Mary Waters - The Favorites

There were certain things Sarah never discussed with her grandmother. She never let on that her mother had been anything but a queen bee in America. And she never mentioned their fights.

In turn, she knew her grandmother kept certain things from her. When Sarah was fourteen, her aunt Tama had told her that when her mother left on her honeymoon, Mrs. Kobayashi had dropped her brave face and wept for days afterward, huddled on her knees in the parlor. “I didn’t know what to do!” Mrs. Izumi said. “I thought she was going to get sick.” At the time, Sarah had assumed this was natural behavior for two people so close. But years later, shortly before she died, her mother had said something surprising.

“It was healthier for me to go away,” she said. “We were too attached.” That surprising remark had stuck in Sarah’s memory like a shard of glass.

She wished she could ask her grandmother about it. But how could she risk hurting an old woman who had suffered so much? The very idea would have outraged her mother, with her Benkei-like protectiveness.

There was one other topic they didn’t discuss: the problem of her mother marrying an American. Until now, Sarah hadn’t grasped the full magnitude of the situation. “There was a little resistance at first,” she was told as a child, “but then you were born, and everyone’s heart just melted into a puddle.” This had seemed reasonable. In Sarah’s generation, there was nothing shocking about a mixed-race marriage.

The Ichiyoshi incident made Sarah curious about her parents’ marriage. She had grown up hearing her parents reminisce fondly about their courtship. She had been delighted by the tale of stuffy relatives-a socially prominent branch of the Sosetsu family-who had begged the Kobayashis to stop the marriage. It would impact their children’s prospects, they pleaded, referring to matchmakers who dug deeply into family histories.

“But you stood up to those silly people and made them go home, didn’t you, Mama?” young Sarah had said happily.

“Of course I did,” her mother replied. “And your grandmother backed me up, one hundred percent.”

The couple had met while Mr. Rexford was in Japan on a two-month vacation. In the fifties, Japan was still struggling to catch up with the modern world. Students were urged to practice their English on any foreigner they met. Since foreigners were scarce in inland cities, Mr. Rexford was approached by a good many college students. Faces stiff with embarrassment, they would blurt out, “Hello, I have a black pen,” or “How is the government in your country?”

One spring day he was standing in a shrine yard, in front of a wooden structure with an enormous rope hanging from the eaves. This rope was meant to be grasped with both hands and shaken, so the large bells overhead would clang and alert the spirits. Then it was customary to drop a coin into the slatted donation box, clap three times, bow, and pray.

Yoko was sitting a few yards away, a sketching board across her knees. She had recently graduated from college with a double major: one in classic Japanese literature and one in English. She was eager to display her skills to someone capable of appreciating them.

“Excuse me,” she said. “That rope at which you are gazing is made of the hair of female prisoners.”

“It was the best opening line I’d ever heard,” Mr. Rexford told his daughter years later.

Their meeting was the start of a tender friendship. After Mr. Rexford went home to America, he wrote her every week. Through their letters, they fell in love.

For many years, Yoko kept their correspondence a secret. After all, Japanese girls from good families did not consort with Americans. She explained away the letters by telling her mother that Kyoto University had a pen pal program, designed to help alumni maintain the foreign-language skills they had learned. Sarah loved the story of her grandmother innocently saying, “Here’s another letter from your pen pal!” as she collected mail from the wooden box at the visitor gate.

“I always had a gut feeling about him,” Mrs. Rexford used to tell Sarah. “I just knew. There was something in his eyes.”

Sarah had never seen beyond those charming anecdotes to the true problem: Yoko had lied to her mother for years. The sense of betrayal must have been especially great because mother and daughter were best friends. Many nights after everyone went to bed, the two had stayed up late into the night, laughing, gossiping, holding philosophical debates. How hurt her grandmother must have been when she learned the truth!

It bothered Sarah that she knew nothing about the most intense and painful time in the women’s relationship. What guilt her mother must have felt! How did she reconcile that remorse? Knowing the answer might have given Sarah a vastly different understanding of her own relationship with her mother.

The public bathhouse was closed for maintenance, so Sarah was preparing to bathe at the Asaki house. She padded up and down the hall, collecting clean underwear and socks and a new woolen undershirt from the tansu chest in the parlor. Her grandmother was staying home; she would wait until the bathhouse opened on the following day. “You go ahead,” she urged Sarah. Even now, old boundaries stood firm: Mrs. Kobayashi never visited the Asaki house except on formal occasions.

It was years since Sarah had bathed at the Asaki house. She had often bathed there as a child; it was quicker than public bathing and it gave the girls more time to play.

Early afternoon seemed the least intrusive time to visit. Her uncle would still be at work, and Yashiko would be in school. Momoko no longer lived at home; she had gone away to college.

“Is it too antisocial, slipping in and out like that while everyone’s away?” she asked. She suspected her mother would have chosen a more convivial hour.

“Not at all,” said her grandmother, helping to pack Sarah’s vinyl bath bag with a washbasin, shampoo, soap, and towels. “It’s the perfect time to chat with Granny Asaki.”

It was a long-standing tradition for Sarah to sit with her great-aunt and look through her photograph albums. This had originally been Mrs. Rexford and Mrs. Kobayashi’s idea. “Why don’t you run along to Granny’s,” they would urge the child, “and ask her to show you pictures from the old days?” It was partly to teach her etiquette. “It makes old women happy,” her mother explained, “to have people know how pretty they were when they were young. Remember that.”

“She was a real beauty in her day,” her grandmother would add. “I remember people always compared her to that famous actress, what’s-her-name.”

But playing up to Mrs. Asaki’s vanity was also the women’s way of ensuring that the “half” child, despite her Caucasian features, would endear herself to the matriarch of the family.

Now these visits served a different purpose: to acknowledge that the old lady was important enough, and loved enough, to receive personal visits of her own. Mrs. Rexford’s calls had been formal, peppered with deep bows and ceremonial language. But Sarah belonged to a generation awkward with such formality, so this was her way of paying respect.

“Oh, and while you’re there”-Mrs. Kobayashi looked up from Sarah’s vinyl bag and clapped her hands once, relieved at having remembered-“be sure you pick up our concert tickets.”

“Tickets? We’re going to a concert?”

“I didn’t tell you? It must have slipped my mind. What is wrong with me lately? It’s your auntie; her choir’s performing this weekend at the brand-new Civic Auditorium. You remember-the big building that’s been on the news lately.”

Sarah had never heard about her aunt singing. Oh, but wait, now she did remember something: a throwaway conversation from the summer she was fourteen.