Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  Drew sits up straight, her spine popping. “How is she?”

  Rachel takes a big breath, and Drew knows she’s trying not to cry. “She was Mom again for a minute, and she told me to get something from her house.”

  She pictures her mother’s face, Mom again, as Rachel says, Mom with recognition in her eyes, instead of the blank Mom they know now, and bites her lip hard. These moments are getting rarer. “Did she tell you about a secret treasure chest buried in the backyard?” Drew says, both to keep the tone light and to tamp down the stinging in her own eyes.

  Rachel either doesn’t get or ignores this bit of humor. “No. It’s some kind of book. In the sewing room,” Rachel continues. She hesitates. “I don’t know what kind of book it is. She said you would know. Do you remember her showing you a book in there?”

  Drew shuts her eyes, pictures her parents’ house, which she’d left as soon as humanly possible, at the age of seventeen and a half, escaping to USC. The sewing room is downstairs. Drew rarely ventured in there. Sometimes, when nobody else was home, Drew would go in and look around, just because she was bored and lonely and nosy. But all she can remember are fabrics and a big sewing machine. A material-cutting table. “I can’t think of her showing me any book. I’m sorry. Did she say why she wants it?”

  “No. But I just know it’s important, Drew. You should have seen the way she grabbed me. Her expression. It was like she was starving and asking for food.” Rachel’s voice is flat, which means she’s afraid. There’s no reason to be afraid about a book, Drew thinks. They’ll go find it. No big deal. Rachel’s always overreacted. Always has. Once, a huge gray moth flew into the family room while they were watching TV. Rachel grabbed Drew and threw her off the couch, out of the moth’s path. “I thought it was a monster,” Rachel had said later. “I was protecting you.” Drew had a bruised thigh for two weeks from that protection.

  Drew pictures all the books she’s ever seen Mom handle. An Italian cookbook. Curious George. Amish Country Quilting. Her mind goes blank. Their mother was never known as a big reader. Besides, Drew was never close to her, the way Rachel had been. “Why don’t you just go over to Dad’s and look?”

  “Yeah.” Rachel gives a little bark of a laugh. “I should. I will. I was just wondering if you remembered, so I’d know what I was looking for.”

  Oh. Yeah. Getting a book out of their father’s house should not be a two-person operation, but Drew had forgotten, for a second, that their father had disowned her sister. Does she want Drew to come down and help? Then she should ask, Drew thinks stubbornly. Is she supposed to be a mind reader?

  Yet something in Rachel’s voice gives her pause. Rachel hates, more than anything, to admit weakness. She’s the type of person who’d bleed all over the place instead of just accepting a damn Band-Aid from you. Does she want help, but is afraid to ask? Afraid Drew will blow her off?

  Drew’s phone buzzes again. Won’t Liza leave her alone for just a minute? Drew hits Send on the bank transfer. The page refreshes itself, and her pulse skitters. The balance is down. A lot down.

  DREW CALL ME IMMEDIATELY, Liza’s text reads.

  She clicks the screen dark on her phone, turning her full attention to her big sister. Rachel’s never asked for help with Mom. Not once. You’re too far away. I can take care of her. Tom and the kids will help, Rachel always said, rebuffing Drew’s offers. No doubt Rachel thinks this makes it easier for Drew, but instead it makes her feel unwanted.

  Drew goes down to visit sometimes, on the weekends, where she sits with her mother, trying and failing to think of anything to say. She usually reads a book aloud, out of the library cart, to fill the time. Then she heads back to L.A. before traffic gets too bad, thinking, sometimes, of calling her sister—but then thinking there’s really no point, because Rachel will just say, Oh, we’re really busy today, not going to be home until bedtime. Which was probably, in fact, a hundred percent true. Anyway, Drew had stopped trying.

  Drew clears her throat, imagining going down to help for a couple of days. Suddenly, walking away from this store, from this nonlife, seems like a pretty damn good option. She needs to recalibrate.

  She hears her sister breathing on the other end of the phone. How Drew always tried to crawl into bed with Rachel, to be lulled to sleep by that sound. Drew has an urge to put her arms around her sister, to tell her both of them will be okay. She thinks of her niece and nephew—Chase a teenager, Quincy in college—and it feels like someone pitched a ball into her stomach. They’re so old now, and Drew has mostly missed it all. If she doesn’t know them well, who will come visit Drew when she’s in Mom’s situation? She wants to see them, too.

  Does Rachel want her help? Will she be offended if Drew offers? Drew pauses. “I could come down there and help you find the book tomorrow. If you want, that is. It’s not a problem.” Please want, she prays.

  There is a silence for a moment. “Yes, I would appreciate that, thank you,” Rachel says softly, and that’s all that Drew needs to hear. She closes the laptop with a snap.

  The Story of Tomoe Gozen

  MIYANOKOSHI

  SHINANO PROVINCE

  HONSHU, JAPAN

  Spring 1160

  If left alone, objects remain in the same unchanging state for all of eternity. An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. Boulders sit on mountaintops, worn down over thousands of years by rain. Trees untouched by lightning or fires keep on growing.

  But then that unbalanced force appears, and suddenly stationary objects are set in motion.

  So it began for Tomoe Gozen, the greatest woman warrior who ever lived.

  The daughter of a samurai retainer, Kaneto, and a mild-mannered wet nurse, Chizuru, Tomoe started life as an unremarkable little girl living in the mountains of central Japan in the late twelfth century. Her younger brother Kanehira and their foster brother, Yoshinaka Minamoto, lived a quiet life on a farm. Yoshinaka and Kanehira were the ones meant to be samurai, to fight for the title of shogun. Tomoe’s father rescued Yoshinaka from the murderous Taira clan, who killed Yoshinaka’s father, or so they had been told.

  Tomoe might have been content to stay a normal little girl. To grow up and marry a boy from a neighboring farm. But then Yoshinaka and the stick set her in motion.

  Had it been a thin, reedy branch off the dead plum tree, the kind of twig that crumbled into dust with a touch, Tomoe would have forgiven the quick pain. Instead, Yoshinaka chose a thick length of sticky pine, a proper switch, the kind used on prisoners.

  That cool spring morning, seven-year-old Tomoe squatted in the square kitchen garden on the north side of the house, picking moth larvae off her spinach plants. All of her concentration was on looking for the bugs, placing each wriggling green worm into a basket to feed to the chickens. The earth was soft and damp from watering, black and fertile. She hummed to herself, a melody of her own making.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said to the third worm. “But you’re making far too many holes in my plants.”

  The worm twisted in her pinched fingers, its white jaws grasping at the air. She threw it into the basket and examined the tender sprigs of spinach. Soon she would pick these, and she would help her mother prepare them for supper with some soy sance and a bit of sesame oil. She imagined her father closing his eyes at the rich, salty taste. “What a good gardener our Tomoe is!” he would say. Her foster brother, Yoshinaka, would have sauce dripping down his chin. “Oishikata!” he would roar. Delicious. The dish was his favorite. One of his favorites, anyway—the boy ate everything.

  Then something solid hit Tomoe’s left rib. A stinging slap. She fell over, knees and hands in the dirt, pebbles embedding in her hands, so rough for a girl of only seven. Her blue-black hair escaped its head wrap and fell over her face. All she saw was a blur of legs going past. She didn’t need to see to know who was to blame.

  Tears stun
g her eyes, mixed with hurt and anger. What had she done? That was a real hit. An ambush.

  “Ha ha!” a boy called from the other side of the garden. Yoshinaka. He wore a gray kimono and loose pants, doing a dance in his bare feet. He waved the branch in his hand. “Taira scum, come get me.”

  Kanehira joined him. “You can’t catch us.”

  Those ungrateful troublemakers. She was always saving them. Tomoe had pulled Yoshinaka out of a frozen pond the previous winter. Always impetuous, he had run ahead onto the ice, not bothering to stop to check its thickness. Tomoe had seen the dark, semi-frozen color and shouted, “It’s not safe!” Then she heard the cracking. Yoshinaka turned to her with an expression of surprise before the icy water swallowed him up. Kanehira ran to help and fell through, too. Tomoe lay on her belly, reached out her hand and hoisted them out, first Yoshinaka, then Kanehira.

  She put her hand on her throbbing side. The flesh swelled around the bones. How dare they? What if they’d missed and hit her eye? Or caught her in the abdomen? She could be half blind, or dead.

  A strangled cry erupted from somewhere in the distance, sending white egrets flapping skyward in a giant cloud. Tomoe stood. What had made that noise?

  The sound had come from her. Rage, pure and hot, floated in her center. She let the sensation guide her, move her limbs.

  Those boys had better run.

  From across the field, she saw the whites of their eyes. The boys took off like rocks out of a slingshot, across the meadow. She chased.

  Yoshinaka dropped the branch into the tall grass. Tomoe bent and picked it up without stopping. The boys had made it across the field to the northern pinewoods, disappearing up the hill. She searched for footprints. All their lives, Father had taught them how to look for animal and human tracks. How to cover their own. If the boys were smart, they would have been careful.

  She brushed her hair out of her eyes and sniffed the air. That distinctive unwashed boy scent of mud and dogs and mashed grass presented itself, and she pushed her way farther into the forest. It went abruptly dark, the evergreen trees interlocking above her head. Here and there were still patches of snow, untouched by sun. She shivered. Her feet were bare. Tomoe kept moving. Those boys would be cold, dressed as they were in light kimonos. She fought back an urge to call them, tell them it was all right. She had spent her whole life wiping their faces clean. She could not mother them anymore.

  At last, through a copse of thick short pine trees ahead, she heard voices.

  “Did you hear that?” Yoshinaka said suddenly. He was chewing.

  “It was a bird. She’ll never find us here,” her brother said.

  “Right. She’s only a dumb girl.” Yoshinaka chewed some more, smacking his lips.

  Tomoe’s hand combed the dirt through the pine needles until her fingers closed around a rock. She threw it, her arm parallel to the ground, so it skipped across the boys’ toes as it would skip across a pond.

  “Ai!” Yoshinaka was first up. Kanehira followed. Their toes pointed away from her. “What was that?”

  Tomoe rolled out from under the trees, jumping upright. The boys had their backs to her. Without pause, Tomoe swung the branch low, knocking their legs out from under them. They collapsed, breath gone, turtles on their backs.

  Immediately she put her foot on Yoshinaka’s chest. He grimaced. His eyes were the rich brown-red color of azuki beans, ringed with thick lashes, and she felt a momentary surge of pity. She wanted to let him up, but something stopped her.

  “Oh, hello. Did you think you were hiding?” She turned her attention to Yoshinaka’s hand, still gripping the food. Dried persimmon. She pried open his fingers and took the fruit. “Mmm. At least you didn’t drop your treat to fight me off. Food shouldn’t be more important than your life.”

  “Let him up!” Kanehira, her scrawny younger brother, tugged at her free arm, knocking her off balance. He tugged on her arm again; she tugged back hard, then shoved him with her other arm. He tumbled backward.

  “You are both idiots.” They blanched—Tomoe had never dared call them an idiot before. A girl could get beaten for that. Tomoe didn’t care anymore. Let my father come for me, she thought defiantly. I am right.

  She casually ate another bite of persimmon, the stickiness all over her hand now. After all I do for you, she added in her head. Getting their meals, scrubbing their clothes, making sure they didn’t perish. She was only a year older than they. She did not want them to see how much it hurt her. She would not be weak. “Never call me Taira.” She ground her foot down.

  “Tomoe.” Rough fingers closed around her ankle.

  “Especially you, Yoshinaka,” she added reproachfully. His chest rose and fell under her foot, but she kept her gaze on Kanehira, who sat farther off, pouting.

  Now, as Tomoe pinned Yoshinaka down, Kanehira kicked at the ground, sending a cloud of needles upward. He stomped his feet. “Stop it, Tomoe!”

  “Tantrums are for babies, Kanehira.” She transferred the fruit to her other hand, wiping her palm on her trousers. “But I suppose that’s to be expected from you.”

  “You just wait, Tomoe.” Kanehira took off through the copse. Tomoe considered going after him, but decided against it.

  “Ah, going to get Father, I suppose.” Tomoe spoke as if she didn’t care, but her stomach seized. There would be a consequence to her retaliation. Father would not be happy. They were supposed to be guarding Yoshinaka, not beating him up. Though he’d legally lost his title, he was still Lord Yoshinaka in the eyes of the Minamoto clan. Tomoe’s family were but his servants.

  “Tomoe, I can’t breathe.” Yoshinaka’s fingers played a tune on her anklebone. It tickled. He squeezed her calf, rubbed the muscle. “Let go.”

  She took her foot off his chest and sank into the damp new grass. Yoshinaka sat up so they were side by side, facing each other. His face was streaked with dirt. His hair, normally pulled back, was loose around his face. His eyes, normally impish, were sad.

  Beaten. Thoroughly beaten. She couldn’t stand to see him like this. She leaned over, the last bit of fruit in her palm. For a moment he ignored it.

  “Come on,” Tomoe said, moving the fruit under his nose. Always, the boy could be swayed by food. She put it to his lips and he glared at her—she thought he’d smack her hand away. He opened his mouth instead and allowed her to feed him.

  Two

  SAN DIEGO

  Present Day

  The next morning, I pull my minivan into the absurdly long middle school drop-off line, behind the fleet of identical minivans. These minivan car dealers must lurk outside hospital delivery rooms, capturing new parents. “What’s going on today? Any tests?” I brake as two kids leap out in front of the car and scurry into the school. I turn up the music. The group’s name, The Naked and Famous, pops up in digital letters on the display. “Young Blood,” my favorite.

  I flip down the visor mirror and put on a little lipstick, singing along. I look good, I think. No makeup, but my skin’s kind of glowing, no doubt thanks to the hijinks my husband initiated this morning. I flip my ponytail sassily and grin, showing most of my teeth. I even remembered to brush before we left. A pretty big accomplishment.

  Chase shoots me a withering look and turns down the volume. “It should be illegal for a mother to listen to a band with a name like that.”

  “Oh really? What about moms dancing to it?” I shake around in my seat, flailing my arms around, and he slides down as far as he can, pulling his hoodie over his eyes.

  You can’t tell my children are one-quarter Japanese. Chase has light hazel eyes and curly light brown hair perpetually bleached blond by the sun. Quincy has hair that was full-on blond when she was little and turned to medium brown when she get older. Quincy and Chase are taller than I am—Quincy about five-ten, Chase already nearly six feet—and both are athletically built.

  Perhaps
they don’t look Asian because I don’t, either—I’ve got reddish brown hair and a smattering of freckles. My face turns red when I drink. I look more like my father’s side, of indeterminate Western European heritage.

  I dance some more, not caring who sees.

  In the past, I was that parent. The one who had no life outside of school. The too-into-it room mother who sends out thirty-page e-mails detailing class potlucks and craft projects. The one who takes carpool duty as seriously as military service.

  And that’s who I wanted to be. I wanted my kids to have a CHILDHOOD: Now Without Traumatic Family Dynamics. To glance up from their timed math tests and know that somewhere, on campus, their mother hunched over a miniature table, cutting out eighty construction paper hearts for the first grade. To know in the very marrow of their bones that they’d come home to a hot dinner with a vegetable and a whole grain and a lean meat, and a father who’d play catch and never, ever tell a single lie to them.

  My phone buzzes and I glance down. My daughter Quincy’s photo lights up the screen. Her engagement photo, to be precise. Got our proofs. A lovely picture, the afternoon light making her long light brown hair and skin glow as if candlelit. Her fiancé Ryan’s hair is shaved to the skin on the sides and back, the top left an inch long in a high-and-tight military haircut, wearing his dress blues.

  Yes. There’s also this. As if there isn’t enough already happening. My twenty-year-old college student is getting married in June. Twenty. Yes, I said twenty. “Look.” I show the photo to Chase.

  He nods absently, sighing at the carpool line. “Yup, that’s Quincy.”

  I put the phone down.

  Only two and a half years earlier, Quincy had yet to meet Ryan. She was looking at college brochures with me at the kitchen counter, her face alive with fresh dreams. She trailed her fingertips along the photos. “I’ve got it all planned out, Mom. I’m definitely going to do grad school. Maybe a double MBA/engineering. That’ll get me on the executive track.”