Mary Waters - The Favorites

Mrs. Asaki returned the bow with an appropriate response. Mrs. Rexford then looked pointedly at her daughter.

Now was the time for Sarah to bow correctly, as she had been taught. She counted silently to herself-one million one, one million two, one million three-timing her bow to end at the count of three. She could hear someone unwrapping a chocolate. Spine straight. Rear end down. It was a difficult, almost athletic feat. Her mother, trying to coach her a month before their visit, had said despairingly that a good bow just couldn’t be faked, any more than a dancer’s pirouette could. It took too long to train the right muscles. A bow was an acid test of one’s daily habits.

Sarah returned to a full sitting position before she realized she had forgotten to utter a single word. She had learned a simple speech, something to the effect that she was happy to be back and grateful for Mrs. Asaki’s kindness. But she couldn’t remember a word of it.

“Well done, well done!” Mrs. Asaki sang out with her cheerful cackle, and clapped her age-spotted hands.

“Granny-san,” said Mrs. Rexford, returning to a tone of affectionate familiarity that her daughter nonetheless suspected was an “outside” voice, “sit down here on my cushion. Ne, please.” She smoothed the cotton fabric in a deferential gesture of invitation. Mrs. Asaki accepted, ducking her head in a pleased quarter-bow, and Mrs. Rexford went away to help her mother with the tea. “Sarah,” she called back over her shoulder, switching once again to a disciplinary tone, “clear those dirty dishes off the table. Quickly!”

Sarah obeyed. Carrying the loaded clearing tray with both hands, she stepped down into the kitchen, feeling with her bare foot for the wooden step she couldn’t see. She liked her grandmother’s kitchen, with its vaguely primitive, backstage atmosphere that was so different from the rest of the house. It had a long narrow floor lined with wooden planks. Overhead were high exposed rafters blackened by years of smoke, from which a lanternlike fixture hung at the end of a long rope. Best of all, a miniature door opened right out onto the street so they could trade with vendors.

Here in the narrow kitchen, Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford were standing side by side. It was the only way they could both fit. Their backs were to Sarah, so they didn’t notice her approach. A newly arranged tray of tea utensils lay at the edge of the counter, ready to be carried up to the guests. Mrs. Kobayashi was lining up individually wrapped tea cakes on another tray beside it. Mrs. Rexford poured hot water from the kettle into a teapot.

“…like a hawk. Even now, she won’t trust Masako and me together,” Mrs. Kobayashi whispered.

“I still can’t believe Granny came.” Putting down the kettle, Mrs. Rexford wiped stray drops from the surface of the counter.

“Never let down your guard,” whispered Mrs. Kobayashi. “She’s aware of everything. Remember that.”

Mrs. Rexford mulled this over. “It’s so unlike Masako,” she said finally. “Usually she’s more careful. If she hadn’t stayed this long, Granny would never have come over in the first place.”

“It’s awkward,” agreed Mrs. Kobayashi.

Sarah, who all along had sensed some disturbing point outside her range of vision, felt a small thrill as it came into focus. The girls’ early arrival had been no accident. Mrs. Nishimura had wanted to come here; she had wanted to linger at this untidy breakfast table. Sarah recalled the guarded, apprehensive smiles of her grandmother and mother.

Now the two women fell silent.

“Hora…” Mrs. Kobayashi let out a sigh. “I had a feeling you should have gone there first. Didn’t I tell you? After this many years, you develop a sixth sense about these things.”

Noticing the girl’s presence for the first time, the women immediately switched to an animated discussion about the freshness of the tea cakes.

There was no chance to ask questions until late that night, when Sarah and her mother finally lay down on their futons.

They were side by side in the parlor. The walls were plastered with a mixture of fawn-colored clay and chopped straw. Like all traditional parlors it had a tokonoma, a built-in alcove of polished wood. Within it hung a long summer scroll with flowing black script. The scroll was the only object of pure white in the room, and it leapt out at the eye from inside the shadowed recess. At the foot of the alcove, in a shallow glazed bowl, Mrs. Kobayashi had arranged a single yellow lily from the garden, deliberately angled across long clean lines of summer grass.

Back in America, Sarah hadn’t remembered much about this room. But as soon as she arrived, everything had fitted seamlessly back into her memory, like the pigeon calls this morning. In fact when she first entered this room, she had immediately noticed that the stringed koto, which her mother had played in her youth and which stood in its original sheath of faded red silk, was now leaning against the tea cabinet wall instead of the tokonoma wall.

Sarah and her mother lay on their backs. Moonlight shone through a gap in the heavy drapes, which were slightly open to let in the breeze. For the first time that day, the house was utterly silent.

“When I was little,” said Mrs. Rexford, “there used to be a snake living up in the attic.”

“Ugh, a snake!” said Sarah. “Did you see it?”

“No. I just heard it at night, when I was lying in bed. The mouse would run-its nails went k’cha k’cha-then there was a quick dragging sound. After that, it got quiet again.”

“Weren’t you scared?” Sarah asked, even though she knew better. Her mother disapproved of timidity in any form.

“What for? Snakes bring good luck to households, remember? In the old days, farmers stored grain in the attic. Grain attracts mice, and mice attract snakes. So having a snake in your attic meant you were wealthy. During the occupation, I’d listen to that sound and feel safe, because the snake was protecting our black-market rice.”

“Black-market rice? In this attic?” Sarah strained her eyes in the moonlight. She could make out the shadowed, roughly hewn rafters of the ceiling, curiously out of sync with the polished gleam of the alcove and wall posts. The attic was silent. Never in her lifetime had Sarah heard any sound. But these were modern times after all, when nothing exciting ever happened.

She shifted her body to look over at her mother, and the buckwheat-husk pillow gave a loud crunch. Mrs. Rexford lay with her hands clasped behind her head. In the moonlight her face looked unformed and unfamiliar, framed by a cloud of hair loosened from its French twist.

They had never slept together in the same room before.

“Mama?” Sarah spoke softly, aware that these rooms were divided by nothing but paper panels. “How come things are awkward with Granny and Auntie?”

“Hmm?”

“I heard you talking in the kitchen.”

Mrs. Rexford gave a sigh of reluctance. Sarah waited patiently. Usually her questions were met with a brisk, “You’re still a child, it’s none of your business.” But this time-she felt sure-her mother would take her into her confidence as a form of damage control.

Sure enough, her mother whispered, “I suppose you’re old enough.” She switched to English. “But you’re not to tell Momoko or Yashiko-they don’t know yet. And don’t bother your grandmother.”

“Okay.”

“Your auntie Masako was adopted as a baby. The Asakis weren’t her real parents.”

“Oh. Then who were?”

“She and I have the same parents,” said Mrs. Rexford. “She’s my full sister by birth.”

“So Grandma’s her real mother…?” Sarah’s mind raced back over that morning. The tightness between her temples intensified as her brain realigned itself.