Now, as then, Mrs. Asaki sat by the window. She gazed out at the open fields and rice paddies, at the encroaching foothills. The decades had left their mark. There were more roads now, more houses dotting the landscape-newer, smaller tract houses such as one saw in certain parts of the city. Every so often they passed an old-style farmhouse, the kind she remembered from her childhood: ponderous structures with steeply pitched, top-heavy roofs in the tradition of temple architecture.
“Have you noticed,” said Mrs. Kobayashi, “that Sarah’s hand-the place where her thumb attaches-is the spitting image of her mother’s?”
“Is that so?” said Mrs. Asaki sympathetically.
“Take a look when you get a chance. It’s uncanny.”
Mrs. Asaki was reminded of the years after Shohei’s death, when her sister-in-law would point out such traits in little Yoko: a certain crook of the arm, the curve of a brow. She hoped this meant Sarah would be replacing her mother in Mrs. Kobayashi’s heart. She was the natural choice, the one least disruptive to the status quo. But the girl lived so far away, and she was of the wrong generation. Who knew what unpredictable turns a mother’s heart might take?
They took two separate taxis to the temple. Mrs. Asaki sat by the window, her fatigue temporarily forgotten, clutching the sill with both hands and glancing about with eager eyes. She hadn’t been here in decades, not since the black-market days. There were no relatives left; they had died or scattered into oblivion.
“That wasn’t there before!” she exclaimed as they passed a snack shop on the corner. Her fellow passengers did not respond. Mrs. Nishimura was unfamiliar with the area, having grown up tending the Asaki gravesite in the city. Momoko and Yashiko were too young to care.
They rode on in silence. “I wonder if Sato-san’s place is still there…,” she said. Mr. Sato was the farmer who had bartered rice in exchange for their silks and family jewelry. After the transactions were completed, he always invited the Asakis to stay for lunch. His wife served sushi made with freshly killed raw chicken from their farm, for ocean fish was scarce in wartime. Squeamish at first, they eventually warmed to it and, in later years, even referred to it fondly.
Mrs. Asaki wished she had ridden in the same taxi as the Kobayashis. She and Mrs. Kobayashi could have reminisced together. We’re the only ones left, she thought.
“This place has completely changed!” she mourned.
“What did you expect, Grandma?” said Momoko. “This is the twentieth century.”
“Momoko,” admonished her mother in a low voice.
Mrs. Asaki’s excitement deflated before the girl’s withering tone. Over the last few years, a subtle change had come over Momoko. Her insolence had an underground quality; it never rose cleanly to the surface but would insinuate itself into some innocent remark. Her own Masako had never been this way, even in adolescence. Was it a modern thing? Sometimes Mrs. Asaki suspected it was indeed personal, that it stemmed from some deep-seated resentment she was at a loss to account for. She was baffled. In traditional families it was usually the parent who bore the brunt of such behavior.
The sting of it stayed with her while they greeted the priest and seated themselves for the formal ceremony.
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.