Mary Waters - The Favorites

“You know what?” she told her mother. “I think living in America has liberated me.”

“Soh? How’s that?”

“I didn’t feel any anger today,” Mrs. Rexford said. “Not even a twinge. It’s all gone.” She hummed a little tune as she rinsed a porcelain dipping bowl.

“You did seem to have a good time,” agreed Mrs. Kobayashi. She took the wet bowl from her daughter’s hand and wiped it with a dishcloth.

“That’s because I have perspective,” Mrs. Rexford boasted. “I can empathize with the little boy he used to be.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“This is so encouraging,” said Mrs. Rexford happily. “If it can happen with someone like Teinosuke, just think how nice it’s going to be when Tama comes to visit!”

Tama Kobayashi-now Mrs. Tama Izumi-was Mrs. Kobayashi’s final child, the only offspring of the second marriage. She lived in Tokyo with her husband and little boy. In a few days, they would be riding out on the bullet train for an extended visit.

“It’s good timing,” Mrs. Rexford told Sarah. “You can relax around your aunt Tama. She’s real family.” They exchanged a knowing glance.

Sarah couldn’t wait. Her aunt Tama had been pretty and fun-loving, with fashionable clothes and bright lipstick. The girl could remember a time when her aunt was still unmarried, when she used to live here at home. She was constantly going off on dates in her fiancé’s sports car instead of taking the streetcar like everyone else. Little Sarah, intoxicated by this whiff of an exciting outside world, had trailed her everywhere. She had fantasized about having her for a big sister. She had fantasized about having her for a mother.

In preparation for the Izumis’ visit, Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford began pulling down extra futons from the storage closet. They hung them out to air in the laundry area, which was a tiny cement courtyard with a covered drain in the middle. One accessed it through the family room, stepping down from an inner veranda onto a neat row of red plastic utility slippers. This roofless space was rigged with washing lines for light items such as clothing, and sturdy bamboo poles for the heavier items. The strong summer sun flooded down, and the air quickly became suffused with the scent of warm cotton.

“Little Jun and his father can sleep in the receiving room,” panted Mrs. Kobayashi as the two women, working in unison, heaved a silk coverlet over a lowered bamboo pole. Its patterned side faced out. The red and blue carp were slightly faded from age and sun, but the silk had been protected from human skin by a wide rim of white cotton casing. “Tama can squeeze in with the two of you in the parlor.”

“Banzai!” cried Sarah happily. She was perched on the ledge of the inner veranda, swinging her bare legs and watching her elders as she nibbled on a snack of dried whitebait and cheese.

“So as I was saying”-Mrs. Rexford was also panting-“I was always so harsh to her and now I feel bad about it.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” said Mrs. Kobayashi. “You were only children.”

The women lifted the bamboo pole in unison. Raised arms trembling with effort, each fitted her end into the loop of twine hanging overhead. Then Mrs. Rexford said, “I have a confession to make. Remember that time Tama drank the entire bottle of rationed milk from the icebox?”

“I do. I had to lie and tell Father I’d mismanaged the household funds. Aaa, he was so angry…”

“Well,” said Mrs. Rexford, “I cornered Tama afterward. I was so mad I slapped her, right across the face.”

“Oh, Yo-chan! She was just a little girl!” Then after a pause, “What did she do?”

“She stood there and sniffled. I said, ‘Look what you’ve done! My mother’s getting yelled at, and it’s all because of you!’

“She looked ashamed, but she stuck out her chin and said, ‘She’s my mother too.’ I told her, ‘Then act like it!’”

Having finished with the futons, the two women climbed up onto the veranda and into the shade of the family room. Sinking down gratefully onto the floor cushions, they picked up round paper uchiwa and fanned the moisture from their faces.

Sarah followed them inside. “What’s for lunch?” she asked timidly. But the women were too engrossed to pay her any attention.

“But Tama never learned,” continued Mrs. Rexford. “Time would pass, then she’d do something else just as thoughtless. That was the problem.”

Mrs. Kobayashi nodded regretfully. They fanned themselves in silence.

Little Tama had grown up largely unaffected by family tensions. She had both of her natural parents and she knew nothing about her half sister’s adoption, at least until she was older. In truth she was a little self-centered. Mrs. Kobayashi, typical of postwar mothers, had raised her with unusual leniency, as if to atone for those hardships that had forced her older children into premature adulthood. Or maybe the girl was just born that way; someone had once remarked that she was, after all, Kenji Kobayashi’s daughter.

“But she was always a good girl at heart,” said Mrs. Rexford, “never sneaky or mean-spirited like Teinosuke. When I think of her following me around, wanting my approval no matter how much I scolded her…” She stopped, overcome with emotion.

“There, there,” soothed Mrs. Kobayashi. She reached over with the uchiwa and gently fanned her daughter’s face. “Forget all that. You’re both grown women, and this is your chance to develop a true womanly friendship. Ne?”

Mrs. Rexford nodded.

“I know how much you wanted that with Masako,” said Mrs. Kobayashi.

Mrs. Rexford nodded again. It was a source of sorrow that Mrs. Nishimura, whom she romantically regarded as her “true” sister, never dropped her outside face in her presence-or in the presence of anyone else. “It’s so hard to talk to her,” Mrs. Rexford had lamented. “She won’t even gossip.”

“At least with Tama,” said Mrs. Kobayashi, “you have a chance.”

Real family, all staying in the same house! Even after her experience with the Asaki household, Sarah had romantic notions about large families. She liked the companionable lulls: she and her cousins often sat on the garden veranda, watching Mr. Kobayashi as he chain-smoked and stared off into space and sketched in hurried spurts. With the women’s occasional laughter in the background, the girls sat contentedly within the aromatic haze of his cigarette smoke, sucking on popsicles from the snack shop. Being on the periphery of adult focus was a new experience for Sarah. She liked it. It felt like a sign of tacit approval.

Neighbors, too, were family. There was always someone nearby to whom she could bow a greeting: housewives in the narrow lane, buying greens from the vendor’s cart; an old man wearing geta and watering the shrubs outside his slatted wooden gate. Even strangers, passing through on their way to somewhere else, seemed to know who Sarah was. Early on she had made the mistake of bowing to random people in the open-air market, assuming everyone knew her family. “Who were you bowing to just now?” her mother or grandmother would ask, puzzled.

Best of all were the titles of familiarity. Friends of the family, shop clerks, even strangers who happened to drop handkerchiefs in the street were addressed as Auntie, or Big Brother, or Granny. To Sarah’s satisfaction, Momoko and Yashiko addressed her as Big Sister.

“Don’t you miss living here?” she once asked her mother. “Don’t you ever wish you’d married someone from Japan?”

“No,” said Mrs. Rexford. “And if I had, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Yes, I would! And I’d be completely Japanese, instead of just half.”