by Asha Lemmie
And then she read.
* * *
April 13th, 1939
My Akira is a marvel.
Every day I look at him, and I look at his fool mother and his dull father, and I cannot believe we have made him.
He is going to be a prodigy, I’d lay my fortune on it. He can already read music though he is only three and he can play the piano better than I could at twice his age.
He has perfect hands. Perfect.
He plays the violin too, and I think he likes it better. But I do hope he keeps playing the piano.
I am teaching him French as well and he can remember whole sentences—this morning he recited a poem I taught him last week.
And such a handsome boy! He looks just like me, not like his father at all—thank God.
But he is so serious, terribly serious. He is shy with his smiles, and when he laughs, he covers his mouth as if he is ashamed. He is soft-spoken and thoughtful, and though he is just a child, he judges very carefully before he acts.
This he does not get from me.
I must take great care or his father will ruin him. Yasuei says that I will make him soft, that he must be molded from the cradle for his calling in life.
But I want a happy child. God knows there is precious little joy in life—I want him to have his sunny years.
I want everything for him, actually, and I have never known pain like the pain I feel when I think that I really have nothing to give him.
I will take him to the countryside this summer and dip his precious toes in the salt water of the ocean. I will feed him sweets and teach him to play Beethoven.
I will wipe the frown from between his brows and kiss his cheeks until he giggles.
And I will pray that he remembers.
I think it will be the worst thing in the world to watch him grow up. Unlike other mothers, I cannot hope for my boy, I cannot dream what he will become.
I know what he will become.
And I can find no joy in it.
* * *
May 2nd, 1939
My mother is here.
She has invited herself, of course, and told nobody that she was coming. She says she will stay for an entire month. Yasuei has taken up an assignment abroad just to avoid her, so now I am all alone.
She has brought her own servants because she says that she cannot trust mine to do anything properly, and they must have rooms as well.
I cannot see how I’m going to bear this. The only mercy is that she did not bring my father.
I don’t need him looking at me like I’m a whore.
He would have beaten me within an inch of my life when I returned from Paris, but Mother didn’t let him. She said that I could not have marks on me before the wedding.
Actually, that’s the funny thing about Mother. She is ruthless, but she is not sadistic. She does not enjoy cruelty, she doesn’t inflict pain for the sake of it like Papa does. And sometimes, when she appears most awful, she is actually protecting me from something worse.
If she can keep me safe, she will. But only if I serve the family. Or, really, only if I serve her.
* * *
July 5th, 1939
She is still here.
God help me.
I can tolerate her constant criticism of absolutely everything I do, from the way I run my household to the way I dress, but I cannot tolerate her stealing my son away from me.
Her passion for him is overwhelming the poor boy. I think she wants to dip him in gold and put him on display as a holy icon.
He is respectful towards her, he is a most well-mannered boy, but he looks desperate for rescuing.
She talks to him like he’s a grown man, not a child at all, and she showers him with gifts as if this is the way to win love.
I can do nothing. I am unable to stand up to her, as usual.
She asks me when I will make another grandson for her, but she is not asking as a loving grandmother.
She is asking as the guardian of a dynasty. If I have a girl, I doubt she will trouble herself to come back here.
She only needs boys.
I won’t tell her that I haven’t slept with my husband in months. He doesn’t come to my bedroom. I suppose he has mistresses. I can’t be bothered to ask.
Eventually we’ll need another son, but for now I’m free.
Now if only my mother would go home to Kyoto.
It’s a miracle the city has not crumbled to dust in her absence.
* * *
August 1st, 1939
My mother has taken my boy.
She has taken him away, just as a falcon will pick up a shiny object and fly it back to the nest.
I can barely write for grief.
She has insisted he spend the whole of August with her in Kyoto and I am not invited. Though I am a married woman and the mother of our family’s heir, apparently I am still too tainted to soil the threshold of her beloved city.
Yasuei is still not back. I write to him and tell him that he must come home at once and take command of his household. My mother is running roughshod over us all.
I dismiss all the servants, every one, and I tell them I will send for them when I want them to return.
I am left alone in this great house. I can hear my footsteps echoing as I walk.
But I cannot stand to be here, trapped within the walls of my husband’s house, in a city that still doesn’t feel like home.
I have to get out.
I must get out.
I will go where I always go when I cannot tolerate my life.
I will go to the music.
* * *
August 20th, 1939
I have met an American.
I have met an American at the symphony.
He touched my shoulder as I was walking out, just slightly, and he smiled at me and told me I had dropped my fan. He spoke in English, he cannot speak a word of Japanese, and he lit up when he realized that I could understand him. He says he’s been very lonely with few people to talk to.
He’s in the army, or the navy, or something of that sort. He has a uniform in any case. But since it is peacetime in his country, he is on leave, and he came here to paint the cherry blossoms.
He has brown skin like a coconut, unlike anything I’ve seen before, and eyes like amber. They’re the oddest color. But they are beautiful.
My God, they are beautiful.
And he is tall, very tall, with strong arms that he says he got behind a plow. I don’t know what a plow is—I think it is some kind of peasant farming device. He has the most perfect full lips.
He is the most extraordinarily handsome man I have ever seen.
But I have been here before. I know better.
I have quashed desire, I have not dreamt of love since my husband slid a ring on my finger and a halter around my neck.
I am his chattel, his broodmare, his loyal and obedient wife, and I will be until I die.
This is what my mother would say. This is what I should say.
But I have seen the American five times now, every night this week. He is renting a horrible little room in the worst part of town, but I don’t care. I throw a scarf over my head, I put on dark sunglasses, and I go into the ghetto as if I were not cousin to royalty, as if they did not used to call me “little princess.”
He is a gentleman. He never tries to touch me, though I cannot miss the way his eyes graze the skin at my collarbone, as if he thinks of nothing but kissing me there.
And we talk. Amazingly, we talk about everything. We have almost nothing in common and yet we understand each other perfectly.
I have never been able to speak to anyone this way.
My boy will be home soon, and though I am so happy, I know this will bring my husband back too. For all his faults, he lo
ves our son.
He sees me no more than he sees the furniture, but I fear that he will smell the desire on me. I am a dog in heat, surely he will know?
This is a dangerous road I am treading down.
I should go back.
But I cannot.
Oh, I cannot.
* * *
September 7th, 1939
Something is happening in Europe, everyone is talking about it. Germany is causing trouble, just as they have always done, and my husband says that it will all end badly and that he hopes Japan has the sense to stay out of yet another war. We are already at war with China, and there has been terrible loss of life on both sides. But the Emperor has declared that Japan must expand and my husband says that another Great War is looming.
But I don’t care about any of this because I am in love for the first time. Really, truly in love.
I have found someone who turns my very world. And I never thought it would be an American, as Mother says they are vulgar people, but it is so.
I spend my days with my son, teaching him songs, tickling him, and watching him try not to laugh, taking him to the little antique shop I like so much.
I am heart and soul for him during the days. No one could doubt my motherhood—certainly he does not. Every evening before bed he takes my face in his hands and kisses me on my dimples. He says, “I love you, Maman,” in perfect French, as solemn as if he were giving a speech.
I tuck him into bed, my little angel, and then I shut off the light and leave him to dream.
And in the nights, I am free. Free as a blackbird, invisible against the dark sky.
And then I go to him—my American. My love.
I don’t feel like I am sinning. I know it sounds strange, since I am an adulteress and perhaps a whore, but this feels . . . pure. It’s the purest thing I’ve ever known.
We make love until the early hours of the morning and then I doze in his arms until the sun rises. The light is so unwelcome that when I see it creeping through the window, I want to take hold of it and fling it back.
In these last, precious moments we whisper of our plans for a future that can never, ever be.
He says that I must get away from my husband, that he will take me back to America with him. He says that we will live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, away from the white people who would not like it and the black people who would not understand it.
He says that we will have beautiful children, and that he will not care whether they are boys or girls. He says he would love a daughter as well as a son and perhaps more, because she would be as beautiful as I am.
And I think I would do it. I think that I would give up my servants and my silks and my dangerous Kamiza inheritance. I think that I would churn butter and milk cows and count pennies if it meant that I could lie in his strong arms every night and hear him say my name.
I love him so much it is like a physical pain to tear myself out of his arms.
But I have to go back to my son.
No matter what happens, I can never leave him. I can never leave him with a father who would see him turned into a block of stone and a grandmother who would tear him apart with the fervor of her ambition.
But the walls of my grand house have never felt so suffocating before. I don’t think I can breathe here anymore. I am suffocating like a fish on dry land.
I am so torn and so distraught that some days I can do nothing but cry.
I sit at the bench of my piano and I am sick with grief. I try to think how I could steal Akira away. He is my son, he belongs with me. And he would be welcome, my love has told me that he would be most welcome.
But I know this is impossible.
We would never make it out of the country. They would take Akira from me and I would never see him again.
Nothing can be done. I will have to stay here, as daughter, as wife, as mother. There’s no way out for me. There never was.
Any freedom I had was always an illusion. Any movement forward was always temporary.
I am a Kamiza.
And in the end, all roads lead home.
* * *
October 16th, 1939
Akira has won his first contest. He is so proud of himself, but he will not say, and instead he says that it is all down to my teaching.
Blessed sweet child.
His father glanced at the trophy when Akira carried it in, but didn’t say anything except “Good.” I know my boy was wounded. But—and this is how I know that he is already ruined—he did not show it. He composed his face and went up to his room without a word.
I can’t wait for the nights to see my American anymore, and often I sneak out during the days. We can’t meet privately, of course, but I tell him where I will be and he is always there.
I make up some imaginary errand and I go out to the market and I feel his gaze on my neck.
I have given up trying to resist the power he has over me. I know that I have grown reckless. I come home smelling of sweat and lovemaking and cigarette smoke—and I don’t smoke. Sometimes I don’t come home at all until noon, and I go in through the servants’ entrance and slip up to my room.
If I had a husband who loved me, he would have noticed by now. But thankfully, I do not.
My maids make excuses for me, they all love me, and my husband is not a man who inspires love.
Akira is too young to know what is happening, but he is a clever boy and I must take care.
I couldn’t bear to hurt him.
He must never doubt for a moment that he is the beating of my heart.
* * *
November 22nd, 1939
Yasuei says that it’s time to make another child, now that Akira is nearly four. He says that the children should be close in age so that they can be a comfort to one another. I don’t know how he would know; he has only one brother and they hate each other.
I tell him that I am unwell, that I have had womanly problems lately and cannot lie with him. I am buying time.
In truth, I cannot bear to let him touch me.
And anyway, there really is something wrong with me. I am tired all the time and I have a strange heat in my bones.
Akira is happy to be turning four. He says that he wants to grow up so he can help me with all my little troubles and make it so I am never sad again.
I tell him that he is the cure to all my sorrows and I kiss his face until he shows me his rare, elusive smile.
* * *
December 3rd, 1939
This is the worst day of my life.
I have seen the doctor, and he has confirmed my very worst fear.
I am with child.
* * *
January 9th, 1940
I cling to hope. Or, more honestly, to denial.
I tell myself that the doctor was wrong. For he was not my usual doctor, but some fool who would never recognize me, clear across town. He might have been trained in a back alley for all I know. He might have been wrong.
But I have not bled since October. My breasts are full and sore. My belly is tender and I am sick with every sunrise.
I am no blushing maiden. I am a married woman with a child already.
I know what this means.
What I must decide now is what I will do about it.
I know of sinful things. It was an open secret in Paris among the artists and musicians. Everyone knew where you could go, where you could find doctors—or people claiming to be doctors—who would solve these sorts of problems. Beautiful young women were advised as to where they could go to avoid being forever shamed.
But everyone also knew that some of those girls never came back.
I can’t do it.
Not because I fear for my life, but because this child is part of the man I love. And I cannot bring myself to harm any part of him.
>
This child will have his skin. There is no hiding it. I cannot pass it off as trueborn, as sluts have been doing since the dawn of time. And I think that I would do this if I could, as shameful as it is, if it would keep me with my son.
But that path is closed to me.
And so if I must have this child, then there is really only one option. I am three months now, and soon my belly will show, for all the world to see. My husband knows I have not shared his bed for months. My father would have me killed for this.
The choice is obvious. Unspeakable, unbearable, but obvious.
I have to go.
* * *
February 11th, 1940
My heart is ripped from me.
I have kissed Akira goodbye, and I will not see him again for years. Perhaps not ever. If he grows to manhood and does not forgive me for this betrayal, I will never see my son again.
This child sits low in my belly and I am poisoned with hatred for it. I think my hatred will kill it, and then I hope so, and then I hate myself for my own thoughts and I can do nothing but cry.
James—for I can say his name, now that I am out from under my husband’s roof—James is my only comfort. He says he won’t think of going back to the military now. He’d rather be marked a traitor and a coward than leave me. I tell him he could never be a coward and that I am a traitor too, so he is in fine company.
We live together at last, as if we were a poor married couple and not a pair of sinful adulterers.
I have brought us as much wealth as I could carry, and all my jewels, so we will not want for things when the baby is born.
We are renting a little cottage by the sea in the middle of nowhere, far from Tokyo. This is one of the the smallest islands in Japan, and this is the smallest village on the island. I could barely find it on a map when I was looking for a place for us to hide.
