Mary Waters - The Favorites

Sarah watched and listened in silence. Among American women back home, her mother would have been the picture of Oriental demureness. Her attitude was one of wide-eyed fascination: “How smart and funny you are!” Privately, Mrs. Rexford considered the Fielder’s Butte women her intellectual inferiors, and had the playing field been level, she would have considered them her social inferiors as well. So her stories at home, while observant and witty, were not always kind. But some American women were flattered and charmed. Nurturing instincts aroused, they went out of their way to offer tutelage and protection. “Honey, your mama’s a real doll!” they would tell Sarah, handing her recipes for potato chip casseroles and Jell-O molds. “Give this to your mama, I know she’ll enjoy it. She’s an absolute sweetheart, such an adorable little Chinese lady!”

Mrs. Rexford now stood in the crowded market, her red blouse like a flame attracting the pale, mothlike shades of the local women’s dresses. This flamelike quality was also in her face. Watching her, Sarah felt that same deep joy as when her mother had picked out her hat.

Their final encounter was at the poultry stall. They approached two other customers who were standing under the red-and-white-striped awning, peering down at a straw-lined display of eggs in various sizes and colors. “Auntie Sasaki!” Mrs. Rexford called out to one of them, in the breezy voice that came so easily to her in this country. “What dish are you going to make with those eggs?” The elderly woman turned around to see who had spoken. Her face brightened with pleasure, and they fell immediately into conversation.

“Just look at you, Yo-chan,” the woman said at one point, patting Mrs. Rexford’s shoulder in the overfamiliar manner of the weaving class. “I bet you’re the queen bee over in America too, aren’t you? Just like you were here. Oh yes, I know you are-don’t deny it! Anta, I’m very perceptive! I can tell, just from looking at your face.”

“Oh, please!” Mrs. Rexford protested, laughing. She dismissed the compliment with a languid wave of her hand, as she had been doing all morning. But this woman’s bluntness caused a frisson of awkwardness to pass between mother and daughter. For Sarah knew what no one, not even her grandmother, fully understood: the truth of how things were in America.

“Is it true you once beat up a bully?” asked the second customer, a vacant-looking young woman in her twenties.

“Oh yes!” said the old woman. “That’s a true story. I know, because it was my very own boy that was being picked on.”

“Once a success, always a success,” chimed in the poultry vendor, who had come over with some fresh boxes from the back. “You’ve done us proud.” The little group beamed at Mrs. Rexford, their eyes shiny with approval.

On that note, they headed home. They passed a small tea shop, the last outpost before the street turned residential. Inside the display window was an assortment of skewered summer dumplings arranged on lacquered trays.

Sarah glanced at her mother. There was a pleased flush on Mrs. Rexford’s cheeks, a glint in her eye, as if she had just come away from a party held in her honor. She caught her daughter’s eye, then looked away.

“I guess the shopping took a little longer than usual,” she said. She said this with a sheepish kind of dignity, and Sarah felt a rush of pity. Or maybe it was guilt: she, with her petty teenage cruelties, had been responsible for many of her mother’s difficulties in America.

“Did it?” Sarah said gently. “I didn’t notice.” They walked on in silence.

The last time she had felt this sort of pain for her mother-the kind that made her stomach feel sick-had been almost a year ago. Mrs. Rexford had made German coleslaw for Sarah to bring to her school potluck: an authentic recipe with caraway seeds and vinegar. Hardly anyone at school had touched it, preferring the more familiar mayonnaise-covered potato salad. On her way home, Sarah had dumped the uneaten remains in the grass. Her mother, greeting her at the door, had seen the empty serving dish and cried, “Why, they ate it all!” and her happy expression had haunted Sarah for days.

What did it matter, she now asked herself fiercely, if her mother wasn’t a queen bee on both continents? How many people were that lucky?

Sarah herself had never been a queen bee anywhere. But these days her status was rising. The neighbors’ admiration and affection for her mother flowed over onto her with little distinction between them. Even in her own family, Sarah belonged-if only partially-to her grandmother’s inner circle, for no other reason than lineage.

Even though she knew she was merely basking in her mother’s glory, the effect was heady. It was like the time when she was a little girl and her grandfather had carried her on his feet while dancing a waltz. In that moment she had understood, for the first time, how it felt to move through space with elegance and authority. “Soh soh, that’s right,” her grandfather had chuckled. “Soh soh, see? Your body knows it.”

Lately there were moments when Sarah found herself gliding through daily life with uncharacteristic confidence and entitlement, just like her mother. It was surprising how easy it was, how natural and right it felt. During such moments she felt a glimmer of hope that her true personality had been in hiding all these years, just as her mother’s had been, and the whole world was opening up before her.

They were halfway home when they met Mrs. Nishimura coming from the opposite direction. She held a parasol of pale blue linen in one hand and a woven straw basket in the other. The three stopped in pleased recognition. “You both look so nice!” Mrs. Nishimura said.

“So do you, Auntie,” said Sarah. Her aunt wore soft pink lipstick and a sundress of the same general shade as her parasol. Under the blue-tinted shade her face looked delicate, almost translucent.

“Ma-chan!” exclaimed Mrs. Rexford, her eyes still animated from the marketplace encounters. “Listen: go to Hachi-ya as soon as you get there. They’re having a sale on prayer incense-the good kind. And it’s going fast.”

“Really? Good thing you told me. We’re almost out.”

As they stood chatting in the street, Sarah became aware of a problem. Inside her string bag, clearly visible if anyone glanced down, was a box of cream puffs. It had been laid right on top so as not to get squashed, and it was wrapped in the distinctive blue paper of Ushigome Confectionery.

The problem consisted of several parts. On a simple level, Mrs. Rexford hadn’t bought enough to share with the Asaki household. If her aunt knew about the cream puffs, she and the girls might expect to receive some that evening.

On a more complex level, Ushigome Confectionery was far more expensive than the store where they had bought the Nishimuras’ cake on the first day. No expense was being spared for the Rexfords’ visit-the best cuts of meat, the most expensive fish, gourmet-quality desserts. Mrs. Nishimura, who was Mrs. Kobayashi’s daughter too, had never had any such fuss made over her. Of course there were logical reasons for this. But there was a fundamental inequality here, one that mustn’t be flaunted. Imitating the sleight of hand she had observed in her elders, Sarah casually shifted the basket behind her back.

Her mother shot her a look of approval.

That glance, coming on the heels of Sarah’s remorse for her mother, triggered in her a burst of happiness.

Later, she would look back on this moment as one of the turning points of the summer. For it was the first time she had actively colluded against her aunt. Even in her happiness she was aware of crossing an invisible line of allegiance, leaving her auntie on the other side.