Mary Waters - The Favorites

Eventually, calmed by the priest’s sonorous drone, she turned her attention to her surroundings. A wall of shoji doors, drawn shut against the morning sun, glowed with a fierce yellow light that lit up the wide room, with its empty expanse of tatami matting meant for funerary parties larger than their own. A mahogany altar, decked out in ornate gold-and-brown brocade, held an assortment of bronze lotus blossoms rising up toward the ceiling on tall stems. Shielded from the sun’s glare, the bronze glowed softly as if radiating light from within.

In the row directly ahead, Sarah and her grandparents sat quietly on black floor cushions. Mrs. Asaki noted the odd way Sarah sat: on folded legs so her backside rested directly on her heels, placing pressure on the tops of her feet. This was no way to sit for extended periods. Mrs. Asaki sat pigeon-footed so that the outsides of her feet, not the tops, bore directly on the mats. She had faint calluses on the sides of her feet from decades of contact with the floor. Modern children-those raised in Western-style houses-could no longer sit for hours as their predecessors had. But that was in the newer districts; in the Ueno neighborhood, Sarah was still the only exception. Mrs. Asaki remembered watching with surprise and disapproval as the little girl hauled herself away from the table after an unusually long sitting session, dragging her paralyzed legs behind her like a seal and gasping, “Pins and needles…,” between bursts of uncontrollable laughter. She hoped there would be none of that today.

Her worries were unfounded. Partway through the ceremony, when it was time for each person to rise, approach the altar, and transfer a pinch of incense from a small bowl to a large smoldering urn, Sarah acquitted herself well. She bowed nicely, with an elegance of line unexpected in a foreigner. That’s Yo-chan’s doing, Mrs. Asaki thought, and she felt a surge of affection for this girl who would stand between Masako and her biological mother.

Finally the priest brought out an antiquated brush-writing set and began grinding ink and water on the stone. With a flourish of calligraphy, he wrote Mrs. Rexford’s name on a long wooden tablet. Bowing deeply, he presented it with both hands to Mr. Kobayashi, who bowed back and received it with both hands.

“Are you sure,” the priest asked afterward, “that you wouldn’t like a cup of tea before you go?”

No, no, they laughed, bowing copiously and talking all at once, thank you so much, but we couldn’t possibly rest till this is done! They left the temple and headed down a short road toward the gravesite, with Mr. Kobayashi carrying the long, narrow tablet before him like an upright spear.

The road skirted the edge of a rice paddy. The day was growing warm. A faint mist rose up from the young green shoots, and with it a long-lost smell from Mrs. Asaki’s childhood, that brackish tang of paddy water. It brought back the past so strongly that her breath caught in her throat. She turned to her brother, wanting to share this moment, but she realized it was nothing new for him; he came here every year to tend these graves.

A small boy was crouching on the embankment of the paddy with a plastic pail at his side, peering into the murky water in search of frog eggs. Or would it be tadpoles at this stage in the season? Mrs. Asaki couldn’t remember.

“Remember when you used to do that?” she asked, turning to her brother. “I can see it so clear in my mind-you and Shohei coming home at sunset, with ropes of frog eggs slung over your shoulders.”

Mr. Kobayashi’s handsome face creased into a warm grin. “That’s right,” he said. “What fun that was!”

“When we lived in the Kyoto hills,” said Sarah, “Mama would show me how to find them.”

“We kept ours in that big stone vat,” said Yashiko, “before we got the turtle. Remember, Big Sister?”

Momoko nodded. “When the tadpoles grew legs, they all hopped out.”

They slowed their steps, gazing nostalgically at this tableau of Japanese childhood. Unnerved by their scrutiny, the little boy rose to his feet and slunk away, clutching his plastic pail.

The Kobayashi plot lay on a small rise, low enough for everyone to climb without too much trouble. It tired Mrs. Asaki a great deal, but she squared her shoulders and said nothing. She wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Kobayashi were feeling the physical strain as well. Single file, they climbed several meters up the short dirt trail. Lush foliage-vines and grasses and edible ferns-fringed their path in wild profusion, catching at their legs with damp, soft tendrils.

There were roughly fifteen Kobayashi gravestones, rising up haphazardly from the sea of vegetation. The oldest markers-small and moss-stained and porous-stood farther up the hill, their engravings long since rained away. They were so old the wooden tablets in the metal braces had rotted away and no one knew who the individuals had been. Nonetheless, they were family. Mrs. Nishimura, the most able-bodied adult, climbed up toward them, picking her way carefully among the damp foliage. She had brought a bag of bean cakes in her purse, and she placed one at each gravestone. Soon the faint smell of incense came drifting down to the others.

“Is this one of ours?” Mrs. Nishimura occasionally called down to Mrs. Kobayashi, for these family plots had no clear dividing lines.

When she came down to join the others, Mr. Kobayashi was kneeling down before the biggest and newest of the gravestones. Gripping a small garden trowel in one hand, he struggled to wedge it under the flat stone slab lying in front of the gravestone.

“Can you do it, Father-san?” said Mrs. Kobayashi worriedly. “Is it safe for your back?”

“May I help, sir?” asked Mr. Nishimura, starting to step forward.

“I’m fine,” the old man replied, a little brusque at these affronts to his masculinity.

“Of course he’s fine,” Mrs. Asaki told the others. “Let the man do his work.”

He lifted one end of the stone slab. With both hands, he dragged it to the side. And there it was-a small, granite-lined space that had lain undisturbed these fifty years. Lined up in one corner were three small porcelain urns bearing old-fashioned designs of their time. Mrs. Asaki’s mother was on the far left, then her father, then her brother Shohei.

Everyone was silent: the children, for whom burial was a new experience; Mrs. Nishimura, beholding her biological father’s urn for the first time; the older generation, whose memories stretched far back in time.

Mrs. Asaki was transported to when she had first stood here as a child, peering down into this small space. It was as if nothing of consequence had changed in the interim; she had come back full circle to this green-filtered light, this same sharp pyoo-pyoo of woodland birds. It was like blinking once, then finding three urns instead of one.

“Hai,” said Mr. Kobayashi, still in kneeling position, and reached out his hand for the box. His wife gripped it one last time, then handed it over.

It stuck in the opening. Mr. Kobayashi turned the box sideways, but it stuck again. No one spoke, no one breathed-but after a firm push it went in, no worse for wear except for a long scratch down the side.

Mrs. Kobayashi gave an audible gasp of relief. Everyone else, just as relieved, began laughing weakly.

“It sure was big,” Sarah said after the stone slab was back in place.

“It took up the space of ten people,” Yashiko said wonderingly.

Momoko wanted to know if they would need a new gravestone after this.

“I shouldn’t think so. There’s space for one more, at least,” said Mrs. Kobayashi.

“Well,” cackled Mrs. Asaki happily, “if that wasn’t just like Yo-chan, all the way to the end!”