Jenn rolled her eyes. “You’re such an optimist, Mom.”
Despite my hurt, I understood. Mom was completely dependent on my father. “You can’t work,” my father would tell her when she wistfully mentioned finding a job. “It’s impossible. Besides, who’d want you? You haven’t worked for almost two decades.”
We finished loading the boxes into the trunk. I stood there mute, my insides churning. I wished my sister was there to say good-bye. I wished I could take her with me. Well, she was barely home anyway, and my parents still liked her—she’d be all right.
Barbara shut the hatchback of her station wagon and regarded me with a furrowed brow. She didn’t fully understand our family dynamics, couldn’t comprehend my father’s nature.
“Come here, sweetie.” Barbara opened her arms. She hugged me in a way I did not recall my mother doing since I was tiny, patting my back. I leaned into her peach-colored sweatshirt with a scene of lambs playing in a field, smelling her drugstore Coty musk. I sobbed, letting myself release all the tension, dribbling snot all over the lambs. I was nothing. My parents could let me go so easily. Like I was a cast-off in one of those boxes. Jenn thumped my back.
Barbara rocked me back and forth. “You’re not a bad kid, Rachel,” she whispered into my hair, her breath warm on my scalp. “You have a good soul. You’re just in pain, that’s all.”
I looked at the lambs through blurred eyes. Nobody had ever told me anything like that. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” She pushed the hair off my sweaty forehead. I tightened my arms around her.
The garage door began grinding closed. I looked back to see Mom, her hand over the button, watching us with a pale face. The door hit the concrete with a final thud.
“Yeah, really. What do they know? Fuck ’em all.” Jenn flipped a middle finger toward my house.
“Jenn!” Barbara slapped her daughter’s hand down in horror. “What’s with the potty mouth?”
“Sorry. I’ve been hanging around with the swim team boys too much.” Jenn flashed me a grin. “Hey, Rach. Our summer league needs a manager. You might as well do it. It’ll be fun. I promise.” She leaned over to my ear. “It’s co-ed.”
I had to laugh. Boys were the last thing I needed, except maybe as friends. But with Jenn there, it’d be all right. “Maybe.”
“Maybe. Not maybe. For sure.” Jenn got in the station wagon, patting the backseat beside her. “Come on, Rachel. Let’s go.”
“Nobody wants shotgun?” Barbara asked. “What am I, a chauffeur?”
So this was what a regular family was like. I relaxed a little bit, feeling less nauseated. Barbara would take care of me, I was certain. I shut the door and buckled in.
• • •
I lived with Jenn’s family until I finished high school. “We could probably legally force your parents to take you back,” Barbara said, “but it’s up to you.” I didn’t want to go back. The only regret I had was at leaving my sister, but whenever I saw her, Drew seemed fine. We seemed to have lived different realities within a single family.
Barbara and her husband refused to take any rent, allowing me to keep the money I earned from a job I had cleaning up for an elderly neighbor. Later, Barbara and her husband, Harvey, got an affidavit to be my caregivers, so they could sign me up for school activities and medical care.
They moved back east shortly after I married Tom, and Barbara passed away from cancer ten years ago. Jenn’s working for the State Department in Europe now, but we keep in touch to this day, exchanging Christmas cards and occasional e-mails. I honestly don’t know what would have happened to me if it weren’t for Jenn’s family. Through them, I got to know what a normal family was like, in stark contrast to mine.
• • •
That was the last time I saw Mom until I was pregnant with Quincy.
When I remember this, it’s like it all happened last week instead of twenty years ago. A pit opens in my stomach and that feeling of abandonment, of being yesterday’s stinky fish, hits me all over again. I wish I could time travel back and find teenage Rachel and give her a big hug like Barbara had. Lots of big hugs.
My father should’ve tried a heck of a lot harder. He hadn’t even made an attempt to help me, the way I would if Quincy or Chase started acting out like that. I wasn’t entirely horrible—I never stole, I wasn’t robbing anyone. I was just lost.
In short, he should have been a parent. So should have my mother. Parents help guide their children. They’re not just these guardians who provide money and shelter, who pay attention only when their kids shine.
For two years after the big to-do that got me kicked out of the house, my mother had obeyed my father’s orders. I’d seen my sister a handful of times—it was easier for Drew to claim she was doing something else so she could meet me—but never my mother. I’d given up on my mother, knowing she either couldn’t or wouldn’t risk my father’s ire.
During the last month of my pregnancy with Quincy, my mother appeared at our house with two armfuls of gifts, calling first to make sure we were home. It felt like we were making a mutually inconvenient but necessary appointment, as though she was coming for a root canal. I’d opened the door to her reluctantly. After I felt Quincy flipping in my womb, awakening with loud music or kicking at the sensation of Tom rubbing my belly, I couldn’t understand how my own mother could have let me go. What, exactly, was my father holding over her head? Maybe it was my crazy primeval pregnancy hormones talking, but if someone had tried to come between me and Quincy, I’d have cut off his leg and beaten him to death with it. Needless to say, at eighteen, I was still angry at my mother. At her impotence and passivity.
But Mom said she had something very important to give me. Entering my house, she stood nervously behind the couch, brightly striped gift bags held awkwardly in her hands. I hadn’t seen her for two years, but she looked as if she’d aged ten, with deep new creases between her brows and at the corners of her mouth. Doing a lot of frowning, but not much laughing. My poor mother. Still, I didn’t want to take the gifts. She was supposed to have fought for me. Determined to make this as uncomfortable as possible, I sat down and waited.
Tom swooped in, though, scooped up Mom’s bags and enveloped her in one of the big warm Italian-family hugs he gives without reservation. “I’m so glad to meet you!” Tom squeezed my tiny mother. Only his parents had attended our wedding. I waited for her stiffness, for her to step back.
To my surprise, her arms flew up and she squeezed him back. When he stepped away, her eyes were bright. She let out a large sigh and smiled. “I’m happy to meet you, too.”
Was that all she was feeling? No sadness? No apologies? I gulped down the lump in my throat. She could not just waltz back into my life, I thought fiercely. I wanted something—for her to say she regretted what her husband had done. That she had missed me. Anything.
Tom touched my shoulder. “I’ll be in the bedroom if you need me,” he whispered, and left.
Mom sat down, playing with the black pocketbook on her lap. She was dressed not in one of her customary Chanel suits, as I’d expected, but in sweatpants and a sweat jacket, the kind of thing she would have worn only while out walking. She stared at the rickety old trunk that served as our coffee table while she spoke. “Your father does not know I’m here,” she said slowly, enunciating each word.
My mouth went dry. “What will you do if he finds out?” Who knew when my father would embark on another crazy whim and force her away? She would comply. She’d shown me that.
Mom smiled wryly and spread her hands out. “It is not your worry. He cannot keep me from seeing you.” She reached into the bag, drawing out a large floppy gift wrapped in pink tissue paper. “I have something for you and Tom, and some things for the baby.” She bowed, as if I were a stranger. Which I was. I made no move to take the package.
“Mom. I don’t need an
ything. We’re set.” In fact, we were not, but if I took her gift, I’d be accepting her back into my life. I couldn’t handle the disappointment if she left again, not while I was pregnant and vulnerable.
“Please.” In that low light, her irises blended into her pupils. I was looking at a dark reflecting pool.
I took the package and unwrapped it. I knew what it would be as soon as I felt the softness through the paper. It was the wedding ring quilt, repeating interlocked circles of blue and yellow and green. My favorite colors. I ran my hand over the stitching, admiring the tiny stitches that hadn’t been touched by a machine.
“I did it by hand,” Mom said. “For you. It will bring good luck.”
“I don’t need luck,” I said, still prickly. I felt Quincy move inside my stomach, pressing her tiny hands against my belly button as she flipped upside down. “Tom isn’t Dad.”
Her face went still. She took out another package. “And for the baby.”
I unwrapped the other gifts. Knitted green booties, a cap, a soft pink receiving blanket. The booties looked vaguely familiar.
“They were yours.” Mom settled back in the couch and gazed at some spot behind me. “I made them for you.”
My chest felt like it was on fire. This was my mother’s apology. Her love letter. She didn’t need to use words. All at once I felt how much effort it must have taken for her to come see me, afraid I’d turn her away or be mean to her. I wiped at my eyes. “Thank you.”
We stopped talking then. Only a mantel clock ticked away.
“And some new clothes.” She pointed at the other bag. “Only yellow and green. Good for a boy or girl.”
“It’s a girl,” I said.
Something akin to disappointment flickered over her face. “Oh.”
“I’m glad it’s a girl,” I said. “I can’t wait to raise a girl. She’s going to do everything. Whatever she wants.”
“How about Tom?” She nodded toward the door where he’d gone.
“Tom’s happy. He says he can do anything with a girl that he could have done with a boy. Take her camping. Play sports.” That had in fact been what Tom had said, but now I desperately wanted him to come out and confirm the story. “Tom!” I shouted.
He came running out as if he’d been waiting on the other side the door, his eyes wide. Those days, every time I called his name, he was afraid I was going into labor. “Are you okay?”
“Tell my mother you want a girl.” I grabbed his hand.
“Of course I want a girl,” he said, his voice laced with puzzlement. He glanced at my mother, her expression as unreadable as a doll’s. “What’s the question?”
After that, Mom came by sporadically. Always in the daytime and never staying for more than a couple of hours. She couldn’t come on Christmas or other holidays; that would make Killian too suspicious.
But she appeared often enough for my children to call her ’Bachan, which means “Grandma” in Japanese. She always had candies in her purse, saltwater taffy and caramels, gooey stuff the kids loved. They were always glad to see her, though mostly Mom just sat on the couch and watched as they played. We never spoke of my father.
MIYANOKOSHI
SHINANO PROVINCE
HONSHU, JAPAN
Spring 1160
Kaneto took them to the town of Kiso-Fukushima to buy supplies. They brought along Yoshimori Wada, the nine-year-old son of another local farmer Kaneto had recruited to the cause. “His grandfather was a Minamoto noble,” Kaneto said. “Descended from Emperor Kawa. He is like us. Samurai blood.”
Yoshimori Wada seemed unremarkable to Tomoe. He was barely her height, with a medium build and a placid face on a ball-like head, his straight hair falling into his eyes. He looked like a dull wooden doll. Tomoe greeted him with a small bow when they were introduced, then faded back behind Kaneto so she wouldn’t have to talk. She focused instead on walking the horse they had brought to carry the goods back.
Tomoe loved going into town, which she rarely got to do. This town was tiny, only two streets long, but compared with the farm it was a bustling metropolis.
Kaneto paused at a stall where a man sold clothing, asking about woven bamboo body armor. “You may each buy a sweet,” he said, giving them each a Chinese copper. Tomoe grinned. Such a treat was usually reserved for special occasions, like New Year’s. This was a noteworthy occasion indeed.
Tomoe and Yoshimori Wada walked slowly to the sweets stall. The two younger boys danced in front of them, kicking up plumes of yellowish-brown dirt in their wake. Tomoe sneezed. “Watch out!” Yoshinaka yelled to the townspeople, doing a high-kick for their benefit. “Minamoto coming through.” Several old people nodded approvingly at him with toothless grins. Tomoe doubted these people would state their support aloud, however.
Tomoe glanced back at her father, expecting a reprimand for the showy display. Kaneto did not turn. It was young Yoshimori Wada who stepped in and clapped Yoshinaka on the back roughly.
“Stop it,” he said sharply. “You are getting dirt in Tomoe’s face.”
Yoshinaka glanced back at her, surprised. “She doesn’t care if she gets dirty.”
“I care.” Yoshimori Wada put his face next to Yoshinaka’s. “You’re her brothers. You’re supposed to protect her.”
Tomoe stepped forward. “It’s all right, Wada-san.”
“Call me Yoshimori.” But he straightened from Yoshinaka.
“I like Wada. Wada-san.” She bowed with a smile. It wasn’t polite of her to call him by his family name. Surnames were given as an honor by the emperor, and should not be bandied about so casually. He might have punched anyone else who tried it. But instead Wada’s face brightened and blushed. Perhaps he wasn’t dull after all, Tomoe thought. Of course, Kaneto would never consent to training a dull boy. Tomoe would watch the boys to make sure they didn’t die by their own clumsy hands, and Wada-san would watch after her.
A group of little girls stood in front of the candy vendor. They were merchants’ daughters, clad in cotton kimonos of light pinks and yellows, their hands soft and untarnished by heavy work, tall in their wooden geta sandals, platforms built on sideways blocks. They looked at Tomoe and giggled.
“Is that a boy or a girl?” one of them asked disdainfully.
“She’s as dirty as a boy, and she’s with boys,” another girl said.
Tomoe’s face burned. But what did she care what these little girls thought? In Japan, merchants were below farmers in society. One day, they would pray for protection from people like her and her family. The real warriors.
Head held high, Tomoe walked up to the sweet vendor. Her mouth watered at the display of multicolored candied fruits and the mochi candies. The air here was sweet. She inhaled and looked over the prices. She had money for the fruit, but not for the mochi, her favorite.
The vendor, an elderly man whose wrinkles nearly pushed his eyes closed, leaned over.
“What would you like, pretty one?”
“One candied loquat, please.” To her left, Tomoe heard the girls continue to chatter about her. Loneliness welled up. She wished she had a girl for a friend. Just one girl, to play dolls or some other nonviolent activity. She had to put Kanehira in a headlock at least once a day to make him behave. She admired the girls’ clean tabi, the socks worn with their geta. They had no dirt beneath their fingernails. She imagined what it would be like to stroll, instead of run, to giggle with friends.
The vendor handed her change. A thought made her heart pound faster; Tomoe bought several candied loquats, golden and juicy, and turned to the girls. “Would you like one?” she asked, holding them out on the palm of her hand.
The girls eyed her with distaste. They said nothing. They turned away.
Then Yoshinaka was there, muscling up alongside her. “Answer Tomoe.”
A girl with catlike eyes wrinkled her nose. “I
smell dung and despair. It must be a Minamoto.” The others laughed openly, several little boys joining in as they sensed excitement afoot.
Tomoe stiffened, sure that her young foster brother would retaliate. But Yoshinaka only laughed and stuck one hand into his kimono. “One day you’ll wish to be a Minamoto, too, and don’t think I won’t remember who you are and what you said.” He stared at the girls with an expression that reminded Tomoe of their dog when he was hunting a rabbit. The girl blanched, unwilling to escalate a conflict with the unpredictable Yoshinaka, and wobbled off, her friends following. “You don’t bother Tomoe, you hear?”
Wada, as she now thought of him, pulled her backward. “They’re not worthy of you, Tomoe,” he said. “Come on, Yoshinaka. Kanehira. Let’s find your father.” Linking her arm with his, they left the stall.
“Here.” Kanehira was at her side. He handed her a mochi cake, heavy, filled with candied fruit. This was the most expensive thing at the stall, because of the cost of the rice. Rice was so valuable in Japan that it was even used to pay taxes. Kanehira must have used his whole coin, maybe even two. She glanced at Yoshinaka and saw that he had no treat. Neither did Wada. All three of them had bought this for her. They did not acknowledge her, but kept walking, eyes forward.
These boys were her truest friends. Both by blood and by chance. They were the only ones she could depend upon, who truly understood her. When the world turned against her, they would form a shield.
They came from the same place, after all.
Tomoe knew they did not want thanks; it would embarrass them. Instead she held out the loquats. Each of the boys popped one into his mouth as they went back to locate Kaneto.
Five
SAN DIEGO
Present Day
Drew does wonder, sometimes, what became of the quilt her mother made for her. When she thought she was going to get married, she imagined putting it on their bed. Then her mother tried to give it to her when Drew knew her boyfriend would never marry her. Every time she saw the quilt, she thought of her almost-fiancé. She feels guilty now, thinking of all the work her mother put into it; but getting the quilt then was like receiving a baby outfit after you know you can’t get pregnant.
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