How to Be an American Housewife

by Margaret Dilloway

  “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 home to her.”

  The images were printed on card stock like the one Mom had of her old boyfriend. The one of my grandparents was high-contrast, their faces so white they had lost all definition. In Mom’s, a crack ran through her face. I gingerly put them down on the stack.

  I turned to him. Mom’s face flickered across his. In the strong light, every wrinkle was cast into high relief. How much time had passed without us knowing him, and this family. “I guess it’s time to say good-bye, Uncle. Or sayonara.”

  “We don’t say sayonara.” He inclined his head. “Sayonara means good-bye forever. We say dewa mata. See you later.”

  “Yes. Dewa mata.” I hugged him.

  He held me tight, then patted me strongly on the back.

  “I’m glad you didn’t throw us out, Uncle.” I stepped back and bowed.

  “I never threw anybody out. Sometimes they leave because of what I say.” He smiled ruefully, then bowed back. “Say hello to Shoko for me. I will see her soon.”

  I did not know if he was talking about here on earth or in the afterlife. “I’ll tell her you say hi, Uncle.”

  PART THREE

  Tokidoki

  It is difficult to keep one’s figure with all the rich foods being eaten in the States. Americans like fried food and rich sweets. The Japanese woman, who stays naturally thin with her regular Japanese diet, may be constantly challenged. But she must keep her figure to keep her dignity.

  The best way to control your figure is through having small portions. Avoid potatoes if you can.

  —from the chapter “Cooking Western-Style,”

  How to Be an American Housewife

  Sue

  Dad’s thousand-yard stare was trained on the TV in the hospital waiting room. Mom was still in the operating room, where she had been for the past ten hours. I had come straight from the airport, leaving Helena at her other grandparents’ house.

  I had not told my father anything about Japan. It was as if I had come to the hospital from my home, and not another country. Somehow, I wanted to save it all for Mom. This trip belonged to her.

  I yawned loudly.

  Dad never took his eyes off the television. Out of nowhere, he said, “Mommy didn’t breast-feed you kids.”

  I shifted in my seat. “I know. She said she didn’t have enough milk.”

  “She did.” Dad tsked softly. “She didn’t want her breasts to sag.” Finally he looked at me, his eyes intensifying into aquamarine. “I wanted her to. It would have been better for you.” He stared at his hands. “I wanted you to go to church, too, meet other kids, do activities. She wouldn’t hear of it.” He spread his arms, then crossed them. “She did the best she could, though. I should have done more.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.” I gave him my best cheerful smile. “I turned out fine.”

  He smiled back. “Are you happy, Sue?”

  “Of course,” I said automatically. “I have a steady job and a great daughter. What else do I need?”

  “If you wait for happiness to find you, you may be waiting a long time.” He reached over and patted my hand.

  “Now you sound like a fortune cookie. Go home and get some sleep.” I didn’t want advice from Dad. Not now. “Mom won’t be ready to see anyone for hours.”

  He leaned back. “I can sleep sitting up, you know. Haven’t you ever seen me watch TV in the evenings?” My father continued to sit there, stubborn as ever, content to suffer through the hours until Mom awoke. He finally drifted off halfway through a soap opera. A kind nurse put a blanket over him.

  A figure entered the room and I looked up, expecting, dreading: Mom’s surgeon. But it was Mike, bearing two cups of vending-machine coffee. His wild hair was neatly tied back and his eyes were clear. I blinked. “Hi,” I said in a small voice.

  He nodded, sitting down with the coffee. “I accidentally got one with sugar. Want it?”

  “Thanks.” You couldn’t pick Mike out of a crowd as my brother. He was a stranger off the street. I had never run out to the tree on Christmas morning with Mike, to see what Santa had left us.

  But Mike was there when we needed him to be. Once, when I was six, a wildfire burned up the mountain behind Jacaranda Street, and we were evacuated.

 
“It’s only a precaution,” the firefighters told us. “Go across the street.” The fire wouldn’t jump the street, they said; it wouldn’t even come close.

  Dad was still at work, but he called and told my mother to grab a few clothes. She did not comply. Mom ran around, crazed, throwing stuff into boxes. Mike came home to help.

  “Take this next,” she barked at him. He moved everything to a neighbor’s yard—all my mother’s Japanese possessions, suitcases, some food, my garbage bag full of stuffed animals. The neighbors watched benignly.

  The last load consisted of only a Japanese-English dictionary. Mike took my hand and walked me across to where the neighbors had set up lawn chairs to watch the fire’s progress, amid all of our stuff.

  A TV news reporter and cameraman caught up with him. “Here we have someone escaping with only the few possessions he could grab,” the reporter intoned, thrusting the microphone into my brother’s face. “What do you have there, sir?”

  Mike hefted aloft the book. “A dictionary.”

  The reporter looked startled. “And what will you do if your house burns down?”

  Mike shrugged. “Rebuild. We’re insured. Maybe it’ll be two stories this time.”

  “Oh,” the reporter said, turning back to the camera.

  Even I was old enough to giggle at the absurdity, us standing in the middle of the street holding a dictionary while a fire raged on the mountain.

  I LOOKED AT MIKE, the mystery, here once again when family was required. “Do you like your new job?” I ventured.

  “It’s all right.” He nodded. “Except for people buying reptiles and not knowing how to take care of them. Idiots.” He shook his head. “How was Japan?”

  I listened for jealousy, but heard mild curiosity. “We saw Taro.”

  He nodded again. “The uncle who hated Mom? She told me that’s why you went.”

  “Yup.” I smiled. “Has it been crazy here?”

  “A little. But it’ll be all right.” He sounded convinced. “Mom’s too stubborn to give up, you know?” He slurped down half his coffee in a gulp.

  “I know.”

  Dr. Su appeared, wearing pale blue scrubs and paper shoe covers making whispery rustling noises.

  Dad was alert immediately, his eyes bright.

  “It was successful.” Dr. Su sat next to Dad. He went on about recovery and infection and how she wasn’t out of the woods yet. “She’s in the recovery room.” He put his hand on Dad’s shoulder. “You can go in and look at her if you like. She’s not awake.”

  “I’ll go see her.” Dad got up and limped down the hallway. We followed, overtaking him. Mike and I slowed our pace so Dad wasn’t walking behind us. Whenever we went anywhere as a family, Mom would creep along, and Dad would walk quickly in front of her, saying, “Hurry up, Mommy!” as though she were a dawdling toddler.

  “Go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Dad was embarrassed, exactly as Mom had been.

  “No hurry, Dad.” I smiled at him. “You’re going in first.”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Mom became more alert. She had oxygen tubes up her nose and wires everywhere. Monitors showed her heart beating at a steady, reassuring rate. I settled into a chair and pulled a blanket over my legs. A nurse asked if I needed anything.

  “Sue?” Mom’s voice came hoarsely.

  I bent over her. She opened one eye, her pupil trying to focus. “I’m here.”

  “You see Taro?”

  I nodded. It felt hard for me to speak, too. “He gave me what you asked for.”

  Mom’s hands reached for mine, her rounded nails stripped of coral polish. Our hands were alike, with long, straight fingers. A surgeon’s hands, or an artist’s, she would tell me. Not the knobby short fingers of my father. “Only for just in case. No worry.”

  I nodded again. I reached into my big tote bag, touching the smooth lacquered box. “Taro sent this to you.” I showed it to her.

  Her eyebrows went up. “I thought thrown away! Where find?”

  “I don’t know how he had it.” I set the box on the bed and took out the photos, holding each one up. “These are pictures he sent you.”

  “Who all these people?”

  “Family.” I tried to name them all. “Here’s Suki and her son, Yasuo.”

  She closed her eyes again. “Taro tell story of Ronin?”

  I couldn’t think of who that was. “Is that a cousin?”

  “No. Not cousin.” Her voice came more forceful. She opened her eyes. “Big story.” She reached for my hand again. “Mike don’t know either. No tell, okay? This only for you, Suiko.”

  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 pal
e 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 on and on, rubbing my back, until I fell asleep. I was not like my mother in every way, but when Helena was little, I remembered what my mother had done for me. I never yelled at Helena for waking me up.

  I leaned closer to my mother in her hospital bed.

  “An old bamboo cutter found a beautiful baby girl in the bamboo,” I said. “He took her home to raise her as his own, and in three months she was full grown and beautiful. She shone light in the house, even in the night. Word of her beauty got out and suitors came to call. Her father set forth five knights to get impossible items. They all failed. Then the Emperor himself came and begged her to come live in the palace with him. She said, ‘If I have to live in the palace, I will become a shadow.’ She got homesick and the Moon People came to get her. She didn’t want to leave, but she couldn’t survive where she was.”

  “And she left potion that make live forever with Emperor. He burn on Mount Fuji. That why smoke go up.” Mom smiled. “All I ever want is you be happy. Don’t forget, you hear?”

  A knock-knock-knock sounded. “Come in!” Mom called. It was Dr. Cunningham. Mom grinned. “Dr. Cunningham! This my daughter, Sue.”