I had with her brother.

  She huffed a sigh, running her hand over her sweaty forehead, and washed the plate over.

  I DIDN’T WISH to be short with Sue now. I stifled my impatience and made my voice pleasant. “You hungry, huh?” I put two pounds of pasta into the boiling water.

  “Is Mike eating with us?” Sue asked.

  “Think so.” When Sue was little, she would ask about Mike, who would show up occasionally, eat, and leave, without a word to her. “Mike loves you,” I would tell her. “He show in own way. Mike loner. Different.”

  “He should work for Animal Control,” Sue said. “He likes animals more than people.”

  It was true. Once there had been a rattlesnake in the garage, come down off the mountain.

  I screamed every time I saw a snake, even a garter snake. “Kill it!” I had shouted. But Mike had gone in there, no shoes, no shirt, only shorts, and gently pushed it out with a broom handle. “It’s not the snake’s fault we built here,” he said. The snake hightailed it to Lorraine’s house, where it got its head whacked off with a shovel.

  Sue was watching me like she thought I would break into a billion pieces. To distract her, I said, “Suiko-chan, get my big green cookbook. Want make peach oatmeal crisp dessert.”

  I stirred the noodles and the sauce. Sue opened the deep drawer where I kept my books. “What’s this? How to Be an American Housewife?” She showed the book to me. There was an illustration of a dark-haired woman holding a plattered turkey in one hand, a broom in the other, as her husband and clean kids applauded her from the dinner table.

  My heart sped up. I fought the desire to snatch it from her. “Housekeeping book. You take. Maybe give good idea.”

  Sue flipped through the book. “It’s written in Japanese and English?”

  “Yeah, so can learn language. Got recipes, tell about housekeeping.”

  “Cleaning floors, laundry, getting along in America? Did people really follow this?”

  “Mommy did.” Oh no. The photo was still in there. “Maybe you try, too. Let me see.” I held my hand out. I needed to get the photo.

  But Sue had already found it. “Cleaning Floors” was bookmarked with a photo, an old black-and-white of a Japanese man, printed on card stock. “Who’s this?”

  Ronin. I had forgotten the picture. “Nobody. Some guy I work with have crush, give me picture.” I kept my voice casual, even disdainful. “Too late make dessert.” I went into the dining area and sat down. I would begin telling her now. Now or never. “Suiko-chan, how many times I go back Japan?”

  “Never.”

  I used to talk about visiting all the time, when I still thought Charlie would get promoted and we would have the money for it. To show Sue where she came from, show Mike. I had stopped talking about it a long time ago.

  The timer beeped. “Noodle done.”

  Sue went to get the pot, but Charlie practically pushed her aside. “I’ll do it, sweetie.”

  Sue and I watched nervously as he limped to the sink. This man used to lift bleeding men from the ground to a stretcher. He would not admit to needing help with a pasta pot. He sloshed the water into the sink, the hot water splashing up at him.

  Sue put her head by mine. “Mom, what were you saying?”

  No. Not now. “Tell Helena and Mike time for dinner.”

  CHARLIE TURNED ON THE TV for the news. Mike came and sat with us, sticking his fork into his plate before his bottom touched the chair.

  Sue smiled uncomfortably at her brother. “You liking work?”

  “They could pay me more.” Mike was already halfway through his plate. “I gotta go.” He was out the door, a wind whipping through.

  I poked at my plate. My hunger had been low lately. Sue and Helena ate steadily. I waited for them to be done. Waiting was my best skill now.

  I should have removed that photo Sue found in the Housewife book. It belonged in a photo album, not stuck as a bookmark in a dusty, forgotten volume. Better that Sue had it and the book. I hoped she could use it.

  For the first years of my marriage, it had been my handbook, my guide to doing everything. Rules for living, American style. Sometimes it was right, and sometimes it was not. Sometimes I liked it, and sometimes I didn’t. But that was just like life. You don’t always get to do what you want, do you?

  In the Japanese household, it is assumed that the man will earn the money and the woman will manage it to accommodate the family’s needs.

  American husbands earn and manage money. Usually, an allowance will be given to his Wife to pay for household items. The Wife must stay within the household budget.

  A Wife must not challenge his maleness by taking over budgetary matters. Do not fall into the trap of acting Japanese in this area.

  —from the chapter “A Map to Husbands,”

  How to Be an American Housewife

  Twelve

  Sue stared at me from the couch in my living room. Her shirt had a bit of spaghetti sauce on it from the dinner we had just eaten. Like her father’s always did after every meal. I decided not to point this out presently. “I got tell you something.”

  Charlie and Helena clattered in the kitchen, getting dessert ready. I had not discussed my plan with Charlie. With anyone. I did not need to. Nobody else had a say.

  “Okay.” She shifted her body warily.

  I played with the crocheted doily on the arm of my chair. Probably she believed I was about to give her another lecture, another reason to tune me out. But her eyes were wide. Expectant. I realized that she was worried about me. I had seen her touch the dust on the table, eye the messes piling up everywhere. The same way I would have. Unlike me, however, she had said nothing.

  Of course she was worried. Her weak mother driving miles to see her, almost passing out in the grocery store. How much I had kept from her. I shouldn’t have. She was no child. Yet neither did I want to burden her.

  I began my story, careful of my words. I measured how much I should tell her. So much history to be shared, all before Charlie could finish scooping out the bowls of ice cream. Not of Ronin. No, Ronin was my own. I did not want this shame to be hers, too. There were some things she was better off not knowing, just as there must be things I did not know about her.

  I looked into my daughter’s eyes and talked.

  “FIND MY BROTHER FOR ME, ” I finished. There, I ended it.

  Sue looked down and wiped at her eyes. Tears. Good. Maybe I had affected her enough to say yes to me. She cleared her throat and rubbed at the spaghetti stain on her shirt with her finger. “I can’t go,” Sue said finally, as I had feared she might. “Too much work. They won’t let me take a vacation. And I don’t know if Craig’s parents can watch Helena.”

  I pleaded with her. “You must.”

  I felt weak, like crying. I hadn’t cried in years.

  “What about Mike?” Sue stared at the floor.

  This truth spilled bitterly. “Mike no can clean bathroom, how he gonna find Taro?”

  Sue twisted her lips. She knew I was right.

  Charlie came in and added his d
isagreements. “You’re not talking about Japan again, are you?”

  “You know about this?” Sue looked from him to me.

  “Shoko, you can’t go,” Charlie said to me.

  “She wants me to go, Dad.” Sue shook her head. “Mom, you were going to go and do this?”

  “Why not? I from Japan. I know way around.”

  Sue considered me carefully, that same studying look she had used since she was a newborn and always had her eyes locked on me. Wondering if I would disappear, I thought.

  Helena spooned ice cream into her mouth. “I want to go, too! Someone else can take my part in the play. They can assign me work. Let me go!”

  This broke Sue down. She had a hard time saying no to her daughter.

  “Good experience for Helena, yeah?” I said hopefully.

  Sue exhaled, blowing stray strands of her hair up. “I don’t know, Mom. How do we know how to find Taro?”

  “I have address of your cousin Yasuo. Suki son. He teach same school. He know where find Taro.” I regarded my granddaughter. “She smart one, help you.”

  Charlie came over to me. “Sue can’t go alone. It’s too dangerous for women.”

  Charlie thought I couldn’t tie my own shoe without his help. More dangerous than leaving a Japanese woman alone in America in the 1950s? I wanted to shout. Sue was not a little girl. I shot him an angry look. He took a step back. “Before I go, I make peace with Taro. You know this important. My family. I no can die without.”

  “No one’s going to die, Shoko.” Charlie moved toward me. “You’re going to be fine and there’s no reason for all this fuss. Besides, who’s going to pay?”

  “Me! Us. Who else?”

  Charlie grumbled incoherently at this. I watched my daughter. The moment was slipping before I could grasp it. Please, Sue. Show me your spunk.

  When she was in kindergarten, she got mad one day on the walk home and ran away from me, across a busy street alone. She knew I could not follow. I watched, helpless. But she looked both ways. She was all right.

  I would not beg. I had presented my case to her. Now if she didn’t want to go, there was nothing I could do except mail my letter to my brother and hope it reached him, somehow.

  “I’ll go. We’ll go.” Sue’s voice came out of a dream. Helena squealed. “I’ll find Taro for you.” She bowed her head at me, looking almost regal.

  I clapped her hands, grinning. “No worry. We figure out.” I held my arms out to her, hoping she would return the embrace. “I feel like I go, too. So happy.”

  If you married an American, it is likely you married a Christian. Most holidays in the United States are Christian: Christmas and Easter being the major ones. In general, these are times of good cheer and celebration. See the HOLIDAY section for recipes and details on decorating the house during these times.

  For the sake of harmony, it is imperative that the good Housewife become a Christian as well. Japanese women should forget about their Buddhist or Shinto upbringing—these ways are not American ways. You will not be able to find people to worship with you. If you continue to insist on praying to Buddha statues, you will cause your husband to abandon you.

  —from the chapter “Turning American,”

  How to Be an American Housewife

  Thirteen

  During the next week and a half, I slept better than I had in months, though my heart was weaker. I watched Sue making travel arrangements as though I were the one doing it.

  The day after the girls left, Charlie took me to the lab to get blood work done. At the Naval Hospital, you always expect to wait a long time. Even when there was no war, it was a long wait. Now, with so many injured personnel home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the wait stretched into hours and hours.

  After the first hour watching scratchy TV in the blood lab, I wished I had a book with me. Charlie and I weren’t big readers. Books were too expensive and library books were full of germs from all the people who had checked them out.

  Charlie read an old AARP magazine and I looked at all the veterans, rows and rows of them in small vinyl-upholstered chairs, faces drawn, some coughing, some too weak to stand, too young to be here with us old people. I wondered what was wrong with them. Some kind of poison from the war? Cancer? Something else?

  “Charlie,” I said, “when you come back from Vietnam, were lot people sick?” Charlie hadn’t talked about the war much to me, or about his job in the Navy.

  “No,” Charlie said. Always the short answer.

  “Seem like lot of people sick here.” I crossed my ankles, which swelled more each day. I hoped my surgery would be soon. I was getting uncomfortable. My doctor said I should use a wheelchair, but I hated doing that. Charlie could never push me up hills.

  I smoothed out my outfit. Cashmere tan sweater, brown wool pants. Usually I wore my brown-and-white spectator pumps with this but I couldn’t get my feet into them now. I had to wear black flats, old ugly ones. I might as well be wearing pajamas and slippers. I still put on the Mikimoto pearls Charlie had given me shortly after we married, and the dangling pearl earrings he gave me for my birthday. I’d only had my ears pierced because Charlie wanted to buy me earrings. In my time, only prostitutes pierced their ears. But now was different.

  Charlie tossed the magazine onto the side table. “Mommy,” he said, “I’ve been talking to Bishop Johanssen.”

  “Uh-oh.” This was the guy in charge of his local church, or ward, as they called it.

  “He said that maybe before this big surgery, when you could die”—Charlie looked uncomfortable—“I should ask you if you’re ready to join us.”

  I laughed so loud several vets looked at me. “Be Mormon? You know answer.”

  “Well, maybe after you pass,” Charlie said, “you’ll change your mind in Purgatory. If you do, come tell me. It won’t be too late to be baptized.”

  I gave him a hard look. It was true that both Charlie and I believed in ghosts—it was part of my culture, as natural as breathing to me—but this Purgatory business I did not believe. Besides, only the unhappy came back. “I haunt you night and day, Daddy,” I said. “Boo!”

  He shifted his body away from me, picking up the magazine again.

  I could have become a Mormon a long time ago, but it was too secretive for me. When I went to my father’s Konko church, I had to sit before my father, who at that moment ceased to be my father and was my priest. We did something called toritsugi, a meditation. My father sat at the altar, with one ear toward that and the other toward you. You sat in front of the priest and simply said whatever you wanted to—a hope, a wish, whatever—for help with your problems, and the priest relayed it to our Tenchi Kane no Kami. Then you sat and thought about your problem and the priest gave you a message back.

  The funny part of that was, of course, telling my troubles to my own father. When I was old enough to realize this, I was afraid. “Do not be, Shoko,” Father said, “because I am also your priest. Whatever you say is between you and Tenchi Kane no Kami.”

  And indeed, Father acted like he never remembered what I said, whether I said I wanted to run away or had boxed Taro on the ears.

  Once, as an adult, right after I’d married Charlie, I’d gone to see my father as a priest. “I am scared,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t know if this will turn out well.”

  Then I closed my eyes, searching for the solution.

  It was at least five minutes before Father spoke. “You are right to be afraid,” he said, “but where does this fear lead you? Nowhere. You must let go of fear.”

  That was my last meditation with my father. He never mentioned that, either.

  CHARLIE HAD WANTED to make our children Mormon. “At least let me take Sue to the youth group,” he had said. “They do activities. She doesn’t get to do anything.”

  I refused. This was difficult for me to say no to. In Japan, community is everything. Here I had nothing, no one, only my immediate family. I spent my years growing up poor, but we still att
ended every picnic and festival with the whole community.

  Sue had had nothing until high school, when she was old enough to have friends who drove her to events. I felt bad for her, but I felt more strongly that I couldn’t let Charlie make her into something I didn’t believe in. I didn’t know how the Mormons felt about Charlie being married to me, but since he was already married, they couldn’t very well tell him to get rid of me.

  Mormons were an okay bunch, on the whole. They helped each other out. Old Man Tattinger, who lived across from us, was a Mormon, and when he became unable to landscape his front yard, a big group of them came to do it. Free. I told Charlie he should ask Mormons to help with the floor, but he refused. Maybe they wouldn’t come because of me. More likely it was because Charlie hated to get help from anyone, freely given or not. I didn’t know. There were some things I would never know about Charlie, just as there were things Charlie would never know about me. This was how it should be.

  An orderly in a lab coat appeared. “Mrs. Morgan?”

  I got up slowly. A young veteran moved his cane out of the way for me. The orderly rushed forward to help me.

  “You can stay here,” I said to Charlie, who hadn’t moved. “Be right back.”

  “Want to get an ice cream after?” Charlie asked.

  I shook my head. “No good for you.” I took the orderly’s arm. “Diabetic, want sugar more and more.” The orderly nodded sympathetically, moving slowly with me along the narrow hall to the tiny bright room where they would take my blood.

  Marriages arranged by parents often work out best. Parents know that sentiment is rarely the best predictor of long-term compatibility. Financial matters, temperament, and status are the objective criteria used to create successful marriages.

  However, your parents will most likely not have arranged a marriage to an American for you. Perhaps they gave you input into choosing the right suitor, perhaps not. You may be unsure of whether you have done the correct thing, especially when your American husband acts in ways un-Japanese (keep this book near!). Do not be faint-hearted and never give up.