Offerings

In 1966, vacant lots remained on the hillside of Yamate, like puddles formed after an abrupt midsummer shower. Stylish one-bedroom apartments and two-story houses with shiny Tuscan red roof tiles popped up in the new subdivision that flourished alongside the neighbouring U.S. military base, the largest in the vicinity of Tokyo. Across the street, wooden single-story units exposed their nakedness; their galvanized iron roofs that were once blue or grey had turned rusty brown, the color of the mud drinks Asako and her friend Miwa made by mixing volcanic soil, water, ragweed, wood sorrel, and foxtail. The drink was an offering to a goddess. 

Whenever the two girls played together, Asako’s younger sister, Nanako, tried to tag along. “You baby leave us alone,” Asako would say as soon as they were out of Mama earshot—who worked behind a butterfly sewing machine set by the window of one of those new apartments. Asako took Miwa’s hand and darted to her secret hiding place, where she kept popsicle sticks, acorns, smooth pebbles, pine cones, and a dragonfly barrette with a missing wing. Nanako ran after her sister, but being small, even for a six-year-old, she was always left behind. 

“I’m gonna tell Mama,” Nanako would shout at Asako, while Suwa, Miwa’s younger sister, stood still, not even trying to follow the big girls.

Only when Asako wanted to play goddess were Nanako and Suwa allowed to join them as honorary fairies. They were permitted to pick royal white clovers in the vacant lot, which Asako called her Paradise Garden. Nanako did most of the gathering while Miwa and Suwa made white clover crowns. A year ago, Mama showed the girls how to weave crowns from the clovers. It was before she began sewing dresses for American housewives from the U.S. military base, dresses that the girls were allowed to look at but never touch; before the girls had their first taste of Sugar Daddy’s and Cracker Jack’s from the base; before Mama spoke about a machine that washed dishes and a television that showed pictures in bright colors.    

No matter how often she tried, Nanako always ended up with a crumpled bundle of Dutch clovers, resistant to untangling or re-braiding. Wanting Asako to believe she took pride in being a picker, Nanako feigned disinterest in weaving. She made sure to pull each white clover as close as possible from the ground, leaving the short ones. She wiped the dirt off the stems and offered them to Miwa and Suwa, who crossed the two white clovers, weaving until the chained Dutch clovers became the length of Miwa’s arm. 

Then it was Asako’s turn. She fitted the woven clovers around the girls’ heads and firmly tied the ends with the strongest stem and decorated the crowns with dandelions. It was her last touch before they marched to a pile of stones she’d built at the center of the Paradise Garden. With sweet green honey crowns on their heads, the girls twirled around the stone temple, each chanting what they wished for.

“Choco Baby.”

“Cola-scented eraser.”

“Roller skates.”

Miwa’s voice was so soft that her wish was never heard, but Nanako liked watching her lips open and close soundlessly like a goldfish’s.

～

Whenever it rained that June, having nothing else to do at home but watch Mama press the foot pedal of her sewing machine, Nanako and Asako splish-splashed across the street to the old neighbourhood and spent most of their afternoons at Miwa and Suwa’s, whose father was always at home. 

“You can visit them, but don’t bother their father,” Mama said. “He needs to rest. Prefers to be left alone.”

Which was not true. Especially on hot days, when the paper sliding doors separating the fore and the back rooms were kept open, Nanako could see him either in his futon or sitting on a zabuton cushion, reading newspapers. Even if he were lying down with his eyes closed, Father Hideki watched the girls with his third eye. 

“Don’t bite your nails, Nanako-chan,” he’d say, even though she had her back facing him. When the girls were tired of folding cranes and jinbei dolls with their origami, he’d make a plane for each girl and tell them to write their names on the wings.

“Asako-chan, your plane flies to Australia. Nanako-chan, yours to the Netherlands. Miwa, to Mexico. Suwa, to Spain,” he said, pointing to the destinations on a world atlas he pulled out from a shelf filled with heavy books.

“Where is Japan?” Asako asked.

“So tiny,” Miwa said when Father Hideki pointed at an archipelago shaped like a seahorse.

“I don’t believe it,” Nanako said. “Too small even for elves.”

“You’re so dumb,” Asako cut in. “Everything is drawn to a scale.”

“You’re a third grader, but you didn’t even know where Japan is, Miss Smart.” Nanako kept calling her sister names until she forgot what she was mad at. 

Then as if there hadn’t been any squabble, Father Hideki explained that as a small island nation, Japan should be friends with other countries and described koalas, windmills, sombreros, and flamenco—everything that Nanako had never heard of. Nanako relished each word, like a hard candy she let dissolve in her mouth, wishing he were her Papa. 

Not that Nanako did not like Papa, who was rarely at home. He knocked on doors, selling Lodge’s cast iron skillets to nouveau-rich housewives all over Japan. During the few days he was back, he’d spin tall tales about a mansion where a bus took him from the gate to the entrance door, about a husky dog he’d mistaken for a wolf—each story accompanied with him flinging his arms in the air, banging his thigh, roaring at his own jokes.

“Can you believe some mother wants to know whether my skillet is good for whacking her naughty daughter?” He’d grab Nanako, who was not as quick as Asako, and roll with her toward the sewing machine pedal, where he tickled Mama’s bare feet. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes and the stubble against her cheek felt like beggarticks.        

～

It was a dream come true for Nanako when her friends’ mother asked the girls to join their family at their grandmother’s house in Chiba. “I’ll have to fill in for a nurse taking maternity leave, so it’ll be my husband and the girls if you don’t mind. Up in the mountains. Nothing much to see. Rice paddies, rivers, you know, the rural stuff.”

“Fresh air should do your husband good,” Mama said. 

From the leftover fabric Mama had gathered over the months, she sewed sundresses for the girls—all four with shoulder straps, elastic bands around the waist, and fake ribbons on the back. Sunflowers, apples, green stripes, red and blue gingham checks, and black polka dots were patched together, making it difficult for Nanako to decide whether they were beautiful or ugly.

“Miwa-chan and Suwa-chan, wash your hands and try on the one you like. You get to pick first.”

Nanako caught Asako counting the remaining watermelon slices on the tray and then placing her fingers on two pieces, hard enough to make a dent. Meanwhile, Mama kept asking her friends’ mother, “Are you sure it’s okay? Won’t they be a nuisance to Hideki-san? Is he getting better?”  

Instead of grabbing the remaining slices before Asako made more claims, Nanako closed her eyes and prayed. She told herself that if Mama would allow them to go with Miwa and Suwa, she would let the girls have her share of watermelon. She wouldn’t cry even if Suwa were to choose the only sundress with rainbow straps.  

“Hepatitis is a long journey. The kids can keep him company, maybe help my mother-in-law take care of Hideki-san,” Miwa and Suwa’s mother said. 

Nanako thought of the red airplane Father Hideki folded for her. Hers was to fly to the Netherlands. Hepatitis could be a country between America and Japan, maybe a tiny island floating in the Pacific.

～

A one-story house with a clay tile roof stood alone at the end of a velvet green rice paddy that seemed to extend forever from the bus stop. Mountain ranges covered with pin oak and cedar trees surrounded Father Hideki’s parent’s house, where he’d left to become a teacher, planning to return someday to work at a local elementary school built after the war.

“Stop sniffing like a dog. Don’t you see her waving at us?” Asako hissed at Nanako, nudging her to bow low to Father Hideki’s mother. Her back was slightly bent, and with a tenugui towel wrapped around her head and neck, her face looked like a small opening, her eyes and mouth squeezed between the sun-tanned wrinkles.

Suwa and Miwa raced toward their grandmother, but Nanako could not. She filled her body with the damp, earthy smell of green that vibrated around her. With her grandparents dead on both sides of her family, this was Nanako’s first time witnessing homecoming. Mama instructed them to call the old woman “Grandma” the way Suwa and Miwa talked of her, but when Nanako tried saying it under her breath, it felt ticklish as if somebody was brushing a foxtail against her arm.

“You’re getting tall,” Grandma said as she stroked Miwa’s head with her dried persimmon hand. “You look quite different. Is that the outfit city girls wear these days?”

The girls were wearing their new sundresses. Nanako noticed strangers gawking at them on the train and the bus. When Miwa looked sideways at Father Hideki, Asako took Miwa’s hand and made her twirl. “Mama made our dresses. She’s very popular among Americans. She might open her boutique soon.”

Nanako had never heard Mama say such a thing, but when she tried to open her mouth, Asako stepped on her sneaker and pushed her head down to bow to Grandma. “She’s my little sister, Nanako. Thank you very much for having us.” 

It was a line Mama had made Asako practice.  

～

Days went by with the girls helping to pick cucumbers and tomatoes that were ripening in the backyard. They sat on the engawa porch and spat out seeds of watermelon, seeing who could blow them the farthest. Gathering those seeds, they planted them beside the well to make them grow quickly like Jack’s beanstalk.

On his good days, Father Hideki took them to a nearby shallow riverbed and sat on a rock and watched the girls scoop up dark chub fingerlings, catch mayfly nymphs, and put them in a jar. Unlike Nanako and Asako, who filled their jars with many fingerlings, Miwa and Suwa only put in two or three. Suwa would lift the jar against the pin oak trees, where the afternoon sunlight seeped through, and watch the pair swim round and round in the jar. Miwa would set her jar in the shallow water and lie down on the pebbly bank. The pair in her jar merged with other fingerlings that were free to swim anywhere. The rule was to return everything to the river when Father Hideki said, “Time to go home.”

Once he showed the girls how to skip stones.

“Choose a flat pebble the size of your hand, full-swing your arm, and let go,” Father Hideki said.  

As the pebble skated on the water’s surface, ripples formed one after the other, merging into concentric circles until the pebble disappeared. The girls clapped their hands and begged Father Hideki to skip stones again and again, eager to figure out why the stones did not sink but leapt in a straight line, escaping the invisible hand that pulled them toward the riverbed.

“Father, we got it,” Miwa finally said, making him sit on the rock. He was panting hard and his pale face was turning red.

“Watch, Father,” Suwa said. She grabbed a pebble and threw it. The stone sunk with a soft plop. Asako and Miwa swung their arms as if they were throwing a net to catch something precious that they could not name. Water splashed here and there as Nanako handed flat pebbles to Asako and Miwa.

～

The night before their return to Yamate, Grandma said she would prepare a special dinner. Not eggs, grilled landlocked salmon, fried dace, or pickled eggplants but something Asako and Nanako most probably had never tried before. Only Miwa and Suwa were asked to help their grandmother in the kitchen while Father Hideki laid down on his futon, which was enclosed in a mosquito net hung from the four corners of the cedar ceiling. Nanako sat at a low table at the center of the tatami room, watching his translucent figure. The net was like an edible wafer of paper. She could almost touch him, but not quite. 

“Don’t wake him up,” Asako said. “I’ll finish the thank you card for Grandma, so you stay here until I call you.” Although Nanako was proud of the watermelon and  cucumber she’d drawn on the card, she wished it were her and not Asako who had come up with the idea of tracing a pin oak leaf and writing down everyone’s name at the pointed tips—Grandma at the top, Father Hideki at the bottom, and the pairs of sisters on the sides. It looked as if they were one big family. 

Having nothing else to do, Nanako studied the large portraits hooked to a beam on the ceiling. One was Suwa’s grandfather. In his stand-up collar and white uniform with gold bands decorating his shoulders, he looked like Father Hideki without a smile. In his sepia world, Grandfather looked younger than Father Hideki. The adjacent picture showed a chubby-cheeked Father Hideki holding a paper, which looked somewhat familiar to Nanako.

“Getting bored?” Father Hideki asked.

Nanako remembered her promise. “I didn’t wake you up.”

“No, you didn’t. Are you interested in those photographs?”

“Is the paper you’re holding the one framed at your house?” Nanako asked, pointing at Father Hideki’s photograph. 

“Yes, it’s a teacher’s certificate.”

“I didn’t know you were a teacher. Will you be my teacher then? When I become a second grader? Please. Please say yes.”

“Maybe.” He rolled over, showing his back to Nanako. Through the mosquito net, he looked like one of the silkworm cocoons that Asako’s class raised at school. A science project for big girls, Asako told Nanako. She made her feel privileged to touch one under mulberry leaves.

Images of cocoons made Nanako shriek at the dinner table when Grandma brought one of her special dishes: a bowl of tsukudani locusts piled up like a tower soaked in sweet-sour soy sauce, a plateful of fried loaches, long and thin.  

“What are they? Mayfly nymphs?” Asako poked the locust with her chopsticks.  

“They’re good.” Miwa stuffed her mouth with the tsukudani. As she chewed them, Nanako could hear a crunchy noise.

Suwa sprinkled salt on her fried loach. “Haven’t you ever tried this before? I can’t believe it. My grandma makes the best.” 

“Well, Mama doesn’t cook insects or snakes,” Asako said and put down her chopsticks. “I’m not eating any of this.”

“Me either,” Nanako said and made a face.

“How about some eggs then? I can make you sunny-side up,” Grandma said.  

When she stood up to go to the kitchen, Father Hideki suddenly rose from the table, trembling. Nanako was sure that she would get a good spanking. But instead, he grabbed Miwa’s arm and swung her onto his futon. The mosquito net fell over Miwa, who looked like a bewildered calico cat. He snatched Suwa and flung her, too. The more the girls tried to free themselves from the net, the more entangled they became. Every wave of their hands sent off a whiff of chlorine, powdered pyrethrum, and something musty and sweet. 

“You apologize to Grandma,” Father Hideki shouted at the wall.  

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Miwa said over Suwa’s sob.

“You apologize to Grandma.” Blue veins bulged on his temples as he tried to control his panting.

“It’s all right. I’m fine,” Grandma said. “Everything’s going to be all right, Hideki.” She took his trembling fist and let him sit on the tatami mat. He leaned against the wall and stared at his photograph as his daughters emerged slowly, one by one, from the net and disappeared into the kitchen.  

～

That fall, with more orders from the American wives, Mama moved onto an electric sewing machine, and Papa ended up working at a department store selling cookware. Neither girl told Mama about that last evening. Not because they were afraid of her chiding, but like their motley sundresses that defied any description, they did not know how to tell the story.

“Why don’t you go play with Miwa-chan and Suwa-chan?” Mama would say to the girls now and then, giving them a pack of animal crackers from her American clients. “Share with them, all right?”  

Out in the vacant lot where the white clovers were gone, Nanako sat with Asako under the evergreen ash and called out the names of the animals—their offerings to a goddess—before crushing the crackers in their mouth. 

“Tiger,” Asako roared. 

“Bear,” Nanko shouted. 

When they picked broken morsels without a defined shape, they hollered, “Locusts, loaches,” and let them melt on their tongues until everything completely disintegrated, leaving only salty sweetness in their mouths.