Fifty Words for Rain(53)

One day I came home from school and they told me he was dead. I moved to Kyoto the day after we buried him.

My mother was different, but she was gone before my fifth birthday.

I remember she played the piano beautifully. She practiced all the time and used to sit me beside her on the bench. When I started playing the violin at two, we’d play together and she would always humor me and tell me that I was her muse.

She smelled of peppermint tea, her favorite. And later, when she started smoking, she wore peppermint perfume so Father wouldn’t know.

She was all laughs and smiles and warm kisses. She would come wake me at five a.m. so that we could play games in the garden. She tried to build castles out of snow in nothing but her nightgown. She was famously beautiful, famously graceful, but she could be as giddy as a little girl. When I found out about the affairs, later, it was hardly news. She needed amusement; she needed to know that she was adored. My father gave her neither of those things.

She cried a lot too. Sometimes she locked us both in the music room and cried for hours.

“Little bird,” she would whisper into my hair. “My poor little bird.”

I remember the day she left. She came to my room and kissed me. She said that she was going into town to run some errands.

And then she was gone.

My father and grandparents sent a search party after her, but I knew, even at four years old, that she was never coming back.

Sometimes I look at Nori and it is all I can do not to flinch. The resemblance is becoming more striking as she grows. I find myself watching her, waiting for the first cracks to show. I have forgiven her for what she tried to do. And I can understand it.

But I’ll never trust her again.

“Oniichan,” she pipes up, in that high, clear squeak she calls a voice. “Where are we going?”

I think that she is my responsibility now and she will be asking me that for the rest of my life.

“Just there,” I say, pointing to a crowded area fenced off with white rope. There are several market stalls and booths, with food, toys, and jewelry. Half the district has come out, bringing their rowdy children with them. “There’s an autumn festival. I thought you would like it.”

Her little face lights up. She stands up on her tiptoes. “You promised to take me to a festival years ago. I thought you’d forgotten.”

At last, she moves me to a smile. She is teaching me her easy joy. I am someone who is not easily satisfied, a consummate perfectionist, but Nori is delighted with everything.

“We’re early now, but there will be performing mid-afternoon—drummers and dancers, all kinds of things—and when it gets dark, there will be paper lanterns. You make a wish on one and then you let it go.”

She wraps her little arms around my waist. This time I let her.

“Arigatou,” she whispers.

I nod. “Do you want to go and play?”

She has forgotten her fear, it seems. Her eyes are bright.

“Are there games?”

“Oh, yes. Bobbing for apples and . . .” I trail off. I really don’t know. I never played games after Mother left.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t know. She is off like a shot. I have to laugh as she bounds towards the festival grounds. The bright autumn leaves form a canopy over everything and the sunlight filters down through their colors so that all of us are bathed in orange light.

I am determined to give her this day.

She flits from booth to booth, and when she finds something that she wants, she looks at me with the slightest hint of a pout and I hand her some money. Eventually, I just give up and give her my wallet.

She buys a large sack to keep her trinkets in, and before I know it she has collected two teddy bears, a box of candied apples, and some jewelry made of seashells from the coast.

I was afraid that someone might say something unkind to her or question her skin, but my fears are baseless.

This is a lighthearted event, and no one is looking for a reason to be unhappy. The war years were hard—not for me, of course, and not for any of the other rich people in the country, but for the common people, they were very hard years indeed, and now everyone just wants to be carefree. Tokyo is coming to life again. Her people have always been decades ahead of the rest of the country. Perhaps my sister will be happy here.

Besides, she is not without a kind of appeal. Her joy is catching, and before long she is playing tag with a group of boys. Someone puts a crown made of leaves in her hair.

She is pretty. I’m going to have to watch her. Pretty and trusting is a poor combination. At thirteen, she is still very much a child, with a child’s desperate desire to be loved.

“Oniichan,” she calls out to me, “I’m hungry.”

I buy her some takoyaki, and she leans her head against my arm as she eats it. We watch the dancers swirling around in their elaborate costumes and she hops up and down in time to the music.

“Do they do this every season?” she asks me.

“Yes.”

Her eyes fill up with quick tears, but she is off again before I have a chance to say anything about them. I spot her throwing some rings around glass bottles.

Unbelievably, I do it. I manage to tolerate an entire day of something that I have no interest in whatsoever. Nori is teaching me patience I never knew I could possess. It’s like a well that I am constantly digging.