How to Be an American Housewife (23 page)

T
he small house was easy to find. Two lines, one above the other, stood for number two. It was close to its neighbors, built out of weathered wood with a simple tile roof. It looked very old, like modernization didn’t quite make it this far. The door practically opened onto the street, and it was windowless at its front. Behind was a rectangle of fenceless land. White towels and boxer shorts fluttered in the wind.

“Mom.” Helena waved her hand in front of my face. “Are we going to stand here forever?”

“Go ahead and knock.” I nodded to the door.

“You do it.” She shrank behind me.

I felt her anxiety. What if he shut the door in our faces? Or worse, was dead? It was strange not to know an entire side of the family. Dad’s family were on the East Coast, but at least they were on the same continent, and had always been easily available by phone.

I knocked. No one answered.

“He couldn’t even hear you.” Suddenly brave, Helena pounded with two fists.

I grabbed her shoulder. “Stop.”

Someone shuffled to the door and creaked it open, Haunted Mansion-style. A salt-and-pepper-haired Japanese man, probably in his early forties, blinked at the sudden light. He drew his kimono close around him. Was this our cousin Yasuo, Suki’s son? I momentarily held out my arms to embrace him, then remembered. Japanese did not hug. As my mother did not.
“Sumimasen
,
”
I said,
“Watashi-wa Suiko
.
”

He interrupted in flawless English. “Aaah. Your pronunciation is terrible.”

“Yasuo?” I bowed.

His smile cracked his face, a plate breaking. “Yasuo doesn’t live here anymore. He moved to Kikuchi City.” He started to shut the door.

“Wait.” I stuck my foot into the door, certain the wood was old enough to break. “Surely you’ve got an address.”

“If you have business with him, you should have his address, not me.” He pushed my foot back with his bare one.

“We’ve come all the way from America.” Helena turned her big eyes up to him, tearing up. She was either exhausted or an excellent manipulator. I suspected the latter. “My mother is his cousin.”

The man relented. “Ah, yes, his American cousins. He has spoken of you.”

“You know him?” I said, hopeful.

“Yes.” He contemplated us.

“We’re on a mission.” Helena drew herself up importantly. “We need to find Great-Uncle Taro.”

“Taro?” The man’s laugh turned into a shuddering cough. “Go to Ueki High School. Yasuo teaches art part-time. Good-bye, now.” He quickly closed the door, hasping the lock.

“Where’s Ueki High School?” I asked the closed door.

“Not even a cup of tea or anything.” Helena’s unlaced Converse kicked up dirt on the road. “I thought he’d invite us to a tea ceremony.”

“The man obviously wasn’t feeling well.” I wondered how he knew Yasuo.

“Where to now?”

Good question. Helena watched me expectantly. “We’ll go back to the hotel and ask for directions,” I said. I had no idea if the high school was a quarter mile away or ten miles away. We would find it no matter what, even if I had to carry Helena on my back.

I attempted to retrace our steps to the hotel, but all the buildings had changed. I was leading us down a trail of blown-away bread crumbs.

“We’re lost,” Helena said.

I opened the map. “If I look carefully at the symbols, we can find our way back.” I tried to match up the map with the street signs. Slow work.

Helena trudged after me. The streets became narrower, until we arrived at what appeared to be a town square. On a platform in the middle, a large gong hung from a wooden altar. “That’s what they ring at New Year’s to chase away the evil spirits.” I walked up the steps of the platform. “There’s one in San Diego, too.”

“Have you ever been?” Helena touched the gong.

“I don’t go out on New Year’s. You know that.” I smiled at her. “Maybe we’ll go next year.” Funny how, now that I could go out on New Year’s, I no longer wanted to. New Year’s was the most important holiday to my mother, not an excuse to party. In high school, I’d get the occasional invitation to a bash and have to turn it down. “Stay home,” Mom said. “Never know what gonna happen, crazies run around. Besides, New Year for family.”

I would spend the evening watching my parents snooze in front of Dick Clark. Mike had long gone. When he was a teenager, my mother had said, he went out on New Year’s. “Boys different,” she said. “And maybe was mistake. Mike too wild. We do right thing for you.” I had to pay for every time Mike watched too much television and failed a test, or smoked a reefer at the park and got picked up by the cops.

“I want to ring it.” Helena looped around. “Where’s the hammer?”

“It’s not New Year’s.” I didn’t want all the locals staring at us for breaking a taboo.

“It could be for any time. It’s in the middle of the square.”

I exhaled. “Please just listen to me for once.”

“Oh, Mom. I always listen to you.” Helena crossed her eyes and grinned. “I’m a good little girl.”

“We’ll find someone and ask where the high school is.”

Around the perimeter of the square were dozens of cherry trees, topped with clouds of pink, continuing all the way down the next road as far as we could see. Underneath, people picnicked on blankets spread out over the green grass. It was an Impressionist painting. My eyes filled.

“It’s so beautiful,” I whispered.

Helena shrank back. “Mom, what are you crying about? I swear, if it’s not a Hallmark commercial, it’s something else.” Nonetheless, she patted my hand.

I blew my nose into a tissue. “Get the camera, honey.”

“Only if you stop embarrassing me.” She reached into her knapsack. “Sheesh. They’re only flowers.”

“Stand by the trees.” I held my hand out for the camera.

She shook her head. “Of you. You never let me take pictures of you.” I hated getting my picture taken. Invariably, I was squinting, I had a double chin, or my mouth was twisted into a gargoyle grimace.

Dad had dozens of photos of Mom posing, shoulders back, bust out, hands on hips, red-lipsticked lips smiling like Lana Turner. From her twenties until now, her pose hadn’t changed. It said: Look at Me. Mine said: Don’t. Please.

Nonetheless, I stood by the gong, arranging myself into a Shoko-like stance. Helena snapped the photo. “Perfect.” She showed me the image. “You look happy for once.”

“I’m always happy, Helena.” And for once, I felt this was mostly true. I was happy here, even as we got lost and my feet blistered and I didn’t know where we would be the next night. I felt as calm as if everything were already taken care of. I waved to a passerby. “Let’s find this high school.”

U
eki High School was a few miles down the bus route, a gray rectangle three stories high, with pine trees shading the lawn into oblivion.

In the office, a woman about thirty with a flipped-up bob worked behind a computer. Her red lips smiled.
“Ohayō gozaimasu.”

“Ohayō
.
Sumimasen,”
I began.
“Yasuo Tanaka . . .”

“Tanaka-sensei?”
She bowed and we bowed back and she bowed again. I held my breath, afraid that this would continue like a Marx Brothers gag until Christmas came. She continued in English. “How do you call yourself?”

Helena’s white teeth flashed. “We’re American cousins.” The lady smiled again and motioned to the bright orange plastic chairs.

When I was in college, my work-study job one semester was being a teacher’s aide to a high school English class. I had taught adverbs versus adjectives to a mostly uncaring classroom; yet at its end, the students made me thank-you cards, and most passed the final. “Did you make them do this?” I asked the regular teacher. He had not. I had gripped my sheaf of handmade cards and decided to become a teacher.

I thought about this as I sat down, feeling a pang as I watched a couple of students pass by. Around the office, photo portraits of serious men and a few women hung on the walls, obviously a gallery of the school’s principals over the years. One of these must be Taro. I studied them, looking for resemblances to Mom, but found no one.

A few minutes later, the office door opened and a trim man in a pink-and-purple argyle sweater vest, purple button-down shirt, and dark slacks entered. His graying hair was cut close to his head and bald in front. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and carried an art portfolio. “Suiko?” He bowed. “This is most unexpected.” An understatement.

“Yasuo?” He had Mom’s same broad forehead and pointed chin. And he knew my name. I smiled at him. “This is my daughter, Helena.”

He stared at my face, too. “Ah!” Suddenly he leapt forward and hugged us both. I hugged him back, touched. “I thought I wouldn’t see you until I died. My dear, dear cousins.”

We followed him into the teachers’ lounge, furnished with round tables. “Sit, sit.” He hustled to the counter. “Coffee? Tea? Or me?” He laughed. “Are you on a tour?”

“Tea, please. I’m getting used to green tea, Mom. Even with no sugar.” Helena swung her feet.

“Tea also, please.” I cleared my throat. “We came here to find Taro.”

Yasuo stopped pouring for a second, his eyes raised to the black cabinets. Perhaps I had been too abrupt. What a strange, sad look came across his face. “He used to be principal here. Now he is retired, a priest. Konko religion. Like our grandfather. He lives in Uwajima now.” Yasuo brought over the tea. “You don’t need to see him.”

“I do need to see him.” I told him about my mother’s heart and what she had asked me to do.

“Same as happened to my mother. I am sorry to hear it.” He nodded slowly. “Such is the cycle of life. One dies, one is born.”

My mouth went dry. “She’s having surgery. She’ll be fine.”

His eyes were doubtful. “The radiation weakened the heart, I’m afraid.”

“Radiation?” Helena took a teacup. “From what?”

“Nagasaki,” Yasuo replied.

I leaned forward. “Her doctors always say the cause could have been any number of things.”

“You never told me that.” Helena’s eyes became huge. “She never told me that. She told me about other stuff from Japan—happier stuff.” She stared into her cup of tea. “Poor Obāchan.”

“She doesn’t think of herself that way, Helena. You know her.” My mother, persisting with her garden and her backbreaking laundry chores. “She never gives up.”

My mother and her iron will, forged during World War II. The most I had ever had to contend with was minuscule in comparison. “You have easy life,” Mom would tell me often.

“So you think she won’t survive.” Helena looked at Yasuo. Her voice was flat.

Yasuo’s chest moved up and down. He glanced at me instead and said nothing.

I reached out and gripped his hand. “I need to do this for her.”

Yasuo smiled briefly. “I do not want to give you false hope.” He gazed pensively over his teacup. What was he leaving out? “I have Taro’s address at home. If you have time, I will take you.”

 

 

YASUO LIVED in downtown Kumamoto City. His apartment was two rooms, separated by a sliding rice-paper wall. We took off our shoes and padded across the light-colored hardwood to a low table. “I like traditional Japanese design,” Yasuo said, inviting us to sit on cushions, then going into the kitchen. “Clean, simple, nothing to dust.”

I agreed. I had always liked what I knew of Japanese design. Westerners put the colors all over the room; the Japanese were more monochromatic, with colors concentrated in one spot. The Japanese way seemed so much simpler: a framing of views, using what you had, not creating clutter to tire your eyes.

We heard water running. A door opened and a man appeared. He was Yasuo’s age, his dark hair clipped in a buzz cut, wearing a white button-down, untucked over trousers. “
Ah, sumimasen
.” He bowed, backing up. “Yasuo, you didn’t tell me we had company,” he said in Japanese, then switched to English. “I am Hiroshi.”

“Sorry. I am Suiko and this is Helena, my daughter.” I shook his hand. “We’re Yasuo’s cousins.” He had to be Yasuo’s roommate.

Yasuo returned with a tea tray and set it on the low table. “They want to know about Taro. They are on a mission from Shoko.” Hiroshi looked doubtful. “Tomorrow, I can take you to the boat to Uwajima, on Shikoku, where Taro lives. It is only an hour from Kyushu. I do not believe the boats run late in the day.” Yasuo poured tea and offered little cakes resembling green Twinkies.