Sisters of Heart and Snow (21 page)

“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.

M
IYANOKOSHI
F
ORTRESS

S
HINANO
P
ROVINCE

H
ONSHU,
J
APAN

Spring/Summer 1177

O
n 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 mother 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.

 

S
AN
D
IEGO

Present Day

Y
ou 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 food 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.”

“Shush.” I shove at her playfully. She laughs, zips up her briefcase.

“I'll call you soon. And Rachel—try not to worry.” Laura opens the front door.

“Hey.” Quincy exchanges pleasantries with Laura and introduces her to Ryan.

“What's up?” She never comes down here midweek. Too much going on.

“I've been cold at night lately. So I thought I'd get that quilt Obachan made.” Quincy smiles at me brightly.

“It's pretty big for your dorm bed.” I look at my daughter, her shining hair in the morning light.

“I still want it. Is that a crime?” Quincy threads her hand through Ryan's. He looks terribly tired, his face drawn and thin.

I peer into his face. “You okay, Ryan?”

He nods. “Working a lot.”

“You should be sleeping if you have the day off.”

“I'm spending the day with Quincy,” he says, and Quincy squeezes his hand.

“Don't worry. My classes are under control.”

Whatever. She's ditching. I bite my tongue against the lecture about skipping the class we've paid for and just motion to her. “It's in my closet, I think.”

We head upstairs into the master bedroom, and I slide open the mirrored door. I know exactly where it is—on the highest shelf. I point. “All the way up there in the space bag, behind the other blankets.” Ryan reaches up and moves everything easily. He's helpful to have around, I have to admit. Strong—and tall. He gets down the heavy space bag and hands it to me. I put it on the bed and unzip it. This one is Chase's, blue and white. Quincy's is yellow and blue. “There should be another one up there.”

Ryan puts his hand on the shelf and feels around. “I can't find the other one. It must be way in there.” He gets the small wooden-backed chair from the corner of the room and steps up; peering into the depths of the closet, he finds another bag, slides it out, and holds it up. “Is this it?”

I take it. It's full of black material. My old wetsuits. I'd forgotten they were up there. I pull at the fabric and wonder if either one will fit anymore. I should get out there into the ocean, use these again. Maybe take Quincy with me. “Nope. See any more bags?”

He shakes his head and takes out a ring box. “This is up in here—is it supposed to be?”

I open the box. I know what's inside. A nugget of gold about the size of a gumball falls into my palm. I turn it over, feel its cold weight in my hand. Sighing, I close my fingers around it and hand it to Quincy. “Gold.”

This gold represents my best memory of my father. Why I still hold a bit of hope that one day we can have at least a neutral relationship.

Once a year, during winter break, he'd take us out to the Anza-Borrego desert for a weekend. It was cold in the desert in winter, a fact most people didn't realize, especially at night. But I loved the hotel where we stayed. We stayed in a casita with its own small kidney-shaped pool, heated with solar panels. I stayed in the water nearly all day, emerging only to run into the warm room.

On days Dad didn't play golf, he got me up early for what he called “Desert pirate gold adventures.” It was something his father used to do with him, and one of the few times Dad seemed truly enthusiastic and open. “There are still veins of gold out here,” he told me, his eyes glinting with something like youth. “Still undiscovered.” Mom stayed behind with Drew, who was too young to go out into the desert. It made me feel proud and important.

Usually, I followed Dad to dry riverbeds where he poked around with a pickaxe, whistling happily. Occasionally he came across a small nugget that looked like lead and held it up to the watercolor blue sky. “Wooooo!” He'd crow. I loved it. I loved how engaged he was, how I could pretend I, too, would find a huge vein of gold and make him proud.

Scraps of kindness can keep you hoping that the person will change long after you should've given up. I was like a stray dog whose owner would feed it steak or backhand it according to his mood, following my dad around, always hoping it'd be the steak.

One gray morning when I was eight, Dad drove me out farther, way past any civilization, to where the desert turned back to trees, the pebbles of the unpaved road knocking on the underside of our Mercedes's non-offroad undercarriage. We pulled over amid spiky barrel cacti, fat paddles of prickly pear, and dried-out brown waist-high shrubs. A long-haired white man waited next to an ancient rusted-out military jeep. “What are we doing, Daddy?”

“Looking for our fortune,” my father said. He gave the man some cash. I suppose it was the man's land. There was no fence or building anywhere that I could see. Just outcroppings of tan house-sized boulders amid the scrubby landscape and pinkish-brown mountains in the distance. To the right a steep slope led to a gully. Here, near a faintly gurgling stream, an outcropping of bare multitrunked smoke trees grew in gray fingers toward the sky.

The man led us down the slope to the muddy wash. I clung to Dad's hand, my feet slipping in the loose dirt, moving through the clumps of dried-out sage bushes and the sumac with crimson-tinted winter leaves. The creek water moved slowly, so shallow I could see every stone beneath.

“Go ahead, now,” the man said. “I'm entitled to half of what you find.”

He and my dad started talking about mineral rights, how most people who owned land didn't own the mineral rights as well. That meant if you found gold or oil in your yard, it belonged to the municipality. “It isn't right,” Dad said, and the man clucked in agreement. “But this man here's smart,” Dad said, turning to me. “He bought all this with the mineral rights attached.”

I stared up at the other man, wide-eyed. “Have you found oil here?”

“Not yet.” The man chuckled, and lit a stinky cigar. “Haven't looked in every inch of dirt, though.”

“When I was a boy, out with my father, I found a big chunk of gold in this very area,” Dad told me. Taking my hand, he led me forward. We waded into the stream, the water flowing around our rubber boots, Dad moving his metal detector in slow arcs. “My father took it from me and promised he'd make the house payment. The next thing I knew, he'd drunk and gambled it away.”

“Gold makes men do evil things. You can't even trust your own father with it.” The old man leaned toward me. Sour breath. “You hear that? If you find gold, hide it from your old man.”

I wanted to get away from him. “Can I try?” I asked my father. To my surprise, he handed me the detector. I walked downstream as my father continued talking. The water was silty, the tossed cloudy sand covering smooth round rocks. I peered ahead. The gully where we stood was covered in smooth rocks three times the width of the water. Farther on, the boulders formed walls. It would be difficult to climb out of here. “Is this whole thing a riverbed?” I called back.

The old man nodded. “Yep. We get lots of flash floods.”

I glanced up at the sky nervously. “Is that why the rocks are so smooth? From the water?”

“Exactly right.” Dad grinned. The wind whipped his gray hair around his head.

I moved the metal detector back and forth across the sand. Nothing. I pursed my lips and kept walking forward, out of the water altogether, toward the big boulders. Overhead, rain clouds thickened, and I thought I heard distant thunder. I ignored it. My metal detector beeped.

“I found something!” I shouted.

The old man limped over and tossed me a spade. “Dig.”

I strained to move a large purplish-gray rock partially buried in the hard earth. My father watched, his arms crossed, a faint smile on his face. The same expression he got when his football team was winning on television. Finally I managed to use the shovel as a lever and pry the rock up, pushing it with my foot.