Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  Tomoe gripped the branch and ripped it from the hands of the other samurai. She swung the branch and smacked the man in the chest. He fell from his horse with a loud shout, rolling down the muddy bank, all the way to the water.

  She jumped off Cherry Blossom and slid after him, her sandals catching in the muck. The man scrambled, trying to get away, but the mud had pinned down his armor and he flailed like a beetle stuck on its back.

  Tomoe reached the samurai, her sword pointed down, ready to finish him. The man held up his hands. “Tomoe!” he yelled.

  The voice sounded familiar. She kicked off the metal helmet that partially obscured his face. The surprised countenance of Yoshimori Wada stared up.

  Shock coursed through Tomoe. She loosened her grip on the sword. It had been years since she’d last seen him, but she would know him anywhere. The softness had left his face, and he was all angles and bones now, his neck strong and wrapped with muscle. He looked up at her, his face a mixture of fear and warmth. “I’ve said,” he said, his fingers scrabbling through the thin ice of the river as he tried and failed to stand, “that if I had to die at the hands of a Minamoto, I would much rather it be Tomoe Gozen than either of her brothers.”

  Tomoe sheathed her sword. “It takes more than a stick to defeat me, Wada-chan,” she said heavily. “You should know that.”

  His mouth twitched. Wada nodded.

  She left him in the muck, walking back up the bank to Cherry Blossom and the rest of the fray. The soldiers fought on the bridge, on the far side, on the near. Tomoe turned once and looked back at Wada, but he was on all fours, still trying to stand up. The only way she would behead Wada, Tomoe told herself, was if he was about to kill Yoshinaka or Kanehira. She simply could not otherwise.

  Yoshinaka fought near the bridge opening. Despite their inferior numbers, his troops were a hardy bunch and acquitting themselves well. Yoshinaka was engaged with no fewer than nine men, who all seemed to attack at once. More enemy seemed to spring up as Yoshinaka cut one down.

  But a samurai on horseback approached from Yoshinaka’s rear, intent on stabbing him in the back. “Yoshinaka! Watch out!” Tomoe yelled, but her voice was lost in the din.

  She dug into Cherry Blossom’s ribs. “Aiiii!” They leaped forward toward Yoshinaka.

  The samurai turned to face her instead. Hachiro Onda, the samurai who had taken little Yoshitaka. He was dressed head to toe in armor, only one small part of the side of his neck exposed.

  Tomoe’s blood seemed to go as cold as the ground. Hachiro growled and swung his sword at her. She saw the flash of the blade as it passed by her face. Yoshinaka shouted something. Time seemed to stop, and then Tomoe was swinging her sword and falling from her horse. For a moment, she thought she’d been beheaded, her head tumbling toward the ground, but then she saw Onda’s head rolling away toward the river.

  Kanehira was beside her on his horse. “Well done! That was Hachiro Onda!” Her brother was splattered in blood and guts. Tomoe wondered fleetingly if they would ever have the chance to talk of this later, at a campfire. She wouldn’t even begrudge anyone getting drunk. Tomoe wished she and her brother could have been closer, but both of them wanted Yoshinaka’s friendship and attention. Both of them wanted to be the captain. Only one could have him. She was the one who had Yoshinaka, body and mind. Perhaps her mother was right, she had been put into the wrong body, and so had he.

  Yoshinaka dismounted Demon and strode over to her. He took her by the arm and helped her up. “Get out of here, Tomoe!” His face was pained and drawn. Blood came from his shoulder, soaking his bamboo armor.

  “I won’t leave you.” They were backed up against the supports of the bridge. She shot an arrow into an approaching soldier.

  “I cannot die with a woman at my side. It would dishonor me.” Yoshinaka’s lips curled into a snarl that dissolved into sadness. “Go.”

  It wasn’t dishonor Yoshinaka was worried about, not after all he had done, making Tomoe a captain and taking over Miyako.

  Yoshinaka did not want her to see him killed.

  She shot another soldier with an arrow. Her fingers were numb and flecked with blood. It had grown even colder. The river was turning into frost before their eyes. A glance around the battlefield told her what she knew inside. The situation was hopeless. The men were decimated. Even the ones who had tried to cross the bridge had been overtaken and slain.

  No, Tomoe would not leave Yoshinaka, she decided. She looked at her brother. Kanehira drew himself up and spoke with conviction. “Go, Tomoe. I’ll stay with him. Go.”

  Why shouldn’t she die next to him? Without him, she was nothing. She had nothing. She thought of Yamabuki and her mother and her resolve returned. She had to see if they were all right and save them.

  She moved toward Yoshinaka. One more embrace, she thought. One more.

  Yoshinaka mounted Demon. “Leave now! While there’s a break.” He leaned down and his strong hand squeezed her shoulder for the last time, the imprint of his fingers remaining there forever.

  “I do not want to leave you,” she said again. Tomoe remembered when they first professed their feelings for each other, that afternoon by the riverbank. A lifetime spent together.

  Yoshinaka blinked rapidly. “I command you to!” He spurred Demon head-on into the next wave of soldiers, leading them away from the bridge. Kanehira followed on his heels without a glance toward his sister.

  “Sayonara, Yoshi-chan,” Tomoe said. She mounted Cherry Blossom.

  She turned and trotted away, over the bridge.

  Tomoe would not look back.

  Twenty-two

  SAN DIEGO

  Present Day

  The following morning, I park in front of my father’s house, wishing that I had a Cherry Blossom to ride into this battle. I ring the doorbell.

  Yesterday, Laura called me while I was at the hospital to tell me that my father was ready to talk. Tell us what this big bombshell was. To show his hand. He’d asked for a conference call, actually. Laura thinks Killian’s attorney finally convinced him, at this late hour, not to spring it on us at the hearing—judges don’t like unfairness.

  “No call,” I said, not thinking about it. Just saying it, right from my gut. “Tell him I’ll see him in person.”

  And so I’m standing here. Alone. Drew offered to come, but somehow I know I need to do this on my own. Finish it. In my purse, I have the address of the Japanese woman, and the photos. I want some other answers, too.

  A woman no more than five feet tall and perhaps twenty-five years old answers the door. She reminds me of a sparrow, with her small, sculpted nose, the way she holds her head to the side. Even her bones are tiny, down to her petite fingers—she must shop in the girl’s section. She looks young and mature at the same time in navy blue slacks, a red-and-white-polka-dotted blouse unbuttoned to the top of her red bra, and navy blue socks.

  Who is she? I stare at her, my mouth open. An aide? A cook? No. I shut my mouth, a violent flush creeping up my chest to my face. Killian already ordered my mother’s replacement. I grip my handbag so hard the surface crackles.

  “The daughter?” she says in heavily accented English. She extends her hand toward the living room. Her nails are painted a deep red, cut short and rounded. “I’m Lucy.”

  I begin to take off my pumps, but she waves. “No need. Not unless it is for comfort.” She regards me with her deep-set almond eyes, her irises so dark they are nearly black. I cannot tell what she’s thinking, if she feels welcoming or is being polite. Nor do I particularly care. Nodding, I follow her in, wondering what it’s like for her to live here with my elderly father. What she left behind, where she’s from. If she has a personality, it’s as hidden as my mother’s was.

  The curtains are drawn, letting sunshine into the cavelike room. The television blares a Matlock rerun, Andy Griffith’s kindly gap-toothed grin spre
ading across the giant screen.

  That’s when I spot him, sitting on the far end of the long brown couch opposite the window, his head turned toward the television. He wears reading glasses far down on his nose and a sudoku book is folded open in his lap. His hair is mostly gone. What remains is silvery, his scalp covered in liver spots and scabs. Still, I recognize his posture immediately. The curl of his upper lip as he works out the sudoku with little effort.

  “Killian?” Lucy walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder. I remain standing, alone, at the far end, awkwardly poised by the door. “Your daughter is here.”

  I stand with my hands by my sides. I’m not going to hug him. I study him up and down, taking in the shrunken limbs, the blue veins under his skin, going over the plan in my head. “Hello, Killian.”

  My father puts the sudoku aside. I notice a walker parked near him, the tennis balls on the ends still a bright brand-new green. He peers at me with his watery, red-rimmed eyes. Still sharp at age eighty-nine. A clearer, lighter version of the blue he used to have. “You’ve gotten old.”

  There was a time when that would have hurt, but it strikes me as funny today. Kind of sad, that he thinks this way. I laugh. “Not as old as you.”

  A reluctant smile plays at his lips even as he makes a harrumphing sound. “Well? You going to come all the way in or what?” His voice is the same, more gravelly, still strong.

  I sit opposite him on the other brown couch. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  Lucy pats at his shoulder as if she’s pulling back on a rearing horse. “Tea?” she asks. “English or herbal?”

  “Herbal, please,” I say. Lucy nods, leaves the room.

  I lace my hands together, my fingernails digging into my knuckles, fighting the urge to get up and leave forever. I think of my children and my mother. I have to do this for them, not me. “I know you don’t believe me, but Mom chose that home and she chose me to have power of attorney. I want her to stay there, and I’ll keep filing appeals for as long as she’s alive. I can make things difficult for you, too, you know.”

  He rolls his eyes, slapping his newspaper hard on the couch. “Oh, boy. Here it comes. The great reckoning with your old man. What do you need? Money? Do you want me to put you in my will? Or do you want to blame me for all your problems?”

  I shift, getting that familiar nausea, like when I was little and had to deal with my father’s unreasonableness, his demands. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because you asked me to be here.” I get the feeling he’s provoking me, trying to make me react. He can’t. “I can see how keeping Mom alive would be inconvenient.” I jerk my head toward the kitchen. My voice rings off the hard surfaces in the room. “I wonder what the judge would think of you already shacking up with a new woman?”

  “It’s not like your mother’s going to get better.” He enters another number in his sudoku, jabbing at the paper now.

  His bluntness is jarring. My insides feel like they’re spilling out.

  He’s right. I knew it in my head, of course. Drew told me what Dr. Hakiyama said. We discussed hospice options just last night. But right now is the first time I’ve really felt it in my bones. Admitted it fully to myself. My mother is never going to get better.

  I take a breath, put my hand on my purse, on the address and the photos.

  My heart pounds. I bring out the photos, fanning the black-and-white images out on the coffee table. Killian leans over and picks them up. The one of the parents and the little girl in Japan is on top.

  “Your mother and her parents.” He smiles briefly, nods. “She was a cute kid.” Killian raises an eyebrow as he looks at the photo of Mom with the little girl. “But I thought you knew about this. Didn’t your mother tell you?”

  I don’t answer. My body goes still, hoping he’ll keep talking. This is it.

  He flutters the picture in his liver-spotted hand. “This is the baby your mother had back in Japan. The one that died.”

  He says it so casually I almost don’t comprehend the meaning of his words. A baby who died. As it sinks in, the truth of what he’s saying, my head snaps back on my neck. “What?” I clutch the seat cushion to steady myself.

  “She never told you?” Killian hands the photo back. “It’s why she was damaged goods, more or less.”

  The baby gazes at my mother adoringly. She looks so tender. Of course. I squeeze my eyes shut. “She never told me.”

  “Baby got a fever when she was about a year old.” He shifts. “I gather your mother’s boss knocked her up. He was married. Gave her some money to keep her quiet.”

  This was my half sister. My mouth is dry. “Poor Mom.”

  “It worked out okay for her in the end, though. She got to live here. We had a part-time maid so your mother didn’t have to ruin her manicure. She quilted the hell out of everything. What a life she had.” He chuckles, shakes his head. “She had no good way of supporting herself there—you have to understand.”

  “She wouldn’t give the baby up for adoption?” What had my mother’s options been? I would have given up Quincy in that situation, I think. If Tom had turned out to be an ass and left me without any means of supporting myself, I would have made sure my daughter had a better life. As much as it would have hurt.

  He frowns. “We never talked about that, but no. In Japan there’s a stigma against adoption, too, unless the baby’s in your family. The Japanese think that if you adopt, you don’t know what you’re getting. There might be bad blood in there someplace. They put kids in institutions instead.”

  “I didn’t know.” My stomach clenches. He’s delivering this information as casually as he might deliver a weather observation. My mother—the mother of his only children—is dying, and he does not seem to be affected at all. Yet it’s typical of him. Maybe he’s closed himself off so completely from real emotion, he can’t feel it anymore.

  “Hell, I wouldn’t have married her if she’d had a kid with her. You never know how someone else’s kid will turn out.” He looks out the window, his expression impassive. “She would have been banned from the catalog if anybody knew.”

  “You never know how your own kids will turn out, either,” I say softly, but Killian doesn’t hear or chooses not to. I take out the address. “Hatsuko Minamoto.” As if the name meant a real live person to me.

  He nods once. “You know.”

  “Tell me.”

  He squints at me, seeming to consider whether he really wants to tell me. At last he relents. “This is what I was going to talk about at the hearing. How she got here.”

  “What do you mean? She was a mail-order bride.” I look down at the address.

  Killian makes a so-so gesture in the air. “Eh. Sort of. What happened is she changed her name. She wanted to cut off all her bad associations, otherwise the catalog wouldn’t have accepted her. It was a high-class catalog.” He lifts the piece of paper with the address on it. “This is her real name. Hatsuko Minamoto.”

  “Minamoto is her name?” Minamoto, like the Minamoto in the story? My fingers tingle. I reach for the paper as though it’s a talisman. Killian releases it.

  “Yup. She’s here illegally, through and through. She lied her way to the catalog and lied her way to me to get here.” He shakes his head.

  This is why Mom never talked about her past. It was too painful. Too shameful. She didn’t want to admit to an affair or her name change any more than I want to tell my children I got kicked out for fooling around.

  But if Mom had only told me . . . I don’t think anything less of her, now that I know.

  I know this now. We all need someone with whom we can be our most core selves. Unhidden and honest. When you hide parts of yourself from other people, they can’t fully know and love you, nor you them. You construct a false version of yourself. Then your true self remains unknown. Isolated.

  You become a stra
nger, like my mother was to me and Drew.

  Killian coughs before he speaks again. “You know, the Snows are too strong for that Alzheimer’s crap.” He rubs the sofa arm with his fingertips. “Nope, you won’t get it from my side of the family.”

  I gape at him. I shut my mouth.

  Killian shakes his head. “I know you think I’m a monster. But think about it. I did you a favor when I kicked you out.”

  I am still silent, waiting for him to spew out his whole tangled thought.

  He pushes himself upright. “If I hadn’t kicked you out, you wouldn’t be who you are. You wouldn’t have your husband or your kids.”

  I sit up straight, too, heat flashing through my belly. Would I want Quincy to, say, get hit by a car just so she can appreciate life better? I shudder. “Who would wish a hardship on their children?”

  He looks at me like he genuinely can’t comprehend the question.

  Lucy returns with the tea on a small wooden tray. “I put a little honey in yours, Rachel.”

  “Thank you.” I smile at her.

  “Hand me mine,” Killian says. She gives him the mug. He sniffs it with a dour face. “You know, I gave Lucy her name. She had some awful-sounding Thai name. Those languages, they sound like grunting. Can’t make head or tails of it.” He slurps.

  I look up at Lucy, who wears a familiar expressionless poker face, like my mother’s. A well of sympathy rises up in me. “What’s your real name?”

  “I like ‘Lucy’ better.” She turns and leaves the room.

  “‘Pakpao’ was her name,” Killian supplies. “Sounds like gunshots.”

  “Killian.” I turn back to him. “Don’t treat her like that. She’s not chattel.” My voice cuts through the air.

  “Huh?” He sips some tea. “Ah, she’s fine. She’s happy. She’s a lot better off here than in Thailand—her parents run a stir-fry stand or something. She sent them enough money for them to buy a house. She shops online all day. When I die, she’ll be set for life.”

  I take a sip of tea. Despite the honey, it tastes bitter. My father shakes his head. “You know, we were a happy little family until you messed it up, Rachel.”