Sisters of Heart and Snow (14 page)

Joseph looks up at his rapt audience. Actually, my sister's looking away, into the depths of the library, at something or someone. I nudge her. “Nobody can find a gravestone or any written record of Tomoe except in the
Heike.
Some people think she was an invention to make Yoshinaka look bad. To have a woman doing your dirty work for you—it just wasn't done. It'd be dishonorable for a samurai. But I think she's real.” Joseph leans forward. “Why would the writer describe her as beautiful and a great warrior if he wanted to shame Yoshinaka? Why wouldn't she be called ugly and useless? She's described heroically. And all the other people and events in the
Heike
took place. Of course, some of it's exaggerated—one account says she literally tore somebody's head off with her bare hands. But other parts are exaggerated versions of events, too.”

A story about a samurai woman.
Onnamusha
, I correct in my head. Mom wants me to read it—obviously it contains something important. “Thanks for agreeing to translate.” I slide cash across the table.

“I'll send it along as I finish. That okay?” He's scribbling away furiously. “Let me just do the first chapter for you right now.”

•   •   •

We sit where we are, watching.
If Mom was coherent, she would be the one telling me this story. But then, if my mother were herself, I never would've found it. Maybe she never meant to tell us. Maybe she only blurted it out because her mind's going.

I turn to my sister. “So you still don't remember Mom talking to you about this book?”

“You were always the one Mom talked to, not me.” Drew keeps her gaze on Joseph Bond, who's writing away intently. “I don't really know anything about her.”

“You lived with her longer.”

“Doesn't mean anything.” Drew exhales. “I know facts, Rachel. What year she was born, when she got married. But she never talked to me about how she
felt
. About anything.”

I think for a moment. “Didn't she talk about leaving Dad? Ever?”

Drew shakes her head impatiently. “No. Not to me.”

“She could have left him,” I say. “She would have gotten half. They got married in California.” He couldn't have sent her back. You can't just do that to someone who's here legally. Who has American-born children.

“Unless they had a pre-nup. Or unless she didn't really want to leave him. She had it pretty good.” Drew sounds matter of fact. “Nice house, all the quilts she could want.”

I shake my head. “You think that's what qualifies as pretty good? There's more to life than material crap, Drew.”

“I know that, Rachel.” Drew crosses her arms. “I didn't say it was to me. To her.”

Anyway, Killian was more than just a distracted father, throwing money at his progeny to keep them off his back. He liked to see how far he could push people. What he could get away with.

He used to take me and Drew shopping at the local Fed-Mart sometimes. It's out of business now, but it was like a Target.

First we'd go into the store and get what we needed. Then he'd look around the parking lot for dropped receipts. Scan them for what he wanted. One day, when I was eight and Drew was four, it was a twelve-pack of toilet paper. “Go in and tell them they forgot our toilet paper,” he said to me.

I knew what to do. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to hide. I drew my scuffed Mary Jane across the asphalt. “I don't want to today.”

He shrugged. “Go ahead, Drew.”

“Aye-aye.” She saluted him. He saluted her back. Drew, the compliant one, began marching back across the parking lot. A car backing up narrowly missed her. I ran to catch up, snatched up her hand.

In school, we learned telling lies was wrong. Cheaters got punished. When a cashier gave her too much change, my mother would give it back. “Karma will come back to you if you are not honest,” Mom would say.

What would karma do to us? I worried. We stood by the manager's desk. Most kids don't know what a manager's desk looks like in the grocery store, that counter in front of the lines where there's a register and a cashbox. Or that the manager always wears a tie. I knew all of this. The store buzzed with register drawers shutting, rattling carts.
Here's your change. Thank you. Come again.

The manager saw us standing there, came over. “You girls need help?”

I looked at him helplessly, my face red. I wanted to tell him.
Our father's making us do this. It's all a lie.
Before I could take a breath, Drew beamed her dimpled chubby four-year-old smile. “Pardon me. You forgot our toilet paper.”

The manager smiled, rumpled her hair. “I'm sorry, young lady. I'll get it right now.”

I clutched my sister's hand. She squeezed it comfortingly.

We walked back to the car where Killian waited. I flung the toilet paper at his head, through the open car window. “Here.”

“Oh, Rach.” Killian sat in front as I helped Drew get buckled. “I'm only trying to make you girls tough. Teach you about life. It's not our fault that some people are so easily fooled. You don't want to be one of them. What do I always say?”

“
Never let anybody pull a fast one
,” Drew chirped. “
We pull it first
.”

We drove away. He never took me shopping again.

•   •   •

Many years later,
I told my mother about these trips. She was silent. She simply changed the channel on the television.

“Did you know?” I prompted.

Her nose wrinkled. “Oh, Rachel. I knew he did many things, but nothing like this. He has plenty of money.” She looked at me, her eyes sad. “I'm sorry, Rachel. I thought he wanted to do something nice, give me a break for once. I was wrong about that, too.” Her voice cracked. She shut her lips and swallowed, her hands clenching into fists at her skirt. Of all the things my father had done, this was the one thing that seemed to distress her the most. She spoke again. “You know, he was a little boy during the Depression. Maybe his father made him do it, too.”

“Don't you think that was crazy, no matter what had happened to him as a child?” It seemed to me there were plenty of things our parents did that we, as parents, could choose not to do to our own children.

My mother made a swiping motion with her hand. “Your father is not like other people.”

We left it at that, never discussing it again.

•   •   •

Joseph puts his pen down,
rubs his eyes under his glasses. “Let me go get you those books. You wait here.” He gets up and disappears.

I turn to my sister. “Don't you remember what Dad had us do at Fed-Mart?”

Drew stares at me blankly.

“He made us steal groceries,” I say. Several people look up, alert to unfolding drama. Rubberneckers. I don't care. “He told us to take the receipts back in and pretend like we hadn't gotten our items.”

My sister blinks. Her slender fingers pick at a cuticle on her left thumb. “I vaguely remember doing that. But I thought he really hadn't gotten the stuff.” She inhales. “Really? He did that? Why?”

I shrug, relieved that Drew didn't remember, that she hadn't known she was stealing. I'd asked myself why he'd do that many times. “He enjoys getting away with it. Why did Winona Ryder shoplift those clothes she could've bought? Compulsion? Ego?”

“I don't know.” Drew purses her lips. “I do know that once I went grocery shopping with Mom, and her credit card got refused. Dad cut her off at a certain amount. Said she was a spendthrift.” She shakes her head. “Can you imagine standing there in designer clothes with a Mercedes in the parking lot and not being able to pay for your cereal?”

My stomach flutters at the thought. “I didn't know that. But he let her do the quilts. She got tons of fabric all the time.”

Drew shrugs. “I suppose such a feminine activity didn't bother him. It did kind of keep her happy. Or occupied.”

Joseph reappears with several books in hand.
The Tale of Genji
, which Joseph insists is essential for understanding feudal Japan; the
Heike Monogatari
, about the civil war; a slim nonfiction book called
Samurai Women
, and a book of poetry by medieval female Japanese poets. “The time during which Tomoe Gozen lived was a very important era in Japan, the beginning of the samurai era. Two clans, the Minamoto and the Taira, fought for the shogunate. The shogun essentially made the emperor his puppet and had all the power.” His voice rises again in excitement and his eyes practically shoot sparks. I can see why he's devoted his studies to the subject. “The Yoshinaka story is very Shakespearean, full of double crosses and betrayals.” He slides the book into a soft cloth bag.

M
IYANOKOSHI
F
ORTRESS

S
HINANO
P
ROVINCE

H
ONSHU,
J
APAN

Winter 1174

T
omoe put on four layers of clothing, her teeth chattering. The snows had been heavy, starting in early October, and showed no signs of letting up. Tomoe was glad. Heavy snow meant water that would run down to the valleys as it melted, helping the crops and people grow.

She walked to the door, sliding it open to let in what little light lingered in the winter-dark sky. This was her own house, a small one-room bungalow. Nothing fancy, no silk screens or fine furniture, but it was hers, built for her by Yoshinaka. Both of them had hoped, though Tomoe was not his legal wife, that she would be sharing this house with their own child, but no matter how many times they lay together, she continued her monthly blood.

Soon she would be sharing this house with another woman, for whom Tomoe would serve as an attendant.

Yoshinaka had made progress in these few years since Kaneto died, winning over their countryside regions, and was now known as the governor of Shinano, home to about ten thousand. In the cities, Yoshinaka was known as Kiso
,
a nickname deriding him as a country bumpkin; it was his cousin Yoritomo who was in charge of the Minamoto clan.

At Miyanokoshi, high up in the mountains, tall log walls enclosed a small village of houses. Below the fort stood craggy rocks and a moat. They were secure, but isolated. Tomoe barely remembered what a real city looked like, or even a small town. She wished they could go to war tomorrow, simply so she could get out of this place and the unrelenting boredom of peace.

Snow flurries blew in, coating her face. She closed her eyes against them.

It was quiet today, with everyone busy making preparations for the newest member of the clan, who was due to arrive in the afternoon. Yoshinaka was not a man who liked to sit in silence. He always had friends around him in his house, where they would drink and talk; outside, they played out every military maneuver he could think of in endless succession. But today, he had come here alone.

“We can have a few moments together,” he told Tomoe. If he was anxious about the events that were to take place later, he did not say so.

Tomoe had nodded, her tears, always hidden from Yoshinaka, long dried. Today was the day Yamabuki Gozen would arrive. Lady Yamabuki, Yoshinaka's new wife. His official wife, arriving from the city of Miyako.

She wondered what the new woman, arriving from Miyako and accustomed to fine things, would think of it, of this place where there was no powder for one's face, no screens to hide behind, no musical instruments to fill the air with their jangling melodies. This place of mere survival.

Tomoe set her mouth in a grim smile. Perhaps the woman would not last long at all.

Yoshinaka's nostrils flared. “Tomoe. You are making me nervous.”

She shut the door. At last, an admission of truth. “You ought to be nervous. We have no idea what this girl looks like.”

“Come here.” He was behind her now, him coming to her, not the other way around. She did not think she could ever bring herself to come to him again. He looped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.

Yoshinaka spun her around and kissed her, his warm tongue comforting her cold one. She embraced him, pulled him into her, letting the heat of his body thaw her. If they did this outside, surely steam would rise off their bodies. Snow would melt. They would make a lake.

They moved to her futon, which she had not put away as she usually did. Yoshinaka pulled her with him under the covers, shrugging off their heavy quilted
tanzen
s and kimonos, pushing the pile of clothes to one side. Skin to skin. She faced him, side to side, ran her hand over the sinuous landscape of his flesh, the muscularity she knew better than her own.

She wanted to tell him that she was afraid this would be the last time. That he wouldn't love her anymore because he had a novel new wife. Yet it was useless to argue against the fact of Lady Yamabuki.

Besides, Yamabuki was a real noble, a woman from a fine family of Minamoto sympathizers in the capital. Marrying her was a necessary strategic move. Tomoe's analytical brain realized this. It was her silly heart that hurt.

“You will always be first for me,” Yoshinaka said. “You must know that.”

She said nothing. She would not extract a promise. He would tell her only what she wanted to hear.

Wind shuddered the walls, blowing inside, blasting their faces through the cracks between the timbers. Yoshinaka covered their heads with the blanket.

“If only we could hide in here forever,” he said. It was the closest he would get to poetry. Tomoe took small satisfaction in the knowledge that his new wife would never hear a poem of his, either.

She opened her mouth to his, biting ferociously in the way he liked best.