Fifty Words for Rain(86)

She doesn’t stir. I don’t even know if she hears me. She has not spoken a single word since I told her of her brother’s death.

I go to sit at the stool by her bedside and am repulsed by the smell of her. She smells of death, of decay.

“Nori,” I say again, more forcefully this time, “there is a letter for you.”

Her cracked lips part. She mouths no and then turns on her side so that she is facing the wall.

I see red sores on her back.

When the police found her and took her to the hospital, it was I who went to fetch her and bring her back here. Once they pulled the glass out, the doctor said she would live and recover fully, but that she would have a terrible scar.

I almost laughed in his face.

I never got to see Akira-sama. He was already in the morgue. And anyway, he had no face. They told me he had no face.

I had to get Nori out of that place before her grandmother arrived. I had to do it, for Akira-sama.

“There is a letter from your grandmother.”

Nori-sama cranes her neck over to squint at me. “What?” she breathes, and her voice is that of an old, broken woman.

“Your grandmother sent a messenger with a letter for you.”

For the first time in days, she sits up. She has to grab hold of me to steady herself, but she reaches out her skeletal arm and takes the letter from my hand.

She removes the seal and opens the envelope, pulls out the letter. I see her eyes scan the page, once, twice, three times.

Her face betrays no emotion; her eyes are as blank as a doll’s.

She hands me the letter and turns her face back to the wall.

I find that my hands are shaking as I try to read it. The morning light streaming through the covered window is gray and dull, but I can still make out what it says.


February 28th, 1957


Noriko,

You will be glad to know that you have achieved your ambition. Your brother is dead. The future of our house is dead. My legacy, which I have worked so hard to protect, will end with my death.

Perhaps now you will believe me when I tell you that you are cursed, you are wretched, you are a child of the devil.

They will have told you that his beautiful face was ripped in two. He died on a cold road in the middle of the night, alone.

He was twenty-one for all of a day.

We, his family, your grandfather and I, have buried him with great honor in Kyoto, his ancestral city.

You have until the end of the first week of March to leave Japan and never return.

This courtesy is out of respect for my grandson, for God knows you deserve none.

You have killed your brother. You have destroyed your mother and your father too.

I will tell you now that he was a common farmhand from a common little state called Virginia, in America. His name was James Ferrier. He died in 1941, shortly after you were born.

I tell you this so that you are very sure that you have no one and nothing. You have no name, for I strip it from you. And you have no family, for you have ruined them all.

Leave Japan. See if you can find some wretched corner of the world that will have you.

Though for my part, I doubt it.

The Honorable Lady Yuko Kamiza



I press a hand to my mouth to stop myself from crying out.

What an evil woman.

“Nori,” I gasp, taking hold of her thin shoulders and forcing her to look at me. “You have to go.”

She blinks.

“Nori, they will kill you! This is no idle threat, they have no incentive anymore, there is nothing to hold them back!”

She tilts her head. “Good.”

I am dumbstruck. “What?”

She shrugs. “I deserve to die. Let her.”

I slap her across the face. I do it without even thinking. All of my grief, all of my rage at a random, cruel universe, comes pouring out.

“How dare you. How dare you say such a thing, you stupid girl. Obocchama risked everything for you, to give you a life, to give you a chance at a future worth having.”

Her cheeks flush. “Yes,” she spits, “and now he is dead.”

“And that was not your fault. It was an accident. It was an act of God.”

Her eyes well with tears. The mask cracks.

“What kind of God would allow this?” she sobs.

I cannot answer her. I don’t know.

I hold her to my chest, this frail little thing, and hold her as she cries.

“You have to live,” I tell her, my voice shaking with fervor. “You have to get yourself out of the country, somewhere safe. Go to your friend Alice in England. Leave Japan, leave all of this behind. Start a new life.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want to live at all.”

I shake her, hard, and her head snaps back and forth.

“It doesn’t matter what you want. Don’t you dare insult Obocchama’s memory by allowing yourself to die. Now, get up.”

She hesitates.

“GET UP!”

I all but yank her out of the bed. She stumbles around the room on shaky legs. She looks like a doe learning to walk.

She collapses against the wall, and for a long time, she does not speak.

“Will you come with me?” she asks in a tiny voice.

Poor, sweet girl. I wish I could. I have never known any other kind of life, never even dreamed of one.