Fifty Words for Rain(28)

Akira shrugged a shoulder. It was clear that if this had ever bothered him, he was over it now.

“She left when I was four. I don’t really remember much about it, and she never told us where she was going. That’s, I’m assuming, when she realized she was pregnant with you. Even before she left, she was never around. She hung around with strange people and stayed out all hours. I highly doubt your father was the first strange man she took to bed with her. Though, as far as I know, nobody ever saw her with anyone colored. That must have been a new curiosity.”

If that was meant to make her feel better, it had a decidedly opposite effect. Her gut churned, and this time, it was more than just a feeling. She leaned over and retched, the acrid taste of bile causing her eyes to water.

Nori dragged her eyes from the floor and fixed them on her hands. They were shaking so badly that she couldn’t stop them. Akira rose from his seat and moved around to where she was, tactfully avoiding the vomit. He offered her a glass of water, but she shook her head.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, fat tears sliding down her cheeks. “Akira-san, I’m so sorry for what I am.”

It seemed unlikely, as tasteless as her mother was, that she had ever bothered to apologize to Akira for abandoning him and bringing shame onto their entire family. So it fell on her to do it.

Once again, her brother shrugged at her. “Seiko made her own decisions. That’s life. My father was a good man. He raised me well. In truth I was probably better off without her.”

“But I—”

“It isn’t your fault. So hush.”

She wiped her eyes. “Where is she?”

It seemed strange that a question that had weighed on her for so long, that had consumed her and dictated in some strange way every single footstep she placed on the ground, could be so simply put: three little words. That was it.

Akira shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Nobody has seen or heard from her since the day she dropped you on this doorstep.”

Nori could not bring herself to ask if he thought that their mother was dead. Instead, a very different question fell from her lips. “Do you hate her?”

Akira shut his eyes, and for a moment, he looked far older than his years.

“No,” he said, running a hand through his messy hair. “I don’t hate her. Do you?”

Nori’s hand inadvertently found the forest green ribbon tied around her neck in a bow. She remembered the day she had gotten this, just as she remembered the day she had gotten the rest of them.

“No,” she whispered, tears welling behind her eyes. But she stopped them there. They would not fall.

Not another tear would slide down her cheeks for the sake of Seiko Kamiza.

Akira’s strangely warm hands lifted her from her seat. She went limp, and he cradled her in his arms like a fledgling baby bird incapable of moving on its own. They stood like that for a long moment. He had never held her close before.

Nori shut her eyes and listened to the sound of Akira’s heart beating. Even his heartbeat was musical. His breathing was slow and steady, and it offered the cool reassurance that life would go on. When the moment had passed, Akira put her down.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “And don’t be late for lessons tomorrow. We’re doing Schubert.”

He left her standing there, and she watched him go, seeing the ghost of his outline in the darkness long after he had gone.

She did not sleep that night. She lay in bed, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, suppressing tears with every inch of willpower she possessed. It proved to be quite a formidable amount. That invisible wall that separated her memories of the time before from the rest of her being was shattering piece by piece.

But she still couldn’t see her mother’s face: just a set of floating eyes.

And she realized now, finally, what that wall had been there for. It wasn’t there to torment her, to keep her from remembering glorious days of bliss with a mother who loved her. It was there to protect her from a mother who didn’t.

Smoke. Lots of smoke. The apartment always smelled like smoke and lye and vinegar.

Her mother cleaned, often, to cover the smell from the cigarettes. She would bring people back to the apartment some nights, on the days she wasn’t gone all day. She’d put on her rouge and her red lipstick, and sometimes she’d let Nori help her. She’d spray herself with some peppermint perfume. A vase of tall purple flowers was never absent from her mother’s vanity. Nori remembered this, especially.

After the primping was done, there would be a knock on the door. Nori was told to stay in her room, and her mother would turn the key in the lock from the outside.

Her mother never struck her. Never struck her, never screamed at her, but she also never kissed her, never held her, never spoke tenderly. The woman was a paragon of neutrality. No hatred, no love.

Nori’s body racked with silent sobs. She could stifle the tears and she could stifle the sound, but her chest heaved up and down with the force of a small hurricane, in total disregard to her will.

Her mother hadn’t given her up so that Nori could improve herself. Leaving her wasn’t designed to teach her a lesson or to make her “good.”

It wasn’t about Nori being perfect. It was about her being gone.

Without Nori, her mother could be free. She could be beautiful and free. No more shame, no more struggle. It was simple. Painfully, painfully simple.