by Kyoko Mori
* * *
When Yuki finished filling the boxes, her mother was still outside. From the window, she could see her in the back of the garden in her black raincoat. Yuki took a red umbrella from the hallway and stepped outside. The rain was only a drizzle now, but it was chilly.
She went and stood next to her mother, who was digging some chrysanthemums with her hand spade and putting them into small planters. Gently but firmly Shizuko patted down the roots of each plant with her fingers. She already had a big box half filled with planters of chrysanthemums. Farther in the back, there were holes in the ground where the columbines and violas had been. Some violas were still left. These had started from the seeds off the larger plants the previous fall. They were too small to transplant. Yuki bent over them. She touched their wispy new leaves.
“Don’t worry,” her mother said. “Violas are hardy. Even if no one takes care of the yard, they’ll bloom and multiply on their own, just like the violets near your grandparents’ house. They’re related, I told you, didn’t I?”
Yuki imagined the violas blooming among weeds, their yellow-and-purple faces streaked with orange pollen. In the fall, their seeds would scatter like golden dust.
She walked back and crouched next to her mother, holding the umbrella over them both.
“I already have three boxes of columbines, salvias, and violas,” her mother said as she put another chrysanthemum into a planter. “These chrysanthemums back here have the tiny purple flowers. Remember? We got them last year from your grandmother. They’re her favorite flowers for the altar.”
Yuki breathed in the smell of silver-green leaves and wet roots. At her grandmother’s black Buddhist altar, the scent of chrysanthemums mingled with the white smoke from the incense and the steam from the freshly brewed tea. Yuki’s grandmother grew several varieties of chrysanthemums, some with petals as thin as silk threads, others with dark red and yellow flowers, large as a heart. All of them were offered at the altar in their seasons.
“Maybe she can give us the big red ones this fall,” Yuki said. “Those are my favorite.”
“Are they?” Her mother stopped digging. “I always wondered if the dead people can really smell those flowers your grandmother offers them—and the tea and the rice, too. You know my older brother Susumu died in the War. I try to imagine his spirit coming back to that room, but I can’t. Maybe he doesn’t care about those flowers. He scarcely noticed anything in the garden when he was alive.”
Yuki said nothing.
Her mother put her hand out, palm up, against the drizzle. “Maybe we get to be something like this rain when we die,” she said. “We’re there, but not really there. We’d be satisfied with just the smell of the chrysanthemums and the green tea. We wouldn’t need much then.”
Yuki felt a chill down her back, like the times her mother told her ghost stories. But that was for the hot summer nights when they couldn’t sleep. Being scared was supposed to keep them cool, like taking a cold bath. “Mama, are you trying to scare me?” she asked. “It’s only April and cold. I don’t want to hear ghost stories yet.”
Her mother resumed her digging. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Why don’t you go back in the house? I’ll be done here very soon.”
“Are you sure? I can sit here and hold the umbrella. I packed everything already. I’m ready to clean up the rooms.”
“It’s not raining that much now. Why don’t you go inside and finish cleaning?”
“All right.” Yuki got up and went back into the house.
* * *
By the time she had swept the kitchen and the living room and was starting to clean her mother’s room, the rain was coming down harder again. She heard her mother enter the house through the back door. Soon, she was standing in the hallway looking into the room. Yuki bent down to sweep the dust into the dustpan.
“I didn’t have time to mark the boxes,” Yuki said. “I guess you’ll have to ask me where everything is. Don’t worry. I’ll remember.”
Her mother took a step into the room. She put her hand on the wall and stood leaning slightly sideways as though she was very tired or dizzy. “Thanks a lot, Yuki,” she said. “You’ve done a good job.”
“It was nothing.” Yuki shrugged.
Her mother hesitated, her hand still on the wall. Finally, she said, “I want to ask you something.”
“What?” Yuki emptied the dustpan into the paper bag in the corner.
“Let’s sit down.”
“Here?”
“No. Let’s go sit on the back steps. You can see the flowers I dug up.”
They walked around the house and sat side by side on the narrow steps behind the kitchen. The boxes of plants were below them on the landing by the door. Her mother’s black raincoat hung on the wall. From the window in the door, Yuki could see the rain, coming down harder now, blurring the line of ginkgo trees in the yard. The plants were green and wet from the rain: columbines with new leaves like rosebuds, violas and salvias and tiger lilies, a peony bush, three kinds of chrysanthemums.
“These look good,” she said. “How about the irises?”
“They’re already sending up spikes. We should leave them. They’ll just die if we dig them out now.”
“That’s a shame.” Yuki peered out the window. The irises were planted in a patch close to the house. Though she couldn’t see them from this angle, she, too, had noticed the long spikes of buds shooting up among their fan-shaped leaves. In a few weeks, they would bloom—large flowers with dark purple outer petals, the pale inner petals, the splash of yellow at the center.
“Somebody will notice them,” her mother said. “They’re so pretty. I know they’ll be cared for.”
“All right.” Yuki nodded.
Her mother leaned toward her and straightened out Yuki’s ponytail. “I want to ask you this now,” she said. “What would you do if something happened to me? If I wasn’t here anymore?” She put her arm around Yuki’s shoulders.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking of that day last winter when we packed your grandmother’s things. Your father didn’t cry at her funeral, remember? She was his mother.”
It had been raining also on that day at her father’s parents’ house. Yuki hadn’t been particularly sad herself. Though her father’s parents lived just an hour’s train ride away, she had seen them only once every few years. They didn’t seem much like family to her.
“My father didn’t cry because he didn’t like her very much. He doesn’t like anybody very much. Why should he cry?”
“But how about you? You’ll forget me someday too. You’ll go on without me.”
Yuki turned sideways and pulled back slowly so that her mother had to let go of her shoulders. Yuki leaned back against the wall and looked her in the eyes.
“I won’t forget you, ever,” she said.
“Still, you would go on,” her mother said. “Tell me the truth. You used to say I was the person you liked the most in the whole world and you’d never want to grow up because then I would be old and we wouldn’t be together anymore. Do you still think that?”
Yuki sat perfectly still. Outside the window, the rain was hitting the irises and making a garbled noise like the radio after the stations had signed off. Yuki tried to imagine the large purple irises rising up on the long spikes like flames on candles, hundreds of them coming up from the wet ground. She thought of jumping over their purple fire. Her mother was waiting for her answer. Yuki turned back to her. “If something happened to you,” she said, “I would still go on. I would be very sad. I would never forget you. Still, I would go on. It wouldn’t be true to say otherwise.”
Her mother slowly turned her head sideways and pressed her temple against the wall. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Yuki flung herself toward her, but her mother remained leaning away into the wall. Yuki took her hands. They were cold, fingers clenched tight. “Mama, I’m sorry,” she said. “I did
n’t say that to hurt you. I wouldn’t have said it if I thought it would make you upset. I’m so sorry.”
Her mother didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, she turned back to Yuki and pulled her hands away.
“I’m sorry,” Yuki said again.
Her mother laid her hands on Yuki’s shoulders and pushed her back gently. She tilted her head a little and looked into Yuki’s face. “Listen, Yuki,” she said. “You were telling the truth. Don’t apologize for that. I’m not really sad. You should always tell the truth.” She sighed but nodded. “I’m glad you said you’d go on without me. You are a strong person. That’s good.” She leaned forward slowly and hugged her.
Yuki hugged her back hard. “I don’t want you to talk about how you won’t be here someday,” she said, her voice muffled against her mother’s hair.
Her mother didn’t answer. Yuki pulled back to see her face. Her lips were drawn tight, as if she was trying not to cry.
“Mama, I’ll help you all I can at the new house,” Yuki said. “We’ll have the best garden we’ve ever had. We’ll start a new iris patch. We’ll get Grandma to give us some white ones and yellow ones, too, even though I like the purple best.” She stopped. Her voice was shaky. She took a deep breath.
“All right.” Her mother stroked Yuki’s hair. “All right. We’ll try and have a good summer and fall. We’ll try and be happy at the new house.” She smiled with her lips closed.
“Mama,” Yuki said, “you know I’ll help you all I can. You know I’ll do anything.”
“Yes, I know,” her mother said, patting her slowly on the back. “I know you will.”
Outside, the rain kept making its garbled noises, sounding far away and nearby at once.
* * *
Yuki could no longer hear the TV from her father’s room. She was done with her boxes. She went downstairs. Her father’s room was open, but no one was there. Her stepmother’s car was gone from where she parked it in front of the house. Yuki stepped outside and walked around to the backyard.
Her stepmother had done nothing to change the yard as yet. The irises Yuki and her mother had planted that fall were sending up their long spikes just like those from the old house. Toward the back, columbines had grown into large bushes and spread. In a month, they would blossom—red, yellow, purple, and pink flowers growing from the same stem, with long plumes like festival lanterns. Yuki went to the middle of the yard and stood by the patch of chrysanthemums and violas. Overhead, some sparrows were chirping in the maples.
Her mother was right about the flowers. They were hardy. They were getting ready to blossom another year. Her mother had thought that Yuki, too, would go on without her. Yuki had said so, two years ago, as they looked at these same chrysanthemums and violas. She should never have believed me, Yuki thought. Three sparrows fluttered down from the maples and chased each other to the neighbor’s yard. They came back and landed near the irises. Yuki walked over to the patch and sat down beside the flowers. Soon, the purple and yellow flowers would climb up the long spikes and open, one by one. Irises flowered sparingly, unlike the roses and peonies that bloomed all at once and shed. When the irises faded, they shriveled into themselves like punctured balloons and dried up; not a petal fell to the ground. Yuki stood up and turned away from the garden.
Mama, she thought as she walked toward the house. Maybe I was wrong when I said I could go on alone. But you wouldn’t let me take it back. I wanted to take it back.
5
PINK TRUMPETS
(June 1971)
The man in the white uniform was drawing fresh chalk lines on the track with something that looked like a small lawn mower. Limbering up on the grass slightly apart from the other girls, Yuki watched the orderly parallel lines he was leaving behind on the caked dirt. There was still another hour to wait before the first event, perhaps two hours or more before the 1,000 meters Yuki was going to run. Some of the parents were already arriving to find seats in the bleachers: this was the last girls’ track meet before the summer vacation—city finals for the junior high school of Kobe.
Yuki shaded her eyes with her hand and looked toward the bleachers, at the women in their white summer blouses, dark skirts, and pale pink, turquoise, or mint-green parasols. The early crowd was mostly mothers, although the meet had been scheduled on a Sunday morning so fathers could attend. Your mother would have been proud, Yuki told herself. She had gotten into the habit of saying this to herself in the two years since her mother’s death. It was what every adult except her father and his new wife had said when she did anything deserving of praise—winning in track meets, being elected president of her eighth-grade class, getting the highest marks every year. It was as though, as far as they, the other adults, were concerned, Your mother would have been proud was a great compliment, the highest form of praise. As for Yuki’s father and his wife, they never mentioned her mother. They said very little of anything to her. There were days when hardly any words passed between Yuki and either of them.
She stretched out her legs in front of her and bent her upper body into them. Her face pressed against her knees, she held the stretch and thought about the picture her mother had taken on School Sports Day when Yuki was in third grade. It showed her passing the girl ahead of her and winning the 50-meter dash. Her mother had pressed the shutter at precisely the right moment. Yuki’s left shoulder and right leg had just gotten in front of the other girl, although the rest of their bodies were still in line. In the far corner of the picture, the finish-line tape blurred white. Yuki was wearing a huge white silk ribbon tied like a butterfly around her long hair, which was pulled back and then braided. Her mother had made her wear the ribbon “so I can recognize you right away even from a distance,” she had said. Her mother was always like that—tying big ribbons around Yuki’s hair, knitting her sweaters in bright red or purple or turquoise, colors that made her stand out.
For another minute, Yuki remained bent double, pressing her face harder into her knees. Since her mother’s death, she had her hair cut so short that from the back, people often thought she was a boy. She could sometimes recognize the look of surprise when they heard her voice and realized that she was a girl.
When she looked up from her stretch, a group of girls in red-and-black uniforms were just passing by. They were from the only private, all-girls school left in the competition. Yuki hurriedly glanced in front of her and then behind her and found the tall ninth-grade girl who ran hurdles. She was bringing up the rear with the shorthaired, almost plump girl who seemed to be her close friend. The hurdler had long hair—Yuki imagined it would come down to her waist when she had it loose—which she wore in a thick ponytail, baring her long white neck. Her skin was fair even after a season of track practice in the sun. As she passed by Yuki, she smiled, her lips curving upward just a little, not showing her teeth at all. Yuki smiled back and then looked down at her own knees. She thought that she heard the other girl, the plump one, suppress a giggle. Her face felt hot. Of course they must have known she was staring; it was obvious. But then she really couldn’t help it.
If she would only talk to me, Yuki thought. She must not mind my staring; otherwise she wouldn’t smile.
The first time they had met, Yuki had just finished running the 1,000-meter event at the meet between their two schools. She came in first, beating a girl from the other school in the last ten meters. Then she went to get a drink of water and almost bumped into the tall girl. Yuki couldn’t remember now exactly what she had noticed about her first—her beautiful hair, her face, which looked cool even in the sun, her long neck, or perhaps just how tall she really was. But about ten minutes after almost bumping into her, Yuki saw her run the hurdles—her legs just sailing, a pair of graceful arcs. When she came in first, a good five meters ahead of the second runner, who was from Yuki’s school, Yuki nearly jumped up and cheered. She caught herself with her hands in front of her, about to start clapping. The girls from Yuki’s school were silent because their teammat
es hadn’t won. Sitting among them, Yuki felt almost sorry for them. How can they not notice her? she wondered. Since then, there had been three invitational meets and the one semifinals meet in which Yuki had watched the tall, graceful hurdler.
If she would only talk to me, Yuki thought again. Then I would be happy for the rest of today, and perhaps even longer.
* * *
By the time her turn came to run, it was past noon. The sun was hot, the air humid. The heat vapors rising from the grass reminded her of the long summer days she had spent with her mother, working in the garden, picnicking, hiking, swimming. The days back then had seemed endless.
She was assigned the outside lane, which she preferred. It was much better than being inside and having eight or nine runners bearing down on you in the dash to the first straightaway. While she waited for the signal, Yuki closed her eyes momentarily and reminded herself of the way the tall girl had just won her race. She had come in first again, five or six strides in front. The results were not official yet, but it was said that she had broken the meet record. I must win too, Yuki thought.
When the gun went off, she was still thinking of the tall girl and also of the summer days she had spent with her mother. Then she was running and the air was a blue blur.
Coming to the first straightaway, she was in third place behind the two girls in red and black, runners from the same school as the tall girl. Yuki decided to stay behind them. A few runners always pushed the pace in the first two laps and dropped back in the third or fourth lap. The ones she had to watch out for were those who were still behind her now. She swung her arms, nice and easy, reminding herself to relax her shoulders, her sides.
At the beginning of the second lap, Yuki felt her heartbeat rock her body even though her breathing felt relaxed. It was just her heart. As always, she had this flashing thought: I wonder if anybody ever passes out from nervousness. Almost the same moment that she repeated the thought to herself, the lightheadedness was gone and her heart no longer beat so hard. This, too, was how it always was. About halfway through the second lap, she always had this brief moment of panic, which went away as soon as she noticed it.
