Sisters of Heart and Snow (18 page)

After Mom took off, I found a wad of twenties tucked into my silverware drawer. It got us through.

I went to the grocery store near our apartment the next day and applied for a job. Every night, from ten to three, I stocked the shelves. Mopped the aisles. I went home and slept for three hours until Tom went to work. If I was very lucky, Quincy slept in until seven or eight. Usually she didn't. I did this for a year, until Tom's dad recovered and they were able to get the business back on track.

If Quincy only knew how much harder getting married before they're established would be. Doesn't she know how grateful I feel every time I can fill up my car all the way to “full,” without worrying about the card going through? I wanted to spare her that kind of anxiety.

I wish for a crystal ball that could see into her future, all the possibilities of all the different paths.

But maybe it's always hard for everyone, in different ways. I don't know of a couple that's never had problems. I know people married to attorneys who complain about long hours, and I think they should be grateful, because at least they're not working twenty hours a day making minimum wage. But everyone seems to have a unique situation. I only know about my life.

Or, maybe nobody knows how to be happy with what we already have. That's the whole problem. No fortitude.

Tomoe had it harder. Twelfth-century Japan? No modern conveniences? How did she deal with her period, I wonder. And now Yamabuki, who seems far too pale and weak to survive for a day in the world of Yoshinaka and Tomoe. You needed to be tough back then, both in will and in body. All I need is the will.

•   •   •

Hikari sits facing the window,
her eyes closed. Should Drew wake her up? That might startle her. Then again, if Hikari wakes up to find some random person in her room, that might scare her, too. Drew never knows quite what to do around her mother these days.

She never did.

It was Drew who told Hikari that Rachel was pregnant. She'd gone into the quilting room. Her mother was bent over the machine. As usual. It seemed to Drew that most every important conversation or fight she'd had with her mother had taken place there. “Do you have any baby quilts?” Drew asked casually.

“Of course I do.” Hikari stopped the machine. She looked at Drew, who leaned against the doorframe. Her usual position. At fourteen, Drew was tall and skinny, barely requiring a bra. She kept her hair short. She could pass as a boy and was sometimes mistaken for one. “Why?” Hikari asked, her voice alert. “Do you know someone who's having a baby?”

Drew nodded, playing with the drawstring on her sweats. From the living room, the roar of a football game blasted. Killian. Drew stepped into the room, shut the door.

Hikari grabbed Drew's hand in both of hers. “Tell me.” Her mother's hands were icy. Despite all the labor. “I'll help you, Drew.”

“Mom.” Drew suddenly understood her mother's worry. “It's not me. It's Rachel.”

Hikari squeezed Drew's hand once, then released her. “Does she know who the father is?”

This shocked Drew. “Of course she does.” But then, her mother hadn't interacted with Rachel in almost two years. She had no idea how Rachel had changed. How hard she worked. Drew wondered what her parents thought her sister did—did they believe her to be a prostitute, entertaining johns in between puffs of marijuana? Didn't they want to know?

Hikari stared at the fabric on her machine. “What will she do?”

“It's her boyfriend, Mom. They're getting married.” Drew spoke rapidly. “Don't worry. He's really nice. Boring, but nice.”

Hikari smiled sadly at Drew. “Ah, Drew. How can you know what nice is?” She let go of Drew's hand and rubbed her eyes.

Drew swallowed. She felt like she was strangling. Anger flared up, unbidden, at her mother. “You should've just stayed in Japan.”

“Yes.” Her mother shook her head. “I thought my old life was too hard. Now I'm not so sure.”

But then we wouldn't have been born,
Drew thinks, and waits for her mother to say she was glad she had her daughters. Hikari pressed the sewing machine pedal, whirring it to life. Drew went back to her room.

At the nursing home, the window's open, the wind blowing cold air straight on Hikari's face, her hair wild. Drew touches her mother's arm. Cold. Maybe Hikari just liked being cold.

Why did Hikari want them to have the story of Tomoe Gozen? It seems to Drew that Hikari's more like Yamabuki. Out of her element, always. Not belonging. Perhaps Hikari thought one of her daughters was like Tomoe, and one like Yamabuki. Which would Drew be?

She feels like Yamabuki, too.

Drew shuts the window. At the sound, Hikari's eyes fly open.

“Hi, Mom.” Drew sits down again. Hikari's mouth moves, but she says nothing. She cocks her head to the side. Stares at her. Hard, assessing.

A memory stirs. Senior year of high school Drew was on the Academic Decathlon team. Their mother was pressed into chaperone service to the state competition in Sacramento. While the other chaperone parents quizzed their children and the teammates with practice questions, Hikari sat in the corner of the hotel room, reading. Always quiet. During the tournament, Drew would look up occasionally to catch a glimpse of Hikari in a powder-blue Chanel suit and her hair in a ballerina bun—so striking that everyone asked Drew if that was really her mother—her ankles crossed, a pillar of stoicism in a sea of hyperinvolved parents.

“In 1180–1185, the Genpei War came at the end of what long era in Japanese history that began in 794?” the announcer asked.

Drew was supposed to know this. Her teammates swiveled their heads to look at her. The girl with the Japanese mother sitting only a few feet away. Little did they know that she knew no more about Japan than the average American.

Hikari stared at her hard. Was she saying the answer in her head? Her white throat moved up and down as she swallowed. To Drew, her gaze looked cold. Disappointed.

“Five seconds,” the announcer said.

Drew stared back at her mother, trying to read her mind. Abruptly, Hikari got up and left the auditorium.

And then Drew knew what Hikari was thinking. Her mother was ashamed. Of her. The blood drained out of her body. Even if she knew the answer, she could not have reached the buzzer. She watched the blue suit retreat into the darkness, the light of the hallway. The buzzer sounded.

“The Heian Era,” the opposing team captain said smugly.

Of course. Drew felt markedly stupid. She hadn't needed her mother to tell her that; she remembered it from her notes. Her teammates patted one another's backs and they filed into the lobby.

She saw her mother waiting for an elevator and ran across, jumped in. One other person was on the elevator, a middle-aged bald man. Drew ignored him. Hikari pressed a number.

Drew inhaled. “You left.” She tried to keep the hurt out of her voice. Her mother walking out, Drew realized, felt worse than losing. The elevator walls were a shiny brass, like a mirror. She watched her mother's face in them.

Hikari raised her head. “When I lose, I do not like people to see me. I thought you felt the same.” Her mother's eyes were wet. “You had your chance and now it's gone.”

Drew was so far from understanding this woman's motivations that she thought Hikari might as well be another person's parent. “Why didn't you ever teach me about Japan?” Drew asked quietly.

Hikari drew an audible breath. She examined her reflection in the elevator, patting a hair that had escaped her tight bun into place. The man with the ear hair shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Why don't you ever say one word about Japan?” Drew's voice rose. “I don't know where you came from. I don't know your family. It's like you're an alien who got beamed down here. How did you end up in the mail-bride catalog?” The man's eyebrows jumped. He met my mother's gaze in the mirror and she looked away. When the doors opened, he stepped out quickly.

The doors slid closed again before Hikari answered. She turned to Drew. Not angry, not sad. Just the same as always. Closed off. “Drew,” she said carefully, enunciating the R too hard as she always did, “living in the past does not benefit anyone. Japan is nothing to me. I'll never go back. You'll never go back. There's nothing there for people like us. There's no point in talking about it.”

People like us? “What do you mean?”

The doors slid open. Hikari shook her head and stepped into the hallway. “The only thing I want you to remember, Drew, is that you come from samurai blood. You have that in you. That is all you need to know. No matter what else anybody says.” She gestured to her daughter. “This is America. You are what you make of yourself. Come on.” Hikari set off down the hallway, walking fast.

Drew looks at Hikari now, in the nursing home room. Her face looks the same as it did then, except for some softening of the jowls, wrinkles between her brows. “You did tell me about us being from samurai,” she says excitedly. “Is that why you left the book for us?” She will have to look up the Sato name.

Hikari blinks at her. “I said,” she mumbles, “I had the strangest dream.”

“Mom?” Drew kneels beside her mother. But Hikari still looks at her blankly. “What's your dream, Hikari?” Drew touches her arm. Her mother's arm is well moisturized, a sign of the good care she receives here.

Hikari looks out the window. “Where is my sister of heart?”

The waves pound the sand. In the hallway outside, a passing wheelchair rattles, a nurse whispers comforting words to someone.

Drew waits for her mother to say more, but Hikari does not.

Sisters of Heart.
The book. Or is she talking about the woman who sent her Tomoe's story? “Who's your sister of heart, Mom? Hatsuko Minamoto? Somebody you knew in Japan?”

“Japan?” Her forehead wrinkles.

This isn't doing any good. They have to write to Hatsuko.

Someone knocks on the doorjamb. “Snack time.” The nurse has a tray of applesauce and graham crackers. She smiles pleasantly at Drew. “You must be her other daughter. Such pretty girls you have, Hikari.”

“Oh my.” Hikari claps her hands as though the meal is a grand feast. “For me? All this?”

“Of course.” The nurse adjusts the tray table so the food sits over Mom's lap. Mom clumsily grips the spoon, making several attempts at the bowl of applesauce before achieving success.

“Should I help her?” Drew asks.

“Nah. It gives her something to do.” The nurse leaves.

“Don't you want some, young lady?” Hikari dips the graham cracker into the applesauce.

Drew takes a bit of graham cracker and does the same. She can't remember the last time she had either a graham cracker or applesauce. Probably back when she was in preschool. She takes a hesitant bite.

Hikari chews and takes another cracker.

They eat in silence for a while.

Drew watches Hikari's placid expression.
Don't you see me?
She wants to ask. She always wanted to ask that. She swallows. Words gather and form at the base of her throat. Things she always wanted to say, but never did. Whether because she was scared of rejection, or because the opportunity never arose. “Mom. I want you to know—I'm sorry we never talked about your life. I wish you would have told me things. I felt so shut out. And you seemed so much closer to Rachel.” But perhaps they weren't, Drew realizes now. Rachel doesn't know much more about Hikari than Drew does. Why did she keep herself so walled away from her own daughters?

Was she protecting them from something?

What was it that Killian would tell the judge? Her mother had not gotten so much as a parking ticket, to Drew's knowledge. Drew can't think of anything it could be.

Unless it was something that happened in Japan. Before she came.

She regards her mother. Still, she can't imagine Hikari doing anything. What was she, a gangster? “Mom, if you know what Dad's going to say in court, you have to tell me. Tell me now.”

Hikari dips another cracker. “My dear,” she says, “you are so very pretty. But you talk too much. You're boring me to death!”

Drew has to laugh. “Sorry.” Her face is so hot.

Mom picks up the plate and examines the decoration, a green flowered vine wrapping around the edge. She wipes at it aggressively, and looks up at Drew. “This won't come off. Why did they give me a dirty plate?”

“It's on there permanently.” Drew swipes her finger across the vine to demonstrate. “It's a decoration, like wallpaper.”

Hikari pushes the tray table away so hard it topples. Drew catches it before it hits the ground. The plate hits the floor, but doesn't break. “It looks like garbage. A plate of garbage!” Her voice rises. “I can't eat garbage.”

“Okay.” Drew pushes the tray table all the way into the hallway, finds the nurse and gives it to her. By the time she returns, her mother's asleep again.

Drew takes her hand. Hikari wasn't a perfect mother. Drew isn't a perfect daughter, or a perfect sister. Or perfect in life.

Drew wishes she could ask her mother many more things. How she felt about Killian, really. What she really wanted for Rachel, for Drew. What kind of motherly advice would she give—she hadn't been one to do that. Perhaps because of Killian. Perhaps because of something else, some constraint Drew has no idea about.

Maybe when Hikari said she hated Drew too that day, what she was really saying was that Drew didn't know her. That Drew didn't understand her any better than Hikari understood Drew.

In her sleep, Hikari squeezes Drew's hand. Maybe this is what Rachel was talking about, about the visits being nice, Drew thinks. Their mother's not here, yet she is here.
She doesn't remember me, yet we're having this moment anyway.
Moments are what matter, now. Not anything that happened before, or anything that might happen in the future.