We step inside, but don’t see anybody looking for two women. No waves. “Is Quincy still playing piano?” Drew asks me. Quincy took lessons for ten years. She stopped when she was sixteen, but Drew, I realize, doesn’t know it.
“No time. Engineering’s pretty demanding.” A little wellspring of worry bubbles into my stomach, thinking about Quincy. Nope. Can’t change it. Not going to think about it.
“It’s hard to make a living at music,” Drew says, a bit wistfully. “I kind of wish I’d been an engineer, just so I’d have a career.”
“No you don’t. You hate math. You would have quit the first year.” I’m not putting her down—just stating a fact. I’m not a math person, either. My daughter is.
“I wouldn’t have.” Drew crosses her goose-pimply arms. “I’m good at math. I just don’t like doing it.”
A young man in the foyer waves. He wears a white T-shirt topped with a blue scarf and black-rimmed glasses. Dark bangs flop onto his goateed face, and his jeans are tighter than Brooke Shields’s in that long-ago Calvin Klein ad. He’s not much older than my daughter. Wow. I am ancient. “Rachel? Drew?”
“Is the name Bond?” Drew raises her brows. “Joseph Bond.”
“At least they didn’t name me James,” Joseph says drily. “Let’s find a table.” We walk past the circulation desk, and he gestures toward a seat at a long study table where students are lined up with open laptops.
“So how do you know Japanese?” I sit opposite him. “Did you study it in school?”
“I grew up in Japan—my dad worked for Sanyo.” Joseph’s eyes are blue behind his glasses, the scarf making them stand out even more.
I place the book on the table. “First, I’d like to know who sent it.” I point to the return address on the box. There are numbers on the first line: 601-7934. “How do you read the address? Is this a house number?”
“No.” Joseph gets out a pad of paper and writes down the translation. “In Japan, they begin with the equivalent of the zip code. The name is on the last line.”
The name he writes in his hyper-neat, left-handed print is for a Hatsuko Minamoto in Kyoto. I have no idea who that is. I’ve heard of Kyoto, at least—it’s in central Honshu, southwest of Tokyo. “Hatsuko. Do you know her?” he asks.
“No.” I’ve never heard my mother mention anybody who lived in Japan or anyone in her family. She didn’t even really talk about what it was like growing up. I do know that she grew up in the city, and that she’s taller than either of her parents, because I’d asked. That pretty much sums it up.
Perhaps this woman knows the secret about my mother that Killian is threatening to reveal. What did my mother do? I wonder. Did she kill someone? Was she a spy? My imagination runs wild, and I inwardly curse my father for deliberately leaving his message so vague. But I wouldn’t expect anything less from Killian.
I lace my fingers together and try to let my mind relax. I watch Joseph work, his super long fingers diligently scratching away. Then I sit up straight.
I remember. Yes, there was one time when Killian made some kind of threat to Mom.
I started swim team when I was five, taking lessons at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. Kindergartens were a half day back then, so Mom would pick me up, Drew in tow, and take us over to the club. Often, we’d get a snack afterward. Pretty simple stuff.
On one occasion, another mother invited us to the park afterward to play with her little girls. I remember being giddily excited at having friends. At seeing my mother chatting and laughing with another mother. It got late.
When we arrived home, Killian was already in front of the television, an Old-Fashioned in his hand. The sun was low, sending bright golden light into the room.
My mother set Drew down. “Take your sister to play.” I took Drew’s hand but lingered on. The scent of chlorine clung to my damp hair. I walked her slowly into the hallway next to the living room, where Drew began rearranging a collection of stone animals on a small table. I could see and hear my parents.
Killian set his glass down. “It’s five-thirty.”
“Yes,” Mom said. “Still light. It’s almost summer. Very warm today.”
He fingered the rim of the glass. “It’s dinnertime.”
My mother nodded quickly. She bustled around, picking up the mail he’d left opened and discarded over the coffee table, two used plates. “Yes. What would you like to do?”
“To do?” Killian laughed. “I’d like to eat, that’s what I’d like to do. That’s why you’re here.”
“I’m sorry.” My mother bowed her head. “I lost the time. We have cold cuts. I can make sandwiches.”
“That’s not the point.” Spittle flung out of his lips. “There’s dirty dishes in the sink. Crumbs on the floor. Who wants to come home to that?”
Mom said nothing.
“You’re doing too much outside the house,” Killian said. He pointed at her. “You can do one activity a week with them. That’s it.”
My mother stiffened, then turned away. “It’s important for the girls to see other children. To play.”
He waved his hand. “Drew’s a baby. She doesn’t care. Rachel sees kids at school and swim. That’s plenty.”
Mom walked into the hallway.
“You’re getting too many big ideas from these other liberated women!” Killian called to her. “Don’t you go thinking you’re a feminist. I can send you back where you came from with one phone call.”
I remember looking up at my mother, not knowing what that meant. She smiled at me reassuringly, but the plates clinked and trembled.
One phone call? Was his threat idle? What could that possibly mean? I play with the strap to my bag, feeling its scratchiness against my fingers.
All I know is that this is the only memory I have of Mom standing up to my father.
“Did you know that Kyoto used to be called Miyako, and was once the capital of Japan?” Joseph tears off the piece of paper and hands it to me.
I shake myself free of the reverie. “No, I didn’t. Thank you.” I’ll have to ask my mother who Hatsuko is. If she can tell me, which is increasingly unlikely.
Drew reads my mind. “I’ll visit Mom today and ask.”
I nod at her, take out my notebook. A flicker of doubt about Drew taking that on passes through me. Why do I always feel this doubt wherever Drew’s concerned? She’s never screwed up my stuff. I am just a control freak. I put my cold hand on top of hers. “Say hi to her, okay?”
She gives me a strange look. Mom doesn’t know us. “Sure.”
“Maybe she’ll have a good day.”
Drew inhales. “Never has when I’ve been there.”
I put my arm around her shoulder and give her an awkward, stiff half-hug. Mom loves you, I want to say, but I don’t want to have to overexplain to Joseph.
Joseph takes a pair of white cotton gloves out of his satchel and pulls them on. He opens the cardboard box, gingerly lifts out the book.
“Should we be using those gloves, too?” We’ve been ruining an antique.
He looks at the spine, at the pages. “I’d say it’s no more than sixty years old, honestly. Handwritten. But I wouldn’t want to be the one who messes it up.” Joseph writes on his legal pad and looks up at us. “This is the story of Tomoe Gozen. Gozen means ‘lady.’ Tomoe’s big in Japan.” His voice rises. “It’s not a letter at all. It’s a story.”
I look at what he wrote.
Tomoe held the round bronze mirror with steady hands and fought her nervous pulse. A warrior stared back at her, in full battle dress.
“I’ve never heard of her. Was she a samurai woman?” I whisper. I say her name in my head the same way Joseph did. TOE-moh-eh go-ZEN.
Joseph assumes a professorial tone. “The term ‘samurai’ only applies to men. It means ‘male warrior.’ The term for women is onna
musha, ‘female warrior.’ You should try not to confuse them.”
Great. He’s going to be one of those guys. Well, at least the translation will be accurate. “I’ve never heard of . . . onnamusha.”
“Few have. It’s easier for the layperson to say ‘samurai woman.’” He glances at me. “Some think this Tomoe was a real person, some don’t. Legend says she was the captain of a samurai general named Minamoto no Yoshinaka, also known as Kiso, which basically means ‘hillbilly.’ He was involved in a big war in the late twelfth century. The Genpei War.”
Drew’s brow crinkles. She’s paying attention now. “Women fought back then? They only just got allowed into combat in this country. I wonder what changed?”
His eyes open wide and the glasses slide down his nose. “Oh, they fought. Empress Jingu of Japan, who ruled from 170 to 260 AD, supposedly led an invasion of Korea while she was almost nine months pregnant. Most fighting women defended their homes against invasion, while the men were off in their battles. If they didn’t, they were raped or given away as spoils of war. Women were just property back then.”
“Property.” That’s how Killian treats my mom. How he treated his daughters. Pretty dolls who were supposed to be compliant. Follow his bidding, because he knew best. Was he a samurai in a former life? It wasn’t just the samurai who did that. That’s how things were.
“Minamoto.” Drew clears her throat. “The same name as the lady who sent it to her? So this Hatsuko Minamoto was related to this warrior woman?”
Joseph frowns, but doesn’t answer the question directly. “Tomoe was a concubine. Not his wife.”
“A concubine?” I purse my lips. “You mean like a prostitute?”
“No. More like a mistress. An official one, not hidden. She had the protection of the family. Like a second wife. Totally the norm in those days.” Joseph flashes us a reassuring smile, like we’d be cool with the concept just because it happened in the twelfth century. What would it be like to share Tom with another woman? I shudder. How did this warrior woman feel about it? Did she love the man? She could have just killed the wife. Or were they friends?
I try to write down all the things he’s telling me. I’m not used to Japanese names, though, so I’m not sure how to spell any of the words. “Minamoto no—what?”
“Yoshinaka. That would actually be his given name, not his family name. In Japanese, you write your last name first. You’d be Perrotti no Rachel.” He takes the pen, writes it down. Yoshinaka Minamoto. “When I translate it for you, I’ll write it the way you’re used to.”
“Whichever is easiest.”
“I’ll make it easier for you, not me.” He continues in an intense tone. “Tomoe Gozen was not only said to be an astounding beauty, she was Yoshinaka’s most trusted captain. One of the greatest warriors of her time. She was skilled with the naginata, the traditional weapon used by women. Basically a curved dagger on a long pole. Warrior monks used it, too.” He writes down naginata. “But Tomoe was also an expert with the short sword, traditionally a male weapon, and the bow and arrow. Most Westerners haven’t heard of Tomoe, but in Japan there are statues and anime and comics and plays and all kinds of art devoted to her.”
He turns the page to one of the drawings and rotates the book so I can see. In this one, the warrior woman sits alone amid ruins. Crumbled walls and smoking fires surround her.
“Some people say Tomoe Gozen is only a legend. But I don’t think so.” Joseph takes out his e-reader and powers it on. “In fact, I have the Heike Monogatari right here. That’s the history of the Genpei War, with mostly verifiable accounts and events gathered from various people at the time. There’s one short passage about Tomoe.”
He points. It reads: General Yoshinaka’s wife, Yamabuki, was sick and had to stay home while Yoshinaka went to the capital. His concubine, Tomoe, came with him instead. A woman of great beauty, she was also Yoshinaka’s captain—equally skilled in sword as she was in bow and arrow. The best in all Japan, male or female. She single-handedly vanquished hundreds of troops.
Joseph looks up at his rapt audience. Actually, my sister’s looking away, into the depths of the library, at something or someone. I nudge her. “Nobody can find a gravestone or any written record of Tomoe except in the Heike. Some people think she was an invention to make Yoshinaka look bad. To have a woman doing your dirty work for you—it just wasn’t done. It’d be dishonorable for a samurai. But I think she’s real.” Joseph leans forward. “Why would the writer describe her as beautiful and a great warrior if he wanted to shame Yoshinaka? Why wouldn’t she be called ugly and useless? She’s described heroically. And all the other people and events in the Heike took place. Of course, some of it’s exaggerated—one account says she literally tore somebody’s head off with her bare hands. But other parts are exaggerated versions of events, too.”
A story about a samurai woman. Onnamusha, I correct in my head. Mom wants me to read it—obviously it contains something important. “Thanks for agreeing to translate.” I slide cash across the table.
“I’ll send it along as I finish. That okay?” He’s scribbling away furiously. “Let me just do the first chapter for you right now.”
• • •
We sit where we are, watching. If Mom was coherent, she would be the one telling me this story. But then, if my mother were herself, I never would’ve found it. Maybe she never meant to tell us. Maybe she only blurted it out because her mind’s going.
I turn to my sister. “So you still don’t remember Mom talking to you about this book?”
“You were always the one Mom talked to, not me.” Drew keeps her gaze on Joseph Bond, who’s writing away intently. “I don’t really know anything about her.”
“You lived with her longer.”
“Doesn’t mean anything.” Drew exhales. “I know facts, Rachel. What year she was born, when she got married. But she never talked to me about how she felt. About anything.”
I think for a moment. “Didn’t she talk about leaving Dad? Ever?”
Drew shakes her head impatiently. “No. Not to me.”
“She could have left him,” I say. “She would have gotten half. They got married in California.” He couldn’t have sent her back. You can’t just do that to someone who’s here legally. Who has American-born children.
“Unless they had a pre-nup. Or unless she didn’t really want to leave him. She had it pretty good.” Drew sounds matter of fact. “Nice house, all the quilts she could want.”
I shake my head. “You think that’s what qualifies as pretty good? There’s more to life than material crap, Drew.”
“I know that, Rachel.” Drew crosses her arms. “I didn’t say it was to me. To her.”
Anyway, Killian was more than just a distracted father, throwing money at his progeny to keep them off his back. He liked to see how far he could push people. What he could get away with.
He used to take me and Drew shopping at the local Fed-Mart sometimes. It’s out of business now, but it was like a Target.
First we’d go into the store and get what we needed. Then he’d look around the parking lot for dropped receipts. Scan them for what he wanted. One day, when I was eight and Drew was four, it was a twelve-pack of toilet paper. “Go in and tell them they forgot our toilet paper,” he said to me.
I knew what to do. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to hide. I drew my scuffed Mary Jane across the asphalt. “I don’t want to today.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead, Drew.”
“Aye-aye.” She saluted him. He saluted her back. Drew, the compliant one, began marching back across the parking lot. A car backing up narrowly missed her. I ran to catch up, snatched up her hand.
In school, we learned telling lies was wrong. Cheaters got punished. When a cashier gave her too much change, my mother would give it back. “Karma will come back to you if you are not honest,” Mom would sa
y.
What would karma do to us? I worried. We stood by the manager’s desk. Most kids don’t know what a manager’s desk looks like in the grocery store, that counter in front of the lines where there’s a register and a cashbox. Or that the manager always wears a tie. I knew all of this. The store buzzed with register drawers shutting, rattling carts. Here’s your change. Thank you. Come again.
The manager saw us standing there, came over. “You girls need help?”
I looked at him helplessly, my face red. I wanted to tell him. Our father’s making us do this. It’s all a lie. Before I could take a breath, Drew beamed her dimpled chubby four-year-old smile. “Pardon me. You forgot our toilet paper.”
The manager smiled, rumpled her hair. “I’m sorry, young lady. I’ll get it right now.”
I clutched my sister’s hand. She squeezed it comfortingly.
We walked back to the car where Killian waited. I flung the toilet paper at his head, through the open car window. “Here.”
“Oh, Rach.” Killian sat in front as I helped Drew get buckled. “I’m only trying to make you girls tough. Teach you about life. It’s not our fault that some people are so easily fooled. You don’t want to be one of them. What do I always say?”
“Never let anybody pull a fast one,” Drew chirped. “We pull it first.”
We drove away. He never took me shopping again.
• • •
Many years later, I told my mother about these trips. She was silent. She simply changed the channel on the television.
“Did you know?” I prompted.
Her nose wrinkled. “Oh, Rachel. I knew he did many things, but nothing like this. He has plenty of money.” She looked at me, her eyes sad. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I thought he wanted to do something nice, give me a break for once. I was wrong about that, too.” Her voice cracked. She shut her lips and swallowed, her hands clenching into fists at her skirt. Of all the things my father had done, this was the one thing that seemed to distress her the most. She spoke again. “You know, he was a little boy during the Depression. Maybe his father made him do it, too.”
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