Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  Drew stops typing. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Why? That was really more of a rhetorical.”

  My sister purses her lips. “I don’t know. It’s just that when we hear back from her, that will be it. Like really it. This mystery will be solved. Over.”

  “But we want that. Don’t we?” I feel a pang. It’s a bit like we’re putting end caps on my mother’s life, too. I take the airmail paper out of the back of the book, where I’ve stuck it. “We need to do it. This Hatsuko might know things.”

  Drew picks up a magazine. “If I write the letter, you can call Killian.”

  I shake my head. Drew’s told me what he said to her in the waiting room. He’d have no problem disposing of us. “I really don’t see the point of asking him. He’s going to say no.”

  “But it’s his granddaughter. Maybe it’ll make him soften. Maybe he’s just like that because we never actually invite him anywhere. You edged him out with Mom. It could be a peace gesture.” Drew takes the paper, uses the magazine as a flat surface.

  Maybe I should phone him, but I don’t know if I’d be able to get any words out. I fear it’ll turn into an ugly fight. I type up an e-mail quickly, before I think better of it.

  DAD,

  I KNOW WE’VE HAD OUR DIFFERENCES, BUT I’M ASKING YOU TO PUT THEM ASIDE FOR A MINUTE. OUR DAUGHTER QUINCY [I have to write “daughter Quincy” because I’m not sure he’s aware that I have a daughter, much less her name] IS GETTING MARRIED IN MID-MAY. SHE WOULD LIKE FOR YOU TO ATTEND THE WEDDING AND THE FESTIVITIES SURROUNDING.

  THANKS,

  RACHEL

  “How’s that?” I show my sister.

  She shrugs. “Kind of impersonal, but whatever.”

  “I don’t know him, Drew. I can’t be chummy. Are you chummy with him?”

  She sighs. She’s not. She knows she’s not. “Okay. Read mine.”

  Dear Hatsuko,

  We don’t know each other, but we might have someone in common. Hikari Sato. She is our mother. Recently, she fell ill, but she gave us the samurai book you sent. Can you tell us where it came from and how our mother came to have it?

  It would be most appreciated.

  Sincerely,

  Drew and Rachel Snow

  “I’m Perrotti.” I hand it back to her.

  “That just complicates it.” Drew folds it carefully.

  “Don’t you think you should put in a stamped self-addressed envelope? And have the letter translated into Japanese?”

  “First you don’t want to do it. Now you’re micromanaging.” Drew sighs noisily. “Fine. I’ll ask Joseph to translate it and I’ll include an SASE. It’ll cost more. Why’d you bother with the airmail paper?”

  I shrug. “I didn’t think of the other things.”

  “But you said them like you had and you were telling me I was wrong.”

  “Sorry.” I hadn’t meant to put it like that. Only my sister would scrutinize the meta-meanings of my word choices so intensely. Once she’d asked, after playing a song, how it was. I was busy doing homework and just said, “Okay.” She’d pouted and wept for hours.

  Drew waves her hand in front of her face. “Never mind. Let me tell you something good.” She folds up the letter and speaks brightly. “Did you know that your local library was harboring a very hot single Englishman?”

  “Alan?” I think of him. He’s always wearing a sweater vest of some kind. I hadn’t paid much attention. “He waived a fine for me once. Seems nice.”

  “Don’t you think he’s hot?” Drew’s disappointed.

  I try to remember what his face looked like. “Um. I guess. He wasn’t horribly ugly or anything.”

  “Oh my God, Rachel.” Drew throws her hands up. “He’s the hottest man in a thirty-mile radius.” She puts her hand on my arm. “Single man. I’m not counting Tom or anything.”

  “Okay, okay.” I cross my arms. “What about him?”

  “I’m going out with him.” Drew draws her shoulders up.

  I clear my throat, thinking of how Drew’s got to go back to her own home sometime. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s just for fun.”

  I kick my feet out in front of me, sending the blanket flying up.

  “What?” Drew turns to me. “Say it. I know you’re thinking something.”

  “At a certain age,” I begin, trying to choose my words carefully. I want the best for my sister. I don’t want her to wander around getting into go-nowhere relationships for her whole life. I trail off. “Don’t you think you should concentrate on men with whom you might have a future?”

  Drew visibly bristles. If she had hackles, they’d be raised. “You never know. I might move here, like I said.”

  “True.” I watch Chase walk through the family room, a stack of chocolate chip cookies in one hand and what looks like a liter of milk in the other. He’s still such a little boy in so many ways. He still plays with his Star Wars action figures sometimes—I can hear him mumbling commands under his breath when I go by his room.

  Drew gets up, stomps away. I shouldn’t have said anything. Let her make her own mistakes. She returns with a package of cookies. “Want one?”

  Chips Ahoy. Crunchy. “Remember when you ate a whole pack of these and threw up?” I ask.

  “Totally worth it,” Drew says.

  “Not really. You did it in my room.” I nudge her with my leg. “Every time you were sick, you’d come running to me. Not Mom.”

  Drew taps my ankle with hers. “I knew you didn’t mind.”

  “Ha.”

  “Look. Joseph sent us some more of the translation.” Drew turns the laptop around to face me.

  I sit up and regard my younger sister. She sits facing me, her back against the other corner. Our feet are next to each other’s. How long has it been since we’ve just hung out on the couch together? Years. Decades, already. I lean over and adjust the blanket so it’s covering Drew, too. I tuck it under her feet.

  “Thanks.” She leans back. “Want me to read it to you?”

  “Let’s see if you’re as good at reading aloud as I am.” I’d read her the first three books of the Anne of Green Gables series when she was little. I promised her one page for every half hour she left me alone. Once I had to go two hours. By the time I finished the third, she was old enough to read the rest on her own. I did the same for Quincy—without the condition, of course.

  “Learned from the best.” Drew sinks into the couch.

  MIYANOKOSHI FORTRESS

  SHINANO PROVINCE

  HONSHU, JAPAN

  Spring/Summer 1177

  On a morning early in April, Tomoe and Chizuru hung laundry on the line. Yamabuki had woken up vomiting and was still in bed.

  “I hope she isn’t sick,” Tomoe said. “I will not go near her today.”

  “Tomoe.” Her mother pulled Yamabuki’s pants from the clean laundry, her expression excited. “Did Yamabuki have her blood this month?”

  Tomoe touched the clothes to see if they were dry yet. “How should I know?”

  “You’re her lady-in-waiting.”

  Tomoe made a dismissive noise. “Hardly. She doesn’t show me her rags.” Though Tomoe cared little about blood, Yamabuki was too embarrassed to let Tomoe help her with such things. Truth be told, Tomoe was glad not to be bothered. Her menses did not appear as regularly as a full moon, like Yamabuki’s. Today Tomoe’s sides felt as if they had been sliced with a dull sword, and the rags she had pushed into herself to stop the flow needed to be changed three times an hour. On days like this, Chizuru usually let Tomoe rest and made sure she had extra protein to compensate for the blood loss. But Chizuru, as was usual now, thought only of Yamabuki.

  “I see nothing. No spots. No rags.” Chizuru threw the wet laundry into the basket. Tomoe followed her mothe
r to the house. A suspicion presented itself, a rising jealousy, but she tamped it down.

  Chizuru went straight to Yamabuki, who lay on her side, a wooden bucket nearby. “Get on your back,” Chizuru commanded. Yamabuki turned, her mouth tight and her face green.

  “Leave me alone,” she moaned.

  Chizuru opened Yamabuki’s kimono and felt the girl’s flat stomach, pressing her fingertips gently below the navel. Yamabuki stifled a dry heave. “Tomoe, feel,” Chizuru said.

  Tomoe felt. Her fingers encountered something of medium firmness, the size of a small pear. “What is it?”

  “Her womb has enlarged,” Chizuru said softly.

  Yamabuki wiped at her mouth. “Are you sure that’s not my stomach?”

  “Pregnant,” Chizuru pronounced. She closed the kimono. “I’d say about two months.”

  Jealousy and joy stormed one another in Tomoe’s chest. Why Yamabuki? Tomoe and Yoshinaka had been together countless times. If Tomoe had a baby, though she was a concubine and not the first wife, it, too, would be a legal heir. She longed to see Yoshinaka hold their baby son in his arms. He would love a child from her as much as one from Yamabuki, she was sure of it.

  Yamabuki closed her eyes and turned over. Tomoe stood over her, waiting for a response. Her back cramped unpleasantly. “Are you not pleased?”

  “Leave me alone,” Yamabuki said, her voice high and muffled.

  “If I were you, I would be very happy,” Tomoe said.

  “You are not me,” Yamabuki cried. “Yoshinaka is such a demon, I would not be surprised if his spawn clawed its way out of my womb. It is probably spitting fire in there now, causing me these pains.”

  Tomoe’s jealousy evaporated, replaced by shock. It had never occurred to her that Yamabuki didn’t enjoy Yoshinaka’s attentions the same way Tomoe did. If Yoshinaka heard his wife’s words, Tomoe wouldn’t be surprised if he did turn into a demon and have the girl killed. Such an insult from a wife to a husband was unthinkable, and invited misfortune.

  Chizuru paled, too. “You are asking for bad luck, Yamabuki. If you welcome this pregnancy, perhaps your body won’t be sick.”

  Yamabuki did not answer.

  Tomoe took her mother’s hand. “Let’s go finish the laundry. She will come around.”

  • • •

  Yamabuki spent all of that spring and most of the summer carrying the bucket with her wherever she went. Though it didn’t seem possible, she became thinner, her ribs sticking out even as her belly grew large. She began refusing to leave the house, saying she was too ill and weak. She no longer played music or helped with the chores. And when Yamabuki recited poetry, she chose the most desolate passages Tomoe could imagine. Her voice no longer sounded like bells, but was breathy and labored.

  One night, Yamabuki recited a piece from the ninth-century poet Komachi Ono.

  “In this world I am the shadow

  Unseen, barely felt

  And still at night, as I sleep

  I am but

  the invisible wind”

  Tomoe thought the words beautiful, but the way Yamabuki said them made her soul ache. “What does it mean?”

  Yamabuki paused. “It means that self-loathing is terrible, I suppose. If even in your dreams, you hate yourself.”

  “I don’t hate myself,” Tomoe said at once. But Yamabuki did, she thought. The idea felt strange. “Neither should you.”

  Yamabuki bowed her head. “I find it comforting, don’t you?”

  Tomoe pushed away the sadness and forced a cheerful smile onto her face. She slapped her thigh to jar the air. “You should not examine your life too closely. It makes you unhappy, Yamabuki.”

  “You, Tomoe, do not understand the point of poetry,” Yamabuki replied, and stretched out on her sleeping mat.

  Eleven

  SAN DIEGO

  Present Day

  You don’t know what you are. Yamabuki’s words to Tomoe echo through me.

  It’s the next morning, and I’ve just taken Chase to school and come back home to straighten up before Laura gets here for our meeting. Of course, I stopped mid-vacuum to read the Tomoe Gozen book. Laura won’t mind a bit of dust.

  I finish reading the passage about Tomoe’s softening toward Yamabuki. Would it be possible for them to be friends? I can’t imagine being generous in a similar situation, but since I don’t live during that era, I can’t say for sure. It would be more of a benefit if Tomoe and Yamabuki could learn from each other, I think.

  My phone’s light blinks and I pick it up. An e-mail from my father’s attorney.

  IN THE FUTURE, PLEASE DIRECT ALL CORRESPONDENCE FOR KILLIAN SNOW TO ME.

  Just like I thought. I’m mad at myself for a second, for even daring to hope. I imagine Quincy’s face falling when I tell her, the mask of indifference she’ll put on. “It doesn’t matter,” she’ll say. Like Drew and I always did whenever we had to. Damn him for hurting my kid. Damn me for not protecting her.

  The box that held Sisters of Heart sits on the family room floor next to a basket of clean towels. I realize I never sorted all those childhood mementos Mom stored in the box. I unsnap the lid and begin taking items out. Three small square photos, maybe three-by-three, fall from between the spelling bee certificate and report cards. Old ones I’ve never seen, the kind printed on heavy cardboard, pre-1970s, certainly.

  I sit on the floor to look through them. Mom never showed us old photos. Other households had album after album full of snapshots. My father had a framed photo of his parents on his desk at work, two gimlet-eyed immigrants in flannel coats, dead long before I came along. Their mystery would likely never be solved, and with the way my father’s treated me over the years, I never cared to investigate.

  But these.

  These are Japanese people. My mother’s family? A young girl, around age eight. The black-and-white image is stark and printed on heavy board. It has to be Mom. I trace the Cupid’s-bow lips, the heart-shaped face, so dark there appears to be no differentiation between the iris and the pupil, so they look solid black. Hikari. I flip it over, scrutinizing the Japanese letters. I think I recognize the symbols from other things Mom had with her name on them. I’ll take it to Joseph to be sure.

  I study the other two photos. A picture of what must be Mom’s Japanese hometown, Mom in a schoolgirl’s uniform, standing with a couple who must be her parents. And one more: a portrait of my very young-looking mother, when she was perhaps no more than twenty, holding a baby girl about six months old. Mom’s eyes are shining and large. The baby has adorable chubby cheeks and reaches toward the camera.

  Who is this baby? A cousin? The child of a friend? Or maybe Mom had brothers and sisters I don’t know about. It could be anyone. I put the photos back, but my hands won’t release them. I drop them and call Joseph.

  • • •

  Mid-morning, Laura comes over to discuss my father. I make a fresh pot of coffee, and we settle down in the living room, her briefcase spilling paperwork out across the coffee table. Drew’s already left for her coffee date.

  Laura claps her hands together. Her fingernails are polished a bright, authoritative red. If I hadn’t known her for so long, she’d be intimidating. “I’m filing a response to your father’s petition, and I need you to sign the forms.” She points with her pen. “I’ve explained how your mother chose this particular place and how she is entitled to spend ‘his’ money, because she’s his wife and not his slave.” Rolling her eyes, she hands me her pen. “The hearing’s set for the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. I’ll be out of town for the next couple of weeks, but I’ll be back in time for that.”

  Just three more weeks. I hold the nib above the signature line. My father will tell the judge I tricked my mother into signing over her rights. That I’m using her to get back at him. The judge won’t know how Killian treated my mother or me. If you’ve got fo
od and shelter and clothing, it’s very difficult to prove that anything’s amiss. “What if the judge agrees with him?”

  Laura purses her lips. “I’m not going to lie, Rachel. If the judge agrees with him, Killian can move your mother wherever he pleases. He can also ban you from seeing her.”

  I put the pen down, add cream to my coffee, and stir it into a cloud. My pulse beats in my ears and my breathing sounds shallow. I take a sip, feeling the hot liquid in my throat.

  Laura touches my arm. She has a determined set to her jaw. “Have you found out anything else about this secret your father was talking about?”

  “No.” The coffee rises back into my throat, burning it. Once again I imagine Mom stuck in the sub-par nursing home, sitting in her own waste, decaying without anyone noticing and me not being able to do a thing about it. “Maybe we should try to compromise,” I say desperately. “I don’t want to not be able to see her. Isn’t there something we can do?”

  Laura raises an eyebrow. She’s of what she describes as Slavic peasant farmer descent: solid, tall, reliable. I’m reminded for a moment of Tomoe. Like the character in Mom’s book, Laura is a fighter. “Rachel, I can ask if he’ll talk to you. But my impression is that your father wants what he wants.”

  “But what if we lose?” My voice is weak. I glance into the backyard, at the leaves floating on top of the pool. If I look directly at Laura, I’m afraid I’ll burst into tears.

  “We haven’t crossed that bridge yet.” Laura pokes the pen into my hand.

  I think about Sisters of Heart. I have to find out why Mom wanted me to have it. Why my name is in it. Talk to her about it, before my father cuts me out of her life. Again.

  I sign the papers.

  A blue Toyota pulls up outside, parking on the street. I stand up so fast my head spins. Quincy and Ryan. “What’s she doing here?” I wonder aloud. I glance at the clock. Ten-thirty. “She has class.”

  Laura raises her eyebrows as she takes in Ryan walking up the path. “That’s the guy she’s known for five minutes that she’s going to marry?” I nod. “Can’t say I blame her.”