Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  And another, this one depicting the samurai woman kneeling at what seems to be some kind of ceremony. A long low table, laden with food, is behind her. A smaller woman, in a rich-looking kimono, kneels beside the samurai. She holds her hand out to the warrior, and the warrior reaches toward her.

  “Oh yeah,” Drew says, her voice loud. “I remember this now.”

  “Now? Just now?” A twinge of annoyance. Why didn’t Mom show this to me?

  Drew shrugs. “I didn’t really think of it as a book. It’s bound like a photo album. I don’t know. I didn’t remember.” She traces the samurai woman with the tips of her fingers.

  “Did Mom tell you the story? What’s it say? Who are these women?” My pulse pounds hard. Below the women, in faint pencil, so light against the color of the paper that I can barely see it, my mother has written our names.

  Rachel.

  Drew.

  I hear her small, high-pitched voice as clearly as if she’s in the room. My diaphragm contracts sharply, without my cooperation, hurting my ribs.

  Our mother is not a warrior. She is—was—the opposite. If there was anyone who fit the stereotype of a passive Asian woman, it’s Hikari Snow. She sat in the backseat if we had a male guest. Never questioned our father, no matter what outrageous thing he’d done. She had our father’s dinner ready and his laundry done without his asking. Once she’d even left Drew’s school concert early so she could switch the wash into the dryer. I couldn’t count the times she blindly accepted things my father wanted, even if they adversely affected her. Or me.

  Growing up, when people asked about my parents, the way people do with their half-masked nosiness after they observe that my mom’s Asian, I’ve always given them the plainest vanilla answers. These days people probably wouldn’t care, but back then they still did. “Yes, she speaks English. Yes, she’s a citizen.” The most unusual thing I’ve let out is that Mom came over in the 1970s to marry my father. “Was he in the military?” they always ask next.

  “They met through business,” I answer, leaving out a word. They met through a business.

  I never tell the interesting part of the story, the thing that would make their jaws drop. Only Tom knows. None of Tom’s family or my best friends or even my children know this part.

  My mother, Hikari Snow, was a thirty-three-year-old secretary working a dead-end job in Tokyo in the early 1970s when she submitted her photo and biography to a mail-order-bride catalog called Satsuma Blossoms. Just like the picture brides of the turn of the century, ordered by Japanese men working in Hawaii and California, Hikari wanted to get out of Japan but had no means to do so besides offering herself up for marriage to a stranger.

  My father, Killian, a divorced businessman older by sixteen years, was charmed by Hikari’s mastery of English and her orphan status. No pesky family matters tying her to home. He promised her a life without want, where she wouldn’t have to live in a filthy third-floor walk-up with four other women. Where she wouldn’t have to decide between paying rent or buying food. In return, he imagined he’d get a supplicant wife who’d bear children and keep house. Which he mostly got.

  “Just tell people I met your mother in Japan when I was there on business,” my father told me when I was small. I remember him saying so over ice cream on the patio, my earliest memory of him. One of my friends’ mothers had been asking about Mom, and I must have been almost four when I asked my father how they’d met, because Killian’s hair still had some blond in it and Drew wasn’t born yet. I had to squint at him, the sun halo-bright around his head, and all I can remember is his hair color as he spoke. “Your mother’s what people call a gold digger, Rachel. People will think we’re no good.”

  I glanced up at my mother, who cleared our empty bowls without expression, her I’m-staying-out-of-it face. “Isn’t a gold digger a miner? That’s not bad.”

  Dad laughed. “No, it means a woman who married for money. Not love.”

  “You love Mom, don’t you?” This worried me. I knew certain things to be true. Santa Claus came on Christmas Eve, the Easter bunny never hid eggs where you couldn’t find them, and married people loved each other, like Cinderella and Prince Charming. Childhood lore.

  Mom carried the bowls inside, sliding the screen shut behind her. Dad leaned forward, coming into full focus, and ruffled my hair. Unlike Mom, Dad had bags under his eyes, wrinkles by his mouth. He’d been fifty when I was born, and was often mistaken for my grandfather. “People get married for all kinds of reasons, Rachel. That’s how the world works. Now, don’t tell your friends, or they might not be allowed to play with you.” He chucked my chin. “And we had you. A sweet, perfect little girl. Hopefully we’ll get a little brother one of these days.”

  Of course, we did not. And it wasn’t long before I grew out of being his sweet, perfect little girl for good.

  Because I was never perfect to begin with.

  Once, only once, and not until I was ten, did I ask Mom directly how she and my father met. “Do you still have the letter?” I asked. I imagined it to be grand and romantic, full of hearts and expressions of love. Maybe she’d written back and squirted perfume all over her reply. Maybe she kept his letters tied up with a silk crimson ribbon, high up on a closet shelf.

  “No,” she said. “It wasn’t a letter like you think. It was a form.”

  “A form?” I didn’t understand.

  She nodded. “It had boxes for what he preferred. Hair: Long. Height: Short. Wants children: Yes. Speaks English. That kind of thing. Then the catalog people wrote to me and asked if I was interested.”

  “He ordered you? Like you were a television set?” I had never heard of such a thing. All my classmates’ parents met during high school or college or at some young adult job. “Could you have said no?”

  “He was the only one who wanted me,” Mom responded matter-of-factly. “Now, what do you want for dinner?”

  It seemed like a blatant, crass transaction. The woman who wanted to be kept. The man who wanted a subservient Asian female. In our community, where girls weren’t told to keep their mouths shut, I kept mine shut. I was embarrassed to have such a nonfeminist stereotype for a mother.

  When Quincy was in middle school, one of her classmates’ parents was a Russian woman known to be a mail-order bride. She was in her late twenties, married to a taciturn biotech executive twenty-five years her senior; she dressed flashily, in short skirts and low tops and high heels, even on field trips, with lots of diamonds. She was a centerfold come to life, and completely intimidating. No one spoke to her. She spoke to no one and never smiled.

  “Typical,” Susannah had said. “She doesn’t love him. She just wanted his money.”

  Was that how others perceived my mother? I remembered my father telling me my classmates might not be allowed to play with me if their parents knew. Did I harbor a similar prejudice against the Russian woman?

  I focused on Susannah. “Hey, if it works for them, who are we to judge? It might be acceptable in her culture. It works for the man, it works for the woman.”

  Susannah stared at me. “There are some things that aren’t right no matter what the culture. What about all the brides who don’t get a good man? They’re stuck here, without anything. Maybe even abused. It’s basically slavery.”

  Images of my mother and father flashed across my mind, and my body went cold, my hands numb. No, I wasn’t going to think about that. I turned away from Susannah without another word.

  I take a breath and scan the sewing room closet. Maybe I’ll find some swords stashed away next. Mom might have been a ninja, for all I know.

  I hear another car pass outside. I push the box aside without looking at the rest of the items, and throw the quilts back to where they were. This is what Mom meant for me to find. For when she forgot. Is there a code in here, too?

  For all I know, the book isn’t a story at all, but a
long letter to her daughters. I gingerly turn the pages again.

  Drew shifts away from under the book, pushing it into my lap. She gets up and dusts off her backside. “I don’t know what it’s about, Rachel. Mom never said. One day, she told me to come in here and get something for her and I happened to see it. She said, Oh that’s just an old book from Japan. I might use the woman in a quilt.” Drew shrugs. “I didn’t think any more about it.”

  “But look.” I point to our names. “She wants us to read this.”

  Drew stares at our mother’s handwriting, her eyes turning liquid. “How?”

  I close the book, put it in the box of treasures. I’m taking the whole box. It belongs to me and Drew. I would have gotten it before if I’d known. “We’ll get it translated. There’s got to be a starving student who needs cash.”

  At the word “starving,” Drew’s stomach growls and Drew coughs, covering it up. “Yeah. I’m sure there is. Ready to get out of here?”

  I narrow my eyes theatrically at my sister, my patented Rachel evil eye. Stop staring at me like a vampire, Rachel! You stared at me first, Drew! She rewards me with a flash of a grin and I know she’s remembering the same thing. “Want to come over and have something to eat?” I ask.

  MIYANOKOSHI

  SHINANO PROVINCE

  HONSHU, JAPAN

  Spring 1160

  Tomoe peered down from the top of the swaying pine tree. She stretched her fingers toward the violet and pink sunset. Almost close enough to touch. This was higher up than she’d ever been. Small branches ripped off and fell away to where she couldn’t see them.

  She’d won again. Pride and guilt mixed in her. Now her brother was relegated to picking weeds in the garden for losing, and Yoshinaka would join him. And now both of them would hate her even more.

  Below her, Yoshinaka shouted. “It’s not fair! She’s lighter. She can go faster.” He shook the trunk.

  Tomoe yelped, hanging on. “Stop, Yoshi.”

  They made their way back down the tree to where Kaneto waited. “Yoshinaka, if you know Tomoe is quicker, then you’d better think of what else you can do to win.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Yoshinaka brushed pine needles off his robes, his face red. “Pull her off and throw her to the ground?”

  “That’s what I’d do.” Kanehira stood in the kitchen garden, his arms full of thorny weeds, and a snarl on his face. “Father, it is a dishonor to our family. Having a girl fight with us. Why don’t you just have me and Yoshi put on geisha clothes and become entertainers?”

  “You’re just mad because you always lose.” Tomoe couldn’t help smirking at her brother, as he had done so many times to her. He threw down the weeds and clenched his fists. “Loser.” She turned away, focusing instead on walking to the outhouse.

  “Take it back!” Kanehira shouted, coming toward her.

  Tomoe didn’t stop or respond. He would do nothing in front of their father. Suddenly something knocked her over. Fists beat onto her back and head. “You stupid girl!” Kanehira pounded her. She heard her father shouting at him to stop.

  Tomoe rolled over. A punch caught her in the face. She kicked at Kanehira’s ankles, causing him to be off balance, then scrambled away. Kaneto grabbed his son in a bear hug as Kanehira erupted into angry tears. Tomoe bent over, trying to catch her breath.

  “Go inside,” Kaneto whispered to his son. Kanehira ran off, no doubt to be comforted by his mother. Yoshinaka followed, shoulders slumped.

  Tomoe stood in front of her father. “Do you think I dishonor you, too, sir?” Her own lip trembled but she willed it to be still. Her back and ribs ached. She wouldn’t complain.

  “You know better than that, Tomoe.” Kaneto’s face was serious. He was being a trainer now, not her father, Tomoe thought. “This is a lesson for you, Tomoe. Did you see Kanehira before you turned away?”

  Tomoe sniffled, thinking. “Yes.”

  “And what was he doing?”

  “He looked angry.” Tomoe stared at the needle-covered ground. “He had his hands in fists. He was walking toward me.”

  “So.” Kaneto stooped to her level, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You turned your back on someone who was threatening you.”

  She nodded. “I thought because you were here, he wouldn’t do anything.”

  “Well, Yoshinaka would not have done that, nor I. But you know your brother well.” He patted her shoulder. “Some who look weak do so on purpose, to make you let down your guard. You must always be ready.”

  “He’s my brother.” Tomoe wiped at the errant tear that escaped her eye. Dirt scratched her skin.

  Kaneto stood. “I know, Tomoe. But he counted on you to turn, so he could attack from behind. Never turn your back to an attack. Ichi-go, ichi-e. All you get is one chance.”

  “But . . .” Tomoe wanted to defend herself. Was she to always be on guard against her flesh and blood?

  Kaneto held up a finger. “Only one chance. Sometimes, you must be the first to attack. Do not wait until it’s too late.” He left her there and went into the house.

  Tomoe stayed where she was for a moment, thinking. She smelled rice and fish. Dinner cooking. But she did not go in. Instead, she went into the garden and finished pulling the weeds, ignoring the thorns that scratched her hands.

  Four

  SAN DIEGO

  1991

  There’s a Japanese saying, Ichi-go, ichi-e. Literally, it means “one encounter in a lifetime.” Figuratively, it means you don’t get do-overs in life. Sometimes you make decisions that irrevocably send you down one path instead of another. When you’re young, everything seems reversible.

  But making a few wrong choices can trip you up forever.

  My father was the one who taught me that phrase.

  I spent my childhood on swim teams, winning meets all over town. It was the one thing that made my father really notice me. I saw his proud expression when the other parents congratulated him, how he took photos when I went up to claim my medals. If I lost, he critiqued my performance on the car ride home, telling me how the other swimmers had bested me, how I could improve my time and my form. The thing was, though he’d been a football player, he was often correct. He was not one of those parents who said that doing my best was enough. Winning was enough. I agreed, then.

  And it was also what I was known for in school. I was Rachel the Swimmer. The girl who got up before dawn to swim and would surely be in the Olympics one day.

  I worked harder than anybody else on the swim team. We practiced in the mornings, and I went back to the pool in the evenings to perfect my strokes, ignoring little stabs of pain shooting up to my neck. Ignoring how I’d stopped my periods and how tired I was every day in class. When my blood sugar dropped too much, I drank coffee and ate a banana and a candy bar and pushed myself to go further. I wanted to be number one.

  When I was sixteen, during January of my sophomore year, I dislocated my shoulder during a swim meet. I felt a deep pop, a wrenching sensation, and then the purest pain I’d ever feel, besides childbirth. I sank, my mouth opening in a soundless scream, lifting one arm aloft to get help.

  I’d never again be able to swim at the same level. At that age, it felt like the end of the world. Suddenly I wasn’t Rachel Snow, Winner of Gold Medals. I was just Rachel Snow, average student. A nobody to anybody, especially to my family.

  And so I found comfort in other ways.

  My friends had all been on the swim team. We’d traveled to meets together, spending entire days huddled together on cold pool decks or applying sunblock to each other’s backs on the hot days. Suddenly I had nobody. I could have been manager, somebody who kept score and gathered up goggles and brought out water, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of watching them all do something I could not.

  Killian treated me differently, too. Apparently, swimming was the on
ly thing interesting about me. He had no reason to take me anywhere or even talk to me anymore. But what could I do about it? It’s not like we had the kind of relationship where our family went to the movies together.

  No longer working out every day, I put on weight and needed new clothes. I had to ask Killian for some money. He stopped drinking his Old-Fashioned to look me up and down, how my thighs strained against my Guess denim mini, my stomach pooching over the waistband. A look of plain disgust crossed his face. I shrank inside. “Better stop eating so much,” he grunted. “No boy will like you, the way you’re going.”

  “Thanks,” I said, in response to the cash he handed me. I’d trained myself not to respond to his barbs now, not the way I had when I was little. When somebody is like him, you expect all kinds of mean things to come out of his mouth. It barely affects you anymore. Or so you think. It’s like swallowing something sharp without realizing it, the object sitting undisturbed until years later, when your insides suddenly begin to bleed.

  I had no idea why Killian Snow was the way he was. He didn’t tell stories about his childhood. I knew he grew up on a cattle ranch in central California that his father had lost in a drunken card game when Killian was sixteen. He had no siblings. Probably his childhood was unhappy. Who knew what had happened to him? All I knew of my father was how he was with us. And of course, in high school, I didn’t spend a second of time wondering why.

  At lunch one day, tired of being alone and deciding I didn’t need any more calories that day, I’d wandered out to the school parking lot. Back then you were still allowed to leave school for lunch, and in the chaos some kids would hang out in their cars in the far corners of the expansive lot and smoke.

  I walked slowly past a truck bed full of these students. “You’re Rachel, right?” a boy with a floppy mop of dark hair said. A clove cigarette stuck out of his mouth. “The swimmer?”