Mary Waters - The Favorites

As she led him out of the room, she heard her aunt saying in a small, stunned voice, “Big Sister, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, both of you,” said Mrs. Kobayashi’s voice. “It’s all right, now.”

As Sarah passed through the dining room to the opposite end of the house, she came face-to-face with her grandfather. He must have come home early in order to get some work done. Like Sarah, he was heading for the opposite end of the house, with a sketch pad in one hand and a cup of cold tea in the other. He must have heard part of the women’s conversation, but it was hard to tell his reaction.

“Can we come watch you work, Grandpa?” she asked.

“Sure, sure,” he said, smiling.

Still holding Jun’s hand, Sarah followed her grandfather down the hallway to his accustomed spot on the garden veranda. Even in her agitation, she was aware of the pleasant coolness of varnished wood under her bare feet. The garden side of the house had an austere quality-perhaps it was the earthen walls or the formality of the dark wood-that required a certain mental adjustment, like entering a museum from a busy street.

Jun, active as always, immediately clambered down onto a pair of gardening sandals and trotted into the garden. Squatting down, he picked up an empty cicada shell. “Look, Big Sister! Come look what I found!” he cried, already forgetting about his Aunt Mama in the other room. Sarah found another pair of gardening sandals and climbed down after him.

They crouched together, searching for more cicada shells. Eventually Mrs. Izumi came out and joined her father on the veranda.

The two adults sat for a while in silence. Mr. Kobayashi lit a cigarette, and its scent wafted out into the afternoon air like a rich, comforting incense.

He cleared his throat and said, “It’s no use trying to change them, you know.” He spoke gruffly, for he knew he was intruding into women’s territory.

“I know,” Mrs. Izumi replied, a bit shortly. Again they were silent.

Sarah knew her aunt Tama had been his favorite as a child. The family albums were full of photographs of little Tama beaming at the camera, her gap-toothed smile playing up to her father behind the lens. Being his favorite should have been enough for her. But Sarah understood why it wasn’t; nothing else compared with the brightness that was her grandmother and mother.

“It runs too deep,” Mr. Kobayashi said, and an echo of private remembrance gave his words a strange resonance.

“I know,” Mrs. Izumi said again.

Sarah glanced over at her aunt. There was an uncharacteristic stillness about her, as if her coquettish energy had finally run out.

In the lull of late afternoon, Sarah knelt before the vanity mirror and practiced pressing her lips together the way her mother had done. Don’t you dare use him to hurt my mother. She felt a little thrill as her face, with its pointy Caucasian features, became transformed with authority and passion.

She was alone in the house, with nothing to do. The men had taken Jun to a baseball game. Her grandmother had gone to the open-air market at this uncharacteristically late hour to pick up something for dinner. “You mind the house,” she had told Sarah, “in case any of them come back.”

Mrs. Rexford and Mrs. Izumi had gone somewhere together. Wherever they were, Sarah knew, her mother would be treating her little sister with utmost tenderness. She knew this from experience; after a fight, her mother always channeled her heightened emotions into intimate revelations or optimistic lectures. Sarah never admitted it, but those winding-down sessions made her feel cleansed and very close to her mother.

She fiddled with the brushes on the vanity. Kneeling on the tatami floor, she slid open the drawer and rummaged halfheartedly through its contents: Shiseido cosmetics, bathhouse tokens, an old-fashioned wooden ear cleaner.

For the first time she missed Momoko and Yashiko. She hadn’t seen much of them since the Izumis arrived. They were being kept at home, out of everyone’s way, for traditional women all understood the strain of hosting an in-law.

As matriarch of the Kobayashi clan, it was in Mrs. Asaki’s interest to support her sister-in-law. So the Asaki house was always open for company, as a sort of second home where the adults could go (although Mrs. Kobayashi never did) for a conversational change of pace. The children were encouraged to play there, and Jun visited often-he was fond of the snack tins under Mrs. Nishimura’s table.

Sarah thought back to those innocent hours she had spent playing at the Asaki house, safe from adult issues that didn’t concern her. Ever since she joined the ranks of her mother and grandmother, she had left behind that world of glowing shoji screens and warm tatami mats, the leaf-filtered light in the kitchen and crackers in tin boxes. And she couldn’t go back. She realized this with a twinge of sadness; it was like that magic land in Peter Pan, out of reach to children who had grown up. Not that anything was keeping her from going. But at this point it was too much trouble: thinking ahead to keep Momoko from being jealous, seeing her aunt Masako’s gentle face.

She thought of the times she had run freely to her aunt Tama as a child. “Where are you going?” she would say. “Take me with you.” She couldn’t imagine doing that now. It wouldn’t be right somehow, after the strolls she had taken with her mother-it would feel like a betrayal.

She glanced out through the open partitions at the laundry area, with its empty poles and lines. For the first time she noticed that summer had passed its peak; the sunlight had changed from hazy white to deep gold, almost amber. The late afternoon sun angled down in dust-moted shafts, reminding Sarah of stained glass. Accustomed to California sun, she was strangely affected by this aged, regretful light of a foreign longitude.

The kitchen door rolled open. Mrs. Kobayashi called out, “Tadaima! I’m home!”

“Welcome back!” Sarah called. She could hear the icebox door opening and closing in the kitchen. This was comforting after the strange, sad light outside.

By the time Sarah descended into the kitchen, her grandmother was standing at the counter and unwrapping newspaper from an enormous bundle of garlic shoots. A plate of thinly sliced raw beef lay nearby, its dark red an appealing contrast to the green of the shoots. As always, her spirits lifted at the sight of food.

“Can I help, Oba-chan?” she asked. Helping with the cooking was normally her mother’s job, not hers. Since only two people could work comfortably in the kitchen at one time, the women took advantage of this legitimate excuse to hold hushed, private conversations. “Put on your apron, Yo-chan,” Sarah occasionally heard her grandmother say, as if her daughter were still a child. “Yo-chan, are you holding your knife right?” Both women seemed to enjoy this.

“Maa, that’s very kind,” Mrs. Kobayashi now said. “Why don’t you get me the konnyaku and the fu out of the icebox. But put on an apron first.”

Sarah took down one of the aprons hanging from a nail on the wooden post. She tied the strings behind her with quick, efficient jerks the way her mother always did. It was like stepping into her mother’s body, and suddenly she felt shy.

Sarah’s relationship with her grandmother wasn’t as personal as her relationship with her mother. Since the two adults were so close, she was rarely alone with her grandmother. The girl loved her wholeheartedly but in the uncomplicated way of a child.

Emptying the gelatinous strands of konnyaku into a colander, she asked, “Did Mama used to cry like that when she was a girl?”

“No. Not at all. She was quiet…but you always sensed how protective she was, how strongly she felt things. I’m still surprised I gave birth to someone like that. Do you know the story of Benkei?”